Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight
How uncomfortable could a gathering of vampires get? Pretty darn uncomfortable if those gathering were the remaining members of the Cullen coven. There was Carlisle, whose logical and slow approach to everything was not making any inroads with the problems befalling the family. Esme, whose desire to see her children back together conflicted with her fury for having to put up with two of them leaving in the first place. Edward, who spent more and more of his time idly playing a game of "life without Bella" in which he imagined what that particular day would've been like had Bella never walked into their lives. Jasper, who sometimes felt like he was the only one able to appreciate the big picture. And last but not least, Alice, who supposedly possessed the gift of foresight but was unable to see past her own nose when it came to the problem in discussion now.
"I understand how you feel, Jasper, but this kind of thing doesn't get determined by a vote. She's already decided."
Jasper, in a display of human childishness impishly folded his arms and glared at his father. Beside him, Alice just sighed and silently counted to 10.
"We can't force her to-"
"You're not even trying!" Jasper threw up his hands as he shouted. "You're not trying at all."
"What would you have us do?" Esme asked. "She made her decision."
"It's the wrong decision," Jasper insisted. "What should you do? What I've been doing! Help me talk to her. Help me convince her!"
A rare moment of clarity followed in which Alice got a glimpse of the near future. Those puppies must be off somewhere chasing a ball or something. What she saw caused her to grimace, and she tightened her hold over Jasper's hand in preparation.
"You know just as well as I do that Bella has a valid point," Carlisle stated plainly. "There's no precedent for someone like her! Turning her might have severe consequences!"
Just as she knew would happen, Jasper's emotions spiked to new heights sending everyone present into an uncomfortable emotional rollercoaster.
"Honey, please," she whispered so only he would hear.
"Say something!" He whispered furiously to her after he calmed himself down a degree.
"You know I can't," she replied sadly. What could she say? Ever since she and Jasper found them, her family had looked to her to assuage their fears. Over the years, few obstacles have every trumped Edward's and her combined skills. But Bella was immune to Edward's gift, and was practically immune to Alice's too as of late. And though she loathed to think of Bella as an obstacle or "problem," the fact remained that Bella was the biggest question mark the family had ever dealt with.
"You're the one who helped her!" Jasper cried out. "You're the one who got her to control it. You know firsthand how strong she is!"
"Overcoming vampire impulses will be orders of magnitude more difficult than anything she's done," Edward said. "I don't see why we should convince her to do something that'll put us in even more danger. Not to mention the people she'll end up killing. Not to mention she doesn't want it!"
"You have no idea how much self-control she already exercises! It's orders of magnitude worse than anything you've ever had to deal with, Edward!"
"So we want to take all that difficulty and all that power and put it inside the body of an immortal?" Edward seethed. "An immortal who on top of probably causing dormant volcanoes to spontaneously erupt, will also have an appetite for people's blood?!"
"There's no going back if she's ever turned," he continued. "She controls the only thing that can kill us. If she goes on a murdering rampage, even the Volturi won't be able to get rid of her."
"Enough!" Esme stood and faced her eldest son. "Bella hasn't led us down so far. I don't care what the odds are-she's family and that worst case scenario isn't going to happen."
Edward moved to protest but she blocked him with a stern look. She turned to Jasper next. "I don't want to see her die either. I'd give anything if we could convince her to join us and I'd do the honors myself if she'd let me. But we can't pressure her! The decision has to be hers and hers alone."
Jasper, stony faced and clearly not happy with the result of this impromptu meeting, took off out the sliding glass door. "Fine. It'll just be Alice and me then," he called before disappearing.
Finally out of range, the family took a collective breath as the mood in the room tapered without Jasper's influence.
Carlisle had a desperate look about him as he turned to Alice. "Do you see anything?"
She shook her head. "Nothing in Bella's future."
"What about-"
"Rosalie hasn't made a decision," she said. Her voice carried a modicum of anger she didn't bother to hide. Alice knew what decisions her sister was teeter-tottering between, and if she made the wrong one Alice promised herself she'd personally donate all the blonde's clothes to Goodwill. Or better yet, she'd get their resident wolves to pee on all of them. And her cars.
Rosalie better decide something soon. Bella doesn't have forever.
"Where are the kids?" Esme asked from behind a mountain of food on the kitchen counter. Gross.
Alice rolled her eyes. "I certainly can't tell you," she huffed. As if Bella and her infuriating talent at blocking her weren't enough. It turns out the canines too are naturally immune to her formerly awesome gift. Their presence on their property made seeing anything as likely as spotting a unicorn (a mythical creature that, according to Carlisle anyway, really is a storybook fantasy).
"Probably terrorizing stray cats," she mumbled.
And where the hell is Bella anyway?
"Ready?"
Bella looked back to where Jacob stood, one step from the treaty line. His eyes were on the ground, as if he alone could see the dividing line that would put him, at last, in his tribe's territory.
She was already across the line. To be frank the whole thing felt anticlimactic. A childish part of her expected wolves to fall from the trees above and attack them. God knows she was psyched for a good fight. Now, without anyone in her line of sight, she was just a tightly wound machine gun ready and desperate to spring.
Jacob finally took the step after he latched onto Bella's offered hand.
"When did you get so damn cautious?" She joked as they continued on.
He smiled knowingly. "When did you become such an adrenaline junkie?"
"Huh?"
"I can practically smell it," he nodded and pointed to her heart. "And your heart rate is going a mile a minute. Somebody's excited."
She punched him lightly-well, not that lightly-in the arm. "It's not everyday I get to fight werewolves."
"Bells," he stopped walking and forced her to turn to him. "We're not here to pick a fight. It might come to that, but we're here to talk."
"Yeah," she muttered, embarrassed at her poor choice of words and angry that it was so obvious how much she actually wanted things to escalate. "I know that."
"Remember," he said softly. "The best case scenario today is that they agree to watch out for Quil and they decide you're not a threat. Don't forget that."
She bit her lip but nodded. We're not here to fight. We're not here to fight. She chanted the words all through their walk deeper and deeper into La Push territory. It was cool in the woods but humid, the early morning fog giving their world a creepy, bluish grey ambiance that would probably give most people the creeps.
"How's your sight out here?"
"Not much better than yours," Jacob replied. They trudged on, careful not to make noise that would be perceived as threatening. Not that they could confidently assess what sounded nonthreatening…
Twenty minutes of silence later, he stopped in his tracks and held up his hand.
"They're coming."
"How do you-"
"Shh...listen."
Bella could've smacked herself. Duh. Immediately she asked the wind for help. As soon as she did, she heard them too. Heavy footsteps-animal, not human-ripped the earth apart. They were coming from the north, and they were on top of them before Bella could finish a thought.
Long used to their resident wolves, Bella wasn't in the least bit shocked by the sight of three SUV sized canines barreling in her direction. What she wasn't accustomed to was how, well, for lack of better words, feral these wolves acted. They were all growling quite loudly and fur stuck up on their necks. One of them was even literally foaming in the mouth.
It wasn't lost on Bella that the three quickly maneuvered so she and Jacob were surrounded. She had to resist rolling her eyes. Play nice, she reminded herself.
"Hello, Sam," Jacob greeted the biggest, black one directly in front of them. He held out his hands. "We're here to talk."
Jacob may have been the one speaking, but it was Bella commanding all the wolves' attention. Sam, the only one in her line of sight, was staring right into her eyes. His growling did not cease.
Jacob sighed impatiently and stepped half in front of Bella. He raised his voice. "We have information that can help you. But we need to talk."
For a second Bella thought they'd have to spell it out for him. But a few tense minutes later, Sam finally reappeared human after disappearing into some thick foliage to get decent.
"You have some nerve showing up here," Sam spat when he reappeared. "And you bring that with you?"
"I don't recall either of us signing a treaty that prevented us from crossing the line," Jacob said coolly. While she knew Jacob dodging the insult to her was good in the long run, Bella nonetheless ticked off a tally in her mind, noting yet another stupendously stupid thing that's come out of Sam's mouth.
"You're practically one of them now. As far as I'm concerned you're not ever welcome on this land."
"I'm not one of them," Jacob said, the first hint of anger in his voice. "And luckily, you don't get to run the pack and the council. I'm-"
Sam interrupted. "What do you want?"
Bella reached out a hand and touched Jacob's arm to prevent him from going off, though in truth she was having trouble containing herself.
"We came to help you."
You rabid dog, Bella mentally added.
"We don't need your goddamn help!" Sam shouted. "We can protect our-"
"You do need our goddamn help!" Jacob roared back. "In case you haven't noticed, I took half your pack from you! You couldn't hold the nomads off with six of us, and now you're down to three. So shut up and for once in your life, listen, and maybe we can all make it through the next few days!"
Bella hiccupped to hide her snigger, but oh how grateful she felt for her perfect memory as she snapped a mental picture of Sam's fish-mouthed face. Even the dogs ceased their constant rumble.
"Victoria's waiting for someone to start showing signs of phasing," Jacob said right away. He might as well make his point now while Sam stood there gaping. "Quill's next, isn't he?"
Sam snapped out of his stupor. "What? How did you know that?"
Balla couldn't resist. "Oh we just came back from his place," she finally spoke. Her voice was high with more than a little mockery. "And every other teenager's house in La Push."
Ok, flaunting her ability to totally screw him was probably not the best way to go about what was supposed to be a diplomatic meeting. But Bella had kept her mouth shut up until then and really, watching a vein pop in his neck would be well worth any fallout, she was sure.
Jacob cleared his throat, once again taking advantage of Sam's speechlessness. "His scent is the strongest. We're pretty sure Victoria will target him, and that it's going to happen soon."
"So you might wanna give him a heads up about all this. And keep him on a short leash. Figuratively speaking."
She pointedly ignored Jacob's weary glance and instead kept her gaze fixed on Sam. Because just then, for the first time today Sam's human eyes looked straight into hers. And then something shifted on his face as his eyes darted from hers and to one of the wolves.
...And then all hell broke loose.
Before Bella could even think you've gotta be kidding me, Jared and Paul, the two wolves flanking them, launched themselves right at her.
And just as she saw the shift on Sam's face that the wolves understood to mean attack, so too did she feel the shift within herself, the shift that gave way, giving her body and her mind permission to uncoil and spread.
A circle of bright blue fire unfurled from her feet and widened, stretched and continued growing out from Bella's place. In its wake lay dead grass that when toppled by a breeze broke into white ash. The circle grew until Jacob was standing inside it too. Then Sam. In the span of half a second, a circle of desolated death ten feet in diameter encompassed them all. And a split second before Paul and Jared's claws could touch her, a mere hair away from her skin, they froze in midair.
Sam was frozen too, but of his own accord.
"Bella?" Jacob whispered, fear lacing his voice. "What the hell...what are you doing?!"
"That," she said calmly though her heart was pounding, "is what happens when you're foolish enough to attack me. Your face gave it away, Sam. Next time, work on the element of surprise."
Jacob's expression slowly morphed from shock to fury as he turned to Sam. "You ordered them to attack her?! She's a human being you son of a bitch!"
Sam shook his head. His eyes travelled from his frozen comrades to the blanket of ash under his feet. "No."
His voice shook. "No," he said more firmly. "That's not human. No way. No way."
One man's trash really is another's treasure. Sam was trembling, as pale as the emptiness that was a moment ago food for her fire. After the initial explosion, Bella tuned the flames to a much lower, gentler level. They were practically caressing the ground now, rolling just centimetres out at a time, still devouring the earth but sensually rather than with brute force. It was beautiful. Watching the hoop unfurl nearly brought tears to her eyes. But there was Sam, looking like hell had just frozen over. And she suddenly felt a stab of anger at this person who failed to appreciate what was right in front of him. No one was hurt, yet he still couldn't understand the wild beauty of what Bella could do.
He has eyes but he won't see. He doesn't see the frailness in the fire. He doesn't see the decency in Jacob. He doesn't see anything worse saving in her.
"Fuck you," she said. "How's this for human?"
Jared and Paul were suddenly and unceremoniously lifted from their mid-air lunge, higher and higher and higher.
"Bella..." Jacob moaned in dismay, but she didn't stop until none of them could see the wolves' figures anymore.
"I don't really care what you think, Sam," she said coldly. "But we need to get back to the matter at hand. Paul and Jared are in free fall right now, and if I'm feeling human, I might just stop them from splattering all over you. Now are you gonna protect Quill, and any other future pack members, or not?"
Sam looked from her to Jacob, his eyes burning with anger. "You're letting her negotiate for you too? Fuck, man. Your mom is probably rolling in her grave."
Jacob flinched but did not relent. "She won't hurt them," he said softly, referring to the skydiving wolves above them. "We can help you. Bella and I can help keep watch over him. Leah and Seth too."
"For the last time, we don't need anything from you. It's our pack. Our land. We can protect our own. We won't let Quill out of our sights." He looked at Bella, his face a swirling mix of utter loathing and fear. "And she is not welcome, treaty or no treaty."
Jared and Paul screeched to a halt directly in front of him. Sam blinked in surprise, surreptitiously double checking that the pair were indeed still breathing.
Jacob nodded slowly as if two wolves didn't just fall from the sky. But there was something else gnawing at him, something he just had to get out into the light. "And what if you fail?" He asked. Bella looked at him, wondering where he was going with this. "What if they bite him and he really does become one of them?"
Though until now Sam had been adamantly in denial of this possibility, he couldn't hide the spark of fear that shone from his eyes. "The tribe doesn't tolerate leeches," he finally said. "No human," he sneered at Bella, "should."
The meeting concluded with Bella and Jacob flying away from the scene after Bella thawed the two wolves (and purposefully banged their heads together a few times).
"You shouldn't have done all that," Jacob said when they landed far away from the treaty line. "I don't think they'll ever accept you now."
"I don't need them to!" Bella said. Her body may be on the ground, but some part of her was still soaring in the clouds, high as a kite. Sam's nastiness aside, that was the most fun she'd had in weeks. "No offense Jake, but I didn't even break a sweat."
Jacob walked with her quietly. She was so abuzz with energy she barely noticed the sidelong glances he stole her way, or the silence that was an opportunity to happily replay the confrontation for her, but was wrought with discomfort for him.
"You sent them the message, right?" Bella asked as she whirled around, suddenly remembering their careful plan.
Jacob nodded, but couldn't help smiling. "It's a good thing that was my job and not yours. Yeah, as soon as they attacked you."
As soon as Jacob realized Sam ordered an attack, he also realized they couldn't trust such a sensitive situation as possible wolf-vampire hybrids to people like Sam, Paul and Jared. Their minds were too small, and this was just too big. So while Sam was staring up at the disappearing outlines of his friends in the sky, he sent a one-worded text message ("go") to Leah, who had been waiting with Seth right outside Quill's front door. Sam's answer to his last question cinched it for him.
"We should go help, shouldn't we?" Bella asked. "Make sure everything goes smoothly?"
He looked at the time on his phone. Leah was supposed to call when they were out of La Push with Quill. There was still plenty of time. But Bella was probably right. And though he didn't want to admit it, Bella outclassed the wolves by a terrifying margin. If something were to go wrong, he'd want her by his, and by Leah's and Seth's side.
"Ok," he agreed. "But no dropping people from the sky, ok?"
Author's note I: So...do we like or do we no like where Bella is currently at? What she did to Jared and Paul-was that torture? Was she justified? What do you think of Carlisle's argument? Edward's? Jasper and Alice's?
Author's note II: I understand and totally sympathize with how difficult it is to wait for updates, especially now that chapters are coming out every couple-3 weeks vs. every few days like they used to. I truly am sorry that I can't do that anymore. The story has gotten much more complex than what it used to be, and that means a lot more pressure and a lot more difficulty getting things just right. That said, it's a lot easier to push updates out faster when I'm completely immersed in Gifted's plot, and I'm completely immersed in Gifted's plot when...you guessed it...you review! Constructive criticism, your thoughts about what might happen next or what you wish would happen or won't happen, analysis...these are the things that keep me on my toes and force me to contemplate the next words extra hard. It's the closest thing to an editor giving their feedback. I promise to work as hard as I can on the next chapter right away, and I hope to hear from lots of you.