AN: Me = not dead! Just overloaded with homework. But, special present, not only here is Edward pt II, but I'm going to do a part III. I rather enjoy hopping back and forth between the hunting trip and the past.
I decided to loop back around and finish off with a few deer. My overeating habits were disgusting, and made my body feel very liquid-y and slushy. But it was necessary. Unless I felt physically ill after my hunting trips, she was too much of a temptation. My eyes darkened almost three times as quickly as they would regularly. Hunting trips were, for me, becoming more frequent than even Jasper's. I would deplete the entire Olympic Peninsula if I wasn't careful. I caught up with Emmett first as I doubled back. He had found his bears and was incessantly happy about them. We ran through the woods, Emmett following my lead, until I brought us to Jasper. He sensed my defeat and laughed.
"I don't know where your head is today, but it was far too easy to win that from you."
"I can guess where his head is." Emmett chimed. A certain human plaguing your brain brother?
I raised my eyebrow sarcastically at him. He rewarded me with a roar of laughter. "Thought so!"
"As much as 'bonding time' sounds like something the girls would suggest, you know we are open to any discussion." Jasper reminded me quietly, with a smirk.I rolled my head back, looking at the skies above us. I watched the slowly marching progression of clouds as I spoke.
"I don't know. This is the first time I've been so confused about something. I can't hear her. I'm unaware of whether my draw to her is the curiosity, or our awful instinctual prey hoarding. Is it her blood, or her mind?" I took a breath. "At the hospital, after the van incident, she asked me why I bothered to save her."
"And?" Emmett asked, when I hadn't answered my own question.
"And I don't know. I've been reflecting and I'm not sure if I was protecting what my body deemed unnaturally mine, or if I didn't want to lose the challenge that she presented." That didn't sound like an adequate explanation, but that was all I had at the moment.
"If I could," Jasper began, softly, "The feelings I got from you in that moment weren't territorial, or as logical, as you are reflecting upon."
"Oh?" I looked at him with surprise.
"What you felt was simple. Panic. Pure, and instantaneous panic. To be honest I've never felt you have such a strong reaction to anything before."
I remained quiet as we walked, reminiscing on the family fight we'd all had the night after I'd pulled my little stunt. We'd all agreed to watch how this played out, after many hours of deliberation, and Rosalie, of all people, had been astute enough to pull from the looks that Alice and I had been exchanging that I was hiding something else about Bella Swan.
"Edward what is it you and Alice aren't saying?" She had glaringly accused. Alice had immediately bit her lip, and looked at me.
"Bella is a little unique." I had managed to say, my eyes locking on Alice's worried ones. Alice had already seen me begin to confess my inability to hear her thoughts and was waiting.
"I'm not surprised you discovered her disability, but I am curious as to how it is relevant to this conversation." Carlisle had said calmly. Everybody, myself included, had looked at him in surprise. He then looked sharply at me. His thoughts were incredibly surprised.
"Edward, you did know that she was hearing impaired didn't you? I cannot imagine such a detail escaping your notice." You two sat beside each other in class. She can barely hear the world around her, surely you would have caught that?
I had stood dumbfounded for a second, and then Alice piped up.
"Ohhhhh. That makes so much more sense." She pressed her fingers to her head and shook it. "I've been seeing various members of this family go through a sign language learning phase and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why."
I had stood there, completely distracted from my own impending revelation, in this new tidbit of information. I scanned my memory for any signs and signals I had missed. I found Angela Weber practising some sign language in her head and under her desk, but I hadn't connected that to Bella. Angela's commitment to note-taking, I had noticed once, when she had thought about keeping her writing neat for Bella, but I had assumed the girl had missed a class. I really could be dense. Her confusion after the accident, with so many people talking at her, what I had assumed at the time was a concussion, was simply an inability to keep up with all of the speech being directed towards her.
"I hadn't noticed it, no." I had said slowly. Rosalie had scowled, her thoughts vicious and mocking. How could the snoop who lives inside everybody's brains not notice that?
"First of all, Rosalie, I don't snoop, and I try not to intrude as often as I can. Second of all…" I had paused, taking a breath, and then looking towards Carlisle. "I don't hear her thoughts."
"As much as I appreciate you trying to offer those around you some privacy," Carlisle had begun, "We truly need to know the direction of this girl's thoughts after today's incident. If she suspects, or is intending on pressing the issue of your miraculous save of her, we need to know it."
As Carlisle had begun talking, I had also absorbed the thoughts of the others.
They don't get it yet Edward. Alice.
What does he mean he doesn't hear her thoughts? Rosalie.
Now is not the time to be polite and unobtrusive. Jasper.
"You all aren't getting it." I had snapped, perhaps a little too sharply. "I cannot hear her thoughts. I am not merely being polite. I have tried until I've given myself a headache. I am not picking up anything. Even in direct contact with her, it's like she doesn't exist. If I close my eyes and focus, there is nothing to hear."
And after a long, shocked pause, the fighting had resumed. We had all agreed to keep watch and keep distance. So I had.
"Edward." The Emmett of our present hunting trip nudged my arm, bringing my attention back to the now. I looked over to him. "Have you eaten enough? Feeling slushy yet?" I want to bet you something.
"What did you have in mind Emmett?"
"I bet you I can catch and drain more squirrels than you in 2 minutes."
"That's disgusting." I complained, as Jasper laughed at us.
"I'll ref." Jasper offered, pushing his long jacket sleeve backward to reveal his watch.
"What are we betting?" I asked, suspiciously.
"Driving rights, as always." Emmett shrugged. "And lawn duty." It was his only chore.
"But if I win, I only get to continue driving, as I have anyway. It's only half the prize for me." I countered, smiling. Jasper sensed my mischievousness and grinned too. "I'll tell you my other condition when you lose."
Emmett scowled, good naturedly. "You're on."
Two minutes later, after too many squirrels and a few broken branches of trees, Emmett still had no driving rights, and would be doing lawn duty with scissors instead of a mower. It would bring me amusement. We made our way back to our house, slowly, jogging more than running. Jasper and Emmett spent most of the journey discussing the type and length of scissors that would be suitable for the squirrel massacre loss.
I thought back to the day I'd started talking to Isabella Swan again. After months of what Alice had called 'mopey silence', where I had not talked to Bella and apparently barely to my family, Mike Newton had finally tipped my hand. It had been a day full of jealous surprises for me. She had countered his offer with a journey to Seattle. Had she truly been planning the trip, or was this an evasion? I had stared a long time into those perplexingly deep eyes, and come up blank. But apparently, her anger and assumed knowledge of my 'regret for not letting the stupid van squish her', had sparked something in me. Something profound had suddenly clicked. I was wounded by her assumption, actually upset that she thought I had wanted her dead, and even more confused as to why I felt that way.
But my mood had begun to improve, watching Bella deny Eric as well. As I had reached the parking lot, I could also hear the worried thoughts of Tyler Crowley. He too had wanted to ask her today. I had to see this too. I had backed my Volvo out, waiting for my siblings. They all looked at me like I had gone insane, as I was drawing notice with the two idling cars behind me. I watched my rearview mirror, watching Bella's frustrated face, as she – horrified – had inadvertently opened up an avenue for Tyler to take her to prom. I laughed at her expression, and my family sat silently in shock on the way home, all marvelling at my sudden exuberance.
I had watched in Alice's head, as she'd had a vision of me, laughing, and walking towards the front steps of our house, and trailing behind me, holding my hand, was Isabella Swan. I had stopped my chuckling immediately.
"Don't fight this Edward. It's not the only one I've seen." Alice had said, and then proceeded to show me other little snippets, flashes of moments that I didn't understand. Bella and I sitting at our own private lunch table, Bella and I running, in jogging gear together, and even, her sitting, in my room. My mood had both plummeted and peaked. Half of me was thrilled, thrilled that I'd get the chance to continue to talk with her, and become close, while the other half was screaming for her blood, and enjoying the close proximity and the danger she was placing herself into.
"Um Alice love, I'm not sure what you showed him, but it made things both better and worse." Jasper had murmured to her. When we got home, I had instantly paused at the front door. There was one house I wanted to be at right now, and it wasn't this one.
"Alice…" I had asked.
She's at home, and I don't see you doing anything bad. But I will admit, if I didn't know you better, I'd think it was creepy.
"Thanks." I had murmured sarcastically, turning around and running to her house. I had seen her officially ask her father if she could go to Seattle, and watched his overall concern about her truck making it there. It had sparked an idea in me, that I'm sure Alice would enjoy, and the others would be perplexed – or angry – with. I had watched her switch in and out of signing and speaking, and Charlie's hesitance with signing. Her partial deafness was new then? Something that had occurred recently? I had perched, like a perverted man in the trees, watching, waiting, while she went about her daily life. She had spent some time on a computer, copied over Angela's impeccable notes, and eventually she had gone to the bathroom, returning in pyjamas, and tucked herself in to sleep. I could see that although her headboard was up against the window, she lay with her head away from it, upside-down on her bead. I wondered why, as I watched her toss and turn, and then settle.
And then she had said my name in her sleep.