ALIVE
The memory jumped to an entirely new time line, shocking me, as I smelt a combination of antiseptic materials and another vile smell. It reeked of filth, blood, and grim combined into one. But it was dark.
After a while, Renesmee began to open her eyes to a bright light shining into her eyes. Strapped to a hard surface, and entirely stripped of her clothing.
Even in her memories, a memory of probably an hour ago, of an experiment that had been induced on her, previously. The experiment was to see how much pain Renesmee could handle. She had apparently blacked out from the amount of pain they induced on her. Her eyes wandered to every point in the hospital like room. But it was cruel, tools where littered all over the small metal table next to her, and they were all coated with her blood. Fear struck her and she began to attempt to escape out of her strap prison.
She screamed out for help. I wanted to tighten my fist. Her cry for help had topped off all of my anger.
I watched a series of experiments conducted onto my daughter. I knew I could release my grip on her hand outside and never see the extent of them, but at the same time I felt compelled to watch because of my vow to myself. I forced myself to stay there, wanting desperately to comfort my daughter as through a span of years. One year went by, then two, three, and four, and then six.
She grew older, and the experiments got even crueler, even though it didn't seem possible that they could. I watched as blood was drained from every inch of her body, leaving her to faint, revive her, starving to death, coming back to life when blood was offered to her. Being teased with a relieving death, only for the bastard that I'd come to learn is named Joham, to drag her back to life. Throughout her stay in the mess, she was starved and weakened to ensure she wouldn't attempt to escape her prison.
Each night after her experiments, she was dragged back unconsciously to her quarters. Which was a small five foot high, ten feet deep cave that acted as what looked to me, like a dungeon. The hard rocky prison served no comfort, or warmth.
Her memory finally halted on one memory, leaving me a little dizzy. And at first I wasn't sure why. But then it hit me. It was September 11th, Renesmee's birthday. It looked to be her seventh birthday. She sat at a small makeup table, staring somewhat-lifelessly at the trinkets that were aligned on the table. These ones were less harmless, and more like the things Alice used. Like Hair driers, curling irons, and various other things I couldn't name. She shamefully, avoided her own reflection. I wanted to see it. A woman, Serena, it looked like, stood behind Renesmee with a variety of hair styling utensils, as she pondered with her hair. Styling it, and strapping her into a dress. Suddenly, Renesmee was standing in the middle of a very, very familiar room I knew was the Volturi's palace.
I wanted to murder something the second I saw Aro. I wanted to tighten my fist, grind my teeth, but I was afraid of what I would do on the outside of Renesmee's memory.
Aro stood side by side with Joham, looking pleased as he trained his intrigued and pleased eyes onto Renesmee. When she looked up to meet his gaze, he flashed a dangerous smile.
She was no doubt beautiful, but artificially beautiful. Put on for display for Joham and Aro as they exchanged pleasant comments, and Aro's expression being positively approving. Something told me, I didn't want to know but I knew I would soon enough in this world.
Renesmee meandered around the palace, impressed by the beauty of the non-exaggerated gorgeous castle. In a decretive silver metal bowl in the blood fountain, she caught sight of her reflection. Now, I wished she hadn't.
She wore a black and grey ball gown, the skirt was so long it dragged behind her, and was riddled with millions of delicate sparkles. Her hair, damaged but still beautiful, was curled, and pinned off to the side.
But her face, looked starved. It was obvious she was on the brink of her own death from experiments. But she smiled, which during this series I hadn't seen. Smiling at being beautiful, and thinking to herself, she'd never dressed up quite like this. Even with the circumstances, she loved it.
In her reflection, she saw a man as he entered the room through the great double doors. I recognized him instantly. Nahuel.
She stared at him, and he eyed her instantly. For the first time that I'd seen Nahuel, I could see a clear emotion register on his face. It was pure and utter rage. But it instantly vanished. The person accompanying him was Serena, as she approached him with a cocky smile. Muttering something, I could read as recognition that Nahuel had finally came to view Joham's success and alliance with the Volturi.
Throughout the exchange, Nahuel's eyes were set on Renesmee's in the reflection. When she turned to see him, he was gone. Standing beside Joham, and listening intently. Joham seemingly pleased for an unknown reason. This made me uneasy.
Renesmee's fear began to simmer into her chest, uncertainty. Her throat started to constrict around a plea for help from someone, and her thoughts desperately talked her out of darting out of the door. Even she could feel this was no longer just any ball full of crowded vampires enjoying blood and dancing and mingling. No, this was a presentation…she was the presentation. Who was that man? Why was he and many others speaking to Joham?
What options where available to her? She eyed the double doors that lead directly outside. That was no option. She was starving and weak, she could barely run at all, let alone Vampire speed. That would be her only option. It wasn't going to succeed, so why even try?
She started to retreat but backed into a rock hard figure, causing her to jump automatically and send her heart into a beating fit, as she spun around panting with fear. As she looked at him, all I could see was her fear reflecting in his eyes.
"Sorry," he said, coolly but calmly. "I was just admiring your beauty." He said, in a low voice.
Renesmee was speechless and still half-panting. The scars over her body anticipating a painful response. The fresh wounds that had been inflicted on her, began to flush and pulsate painfully with blood from the amount of work her heart was doing. She gulped, and winced as he picked up her hand gingerly.
He appeared to be thinking of something. Contemplating…calculating. He gently picked her hand up, and brought it to his lips. It brought a sense of warmth to her that she hadn't felt in years.
"I was wondering if you'd like to dance," he asked, politely.
Renesmee, still panting managed to find her vocal ability. "I…" she began and attempted to smooth her croaking sick voice.
"Yes," she said, this time a little smoothly.
This wasn't the last time she saw Nahuel. Another series of seeing him sneak into her quarters for what seemed like months.
Nahuel didn't fool me for a minute. At first he had, but I could see behind his mask of nothingness what he felt for Renesmee. It was like watching a movie, anticipating a scene you knew from the beginning, was going to happen and could feel it coming closer each second.
I watched one night, as Renesmee began to awake on her hard metal table again, but something was different about this one.
Joham stood menacingly over Renesmee. The room tilted, shifted, and blurred in and out of focus as she peered around, hoping to find some type of base for her. As soon as she knew what was about to happen, she began to pull at the restraint at her wrist. This bed was different from any of the other beds.
Her legs were separated from each other, and both of her legs had been securely strapped into the stirrups that supported them with some sort of restraint that when she tried to pull them out, latched into her skin with razors, causing Renesmee to gasp in pain.
"Do you really think this will work, Joham?" Aro asked.
Her eyes whirled around until she looked behind her bed to see Aro as he looked down at her curiously and with great interest. She tugged on her restraints instinctively, and gasped when the razors cut further deeper into her legs.
Something else was happening. Her heart felt like it was going to beat so hard, it would tear out of her chest and escape out of the room.
"What's going on?" She suddenly demanded. "What are you guys doing? What is he doing here?" questions spilled from her mouth. Even I was curious.
What in the hell are you doing! I wanted to shout. Tear myself out of Renesmee's memories, murder the bastards and save her. But once again…I couldn't. Because she was determined to give me my life back…It was my own fault.
Instead…I watched as the next thing, which was unimaginable, happen.
Joham clamped around Renesmee's throat, pinning her quietly down onto the table, her alarm growing even more. Things happened so fast.
Her restraints on her legs became tighter; the door flung open dragging a beat up looking man. Aro made a gesture to come inside, before he disappeared through the door. Now I knew what was coming next.
"No! I won't!" The man cried out, growling, somehow unable to shift to protect himself.
Joham kept his iron grip on Renesmee's throat, her lungs becoming unable to withhold anymore oxygen and causing her eyes to begin to darken. She could feel herself slipping into unconsciousness but her alarm was still active, keeping her from fully slipping.
"I could always persuade you, or you can do this willingly," Joham said impatiently and annoyed.
"I won't rape a girl," The wolf growled again.
"She isn't a girl, she's just an experiment," he said, disregarding.
His words rattled in my school, causing my blood to boil. But I couldn't say anything. She wasn't just an experiment, she was my only daughter. No, she was Bella's daughter. I no longer had the right to call her anything to me, and not because I use to hate her, but because I never took advantage of the fact that I, out of any vampire, produced an actual daughter. Not an adoption, but a daughter. I frowned at this.
"If she dies, there is no harm done. I will just have to find another in a couple of years, she will not go missed, her family didn't even want her," Said, Joham.
"I don't care! I won't do it, I refuse!"
"I see we have to do this the hard way, Serena!" Joham called and a girl appeared in the door jam.
She made her way over to the chained wolf, who thrashed in his chains, ignoring Renesmee's cry for help.
"Serena, please don't let this happen!" Renesmee cried.
Serena peered straight into the wolf's eyes. Intentively, instructing him somehow with some sort of mind control. A few minutes and he stopped struggling and looked at Renesmee with an uncontrollable lust and guilt.
"I'm so sorry…" he said, shaking his head, begging nobody. "Please someone kill me! Please!" he begged.
He walked over, compelled as he made his way to Renesmee. He was now standing in between her legs. She had no ability to stop what happened next. It was already happening no matter what she begged the mutt.
Renesmee thrashed in her relentless restraints and cried out, screaming, begging for the pain to stop. She smashed herself against the table hoping to break it, bust it, and make a mark, anything for it to stop, but was eventually held down when Joham tightened her restraints and left the room.
Blackness consumed her vision for the next time duration, blacking out from the pain. When she finally came to, it was finally over. But before she blacked out again, she watched when Joham re-entered the room, this time with a handheld gun. The man growled at his appearance.
"You son of a bitch…" The wolf growled.
He didn't respond with words. Instead, he sighed and held up the gun, and fired the bullet through the man's skull, killing him instantly.
I wanted to rip my hand free, scream, rant and rave. But I had actually forgotten how. I was stuck.
The memory moved again. She was back in her chambers, cold, tossed onto the ground, like junk. Pain was everywhere. Her head, her arms, legs…other areas. She smelt heavily of blood. But she was still unconscious, and was coming to more and more. What she thought was thunder, was beginning to soothe her and summon her back into the present.
These were rare moments where her bones, even as weak as they were, become weaker, relaxed. Her back, as impossible as it felt, became more painful as she relaxed it against the hard rocky ground. She stared up at the short, stone ceiling above her and then closed her eyes. Not asleep, but not awake either.
This grumble of thunder this time, made her cave shake causing her eyes to fly open and her body to jump. When another sound cracked and her cave shook again, she knew it wasn't thunder. It was probably another experiment. She recoiled, tears pooling in her eyes. She did one thing, that made me glad I no longer had tears.
"Please…let this all be a dream…I wished I had my mom," she begged to no one, knowing her wish would never be granted, but she still grieved by turning her face into the dirt and weeping into the dust.
She turned to her side and tried to put her arms under her to push herself up to find the source of the cracking and vibration sound. But the overwhelming pain from below nearly paralyzed her and grounded her again. The blood rushed to her injuries, inflicting even more agony that was beginning to make her black out again. Darkness was consuming her vision quickly, and she was losing ground. Her stomach churned, threatening to toss up…what? She hadn't eaten, what was there to throw up?
After a minute, she was sinking even deeper, her eyes closed, her mind drifted but was just absent enough to hear the cracks that were becoming slight booms now.
It happened again, and this time a huge chunk of the cave came in on her. She was so weak and didn't care enough to even try to dodge anymore. There was no hope for her. Only that she hoped she'd die someday, but that was it. If they wanted to experiment on her, she had no other choice.
Her thoughts began to drift off, as the blackness of her mind consumed her, for her momentary relief from pain into unconsciousness again.
In the distance she could still hear, one final blow caved in her walls of her prison. It was probably one of the blood thirsty vampires, coming to drain her body of its blood. But she wasn't afraid…in fact, whoever it was, if they wanted to kill her, were welcomed. She became hopeful at the thought.
But something unusual happened to her. She felt warm, strong arms, slip under her and curl her against their chest, and then she felt as if she was floating. Was she dead? She subconsciously smiled to herself.
But the smell I remembered from the present time. It was Nahuel who had saved her.
Into another memory morph, it seemed to be a few months after Nahuel had saved her. Renesmee waved him fair well on a blood-bag run, then quickly hid herself in the house. She looked to be in some secluded woodened area, and was inside of a small cabin that smelt of pine and rain, with a small love-seat against the living room wall, and a fire place in front of it. She drew the window darkening panels, sprayed an entire can of air freshener around, and then retreated to her space in the house. Renesmee was staring into her reflection of a bathroom mirror. She looked so much better. Food had obviously replenished her vitamin necessities and had been supplying her food this time.
Scars had healed, but I knew, not all of them would. She was alone…but I could hear a secondary heart beating, and I knew what it was.
She casted a look down to her stomach, with an absent and pained look.
Joham had got what he wanted, a wolf-vampire-human hybrid. Tears welded in her eyes, spilling over the rims of her eyes as she stared at herself in the mirror and began speaking.
"Please know…no matter how you came to be, I loved you," she begged the mirror.
"I would've held you, gave you the life I didn't have, a birthday party, a birthday cake," she said, promising an invisible force.
"But your life wouldn't have been like that…Please believe me," she begged again. "You would've ran like me, running when you should be enjoying life,"
She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair, taking a few hysterical seconds.
"He would've found you, used you as experiments, too, my baby," she touched her belly. "I can't give you that life, and I wouldn't have been able to give it to you," she confessed.
"We will be together again…Because, I will die. He will find me and kill me for ruining his experiment…for never knowing his new hybrid toy, but he's fooled. Because you are mine, and I will not curse you with the life I know too well," she promised.
"Please know," she placed a kiss on her fingers. "I love you now, as I will for forever, and will regret not even getting to hold your precious body in my arms, placing a kiss on your tiny wounds, tucking you into a warm bed, like you deserved. But you deserve less to be a pawn in Nahuel and I's, lifelong war we have ahead of us,"
She silenced herself, before closing her eyes to collect her thoughts. She made her way to the bathtub, crawled inside and laid for about twenty seconds. Before closing her eyes, her hands shot through her stomach, just above her abdomen where her unborn child was.
Tearing through her flesh, blood pooled over her hand making what she was gripping slippery. She screamed at the top of her lungs, her pain becoming my pain, her screaming becoming my screams, begging her to stop.
This time I gave into temptation. My hand disconnected from Renesmee, releasing me from the prison of her memories but when I exited, I realized Renesmee's screams were no longer what I was hearing. It was mine.
I was screaming, backed into a corner of Renesmee's room, and covering my head. My hands dug into my stone temples, unable to make a mark. When I finally heard Carlisle, I growled, hissed and swiped at him as I came out of it.
"Edward!" someone said, and I finally realized Esme and Carlisle were both there. I panted and dry heaved as I came back to the present time. It was like being shoved through a time machine, and I was pretty sure that, that had similar affects as well.
I held onto the floor, and felt myself stumbling to the wall for support. My own temperature made its way to me, becoming more normal.
My heart remained dead, and I was relieved.
And then I was angry, then I was murderous. I was going to find this Joham, and I was going to rip him apart.