This is not happening .
No.
Not again.
Did the divine providence have a sick way of never letting me catch a break? It certainly felt like that, as I was darting through the trees, too far behind Bella. The smell of blood was getting stronger each second and I knew Bella had not arrived, because I could see in the minds of the kids that they were still alone, still freaking out over their friend being badly injured and bleeding freely.
"Goddamnit, Bella, stop right now, I know you can hear me!" my voice came in a roar, but I couldn't bring myself to care about manners.
The kids. I just had to get to them before she did. It was all right. I could do this. She was fast, but I could be faster. My feet started moving more intently, almost flying across the ground. I zipped my pants back up as I ran, my desire from earlier suddenly drowned out by panic. My love was well-fed, but it didn't matter now. With the scent of fresh human blood being spilled, that didn't mean much. I felt fire burning in my own throat, although not even remotely close to what I used to feel for Bella's blood, as I ran.
For the shortest second, I caught a glimpse of her hair, flowing behind her like a thick veil. We were seconds away from the boys.
"For God's sake, listen to me!" I tried once again, with no success.
Please stop.
Please don't do this.
Please stop!
I was throwing thoughts into the void, I knew it was useless. My feet were failing me, unable to catch up with Bella's newborn speed. Still, I tried harder and harder, not giving up.
But someway, somehow, the merciful void had listened - because the next second, my wife stopped and I bumped right into her. The boys were now only two dozen feet away from us. Only a few thick trees were separating us from them. I could not concentrate on their cries of help, knowing that they were in far more danger than they could have imagined. My arms circled around Bella's body and I kept her glued to me.
"Don't. Move. Another. Inch," I warned.
"Wasn't planning on it."
She didn't sound tense. Or scared. Or even hungry, as I had expected. There was, however, a deep frown dimming her features.
"I don't want to hurt them, Edward, I promise. But you need to help that kid."
The cries persisted, growing more desperate. The kids were completely clueless as to what to do next. Panic had frozen their logic.
"We need to go back right now," I said.
"I'll go right back to the inn and tell Alice. We'll call an ambulance, but… stay and help him. Please?"
Her eyes were begging, desperate, needy. There was no sign in them of being on the verge of cracking, yet I felt scared to let her go from my arms. The scent of blood was dense in the air, tingling in the back of my throat, playing with my own thirst. With decades of practice behind me, it wasn't an extraordinary effort to not let my judgement get clouded. But I couldn't be so sure about her.
"Let me go, Edward."
"No."
My response came automatically, as the crying in the background grew more intent.
"Please, do it for me," she insisted. "I… need to make this right this once."
I felt her fingers dipping into my flesh, painful almost, with how hard she was pressing them. My grip on her loosened ever so slightly.
"I can't do it without you," Bella added.
"Love, what do you-"
"I'll run," she interrupted. "And you'll stay to help them until a medical crew arrives. Please, I want to make it right!"
Urgency boiled in her voice and I began to understand. Beyond this sudden wish to help laid more than self-control - there was also the need to have a rematch, however small, for her past mistakes. A rematch I had never realized she needed so desperately until now.
God, was I dense sometimes.
I let my arms fall to my sides, releasing her completely. Risking. Trusting. Hoping.
Bella did not disappoint. As soon as I set her free, she disappeared once again - this time, running in the opposite direction, the sound of her feet getting more distant with each second, until I could no longer hear it.
For the first time since we had left the lands of Alaska, I was completely without my Bella. She was no longer within easy reach, as she had always been.
A wave of panic washed over me, heated and strong. I was without Bella. Bad things had happened in the past when I let that happen. But she was now far from the spilled blood - that had to mean something. Would she make it past the reception desk of the inn without doing anything reckless? She had managed to keep her control here, but was it enough?
The worst part was that I had no more time to linger on my anxiety. The scent of death looming in the air was powerful and I had to act quickly. I got out from the cover of trees and tried to keep a running pace that would suit a human. Three pairs of eyes raised up at me, dread swimming in them. Only one pair remained closed: that of the boy laying on the ground.
While I didn't have Carlisle's decades of medical practice, I knew the theory of what I had to do. The boys stood back out of instinct when they saw me. My knowledge of the Japanese language put them at ease, if only for a little bit, when I told them I can help their friend until medical help arrives. One of them had already called an ambulance - and I figured Bella did so too by now, if she had managed to get back incident-free.
With great care, I kneeled in front of the wounded kid. He was still breathing, but he was unconscious. I asked the boys if they had gauze or anything resembling that on hand. Luckily, two of them had come prepared, which made my mission much easier. I ripped a good portion of the gauze roll they handed me, folding the material in on itself and pressing the cloth gently to the open wound. The skull was obviously fractured, so I had to keep my touch as delicate as possible, to avoid any additional harm.
I kept talking to the boys as I continued taking great care of their wounded friend. They didn't say much in return, too frozen by their collective shock to communicate more. It was surprisingly easy to ignore the blood when my attention wasn't focused solely on it. Having a clear purpose helped and my mind conjured up Carlisle's face in response to what was happening. I had seen so many memories of him attending his patients throughout the years and the lack of conflict within him had always puzzled me. He would tell me he was just doing his job - nothing more, nothing less.
It wasn't until now, that I began to understand his resolve in a way I never would have thought possible. My throat was burning, of course. But the pain of that was barely stinging now, because that wasn't what mattered most. What mattered now was the kid in front of me, who was probably going to suffer from some long-term head trauma after this accident, but who could live. He had to live. For his sake. For his loved ones' sake. For Bella's sake.
Bella.
I didn't have my phone with me, to call and see what she was doing. A small part of me could perfectly understand why my mindset was not the healthiest. From the outside, I could bet it would have been easily taken for a controlling behaviour. But I didn't need to control my wife, at least not beyond the walls of our bedroom, where she longed to be dominated and I longed to indulge that wish - the rest of the time, she was perfectly capable of doing that on her own. However, the accident had warped my views. The mere thought of leaving her alone left me a crumbling mess, full of anxiety, fearing that something bad would happen if we parted.
But nothing bad had happened yet. Nothing bad would. Not again.
"Edward, she is okay."
Alice's mental voice called out from the distance, the chimes within it resonating high above the voices of the kids. Listening closely, I heard the air wheezing as she ran.
"She's with Jazz and Nell now. Help should be here in about… Five minutes and twenty seconds, if my senses serve me right. In fact, you can probably hear it."
I exhaled, without realizing how clenched my entire body had been up to that point. In the background, the rattle of a helicopter grew closer.
"I could see some sort of panic attack in your near future, so I'm here."
And she was indeed here. Hidden behind the trees, she stopped and remained unmoved, waiting. I made an effort to talk some more to the boys - they were already creeped out enough by the odd pale stranger who had come out of the woods, dressed in a questionable combination of cashmere sweater and trekking pants, to help them save their friend. Silence wouldn't have helped with easing up their apprehension, understandably so.
An emergency team arrived soon after, right when Alice had predicted it. They landed a few hundred feet away from us, on a large patch of grass, surrounded by bushes. Two paramedics came and carefully put the boy's body on a stretcher and took him away to the helicopter, the kid's friends following closely. They made sure to thank me, their young minds trying to balance my benevolence with the bizarre timing of everything. One day this would only be a memory they would shrug off.
"He'll recover in a few weeks. I've seen it."
Alice made sure to show me an image of the boy, opening his eyes in a clean white room, as she got out from her cover. Seeing her again, in all her four feet and ten inches glory, brought out a much needed repose. I rushed to her, taking her in my arms and rotating her body in the air as I hugged her tightly.
"Have I told you how much I've missed you?" I asked when I let her back down, tousling her hair with one hand.
"Twice now! Of course you missed me."
"You know I've missed you too," she added in her mind.
She arranged her hair back in position, complaining mentally about me ruining her hairstyle.
"Tell me how Bella is," I pleaded.
"She was a little agitated when she came back. Jasper - actually no, Nell calmed her down."
"I don't know how she did it, honestly. Running away and not coming back..."
Alice rolled her eyes.
"It's been over two months since that night. She's learned a thing or two about control."
"Two months aren't that long."
"Give her some credit, Edward."
She walked around until she found an overturned log. Sitting down, she invited me to join her.
"Giving credit to a newborn when it comes to control is a tough thing, as I've found out," I uttered, sitting down on the other side of the log.
"You can't hold her in a leash, you know?"
"I would never and you know this. This is temporary, to keep her safe."
"Make sure she knows that every once in a while."
Alice didn't seem to be as invested in the conversation and I searched her mind to understand why. And there it was, the delicate contour of a thought; she wanted to show me something - or, at the very least, she was debating whether to do it or not. The months we had spent separated didn't make her any less capable of being able to conceal bits and pieces of her mind, but there was always a crack in her defenses.
"Well, what is it that you wanted to show me?" I queried - she was well used to my bluntness.
"Oh, you know… I've just seen some things right as I was coming here."
The edge in her voice was sharp.
"What things?"
"Snippets of the future… but they were pretty clear, so I don't even know."
"Okay, then show me."
"You won't like what I've seen, Edward."
"Fine, consider me warned."
Alice's eyes got lost in the distance, avoiding me. She knew I wasn't one to prefer being let down easy, but something within her was still a little wary of letting me in on what she had seen.
Still pondering over this little conflict, she began to replay her visions for me.
The first one began simply enough: an image of me, walking through a grey stone antechamber. I couldn't see my face, only my back, covered in a long robe, as I entered a much bigger room. The new room was perfectly round and reminded me of a castle turret. Long window slits were filtering the light in a rainbow spectacle in the air. Aligning the stone walls were several wooden throne-like chairs - three of them more imposing than the rest. But all the chairs were empty.
Stepping further into the room and into Alice's vision, I could now see why nobody was sitting down. Everyone was on the floor, a tangle of limbs and black capes. Underneath this mess, I could see blood and I could hear groans. A single face lifted up from the tangle and I recognized it from Carlisle's paintings: his long, pitch-black hair was tucked behind his ears and he smiled a bloody smile.
"Edward, dear, now you're just in time, we've barely started!" Aro welcomed me.
"I'd hunted in Sesano, when you sent me there with Jane and Alec," I said. "I am not hungry."
"Always refusing my feasts, young friend. You and your sister are incorrigible."
The future version of myself turned away, seemingly ready to head back to the stone antechamber.
"You'll come around one day," Aro added, before resuming to drain the one of the many corpses underneath him.
This image ended abruptly, sending me back to the present, on the log in the woods. My mouth fell open, as I took in what I had just seen: the horror, the atrocity, the impossibility of it all.
"Wait, before you say anything, there's more," Alice whispered.
She pulled me right back in with another visual she had seen that day, just as I was ready to protest out loud. I was in another room now: made of stone as well, with a large bed and no windows whatsoever. On the wall, a calendar was showing the date: June 20th, three years from now. My birthday.
The door opened and I could see me and Bella entering the room, closing the door behind us with a key. I was still wearing the dark robe from the previous vision, only this time I could see the golden 'V' adorning its front. Bella was dressed in what seemed to be months-old clothing, judging by the crumpled fabrics and the rips within them. I noticed in passing that we both had dark eyes, verging on black, gloomy shadows adorning the white skin underneath them. It was clear that neither of us had hunted in a long while. Before I could see anything more, we were already kissing with fervour.
"I missed you so much, you don't even know," Bella muttered between breaths.
"I missed you more… I'm going crazier each day without you here."
I watched as Bella and I fell into the large bed, grasping at each other with a rapacity that seemed completely animalistic - if not downright insane - from the outside.
"Tell me we've got more time this time, please," she gasped.
"We have the whole day. You know they make exceptions for birthdays."
She rolled over, until she had me underneath her.
"Can we ask for more? At least three days? I cannot wait until Christmas... not again, I feel completely lifeless out there without you..."
"I know, I know, my love… my angeI… I am the same. But they'll make a scene again if we ask and I don't want you once again to get hur-"
The vision ended, snapping me back to reality with the brusque transition.
"What the hell was that?" my voice came in an uncontrollable growl.
"A possibility," Alice answered in an even tone.
"There is no way in hell that happens."
Alice's hand found its way to my shoulder, patting me gently. I accepted the sympathetic touch, but it wasn't consolation that I needed that moment.
"We can't be sure right now. Things are changing too fast."
"Alice, we are not joining the Volturi. That is not my future. Nor Bella's. Do you understand me?"
"It's not like I want it any more than you do," she snickered.
I shook my head in disbelief. An existence in which Bella and I could only see each other a few times a year, for extremely limited amounts of time, seemed like the worst kind of Purgatory. Where would that take either of us? According to what I had just seen, we would become mere shadows of who we were now - unfed, unkept, solitary shadows. Vampires could not, for all intents and purposes, become insane. But I was willing to bet I would become the exception if Bella and I would ever be forced to part ways.
"Jasper is everything to me. I wouldn't risk his life just to stay away from the Volturi. I'd be crazy to do that."
"I know you wouldn't. Neither of us would and that's what scares me right now. But to live like that, like what you've shown me..."
"It's still better than having them dead, don't you think?"
"Obviously."
The death scenario was worse than Purgatory: it was Hell itself. A Hell from which I would escape very easily by finding someone merciful enough to kill me. But I couldn't accept living in any of these realities.
"That's not everything, though," Alice added with a careful infliction in her voice.
"What other options do we have?"
"It's something I didn't expect. Don't freak out too much. I'll show you."
She let her thoughts go, replacing them with another vision she had had. This time, there were no more stone walls around. There was a deserted beach, the champagne-coloured sand almost sparkling in the pale light of the full moon above. There was no awful beast in sight, despite the full moon. Some future version of myself was lying lazily on the sand, looking in the distance with a smile on my face. In front of me, I could see Bella and Nellie: they were running, playing, laughing.
With a slight blur, the vision jumped forward a bit, now showing Bella and Nellie coming up to me, still laughing.
"We're going swimming to see if we can catch a shark," Nellie announced, grinning. "Come with us!"
"Maybe another night, kid. I might go in and compose something, I feel inspired."
The girl rolled her eyes, while Bella threw me a look I could not decipher.
"Always with that damned piano, old man," Nellie said, smiling sprightly.
"You know me well by now, little one."
Little one? That was how Carlisle called Alice. I froze in place.
Bella threw her arm around the kid's shoulders and, surprisingly, Nell responded to this by circling Bella's waist with her own arm. It seemed as if they had done this countless times before, as if this was a habit.
"Alice," I uttered. "What exactly are you showing me?"
"You tell me."
The vision in her head dissipated slowly, with Bella and Nellie walking towards the sea and future me smiling in the sand. I had not noticed my hands were closed into fists until I looked down at them.
"Maybe you are more like Carlisle than you're giving yourself credit for."
I stood up, unable to shake the odd feeling the images I had seen left me with. While this version of the future seemed to be Volturi-free, it still felt strange and unfathomable. Where was the future with Bella and the rest of our family together, somewhere safe? That was the only thing I needed.
"I am not anyone's father," I said, stressing every word.
"Biological father? Most certainly not."
"Biological, adoptive, step - call it whatever you want, but I am absolutely not some father figure to anyone. Nor do I want to be."
"You seemed pretty happy in that vision though..."
"It's some warped vision, you've had those before."
"Possibly. With everything going on, it might as well be. But it was better than the other two. And even you cannot deny that."
"Of course it's better than being separated from my wife. But I don't need that kind of family with her. I've long accepted we cannot have that."
"I think you're overreacting right now," she sighed.
"For God's sake, Alice, I am not a father and have no interest in being one!"
"It's your decision too, so stop acting out. It won't happen if you're clearly so against the idea. You know how this works just as well as I do."
"I also know it is often more complex than that."
This couldn't happen. It wasn't what I wanted. My wish was simple: to be with Bella and our family, despite all the odds being stacked against us. There was no place for a moody kid in that plan.
I tolerated Nell. I even liked her a bit. She was a kid with a painful past and with a special gift to compensate for that. She had helped me and Bella tremendously with the werewolf - and she was willing to do it again, since team work seemed to be the key when dealing with the beast. But beyond this point, our paths had to separate at some point. It was only logical.
I knew Bella liked her as well, possibly more than I did. But I also knew she had never truly wanted kids. This had been her core argument for all the times I had told her I would not be able to give her this human experience, if she would ever change her mind. Did we have to have this discussion again?
The last time we had truly discussed this in depth, she was still human. We were a week away from our wedding, tucked under the blankets in her room and entangled in a close embrace. That night, I had decided to hit pause on our honeymoon practice. Her period had come that day and she had been having cramps on and off. By the time we ended up in her bed, she insisted she felt better, but I was convinced she was bluffing.
"Stupid period," she mumbled. "I wish I never had it."
"Most women your age are very much grateful for theirs, at the end of the day."
"Because they have a reason to be happy when it comes on time."
"I wish you had too, my love."
She sighed deeply, pressing her palm on her forehead.
"Not this again..."
"It is worth being reminded of this reality."
"No, it is not. I am marrying you, Edward. Which means that I know what I am giving up - although it really doesn't feel like giving up anything."
"Not right now. But five years down the line? Ten years? Twenty?"
"I don't need that level of responsibility, honestly. I've felt like a parent for so much of my life with my mother… and don't get me wrong, I didn't really mind, because I love her. But I just need to know I have only myself to take care of from now on. And I need to know I have all the time in the world for you and only you, no one else."
The last part was full of warm promises, but I didn't let that distract me.
"We can wait a few years, Bella… find a good donor if you change your mind and-"
"No! What? No!"
"It's an option."
"For you maybe. If I were to change my mind someday and have anyone's kids, I would've had yours, if that was a possibility. But otherwise, I am not interested, thank you."
"Your voice is trembling", I chuckled, pressing my palms against her heated cheeks.
"Only because you're out here making the craziest assumptions and proposals. I know what I want, Edward - and at this point, I expect you to know too."
She had sounded so confident that night. Our discussion had stretched far past midnight and I believed her completely by the time we were finished. The subject never really came up again - at least not as a serious matter that needed to be dealt with.
"Listen, silly, you're worrying too much, as usual," my sister said, dragging me away from my memories. "Neither of these things have to happen, you know? They're just worth keeping in mind, if you want to avoid choices that would lead to them."
Alice stood up from the log as well, coming to face me. Her eyes were perfectly golden and as warm as ever - it felt so strange to finally see these eyes again in front of me. Surreal almost, as if she could disappear any moment if I made a mistake and blinked.
"I want things back to how they were, Alice," I admitted. "I'm tired of running and not knowing what comes next."
"You know I want that too. It's been so stressful… and Jazz had to handle double the amount of stress because of that. I want some peace for him."
"I owe you two and the rest of our family everything," I said.
"You don't owe us anything."
"But I do, because all this change wouldn't have happened if it weren't for me."
"No one is judging anyone for anything. This is not how we work. Do you think we would have lasted half as long together if we would have held grudges whenever one of us did something wrong that forced us to move?"
She was being too gracious - all of our misdeeds, as terrible as they had been, had been handled relatively easily, since there had never been any witnesses.
"Think about it this way," she added. "Would you have hated me terribly if I did this?"
I laughed at the impossibility of ever hating Alice.
"Of course not. I would've felt sad, but not angry… and especially not hateful."
"Then why would you ever think anyone of us would feel any different when it comes to you or Bella?"
She smiled the warmest smile, reminding me exactly why she was my favourite sibling.
"Thank you, Alice."
"Anytime! Now what do you say about heading back? In a couple of hours we might have to leave anyway."
"You know it won't take the Volturi long to set the rest of their plan in motion, now that Elijah has talked," she added in her mind.
"I know, I just wonder where our next stop will be."
"We'll know as soon as Demetri and the rest set off. Until then, Bella has to train, so you two are not running off again."
She raised her nose high, confronting our previous mischief.
"That wasn't why we ran," I managed to say.
I was, in fact, telling the truth. The fact that Bella and I had simply got too overwhelmed with the wonder of me being able to hear her mind for way longer than just a few seconds was an entirely different story, of course.
"Not my point!" Alice said. "It'll have to wait. Now come on, let's go."
And later on that day, while my wife was making serious progress with her shield and she turned to meet my gaze, smiling, I realized one thing: as long as the end of the day still found us together, I didn't mind the waiting at all.
If you've got any thoughts on this chapter, I am happy to read and respond to them! :)
Endless 'thank you's to all of you who are still hanging in there, following this story - your patience and interest amazes me and makes me happier than I could ever put into words!
Also, I am forever grateful for all of you who had ever left a review on my story! It might not seem much, but your words made these strange times we are living in bearable and they also made me literally squeak with joy countless times. So really, hats off to you!
Stay safe, stay happy!
