I DO NOT OWN THE TWILIGHT SAGA
A/N: So this story will be taking place in 2012, the same year the last Twilight movie came out. I see Emily Rudd as Max.
"You don't have to do this, you know that, right?" Lena reminds me as I carry her from the bathroom to her already made bed. She's been confined to her wheelchair ever since she broke a hip five years ago and never truly recovered from the surgery.
"Yes, I do," I tell her as I begin to towel dry her. My sister has always had trouble accepting help from other people. She's the kind of person who believes that the only way you can get things done right is to do them yourself. But it's not like she can do this by herself. "You're my baby sister, it's my job to take care of you." Lena rolls her eyes as I massage lotion on her legs and then help her into her undergarments.
"Technically you stopped aging sixty-nine years ago, so that'd make me older than you." Now it's my turn to roll my eyes.
"Okay. But I've been on this planet longer than you have, so I'm therefore responsible for you and your wellbeing." I put her in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, then I force socks and shoes onto her feet as she huffs.
"I just don't like seeing you wasting your time on me when you could be doing something else." I snort loudly. She's known about what I am for the last sixty years, after that nearly ten year period when I was still learning to control my thirst. And she knows that what she just said is foolish.
"You know I'm literally not getting any older, Helena," I remind her, then I sigh as I pick her up again and transfer her to her wheelchair. I sit on the edge of her bed out of habit, and purse my lips. "I'm old, and yet I'm still young."
"If I remember correctly, your birthday's just a couple of days away. How old will you be this year, again? A thousand?" A smile tugs at her lips and I follow suit.
"I'll be ninety, smartass." I wheel her to her smallish kitchen and leaver her by the kitchen table while I make her something to eat. I only have another hour with her before the rest of the family gets here and I have to leave. Lena is the only person I've ever told about what I am. I contacted her a little less than ten years after I was changed. By then the war was over and Lena was free and in America, trying to move on from everything that had happened. She had gotten married to an American man and was pregnant with their first child.
I had to see her. I had lost everybody else to the war. My parents, my youngest sister, Safiya, and my older brother; as well as all my friends. I knew that the Volturi would kill me and her if they were to find out that I had told Lena, but I knew I could trust her to keep my secret. And she did.
And it wasn't hard to do it without rising suspicion. Illusion manipulation is one part of my "special vampire gift" as Lena likes to call it. There are many aspects to my gift, so much so that my friend Eleazar thinks that I could be one of the most powerful vampires. But I don't use many of them if I don't have to. I don't like to mess with people's minds, but I'd do it in a heartbeat to be able to spend time with my sister. For the first forty years I told everyone that Lena and I are just friends, and made the illusion that I was aging right along her. But after I reached the age of sixty I decided to kill myself off and present myself as my own niece. Now people see me as a forty year old hanging around someone old enough to be my grandmother technically.
I set down a bowl of oatmeal and a plate of peeled oranges in front of her, placing her coffee there as well a few minutes later. I sit down and watch as she eats, happy that she's not fighting me this time. She hasn't had much of an appetite lately.
I turn my attention away and look around. The place is full of stuff in the way only a little old lady can achieve. A small tv sits on the kitchen counter and it's also cluttered with fruit and papers and cooking supplies. Her fridge is covered with magnets and pictures and drawings. A cuckoo clock hangs on the wall and I can hear the pieces ticking and moving. And then I see a picture she hung up. It's a picture of our family, taken about six months before Germany invaded Poland. Lena was only thirteen then, but the similarities she shares with our mother are great. Lena, Safiya, and Mom were like identical triplets or something. They all had thick black hair and deep, dark eyes. While I'm a carbon copy of our Russian father: blonde hair and blue eyes. And my brother was a mix of the two. Black hair from Mom and blue eyes from Dad. The only things we have in common are our noses and smiles. Our dad used to tell us that we have his nose and our mother's smile.
"Do you miss eating human food?" Lena suddenly asks me. I look back at her and shrug.
"Sometimes I miss being able to eat mom's kalduny," I say. Kalduny is this Polish dumpling that my mother used to make on special occasions. They were my favorite when I was human. "But other than that, human food repulses me. Imagine if you were to try and drink blood. You'd be disgusted."
"I am. Did you…feed recently?" I smile at her trying to take an interest in the vampire part of my life. The part that disgusts her the most: my diet.
"Yes, I did. Last night. I got a bear and two deer." She scrunches up her face and I laugh. "Why ask if you're just gonna react like that every time? I don't mind keeping that part of my life to myself."
"I don't know, it just interests me. I can still remember you and I sitting next to each other eating breakfast when we were kids. And now you're a blood drinking vampire."
"I know. Sometimes I wish I wasn't," I admit. She takes my hand in hers, and shutters slightly at my ice cold skin.
"No. Don't ever say that. If you hadn't become a vampire, then I wouldn't have been able to see you again. You would be dead." She goes back to eating her oatmeal after that, sensing that I don't want to talk about my near death experience. And while I'm washing dishes, there's a knock at the front door.
I open the door, expecting to see one of Lena's kids or grandkids standing, waiting to get in. But it's not. Standing on the other side of the door is Alice Cullen and Jasper Hale. They're old friends of mine and come from a bigger coven. I don't wait for them to say anything, I just step outside and shut the door behind me, not wanting Lena to see them.
"What are you guys doing here? How did you find me?" I question them as soon as the door closes. Alice and Jasper share a look, and I can't tell what they're thinking.
"We need your help," Alice explains quickly as a car pulls up the driveway. "The whole family's in trouble." She hands me a folded up piece of paper that's small and stiff. Alice is usually vague, but nothing like this. Once, she called to tell me that she saw me getting into a confrontation with someone, and then hung up. The someone she was talking about was my old boss when he tried to grab my ass. I frown at the both of them. I see Lena's family getting out of their car and start walking up the driveway to where I'm standing with Alice and Jasper in the open garage.
"What is going on? What happened?" We're talking at a volume too low for human ears to hear.
"Please, Max," Jasper cuts in. "Just trust us. Go to that address and the whole family will be there. They'll explain everything. Please." I debate for an eighth of a second. I don't' want to put myself in the middle of some vampire emergency. If I do, then there's a chance the Volturi will be involved somehow. And my biggest fear is that they find out what I can do. Because if they do, they'll use Lena and her family against me to get me to join them. Or worse…they find out about Judith. But my friends need help. I can't just abandon them when they helped me so much all those years ago.
"Fine," I answer them just as the human's reach us.
"Hey, who are these people?" Lena's son, Mike, questions me.
"What people?" I ask, lacing some compulsion with my voice. Confused looks cross over Mike and his wife's faces. "Why don't you guys go inside. Lena is expecting to you. And tell her that I had to leave but that I'll call her later, okay?" Mike shoots me a smile.
"Sure thing! See ya later!" They head inside and I turn back to the vampires.
"I'll go, but I reserve the right to leave if I feel like it gets too dicey. Okay?" I stare them down, expecting them to argue about how I have to stay no matter what. But the argument never comes.
"That's fine," Alice reassures me. "I know what it's like to be wanted by Aro. It's dangerous to be someone that he wants on his side. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. So if you feel like you need to go, you can go." Fuck! I was right, the Volturi will be involved. But it's too late to back out now. And if I go to the address that Alice had written down and don't like what I see, then I can always leave before the Volturi even know that I was there.
I nod my head and take a deep breath, steadying myself. "Okay. I'll leave in an hour."
As I leave Alice and Jasper and head to the local school, I think about how I'm gonna explain this to my kid. She's going to constantly bring up the fact that I'm contradicting what I always say about staying away from the Volturi and other vampires so we don't get found out. I didn't even give birth to her yet she's somehow exactly like me.
I sign her out of school, and when she sees me, she automatically knows that something's wrong. I never sign her out of school. I nod my head in the direction of the school's front doors.
"C'mon," I tell her. "I'll explain everything on the way home."
A/N: What did you guys think? Please review!
~Gina
