In the year 2020, Vampires took control of society and ordered all humans placed in vampire custody. The people who were not captured formed a Resistance movement, headed by the Human Council, who began to plan the Insurgence.
I am, of course, indebted to Stephenie Meyer for this world we all play in, and these characters we all adore. Additionally, I am indebted to hitntr01, who has graciously allowed me to use certain concepts from her wonderful story "In Need of Rescue", which constitute much of the background of my own story. These include: the language Vampiri, the Rules, the machines used to draw blood from humans, Manners Training, and the plot theme of Edward working as a guard at a facility holding humans. Thank you, hitntr01.
Chapter 46 – Opening the brothels
While Marcus worked in Jasper's office upstairs, I began to plan the release of the brothel girls with the allies. Marcus' guard was antsy, and Jasper began to wave them outside. "Lord," I began, addressing him as the Major, since the guards were accepting him in this role.
Jasper looked at me steadily. "Marcus' guard will not be safe outside. There are allies outside who have been waiting for years for some action. The smell of Italian blood is inflaming them."
It was true. Billy had called one of the Home boys and warned that Sam was having a lot of trouble keeping Brady and Colin in line. They were itching to take out some vampires, now that Aro was down. They wanted to take part in the dismantling of the vampire world by literally tearing apart a few vampires. But the Human Council wanted some of the Volturi guards alive in order to give testimony and stand trial. We had a great deal of information from the mind-readers, but once again, we didn't want the human race to rely solely on vampire allies' testimony in a trial of the vampire leaders.
So instead of sending the guards outside, Jasper sent the guards to the third floor to wait in the hall outside of the office Marcus was working in.
I turned to Carlisle. "There will be a lot of badly injured girls being released from custody in a few hours. We're going to need help…"
Carlisle recovered himself, looking at me intensely. "Edward is a doctor. He and I will both help. We will need a lot of supplies. I will go to Seattle…"
"I would prefer if you stayed in Forks. I need you," I said softly.
Carlisle ran his hand through his hair and then smiled. "I will send for supplies and have them brought to the hospital."
The mind-reader told me that Crazy wanted to come to Forks, but I asked him to request that she go work with the ally doctor in the Midwest. My doctor friend had been training the recovering girls she had treated, but Crazy still had medical skills from her EMT days as a human that would be useful to the doctor at this time.
Before noon the next day, the buses started arriving with the girls who the allies had begun to pick up from the brothels.
I was surprised to see that all of the Cullens went to the hospital to offer their assistance to the human girls.
There was an appalling lack of pain medication, and Carlisle was doing triage on a group of young women who would die even if the best medical care from twenty years ago had been available. Jasper moved from room to room, using his gift to give the girls' a few minutes of peace. After he left, their pain would begin again, but the respite gave them time to get their thoughts in order.
Rosalie stunned us all. It was as if she finally began to realize that her human ordeal had been visited on every young human girl when they reached the age of sixteen. Like Jasper, Rosalie moved from girl to girl, talking with them, getting their names, and occasionally getting one of them to laugh. She combed their hair and helped them wash, comforting them as best she could. These actions, however small, would have been unimaginable coming from Rosalie just a few days ago.
The toll it took on Rosalie was only obvious when she left the rooms. I occasionally caught a glimpse of her as she leaned against one of the walls in the hallway between her visits to the girls' rooms. It was as if twenty years of blocking her thoughts and emotions broke at once. Esme had also come to the hospital and was going from room to room with Carlisle, helping take histories and get names and other personal information.
After a few days, I found Esme softly talking to Rosalie in a hallway. Rosalie was leaning against a wall, with her usually haughty head bowed, looking like she would cry if she could. It appears that the rift between them had been healed by the joint effort of working with the dying human teenagers.
Jasper continued to go back to his house at night, to check on Ardella and Amy. It was odd, but he seemed to take comfort in making Ardella's daughter Amy laugh. I knew his relationship with the child probably started as a way to gain Ardella's trust, but the bond developing between himself and the child was real.
As the vampires in the town started to realize the tide was turning in the humans' favor, they began to let the humans in their custody walk outside freely without wearing collars. As Forks was small, the sixteen humans in the city soon found one another and began talking about their lives.
Rosalie had suggested to Emmett, who continued to appear at his job at the bar daily, that he might want to get some textbooks from the high school. Emmett continued to give informal updates on the status of the Insurgency to the vampires of Forks, until such time as the Human Council started announcing the planned release of all the humans in custody.
Why the Human Council was being so damned slow, I didn't know. They had known what was going to happen, why hadn't they gotten their plan ready a year ago?
Finally, the announcements were made.
The Human Council announced that all humans were free.
The humans living in the death camps were to be moved to apartments that the allies had been setting up and stocking in preparation for this day.
The humans living in vampire homes were encouraged to move to these complexes as well, or to local housing, as they would need help with independent living skills. We had talked Mademoiselle, the Manners Training teacher, into coming up with a program for developing the necessary skills needed for independent living. The former human blood slaves would eventually be allowed to move back into the houses they had lived in during their captivity, or move to other housing of their choice. Most humans had been told, as they were growing up, where their human families had lived. Many had street addresses or family names that the allies could track. Quite a few had expressed an interest in eventually making their way back to their family's homes.
The brother girls would begin moving into the apartment complexes as they became strong enough to leave the hospitals.
In the complexes, people would be in group living, learning basic life skills such as cooking, reading, and the basics of independent living.
Each city would be placed under a provisional government, composed of human residents of that city during the Vampire Occupation. This council would consist of former human blood slaves, residents of the brothels, if there had been one in the city, and the living death camps, if there had been one in the city. God help the vampires living in a city that had supported a brothel. Where possible, a former colony member, who had experienced independent living and self-government, was added to this provisional council. This council was given complete control of all aspects of city governance, both human and vampire. They had local authority over all vampires in the town. This was part of the plan that I had encouraged. I had noticed in my travels that the enforcement of the Rules varied from city to city. So if the vampires had been kind to humans when they were in authority, they might be able to look forward to similar treatment at the hands of new governors. As most of the humans would have spent their entire existence under vampire law, they were pretty much treating the vampires as they themselves were treated.
As the living death camps were emptied of humans, the local cops and death camp guards were ordered to report to those camps. There, they were required to put on the attire previously worn by the human inmates, and would await their trials with the same access to books, visitors, and legal council they had afforded the humans who had spent the previous 19 years interned in the same walls. In other words, they would have no contact with the outside world prior to their trials.
The rest of the vampires were to report to the local police station and were given arm bands that marked their status. There were not enough facilities to imprison all vampires, and the Human Council had decided not to execute them all immediately. They would be allowed what the humans had not been allowed – the opportunity to stand trial. In most cases, they were ordered to stay in the towns they had lived in until the time of the trials began.
If they refused to stand trial, they were executed on the spot.
Papa still argued against the reunion of the cousins if we were all to be in one place, outside of Home. He was still afraid that something would happen to us if we were together, so we stayed separated. Home was still a place that no one could find, due to the gift that one of the vampires had, and I would have been happier if all my cousins stayed there. Of course they wouldn't, and now three of them were with me at all times.
Somehow, it had happened. Somehow, humans had regained control of their world.
The Council initially named Marcus the leader of the surviving vampires and decided to communicate with him. He did not return to Volterra, but instead established a residence in Seattle. It was decided that Papa and Jasper would be co-leaders with him. Carlisle was asked, but he wanted to remain a doctor. He argued that he needed to begin training humans to be doctors, and to found a medical school, which would not allow him to dedicate the time needed to be a ruler of the vampire world.
As for myself, I was tired, and I wanted to go home, which is what I called heaven, to be with my mother. I had done my part; I had contributed to the freedom of my people. The burden of feeling the pain of the humans rolling off of the vampires on a daily basis was taking its toll.
The Council wanted me to live, reminding me that when I died, any vampire who hadn't been given the antidote died too.
So I had to stay alive, to keep allowing the Council and allies to draw samples of my blood. While I was confined on the living death camps as a child, my blood had been drawn to serve as vampire food. It had poisoned all who drank it.
Now, my blood was being drawn again, but this time it was to be used as the antidote. It would only be given, on a lottery basis, to vampires who agreed to stand trial. All the rest would die when I did, if not sooner.
I knew that Jasper and Marcus would both be tried, and they would be sentenced for their part in the enslavement of the human world. The initial plan was to have their sentences run at different times, so that one would be ruling the remaining vampires. The fear was that without a recognizable leader, the remaining vampires might turn nomad. There could still be some vampires who would escape human justice; some who had not drank the tainted bottled blood.
After a month, with Carlisle and the rest of the Cullens spending 24 hours a day at the hospital, there began to be a break. Over half of the brothel girls had died of their wounds, and half of the survivors might yet die. But one quarter would live. This was more than I had hoped for.
During this time, I started spending more time at home, as I now considered the Cullen house. One of the rulings had been that if a human living with a vampire wanted to stay with the vampire in the house, the council would honor that request. Carlisle and Esme had no charges against them, so there had never been a question about their freedom.
Esme had initially stayed with us, but she and Papa had finally decided to go see the Home property, as she would live there. They had both been working with the recently freed humans of Forks and had not spent time together. That was going to be remedied.
One day, in early February, 2040, only Carlisle and I were in the house. I was exhausted, but he found some lasagna, and we sat on the cushions in front of the file. Had it only been 8 weeks since this had been our routine?
He stroked my hair while I ate. We sat in silence for a while, staring at the fire. Then he slid down so that we were eye-to-eye.
The front door opened, as it had so many times before in the past eight months, and Jasper entered quietly. He sat next to us too. They looked at one another, and then each took one of my hands.
"You know that we love you, little one?" Carlisle asked.
I nodded. I hadn't known originally, but I had started feeling the pain when we were separated that I knew meant we were mates.
"Will you stay with us?" Jasper asked. I nodded.
"As long as I stay human," I agreed.
"Little darlin'," said Jasper, "will you tell us your name?"
I smiled. Finally, it felt right. I no longer needed to wait to see my mother to hear my name again.
"Isabella, but I prefer Bella," I said softly, turning to gaze at my now mates with a smile.
THE END
PLEASE REVIEW. Thanks to everyone who made it this far, and to those who kept me going by posting your reviews, and/or marking the story as a favorite or putting it on your alert list. It was greatly appreciated.
I may tag some outtakes to the end of the story, as there were quite a few things I cut from the final version of the story. The two outtakes I posted separately didn't seem to get much attention. I don't know if they weren't noticed, but for that reason, I will tag any future outtakes to the end of this story.
I had a few requests, way back, about posting a separate story about Bella's years in the wilderness, prior to meeting the Cullens. I have drafted a few chapters and may post them at the end of this story eventually. If there is enough interest, I will start to post them as a separate story. My only concern in posting such a story is that almost all the characters, other than Bella, will be my non-canon creations.
Thanks again for reading.