THE REMNANTS
Chapter 8: Edward Part III
Edward paced the halls while his eyes remained fixed on his hands. The picture he held was the first sign of his Bella in nearly four years. He couldn't believe it was the same woman and yet, how could he not recognize her? It was her face, though so much thinner and tanner than he had ever seen it. It was her seated beside the unmistakable figure of the Toubou camel herder, tiny baby held in her arms, and a face glowing with joy. That was an expression he hadn't seen on her "real" face in years, though he saw it nearly everyday in his dreams.
He couldn't put the pieces together. Why was she with Amir and this child?
This was the most solid lead he had found on her location since he started searching a year ago. He was elated. He would need to organize to leave immediately to pursue every possibility this opened up for him.
He entered the Generation Lab and then stopped. The other one, the new guardian, sat there with a mirror in one hand, a pair of scissors in the other, and a computer screen blaring a Youtube video on "Do-it-Yourself" haircuts. A pile of long, chestnut locks covered his keyboard and surrounded her on the floor. She wore a polka-dotted dress that matched her red lipstick. It was stretched so taut against her increasingly robust figure he figured it was either an online-shopping size error, or a purchase that hailed back to her more petite past. He couldn't say her additional pounds didn't suit her well, but he would never say it out loud. In fact, he preferred to avoid the insufferable woman as much as he could. As long as she did her work, he let her be, but if he was honest, she rather terrified him.
He could still remember the day when he realized the truth. For awhile, after she left, he thought he could easily replace his Bella. No, he knew he desperately needed to replace her.
Initially, it was her invaluable role within the Temple that he sought to replace. When he woke and discovered his guardian gone, he couldn't help but panic. Yes, he was worrying about her safety and what might have befallen her, but he was also panicking because the Others were in such deplorable condition from their long neglect. It was this same state of their health that compelled him to stay and tend to them rather than immediately go and search for the missing woman. Yes, his Bella was gone, but these Others would die if he did not intervene immediately. He wasn't choosing one over the other, simply tending to the area of greatest immediate need.
I'll look for her later, he told himself.
Later came much later than he anticipated. His first task, after the lengthy process of restoring the Others to full health, was to choose a new guardian and set to work giving her a crash course into her new life. His pace of teaching was expedited exponentially by his own need. Without a caretaker for the Others, he lost the freedom he had come to take for granted. He couldn't indulge himself as he desired and was forced to cut back so much he could barely function. After so many years of complete unrestraint, the need to cut back hit him like a hatchet in the gut.
He was dismayed to discover that consumption of a single specimen, what had originally flown him to such incomparable heights of ecstasy, did no more than give him a slight pleasant warmth, barely more potent than back when he used to hunt mountain lions. His trance was so short, it might as well have been an afternoon nap. For another thing, within half a day of feeding, he already felt so thirsty that he could think of little else. A tremor crept through his hands and the longer he went without, the more it grew into an earthquake-like shaking that made it nearly impossible to use his computer, hold a book upright, or spoon-feed his new protegee. His thoughts scattered like ladybugs from a jar and he moved as if in a disjointed haze, as if his mind were a series of puzzle pieces poured from a box onto a table.
This made him forget, for awhile, that he needed to find her. He placed all the time and focus he could on getting this one adequately prepared. Looking back, he now was convinced that he released his new guardian too soon and imbued her with far too much freedom. So desirous was he to be unburdened from his tasks, he had given almost full and unrestricted charge of the facility into her hands before she was two. In return, she had grabbed on to her tasks with both her hands until some days he wondered who really ruled his Temple.
Still, she did her job, and that enabled him to finally stop shaking, at least for a time, and to finally put his fractured mind back into some semblance of wholeness, and escape from what lay beneath, at least for a time.
He knew beneath, it was not only his mind that was fractured. When his mind was whole, he could feel her absence. In his very bones, he felt as if someone had removed half his organs and left him to live without his lungs and liver. Without her scent, her presence, her heartbeat, his life lost its luster, his dreams lost their inspiration, his desires extinguished, and all that was left was a thirst to escape, quench the pain, and forget everything.
As soon as he was free, that was what he did-perhaps a little too freely. Later, he could remember very little of those months. He wasn't quite sure what exactly happened, only that when he was coherent enough to think and wonder why he felt like he had been gutted like a fish, it was then he thought about her again. He combed through his memories of her-every smile, every expression, every conversation. He lay on her bed in her room to catch whatever lingering particles of her delicious essence still remained and bask in every item within that connected him to her.
He couldn't even look the Others in the face before he consumed them. They were a mockery, a contempt. How could he ever have pretended they were her?
One day, he realized he was being foolish.
Why am I so sad about one, when I have others? I can simply replace her and be done with this, he thought. In the same way he had replaced her role as guardian with another, he could also fill the glaring hole in his heart with other. The idea cheered him up greatly. He could rid himself of his internal agony and return to a sense of contentedness with his circumstances again. He couldn't believe he hadn't tried this already.
He walked into the Generation Lab to find his new guardian. He'd barely noticed the woman since he released her into her tasks. Their interactions thus far had been confined to discussions on supplies, tips for managing the computers, and ensuring the new driverless car was operational for its monthly airport runs. So caught up in his own affairs was he that he'd paid very little heed to her developing personality or attributes. He always assumed she would turn out just like his Bella, but had never paused to investigate further.
The new Bella sat on a computer chair with her legs crossed and bare feet balanced on a table. She wore a pair of blue sweatpants and a red T-Shirt. On her lap she held a bowl of steaming soup and she took sips from a spoon while she read a book held in one hand. Her shoulder-length hair fell across her rosy cheek and her forehead made that perfect little "v" shape as she read that was oh-so-Bella. He nearly swooned at the image she painted.
He came towards her and leaned against the wall to take her in. He was bombarded with the strength of emotions that one facial expression stirred in him, and the myriad of memories it elicited.
Small talk, he thought to himself. Keep it casual, keep it light.
"What are you reading?" he asked as he forced himself from the past into the present.
She startled and peered over the top of her book at him in surprise. Then she raised a skeptical eyebrow.
"The Raven," she replied and lazily lifted her book to reveal his anthology of Edgar Allan Poe. It was his turn to be surprised.
"You enjoy Poe?" he asked.
"The dude's mind is as creepy as hell. His writings are almost as disturbing as living with you," she responded. "I find that ironically comforting to think you aren't the only psycho in the world."
Edward stared at her dumbstruck. Her speech, her cadence, her expressions-they were not like his Bella-or like anything he had taught her. Where had she picked up her slang and her ideas? What other influences had she thrown her developing mind into?
Again, he was surprised as he took in the scent emanating from her bowl.
"You are eating SpaghettiO's?" he asked. "How do you like those?"
"I was hungry," she said with a shrug. "I mean, it does look a little too close to your diet to make it really all that appetizing, but I like the way the little O's stick to my tongue. Besides, I ate all the canned ravioli yesterday."
Edward stood dumbstruck and stared at her so long she grew uncomfortable and shifted in her chair.
"How are you different from my Bella?" he finally asked, more to himself than to her. He didn't understand.
"Who?" she replied.
"My Bella. The one who disappeared and whom you have replaced. She hated Poe and SpaghettiO's. You are from the same DNA. You should be the same," he said, his forehead wrinkled in confusion.
She shrugged. "Sorry, oh Beneficent Creator, perhaps you made a mistake when you put my neurons together. You probably zoned out and forgot to add in a few synapses at a critical moment in my creation."
He nearly cried out as she folded over a corner of a page to hold her spot in the book. She placed the book on the table and turned to give him her full attention.
"I think I made a mistake when I taught you to use the computer," he said, more to himself than to her as he made the connection to her most likely source of outside education.
"That's right. The best way to manipulate underlings is through the maintenance of ignorance," she answered nonchalantly. Edward came closer to her and bent down to inhale her hair. He closed his eyes and took in the scent.
Yes, it was Bella, but still, not.
"Dude, what are you doing?" she asked as she pulled away from him with her brown eyes wide.
"I am investigating your scent," he replied.
"Yeah, cause that's not awkward," she said with a sarcastic eye roll as she readjusted her position to place her farther away from where he peered over her.
"Bella, I...," he began. She interrupted him with a squeak.
"No way! That is so not my name. I refuse to be called after your favorite food. I mean, I don't go around calling you 'Bacon' and I sure as heck don't want you to confuse me for your breakfast or your after breakfast cuddle toy."
He pinched the bridge of his nose. "What would you prefer I address you as?"
"Your majesty, your excellency, your resplendent brilliance. if those are too large of words for you, then call me Buffy."
"Buffy?" he asked. "Why on earth would you prefer such a silly name?"
"It's not a silly name. It's a butt-kicking, awesome name. Buffy. Vampire Slayer. It's to remind me of my role model and my life aspirations," she said with a wide grin.
"You...that show was ridiculous. Isn't that hundreds of years old?" Edward responded. He could still remember the long hours his sisters spend watching that show and picking it apart for all its inconsistencies.
"Some things only get better with age. Besides, its so old that now its free for online streaming. I can watch it all I want. The newer stuff's harder to come by without paying for it or buying a subscription to streaming services that don't work in this part of the world."
"And it's so accurate in its portrayal of the supernatural...," he responded dryly.
"And Poe's poem is so accurate in it's portrayal of a raven? I may not have ever seen one, but I'm pretty sure they can't speak. Accuracy is not a requirement for inspiration or art," she responded with a flourished bang of her hand on her book.
He wished he could give a response witty enough to wipe the smug grin from her face. Instead, he excused himself and fled her to try to wade through the myriad of emotions their conversation elicited in him.
Their relationship, after that, never did show much improvement.
ooooo
From then on, he remembered that day as the day he started searching for his Bella again. He stood for hours in the hallway outside of his Bella's room as the realization sunk in. Buffy and his Bella were not the same. He couldn't help but feel some angel of fate created Buffy simply as payback to remind him that his Bella was not so easily replaced.
As the memories of their years together flooded over him, he fell to the ground with his head in his hands, as he felt his heart ache with a longing so deep he couldn't put it into words. This was not a desire born of thirst. This was a desire born of something so much deeper and more intrinsic to his very being. He needed to find her. He was a fool to wait so long to begin his search.
She proved as challenging to find as a pebble in the Sahara. He could only leave his source of food for so long between feeds. This was further complicated by the relatively "off-the-grid" nature of the pastoralists he sought and how little knowledge he had of her movements after she left. If she had fled to New York, he could have found her in a week. In the isolated deserts, she could pass a place he just searched and he'd never know it. There was no electronic bread trail or security cameras to catch glimpses of her familiar face. instead there was only the olfactory black hole of the endlessly shifting sands and isolated, constantly moving bands of small family units.
Now, with this photograph he had paid contacts no small price for, his suspicions were confirmed. Amir had kidnapped her and, in his self-centeredness, Edward failed to come to her rescue in time. He only hoped he wasn't too late and she would forgive him. After nearly four years apart, he knew how to find her.
He burst into the Generation Lab to tell Buffy he would be gone, only to get distracted by the sight of her with scissors.
"What are you doing?" he asked in that tone of voice only this exasperating woman could make him use.
"Becoming a ninja," she answered in a voice dripping with sarcasm. "What's it look like?" She snapped her scissors in the air a few times to demonstrate and pressed "play" on her video again.
"You do realize you are cutting your hair in an entirely crooked line?"
"The correct term is artistically slanted. It brings attention to my jaw line and makes me look sophisticated."
"It looks like it was cut by a chimpanzee," he replied.
"Well, we can't all pull off the whole 'never wash my hair, never bathe' look now can we?" she asked as another lock fell and she wrinkled her nose in the mirror at the result.
it was only then that Edward noticed another Bella laying on a pile on blankets nearby. No IVs provided her with her body's requirements which meant she had been out of the Generation tanks a significant amount of time. She lay on the floor wearing one of Buffy's older and much smaller dresses and stared at the cascading locks of hair that fell around her.
"What is she doing in here?" he asked and pointed at where the woman now turned her head slightly to look at him.
"My assistant," Buffy responded without even turning to look.
"You watch TV and eat cookies all day long. Why could you possibly require an assistant?"
"Hey now! Show some respect for the manager of your personal affairs. Babysitting you and your harem is a full-time job."
"Put her back," he said in a voice he hoped sounded commanding instead of exasperated.
"No. I don't think I will. Oh look. I think I forgot to order more IV drips and fluids. Let's see what happens when the sadistic vampire gets hungry and can't find his dinner."
"Why do you have her?" he said as he grumbled in frustration at the unmanageable woman.
"Isn't it obvious? I've decided to start my own army of the undead to overthrow your tyranny and liberate the masses."
He raised an eyebrow in response and she shrugged.
"Fine. Boredom, companionship, to act as liaison with you so I don't have to see your face. I decided I need a decoy to act as a buffer in case you feel like chewing on my arm, sucking off my face, or smelling my hair again."
"And why does it look like she's been finger painted by a child?" he asked and pointed to where different colors marred the pale, nearly hairless face.
"Makeup practice. She looks fabulous. She's decided to become a model when she grows up. So, besides irritating me, why are you here?" Buffy said, changing the subject. She placed her scissors onto the desk and piled locks of hair together to dispose of them. She looked at her face in the mirror and gave it a little shake. Edward cringed internally at the asymmetry of it and tried not to look at the line of it again. He was convinced she did it simply to irritate him.
"I'm going away for a bit. Don't blow the place up while I am away," he said with a resigned sigh.
"That's a brilliant idea! Thanks! I'll order some dynamite tonight," she said dryly.
"And strand yourself in the desert with no place to go and no one to help you?" Edward said. "Excellent idea. Be my guest."
She gave a slight pout. "Fine. I'll hold down the fort on one condition. You leave my assistant alone."
"You are absurd."
"Definitely. Do we have a deal?" she said with a look on her face that showed she already knew she'd won. He loathed her just a little more at that.
"Fine. Keep her," he said.
"I knew you'd come around," she said. She gave a wide grin intermixed with mock-innocence and she tilted her head towards where the woman lay. "I've been working on names. What do you think of Bellarina...or Bellaflop...or Bellabottom...its still a work in progress."
"Utterly absurd. I'm leaving now."
"Wonderful! Don't hurry back!" she answered with feigned sweetness in her voice that reminded him so much of Rosalie that he cringed internally even more.
ooooo
Edward's leads took him to the far north of the country where the earth rose into towering mountains, the air cooled, and the Toubou built their settled villages. In one of the sandy villages on the fringes of the mountains, he first caught a hint of her unmistakable scent. If it weren't for information from a distant relative on the habits and location of the camel herder, he never would have found her. Within a conical sand-brick hut with a grass-thatched roof, surrounded by herds of livestock, lay the source of the most beautiful scent in the world. Within, his Bella sat on the dirt floor, nursing a toddler from her bare breasts. She wore a threadbare burnt orange dress, her hair in two thick braids dotted with red and silver bangles, and a large round ring now hung from her nose. Her previously pale skin was dark with sun and newly formed wrinkles lay between her forehead and the corners of her eyes. She was gaunt and too thin, but she glowed from within with a light of happiness that poured out of her eyes.
Bella smiled up at the face of an ugly mortal man with graying hair covered by a dirty, white turban, whose crooked teeth protruded from his wrinkled face. It was the camel herder. The man who, for years, had delivered his supplies to Bella. The man gazed at the suckling child with the sandstone-colored skin in fond pride and it all became clear. For years, the deplorable man had been meeting her, alone, in the desert. How foolish Edward had been to let this happen! He had allowed the herdsmen to weasel his way into the life of his Bella, take her captive, and deceive her into following after him. How long had their love affair been going on, right under his nose?
He cursed to himself and tuned his out-of-practice mind to listen to the thoughts and words that flooded around him and he grew even more furious. Badiyah, they called her. The third wife of Amir and the mother of Dawlah.
He was aghast. Bella was reduced to being third third wife to an impoverished camel herder, malnourished and enduring unimaginable conditions in the desert, and forced to milk his goats and be milked by her captor's offspring. How dare the man ever consider laying a finger on what belonged only to him. This whole time, she should have been with Edward. Jealousy and fury overtook him and compelled him to rescue her from her captivity and bring her back to where she belonged.
With Edward.
Within, he felt he was Perseus, rescuing the captive Ethiopian princess from her bonds to woo her from another and wed her as his own. He was Siegfied delivering his fair maiden from the ring of fire to prove his worth. Like Isimbwa, he would liberate Nyinamwiru from her prison. He barged into the domestic scene, growling, with teeth bared.
He expected Bella to welcome him with joy and gratitude and throw herself into his arms. Instead, she hissed, gave the baby to a young girl, and sprung to her feet to unsheathe a dagger.
"Don't touch anyone," Bella shouted. "You will not hurt my family. So help me, Edward, I have a knife and I will use it."
"Foolish woman," he spat back at her, dismayed by her less-than-warm reception. "What do you think a knife will do to me?"
The daggers in her eyes were sharper than the one in her hand as she pulled the gleaming knife to the artery in her neck. "It can do plenty to me," she said. "If you wish me to come with you alive, you will not touch a hair on anyone in this village, now or in future."
Edward stared at her in shock, unsure what to make of this.
"I swear it," he finally said and he sighed inwardly when she took the blade away from her delicate neck. She placed it back into its sheathe and hid it under the folds of her dress. She cast a lingering hand along the cheeks of both the boy and the girl who carried him. Tears fell freely down her cheeks as she turned to follow him from the hut.
When the cries of the children in the hut met her ears, she could hold her own in no longer and her shoulders hunched in sobs that she poured into her hands.
This wasn't what Edward expected. Bella wept the entire journey back to the Temple. At that moment Edward felt more akin to Hades kidnapping Persephone and forcing her to the underworld than to the hero Perseus' rescue of the distressed Andromeda. She truly was caught tight in the deceitful lies of the camel herder.
ooooo
Once they returned, she raged and pleaded with him for days. With her hands, coarse from hard labor, her body too thin from her years of simple meals, and her clothes nearly threadbare, she still had the audacity to claim she found happiness and wished to return to her "home." She cursed at him colorfully in Arabic words he had surely never taught her and said she no longer wished to be slave to a jinn.
"You are not my slave!" he hissed back, deeply offended by her words.
"Am I not? You introduced me to Amir as your captured slave and my duties here resembled that from my first day until my last. You have forced me back here though I did not wish to come. What am I then if not your slave?" she shouted.
"Don't you know?" he said, his voice deflating as his hands covered his face in a sudden onslaught of emotion he sought to shy away from.
"What am I supposed to know? Is it my turn to die at your hands?" she said.
"Die? Bella, how could you think I would ever harm you? Have I ever hurt you or mistreated you or denied you anything you needed?" he said, genuinely hurt by her assertion.
"No," she said as she dropped her eyes and admitted the truth to him. "You have never physically injured me."
She didn't say it, but they both knew the words she held in. He had hurt her and mistreated her in other ways. So many other ways.
With that unspoken truth wedged like a tree branch between them, the both fell silent. Her dark eyes now roved over him, searching his face for something only her keen mind could read from it.
"Edward, you look terrible. What has happened to you? Why do your hands shake so?" she asked, her anger momentarily replaced by a semblance of tender concern.
He curled his hands into fists to try to stop the shaking. She ran her finger over the deep shadows beneath his eyes which had grown to envelope his entire eye socket with pools of violet. His skin had paled to a near-translucent white that only accentuated his inhumanness further. He turned away from her, hoping the shadows of her room could hide him. Her concern, instead of soothing him, irritated him and he lashed out.
"To me? What happened to you?" he said as he stared at the gray in her hair and the deep ridges in her forehead and around her eyes. "The desert has not been kind to you. Why have you done this to yourself?"
Instead of growing insecure or feeling the need to hide, she stood taller and laughed. Her laugh filled the room and made all her jewelry sing and dance. He swallowed and turned his eyes away.
"Edward, I have been happier the last four years than I ever have before. My life is full, even if it is not easy. I have mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, a husband and a son. My desire is to stay with them. I do not wish for ease. I wish for belonging," she said. She opened her arms as she spoke as if within her arms she held all the people she spoke of and he was suddenly overcome by jealousy for all the people she had grown to love. How could she choose them over him? How could she grow so full in his absence while he grew so empty in hers?
Edward sank into the rocking chair of her room and rocked himself with such vehemence that the chair creaked in protest. Bella sat on her bed, her eyes like fathomless liquid pools within her browned face as she stared at him. Her anger had fizzled and cooled and in its place a resigned sadness lay. While their physical positions were so very similar, the people who now sat in them were not the same as they had once been and both could intrinsically feel the subtle shift the long years had wrought.
"This pathetic excuse for a man that you call husband has brainwashed you and told you lies," Edward spat bitterly. "He has made you accept a life which you should never have accepted. You should be loved, adored, and worshiped, not worked to death. How can you accept a man who has other wives before you? He is not worthy of you."
"Why would I not? Amir is kind to his wives and children. He gives us plenty of millet and livestock, and he gives us children. His clan is strong and able to protect us. He is an honorable man who gave me a home, a family, a people, and a life when I had no kin or status or skills to repay him with. I wish for nothing," she said, as she ran her hands up and down a silver pair of engraved bracelets on her wrists and spoke with warm affection. He hated the man even more.
"You wish for food? I can give you the best in the world. You don't have to fight through the desert, half-starved, and ill. You wish for jewels? I can flood you with diamonds and gold. You wish for protection? There is no human who can hope to escape me. I may not be able to give you children, but I know how to worship you in every possible way and adore you as you should be adored," he said.
"I do not care if you made me by your magic or gave my spirit into my body or can buy me the largest herd of camels in Chad or all the gold in the Sahara. You think the grandeur of your wealth and gifts are enough to make me choose to stay in your 'City of Brass'? I do not wish to become the queen of your city populated only by corpses. No, I would rather be third wife to a camel herder than queen of the dead. I wish for nothing you can give me except my freedom."
She cocked her head, making her nose ring dance and the bangles in her head shift again. Her eyes, no longer filled with innocence, peered through him instead of at him. Even with her weather-worn skin, streaks of gray, and thinner frame, she was still the most beautiful woman Edward had ever seen and her scent clung to his senses like an embrace. He fought to focus on her words instead of losing himself in another of his fantasies, as he had so often done when he spent night after night in her room during her absence, pretending she was there with him.
"Edward, why have you brought me back here?" she asked, her voice growing weary. "Surely it would be easier to train one of the others to serve you instead of forcing me against my will."
"You think I could replace you? You think I brought you back to serve me? You know nothing," he said in a tone that began in anger and expired in melancholy. He decided he didn't want to answer anymore questions that night. It would be so much easier to answer her questions if he knew the answers himself. He didn't know what he wanted, only that he wanted her near him.
He left her alone in her room and descended into the darkness of his mixed emotions.
oooooo
He took a break from his faithful vigil to pace the halls of his Temple and think. As he searched inwardly and let his feet and mind wander, he happened to look into the dining hall where Buffy sat at a table with her "assistant" nearby. Both wore matching Catwoman pajamas and slippers. Buffy's face was pursed in concentration as she painted the nails of the other who lay on a bench and watched the process with a slight smile on her face. A tray of Oreos lay between them, half-eaten, along with two half full cups of reconstituted powdered milk.
"Buffy," he said with a terse nod of his head. He tried to smile but he knew it came out more as a grimace. Her responding frown told him she shared his lack of enthusiasm at seeing him.
"Yes, oh Nefarious Vampire Overlord? To what do I owe the displeasure of your visit?" she said. She didn't bother to look at him but instead she admired her bright pink handiwork and her lips made an "o" as she blew on the nails.
"I brought my Bella back," he began, and then stopped. He began to doubt the wisdom in discussing this with the woman, but he needed both her assistance and he wished to unburden his mind so he continued on, heedless of the possible witty rebuttals and insults the woman was sure to fling at him with as much vigor as a chimpanzee throwing feces.
"Yeah. We've all heard how happy she was to see you again. She's wept with joy every night," Buffy said with an eye roll.
Edward responded through gritted teeth. "She's just confused. We have some things we need to work through. She was kidnapped and forced to marry a sixty year old camel herder and live in the desert for years. It will take some time for her to get her head back on straight."
Buffy gave a sardonic laugh and only pretended to muffle it behind her own pink fingernails.
"Kidnapped? I don't think so. So, she prefers a 60 year old camel herder to you? Really can you blame her? I mean, you're what-like a thousand or something?"
"Hardly," he responded. "At least I have all my teeth."
"But you also have a tendency to run naked through the halls, gnaw on the furniture, and have sex with your food. Compared to you, the camel herder sounds like Prince Charming. I mean, I can't even say you'd be my last choice. You'd be more like my 'I'd rather throw myself off a cliff or join a nunnery than be with you' kind of choice."
"You aren't exactly helping," Edward said with an exasperated sigh. He'd known this wouldn't end well and still he voluntarily entered the room.
"Oh, I'm sorry. You came to me for encouragement? I'm the wrong person for that. I'm gonna be real here. You're living in denial and, no, I don't mean the river," she said as she met his eyes with her own condescending expression.
"Why do I let you live?" Edward said in half-hearted resignation. He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes as he debated the merits of freeing himself from his perpetual thorn in his side. Buffy gave a merry chuckle, slipped her short, crooked hair over one shoulder of her pajama shirt and put the tray of Oreos back in the bag. Then she gave a wide yawn.
"You let me live because you are a hopeless addict and I am both your enabler and your drug dealer. You need me more than you hate me."
"I am not an addict," he said automatically. She laughed and he bristled even more.
"Yeah, says every addict ever. I did research on this, you know. You have all the signs."
"I can stop whenever I want," he said, much too vehemently, he only realized after, to be taken seriously.
"Yeah, right. And I only watch Buffy on Tuesdays. Whatever, dude. Unfortunately for both of us, I live with you and I can tell you, as a fully unbiased outsider, you totally are an addict. You might love this chick but not as much as you need your high. She was smart as hell to get out of here when she did...I'm telling you, living in the middle of a desert, with or without a 'kidnapping' camel herder, is better than being stuck with your sorry ass all the time."
Edward sighed and deflated. It wasn't worth defending himself and instead he sought to relieve part of the burdens that troubled his mind.
"So, what do I do? How do I change her mind?" he asked.
"Seriously? You're going to ask your four year old movie addict for relationship advice? You are hopeless. It's really not so complicated. If she says she doesn't want to be here, let her go. Then you go to the vampire equivalent of rehab, whatever that is. You know they have online groups for that kinda thing. All you have to do is show up and say, 'Hi! I'm Edward and I'm a Bellaholic,' and you'll be way better off than you are now."
"I don't plan to stop," he said, his defenses rising again.
"I thought you can stop at anytime."
"I can. I just choose not to," he said with a smug expression on his face.
"Classic. Should I call your mom or your sister to help in this intervention? Maybe they'd like to hear about what you do in all your spare time. I'm sure they would be very proud," she said with her equally self-satisfied face. She crossed her arms across her chest and gave him the look. That look she reserved for him when she was scolding him as if he were a child. He hated that look.
"How do you know about...," he said and trailed off. He'd never mentioned his family to anyone ever. Not since he left.
"I hacked your computer so I could read and respond to all your emails," she said. "You really should try to read your own emails sometime. I'm pretty sure you've got some bills you forgot to pay. Oh, and your mom has emailed you every week for like a hundred years. You might want to actually call her sometime."
Edward stared up the ceiling willing himself not to throttle the woman. "I didn't come in here for a lecture. I can manage my own affairs," he said.
"Clearly. That's why you came in here for advice. You just happen to find my advice inconvenient so you are choosing to ignore it."
"Enough...The reason I came was not for advice but to instruct you on the care of our new guest. Make sure she has food and water."
"Will do, boss."
He gave a mirthless chuckle at that. "If I was your boss I would fire you."
"You would also pay me...and I could quit and go on vacations and have benefits. Hmmm, speaking of that, I think we should have a serious conversation about my retirement plan..."
"No."
"Right. Slave for life. Got it. Can I at least get a cat?"
"No," he answered over his shoulder as he walked out of the room.
"Goldfish?"
"No."
"An electric collar and muzzle for you?"
He grumbled out a response under his breath and retreated as far away as he could get to go hide and metaphorically lick his wounds.
oooooo
Edward laid meals outside her door each day along with any present he could think of. Fine jewelry and fancy clothes were laid out for her along with picture books and music. He read to her through the door and hummed his songs under his breath, continually hoping she would finally surrender and open the door to him again. He pretended he couldn't hear her weeping late into the night or her screams when she awoke from a nightmare in the middle of the night. He stayed outside of her room, day-after-day, until he could bear it no longer and begged her to open the door to him again.
"Bella, please. Just talk to me," he pleaded. He could hear her stirring within, but she failed to come to the door.
He could recognize her sigh and the squeaks of her mattress as she sat on her bed. The sound of her heartbeat, so unique to her, could be heard through the door. He wished she would open it so he could see her face and the turn of her expressions. Instead, she kept it closed-another barrier between them.
"My name is Badiyah," she replied through the door. "You already have more Bellas than you can count. I am not one of your Bellas."
"No, you are not," he said as he leaned against the wall beside her door. "I never pretended you were. I have always treated you different. Haven't you seen that? Why did you leave? Do you know what that was like for me to wake and find you gone? I wanted so badly to come after you, make sure you were well…Why didn't you stay with me?"
"I left because I no longer wished to stay. You told me yourself that your kind and my kind do not marry and now you are behaving as if I were an unfaithful wife. What is this about? Edward, you barely spoke to me for over a decade and now you pretend as though you wished for my presence. I am not your camel to work and then put away until you require my labor again. If I am not your slave, then let me go."
"I didn't bring you back here to work," he said. "I don't care about that. How can you think that's all I valued you for? We've spent over twenty years living here together. I held you when you took your first steps and decided you hated my cooking. I taught you to speak and to love Shakespeare. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
"Of course it does. Edward, I have always cared about you deeply," she said. "But I am not the woman I once was. I am not so young and my eyes have long been opened to many things. How many nights would I need to keep telling you stories before it would be my turn to die for the sins of my kind? How many of my sisters have you sent to their deaths the morning after you bed them? Even now, their spirits haunt these halls and whisper songs of death into your ears that drive you mad with evil desires. No, Edward, I wish to be free of the smell of death that clings to this place more than I wish to stay here with you."
"Don't make me choose between them and you," he pleaded. "Please. That's the only reason I kept my distance from you. I didn't want to have to choose and I knew you would require it."
"Of course not," she said. "There is no choice for you to make. You have the life you wish for and I found the one I wish for. I am no more asking you to change or to choose than I am willing to remain here with you. Do not grow distraught over a choice you need never make."
"How can you say that? I never wished for you to leave," he cried. "How could I have the life I wish without you? For me, there's only you. You have consumed me. I fought so hard and against it, but I cannot escape your claim on me, no matter how I try. I am completely and utterly yours"
She gave a mirthless laugh. "Do you know how I would have rejoiced to hear those words from you when I was still young and thought you were the sun and moon and stars? Now I am wiser and your words ring hollow," she said. "You have had one of my sisters for all of Shahrazád's thousand and one nights and still you long for more. You deceive yourself if you think you wish for me. I am another goal, another phantom outside your grasp, and once you claim me, I will mean no more to you than any of the others whom you give as an offering to the desert."
"You have never been like any of the others to me," he said.
"No, I haven't," she said in a tone which spoke of layers of meaning which she she knew but would not explain to him. He wished, not for the first time, to be able to read what went on in her mind, to understand her, and know the right way to "fix" this.
"Please, give me a chance to try again," he said.
"No," she said and she didn't speak again, no matter how he tried to draw her out. Silence enfolded both of them and neither stirred from their shared solitude.
ooooo
For two days after this, Edward locked himself in his bedroom. He neither noticed the time nor how the world spun on around him as he lost himself in his own musings and long-postponed internal reflections. He was at a total loss. He didn't know what he should do next, but he couldn't escape the feeling that his decision would have permanent repercussions.
This room was soaked in her. The couch where she lay for countless hours lost in his stories. The carpet where they both lay, eyes closed, hands intertwined, and listened to Debussy. The painting she said reminded her of a Longfellow poem. The bed where he had hoped...well, those hopes were long past now.
He had an entire metaphorical closet full of well-intentioned plans he had most intentionally and obliviously chosen not to fulfill. He felt his own disparagement grow as he took those plans out one-by-one to scourge himself with their unfulfillment.
He never solved any world diseases or brought healing to humanity. He never took his Bella, the real flesh and blood woman, to see the world. He never even told her he was sorry for all he'd put her through.
He remembered his initial noble aspirations of freeing the first Bella he made and somehow making atonement for the first innocent life he had stolen. Here was his chance, here was his opportunity. She had already proven she could survive and thrive and she was only asking for what he had originally intended for his first creation. Even still, he tarried and struggled to accept the idea.
But what kind of life would she have if she went back? He asked himself. The harshness of her pastoral lifestyle had already taken a toll on her on her body. Her life would be short and difficult. Why should she want that? Surely, there was another way. As he thought of releasing her, watching her leave him and return to the arms of an unworthy other man, to bear him more children, and convince herself of her happiness in such abysmal circumstances, he could not bear it.
He thought he knew Bella. He had memorized every book, letter, and email read by or written by the original. He had experienced hundreds, perhaps over a thousand exact replicas of his siren. He knew her DNA, each cell, each organ. He knew the taste and expression of her fear, her anger, her happiness, her ecstasy, her sadness. His life work had been utterly devoted to the study of and worship of every possible manifestation of this woman. He thought he knew it all.
But this was a Bella he did not know. Even her physical appearance was worlds apart from that of the original. And her spirit? He had never seen its equal. This obstinate, stubborn, willful, self-possessed Bella was a marvel to behold.
He had created her, formed her tissues and cells, and taught her to walk and talk and eat and think. He so carefully formed her to fulfill a purpose he had set for her. Yet she chose to rebel and remake herself in a way contrary to any he would have ever dreamed of. She embraced a path for herself other than the one she was designed for. His statue had truly come to life and was now a woman. His Eliza had grown into the "pillar of strength" he never thought possible, only to throw her slippers at his head and decry his complacency in presuming she would remain bound by his ivory carving.
He warred between awe and adoration to absolute fear and hatred. How could his creation become something other than he intended? How could she so integrate herself into a human community that she was enculturated, married, bore children, and was accepted by the other humans as one of them?
The answer unsettled him more than he wished to admit. It hinted at the undeniable presence of a human soul within her scientifically replicated body.
Had he been wrong this whole time? Had he been so willfully ignorant that he refused the obvious? Perhaps she did have a soul-her own unique spark of life, of freewill, of human capacity for good and evil, to choose and to change? And if she did, what of the countless Others-the Bellas he told himself were soulless products of science? Did they, also, have souls and the potential to become their own living, growing, breathing individuals? Had he buried himself in the guilt of thousands of robbed souls instead of the single one he so convinced himself to believe? He felt nauseous at the thought.
Even more unsettling-what did this reveal about him? He had convinced himself he was a product of his biology, compelled into his actions by forces beyond his control. Was it his vampiric nature or his vampiric choices that determined his life? Rather than fight against it, rebel, and live a life of his own choosing and direction, he chose to surrender to the path set out for him and passively accept to become what he was now.
His Bella rejected even the name he gave her. The brilliant ferocity with which she refused her destiny burned him like a blazing furnace. She scorched him and revealed his own pathetic weakness and burned off all of his pitiful self-justifications as dross. These thoughts led him into deeper and deeper mires of desperation, self-hatred, and self-recrimination which threatened to consume him from the inside out.
He hung his head into his knees and rocked himself back and forth on the floor of his room and let the darkness consume him.
ooooo
As the hours progressed to days, something began chipping away on the edges of his all-encompassing darkness. Bella's fire kindled his own desire for her even more and it rose into his despair hotter than the sun over the Sahara at midday. He had, for so long, basked in the superficial and controllable aspects of Bella, of the Bella he had created and chosen to see. But this Bella proved a wellspring of otherness, of tantalizing mystery, and unconquered power. He wanted to bask in the soul she undeniably possessed and let the innermost depths of her heart, this heart he did not create and could not understand, to be his. He needed her in a way he had never even dreamed possible and that made him hate her and love her and want her all the more.
Then, as if a full moon rose over his musings, he realized if it meant he had to give all this up, all the Other Bellas, everything he had worked so hard for, in order to have her, it would be worth it. If he had to turn her or stay with her till she aged, it would be worth it. He was completely and irrevocably in love with her…and had been for a very long time. He'd just been too much an arrogant, pig-headed imbecile to see the obvious.
He only now realized the truth he had refused to admit for so long. She was his mate. Only her. There would never be another.
This realization floored him. He could barely breathe as the weight of it crashed in upon his head like a granite boulder. For decades, he had exchanged his "pearl of great price" for plastic beads and only at the reality of losing her could he gauge the worth of what he had thrown away so carelessly.
He loved her, and she asked him to let her go. Would he, by accepting his statue's animation, lose her? Would he, by keeping her with him against her will, return her to lifelessness?
Either way, he lost her and he had no one to blame but himself.
ooooo
With this revelation burning in his breast, he wanted to-no, he needed to, talk to her. She needed to know that he loved her more than his whole world, that he would give up everything for her, and he finally knew what he wanted and why he was so desperate for her return. No matter how he pleaded and called for her, she would not answer nor come to the door. She failed to so much as whisper back to his queries.
As two more weeks passed without her so much as opening the door in his presence, he grew distraught and depression buried him in a shroud so deep he could not see a way out of it. It had been so long since he last fed that he had long since lost count of the days and he could barely keep his hands still beneath him or his thoughts condensed enough to realize them.
During his long vigil, as his deepening thirst disintegrated his mind, he was plagued with apparitions of her so realistic he could no longer differentiate between the real and the imaginary. In some, she opened the door and came to him in a vision of loveliness and adoration. She threw herself into his arms and agreed to be his and his heart nearly burst with happiness. In others, she came at him with blazing eyes full of betrayal, anger, and hatred. Her words were full of bitter vitriol and pierced him like a blade.
"May your greed and lust consume you into the very fires of hell! May your evil heart find no rest until you burn!" the angry siren spat at him before she turned her back and slammed the door in his face.
Other days, she simply wandered the halls, walking through walls, and staring into a void of nothingness as if she were a ghost. Her flesh-covered image turned into skeletal phantoms and she neither spoke nor responded to anything in her path. Her silence cut him even deeper than her rage, yet as she evaporated or morphed into another manifestation, he still failed to grasp the corporeal.
He found this so disconcerting that he finally buried his head in his hands and closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see anything anymore. All his previously noble notions of giving up the Other Bellas for her now seemed as useless as his constant vigilance outside her door. He needed to feed or else he would continue to have his faculties crumble. He couldn't think, he couldn't plan, he couldn't make sense of anything.
It will help, he told himself. I'll know what to do afterwards. Just one more time.
In his desperation and long-neglected thirst, he drank more than he had thus far tried at one time without pausing to think of the consequences and he spiraled into oblivion.
In his trance, he never noticed how such an unnatural intake of liquid into his body sought outlets to relieve the building pressure. When he woke, he couldn't feel the tiny microscopic fissure that leaked blood through his lower back to release the internal pressure from his abdomen. When he woke, all he could think of was her.
oooooooooooooo
Edward screamed and threw a desk into a wall, smashing the wood into splinters against the cement and sending a shower of plaster over the floor. He gave another shout so loud, the walls shook.
She was gone. Again.
The tranquil lethargy of a few hours ago quickly evaporated into an icy wave of paranoia as he searched room after room and couldn't find her. How many days...or weeks...had he been unconscious?
What have I done? He hissed at himself. How could I have left her unguarded?
He collapsed into sobs on the floor. Would he ever cease to be such a fool? Would he ever stop sabotaging what he truly wanted the most?
When he composed his emotional hurricane enough to regather a semblance of rationality again, he sought out his useless guardian.
"Buffy, where is she?" he said in a rush. He found her in her pajamas with gallon of ice cream on her lap and a spoon in her mouth. Tears flooded her cheeks as she watched some silly soap opera characters on her laptop. She didn't even look up at him when he burst into her little space she'd created for herself in the supply room.
"She left," Buffy replied, as if she were talking about the weather or a new bar of soap instead of the disappearance of the love of his life. He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes to try to control his reaction.
"And you didn't stop her?"
"Of course not. You told me to make sure she had food and water. I did what you said exactly. She has enough food and water to last her quite a few weeks."
"Argh!" he shouted, finally losing hold of his temper. "You knew I didn't want her to leave. What have you done?"
"Dude, I've put up with your drama king show long enough. 'Please, Bella I love you...I want to kill you that's how much I love you...I'll have twenty more of you in my pants by dinner time...but I love you more.' Please, if you can't convince her to want to stay with your sorry ass, I sure won't make her. You were stupid enough to pass out for two weeks and she was smart enough to run. End of story."
"Why do I feel like there's more you aren't telling me?" he said, noting the way she hunched her shoulders and how her face remained impassive in a way that hinted at restrained emotion beneath.
"I might have tried to castrate you while you slept," she answered with a shrug and another bite of ice cream. He wasn't convinced she was joking.
"Fine. I'm going after her," he said, choosing not to rise to her bait.
"Yeah, 'cause nothing says 'I love you' like obsessive stalker and forced imprisonment."
"I have to. She's my mate. I'm bound to her for eternity," Edward said. He no longer wished to deny his motivation and rather reveled in the freedom of saying it aloud.
"Mate? As in she helps you captain your ship? Or she's actually from Australia?"
"You are absurd. No, my kind, we mate for life. It's an intense emotional bond that only happens once and not even death can break it," he said. He grew sad as saying the words felt like clamping iron chains on his hands and feet. Buffy suddenly grew more interested. She turned to face him with her swollen, red eyes and put her spoon in the ice cream container.
"Back up again for me. Sorry, a little slow here….your kind mates for life and when you first met your mate your first instinct was to eat her?"
"I didn't know she was my mate! I never knew, not until…not until last week."
"Woah-you lived with the woman for decades and you never figured it out? I'd think a permanent, life-altering bond with another person would be easier to identify than that."
"I thought the clones weren't real people….I thought I couldn't possibly find a true mate there…and I didn't want to find my mate," he said, his voice tinged with his regret. "So I chose to ignore all the signs that should have been so obvious to me."
"First off, thanks a lot for the vote of confidence. Do I need to start a political party and get flags and buttons that say 'clones have feelings too'? Sheesh.
"Second….no kidding you didn't want to find your mate. You murdered her genetic counterparts thousands of times. To me that screams 'commitment issues'. Come on, spill the truth. This whole time you couldn't bear the thought of living for anyone except yourself and you've done everything possible to cut off any one or anything that would make you gain even an ounce of unselfishness. You've wanted your freedom to do as you please, even if that cost everyone around you their lives. Yeah man, you bring twisted to a whole new level of curly fry."
"Well, as you so delight in reminding me daily, I'm an idiot," he said.
"This is a step beyond idiotic. This falls right over the edge into utterly ridiculous."
"For once, I think you are right," he said. He no longer felt the need to defend himself and simply let himself simmer in his self-loathing. Instead of gloating over his admission, as he expected, she grew even more uncharacteristically somber. Her eyes watched her screen, though he doubted her mind registered any of what she watched.
"What is this?" he said with a half-smile. "No crowing over your victory?"
She shook her head and a single tear rolled down her cheek. "No, Edward. There is no victory today. Not for anyone."
Ooooo
He didn't go after.
He locked himself in his bedroom and let his depression suffocate him as he forced himself to do the hardest thing he could ever think of doing.
He let her go.
She asked for one gift from him to prove his love, only one. He would give it.
Perhaps, like Christine, she would never return to her musical Phantom locked within his own self-imposed dungeon. Perhaps, she would give her love to Raoul instead, but he would grant her the choice. Perhaps, like the Beauty, she would return to break the spell holding the Beast captive and transform him back into a handsome prince with her love. Still, it was her choice.
He would wait...and hope...and change.
He would return to hunting and abstain from the Others.
He could do this. For her, he could do this.
He didn't know he was already too late.
.-.-.-.-.-.
"For it falls out
That what we have we prize not to the worth
Whiles we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost,
Why, then we rack the value, then we find
The virtue that possession would not show us
While it was ours."
William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
.-.-.-.-.-.
Author's Notes:
This is the longest yet...thanks so much for all of your reviews and favorites and follows! I appreciate all your input greatly!
Literary notes: City of Brass: This tale comes from A Thousand and One Nights. Basically, a group of explorers stumble upon a fabulous city. As they are awed by its riches and its beauty, they discover its darker side as they find it inhabited entirely by well-preserved corpses. The story goes that the city, despite its wealth, could not prevent a terrible famine from destroying the population of the city.
There's a bunch of other references to mythology and literature-I think we go from the Greek tale of Perseus and Andromeda to the Banyoro legend of the founding of the Cwezi empire to the Norse account of the Valkyrie Brynhilde. Also, the Rape of Persephone by Hades (another Greek tale) is mentioned. Then there's some Phantom of the Opera and "Beauty and the Beast" thrown in for good measure. And of course, more references to the framing tale of A Thousand and One Nights. Oh, and a brief reference to the Biblical parable of the "Pearl of Great Price." I think those ones I'm gonna leave for Google to explain instead of trying to summarize all of them here. ;)
Another note: In reviews a few of you inquired as to why Alice waited so long to intervene. She waited for two reasons: 1.) She knew that to stop Edward, she would be forced to kill him and the thought of killing her beloved brother was, understandably, rather horrific. 2.) As long she maintained two visions for Edward's future, she had hope for his future redemption. He still had a choice and could change. She couldn't accept ending him as long as there was an alternative. When that future possibility for redemption shattered, she knew what her only inevitable course of action was to intervene. The question I will leave you to ponder upon the end of the story is what caused the vision to shatter in half? (No, I will not answer. That's part of the fun is making you decide which event or decision is the 'point-of-no-return').
Next chapter, Buffy will take over as narrator.