Title: The Ties That Bind

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Nothing mine, all belongs to Stephenie Meyer. Sad but true.

Pairings: Carlisle/Esme, Rosalie/Emmett, Jasper/OC (Bella Cullen), Edward/OC (Elizabeth St. John)

Beta: EmoTWiLiGHT

Author's note: This fic is the sequel of 'Endless Waltz', you have to read it in order to understand what's going on... Twenty years had passed since the finale of the first fic and here is the rest of Bella's story. The title of the fic come from the homonym Bruce Springsteen's song.

Bella

I could hear the rain hitting on the windows. It was the second, no, the third day of heavy rain in a row… Thank God we had eaten properly before the storm began, I really wouldn't like to go to the stables and choose which one of our horses I felt like sacrificing. I was laying on the couch, reading a book, and my head rested on Jasper's chest. He was also reading, but with one hand he was stroking my hair. The fire in the fireplace irradiated light and heat in the living room, but I could barely feel it on my hard, perfect vampire skin. It was something nice to look at, though. I sighed, and closed my book. I moved to get in his lap and hide my head against him, with a deep sigh. Jasper kissed my forehead and hugged me. God, this would never get old for me. Never.

"So? Do you still want to go to Dublin tomorrow?" he softly said to me.

"Dublin sound nice," I said, already imagining our bike trip to the Irish capital. "If the bad weather continues, we could also make a trip to London later this week…"

Japer rolled his eyes, laughing. "How many times can a girl go see the Tate Modern before she becomes sick of it?"

"Quite a lot."

Especially considering I had been doing it for the last twenty years.

Twenty years… once I wouldn't have even conceived the idea of living a day outside the coven… but things had dramatically changed when I brought back Edward.

I had no idea of what I had done, back then. How could I? Everyone was crazily happy to have Edward back in the family, alive and well, after years spent mourning him. Jasper and I decided to postpone the wedding for a few months, and we all devoted to help Edward recover after his long captivity. He kept saying he was fine, but we didn't believe him. We were just waiting for him to ask our help. Eventually, he did.

I was the one that had saved him, so I saw nothing wrong when Edward started to get closer to me. We spent lot of time together, hunting, taking walks... He was the one that had known my mother better than everyone else in the family, I loved hearing him talk about her, now that he knew my mom was never angry at him for leaving. I had gained a new brother and a friend, and everything was fine for once. No catastrophes or twists.

I was so eager to help that I didn't realize how much Jasper was suffering. Thanks to his power, he knew perfectly that what Edward was feeling for me had nothing to do with the feelings a brother should feel for a sister… He tried to make me realize the truth without addressing the question directly, but I didn't want to listen. I couldn't believe Edward would do something like that, try to steal me from his brother… Edward knew I loved Jasper with all myself.

Then, one day, I started to see the signs Jasper had already noticed in Edward, and I felt like dying. He was right. Edward reserved his crooked smile only for me. His eyes lit up when I entered a room. His embraces lasted always a second more than licit. He always tried to spend more and more time alone with me… Such realization hit me when I was walking in the woods with Edward, after hunting a couple of deer. I couldn't help myself, and I asked him what he thought was happening between us. The look in his eyes was enough of an answer. But whatever reaction he was expecting from me, the frightened look I gave him after he had told me what he felt for me wasn't what he hoped to see. I ran to Jasper in his library, and I hugged him, begging for forgiveness. I had sworn I would've never hurt him… but I did. Again. And I couldn't forgive myself.

I told him what had happened. Jasper told me everything was alright, but I knew it wasn't. It wouldn't be until both of us would stay in Canada, with the rest of the family. We were discussing where to go and for how long, when Esme and Carlisle told us that Edward had left on his own moments before. Carlisle told us what we already knew: Edward had fallen in love with me, because of who I was, what I had done for him and of my incredible resemblance with his lost love. He had confessed to Carlisle before leaving that he had really tried to steal me away from Jasper, and the guilt he felt after realizing his mistake and that his love wasn't reciprocated made him decide to stay away from the family until he would be able to see me just as a little sister.

Like I needed to feel more guilty. Trying to help the family, I drove a rift right in the middle of it. I literally begged Jasper to take me away, didn't matter where. Edward was Carlisle's first son, the first companion he ever had. I couldn't look him and Esme in the eyes anymore, knowing that I was the reason he had left.

We first moved to Boston, where I devoted myself to give back all the objects in my box to the people that had lost a dear one in Volterra because of the Volturi. Then, one year later, we ended up in Ireland. I realized once we were in Dublin that the information I had was wrong. Dublin was the wrong place... the agency that organized that trip had closed in the meanwhile, and every record had been destroyed. Trying to find the right people would be like searching a needle in a haystack… but I had time, and I really didn't want to go home, so I started working. But even my stubbornness couldn't do much against the total absence of clues. And the only ghosts I could ask for help were in Volterra… prisoners of that vampire sorceress, Elissa.

When I didn't resolve the enigma of the box, I moved on and started searching information on her. Elissa was almost as old as the other Volturi, I discovered. Her ability worked like mine, so to speak… but I helped spirits to leave this world. She used her power to keep them captive and use them as a sort of private army. The fear I had felt when she had saw me in the dungeons made me feel grateful I couldn't sleep anymore. She would constantly be in my nightmares otherwise.

A few months after we settled in Ireland, we heard that Emmett and Rosalie had come to Europe too, for their honeymoon, and decided to stay. They were living in France. Carlisle and Esme stayed in Canada alone, and even if my heart ached to imagine them in that big, empty house, I couldn't bring myself to ask Jasper to take me back. We kept in touch with phone calls, letters and emails, though… but Edward was like he had disappeared out of thin air. The only one he talked to was Carlisle. He never tried to call us. It didn't help my guilt.

I put my wedding dress at the bottom of a chest, along with the wedding rings and all the rest of my wedding-related things. How could I think of that, when my family was disbanded? I knew that Esme wasn't happy that Jasper and I lived like husband and wife without the blessing of a priest, but I refused to think of it. I would marry, and Jasper agreed with me, only when the family would be reunited once more.

Jasper and I started to wear claddagh rings after a year or so of living in Ireland, and we started to think of those silver rings as our wedding bangs. We had bought an old noble residence that was falling to pieces, and we slowly brought it back to its ancient splendor. It was in the middle of nowhere… exactly where I wanted to be. The garden was huge; when I wasn't reading or hunting, I devoted myself to it. The sunny days were a little too much for us, but we lived so isolated that it didn't matter if we accidentally exposed ourselves to the sun and started sparkling.

And then, five years later, Eamonn O'Shea came in our lives.

During one of our hunting trips in Connemara, we ran into a small group of nomadic vampires – a female, two males. They kind of mocked us for our feeding habits, but they let us be. The female, Ella, was fascinated by the loyalty and love she could see between me and Jasper, and looked with envy at our matching rings. The two males, Darragh and Ryan, looked at Jasper's battle scars with open curiosity, but they didn't ask questions. We left after a couple of days. Two days after we were back home, the killings started.

If we had doubts on who was the killer, we stopped having it when we met again Ella, Darragh and Ryan. They had followed us. Since you don't want to eat humans you can't prevent us to from doing it, was Darragh's simple answer. We tried to make it on our own, but Darragh, the leader, was determined in taking what he thought was rightfully his. That included everything 'the strangers' had built in the previous years. So we decided to call some backup… namely Rosalie and Emmett, who took the first flight available to come and help us.

Only when Emmett took me in his arms and made me twirl in the air a couple of times I realized how much I had missed him and his booming laugh. Rosalie wasn't so good-inclined, though. She still hadn't forgiven me and Jasper for calling off the wedding and running away, years before. She kept on repeating that it wasn't my fault I looked that way or that Edward had fallen in love with me, and she hated the fact I wasn't still ready to recognize she was right and I was wrong. Since she was on the verge of one of her legendary rage outbursts and I was at the receiving end of it, we all decided to make her direct her unspeakable anger towards the nomads, and we immediately went looking for them in the forest.

They weren't expecting us to call help. And they really weren't expecting such help to be one of the Furies and her legally wedded husband. We asked them to leave, several times. There was no need for the bloodshed to continue or for someone to get hurt or killed. But they didn't listen… so we did the only thing in our power to make them stop.

The bonfire produced a high, dark column of smoke. We stayed there in complete silence, watching the flames, until we were sure the remnants of those three had been incinerated, then we went home. Incredible… I remembered clearly how much killing my first prey had upset me. Seven years later, I had dismembered three vampires with my fiancé, my brother and my sister, and upset wasn't the word I would have used to describe what I was feeling inside.

When did I change? How?

I didn't have the time to analyze myself further, because the nomads left us a horrible parting gift: they had kidnapped various children from the villages nearby and hid them somewhere in the forest, but we discovered it only when it was too late. And I couldn't see their ghosts, meaning that Ella, Ryan and Darragh didn't have unfinished business… especially with us. Ten children, hidden somewhere in the forest, with no protection or food… we immediately started searching for them, trying not to interfere with the human search parties.

I never felt more relieved in my life than the moment I finally found them in a hidden cave. I tried my best to look reassuring, and I guided them out of the forest and on the street for the nearest village with Rosalie, Emmett and Jasper. But one of the children refused to go. He was fascinated with our golden eyes… he thought we were the elves that lived in the forest. We said we were. We didn't think we were doing anything wrong, he was just a child, and he would eventually realize that there were no such things as elves in the forest.

Yeah, right.

Little Eamonn never stopped trying to find the way back to the house where 'the elves' had taken him and the others to make sure they were fine before sending them home. But we didn't know that yet. We said goodbye to Emmett and Rosalie, and kept living our simple, retired life. A couple of years later we restored the little farm that was in our property and started breeding horses. Once more, Jasper was a constant source of information. It reminded him of when he was younger and human… He had a brother and two sisters, I discovered. Two loving parents. An army of young ladies that hoped to seduce him and become Mrs. Whitlock. He also spoke fondly of the horse he had back then.

The following Christmas, we both give each other a horse as a gift. As a result, we were the two proud owners of two Arabian horses, probably the most beautiful creatures I had ever seen in my life. Jasper's horse was grey, a shade so light that it could be mistaken for white. I chose that specific color because it was the one his beloved horse had. But the one he gave to me… oh my. His coat color was of the darkest shade of black. It was a rarity between purebred Arabian horses. I named the horse Angelus, and Jasper named his Liath Macha, like one of the two horses that guided the chariot of Cúchulainn, an Irish mythological hero. Liath also meant 'grey' in Gaelic… it was the perfect name for that creature. But that horse had a devil inside of it, for sure. Jasper loved it for that reason as well, but it was a real annoyance having to deal with such a free spirit. Once it ran away, and we had to go look for Liath everywhere. I found it… well, a young man found it. His name was Eamonn, and in that occasion, I didn't notice his astonished look when he saw me. I was quite used by now to the admiring looks I received from men of all ages when I got out from my refuge. And I was too relieved to have found the horse to notice anything else beside Liath. Like Eamonn following me home, for example.

He was clever… he never tried to face us directly. He waited till all the other children, now young adults, were back in town, and only then they decided to come knocking at our door. Denying was impossible, they did the homework… maybe we weren't elves, but they knew we were supernatural creatures. They just didn't expect us to be vampires. They saw Ryan and Ella kill a couple of humans and drink their blood in front of them, so they were comprehensibly scared by us now. But their fear didn't last long. We were the ones that saved their lives… they trusted us once, and they chose to trust us again. We finally learned all their names (Eamonn, Emer, Dana, Gregory, Jack, Lynn, Isabel, Daniel, Peter and Michelle) and we decided it wouldn't hurt to have some human friends. We got particularly attached to Eamonn and Emer, now his girlfriend. I let her borrow my wedding dress when they decided to get married in our garden. It was like having a family again, especially because they decided they would be the farm's tenants and moved inside our property. Four years later, Emer was diagnosed with cancer… the day after she had discovered she was pregnant.

All of the sudden, it was like reliving my mother's story. I didn't want to lose Emer… she was just 25, she could have other children… but she was sure she could have her baby and then start the treatment. We spent months in incertitude, watching her belly grow and praying for a miracle. Emer's baby was born seven months later, because there was no time left for Emer to start the cure. Eamonn devoted to his wife, and Jasper and I took care of his baby girl, Abigail. It was supposed to be only a temporary solution, but Emer's death destroyed Eamonn... He couldn't even get close to Abby. That was why, after a couple of months, I went talking to him. Well… I didn't exactly talk. I punched him in the face and broke his jaw, shouting about how big of an idiot he was, that Emer wasn't there as a ghost because she knew she had no reason to stay behind (a good thing, I had discovered in those years spent dealing with ghosts), and that his little girl didn't need Jasper and me, but his real father. I told him everything about the circumstances of my birth, how my father and I never connected, how the blame of having caused my mother's death had driven a rift between us until I ran away from his house. That did the trick. Besides, Jasper told me I was really scary in that moment. Rosalie-like scary...

Anyway, Eamonn started to spend more and more time with Abby after my 'speech'. Who cared how had I convinced him?

After Eamonn and Abby moved out of our house, I immediately picked up the phone and begged Esme and Carlisle to come. I didn't realize what I had done until I heard Esme telling me that Carlisle had already booked the flight as we were speaking. While waiting for their arrival, Jasper and I (with Eamonn and the others, of course) tried to imagine how this meeting could go. They were sure no one would blame us for the getaway or me for how things had gone with Edward. We hoped they were right… and the moment we saw Carlisle and Esme in front of us, with those bright, happy smiles of theirs, Jasper and I realized our self-imposed exile was over.

We called Rosalie and Emmett as well, and I introduced them all to our human friends and little Abby. I noticed that all the girls plus Esme and Rosalie were chatting, maybe too much, with a weird glint in their eyes, but I was too busy with Abby to pay more attention to them. And I knew how Isabel and Michelle were after the third glass of wine…

Eamonn took advantage of the evening to tell us he wanted Jasper and me to be Abby's godparents. We already loved that baby like she was our child; we immediately accepted. He loved the fact we would be, without a doubt, around for all her life and beyond. Emer's death made him question many things about life and future. He now loved to have everything set and planned… just in case.

A week later, the girls were still planning something… and they didn't want me to know. Carlisle and the others had joined their ranks as well, and Jasper found himself in my same situation. Then, out of the blue, the entire Denali clan showed up on our doorstep, bearing gifts… and everything became clearer.

They had secretly planned our wedding! And they did it so fast and so good we didn't even have time to actually protest. Not that we wanted to. Silly us. We had waited for the family to be reunited to get married… we never thought that maybe our wedding could be the catalyst to make that happen.

The only thing that hurt me was that Edward wouldn't be there for the wedding. Twenty years hadn't been enough for Edward to forget whatever feelings had for me, apparently. I sighed, but like Tanya and Irina put it (and in a really colorful manner), Jasper and I had waited long enough for him to come back. We couldn't wait anymore, it wasn't right for us and most of all wasn't right for the rest of the family. The family that had loved us and supported us since I first stumbled on them oh so many years before.

The ceremony was exactly what Jasper and I had dreamt of. Rosalie and Esme wanted to do something bigger, but I knew that not even they could've made Dana, Lynn, Isabel and Michelle change their minds once they were set on something. I learned that years back as well.

We had the ceremony outdoors, after the sunset. And even if some raindrops menaced to ruin the party, it went on as planned… no, even better than that. We introduced the rest of the family to Irish traditional dances and music, and… and I never felt happier in my life. Now I got why Emmett and Rosalie kept on getting married so often… it was awesome!

I giggled madly when Isabel, Rosalie and Kate insisted Jasper take off and throw away my garter to the single men in the group plus Emmett (because Rosalie wanted to get married again but there were too many single girls in the party and she wasn't in the mood for fighting for the bouquet.. especially because we had something else planned for that moment). Then I turned to throw my bouquet at the girls (and I was aiming at Esme, who was sitting peacefully with Carlisle and watching us play. They never got married again after their first wedding… and Rosalie and I agreed it was definitely time for another ceremony). I took a deep breath, I closed my eyes, and threw the bouquet behind my shoulders. When I heard no cheering or Rosalie teasing Esme, I turned to see what went wrong.

I stared at Edward with my mouth wide open. He was holding the bouquet in his hands. I had to blink a couple times to actually believe what I was seeing. And I wasn't the only one…