A/N: HALP. My baby doesn't sleep at all during the day!
She is definitely mine.
I would not survive in this Trust No One World. Legit. Speaking of...let's see who jumped Bella.
The sound of a baby's gleeful giggle was what drew Edward's attention.
His situation was perilous. He'd strayed too far from his intended path and was hopelessly lost. Well. He supposed technically he knew where he was. The geyser that had taken him by surprise, scalding his arm almost a week ago, was indication enough. He'd opted to climb higher, knowing he was safer from Yellowstone's thermal features up in the mountains. Anyway, he might be able to orient himself from up there, and get back to where he needed to be.
He was hungry, alone, and knew better than to think his survival was a foregone conclusion. It put him in a somber mood. The child's giggle was incongruous and sunny, drawing Edward in like a moth toward light.
He was careful, of course. Whomever was with the child wouldn't necessarily be friendly. It was rare to see a baby with a nomad, so he had to also keep in mind there might be others nearby. To that end, he moved as quietly as possible, sticking to the thick treeline.
As he crested a hill, he glimpsed the child. A tiny thing, running as well as a baby could with his fists up. He fell on his bottom twice, pushing himself up quickly as he continued on his quest up the embankment toward a solitary figure. A woman, he realized.
At least, he thought it was a woman. Her clothes were shapeless. Most people's were. It wasn't as though anyone could go shopping. It wasn't too hard to find a horde of clothes—in abandoned stores and homes—but in the right size? Forget about it.
Still, the figure was slight. Her hair was on the longer side, though, again, that didn't mean anything. It was also ragged. A lot of people, men and women, cut their hair with whatever they could find—usually a knife. Shorter hair was easier to manage in this uncertain time. And it wasn't as though many people had the opportunity to wash theirs often.
The toddler crashed into the woman's legs. Edward watched. Was it wrong to watch like he did from the treeline? Like a creeper? Back in the not-always-civilized world of before, this might be considered very wrong—watching a woman and a child having a private moment while they were none the wiser to his presence.
As it was, though, Edward watched without calling attention to himself for several reasons. This was a beautiful sight. A human moment. He watched the woman point out into the distance, her head bent close to the child as she talked softly. Teaching it? Telling it not to forget what beauty was left in the world?
The woman sunk down, crossing her legs and settling the child on her lap. She rocked him sweetly.
And then pulled out a gun.
When he realized her intention, Edward reacted without thinking. He bolted forward, out of his hiding space, and grabbed the woman by the arm. He wrenched her away, throwing her to the ground and pinning her there, one arm twisted behind her back. He grabbed the wrist of her other hand, smashing it to the ground until she released the gun.
He released his hold then, but it was a mistake. With a mighty cry, she pushed up, sending him sprawling off her. She scrambled for the gun, but he was quicker.
It all happened in a whirlwind. Never in his wildest imaginings would he have thought himself capable of attacking a woman, yet here they were. They wrestled. Edward had enough presence of mind to remember to try not to hurt her. She kept getting her hands on the gun. Her legs and arms were a blur of motion, falling randomly on him as she shrieked out guttural war cries. He kept trying to bite out that he wasn't trying to hurt her, only prevent her from hurting the baby, but he couldn't speak. He was too busy trying to stop her dangerous arms and legs. All the while, the baby screamed and wailed.
Finally, Edward was able to pin her beneath him. He'd caught one arm, holding it out and to the side while his weight held her legs down. He searched frantically for her other arm, meaning to immobilize her completely, when it happened.
At first, Edward thought she had punched him—again—particularly hard in the side and then the leg. It was odd, though. A weird pressure. Shock went through his system like a cold chill down his back and white spots before his eyes. He fell off her to the side onto the ground.
That was a mistake. She rolled over too, straddling him. Her features were twisted into a vicious expression of rage, and she held a wicked looking knife high.
A very bloody knife.
"Stop," he gritted out, hand held up. He fought a wave of nausea. At the sight of the knife, realizing she'd stabbed him, the pain was beginning to kick in.
An incredible, crippling pain.
But she was about to drive the knife into his heart.
"Stop. I wasn't trying to hurt you! You don't have to hurt that baby. It was the baby. You were trying to kill it."
That seemed to make her pause. The scowl faded a degree or two and her hand, knife still clutched at the ready, swayed hesitantly.
"You didn't want to, right?" Edward had to swallow hard. The chill had faded, and an incredible heat was working its way through his blood, held at bay only by adrenaline. His life was still in immediate danger. "I saw you with it. Her. Him. I saw you hold him. You don't want to do it. You don't have to. I can help you."
The woman scoffed, but her eyes darted quickly to where the child sat, bawling. His lusty cries echoed.
Narrowing her eyes at Edward, she lowered the point of her knife toward him menacingly, but she rolled off him. When she got to her feet she held both the knife and the gun. She backed away, the gun pointed at him as she did.
Edward huffed, his head rolling as he slowly—no sudden movements—put his hand to his side. All he felt was sticky, wet, heat. "What do you think I'm going to do to you now? I'm too busy bleeding to death." He was remarkably calm about that fact. He thought about his parents. Would they ever know what happened to him?
The woman, still keeping eyes and gun on him, slid her bloodied knife into a sheath at her ankle. She picked up the child, hoisting it—him, Edward thought—onto her hip. "I don't think I got deep enough to kill you. You twisted."
A sarcastic, "My bad," poised on his lips went unsaid as pain washed over Edward. He rolled to the side just in time, throwing up whatever had passed as breakfast that morning. Each heave of his chest sent a spike of hot agony through him. He groaned, slumping onto his back when he was finally spent.
The child was still hysterical—who could blame him—but he'd turned to muffle his cries against the woman's chest. She stepped carefully closer to Edward, gun still up. "Are you alone? Is there anyone coming for you?"
Edward laughed and instantly regretted it. He gulped in air, staring up at the cloudless sky. He didn't even care that she was pointing a gun at him at this point. "No. No one."
"What the hell were you doing up here alone?"
This time, Edward couldn't hold back his sarcasm. "Trying to find a good place for my fortress of solitude. What do you think I was doing up here?"
"How long have you been watching me?"
"This isn't about you. I wasn't here for you." Rationally, he knew the woman had every right to be fearful and suspicious. But she'd stabbed him, dammit.
"You attacked me, asshole."
"You were trying to murder your baby, asshole." The last word came out choked as Edward swallowed a moan. That hurt. Everything hurt.
"I wasn't... " She huffed. "He's not my baby."
"So you were trying to murder someone else's baby. Well, that makes it better."
"Yeah. His parents are in several pieces down the mountainside. You want me to put him back where I found him?"
That shut Edward up. For a second. "Did you do it?"
"What? No. I'm not a murderer."
"Except babies."
"That was...Fuck! It's not safe up here."
Oh, good. She was going to leave him alone to bleed out on a mountainside. There was a Greek myth about this. He couldn't remember which one. Something about the ravens pecking out the guy's kidneys every day as he lay chained to a rock. The raging heat had faded from his face, and he was chilled now. He shivered, trying not to be afraid and failing.
The woman appeared by his side, making him start and then gasp with the renewed pain that went through him. As he breathed in cool, mountain air, trying desperately not to throw up again, she put the baby in his arm. "Hold this," she commanded.
Bewildered, he held the baby to his side with the arm that wasn't pressed to his wound. The little boy was breathing in sharp, raw gasps now, calming down if only because he had no more energy to cry. He grabbed at Edward's shirt, tugging at random.
"Don't try anything. I'll kill you first and ask questions later."
"My hands are tied," he pointed out. He had an arm full of distraught baby and the other hand was busy keeping his blood in his body.
He watched through hooded eyes as she took several strips of cloth from her bag. She tied a long length tightly around his upper leg, pushing him back down when he instinctively kicked out. "You're going to hurt yourself."
"Yeah, well. You stabbed me. Twice."
"Right. With no provocation whatsoever."
He huffed, too busy trying not to vomit or pass out to speak. He was dizzy, his skin clammy and cold. To distract himself, he watched her.
Sure hands, stained crimson with his blood, confident in what they were doing. He looked up at her face, noting the way she scanned the treeline, her brown eyes sharp. She kept glancing at his hands too, doubtless making sure he wasn't about to attack her again.
She was pretty. And young. Maybe mid-twenties at that. His age.
"What's your name?" he asked, closing his eyes.
"None of your fucking business."
"Just making conversation. Jesus."
"You don't need to know anything about me." She lifted his hand away from his wound and pressed a piece of cloth into it. Hard.
He screamed. He couldn't help it.
"Get up," she said, blunt but at least she didn't sound disgusted.
"Why?" he asked anyway. It wasn't as though he had any more reason than she did to trust anyone. And she hadstabbed him.
"You want to lay here and bleed, that's fine with me. That wound needs to be sterilized and dressed. You're welcome to do it yourself while warding off whatever predators might have been drawn by his crying and your bleeding all over the place." She yanked the baby out of his hold as she stood up again. "Or, you can get off your ass, follow me, and since I'm the one who stabbed you, I'll help you. Either way, I'm getting out of here, because we're sitting ducks where we are." She propped her free hand on her hip. "So what's it going to be?"
He was tempted to tell her to fuck off just because. By then, he could tell she was right. He was unlikely to bleed to death. The wounds hurt, a lot, but he didn't think he'd struck anything vital. And if he had, if he was bleeding internally, he'd be helpless to fix himself. That aside, there was a high risk of infection if the wound was left open.
Then there was the child. The little one had finally stopped crying and was clinging to the woman, one fist shoved into his mouth and his troubled eyes on Edward. If he told her to fuck off, odds were that baby was dead.
A great deal of effort and grunting later, Edward started to push to his feet. She was there, offering an arm so he could lean on her while he found his balance. She took the time to search him, finding a gun and a knife of his own. These she stuffed in her bag before she handed him the child. "Keep one hand on your wound and the other on him. I'll help you walk."
In other words, with his hands occupied, he wouldn't be able to attack her. He sighed but nodded.
So, the awkward party began making its way down the mountainside.
"How do you know how to stitch people up?" Edward asked to distract himself from any number of things. Why the woman had been about to kill the child she had otherwise taken care of and comforted. Where she was taking him. If he was actually going to survive this encounter.
And the fact she was still a pretty woman, warm and more than a little intriguing, tucked under his arm as she helped steady him. He wondered who she had been in the world before. "Are you a doctor? A nurse?" he pressed. "Or you just stab a lot of people?"
"I usually have no interest in stitching up the people I've stabbed," she said darkly.
A shiver went down his spine. "Habit of yours?"
She scoffed. "You think you're the first one who's attacked me?"
He was quiet at that. He knew damn well what happened to women who wandered this land unprotected. He shivered again. A man wandering alone was at risk of winding up dead. A woman alone though might suffer any number of horrible fates.
"I really wasn't trying to hurt you," he murmured. "I don't want to hurt anyone."
"Sure," she said.
Before he could think of an argument, knowing she didn't believe him, a tiny cabin came into sight. "Home sweet home, huh?"
"Not anymore," she muttered darkly, and it took him a minute to understand what she meant.
He knew where she lived. It was no longer a safe haven. Whatever happened after she stitched him up, she'd be moving on, probably never to return to this location again.
A/N: Hehehe.
Bella stabbed Edward. How 'bout them apples.