My lame reason for taking long is that I couldn't quite find the right person to tell what was happening in the last bits. There were practically six different drafts until I finally got one that fit. I hope you like it.
Disclaimer: Never have and, much to my disappointment, never will own Twilight.
Chapter Four:
Where Valuable Information Reaches a Desperate Party
In the snow-covered vastness of Greenland, there lay a small, discreet house. One would naturally overlook such a plain residence, but if a much too curious passerby were to examine it further, they would see that this deceivingly simple home was built more like a bomb shelter than an eccentric getaway from basically any human contact for two hundred miles in every direction. It could survive a nuclear holocaust or a siege; it was made to last, and to keep those inside safe from any threat imaginable.
Well, almostany threat; sadly, the mind and heart couldn't be protected by the reassuringly strong stone walls. This often overlooked fact was thrown into new context for Bella as she burst out of the house in a daze, automatically grabbing a hold of her emergency bag of clothes and identification before locking the door behind her. Her mind was still incapable of any thought beyond the recurring words from the Internet: Heroic Teenager, Edward Masen, was Shot in a Bank Robbery Only to Die Several Days Later from Lung Failure.
It had been a stupid mistake on Bella's part, looking up Edward when she only knew it would lead to no good. But, really, how could she predict for this to happen? In the back of her mind, Bella had always told herself that he was safe where he was, away from her. That at least had brought her some self-righteousness to her self ordered exile. But curiosity, something she had fought off for fourteen months without any end in sight, had conquered Bella, just as it had with Pandora.
During the solitary months, she found herself overwhelmed with thoughts of Edward, and instead of fading over time, the odd ache that accompanied her musings of him grew more and more. She didn't understand the all consuming urge that came over her while reading the article to fall to her knees and cry. She felt sick with her tearless sobs, and they did nothing to relieve the hole that was increasing within her, taking everything until she was just an empty shell of want.
Want, she thought bitterly as she started her car. It used to be such a common concept to me, but now, I can do nothing but just that. I want to see Edward's face, smiling and happy. I want to be held in his arms. I want him to tell me that everything is fine, no perfect, because we are together. And, sadly, none of Bella's wants would be fulfilled. Edward was dead, and there was nothing she could do about it.
Blankly, Bella drove to the airport, calling to book a ticket before her brain could catch up with her heart's self-abusing reasoning. She was going back to Washington, as close to Edward as she could possibly get without drastic measures. Her brain questioned the choice, but her heart remained silent in its own grieving.
It wasn't until she was on the plane that it all came crumbling apart and the dark pain of understanding flooded through her body like a wave, poisoning everything with the sick truth of what it meant.
000
Lucy Nichals, a stewardess for just about ten years, had seen the pretty girl from 5A rush out of her seat, although the seatbelt sign had distinctly been on, and toward the bathroom. She got up to chase after her and a bout of turbulence sent Lucy to her knees when the plane shook, but the girl only stopped outside the bathroom door, resting her head against the wall and wrapping her arms around her stomach.
Lucy finally regained balance and put a reassuring hand on the girl's surprisingly cold shoulder. "Honey," she asked, "what's wrong?"
Though the girl was shaking because she was, Lucy assumed, weeping, when she turned there wasn't a trace of wetness on her angel-like face. Lucy was almost in a trance by the large golden eyes, filled with a sadness she couldn't even begin to comprehend, and the melodic voice that was so clear and bell-like as the girl bawled, "Why did he have to die?" The girl sunk down to her knees, making what would have been an awkward fumble of movement seem as graceful as a ballerina's much performed solo. "I l-loved him so much and I never even knew it."
Lucy looked around for some kind of help as to what to say to the heartbroken girl and realized that from where they were, in between the business class and economy class seating, for everyone to see. The girl seemed to see that too, because she got up and quickly locked herself in the bathroom, the unoccupied sign turning to occupied with lightning fast speed.
Feeling her maternal side kick in, Lucy knocked gently on the door, calling, "Miss? I know it seems hard to deal with it right now, but why don't you come with to the kitchen, where I can get you some coffee and we can talk it out?" Lucy held her breath when she heard the gasping sob of the girl turn muffled, like she was holding something over her mouth to keep herself quiet.
The door unlocked and opened to a small slit, showing only as much as her eye and the small expanse of snowy white skin underneath. The girl only looked at Lucy with that odd colored eye before a voice sounded through the gap. "It is very kind of you to offer," it said, shockingly monotone for its sweet lilting quality. "But I just wish to be alone now. Thank you." Then the door closed once more, leaving Lucy with mixed feelings of sadness, unease and pity.
Nevertheless, she had kept a wary eye on the bathroom door for the remainder of the flight. But Lucy didn't see the girl come out of the bathroom until the very end, and even then it was just a glimpse of long brown hair in a crowd before she was gone.
When everyone, passenger and staff, had filed out of the plane, Lucy could only sit silently in one of the chairs, thinking over what had happened in a confused manner. After an hour's meditation, she called her husband and told him that she loved him more than anything else in the world, and that she was sorry for the fight they had earlier. She decided that love was a much too precious and powerful thing to throw away on petty details.
000
Bella was finally able to pull herself back together for the flight from Boston to Seattle, but the hurt remained, never fading, never growing, just taking her over.
When she arrived in Seattle, it was a choice between two homes she had in the area; a tiny, unnoticeable house in the small town of Forks, or her beach house. Bella wanted to go back to the beach house, to see the same green eyes that Edward had alive in his mother and the same facial features shared in father and son. She knew that there would be pain with these little bits of remembrance, but she would welcome it, bury herself in its comforting depths. But his parents were there and, mourning or no, they would recognize how young Isabella Swan hadn't changed in the two years she had been gone. So it was off to Forks.
Driving at break-neck speeds in a rental car she probably had no intention to give back, Bella worried at what lay in that town. She had bought the house in the eighties and found the quiet atmosphere suitable to her needs. It would have been like one of the other countless houses she owned across the world, had it not been for the white manor she had found while hunting one day. It looked abandoned, but she could smell the strong, heady scent of other vampires still clinging to the place. She had left town the next day, terrified at the thought of being found.
Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to go walking into a place where another vampire could be, but the pull was undeniable, and the dejected, brokenhearted Bella saw no choice but to follow it.
She drove on and, soon enough, a sign loomed in the distance, welcoming her to Forks.
000
Strains of piano floated up to Alice's room, where she was laying on the next to useless bed. Today, the chords and crescendos were restless. The skilled hands roamed across the ivory keys with more ease than he could accomplish in reality, hunting down notes and bringing together a harmony that could clearly tell Alice what he was thinking about.
Edward wished to leave, and badly. He didn't want people to notice, didn't want the family to think he was ungrateful, but they all saw it in how he would look out the window with longing, thinking of far off places and potential hiding places. The boy was a ghost as he paced slowly throughout the house in Denali; mentally drained from the extreme training he insisted upon, emotionally wasted by the internal tearing he felt at his seams the longer he didn't see her, the more space that went between them. He was dwindling in front of the Cullens, his only spark coming from the fierce determination and need that raged and consumed him. If he were to go much longer without her, it would drive him insane.
He tried his best to keep it hidden, but it always found ways to seep through. When spending time with all the new editions of the family, it seemed as though each bit of knowledge they provided was saved, every name and place catalogued carefully away for later use, creating his very own vampire version of a world map. Every failed test of controlling his thirst built up his frustration and set back his plans to walk through a world full of temptation.
Of all the family, only Carlisle knew what he really wanted. But Alice suspected.
When Edward had first been changed, Alice had watched the future very carefully to see how their new family member would take the change of lifestyle. While sorting through the images, one that she wasn't familiar with popped up, as brief and flickering as a candle before being blown out by a gust of wind. It had been a girl of their kind, walking through a snowy landscape with a look of unwilling purpose on her delicate face.
She hadn't seen anything of her since, and discarded it as a fluke. But something about those rare times when Edward would lose himself in thought, his fingers would run across the piano in such lovely sweetness, like he as thinking of something so ethereal it couldn't be put into simple words but embodied through melody, not to mention how he so unwaveringly denied Tanya's advances, led Alice to believe it wasn't adventure or foreign places he was looking for, it was a woman.
Knowing his little talent would be immensely inconvenient in the fact that she wanted to hide this information, Alice kept it to herself, not even telling her Jasper, and only pondered it over while Edward was out hunting.
Now, as the frantic music slowed, turning into a sadder, more longing version of one of his tinkling and loving tunes, Alice's thoughts were unintentionally strayed toward the face of the girl. She had seemed so lonely in the frozen tundra around her, so desperately lonely. Downstairs, the composition was venturing into the high notes, becoming a fragile and wistful lullaby.
Even with Edward on the floor below, Alice couldn't stop the new insight to the future from coming. The girl was attached to her thoughts, opening doors to Alice's mind and catapulting her into a small car, clean and impersonal like only a rental car can be. Behind the wheel, hands gripped into fists, Alice could see the same girl as before only, instead of a look of doing the right thing, she looked as though her heart had been ripped out, torn to pieces and stepped on a few times. Her golden eyes stared aimlessly ahead of her, no thought of where she was going or what she'll do, she was just a shell. What she had once been was long gone now, taken away by something traumatic.
Outside her car, on a lonely freeway, a sign rose out of the snow-covered vegetation and greeted her with fake cheer and a cheap picture…
Then it ended, jolting Alice back into reality with a sudden end. The brief episode had only left her with familiarity at the name of the town and a parting look at her sad eyes.
An abrupt clattering of wrong notes and conflicting sounds brought Alice's attention to the lower floor. She listened as the piano bench slide backward, grating against the wooden floor and most likely leaving gashes, and could only faintly hear the sound of feet making brief, almost nonexistent, contact with the ground before Edward was standing in her doorway, his now topaz eyes wide with disbelief. His mouth opened and closed a few times before a strangled sound emitted. "B-Bella?" he questioned incredulously. "You saw Bella?"
000
Jasper turned the page of his book sullenly, shifting slightly on the stump he was now sitting upon. It seemed childish, hiding in the woods so he could reflect on a brilliant military strategist's memoirs without feeling what Edward was always feeling, but he just couldn't stand it any more. The boy was a large black hole in Jasper's emotional field; emitting overwhelming amounts of yearning, agitated, and miserable angst into the world.
Knowing that Edward's heart was broken and his soul strained, Jasper tried not to resent him. Even if he did want to, he knew that blaming the boy would be hypocritical; he was driven by a love as life shattering and unflinching as Jasper's own love toward Alice, and if whatever had happened to separate Edward had happened to him, he would have done the same.
But, as the foot deep snow seeped through his clothes, Jasper allowed himself a dash of bitterness.
Probing cautiously further, Jasper searched the air for the now familiar despair in the distance. Seeing as how it had morphed into an easier to take pensive and quiet melancholy and not his full force moods of blind and claustrophobic panicking, Jasper decided to go back into the house and spend some time with Alice, who was in that deep calm that often accompanied her fortune telling.
He chose to walk at a slow, rambling human pace, admiring the way the sun rise set the clouds in the sky on fire. As he approached the house, Jasper could here the gentle playing of a piano, and he smiled. He would deal with anyone who can play that well with so much, perhaps too much, emotion and skillful creativity. The music only added to the beautiful scenery and Jasper felt a comfortable peace fall over him, only to have it quickly interrupted.
It was almost like a shock that stopped him in his tracks. Jasper struggled, trying to sort through this new tide feelings that rocketed and hummed through his body. His fingertips shook, his eyes clenched shut, his joints froze in a stiff stance, and he could pick out only a few from the raging ocean and name them; confusion, worry, shock, and a fierce thrill of wonderment.
Once more getting his limbs to function properly, Jasper was sprinting as quickly as he could the Denali house, ignoring Tanya's questioning look as he shot through the door and up the stairs, to the core of emotion that was knotted in a tight ball, now revealing new additions to the tirade, like eager excitement and the dizzy, light-headed sensation of love.
He arrived at the door to his and Alice's bedroom to find Edward spinning a tiny, pixie-like figure in the air at incomprehensible speeds. When he noticed Jasper's presence, Edward stopped, letting down a very enthusiastic Alice and ran to his adopted brother, clasping Jasper's forearms and grinning a maniac smile that seemed like it was ready to burst. Answering the puzzled question in Jasper's mind, Edward ecstatically shouted, "Alice found her!" before running out of the room, leaving only the echo of a burst of musical and utterly happy laughter in his wake.
Jasper turned to his wife with the utterly bemused look of someone who doesn't understand a bit of what had just happened. Reluctantly, not even sure if he wanted to know the answer, Jasper asked, "What happened to him?"
Alice took her husband's hand and started leading him out of the room and down the stairs. "Let's find out, shall we?"
000
Tanya failed to understand the turn of events that had taken place. This made her angry because, as leader of the Denali coven, she not only insisted, but demanded to be in the loop at all times; this, though, was not one of those times.
Chaos was taking over her home at the moment. It had been quiet only a quarter of an hour before, but now, the Cullens were running left and right, talking in excited voices, then disappearing to go to another room. Tanya turned to Irina and saw an identical look of confusion on her face. Soon, Carmen, Eleazar, and Kate joined them on the couch to watch as Edward, dressed in durable clothes and a pair of water proof boots, came down the staircase with Carlisle.
Carlisle took one look around at his family and friends in the living room and sent a smile toward the confused Denalis. The hum of conversation died down when he opened his mouth. "We," he said, "have good news." He motioned for his family to all take seats and finally sat down in a chair himself. Some how, Tanya felt that this wouldn't be particularly good news for her.
She turned her attention toward Carlisle as he began, "Over a year ago, a young man was shot. My family knows of this, but I'm afraid that you, my friends, have not heard of how Edward has become one of our kind. He was the young man, and he fell into my care at a hospital in New York City. It was obvious that he was going to die, the only question was when."
He stopped for a moment, letting the news sink into their minds. Yes, they had wondered how Edward had joined them, but in respect toward his privacy they kept their mouths shut. "What made up my mind to change him, though," Carlisle continued, "was that he knew exactly what I was." There was a wave of shock that ran through the Denalis; no humans should know that vampires even existed.
"Until now, I was the only one that knew why Edward was aware of our kind. My family may have been suspicious or guessed at it, but his human life is as much a mystery to them as it is to you. Edward?" he asked. "Would you mind telling the rest of us what you have just told me upstairs?"
Suddenly, all eyes were on Edward, and they finally saw the expression on his face. It was not the habitual polite mask they had become so accustomed to, but filled to the brim with joyful excitement. He smiled at them all with sparkling eyes as he said, "When I was human," in a voice more velvet and melodic in his happy state than they had ever heard, "I lived by the ocean with my parents. One night there was a storm stronger than most I have ever seen and, out on the pier a few doors down, a girl had fallen in the raging waves.
"I dove in after her and only managed to get caught in the tide far below the water. She…saved me, in more ways than one, I now know. Faster than possible, she cut through the heavy waves with ease and dragged me to shore, before disappearing out of my life all together."
His already animated face softened and a warm glow of tenderness encompassed his words. "I fell in love with the girl, and was determined to find her.It didn't matter that she was exactly like the tribal stories describing their 'Cold Ones' or 'Bloodsuckers,' she was now apart of my life. All I really had was her name, Isabella Swan, though. It took me months to track her down to New York.
"I found her at the Public Library, where she worked, and we met. From the look of her eyes, I could tell that she musthave felt the same way as me, but she left, saying that she was putting me in danger." He let out a grim chuckle and added, "It turned out that the gunman was more jeopardizing than she was, though.
"I have been waiting this whole time to gain enough control so I can go into the world and continue my search for her, but Alice," he threw a quick grin her way, "has just seen where she is, and I'm going to leave and see her." He stood up, and took a small bag, containing a phone, compass, map, and change of clothes, from Esme and gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. "Goodbye. I hope to return in a few days to introduce her to you all."
After a few more hugs and mumbled goodbyes, he was gone, leaving the two families to their varying degrees of reactions. The Cullens, who had at least speculated at the reason for his moods, seemed to be as happy, if not a little worried, as Edward. Carmen, Eleazar, and Kate seemed perplexed at the sudden unloading of information but took it in stride and joined their friends in conversation.
Tanya, though, was staring out the window at Edward's retreating figure with disappointment. Her pride was hurt, and the first real chalenge of a man, one who she had to work for and aspire after, was head over heels for a woman she had never even heard of. Isabella Swan…hmm, Tanya supposed that she ought to at least find out who her competition was. That way, she thought with a smug smile, I know who to gloat to when I win.
Now, I don't want to jump on the "Tanya is a villain" bandwagon, but I believe that she would, for the sake of her pride, take measures that others wouldn't. She'll cause trouble in the future, but I'm sure it will all be, mostly, unintentional.
I'd love to hear what you think.