13) Remembering

I slammed the door behind me as I exploded through the front of the house.

In the living room, everyone in my family sat solemnly and avoided my anguished glare. Everyone except Jacob. I flicked my stinging eyes away from his sorry eyes and started up the stairs.

"Nessie!" Jake called after me. "Slow down, honey!"

I paid no attention to him, I just kept up on my rampage through my bedroom door and shut it forcefully, knocking a picture of the wall from the impact.

"Shit," I muttered as it hit the crystal bowl on my stand and smashed it into a jigsaw piece.

I sighed heavily and fell onto the floor. Nursing my face in my hands and fighting to hold back the tears I could feel beginning to overflow again.

"Ness?"

I registered Jacob when he pushed the door open silently and moved into my room.

"Sweetheart," he leant down and scooped me into his arms before he walked over and sat on my bed.

My hand still covered my face, and my body was curled against the front of him. He pulled my hands away from my face and swept at the stray tear flowing down my cheek.

"Sweetie, I'm…" he licked his lips and bit them, shaking his head slightly. He had nothing to say.

I did. I didn't want to say it, but I did have something to say. I'm sure he knows; he would have found out before me, but I still had to tell him. I had to say it; accept it.

"He's gone, Jacob. Grandpa's gone," and with that the tears inundated me, so I let them go.

My heart felt as though it was being stabbed over and over again with each sob and even Jacob, as he locked me to him, didn't cease them. My body shuddered and ruptured cruelly and if it weren't for Jacob I probably would have had to forage my room to pick up all the shards. My hands found their way to Jake's shirt and I leant forward to press my face into his chest. He tucked my head in underneath his chin, whispering shhh's and kissing my hair while he rubbed my back and massaged my neck.

Eventually my tears settled and I twisted my head to press my cheek against his shoulder and burrow my nose into his collar.

"She didn't change him," I whispered.

Jacob's arms squeezed me tighter and he ducked his head to kiss my temple. "He didn't want to be changed, sweetie. He didn't want to live without end; that's not what life is to him."

I moped as I asked why and Jacob's chest rammed into me as he heaved in a breath and released it in a sigh.

"He didn't want to have to wait around and watch the world die," he explained.

"The worlds not dying, the people are," I muttered bitterly.

"That's… I get how that sounds but honey, that's not what I meant. What I meant was that Charlie believes that when you're born, you grow and experience different things through life and then after all your lessons and when your times comes, you leave the world. He doesn't believe that external existence is life, that's not what he was born for. He just wants to live his share and move on, baby."

"But, Mom's going to live forever because she's a vampire. Why wouldn't Grandpa want the same thing? Why wouldn't he want to…" I trailed off as I tried to understand why Grandpa never wanted to live forever with the rest of his family. I tried to understand why he didn't want to stay with us.

"Your mom chose this life for herself. She chose this life for your dad, and for you. If she never wanted to be a vampire, she wouldn't be here."

"Why?" I drew away from his shoulder to gaze into his face.

"Because she would have died," he stroked the tear streaks off of my cheeks and cleared my curls from my face again. "She almost died in labour with you, the only reason she ever survived was because of your dad's venom. It was a close call, sweetie. She almost didn't make it."

I could feel my eyes den underneath my creased eyebrows and flicked through the memories from when I was born.

The suffocation as the sac broke and the frantic escape I suddenly wanted, the frantic escape that I needed. I remembered my mother's screams for me, for her. The snapping, the ripping and the clawing of Mom's stomach and womb as Dad ruined his way to me. Seeing my father and feeling his hands cradle me for the first time. "Renesmee" he had whispered. I remember Mom demanding me, and felt it as Dad rested me in her arms. I could feel heat through the air, hotter than my Mom's skin but didn't look; I was distracted by her blood and sunk my little teeth into her. When she had gasped, Dad snatched me back and told me I was not to bite my Momma. Aunt Rose had come in then and carried me downstairs to feed. I remember the bottle she had stuck in my mouth as I tried to break free of her grasp to look over her shoulder at the most beautiful thing I knew I would ever see. I saw Jacob.

I fought more in Aunt Rose's grip and struggled my absolute hardest to get to him, to snuggle up to him, to feel safe. Forever. Aunt Rose refused to release me so I stared at him until he looked at me. When he finally glanced at me, his eyes full of loathing, I locked my eyes onto his and his eyes softened radically. I smiled a wide toothy grin at him and he was undoubtedly taken aback.

Jacob. My Jacob. Forever.

I also remembered the faint erratic beating of a fading heart. The hurrying, the pause… thump, thump… thump.

I remembered silence.

"I remember," my eyes focused back in on Jacob's face.

He searched my face for a moment and then silently removed my hand from his cheek. It confused me a little since I never memorized putting it there.

"Wow… I've never seen it from your perspective before," he mumbled.

"What exactly did you see?" I asked.

"Everything you did from the beginning. I didn't realize I looked that shocked when you smiled at me," he grinned at me this time and I giggled.

"You looked absolutely gob smacked, Jake," I snickered through fits of titters. "It has to be the funniest face you've ever pulled."

"Funniest? Why? What other faces have I pulled?"

"Heaps, you pull funny faces all the time. That one was my number one favourite though."

"Good for you," he murmured. "Honestly though, wouldn't you be freaked out if a ten minute old baby grinned at you with a wide set of sharp teeth, gorgeous caramel curls and pretty chocolate eyes, even if they were half vampire?"

"Probably," I admitted. "But you still love me."

"Yeah, I do," he smiled a little as he rubbed his thumb over my cheek.

It was silent for a moment until I recalled exactly why Jake was here holding me and another tear crept down my face.

"Honey," he bent to kiss away the tear and pressed his cheek into my neck. "He's happier where he is now, that's all that matters."

"I know, and I'm glad he's happy and all but… I can't believe he's gone. I loved him and I didn't think he'd leave so soon," I breathed. I mimicked Jacob and lowered my head into the crook of his neck.

"He was only human, sweetheart."

I nodded and pressed my face deeper into his neck. "I'm going to miss him so much." A few more tears broke free, soon followed by the rest of the herd.

"I know, baby. I know," he kissed into my neck.

One of his arms encircled me tighter and pressed me solidly against him while the other stroked through my hair and around my neck, helping to disperse a little of my distress.

This time around, the tears never subsided; they kept flowing form unknown places in my wounded spirit. The only thing keeping me in some kind of order was Jacob. He kept repeatedly picking up each piece of my spirit as it slashed away from me and reinstated it, waiting for it to solder itself back in before he let go and picked up another piece.

This only made me cry harder that he had to sit here and do this, so I hugged him around the neck and sobbed sorry as many times as I could with each pause between my slashes.

"Don't be. Nessie, don't be; there's no reason for you to be sorry. You're hurting, and you need to let it go. I'm here for you, honey. As long as you need me, I'm here," he breathed into my ear as he moved us into a laying position. "Let it go, sweetheart. Let it go."

That was all the permission I needed. I set off on another storm of sobs and crawled into Jacob's side, using his arm as a pillow and holding myself to him with one of my hands wrapped around his waist and draping over his back while the other pressed into his chest. He crawled as close as he could to me without laying on top of me and traced my back while he kissed my tears away.

I finally began to lose consciousness, my mind coming and going with each breath. My uneven hiccups and Jake's comforting voice and heart beat set a contrasting lullaby that soon lulled my to sleep, and my thoughts eventually went black.

Blank. Nothing. Silence.