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Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer and I flipped a coin for the rights of Twilight back in the day and, to my despair, I lost.
Chapter Six:
In Which Edward Loses His Fondest Wish
Rosalie turned a page of the magazine held delicately in between her hands, feigning interest at the upcoming spring fashions, and strained her ears. Three rooms over, Tanya was having a private phone conversation. This, in itself, was suspicious for the simple fact that no one in this house ever took a private call. It was impossible with a clairvoyant and a mind-reader, not to mention over a dozen pairs of extra-sensitive ears, so they didn't even bother.
Until now that is.
It seemed that Tanya had a plan of mysterious nature, and this little touch of drama beckoned Rosalie closer, enticing her vampiric curiosity. No one else had seemed to notice as Tanya slipped away with her cell phone, whispering and muttering as only a vampire could do.
From where she sat, Rosalie could only hear bits and pieces – "…I want to know about someone…surely your people know all of us…Olympic Peninsula. Why? What has she done…" – but to her they just didn't add up. No names were used, that Rosalie had heard, and it was all ambiguously vague.
Soon she heard the snap of a cell phone closing shut and Rosalie focused back on the magazine, reading along the lines but not comprehending what they said. She was too preoccupied with what she saw out of the corner of her eye; Tanya.
She was treading slowly around the corner into the living room, her brow wrinkled in deep thought, her eyes downcast and clearly puzzled, her lips pressed tightly together in a tight frown. Tanya took one look at Rosalie and a guilty expression appeared before disappearing just as fast when she composed her features. You could still see it though, in the corners of her eyes and the way her hand clenched too tightly on the cell phone in her hand.
Then Tanya was out the back door and sprinting toward the forest, a recklessness that Rosalie had never seen in her apparent in the swift turns and oblivious speed.
Rosalie set the magazine down and tucked a golden curl behind her ear. Tanya had been acting strange for the past two days, not talking much and wrapped in her own blanket of quiet determination. Now, she seemed so startlingly uncertain and fragile.
She had a secret, and Rosalie was going to get to the bottom of it.
000
Wind carried the snow in from the gentle drift outside. It blanketed the wooden floor of the cabin, untouched save for the swinging door, which banged back and forth with each gust from the blustery weather. But the only inhabitant didn't mind. He just sat on the small bed, impervious to a cold that was physical, knowing that it was no match for the barren wasteland that his heart had become.
In his clenched hand was a piece of paper, folded and wrinkled and smeared from the near hundred times it had been looked over with varying degrees of loss, anger and sadness. It read:
I've never really had a reason to live for; goals, yes, but never something that you set your heart on and pray for every night. But then you came along, Edward, out of nowhere, turning my simple existence inside out and making all my thinking muddled. It had been simple before, I only had to think of myself, but with you, I suddenly cared. Edward, you made my knees weak and somehow gave me hope, not the acceptance I had been living with, for the future.
I suppose I made you mine, in a way. Everything that concerned you was of central importance to me. I wanted to know everything about you and make you as happy as you could make me with just the memory of one smile.
That is why I have to leave. I know it's a stupid reason that is overused in books and movies across the world, but if I were to stay, you wouldn't be what I most desperately hoped for you to be: safe. All you have to know is that there are some people after me. When I was changed, they wanted my power and tried to make me stay with them, but I escaped. I want to settle this with them, tie up all the loose ends and return to you as soon as possible. Please believe that, Edward. My love is the one thing you can be absolutely certain of, don't ever doubt that.
And don't come after me. You have been chasing me ever since we met and quitting might seem hard to you, but you have to. Please, for me. When this is over, we'll be together, out of all harm. I promise.
I love you Edward, and I'm so sorry,
Bella
Despite her wishes, he had tried tracking her down. The sight of the empty house terrified him and he had immediately ran back to the woods, his nose in the air, looking for any sign of her passage. But the snow had then blanketed everything, leaving Edward with nothing to go on. He had stumbled back to the house, feeling his world crash around him.
From the beginning of his transformation, he had had the hope of Bella. It was what had driven him to pushing his control and testing himself over and over. Now that she had left him when she knew of his love put his whole life into question. Edward felt the feelings the thought of her had put a stop to crash over his body. Suddenly, he was homesick, mentally exhausted, and unsure of what to do next.
She doesn't want me, he thought miserably. The note in his hands mocked him, teased at the ends of his thoughts, and danced across his mind in loping, sarcastic sways. Yet, no matter how much his wounded spirit yelled for him to rip it up, throw it away, or just simply let it fall onto the snow-covered floor, he couldn't. His heart told him those thoughts were unfair and self-centered. Bella does want you, Edward. That's why she left.
But that was a path Edward didn't want to go down. He needed time to think and plan. He needed to evaluate his position and look for a way out, an emergency exit he just couldn't see in the swirling mass of bright, florescent hurt that hid it from sight.
Reaching for his phone and pressing one of the speed dials, Edward thought that Bella was right. He would continue chasing after her.
000
"I want a list of all her properties within the Olympic Peninsula, Demetri. My entourage and I will arrive in Seattle on our private jet within a few hours and you are expected to be waiting for us there." Aro flipped the phone shut, handing it mechanically to the waiting hands of an attendant to his right. He rubbed his hands together in a decidedly predator-like gesture that seemed to signal that the hunt is almost over, the prey is within reach.
And it was all thanks to a stupid, jealous woman. If she hadn't called, asking about a girl, then the Volturi could have wasted years chasing Isabella from house to house, just missing her. But now, the choice had narrowed drastically to two houses; a small property in a town none of them had ever heard of, or a sea-side mansion. They were going toward the latter, the more likely location, first. That Denali girl had said that was where Isabella and the foolish boy had met.
"Master?" called the soft voice of Jane. "The plane is ready to take off."
Aro smiled at the small but lethal girl and answered, "Let us leave, then, my dear." The girl's lips twisted into a smirk and she took off before him, joining her brother on the way. The two angelic children had specifically asked to join him on this journey. Though their powers didn't harm the one they were chasing, they were an intimidating force. They hated Isabella for so easily denying her powers and wanted revenge.
And, if they still could not get their hands on her, then they could at least hurt the boy she loved, Edward.
Tanya had told him of the boy. His good, old friend Carlisle apparently had a hand in his transformation. Edward could read minds without the necessary contact that Aro himself needed, and this worried Aro. He knew that the Cullen's were becoming quite a powerful coven, gaining more members and alliances as the years passed, their talents unrivaled and unique. They were well respected, as well, a trait that could be dangerous for Aro, who had gained many enemies during his stay in power.
But, then again, Aro was thinking of this wrong. He didn't need to think of this as a cruel act of tearing apart any threat he foresaw and ruining otherwise happy and fulfilling lives, but as an opportunity for…recruiting.
000
Trying to not look at the clock, Carlisle paced his study. Back and forth across the floor he went; his footsteps unintentionally in time with the internal ticking of the offending timepiece perched on the mantle. He shouldn't be worrying, yet worry he did. Living as long as he has, Carlisle's developed and finely tuned senses to the world around him and he could feel when a shift between circumstances took place. Now, he had an apprehension he couldn't shake and his mind wandered over to Edward, his son.
It would have been fate, or some odd kind of coincidence that his phone were to ring then, but Carlisle had been puzzling Edward's situation for hours, making the name that flashed across the screen of his cell long awaited and too late.
He flicked it open and questioned, "Edward?" with open concern.
From the other side he could hear the familiar high winds that accompanied running and his son's voice barely bothering to rise over it. "She's left, Carlisle." His voice sounded so dead; as controlled and forcibly restrained as the times he failed in training and saw his plans set back another month.
"Bella?" Was all Carlisle's mind could come up with. He realized how stupid and insensitive that sounded and tried to comfort the poor boy. "Edward, I'm sure it must have been some misunderstanding. Or, if it is what you think best, you can come home-"
"No, I'm not going home, or, at least, what is now considered my home." Carlisle had never heard the articulate and thought-out Edward seem so flustered and indecisive. "I'm going back to where this all started. I need to think this out and work out a new plan. Maybe I will say a final goodbye to my parents… Then I'm leaving, for good. I refuse to give up on her, Carlisle." He sounded like he wanted to say more, but it passed, and in short, clipped words, Edward ended the conversation with, "I will visit you if I'm ever in the area again and will call to check up sooner or later. It's best that I disappear for a while… Goodbye, and give my love to the others."
The line went dead and Carlisle stared at the blank screen with shock. Then, his mind began working once more, catching the phrase he should be most terrified off in that farewell: "Maybe I will say a final goodbye to my parents..."
Carlisle ran out of his study and into the hallway, unnecessarily yelling his daughter's name. "Alice?" he called as he passed her room. "Alice! This is impor-"
"We're here, Carlisle," calmly said a dainty voice from the main hall. He was there in a second and saw Alice and Jasper standing side by side, both wearing clothes that were tough and durable. "Here." She tossed him a pile of clothes and urged, "Dress quickly and we still have a chance of catching up."
Hesitating only for a second, Carlisle asked, "Will they be safe?"
"I don't know." She ran a hand through her disarray of hair and Jasper wrapped an arm around her waist, sending out a wave of tranquility to anchor her to the present. "It keeps changing, but sometimes he avoids them entirely and sometimes they die horribly." Her golden gaze connected earnestly with his and in a mere whisper she sighed, "But we've got more things to worry about than his parents."
000
In the burning glory of the sunset, the ocean waves were painted the most fantastic hues of red and orange. To Bella, it all looked like blood.
She was in the small space in her basement, curled in a ball with six inches of steel surrounding her on every side. The doorway was concealed, and only through pressing a specially concealed spot would a panel slide out, asking for a sixteen digit password. She felt like a child playing a demented game of hide and seek, only the prize for winning is your life. She knew it wouldn't stop them, but, perhaps, while they were momentarily distracted by the defenses, she could escape through the back entrance and make it could safely.
I loud crash echoed down from upstairs and Bella knew that they had gotten through her first line of security, which was, basically, her only security besides the compartment she was cowering in.
They didn't bother to be quiet as an authoritive voice ordered them to fan out and search for her. Bella wasn't breathing anymore as the footsteps slowly paced across the wooden floors of her house, invading it in their search for her.
Bella cursed herself for coming back here. She had only wanted a place to plan so she could then fly to Italy and speak with them on her terms. But now, she was to be a prisoner of theirs; unable to barter and bargain for the freedom she so desperately wished for.
The basement stairs creaked.
Waiting until the person owning them seemed to be inspecting the wall holding the hiding place, Bella pressed a button to her left and a passage revealed in front of her. Quietly, yet swiftly, she pulled herself along the seven feet of passage then came to the ladder rungs she had installed going straight up to a spot on her driveway, where she could then run like Hell in whatever direction didn't have any opposition. She'd swim if she had to.
At the top of the ladder, Bella unlatched the trapdoor and the reddish sunlight covered her pale features. A noise below showed that the assailant downstairs had managed to rip through the reinforced steel, Bella hurriedly pulled herself through the hole and turned to run. She had made only the depressing distance of two feet when a voice called to her.
"Hello, Isabella, my dear," it purred with satisfaction pouring out through every syllable. "How nice it is to see you again."
000
Darkness had fully fallen upon the sea-side community when a lithe figure climbed through the open windows of the Masen's home. It walked silently to a chair in the corner of the master bedroom, and sat down with a ponderous air of one deep in thought. The head tilted to its side when it concentrated on the slow, sleeping minds of the two forms in the bed.
They were huddled together underneath the massive sheets, clinging to each other even in sleep, depending upon the other to protect them from the malicious nightmares that hid in the night. There were abandoned tissue boxes feebly peeking out from the mass of their used and fallen insides. A TV had been brought into the room on a cart. Towers of plates and bowls leaned precariously to their tipping point, mostly filled with untouched food. It looked as though the two hadn't left the room for a year.
The person in the chair's attention was brought to the slender figure as her breathing became more panicked. She writhed underneath the heavy comforter and bolted upright, tears streaming down her face, her auburn hair resembling a haystack. The man in the chair froze, and willed himself to sink back into the cushions. He didn't dare move for fear that she would see even the slightest sliver of who he was.
Looking down at her husband to make sure she did not wake him with her start, Elizabeth wiped the troublesome tears from her eyes. In her dream, she was back on the phone, listening to an officer tell her that her son was dead. She knew that all the shows and books said that mourning parents ought to busy themselves with activities and clubs, but, to Elizabeth, that felt disrespectful. Both her and Eddie had loved their son so much, that merely forgetting about him and hiding their misery was impossible.
At least she had Eddie, though. They were all they had left now, and they didn't teeter into the fighting and blaming that Elizabeth had heard accompanied their situation. She gently ran a hand over his soft, black hair and felt love blossom within her; he hadn't even suggested that they try and forget about Edward, and had no complaint to the long path of mourning they were walking, hand-in-hand, down. Elizabeth was blessed to be married to him.
She cast her eyes across the dark room, taking in the mess that she could see highlighted with the bright light of the full moon flooding through the windows. Elizabeth knew that before she wouldn't have let anything like this happen within her household, but every time she tried, a little object, something trivial, would remind her of Edward and she couldn't carry on any longer, incapable of any motion except cradling the found object in her arms and remembering.
She might as well take down the dishes, though. The swaying stacks had been worrying Elizabeth, making her think that any moment they would fall on top of something important. And, with the piles of old baby albums and carefully drawn sheets of music, that could be anywhere.
Awkwardly getting out of bed, Elizabeth felt unprotected away from the calming warmth of the sheets and the needed presence of Eddie. The cold floorboards underneath her feet felt foreign and vague; she was suddenly aware that she was now a stranger in her own house. Sighing, she held the first mass of dirty dishes in her arms and turned to the d-
There was a man in the corner.
Elizabeth screamed and dropped all that was in her arms taking several hasty steps back. Behind her, she heard Eddie wake up with a start, urgently groping for his glasses as he frantically asked how she was. Elizabeth spotted the cordless phone on the dresser and was about to make a move for it when she heard the man speak.
"Wait, don't, please." It was a soft, vulnerable voice, pulling at her heartstrings with dreadful familiarity. "I will leave; I promise. I just…wanted to see you again. I shouldn't have. Sorry." The man started toward the window, his steps slow, his hand lightly touching a picture frame on the wall, and he avoided the moonlight, hiding his face from them.
Behind Elizabeth, Eddie's mind reeled. That voice, had he imagined it? Was it that he hadn't yet shaken off the last vestige of his terrifying dream, where he had to watch his son shot in the heart over and over, or could it possibly be…? "Edward?" he found himself calling. "Is it really you?" Eddie heard his wife swallow audibly, already knowing that she had thought the same thing he had.
The man stopped in his tracks. In the shadowed alley where he walked, he turned, the outline of his head seeming to consider the light of the window in front of him for a moment, and then he stepped forward.
The Masens gasped. There, standing before them, was their dead son, illuminated from the light behind him like an angel. His features seemed to have changed, became too perfect for the likes of any mortal human, but it was Edward. He regarded his parents with a fretful expression, listening to their minds with diligence and ready to bolt if they didn't want to see him. "Hello," he whispered in that soft, velvet voice.
"Oh Edward." Feeling pulled to this beautiful dream, Elizabeth was oblivious to everything around her, from her husband's slow, fumbling task of dismantling himself from the bed and onto his feet to the sharp pieces of broken dinner settings that littered the floor. "How?" Her mind went back to when she had not been able to see the corpse in New York. The doctor had said she wouldn't want to see her son like that…they had agreed… "You're…alive?"
Edward, who had been both painfully aware of the too-hopeful expressions dawning on his parents' faces and how his mother's foot was getting, in her little shuffling steps, dangerously more likely to stepping on one of the glinting remains of a bowl. Quickly taking a step forward, Edward took his mother by the elbow with one hand and his father's shoulder with the other, leading them to the bed and gesturing for them to sit down on the end.
There they watched, in awe and entranced, as he began to pace back and forth, feeling the shiver that still stayed even though his icy touch had left. His thick, durable boots crushed any offending glass and, occasionally, he would glance at them, open his mouth as if to speak, and close it with a snap before continuing his pacing with renewed fervor.
Eddie, confused by this odd and implausible world he had woken up to, took his wife's hand in his own. She squeezed it with what reassurance she could and they continued to watch their ghost of a son run a troubled hand through his hair.
As the word "ghost" ran through the Masen's minds in almost synchronicity, Edward grabbed at it and held it down with every mental ounce of strength he had. He turned toward their grief-ridden, disbelieving, and, somehow the worst, unwaveringly loving faces with the same emotions that danced across his own perfect features. "No, Mom," he said. "I am not alive."
In this, the house that he was raised in, Edward's voice was growing more and more out of place with its alien beauty. He was brought here as a child. He ate, slept, bled, cried, and lived within its comforting walls. This house and, he realized with pain, his parents, belonged to his human self, not the new, dazzling and deadly creature he had become. "I am dead."
Elizabeth's and Eddie's faces dropped, but only slightly; they were aware that they were on stolen time with their boy, and they would take it, no matter how over the edge it all seemed. Eddie pushed his glasses up and squinted, looking for a glimmer, perhaps a shimmer, in his son's form. An old question, one that had been haunting him doggedly for the long, hard year, found its way to his mouth. "Why did you leave, Edward?"
Their boy looked at them with dark, hunted eyes. They saw, even in the uncertain moonlight, that they were not the lovely green ones he had inherited from his mother, but something entirely different; foreign. Edward sank down to the floor, folding his legs like a pensive Indian chieftain, and looked up at them with the same devotion and admiration he had had as he stared up at them those many times during his childhood while listening to countless stories of adventure and romance. Now, though, it was his turn to tell the tale.
"I fell in love," he said simply. In the faint light they could see a glint of silver as Edward pulled a delicate bracelet from his pocket and held it lightly in his hand, like a sacred thing. "Completely and utterly in love." His eyes flickered up to meet theirs, asking for forgiveness, praying for someone to lighten the emotional load he held on his back, but they could only stare back at his heartbreaking face and see the rather desperate way he held the jewelry. "Dad, I remember when you once told me that you fell in love with Mom the moment you saw her. And when she stepped into my life, I was instantly smitten; I had to follow her, had to have her."
Elizabeth, a tear running down her cheek, reached out and, in the most motherly of gestures, ran the tips of her fingers over Edward's face. Once again the cold surprised her, but not as much as his reaction. He placed his icy hand over hers and his eyes darted between the sweet, kind expressions of his parents. "I'm…so sorry," he breathed, his eyes so full of sadness and emotion that it was a wonder tears hadn't started their slow wavering descent down his face.
"Don't be sorry," Eddie said, getting off the edge of the bed and kneeling before his son. "Never be sorry. We love you, Edward. No matter what." He leaned forward and wrapped his arms around Edward and soon felt Elizabeth join in on the embrace, her body shaking with her sobs.
It felt so good to them, holding Edward just like they had done countless times before, in both the good and the bad, that they didn't notice how his body froze, fighting off a monster that he refused to let out. The moment of blood lust stood face to face with Edward's frantic need for this last moment with his parents. There was a brief struggle, but his heart won out and he returned the hug.
Just for that brief, shimmering moment, they were family again, and that was enough for them.
They stayed like that for several minutes of silence, but Edward heard an unmistakable call of his new life ringing in the chambers of his mind. He sighed, interrupting the happy memories of more simple times that were running through his parent's minds. He pulled back, staring into the faces of his two idolized heroes and said his last farewell.
"I have to leave now," he said. They, who have both been well taught in the world of fiction, took this as meaning that he no longer had to linger. Edward didn't bother to correct them. It was much easier to let them think he was a tortured spirit, a concept accepted to them, then entangle their lives any more with the supernatural.
Words, cliché and reminiscent of so many movies, though completely heartfelt, fell from his mouth as he noiselessly backtracked to the window. "I love you both so much. You were the most perfect parents a kid could ask for and I wouldn't want to change one second of it. Goodbye." Then he was gone out the window, moving toward the future with a settled hear and new motivation.
Elizabeth and Eddie wordlessly clung to one another, needing no words to express the feeling coursing through their bodies. They didn't have to try and convince themselves that this was some odd, shared dream. In their need to come to peace with what had happened to their son, they believed it more readily than any of the other events that had happened in the past year.
It would still be some hours until they went back to bed, but it would be a dreamless, restful sleep. They were finally out of the dark tunnel and into the bright calm of acceptance.
000
The Cullens found Edward on the pier, resting his arms on the repaired railing and staring at the horizon, where the star-speckled sky met with the calm sea. As they approached, he looked over his shoulder and answered the unasked questions running wildly through their heads. "No, I did not kill my parents. They are in the house, unharmed. We just need to work out the past so we could…move on." He spoke the last bit with reverence, making it seem like a path to something heavenly.
Carlisle's mind settled from the whirlwind of doubts it had been and fell into understanding relief. "Good. Let's start home before the sun r-"
"No," Edward interrupted. "I meant what I said on the phone." He took a deep breath, trying to block the guilt that came rushing in when he heard the sad, unintentionally pleading thoughts in his adopted family's minds and-
Froze.
Weaving almost unnoticeably underneath the heady scents of human blood from the sleeping individuals in the houses, the distinctive ones of the Cullens', and the full smell of the sea beneath him, there was something dearly familiar to him. It reminded him of long, treasured hours alone in a cabin, brief moments of complete happiness, and freesia.
His face was a mask of shock, his head telling him that it couldn't be, that it was just wishful thinking. "Bella?"
Jasper gave Alice a questioning glance and grew only more apprehensive at the unsurprised knowing that wound through her emotions and showed itself in her large, pitying eyes.
Carlisle followed Edward's gaze up the length of the beach to a beautiful mansion. He cautiously sniffed the air and let the variety of smells sink in. He had identified every one of them but two; a sweet, floral scent and one that was darker, older, seeming to be the combination of several different sources all collected together to form something that felt like a predator to Carlisle. He didn't know where to place the somewhat familiar scent until it hit him. With growing foreboding, he hissed, "The Volturi."
Edward snapped out of his daze and tried to catch up with the flurry of ominous thoughts that took over his adoptive father. "What do you mean?" He couldn't pick anything from Carlisle's mind but the image of dark castle walls in the shape of a circular room where robed figures looked down at you with suspicion. "Who are they?"
Trying to rid himself of their threatening presence in his thoughts, Carlisle looked over to Alice, standing beside her husband. Her face said that misfortune was coming, her eyes said that it would not be merciful. Carlisle wrung his hands and finally faced Edward. "This is much worse than I had thought."
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