She left Edward as soon as she could to meet Jacob halfway.
He was overjoyed to see her, and phased back to human form so fast she barely had time to turn her eyes away.
«Hi, Nessie!» he said as he shuffled into a pair of jeans, and he sounded somehow even more happy to see her than usual. As if just by taking a few minutes out of her day to greet him, she had made his entire week.
«Jake, hi,» Renesmée smiled as she turned back to face him, hoping it looked more genuine than it felt.
None of what happened in Volterra was of Carlisle's own volition rang through her mind again, for the sixty-seventh time since Edward had first said the words.
Renesmée looked down at the forest floor so Jacob couldn't see her eyes well up with tears, and tried to keep her cool.
What she wouldn't give to be a full vampire right now, so she could simply hold her breath, not have to worry about keeping it even, about…
The memory of her grandfather's voice, accompanied by that odd smile, joined Edward's words in her mind. Seducing me wasn't very hard. Embarrassingly easy, really.
She kept her arms at her sides and her shoulders low, trying with all that she had to keep her composure.
«You wanna hang in the woods today? Just us?» Jacob asked, still eager.
Renesmée raised her eyes to stare back at him and weighed her options.
She'd come because she needed to get out, out of the house, away from Edward before her thoughts could slip up or he could say anything more.
Going out to meet Jacob had been a good excuse that meant Edward wouldn't follow to keep her company, and frankly the only thing that she had been able to think of that didn't require thinking too much about it.
Renesmée valued her gift, but the older she grew the more she came to wish she had at least some of her mother's ability. Or at the very least that Bella would shield her when she asked, but on the occasions Renesmée had asked Bella had immediately asked if there was anything her daughter was upset about, and things had backfired completely.
No, Renesmée couldn't stay in the house where her father was, and seeking out her mother wouldn't be good either.
She'd really rather be alone, but that too would make her family want to know why. It would make them nervous as well, between Alice's inability to see her and her near execution as a child her family rarely let her alone in case something should happen to her.
Looking at Jacob's overjoyed smile and adoring eyes, she felt vaguely bad for letting him think she was here for him.
For a moment, she thought about confiding in him. As his imprint, she was supposedly his number one priority in the world.
If she asked him to keep this secret, that what she needed most in this world was for him to keep his mouth shut and only be a listening ear…
The thing was, for all that Jacob was supposedly whatever she needed in life, as she grew older she increasingly found that she was the one being what he needed.
Oh, he'd been great when she was a baby, always cheerful, always excited to play whatever game she wanted, he was silly and funny and safe.
But Renesmée had not been a baby for very long.
These days, she increasingly found herself being the one entertaining Jacob, counting the hours until he'd leave and she could get back to what she wanted to do.
It was easier said than done, avoiding him, as the one time she feigned not feeling well had turned into a disaster for the history books.
(That particular scheme had been inspired by the human women of 19th century literature. If they could sneeze once and be out of capacity for the week, then surely Renesmée could say she'd slept poorly and be excused from playing video games with Jacob for the day.
It wasn't even a lie. With her parents tirelessly copulating within hearing distance each night, Renesmée had undereye bags that put the thirstiest vampire to shame.
Alas, this plan had blown up in her face. Jacob had been concerned, her parents had been concerned, Carlisle had given her a check-up to make sure she wasn't dying, and then Rosalie had looked over his notes and interrogated him to make sure he hadn't missed anything. Renesmée had spent the next week being fussed over by the whole family, and Jacob even slept on the floor next to her bed and spent her every waking hour reading to her.
It was touching, but exhausting.)
Spending time with other family members would be a legitimate excuse, but…
Well, Renesmée's Ireland trip was nothing if not a spectacular example of how that sort of thing really wasn't a winning strategy for her.
No, she was, for better and worse, stuck with Jacob.
Who got very upset at the very indication she wanted to spend her time elsewhere.
And if she were to tell him what she'd learned, well.
The odds that Jacob would sit down, listen, and then never speak of it again were roughly the odds of Jacob agreeing that they saw each other a bit much and should cut it down to once, maybe twice a week.
More importantly, she would be completely betraying Carlisle's confidence.
«Actually, Jake,» she began, mildly surprised at how upbeat her voice was, «I was hoping I could ask you something.»
Feeling her composure settle, she summoned another smile to her lips, and danced forward, making a game of not letting her feet sink more than a centimeter into the snow with each step.
Jacob watched her approach with that look of helpless adulation she'd come to expect from him.
«Easter is coming up.»
Well, that wasn't strictly true, Easter was two months away.
However, after the disastrous Easter Egg hunt Renesmée's family had thrown for her the year before, she felt it was very reasonable to let them prepare properly this time.
(It could not be overstated how disastrous that Easter Egg hunt had been.
The goal had been fairly straightforward: the family had wanted to do something fun for Renesmée that Easter, as they did every holiday, and nothing seemed more appropriate than an Easter Egg hunt.
And so, Alice and Rosalie had dressed their little niece up in a white and brown bunny costume that somehow looked classy, and given her a basket and a map.
The rules had been simple: somewhere out there in the wilderness were seven eggs, as each of Renesmée's family members had hidden one.
The first egg she found was Edward's. As he didn't want to make it too easy for her by hiding the egg himself, thereby giving her a scent to follow, he'd let Jacob hide the egg instead.
So she followed Jacob's scent.
It was a very nice egg.
The next egg would have been Emmett's, as he had not cloaked his scent. No, he had hidden the egg in a nearby lake, trusting the challenge to be finding the egg underwater.
Well, it was challenging, alright, as he had forgotten his niece needed to breathe.
They'd forfeited that egg.
Then there'd been Rosalie's egg, which had no scent attached as she'd air-dropped it with a drone, but in turn it was lying out in the open, perfectly surreptitious. Esme placed her egg in the house, as it was technically on the map. Renesmée would admit that was clever, if skirting the rules. She'd only found it when she returned home at the very end of the hunt.
Jasper's egg, which he had attached to a mountain lion so she'd get a treat along with her egg, was never found.
Nor was Alice's egg, as she considered Renesmée's immunity to her gift to be an unfair advantage, ruining her fun so she couldn't place the egg in the last place Renesmée would look.
To Renesmée's everlasting disappointment, Bella's egg had been by far the worst.
Bella, having realized that her daughter would all too easily follow her scent, had decided to simply cover the entire area in her scent. She'd methodically covered every corner of the map in her scent, spending no less than three hours running back and forth, to and fro, and across. The egg was deposited in a random location.
Renesmée had no clues, and ended up spending six hours looking. It was nighttime by the time she was done, and Jacob had dozed off while an apologetic Carlisle had gone back to the hospital, where he had a night shift.
Carlisle had been the only one whose Easter Egg was actually fun to find, as he had hidden it a few days ahead, letting time and the elements wash away his scent. Renesmée had a decently difficult time finding it.
Still, she'd come away from the experience never wanting to hear the word «Easter Egg» again.
Unless it was for a good cause.
Yes, future Renesmée would undoubtedly regret setting herself up for whatever Jacob came up with, but it was a price worth paying for privacy.)
Indeed, Jacob gave her a slightly panicked look. «Easter?» he said, his voice a bit high. «Oh, but we're not doing anything this Easter. Not after last year,» he said, the lie obvious.
Renesmée giggled at him. «Nice try, Jake. Alright, um, how about… how about,» she said, dragging out the «ou» in about, «if anyone is doing anything this Easter, then you can be in charge? Of the hypothetical something?» She gave him a knowing smile. «Look, after last year, I think maybe one person should coordinate the whole thing. The hypothetical thing which I know nothing about, I mean. But, if Schrödinger has an Easter project lying around in that box of his, then I want you to be in charge of it.»
The smile on Jacob's face was so bright, Renesmée could see why Bella said he was like the sun. «Really?» he asked.
«M-hm!» she chirped. «I want it to be a doubly great Easter to make up for last year.»
«You got it!» Jacob said! «Hypothetically,» he added, and wagged a finger at her.
She laughed again, and made a show of a serious nod. «Since nothing has been confirmed, I'll be very surprised if anything happens this Easter. Really, I won't see it coming.»
Jacob winked at her.
«Alright,» he said after a moment of gazing happily upon her, «so what are we doing today?»
… Goddamnit.
«I was headed back to the cabin, actually,» Renesmée said after a moment's pause.
Jacob nodded, and turned to face the direction of the cabin.
«Jake,» Renesmée laughed, even as she very badly wanted to tell him to just give her five minutes of peace, «I'm just going to change. This dress, it's too… dressy, I suppose, I'm in a jeans mood today.»
«Oh, okay,» Jacob said.
He made no move to turn away from the cabin's direction.
«Jake, I'm just going to change. Really no need for you to come with,» she said, the accompanying laughter a bit forced now.
Jacob's eyes widened. «Why? Is there anything wrong?»
«No!» she hurried to reassure him. «No, nothing's wrong, I just… don't see the need for you to come with, that's all. It's a detour. You'd have to wait outside, anyway.» She gestured vaguely towards herself, indicating that she would be changing.
Jacob frowned.
«Besides,» Renesmée added, wracking her brain for an excuse, «it would be great if you could boot up the Xbox for Skyrim. It takes forever.»
Jacob looked unimpressed for a moment, which was fair since Emmett's console was at the top of the line. It was as fast as it could be.
But, the need to please his imprint overshadowed all, so he nodded. «Alright. See you in ten minutes?»
She smiled. «Ten minutes. No— fifteen, I'm not sure which jeans.»
«See you soon!» he shouted over his shoulder, before he stripped, and phased.
Staring intently at her shoes, she was… going to have to talk to him about undressing in front of her. At some point. When she had the time for the subsequent trademarked Jacob Panic.
He stopped by her for a few seconds, and she scratched his ear obligingly.
Then he was gone.
Renesmée felt the pleasant, happy face slip off of her features like she'd wiped it off with a towel.
Left was a girl who'd just learned her grandfather had possibly, probably, been raped.
Thinking it aloud to herself was enough to undo the wall she'd carefully constructed in her mind, the dam that had held the horror and grief at bay.
The sobs came almost before she could bury her face in her hands. Distantly, she was aware of her bare knees resting on the snow, melting it underneath her.
She would have spent the day there, weeping for her grandfather.
But a look at the ostentatious Richard Mille Edward had gotten her that Christmas told her that she'd wasted ten minutes already.
If she didn't get back in time, Jacob would come looking for her, he'd be panicked, and it would become a whole thing.
She would be making everything worse for herself, and possibly Carlisle as well should the worst happen and Edward caught a thought he shouldn't.
Renesmée summoned strength she didn't actually have, and choked down her sobs, stabbed her feet into the ground so they could hold her.
Funny, she was still gasping for breath—
But, it didn't matter.
She took off towards the cabin, chanting a litany of reminders to herself for why she really, really, needed to keep it together.
Only to find herself standing nowhere near the cabin, but by the highway leading to Forks instead, just within the treeline so the cars wouldn't see her.
(She had, after all, never actually been introduced to Forks. Her appearance would raise too many questions. Better, her family had reasoned, to wait until her aging had slowed before announcing her existence to the world.)
Carlisle had a shift starting at nine o'clock, and it was eight thirty. He'd be driving past any moment now.
She had no aim, no plan, no thought beyond the fact that she was apparently standing by the roadside, watching out for her grandfather's Mercedes instead of changing into her jeans.
Almost absentmindedly she fished out her phone, and sent a quick text to Jacob. «Going on a quick hunt. Will be back l8r. You can play S without me». She then put the phone on airplane mode, and slipped it into her leg holster.
To hell with the consequences.
It was only two minutes later that Carlisle's car appeared.
«Grandfather!» Renesmée cried, waving a hand. He'd see her, she knew.
Carlisle's eyes bugged at the sight of her, but he composed himself so fast she doubted a human would have caught his shock. «I'll stop, give me a second,» he said without lowering the window, and the car disappeared from her sight.
Not a minute later he was by her side again, this time without the car.
The concern on his face only grew deeper once he smelled the salt on her face. «What's wrong?» he asked, automatically holding a hand out to her.
Rather than speak, Renesmée touched his offered hand. Hunt? she communicated.
Carlisle nodded. Apparently, something in her face brokered no argument. «One second,» he said, and fished out his phone, dialing a number.
Two minutes later, Carlisle had an upset supervisor and a double shift the coming weekend, but the day off.
Renesmée smiled gratefully up at him.
«Am I right that whatever it is you want to talk about, you want to talk about in privacy?» Carlisle asked gently.
She smiled again, or tried to. Her eyes welled with tears again, and her face twisted into a pained grimace.
Carlisle had his arms around her in less than a second, and she inhaled his scent shakily, holding on to her composure for dear life.
Sensing, perhaps, that she was on the edge of breaking, Carlisle turned her deftly around so he could pick her up, one arm under her knees and the other under her back. It had been years since he last carried her.
He smiled down at her, looking impossibly kind and beautiful. «It's been a while since we crossed the Salish, hasn't it?»
Looking up at her grandfather, so kind, so wonderful, so wholly undeserving of anything bad, Renesmée only felt more awful at the thought of what Aro had in all likelihood done to him.
Carlisle's eyes widened in alarm as Renesmée started crying again.
Wordlessly, he took off running.
He put her down on the coast of East Sooke park, having paused only to reassure a frantic chorus of Jacob and Bella demanding a search and rescue on the phone.
She was forever grateful to him for claiming it had been his idea to do a grandfather-granddaughter bonding trip, and for being vague about where they were.
«Now will you tell me what this is about?» he asked as she did a few lazy backflips to stretch her limbs after being carried for such a distance.
The thing was, she still had no plan.
Oh, she wanted to know, needed to know. She needed to know if her enmity with Aro was just that of Harry Potter having tense relations with Voldemort after the whole tried-to-kill-her-as-a-baby thing, something decidedly unpleasant and frightening but ultimately not that personal.
Or if Aro was Carlisle's rapist, in which case Renesmée would have to kill him.
She didn't even know how. Knew, logically, that it was completely infeasible for one hybrid whose teeth didn't even have venom to kill a vampire, nevermind Aro.
But if he'd done it, if he'd committed such a monstrous act against someone as good and wonderful as Renesmée's grandfather, let it happen for decades then he had to die. She would find a way, or die trying.
There was only one problem.
«You said…» Renesméebegan. «In Ireland, when we talked.»
Carlisle's eyes widened minutely as he realized what she was talking about.
Renesmée summoned the words he'd spoken to her, and recited them. «Live in the now, and if you have a happy memory, then don't let the sour present ruin that for you. Cherish the past.»
Was her tone hollow?
Carlisle watched her silently, the expression on his face unreadable.
«You don't want decades' worth of fond memories to lose their value to you. You can't, either, your neurochemistry makes that impossible for you.»
She paused, studying the look on his face.
He was still watching her.
«Do you stand by that?»
Carlisle tilted his head, a light frown crossing his brow. «Yes.»
She stared at him for another long moment.
If she spoke now, even if he chose the blue pill, there would still be no going back. She would have revealed the existence of the red pill.
(Not that she'd ever watched Matrix, that movie had not yet been approved for her consumption. But she knew it well enough from Jasper's philosophy classes.)
But she could no more keep her silence than she could make her heart cease its beating.
«You're in the hospital,» she said, the words tumbling out without her quite hearing them. «A patient came in earlier in the morning, and after several hours of unbearable pain he died. You're breaking the news to his wife. Do you tell her he died peacefully, or do you think she should know the truth?
Or,» she added, drawing on a movie Emmett had shown her as part of some… Emmettness. It couldn't even be called a joke, it was just Emmett being Emmett.
Edward had been apoplectic with rage. It had taken Carlisle, Bella, and Jasper's combined efforts to soothe him, and even then he had not completely forgiven Emmett.
As for Renesmée, she'd hoped this would spell the end of the TV censorship. There were so many films she was dying to watch.
No luck.
«You're in the desert, when a package arrives. Your colleague tells you not to open it, but you have good reason to believe that inside is something dreadful. If you open the box, it may break you. But if you don't, then you'll never know what was inside.»
A smile lurked at Carlisle's lips. Combined with the dappled sunlight turning flecks of his skin to sparkling diamond, he could not have looked more enigmatic. «You're asking if I'll sooner have the ugly truth, than blissful ignorance.»
Renesmée nodded.
Carlisle tilted his head again, and his golden eyes were as sharp as his teeth as he seemed to see right through her. «I've never been one to shy away from the truth, Renesmée,» he said, a seriousness in his voice she hadn't heard before. «No matter how ugly it is.»
Renesmée nodded again, this time a quick, jerky, movement.
«Alright, then,» she whispered.
She closed the distance between them, and held up her hand. «Please forgive me,» she whispered, voice breaking again as she remembered how fond Carlisle's face had been as he recalled those years in Aro's bed.
Carlisle only smiled at her. «Already forgiven, Nes,» he whispered.
Renesmée placed her hand against his cheek before she could chicken out, and replayed her memory of what Edward had told her.
A/N: The movie Renesmée references is Se7en. Great movie, but holy god is it brutal. At the end, the main character's pregnant wife is decapitated, and her disembodied head mailed to him.
Usual thanks to the beta known as The Carnivorous Muffin, who is no vegan cupcake.