Thanks so much to addicttwilight2, anaismark and icrodriguez for their constant encouragement, also to everybody who contacted me at one point or other to express their support and hope that the story would be continued. Standard disclaimers continue to apply.
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I would wrap you in angels just to keep you safe.
"Lullaby", Martyrs & Poets.
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Chapter Fifteen: Safe
He watched them leave. Watched and waited, his body stiff with tension. When they had disappeared from sight, he closed his eyes and focused his other senses on their movement – his ears sharpened to their soft footfalls. With every inhale and exhale, he smelled Jacob and Leah, sensed their presence around his home, and he knew that if he thought about it too much his overwrought mind would snap and he would bolt, with his wife, so that they were somewhere – anywhere – else.
When a few minutes had passed, he allowed himself to relax, minutely. Some part of him knew that they were far away by now, out of the area and out of their lives. He flexed his hands briefly and opened his eyes, searching for his wife.
A jolt of panic flew through his body when he registered that she was no longer beside him.
He wheeled around, a wordless cry of protest erupting from the centre of his chest, and it was happening again, he was alone, Bella had left him, she'd –
"Edward?"
He spun again and saw her, curled into a ball near the trunk of a tree. She had folded into herself so absolutely that his eyes had skittered straight past her.
For a moment, he simply watched her watching him. Her arms were clenched around her stomach, her knees drawn up as if to protect her heart, and he had the very real sense that she was trying to literally hold herself together.
Then everything that Jacob had imparted finally hit home, and he felt a wave of emotion so intense that he felt his chest would surely crack open. Anger and frustration and anguish and confusion swirled to form a mass of pain so toxic that he felt physically ill, felt his dead heart struggle with the weight of it all, and he had the very real urge to crumple where he stood.
Watching her, watching Bella, his wife, his world, he told himself firmly that she couldn't handle that – that one of them had to pull it together, had to stand strong, show no weakness... and then the side of him that still clung so firmly to cynicism and brutal reality checked him, told him that Bella was not, in fact, his wife, that he was a fool and that he should walk away while he could still operate his limbs.
Bella curled up even further under his scrutiny, her arms wrapping around her knees, her bottom lip caught firmly between her teeth. The insecurity of the gesture left him gasping for air, his hand going to his throat as if to tear at the phantom constriction he felt.
He closed his eyes and swallowed deeply, trying to gain some modicum of control. It didn't work. Still the battle raged on within him, and he vacillated, torn, between alternate states of reality.
He loved this woman, but he hated her too. He wanted to repair what they had lost, but equally, some dark part of him wanted to see her suffer. He wanted to have faith, wanted to forgive, but still his inner demons snapped viciously at him, snarling warnings.
He wanted no part in that ugliness but he could not banish it completely.
He could feel himself swaying where he stood.
Most of all, he just wanted it over. Just wanted some rest, some peace. He needed some respite from this burden, this knot their lives had formed, he needed to be numb for a while, to not feel...
A warm hand slipped into his own, small fingers squeezing reassuringly. He opened his eyes and looked down, fascinated.
Bella stood before him, having uncurled from her protective position. She was watching him carefully, as if waiting for something.
He let his hand lie limp in hers. He could not muster up the energy to even acknowledge her gesture with a nod. He both loved and hated how much better he felt when she touched him, and the constant, exhausting dichotomy was ripping him to shreds.
Tired. I'm so tired.
"I know," she whispered, her voice very small and lost.
His every movement felt sluggish. Air sighed lazily into his body and back out. He blinked, and it seemed to take forever.
Her dark eyes looked into his, and her expression seemed to clear. Her hand squeezed his again.
"Come," she said quietly, and he followed her, obedient as a child.
She led him through the house, up the stairs and into his bedroom, where her gentle hands removed his pants and his heavy sweater. Lifting his limbs so that she could manoeuvre the material off his body took up all his energy, and so he didn't question her motives. She removed her hands from him to shuck her own jeans down her legs, and he watched listlessly.
She coaxed him onto the bed with her, and when she was lying on her back, propped by pillows, she guided him so that his cheek rested against the soft cotton of her t-shirt, over her heart. She took his hands and moved them so that one locked around her torso, moulding her to him, the other resting on the plane of her stomach. Her bare legs tangled with his. One of her hands stroked through his hair, her nails softly scratching his scalp – the other rubbed concentric circles between his shoulder blades until he relaxed entirely and allowed her to feel his full weight.
She murmured to him, and her melodic voice washed over him. His brain was still too frantic to focus entirely on anything and so he only gained snatches of meaning – but what he did catch made his heart swell and catch in his throat, his eyes prickling with tenderness and thankfulness. Gradually his breathing loosened and became deep and rhythmic, the thick band in his chest relaxing somewhat, and he sucked air down to the very bottom of his lungs in gratitude.
She gifted him with fragments of lullabies and soft gentle songs, pieces of poetry and promises of love, of better things to come. Soothed by her words and by her presence, he watched the sun spear the sky with radiance as it set.
Lying there in her arms, just for a little while, he believed that everything would be okay.
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Her hands on his body stilled, her voice stopped.
She shook him slightly. "Edward?" she asked, with the air of trying to wake him from a deep sleep.
He opened his eyes, stretched a little, looked up at her. When he saw her darting eyes, her tightened mouth, he roused fully. His back arched and he raised his body over hers, protectively.
"What is it?" he asked sharply, already listening.
"I think... I think someone's coming," she whispered, a hint of fear in her voice. "I think... your family?"
In a fluid movement, he was at the window, scanning the forest for any sign. He noticed, marvelling, that the sun was high in the sky again. He hadn't realised how long they'd been laying there. It had felt like such a suspension of reality that he was utterly and ridiculously surprised that time hadn't stopped.
"I don't see anything," he said, his body tensed. "They're not supposed to be back for days. Alice said –"
And he was brought up short by a knock at their bedroom door.
He wheeled around, aghast.
Now he could hear what he'd failed to notice before. Six rivers of thought gushed suddenly forth in his brain, and he winced disbelievingly. Bella was right – his entire family had entered the house, were gathered in the living room. How – how had he not noticed?
Alice had evidentially tired of waiting for a response. The door flew open, and he gasped in shock as he felt a tidal wave of anger emanating from his tiny sister.
She said nothing, only glared at Bella briefly and then swung her eyes towards him. He could guess that she was attempting to communicate with him, but could not make out a word of meaning. Her thoughts flowed unstoppably, a current of incomprehension, and he was swept away by it.
He gripped his head, utterly stunned. He'd known that his gift wasn't working properly for him, known that he was too distracted, too utterly broken apart to steer his way through the subtleties of mind-reading, but until this moment he hadn't realised just how far he'd let it get away from him.
Alice's mind was more than capable of following several different strings of thought at once, as was every other mind in the house. It was like listening to multiple radio stations. He would zone in on Alice's furious inner diatribe just to get distracted by a snide remark from Rosalie or a worried plea from Esme. The resulting mishmash pounded relentlessly through his brain. So this is what a headache feels like, he thought, horrified.
Alice's frustration filtered through. Focus!
He shook his head at his sister helplessly. He felt like a fish on dry land, struggling to breathe.
Her gaze swung back to Bella again. His followed, and he swallowed deeply as he saw his wife trembling under the inexplicable fury emanating from her sister-in-law.
When it came, Alice's voice was tight, unrecognisable. "Living room. Now," she hissed, and spun on her heel to depart without them.
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There were moments, in this new life, where the absolute strength and power of her body infused her through with invincibility.
She remembered how she had destroyed nearly everything she touched, her first few hours – remembered the gritty dust beneath her fingers as lamps and doorknobs and bookshelves had crumbled like pieces of wet biscuit under her careless hands.
She had looked at her new limbs then with a dawning awareness, finally realising that she was, in all probability, the most dangerous person on the planet at that particular moment.
That was one kind of strength. The other came at the most unexpected moments, with the softest, gentlest gestures.
Watching her hands weave through her husband's thick thatch of hair as he lay against her, allowing her to comfort him – the sense of pride, of ability that had led to a quiet feeling of inner fortitude, that had made her straighten her spine a little, made her hold her head a little higher.
During those moments of peace with Edward – during all moments of their joint solitude, in fact – she could really believe that the mess she'd created was fixable, that she would survive, that she would heal while mending Edward, that they would emerge at last as equals, forged by fire.
Then, invariably, something else came screaming her way, and she was reminded of just how hopeless the entire situation was. Reminded that she was now reaping what she'd sown.
Now, downstairs in the white house she could remember loving, listening to Jasper and Edward scream at each other, watching their jerky, stressed movements, cowering on a chair in the corner as the rest of Edward's family surveyed her with tightened masks, she was terrified. Weak, and helpless, and terrified.
She knew what the Cullens were trying to do – what they'd been trying to do for the last six months. In the end, of course, the bonds that had formed between Edward and his family over eighty years were much stronger than the threads of brittle loyalty they'd ever felt towards her.
Her familial threads had snapped, and now the others were once more trying to close ranks, to protect the man they all loved from further harm at her hands.
She knew that Edward was holding on as best he could to his self-control, trying as hard as possible not to punch Jasper, not to catch him and throw him through a solid brick wall, and she knew that Jasper, too, could sense this. She wasn't surprised, then, that he spoke as though she could not hear him, that he gestured to her without even looking at her, that his tone was firmly, carefully blank, as though they were discussing a once-beloved dog that had turned rabid and was now no longer wanted.
She understood it – knowing that if Jasper displayed any hint of outright hostility towards her, Edward would snap – but that didn't mean she had to like it.
She tried to concentrate, tried to ignore Alice's stony eyes boring into her.
"...do you know, Edward?" Jasper bellowed, his arms waving. "How do you know that she's for real?"
Her husband's eyes darted to her, then, and she ached to see the uncertainty there. He looked so much like a lost little boy, and she gazed fiercely back at him, willing him to see the truth in her eyes, willing him to remember.
His shoulders slumped, then straightened – as though he'd shrugged a burden off, then immediately picked up another. "I just do," he answered, his body tilted towards Jasper, his eyes never leaving hers. She swallowed, feeling the seed of their connection grow firmer, marvelling at his faith.
Her one-time brother-in-law paced back and forth, his hands gripping at his hair. A part of her noted, with interest, that she had never seen him lose so much control before. She was reminded that this was a man who routinely dealt with the entire spectrum of human emotion, and wondered briefly at the added strain he must have been under, to be so agitated.
"It isn't good enough, Edward," he groaned, his back flexing. "I do not feel a damn thing from her, did you know that?"
She felt a jolt of surprise and gasped, clearly shocked. Jasper's honeyed eyes flew to her face for the first time since they'd entered the room, and he snorted in derision.
"Not even that," he drawled. "Either she's the best actress in the world, or she's been transformed into a cold, callous machine – no, actually, not even cold or callous, I could at least sense that – or she's purposefully blocking me..."
Edward's eyes swung back to his brother's, and she could see traces of doubt begin to line his features. "She could never block you before," he mused, and Bella froze.
Jasper sensed victory. "Exactly, Edward! Which makes me think that she's got to be doing it consciously, she's got to know, to understand, which means –"
No, she couldn't bear to hear what it meant.
She bowed her head, feeling a sudden stab of nostalgia for the mane of hair that had once served as a shield for her face, and worked to block the sound from her ears.
here is the deepest secret nobody knows...
She closed her eyes and dove headfirst into the flash of memory she'd had earlier – watching European lights twinkle outside of their Parisian window, feeling the silken fabric of the sheet that Edward had swaddled them both in against her cheek, his lips brushing her ear as his sweet breath wafted around her, whispering words of devotion, of love everlasting – stolen from a long-dead poet, but none the less true for that.
She could feel it all as if it were still happening – feel the sting of now-non-existent tears in her eyes as she swallowed and leaned back against the man she loved, her heart too full for words. She could feel his arms flexing around her, as if longing to hold her closer, tighter, though their bodies as connected as it was possible to be.
She could feel the over-arching frustration that they could never and would never be close enough, feel the music that he wrung out of her body reach its crescendo, feel the thud of her head meeting his shoulder as her eyes squeezed shut and her body dissolved, feel the rise-and-fall of his chest at her back as he groaned aloud with all she made him feel.
i carry your heart... i am never without it...
She opened her eyes, startled and embarrassed to find herself back in the present, with the eyes of seven vampires staring at her critically. If it had still been possible for her to blush, she would probably have been visible from Canada.
She bit her lip as her eyes found her husband's, searching their sorrowful depths for any indicator, any sign that he knew what she felt, that he could somehow tell where her mind had taken her. Edward stared at her for a moment, his brow creasing, before turning away and continuing his argument with his brother.
Their Parisian honeymoon seemed to recede back even further into their history as she watched his back flex. So close and still so far away.
She felt the sting at the back of her throat that had always precipitated tears, and closed her eyes, quickly – knowing that she was incapable of actually shedding them didn't mean that the habit of concealing them faded away.
Inhaling deeply, the scents of the people she'd once called her family swirled around her, pushing the last vestiges of her bittersweet memory back. Sandalwood and lily-of-the-valley, warm caramel and cool mint, salt and citrus and a thousand other subtle hints that the English language had no words for...
Then the air in the room changed, and she inhaled a gulp of apple and iris and something else – something that was so light and delicate, so feminine and fresh, that its fragrance made her smile without thinking or knowing why.
She opened her eyes to seek the source of the scent, and with a start, she met Rosalie's gaze.
Automatically she flinched, expecting animosity, but strangely saw none of it evident in her sister-in-law's eyes. Rather, they were calculating as they appraised her – not with disdain, as had happened so often, but with seemingly genuine curiosity.
She bit her lip and curled further into herself, and felt as though she were watching something very important happen from miles and miles away as Rosalie's eyes widened. She could almost see whispers of suspicion and dawning comprehension begin to braid together, forming a ladder that led to a place she was somehow instinctively afraid of...
She saw Jasper halt and swing around to observe their interaction, saw Edward stiffen and draw breath as if to reprimand his sister, saw the rest of the family furrow their brows, excluded as they were from what was happening. She wanted to scream, to flail her arms or otherwise distract them all from the thing she could feel coming for her, the thing that would sweep her up and carry her away...
And then Rosalie herself was standing directly in front of her, then crouching down to meet Bella's eyes, and her hand as it touched hers was soft.
Bella could only gaze at her – her usual veneer of haughtiness had vanished and the surprising gentleness that took its place gave her the appearance, more than ever, of an angel among immortals.
Rose leaned even closer, the curtain of her golden hair and the sweet scent of rosy-cheeked apples excluding everything else from her mind, and Bella fleetingly felt like a child in the arms of its mother.
"Who are you trying to protect, Bella?" she asked softly, kindly, and she drew Bella's hands, previously clasped so tightly over her abdomen and the vast emptiness she could feel inside, into her own.
More words, more yelling, more tumult in the house and in her head, but Bella couldn't look away, hypnotised as she was by Rosalie's actions. As one in a daze, she saw Rose's lips moving, shaping words.
"I don't want to hear it," she said suddenly, and yanked her hands away. "Stop it, Rose, stop it right now!"
But Rose's fingers were once more laced with hers, and her hands were drawing Bella's own away from her ears, and despite the fact that Bella was so much stronger than her, she let her do it.
Rose's thumbs swept over her knuckles, and the tenderness of the gesture made her breath catch in her throat, made her look up into surprisingly sad golden eyes.
"You were pregnant, weren't you, Bella?"
And her day of reckoning had finally come, the answer was there at her lips and she couldn't run or hide or avoid it anymore, she had no choice but to say it.
"Yes."
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Thanks for reading, please let me know what you think.