41. Attitude Adjustment
For the space of three of Bella's heartbeats, there was complete and utter silence in the room. The silence was broken when Bella yelled, "Holy crow, you can hear him?"
The baby jerked, alarmed by the sudden loud noise, and its foot impacted the top of Bella's stomach. My hand shifted to where the foot had hit her, and I rubbed the spot lightly, trying to soothe both the child and its mother.
"Shh," I said. "You startled it... him."
Her hand slid to her side, and she whispered, "Sorry, baby."
The child shifted away from me, its face turning toward Bella's body, and the red haze that colored my vision faded as its eyes drifted shut. Snug in its womb, the child within Bella reviewed the past few minutes, the sounds it had heard - Bella's murmured voice as well as her shout, my confused and astonished tones - as well as the image of matching its hand with mine.
"What's he thinking now?" Bella asked breathlessly.
The child replayed her question several times, seeming to savor the sound of Bella's happiness and excitement.
"It... he or she, is..." I looked up to meet her eyes for the first time since I'd realized I was hearing the child within her. The only voices in its mind sounded like those it had heard, so I couldn't be sure if it was a male or a female, but decided to go with Bella's guess of it being a boy. She'd been right about everything else, why not this, too? "He's happy."
The child was happy simply to hear Bella's happiness. With no frame of reference to guide him he might not understand the words, but he did understand the emotions conveyed by her voice. Bella's sounds of joy brought the child pleasure, a feeling I happened to share.
No, not the child. Bella's child. No, Bella's baby. No, more than that, even. Our baby. Our son. Bella's and mine.
For the second time that morning, it hit me that I was going to be a father, but not to the terrifying creature I had previously envisioned. There was no mindless monster growing within the woman I loved. Bella was carrying the baby I had planted within her on our wedding night, on the glorious night when we had first given ourselves to each other in an act of love. How could I have thought something we had created that night would be anything other than incredible?
I was going to be a father!
And our baby was happy simply because his mother was.
Bella's breath caught as her eyes filled with tears. They overflowed and ran down her cheeks unchecked, to drip from the tip of her pointed chin. I didn't want to remove my hands from her round stomach, nor did I feel the need to wipe them away. Let them flow. If my eyes could cry, they surely would have been shedding tears too.
Bella was pregnant with my baby, and she would just have to cry tears of joy for the both of us.
"Of course you're happy, pretty baby, of course you are." Her hands caressed her belly, weaving circles around my own as she cooed. "How could you not be, all safe and warm and loved? I love you so much, little EJ, of course you're happy."
"What did you call him?"
The blood in Bella's cheeks swirled under her clear skin. "I sort of named him. I didn't think you would want... well, you know."
A pang of shame flared within me. No, I wouldn't have wanted to name the hideous creature who was killing my beloved bride. I hadn't wanted to name it, I had wanted to kill it. I had tried to kill him! In the absence of a supportive husband, Bella had done what any mother would have, and gone ahead and named her baby anyway.
"EJ?"
"Your father's name was Edward, too."
Oh, how I knew I would never deserve her. In spite of everything, she had named our baby after me. But I was already a Junior, so what could the J stand for?
"Yes, it was. What - "
I stopped speaking as our baby turned toward the sound of my voice and opened his eyes again. He repeated the words I'd said, including the name Bella had given him and the awe I'd felt as I'd said it. He seemed to like hearing that almost as much as he'd enjoyed Bella's happy words of love.
"Hmm," I laughed in amazement.
"What?"
"He likes the sound of my voice, too."
"Of course he does," she said smugly. "You have the most beautiful voice in the universe. Who wouldn't love it?"
Her ecstatic smile of triumph left me speechless. It was the same smile she had given me after our first kiss as husband and wife, a smirk of pride and pleasure, of certainty in a future full of promise and hope and love.
Rosalie leaned over the back of the sofa, and her voice was full of amazement when she said, "Do you have a backup plan? What if he's a she?"
Bella wiped the tears away and nodded. "I kicked a few things around. Playing with Renee and Esme. I was thinking... Ruh-nez-may."
"Ruhnezmay?"
"R-e-n-e-s-m-e-e. Too weird?"
"No, I like it. It's beautiful. And one of a kind, so that fits."
"I still think he's an Edward." After a moment of silence, Bella pressed me, "What? What's he thinking now?"
I'd only partly been paying them attention, and had tuned out both Rose's and Jacob's minds as I focused on listening to the babe's. Although part of me wanted to join their conversation about naming him, I was more interested in his reaction to their voices than in what they were saying.
Our baby, EJ or Renesmee, liked Rosalie's voice. It had the distinctive ringing tones of our kind, and her words were said with pleasure and relief. But it was Bella's voice he parroted, playing with the sounds that made up the girl name Bella had chosen.
Bella's pulse grew loud again as he focused on the beat. He seemed to like the sound of her heart. So close to the source and surrounded by the blood the muscle was pumping, her heartbeat swaddled the child she carried. He liked it - the steady rhythm that he could hear and feel - almost as much as he seemed to like the sound of her voice.
Her pulse was dancing in my mind, echoed back from the baby's ears, along with another, faster one. Faint but definitely there, the other one was unfamiliar, and could only have one source.
Bella's body jerked with the force of her gasp as I laid my ear against her stomach. So often I had rested my face against her chest with my ear over her heart, and now I listened to the beat of our baby's heart. It was much faster than hers and steady for the most part, only fluttering in reaction to when Bella's stumbled.
It did so now as I pressed my ear against Bella's stomach, and the baby reached out its arms again, running tiny hands over the membrane that separated the two of them. He seemed to want to offer her some kind of reassurance, and I had the feeling that if he had known the words, our baby would have been telling Bella that everything was going to be alright, that she would be alright.
"He loves you," I said in realization. "He absolutely adores you."
At every turn, Bella had been proven to be right. Still I'd doubted her. If ever I needed proof that Bella was an angel, surely her patience with me was evidence enough. I turned my head so that rather than my ear, I could press my lips against her round belly where my son grew.
Bella gasped and her hands left her stomach to clutch at my hair. She used what little strength she had to hug me against her as her shoulders started to shake.
Had there ever been a more stubborn fool than I? Was I so determined to perpetuate my belief in my monstrosity? I'd nearly destroyed the greatest gift a man could be given. I had the unconditional love of a beautiful woman, and she was carrying my child. A son - or daughter - who grew, who lived, who loved.
I'd been so focused on Bella and the babe within her that I'd completely forgotten we had an audience. The noise of him rising to his feet brought Jacob to my attention once more, only now, his thoughts made me flinch.
I was glad Jasper wasn't home. I was no empath, but Jacob's pain was so evident in his mind, that I cried out in reaction. His pain was too fresh, too familiar.
He still believed as I had, and seeing our happy family together, loving the creature he regarded as a monster had him trembling in pain and fury. No rational words of reassurance would reach him in his current state, and any attempt I made to tell him of what I'd seen and heard were likely to do more harm than good.
Seeing his hands trembling and recognizing the fire that presaged his transformation, my eyes widened. His mind was filled with so much anger as he glared at me, the only thing that seemed to be preventing him from attacking me right now was how close I was to Bella. If he were to attack, she would be the one he harmed.
Escape! Any excuse...
Too well did I understand his need to run away, to leave behind the source of pain and fear. Leaving Bella's side, I bolted to the table where I usually kept my keys and grabbed the first one my fingers touched. I threw it at Jacob, and he caught it without looking.
"Go, Jacob. Get away from here."
Seconds later, he was bolting across the lawn. I blinked in horror as he envisioned wrecking my car. Having just survived two weeks in an airport garage, my Aston Martin was sore in need of a good detailing. I hadn't given a thought to checking it for dents or scratches with Bella's condition absorbing my attention, but now I wondered if I would ever see it again.
The door was still shivering slightly in its frame as I strode over to close it. Chiding myself, I decided not to let Jacob's reactions bother me. The car was just a toy. If he wrecked it, I could always buy another. If destroying something of mine made him feel better, so be it.
I returned to kneel in front of Bella. A smile tugged at the corner of my lips as I began to realize what I should have understood from the start. Bella was going to be a mother; I'd given her a child. As my hands resumed caressing her stomach, the line of stress formed between Bella's eyebrows.
"What was that about?"
"Bella..." I breathed in wonder.
"Edward? Why'd you tell Jacob to leave?"
"You're pregnant," I said as though she wasn't well aware of the fact.
She giggled and nodded. "Yeah, Edward. I know."
"You're pregnant," I repeated in awe as I tried to absorb the truth. "You're going to have my baby, Bella."
More tears leaked from her eyes, but Bella giggled and nodded again. A grin spread across my face at the reaction our baby had to hearing his mother's joy. Her laughter running through our child's mind was delightful, and I was glad for my perfect recall. Days, years, centuries from now, I would be able to bring back the memory of this moment and replay precisely the way it sounded - and the way it felt - to hear Bella's laughter in our unborn baby's mind.
"What's he thinking now?"
I glanced back up to meet her eyes. They were shedding tears without pause, and she absently wiped them away. The love shining from them floored me; that she should still feel as she did after what I had tried to do seemed impossible. Her capacity for forgiveness exceeded even Carlisle's. I reached up to curl my hand around her wet cheek.
"He's thinking he'd like to hear you laugh again. He liked that a lot."
So did I.
And then she was laughing - somehow crying harder at the same time - and I was laughing, and Rosalie was laughing, and the babe within Bella laughed along with us in the only way he knew how. He mentally repeated our happy sounds and wiggled with pleasure, stretching his legs out and snuggling himself against her.
"Mm!" Bella put a hand over where mine had already flown. "Ah, oh."
He recoiled in displeasure from the strain in her tone.
"It's alright," I said soothingly. "You just need to be gentle. Your mother is breakable."
"Edward," Bella breathed. "Can he understand you?"
"No. And, yes. Sort of." My hands smoothed her shirt tight across her stomach, snugging it so I could better see the shape of her belly. It was perfectly round, and much more solid than I thought it should have felt.
"How? What do you mean?"
I met her eyes again briefly before returning my gaze to the miracle of her stomach swelling with my child. Our child. I shrugged and shook my head. "It's... strange. He's so... aware."
Her streaming eyes were huge and filled with wonder and excitement. She watched me without speaking as I closed my eyes and focused on our baby's mind, straining to catch the most fleeting of thoughts.
"He's aware?" Rose pressed me. "As in..." ...he can talk to you like this?
"No, not like that; he doesn't understand our words enough to use them, but thoughts are more than words people speak. And his are..." I tried to name the impressions I was getting. Eventually, I simply said, "Good."
"Good." Bella marveled before stating firmly, "Like his namesakes."
My eyes flashed up to hers. She was smirking around the tears that had slowed, but not stopped. Namesakes, she'd said. Meaning he wasn't named only after me. "EJ? Edward...?"
"Jacob, of course."
I laughed and shook my head. Why had I even needed to ask? "Of course."
"Um, speaking of... Why did you tell Jacob to leave? What happened?"
"It was better that he leave," I said shortly. When she continued to frown at me, I sighed and elaborated, "It wasn't good for him to stay. Watching this hasn't been easy for him."
She laid her land on my cheek. "Or you?"
I didn't answer and caressed her stomach. No, it hadn't been easy.
Whatever his disposition, the baby was not good for Bella. Even if I had known from the start that EJ would be intelligent and good, the danger caused by his presence within her was very real. I swallowed hard as a vivid image of our son growing desperate enough to free himself from Bella's body formed in my mind. As happy as he was now, snug and warm, he was already cramped and growing quickly. He would feel the need to be born soon.
If EJ was aware enough that he loved Bella, he would know what he was doing to her in delivering himself. And what would that do to him?
"Bella, you have to let Carlisle take the baby."
"What? No!" Bella snatched her hand away from my face and placed it between mine on her stomach at the same time that Rose yelled my name. Their exclamations startled little EJ, and he jumped, making Bella wince.
"Shh," I laughed and rubbed the spot he'd impacted.
Bella whispered my name and shook her head in disbelief.
"Bella, love, listen to me, please."
"No! You - you've already made your arguments, and I am not about to - "
I placed a finger over her lips. "You misunderstand me. You aren't going to be able to deliver in a human way. Carlisle has explained to you what Jasper and Emmett found."
She pulled her head away from my finger. "Yeah. And when he's ready, Carlisle will help him deliver himself while you change me."
"That plan is dangerous, Bella."
"It's the best one. It's the one that means we'll both be fine."
"I disagree. No, wait." I held out my hands to both of them as they started to argue with me. Making my voice as calm and rational-sounding as possible, I said, "Human women have planned cesarean deliveries every day."
"When their babies are viable," Rose snapped. "Not when they aren't even a month old!"
"But this isn't a human baby. Can't you hear his heart, Rose? A month old or not, he's self-aware, and fully physically developed already. The only thing he is really going to do now is get bigger and stronger. Why wait? To what end?"
They exchanged glances.
"Bella, please." I took her hand in mine and held it against her stomach while my other hand cupped her face. "Our baby loves you; don't you think he would prefer to be born in a way that does not put you - either of you - in danger?"
With a wary look in her eyes, she slowly asked, "What, exactly, are you suggesting?"
"As soon as Carlisle gets back, I would like to take you straight into surgery. He'll give you anesthetics so you won't feel anything. Rose will be with you the whole time, and as soon as he's delivered, she can take EJ to care for until you are able. We can even let you hold him first while Carlisle gets you cleaned up."
"And then?"
"I - I had an idea. Your heart has been struggling, love, and I thought, if there was a way to get the venom into the muscle directly... well, that you had a better chance of surviving his birth." The wariness on her face was replaced with confusion as I spoke. "I've already prepared a syringe with my venom."
...what you two were up to... knew it was something! ...hope you're planning on cleaning up the mess that's made by now...
I chuckled. "No, Rose. Our venom is not corrosive to all materials. It will still be ready when Bella is."
"You're not going to bite me?" Bella demanded as her jaw dropped open.
"I... would rather not."
She made a face and slumped slightly.
"I can inject my venom directly into your heart and initiate your change as soon as he's born." When she didn't answer, I said, "It will be my venom, and I will be the one to give it to you. Does it matter all that much how?"
"I guess not." Bella pulled her lower lip between her teeth as she studied me. "It matters to you though, doesn't it?"
I had already tasted Bella's blood once, and while I couldn't deny the part of me which yearned for another taste of it and the pleasure it would bring, I did not look forward to spending the rest of eternity seeing scars that had been left by my teeth.
"I would prefer not to mar your perfect skin. If the venom in the syringe works, I won't have to. But if it doesn't... If, for whatever reason, the venom must be delivered by bite, then I won't hesitate. Either way you'll be a vampire in three days if you just, please, allow us to deliver the baby today."
Bella breathed as heavily as her broken ribs and swollen stomach would allow and pressed her lips together. I was afraid that she was about to refuse, but instead, she nodded once, firmly. "Rose? What do you think?"
To my shock, Rosalie instantly agreed. "I think it'll work. I say we do it Edward's way."
"Yeah, alright. Okay. When Carlisle gets home, we'll do what you said. Do you hear that, baby? You ready to be born today?" She was rubbing circles over her belly while she spoke the last words, laughing and crying all at the same time.
I laughed along with her - in relief. The pregnancy was almost over. Our son would be born today, as soon as my father returned home. Bella had lasted this long, surely a few more hours would not change anything.
My arms wound around her as I kissed her belly and listened to the incredible sound of Bella's laughter dancing in our baby's mind.
