Day 8

Tanya's Story

A/N: I haven't updated this story in, quite literally, almost a decade. I hate that I may have disappointed anyone, since the story was already finished. So I'm doing it in a giant wave, for anyone left interested. Thank you, everyone, who reviewed and showed appreciation for this work. It was the longest and most involved fic I've ever written and it means a lot to mean, even all these years later.

I was in a state of panicky ambivalence by five o'clock the next afternoon. Jasper had excused Tanya of her regular duties to help me prepare for the ball and she was currently standing at the threshold of my door, hesitating.

And naked. Always naked.

"My room actually starts a few feet in front of where you are," I said, pointing to her feet from my place on the bed and then pointing to a spot a few paced ahead of it. "So, go ahead and move there so we can start making me pretty."

One of her hands was gripping the doorframe and she stared at it. "Master asked me to help you prepare."

"Okay," I said. When neither of us spoke, I again gestured at her feet and then at a spot on the ground closer to me.

"Okay," she said. She didn't move.

"Look," I said, now annoyed. "I can't even imagine how much you want to tear my face off for being here as Jasper's new sub, but this is what's it come to and unless your ultimate plan is to loiter like a hobo on the outside of my bedroom door, I really need you to come inside far enough so I can close the door. I'm not keen on sharing my naked ass with the rest of the house."

She blinked stupidly at me. "Close the door?"

"Yes," I said. "Close the door." I made a closing-the-door movement with my hands.

She took a tentative step inside my room.

"Jesus, Tanya, I'm not a rabid lion that's going to attack you once you step inside. I have, like, 20 minutes before Edward shows up and all I've accomplished is a shower." I looked at the vanity mirror over my dresser and sighed. "And see all those bottles and tubes and shit? I don't know what any of them do. I need you to help me with this."

Perhaps it was Tanya's need to be useful, but she squared her shoulders – which was kind of a dramatic gesture, I thought, considering she was just going to be putting on my makeup – before she stood behind the small chair in front of the mirror.

"Sit," she said.

I grinned. "Yes, ma'am."

Jasper had stopped by Edward's earlier today and from what I understood, had to practically pound the door down to retrieve my dress and shoes from Alice who had insisted on holding them hostage in an attempt to get me to come over. But Jasper, being his usual arrogant and horrifically sexy self, had managed to convince her to hand them over. He swore he'd let her do my makeup, though. But watching Tanya flutter about my head like a confounded butterfly allowed all thoughts of Alice to slip painlessly out of my mind.

"Ow, Tanya," I said, batting her hand away from my head. "That hurts."

"Beauty hurts," she said, taking the bobby pin I had wretched from my hair. "Quit fidgeting."

I groaned.

"Stop," she said as I made a valiant move to take another bobby pin out. "You don't want to disappoint tonight."

After a few more long, agonizing moments Tanya swiveled my chair around to face her and smirked in satisfaction. "Done and done." I made a motion to turn my chair towards the mirror, but she caught the back of it and twisted me to face her. "Not yet," she said. "I want you to be all dressed up before you look."

I sighed dramatically and watched with detached interest as she unzipped my dress from its protective bag and unpacked my shoes from their box.

"Jesus, those heels are fucking high," I moaned. "There is no way I can walk in them all night."

Tanya smiled. "I packed a pair of flats in your purse in case that happens."

"Tanya, the Lifesaver, of course."

Her face brightened and she pulled me up, slipping the dress over my head and tucking my feet into the shoes. She turned me towards the full-length mirror on the far wall with a look of immense satisfaction.

"Jesus," I breathed.

Tanya clapped her hands together in a very prepubescent way. "I'm glad you like it!" She scurried around to the front of me and began smoothing the fabric of the dress over my hips. I stared at the mirror above her head.

Objectively, I knew I looked beautiful. Tanya had done my makeup to devastating perfection. But with the dark ringlets of curls piled high on top of my head and the porcelain paleness of my face reflected in the glaring overhead light of my bedroom, I looked . . . almost breakable. I tentatively reached up to touch the side of my face and was almost surprised when my reflection did the same. No, it wasn't that I was breakable. Fragile, perhaps. I closed my eyes, feeling weary. Those were synonyms, I was sure, and I spent a few moments trying to pick the correct words out of my suddenly light head when that electric pulse began quivering at the back of my head.

I opened my eyes. Edward was here.

Almost immediately, I heard shouting that managed to travel up two flights of stairs and through my heavy bedroom door. Tanya straightened up and cast me an alarmed glance before running towards the door. She swiped the t-shirt I had been wearing off my bed and threw it over her head before disappearing into the hallway. I stood there for a moment, vacillating between wanting to see what was happening and decidedly not wanting to see what was happening before running after Tanya.

I caught up with her on the first floor landing as she peered down the stairs at Edward and Jasper. I was not surprised to see that they both looked absolutely furious. However, I was surprised to see Edward dressed in street clothes.

"You certainly do not expect me to allow this of her," Jasper said, his face cold and his voice colder. "I agreed she could attend this atrocity of a ball with you, but she will not leave this house with you for any other reason."

Edward's face was flushed with anger. "That," he hissed, "is not up to you, is it? She's not your sub, that much I know. And she can –"

Even from the top of the staircase, I could see a flicker of undiluted pleasure pass through Jasper's eyes. The sides of his mouth curled upward into a smile. He spoke slowly. "Oh, but she is, Edward."

Edward looked incredulous for a moment, as though questioning Jasper's sanity. But after looking intently at Jasper for another long moment, his lips parted in horror.

"How – How did you . . . No, she – she wouldn't," Edward paused and shook his head once, as though clearing it. "Alice . . . she would have . . ." he trailed off and shook his head again. Then, as though receiving a direct blow from Jasper, closed his eyes and rocked his head back. "It's not . . . it's . . ."

Tanya made horrified noise under her breath and Jasper, with his eyes still on Edward, turned his head towards her.

He grinned. "How about asking Bella herself, Edward."

Edward's head snapped to where Tanya and I were standing on the landing. Tanya took a step in front of me, concealing half of my body behind her.

"Edward," she said. "I think perhaps it might be best if you let Bella get back upstairs."

Jasper grin turned into a wide smile as he appraised her. "I quite agree," he said. "Bella, please return to your bedroom. I will be up in a moment to speak with you."

"Bedroom," Edward said softly, as though he'd never heard the word before.

"Edward–" I started, but my voice broke on the last syllable of his name. I tried again. "Edward, please."

"Bella," Jasper said harshly. "Go to your bedroom."

My eyes were darting frantically around Edward's face, taking in small portions of his features. His pink lips, still parted with a look of horror, his eyebrows furrowed tightly together in confusion, his eyes, wide and round in shocked disbelief. His face was an incomprehensible mess of pain and bewilderment, made whole by the realization that his life with me, perhaps the life he thought he could have with me, was being sucked from him by the man he had loathed as a child and who had methodically and treacherously stolen from him the one person who he thought was his alone.

The electrical pulse, struggling to remain alive, vibrated and quivered at the back of my skull.

I opened my mouth, but I didn't know how to tell him, how to convey to him the plans I had here. Why I was still here, in Jasper's house, why I had agreed to be Jasper's sub, without ruining my chances of getting over this disease that controlled every part of my body.

"Edward, it's not –" I started, but when Tanya grabbed my hand and began pulling me away from the landing, I knew I had to give up hope. I twisted my head to look at him as she pulled me up the stairs, walking slowly enough not to trip over my shoes and dress, but fast enough so Tanya could pull me with little resistance.

Edward's eyes followed me up the first flight of stairs until Tanya pulled me into the second floor hallway and let me crumble to the ground.

Without another word from either man, I heard the door open and close and listened as the soft click of Jasper's boots led him from the foyer and off into another part of the house.

I laid my cheek against the wood floor of the hallway and closed my eyes, trying to stave off the black tar compression that already turned my stomach to stone.

"Bella," Tanya said. She sat down next to me and placed a cautious hand on my head. I waited for her to say something else, but she just sat there, breathing unevenly.

"Don't cry," I slurred.

"I'm sorry," she said.

I turned my head to look up at her. She was looking towards the stairs.

"For what?" I asked, my voice a little sharper.

She looked down at me and though she'd only been crying a few moments, her eyes were already red. "For you not being able to be with the person you love."

"Edward?" I said. "I don't love Edward."

She continued looking at me. "It's okay, Bella. I've been there. I won't tell Master."

"Tell Master?" My voice was slow again. "But I don't love Edward."

The electrical pulse at the base of my skull flickered in a disgruntled fashion.

"Seriously, I won't tell him," she continued. "It's not his business, really. As long as you're faithful to him. And there's not really much you can do to stop being in love with someone, you know?"

I shook my head. "Tanya, really –"

But the electrical pulse gave a sharp, painful tug and I gripped the back of my skull in response.

"It happens to the best of us," she said wryly. She unclenched my fingers from my head and laid my hand on the ground next to me. "One time or another, we are all stupid and fall in love. We just have to . . . overcome it sometimes, I guess, to get what's best for us."

I was shocked, once again, by Tanya's poignancy. I rolled my head on the ground to look up at her. She was softy twisting the infinite curls she had piled delicately on my head and looking blankly down at my hair, smiling in a soft sort of way.

"What's his name?" I whispered.

Her eyes came back into focus for a second, but she quickly closed them and pressed the back of the head against the wall with a pained expression. "Garrett," she said after a few moments. "His name was Garrett."

"Was?"

She breathed out a disbelieving sound. "Well, I guess it still is."

"Where is he?"

"Alaska now," she said simply. "With my sister."

"Jesus," I whispered. "That's awful."

"Yeah," she said. "It is. But there's only so long you can wait for someone until you have to give up hope, I guess."

I tried to decipher her expression. Sure, there was sadness, and I wouldn't have expected anything else. But it was the sort of resigned look she had, a defeated one, and it reminded me vaguely of my grandmother's expression whenever she'd spoken about her four sons. It was a look of understanding, of acceptance: she had four sons, and no daughters, and that's how it was. But if it had been up to her, if she had been able to change it, she would have. And that's the same expression Tanya wore. Acceptance of what had occurred, but regret of her past life choices.

"You left him for Jasper."

She furrowed her brow and rolled her head towards the stairs. "Yeah. I did. These panic attacks . . ." she trailed off.

"Would he take you back?"

"I don't think so," she said. "I haven't seen him in a very long time. He married my sister. My family, well, they kind of abandoned me once they realized who I was. I tried to explain it from my panic attacks to my desperate need to serve. But they didn't get it, not really. When they moved to Alaska, they didn't ask me to join them. And I knew I needed a permanent residence here."

She looked down at me. "I love Master very much, Bella," she said, her voice growing both harsher and quieter. "But since I see you struggling with the same thing, I want to make sure you know that this is not my first choice. If there was even a chance that I could be with Garrett again, I would take it."

"But your panic attacks . . ." I said. My neck hurt from staring up at her from my position on the ground, but her eyes had become ablaze with something fierce and though I desperately wanted to, I felt like it would be offensive to look away.

"I haven't had a panic attack in almost four months."

I knew I had that bewildered expression on my face. "Then why –"

"Where am I going to go?" she asked, her words rushing out in a jumble. "I don't know how to function in the real world anymore, Bella. This is it for me. I will be here until he makes me leave."

I rose from the ground, propping myself delicately on my open palms. "The real world?" I asked. "You haven't been here all that long."

She gestured towards the staircase. "I can't live without a Dom, Bella. I'm a sub and this is my life now. Unless you can guarantee that another Dom will be waiting for me the second I walk out the door, this is as good as it's going to get for me." She screwed up her face in exaggerated contemplation for a moment. "Look, I know it's not my business, but Edward's right. There are other ways to do this. Honestly, I don't know if you really need a Dom to overcome this whole thing. You might just need a guy who loves you. And who you loved."

I opened my mouth to deny that I loved Edward again, but she waved a frustrated hand in my face. "Listen to me, Bella. If you think that there is even the smallest chance that you don't need Master to do this, you need to take it. Because he'll separate you from everyone you love. You think Edward is going to go out of his way to see you again after that?" She gestured towards the staircase again. "He loves you, Bella, but he will give up and it's probably going to be tonight."

Fury erupted through me as the last of her words worked their way into my head.

"DAMMIT, TANYA!" I cried, throwing myself onto my ass and scurrying a few feet from her. "DAMMIT, you can't do this!"

"Shh, Bella," Tanya said, throwing a nervous glance towards the stairs. "Stop, I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry. I take it back."

"You - You can't just come here," I said, ignoring her and grabbing tight fistfuls of my hair. "And ruin what I've built here. How many people I've had to convince . . . how happy you seemed . . . and I thought, well fuck, I don't know, that if you could be happy here, I could too. But then you come at me with this bullshit and just . . . Jesus. Do you have any idea how many people I've fought with over whether or not to live with Jasper? How many people begged me not to go? How many . . . many . . ." I trailed off and screamed, a loud echoing sound that, even though it had come from me, still made me jump. "Edward loves me! Edward loves me and here I am, stuck with Jasper. FUCK! And it's just too damn hard for me, Tanya, to be away from the person I love and decide to go live . . ."

Tanya's lips parted in surprise.

"Oh no," I said, quickly sinking back to the floor. "Oh, no. No, no, no."

Tanya's eyes had grown progressively wider as I screamed at her, but when I sank back to the ground, she began to cry. "Bella," she said in a choked voice, "Bella, I'm so sorry. I didn't know. I thought you knew. How do you not know? How do you not know who you love?"

In a rush of fevered passion, I sat up and began ripping bobby pins from my hair, flinging them to the ground with enough force to send them jumping and skidding across the hallway.

"Bella, what are you doing?"

"Why are there so many fucking bobby pins?" I yelled, my fingers grazing over a half dozen at a time as I tried to seize the loose ones. After a few more desperate moments, I gave up and swung my legs underneath me, kicking off my shoes with the back of my heels. I got on my knees and pulled my dress up, trying to lift the heavy fabric above my head.

"Stop, Bella!" Tanya said, pulling the fabric back down. "Stop, stop, you're going to ruin it!"

There was a note of hysteria in her voice that made me stop struggling. "It's a fucking dress, Tanya," I spat. "Nothing more." She began smoothing the fabric back over my stomach and hips. "STOP!" I cried, pushing her hands away. "Stop, it's just a dress!" When she didn't stop, I seized her wrists and held on to them until she looked at me. Her eyes were wild. "Either you help me out of this, or I'm going to rip it off my body."

The strands of tightly curled hair I had managed to untangle from the messy up-do swirled around me as Tanya unbunched the fabric from under my legs and raised my arms to find the hidden zipper. She unzipped it quickly with shaking hands, as I threw obscenities down the hallway in my panic to get it off. I managed to get the thins straps of material off my left shoulder and push the tight bodice of my gown to my waist before a rush of goosebumps up my arm told me Jasper had found me.

He looked disgusted. Tanya quickly stood and moved behind Jasper, frantically wiping tears from her face once she was out of his line of sight. I stared up at him, my dark mood suddenly bubbling into anger.

"How could you do that?" I cried, scrambling to my feet. I gestured wildly towards the staircase. "How could you say those things and let him feel like that and let him walk out of the house without . . . without letting me talk to him? Why are you like that? Didn't you see his face? Didn't you see his reaction? How in god's name could you let someone be affected so much by your words in such a disgusted, underhanded way? What did he ever do to you, Jasper? Huh?" I slapped my hands firmly against my chest. "For the love of all that is holy, Jasper, I beg you, tell me what awful, deplorable thing Edward did to make you treat him like that. What happened in your high-brow, upper class life that made you such an insufferable –"

"Careful, Bella," he said quietly.

I looked away from him as I began to cry. "He just wanted to take me to a ball," I whispered. "He just wanted to see me."

"No," Jasper said in a slow, patronizing voice. "He wanted to not attend the ball and take you back to his place for the evening which, and it goes without saying, is completely inappropriate."

I felt too defeated to argue. Because it wouldn't have mattered. I slumped back to the ground and drew my knees up to my stomach. I put my forehead against them, rubbing my head against the scratchy fabric of my stockings.

After a few moments of silence, I looked back up at Jasper. His top lip was curled upward in what was unmistakably disgust. His eyes roamed my body slowly, taking in my disheveled hair, my exposed bra, my smeared makeup, before, with the beginnings of a smug grin, he looked at my face. A sprawling mass of uncomfortable goosebumps rose across my exposed chest and belly. His eyes followed the delicate pattern of the bumps and after a few moments, his face grew hard.

I opened my mouth, ready to fight again, before, with that same hard look, he again looked at my face. This time, there was nothing angry or disgusted in his expression; instead, the hard corners of his glare softened and a delicate frown replaced his self-satisfied smirk.

"Clean up, Bella," he said, turning towards the stairs. "You are embarrassing yourself. Tanya, please assist her."

That black, heavy tar was beginning to creep back up my chest, making it difficult to breathe. I waved Tanya away, closing my eyes and preparing to fall asleep right here, in the middle of the hallway. I rested my head back down on the smooth, cool wood and took in a deep breath before I closed my eyes. Within a few seconds, Tanya's warm hands were hoisting me up under the arms until I was in a sitting position. I groaned in protest.

"I'm not letting you fall asleep until you get to your room," she said in a quiet voice. "Stand up, Bella, please."

Without knowing quite how I managed it, I rose and Tanya slung my arm across her shoulders, helping me move towards the staircase. The trek to my bedroom was both long and painful as each step I took allowed the tar to take hold of more of my chest, until my throat felt raw and my lower jaw began to slack despite my efforts to keep my mouth closed.

Tanya did nothing short of kick open my bedroom door and throw me on the bed. I fell with a moan of pleasure, ready to roll over in my half-clothed body and fall asleep.

She undressed me quickly and took off the shirt she was wearing. She seemed to hesitate for a moment, deciding whether or not to put it on me, before she mashed it into a ball and stuck it under her arm.

"I'm leaving the bobby pins in," she said quietly as she turned off my bedroom light. "To remind you what happened today when you wake up in the morning."

She stood by the door for a moment, looking at me. I tried to look back, but the lethargy that had threatened to knock me out in the hallways was creeping up my neck again. After a few long moments, she left, closing the door behind her.

That was the last time I ever saw Tanya.