AN: Hey, thanks for all of the reviews.
I know its been a while since my last update, but I wasn't that sure how I wanted to write this chapter, and it is probably a little bit confusing ... I know it kind of jumps around a little from person to person, but I kind of like this chapter. I think its my favourite so far, so ... tell me what you think!
And can some of the lurkers on story alert review pretty please? I just kind of want to know what you guys think of this, and whether you want it a little bit more like the old one, or if you like where I'm going with this? Or if you haven't read the old one, and just like this one???? Or hate it? I don't mind - just a review would be cool!
Alice Cullen sat behind her desk, rigid and stone in appearance; living up to the expectations of her kind. The only movement was the steady falling and rising of her chest, but was quickly replaced by the light drumming of her fingers against the rough wooden desk. Her other hand tightly clenched the plastic chair, only to break through the hard material.
She ignored this however, not caring that in the next class a student would see the finger-like imprint on the chair, and would tell the teacher of it – something which was not in her families best interests. No. She clenched her fingers together into a tight fist – they would not be able to trace it back to her.
Instead, her mind had wondered away from the teacher's monotone lecture on what was to be expected of them now they were juniors - a speech he had made repeatedly each year to each and every class he taught on their first day – and were facing a demanding year he had carefully constructed and planned to each minute detail, solely to separate those who would succeed in his class, and who wouldn't.
Her mind left the classroom entirely, wondering away from the hallways of Forks High School as she tried in vain to accurately remember her human memories. Several blurred, hardly legible images flashed across her eyes in a slow sequence as her brain attempted to think back several decades.
It was failing miserably, all she could see was indistinct shapes moving around in a dull swirl of motion. A flash of brown met her eye before it faded away in the background. A few more times she saw it, along with a pair of brown eyes before it faded away. This brown flash seemed to be a recurring thing in her memories, and she was unsure who or what it was.
Alice felt a light probing sensation in her mind, before it was quickly extracted. It was an unspoken code between Edward and their family that he would not look through their private memories, in particular those of their human life.
With a last attempt for Alice to see the memories clearly, she gave up, but her mind was still a million miles away from the lecture the teacher was currently giving.
She just couldn't understand what was happening.
Throughout her life, Alice had constantly felt as though she was being watched. A few times she had felt a strong sense of power radiating off a corner but there had been no one there when she looked. When she tried to look for the person, both normally, and with her gift, she had failed. A white block had come up with it, while she heard a musical voice laughing. Sometimes two.
But today was something else, something different that she had never experienced before. The feeling of a presence hanging over her shoulder had increased, to the point she had been constantly looking over her shoulder, half scared of whether she would see something, but an over-whelming desire to know what was happening came over her.
She had sniffed the air, and found nothing.
She had listened, and heard nothing.
She had Seen, and saw nothing.
Perhaps it was because it wouldn't affect her that she couldn't see the presence. It was true, after all, that normally her visions showed only what would affect her, or her loved ones. Perhaps that was why. But then again, if the person – or people, Alice corrected, thinking of the second, more sinister voice that occasionally joined the first – was not important, nor would affect her, how come she felt this way? Surely, whoever she or they were, her fate was affected by their decision.
Unless … they had not actively made the decision to follow her?
Jasper paused in annoyance, raising a pale marble hand to rub his temple soothingly. His hair was on end from the workout, and around him he could several sweaty human bodies. His nostrils flared in disgust of the change of scent in the air around him as he inhaled the stench of the young teenagers. With a final sniff, he stopped breathing entirely.
He had frozen, allowing the humans to run on ahead of him, their tired limbs working overtime as they struggled not to be last. The gym coach glared at him as he stopped in his tracks, opening his mouth to tell him off, before he noticed Jasper's own intimidating stare, daring him to comment. With a brisk nod, the greying man jogged on, hurrying to catch up with the other students.
The man was scared of him, tinted with hints of annoyance but he was intimidated by the young vampire. He felt troubled by something else, though Jasper couldn't quite place it, and hints of exhaustion came through in his emotions – most likely from lack of sleep, judging by the dark circles under his eyes. The teacher felt old and self-conscious, though was lusting after someone, most likely a student and felt traitorous, presumably to his wife judging by his ringed finger.
It was his power, though perhaps not as intense as Edward's, nor as useful as Alice's that allowed him to know how the people around felt. It was underestimated and taken for granted by his family because of his siblings other, stronger gifts. But he himself, felt it was worthwhile knowing exactly how people were feeling. Edward's could be avoided by a person focusing their mind on one topic, a repeated mantra if you will. Alice could be thwarted if a person was undecided, or made an instinct decision, but never in his years had he come across someone who was not affected by his gift.
But this did not mean he wasn't sometimes annoyed by it.
From the PE hall he was currently standing in, he could feel Alice's annoyance and confusion radiating off her in waves, tinted with impatience and pain. And with those emotions radiating into his system, he couldn't help the howl of pain that erupted from himself. He could Edward peeking into his mind, gathering information from his breakdown, and he couldn't help the mental growl that was caused by the intrusion: GET OUT.
Within his family, it was well known that he was the pacifist, however he couldn't help the scream from his lips when Edward entered his mind, and continued to poke through it despite his insistence. It was at times like this he hated his brother for what his gift was, and how he used it at times of weakness. Though he said it was for safety, a caution, Jasper himself felt it was unnecessarily intrusive on his private thoughts.
Focusing on a mantra, mainly consisting of: Get out! Get out! Get fucking out! He continued it up until he felt Edward retreat from his thoughts, which didn't take long once Edward realised he wouldn't stop the mantra until he left.
Allowing his thoughts to flow out from his brain, including those he had kept hidden in the back of his mind for so long, he couldn't help but allow the howl of pain to erupt from his lips.
Rosalie glared at the humans around her, as if it was their fault that she had to endure her own mundane existence. On instinct, she twirled a lock of golden hair around a long pale finger, pondering her life miserably. Her mind immediately fell on one human: the most annoying one of all.
Bella Swan.
The stupid ignorant human who clearly had no idea of the hardships some had to suffer because of her stupid species. She had no idea what people had to face each day because of her kind. No inkling of what had happened to her, and what she wasn't able to do.
She couldn't cry – she wasn't allowed the luxury of being able to let tears fall her eyes, and a million should have fallen for everything that had been done to her. Nor was she able to think or concentrate without acknowledging the permanent burning in her throat, a constant reminder of what she was sacrificing each day, just so that she could hold onto that last shred of humanity.
And the biggest pain came with being unable to bear Emmett's child. To be unable to have a baby girl and show her the way society worked. To find her the perfect husband, and to teach her how to tell the difference between the Emmetts of the world and the Royces.
But the worst thing was the fact that every day since she had been created, she had been forced to watch humans neglect to realise exactly what they had. How they had failed to notice what they could do, and what she couldn't. That when she moved to a new school, she was forced to remain distant and cold. How they could notice someone was nice, that they had similar interests and could become friends with them, while she had was unable to get close to anyone except her kind. It was the fact that their lives constantly changed, while her's stayed permanently the same, a repeated sequence that would stay the same forever. How she had been forced to change from the young innocent girl who wanted nothing more than a family.
This was how the Ice-Queen had been formed.
Emmett sighed as he lifted the metal tongs to drop the magnesium into the acid – an experiment he had performed a thousand times over. The teacher lectured dully about the effects, and the chemical reaction this was giving off. She was dull, boring and seriously uninformed.
Tiredly, he reached to take off the mandatory safety goggles from his eyes, and lifted them to perch on the top of his head. If he was human, he was sure he would be yawning.
As a vampire it was unusual, if not completely unnatural for them to feel tired. Stressed, panicked – all of those were occasional, though much more intense than a normal human's. But it was normal. However Emmett could not remember ever feeling tired as a vampire, nor could he remember anyone of his species ever saying they were.
He glanced around at his 'peers' wondering how they coped with it. Some looked like they were half-asleep, barely coping with the early hours school started. Dark circles were under several humans' eyes. Others were yawning into the back of their hands. And one out of twenty was wide awake.
Emmett glanced into the front of the class where the new student sat, Bella Swan.
In the darkest corner of the cafeteria sat a pale family, away from the windows which would make their skin sparkle like diamonds and reveal their existence to the entire Forks' student body. The family had five people in total, four of which looking like they were facing the worst day of their life.
One was smiling as he swept his power along his year, listening to their every thought while they remained none the wiser. Common issues swept across the front of their minds – acne, make-up, allowance – and it was these he swept past. Other minds had more interesting, complex things to worry about – abuse, a tearful breakup, the death member – and here it was where he spent more time listening to their thoughts.
Edward grinned as he listened to one particular sob-story, and happy with today's gossip he was about to turn away and tune into his family's minds when he heard a name repeated in dozens of human's minds: Bella Swan.
His gaze swept along the student body, searching for the human who matched the face Jessica Stanley had provided as she angrily thought of how much attention she was getting.
Sitting at a table by herself, a young beautiful girl sat with her long brown hair cascading in ripples down her back. Her skin from what he could see was unnaturally pale, almost to the degree his own kind was. Considering she must have grown up in a place with little sunlight, he delved into her mind only to recoil in shock.
He felt nothing.
Esme stared out of the window of her gently lit precious greenhouse. Rain was pelting down from the heavens, thunder and lighting following it in quick bursts. A loud grumbling rippled throughout Forks, and seconds later, a streak of light flashed through the sky. Esme frowned as prodded a plant carefully with her fingertips before reaching for the watering can – the thunder was near.
In her life she had experienced much happiness and she was perfectly content with her life and Carlisle and her children. Her children. She protected them with a fierce motherly instinct, and she could honestly say she was pleased in life, despite what she was.
But today, something felt different … something was wrong, and she couldn't help but delve back into the memories of her past life. Before she had found her children, before she was a vampire. She remember her human life, the blurred images flashing across her eyes.
Back when it had been simple, when there was a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Carlisle stood in the middle of the hospital, looking around at the empty wing. No patients remained in the Intensive Care Unit, the ICU, where thirteen had been at 11:59 the day before. The first patient, a victim from a hit and run, crashed at precisely one second past midnight. It was as if she had been waiting until that moment. It was as if she wanted to hold on for one more day.
He glanced down, frowning at a bed which remained covered in blood from the stabbed victim whose stitches had broken. His gaze fell onto the bed where the man who had just came out of a liver transplant had been, before his blood had clotted and he passed at 1:39am.
He rubbed at his eyes wearily as he stood in the empty wing, once full of people, now still in a ghostly silence in the white hospital. The blood on the sheets remained a reminder of what had happened.
His beeper went, his break would be over in one minute, and he had a lot of paperwork to fill out. With one last glance of the empty room, the clock struck 5:30. His beeper went once more, an ambulance was coming in from a car crash, and they were expecting multiple casualties.
He sighed: a new game had just begone.
Bella sat cross legged on the floor of her home, back to back with her sister. A school bag lay forgotten on the cool wooden floor, shining in the light of the flames dancing in the fireplace. A spark flew out, but the sisters took no notice of it.
Instead, they leaned against each other's cool backs, finding comfort in their closeness as each stared off in the distance, neither speaking or acknowledging the other's presence except to occasionally stroke the other's hand in comfort. Their expressions were mournful, eyes brimming with tears that would never fall as they looked out of the windows of either side of the warm room. One window stared out into the beautiful garden, while the other looked into a forest filled with poison ivy and thorned hedges.
A old man sat at the foot of the bed, stroking a long beard as he stared at the two young girls. They not look back, or meet his contemplating gaze and, as minutes became hours, his hard stare changed into a rare satisfied smile.
"Happy Birthday," he whispered into the silence.
AN: I was wondering, apart from what you think of it ...
WHAT DO YOU WANT THE PAIRING TO BE?
Just wondering, figured that would get your attention lol. But I know some people wanted a slash but ... I dunno, what do you guys think?
If you review, I just go with your idea ...