A/N: Whoo, I have a plot seed. I may be going too emo, but it's gonna get better.
YES, THIS CHAPTER IS TOO SHORT.
There's not really more to write on it. There's always the next chapter.
During The Great Edit of December 2011, it really hit me how lazy this chapter was. I might try to expand it by a few sentences.
Chapter 7: Damned
I was vaguely aware of the others talking, Carlisle about the philosophical facets of this new "condition", as he called it, Rosalie about the implication that the liquid in the vial might somehow turn her mortal again, Emmett about creatively spun details of the rumored private lives of the Volturi and Edward's clipped replies, but it didn't reach all the way in.
The sun. I always liked the day best. It made me feel that the world was a hopeful place at best, somewhere where you could find a measure of peace and happiness.
I tried to remind myself that the sun would still be there, still lighting up the world and the souls of people. Humans. Those who could just live with a few petty worries. Those who could still see the sun without burning up.
Somehow, the thought felt strangely fascinating, and I fought the urge to throw myself out in the sun, just to see it one last time. I became completely aware of what I was. I was dead, a corpse. I ought to be long buried. Yet I was still somehow alive. Even if I was beautiful, even if I could walk among humans, even if I could talk to them, all those things were unnatural. I should have been rotting in the ground for more than a year now.
I could still hear the others talking, but I didn't want to resurface. With a kind of morbid curiosity, I decided to break out of my stupor. If I had to know how inhuman I was, I needed to look around. Look at others. Test myself to the limits. Maybe I could even learn how to feel alive again. Even if Aro's draught could cure me of this state, my curiosity would probably overpower the temptation to become human again. Detachedly, I watched Carlisle and Edward concernedly discuss the ethical and theological aspects of their new vulnerability to sunlight.
Esme seemed to have given up on stopping the quite depressing topic and was instead watching from the sidelines with Rosalie and Alice. Jasper and Emmett were engaged in discussing their physical capabilities after the curse - it had to be a curse, had to be unnatural somehow - and managed to avoid any philosophical undertones.
I caught myself cautiously analyzing them from my dazed state, like they would somehow reveal a hidden secret. Edward was just as blindingly handsome as before. His hair had changed color slightly; a human wouldn't be able to tell the difference at first sight, but it had shifted a tiny bit toward the reddish side of the spectrum. His skin, like that of all the others, had taken on a more human pallor, more gaunt than porcelain-perfect, and I was able to make out faint freckles on his cheeks and nose.
Of course. He had reddish hair and had once had green eyes - it was hard to believe I hadn't figured out sooner that he'd once had freckles. Rosalie scarcely looked more human than earlier - her beauty and the way she carried herself, even when sitting still, were deeply inhuman even now, when her flawless skin hid a slight shadow of color, but that seemed to be part of her appeal.
Jasper's scars had faded slightly, but his eyes seemed sunken and a feeling of disquiet hung around him, suggesting that something much worse was hiding under the picture perfect facade. Emmett was still positively huge, and while his broad smile had lost the disturbing predatory note it had once had, he seemed somehow more fundamentally disturbing, somehow wrong, in almost imperceptible changes in both his speech and body carriage.
So different. Some kind of new world. A dangerous world. But an exciting one. The weak light began stinging at the corners of my eyes and pricking at my skin like needles. Without thinking, I curled up in a corner, closed my eyes and fell into something like sleep for the first time in more than a year.