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The Journals
By: Everleigh Allen
Chapter 14
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Bella stood in the middle of her new room for several more moments. Her body felt flush as if it was set aflame by Edward's simple touch. Like wildfire, coursing through her body- her soul, and veered headfirst after him.
Her feet, ever her adversary, chose this moment to be rooted to the floor.
She eyed the journal and moved forward towards it, instead.
There was a small, worn slip of paper torn from a book that held a place in a journal. Bella opened it up carefully, noticing that it still saved the spot where she realized that they knew about her and her arrival in Forks.
"At least let me see her before I have to leave her behind," Bella reread Edward's words, breaking her heart all over again, but she continued.
Alice gives a curt nod and I see my family leaving the room.
I, like always, am left there alone.
-EAMC
April, 2017
"Edward's emo again," Emmett huffs. I roll my eyes and do my best to ignore him. Emmett carts the insanely large cross that Carlisle kept laying around the house out the front door and into the moving truck.
It belonged in a church, not a house, but alas.
There was a debate within the family about where it came from and how it even got there, but the most we could figure from mind reading the ancient memories that Carlisle did well to keep locked away most of the time- was that he took it from the church that his father was a pastor during the European vampire wars in the 1600's.
Perhaps it was endearing and sentimental at one point, but Edward couldn't see Carlisle housing the cross in Volterra, either. It had to have been well stored away in secret for some time.
Some of our family and relations think the cross is a reminder to remember who he was, the son of an Anglican pastor during the time of political and religious upheaval. They think he chooses to believe it represents a faithful, humane, (and a nod to his overly empathetic-to-humans side) but I have seen a different side of Carlisle, one buried so deep that every time it rises to the surface he quickly looks at me- instantly repudiating it.
Carlisle hides it well.
But it's there in all of us.
It's our nature.
A cross to bear.
Only he, Aro, and I know the truth about the cross. The extent of the crusades of werewolf and vampire hunting and how that cross bore a stained spot in all of it is a secret well kept.
Carlisle's father, a devoutly religious albeit vicious man, had killed countless souls in his wake that when he was finally caught, disemboweled, and quartered, they let every vampire take a swatch of the tainted, bloodied clothe. That cross is the same cross that once held his father's robes, drenched in his blood as a warning to humans and vampires alike.
Carlisle was no exception to the brutality of either side. The mob searched for him, wanting to appease the pain and death casted by Carlisle's father's hand. They came for him with their torches lit and screaming for him to resurface from the bowels of London. He watched them from afar, writhing in the pain of his transformation.
One vampire, the stranger whom changed him, hid him just enough to bear witness to the hostilities of the mob mentality.
Once he was reborn into his new life, there was an acceptance- and perhaps an atonement of his father's sins. He vowed to be different.
He wouldn't feed off of humans; there had to be another way.
Carlisle couldn't- wouldn't save his father and that clothe was the very last piece of his father's human existence- his human existence- and it served reverence of lessons learned.
"Earth to Edward-" Rosalie hisses, waving a hand over my line of vision.
Bella could see the where the ink pooled, drenching the page and smiled, running her finger over it as if it just happened.
"Let's go, one last time, yeah?" Alice says softly, carefully.
It's the moment I've been waiting for and dreading the whole time- my whole existence.
Yes, Bella would be safer away from me, but would this time suspend or be forever fractured for me?
I feel the cut deeply.
I give Alice a curt nod, not that she needs to see it.
I want to touch Bella, smell her sweet fragrant blood but each thought is combatted with a new vision from Alice and they all end up with Bella dead.
"Stop torturing yourself, brother," she pleads.
No one is better at torturing myself than me.
I hear Jasper's words in my mind, but what he really means is that I am also torturing him.
The feeling of her blood, the sweet ambrosia that made mere humans into Gods taunts him, too.
"Sorry," I mumble.
"You weren't going to do anything," Alice's sing song voice says casually to Jasper. It's a second nature comment that she doesn't always realize she says, but on some level it calms Jasper and so it continues.
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I see the police cruiser driving through town.
They are stopped at a light and there's a lull in their conversations. I can hear Charlie's mind fluttering about thinking of things to say, but he doesn't say anything substantial, if at all.
We knew from the buzz around school she would start at the beginning of the week. The boys at the school were excited and curious to see the new girl but there were more than a few girls that couldn't help feel the threat and delicious drama of a rivalry.
We watch the cruiser pass the town's large wooden welcome sign, the wooden grizzly bear, and a logging truck before they turn down the street to Charlie Swan's house.
"Okay, we have almost an hour before they'll head to the diner." Alice informs the group.
Esme smiles kindly but she exudes care and sympathy. "Carlisle had to leave me, too, once. It's not forever, son."
"And he found you almost dead," I remind her. It comes out more bitter than I meant but I know I'm already forgiven.
I apologize anyway.
"It's the best way we've seen," Carlisle chides gently.
I don't need the reminder.
I know Bella Swan Death Wish is a reoccurring event while we remain there.
I can't help but want time to move faster to see her- but slow time down once I do.
What they don't know is that I plan on visiting silently to check in on her from time to time.
Alice sighs.
She won't stop me.
"I won't interfere," I promise and she doesn't believe me but nods anyway. With how she and Jasper orbit each other, she knows that she wouldn't be able to stay away either.
"Let's go withdraw our children from school then we'll go to the diner," Carlisle suggests since we have time. His memories fold into thoughts of Marie and Annie Belle in the same diner all those years back.
It takes less than twenty minutes to have transcripts transferred, our belongings to be collected, and leave the school.
It was as if we never existed.
The drive back to the diner was quiet and I felt a bit of relief when I saw the cruiser already parked in the lot. I parked my car right next to it- smelling the air around the car for Bella's scent.
"Like an animal in heat," Rosalie mutters, looking away but her thoughts are sympathetic. She doesn't want to leave any more than I do. Her thoughts then circle around the notion of being separated from Emmett and she shudders.
They get it.
We avoid the table that Bella and the Chief sit at and move around them silently. Bella's holding the menu, blocking her face from my view. I bump her chair on accident- on purpose- causing her to look up at me.
"Sorry," I say with a smile.
She gasps but says nothing.
She just stares.
I take my seat and pick up my own menu while maintaining eye contact, unwilling- or unable to break it.
I couldn't be more obvious but I can't help it.
I force the menu between our gaze, hoping it was enough to leave an impression on her.
Time rewinds in Bella's mind… The odd, beatific family that moved through the diner that first day.
How had she forgotten them until now?
Bella stared at Edward's words, remembering the one- the odd one out- staring at her so intently she was barely able to breathe, let alone eat.
She remembered him.
His hair styled messily on top of his head, sides cut short. His wool jacket and boots that seemed too heavy when he walked over the tiled floor.
She remembered the stunning blonde girl and the girl with choppy black hair- both were staring at her.
The mother figure gave a small greeting to them which caused Charlie to blush.
None of them ate any of the food they ordered.
And as Charlie ate his pie and then paid, Edward felt antsy as his time was running short.
They all rose at the same time to leave, the Swan's and Cullen's.
She remembered the one named Edward moved fast through the diner as if he was upset.
A piece of paper fell from his pocket and onto the floor.
Bella picked it up.
She read it.
She reread it in the car and over and over in the quiet of her room.
How had she forgotten?
The night was warm and she left the window open, hoping to hear the owls, but there was only silence.
She held the paper as she slept that night, dreamt of him and his intense stare.
She dreamt of herself, as Christine, taken with the Phantom as he tried to seduce her… the paper's printed quote fresh in mind and in dream:
"Too many years fighting back tears. Why can't the past just die? Wishing you were somehow here again, knowing we must say goodbye. Try to forgive, teach me to live, give me the strength to try! No more memories, no more silent tears, no more gazing across the wasted years. Help me say goodbye."
When she woke the next morning, the note was gone.
Her window was shut.
The quote long forgotten.
The memory of the odd boy and his family at the diner shifted towards the back of her subconscious as she readied herself for her first day of school.
But as Bella sat in her new room in the warmth of the Cullen's Chicago home, Bella looked back at the slip of paper. This time, she turned it over and she could see the faint, well-worn typing of the quote written there.
Edward had been there- in her room and in her mind.
He was there in the dream- except, what if it wasn't really a dream at all?
What if it was a goodbye?
What if it wasn't really a goodbye- but more like a promise of reconnecting?
He left the note when he was struggling to leave her behind and her heartache at how that must have felt for him.
Bella reread the words again, her heart thundering in her chest as if he was singing the words to her as she slept.
But when she looked up from the note, Edward stood there like the Phantom himself murmuring the words as she recited them, too.
Then, before she could blink he was before her his body aligned with hers as he whispered new words… another eerily beautiful quote:
"Passing bells and sculpted angels
Cold and monumental
Seem for you the wrong companions
You were warm and gentle."
Whispered words sang gently in her ear, describing them perfectly.
His hand cups her cheek on one side, caressing the other.
She leans into his touch, trusting, and says, "Wildly my Mind beats against you, but my soul obeys."
Edward tilts her head to touch his lips to hers, eyes wild and watching as the slight movements turn into a kiss. Eyes flutter closed as it is deepens, lips part and breaths exchange before touching again intensely, roughly.
He's waited too long for her, her touch, her kiss.
He'd wait forever for another.
But a small clearing of a throat fills their ears and they reluctantly part, seeking out the interruption.
"Time to feed the human," Alice giggles.
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A/N: Sometimes I know exactly where the story goes and it takes a whole different journey on me. I don't try to fight it, perhaps a channel of sorts to a different universe within universes. Haha.
Thanks for the understanding on the delay as I had a deadline to finish a painting that was most challenging and mentally and emotionally taxing. It'll be displayed publically by appointment only in Austin, TX this October. Woo hoo.
Quotes: "Too many years fighting back tears. Why can't the past just die? Wishing you were somehow here again, knowing we must say goodbye. Try to forgive, teach me to live, give me the strength to try! No more memories, no more silent tears, no more gazing across the wasted years. Help me say goodbye."
"Passing bells and -sculpted angels, Cold and monumental, Seem for you the wrong companions, You were warm and gentle."
"Wildly my Mind beats against you, but my soul obeys." –Phantom of the Opera, ― Charles Hart, The Phantom of the Opera: Piano/Vocal