A/N - mac made this chapter possible. I have a nasty habit of deleting everything I write lately. Big love to goldenmeadow for wc'ing my ass into submission.
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"Water?" Edward's voice sounded hoarse, like he'd been up all night smoking crack.
I shook my head, pressing my forehead against the passenger-side window and leaving an oily mark on the glass.
"Whiskey?"
I glared at him, and he laughed, his eyes crinkling in the corners. My neck snapped, and my head spun away in my best Linda Blair impression because no fucking way could I look at him right now. He distracted me, and I needed to get my shit together to face Charlie.
My stomach felt raw and empty, acid corroding it into Swiss cheese. Nausea flooded my mouth with bitter saliva, and the constant lurching of sex-car wasn't helping matters much. Sweat poured down my skin in rivulets; every discernible nook and crevice of my body felt drenched. Of course, the seat warmers made things worse; my ass sweat like a greased pig.
I glared at the instrument panel on the dash, searching for a glowing button with an asscrack on it. I mean, Volvos were supposed to be intuitively designed, right?
Yeah, there was no such button, and the nausea only intensified in the heat.
Edward drove the way a pubescent puppy humped - fast, aggressively, and with something to prove. I bit my fingernails to the quick, listening to the engine ignite and rev and sputter.
He cursed under his breath as the ass-end of a Buick became perceptibly larger in the windshield. Rather than simply pass the offending vehicle, he made a show of pounding on the clutch and down-shifting the stick into fourth as the engine dropped into my gut. He held it there, pushing on the gas to gather momentum before wrenching the shifter back into fifth. The clutch released, and the tires screamed obscenely as we passed in the oncoming lane.
That's right, bitch. Who's your daddy?
"You're gonna burn out your clutch," I muttered, and he chuckled in reply. It was the first time I'd spoken since we left the motel. "And turn the fucking heat off."
"No problem. I'm turning the fucking heat off," he mocked, letting go of the stick for a second to turn a knob with a skillful flick of his wrist. "And I thank you for your concern, but what do you know about stick?"
I shrugged, careful to keep my eyes averted from his. "I handle yours well enough."
"True."
The skyline buzzed by in the window as I half slumped in my seat, vacantly watching the world go by in a green streak of motion.
I wanted to be a tree.
"What're you thinking?"
"Oh my fuck! Are your balls descended ovaries or some shit?" I complained, whipping my head around, my neck aching from the constant whiplash. Meh, I was a melodramatic bitch. "I mean, guys aren't supposed to ask that question."
"Sorry for giving a fuck," he said casually, but I sensed an underlying tension in his voice.
"You should probably just ignore me right now, Edward. I'm having a panic attack."
"Oh yeah?" He smirked. "Do you have discharge?"
"Guh?"
"Remember when I went to see you at the hospital that first time? You said you had a panic attack and discharge?"
"I said no such thing. God, sexual compulsive much?"
"Totally," he replied in a tone that made me think he was mimicking me.
"This is a terrible and serious situation, and I'll thank you to not act like an ass."
We fell back into an uncomfortable silence for a while, and I managed to keep my mind blissfully blank . . . that was, until we passed by the bait shops that dotted the highway just outside the La Push turn-off. Charlie used to take me to the craft stands when I summered in Forks as a kid because I loved the hand-whittled animals. I wondered idly what happened to my collection.
Edward turned on the radio, and I felt my face twist into a sneer, my stomach lurching.
"Fucking no!"
"Are you about to freak out?" he asked warily.
"Yes! I can't handle music right now. And dude, really? Britney Spears? That cunt fills me with rage."
"Shit, okay. I'm turning it off." His hand rested on mine for a moment, and I sighed; despite my umbrage, his touch still comforted me.
That's when I really looked at his face. A purplish bruise had begun to bloom over his jaw - an impressionist violet spattered on a stubbly canvas. It was pretty, in a Monet-meets-Dali kind of way.
"I think you've dealt with enough fallout for, well, a lifetime." I ran my fingers over the bruise and thought about melting clocks. My mother had taken me to the Salvador Dali museum in St. Petersburg, Florida when Phil was at spring training last year.
Renee liked to move quickly through any kind of museum, but at this particular gallery, I'd found myself transfixed by the strange colours, the juxtaposition of erotic and religious imagery, and the many optical illusions.
Nothing was as it seemed, yet everything was as it should be.
"This picture is what my poetry looks like," I'd told her. The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory - the melting clocks.
"It's nice." She'd clucked her tongue distractedly.
It was nice.
That's when I'd noticed she wasn't looking at the picture; she'd looked through it. Her eyes bent light like glass, never absorbing anything but reflecting outwardly. Everything was an illusion if you looked at it for long enough.
"Renee . . . we don't know each other very well, do we?"
She'd laughed, her blank face transforming into a warm smile. "Don't be silly, baby."
We'd probably made a pretty picture in that moment, the two of us. Look: mother and daughter, Mary and Mary, virgin and whore. Look closer. Look at the real picture, the truth depicted deep within the layers of stippled chaos.
Did anyone see the truth?
"You don't know me," I'd whispered acridly.
A shadow fell over her face. "I know you better than anyone."
Did she? Because I had no clue who I was. I'd spend the rest of my life reconciling the girl I wanted to be with the whore Phil turned me into.
-({})-
"Go home, Edward," I pleaded, staring at the knots in the wood siding with such intensity my vision blurred.
"I'm worried about you," he said gruffly. He sounded like Charlie.
"You can't be here right now." Really, he couldn't be. But I also couldn't seem to summon the courage to open the front door. "Shit. Fuck... shit again!"
"What? What is it, baby?"
"Don't call me baby," I snapped, my voice breaking. "My mother calls me that."
"Sorry." His hand grazed my lower back gingerly in a sad gesture of comfort. Every muscle in my body became rigid, but I glanced at his arm with affection, oddly enchanted by the soft cotton of his shirt.
"I don't know how to be around him now . . . now that he knows what I did. I mean, every time Charlie looks at me all he'll see is-"
"Bella," Edward said firmly, an emotion I couldn't identify thickening his voice. "You have to stop that . . . he's not going to look at you any differently. This was something that was done to you. It doesn't change who you are."
A laugh, maniacal and ugly, rushed out of my lungs. "Of course it does! I'm who I am because of what Phil did. Every little idiosyncratic thing about me - even the stuff you like - is a product of what happened. Shit, Edward . . . I can't separate myself from it. That's just naive."
"I fucking hate this."
"Yeah," I agreed, twisting the handle on the door. "This just pure sucks."
As soon as it squeaked open, Charlie came flying down the hall like a bullet from a barrel.
"Get out of my house," he growled. I wasn't sure if he meant me.
"Dad . . ." I closed my eyes and recited The Wastleland in my head to keep from thinking.
April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain . . .
"Please, Chief Swan," Edward said softly, bravely. "I care about your daughter, and she's freaked out."
"Leave. Now." His voice . . . it wasn't right. My lids flew open; I didn't recognize my father's eyes. They were crazed in an all-the-way-psychotic kind of way. I also noticed he still had on his uniform, including the gun and holster.
"Please," I added desperately. "I can't do this with you here." Something pivotal was about to change between Charlie and me. Edward couldn't be here to witness it.
He rubbed the small of my back quickly, whispering, "I'll be in the car."
"Go home."
"No." He turned away from me and walked out, leaving the front door open.
I sunk my teeth into my lip, turning on my heel and stiffening as Charlie's hand landed on my shoulder.
"Dad," I started, unsure of what to say. His hand felt like hot iron, a weighted inferno pushing into my collar bone, collapsing my chest. I shrugged it off me.
"Why, Bells?" he pleaded. I faced him even though it near killed me to look at him. He hunched in front of me, gasping and shuddering like he couldn't breathe properly. Upon closer inspection, his face was nearly macabre. Tears gathered in the deep wells under his eyes, the skin there a darkened, haunted purple. I'd never seen him shed a tear in my life.
"Why what?" I asked sluggishly, backing up against the wall so it would help me from crumbling onto the floor. The unspoken words between us weighed a ton.
"They said . . . Dr. Cullen said . . . your doctor wouldn't tell me anything, but Cullen . . ."
"What did he say?" I felt naked and bruised - completely on display.
"That you . . . shit, Bells. Is this why you tried to die? How could you live like that for so long?"
He couldn't say the words. I didn't blame him.
"I didn't want to live like that at all. I didn't ask for any of it." Shame burned through my veins, boiling my blood in ill-begotten anger. "Are you blaming me too?"
"No!" He yelled, snot shooting out of his nose. He broke out into hiccups, his face turning purple.
"Shit, Dad, breathe!"
"Why . . ." he wheezed, "didn't you tell me?"
"It wouldn't have helped anything," I said simply.
Charlie couldn't find breath enough to speak, but his eyes clearly blazed, why the hell not?
"The damage was done. Telling would only hurt everyone."
He bowed his head into his fists before pounding them into his skull several times. "You were protecting Renee."
"No, Dad. Let me explain." I searched my mind for a fishing metaphor, but it was all Greek to me. Not fishing, my explanation. "This was my tragedy, plain and simple. It was containable and small, but the more people who found out, the worse it became."
I tried to pull Charlie's fist away from his face. "There's this ancient Greek myth about a woman named Philomela-"
"Don't try to baffle me with bullshit." His voice was weak, but his eyes burned furiously.
"I have to; it's my way." I smiled weakly. "So, Philomela, this ancient Greek chick . . . you see, she's raped by a king - her sister's husband - and she decides that the world should know. Well, the king doesn't like this very much, so he cuts out her tongue."
Charlie's eyes widened maniacally. "Did he threaten to cut out your tongue?"
"No, Dad," I said softly. "Let me finish, okay?"
He nodded, but I wasn't really sure he was listening. "Philomela wove a tapestry that depicted what happened to her and sent it to her sister. Well, her sister got revenge on her husband by killing their child and cooking him for supper."
"What?"
"The Greeks were melodramatic and horrifically violent. That's why they're the cradle of our civilization."
"Why are you telling me this shit, Bells?"
"Because it's easier to speak in code than to tell you what happened to me."
"What happened?" he demanded gruffly.
"The gods turned Philomela and her sister into birds to save them from the king's wrath."
"To you . . . I need to know. Please . . . what did that bastard do to you?" Charlie kept is eyes carefully averted, but I could tell the whites were nearly pink from crying.
"I can't-"
"Tell me!"
I swallowed slowly, feeling my heart slow and my respiration decrease as a cold calm took over my body. "Phil sexually abused me. It started four years ago."
Charlie already had a gun in his holster since he hadn't yet removed his uniform, but for some reason, he unlocked his gun cabinet and collected a rifle, along with several rounds of ammo.
"Oh my god, Dad, where are you going?" I really didn't need to ask. The answer was evident in the determined way he clipped his bullets to his belt and stomped out the front door, his heavy boots leaving dents on the lawn.
"Phoenix."
"You're going to shoot Phil?" I gasped.
"No, the bullets are for your mother," he sneered and disappeared into the garage. He emerged seconds later with a set of old, rusted gardening shears. "These are for Phil."
"What?" I screamed. "You can't!"
"Stay put," he warned, pulling the cruiser door open so violently I thought it might separate from the frame.
"Charlie . . . Dad, you can't."
My words fell on deaf ears.
My mother . . . he couldn't possibly mean what he said.
The nausea that'd been taunting me all day finally made good on its promise, and I vomited beside the driveway as Charlie tore out of the driveway.
"Edward," I sobbed through the burning in my throat. Thank fuck the Volvo was still parked in front of the house. I lay down on the lawn and said his name several times.
A murder of crows flew by overhead, and a heady darkness clouded my vision. The tree line was the last thing I saw before succumbing to oblivion.
Fuck. I really wished I could be a tree.
A/N - this chapter was really difficult to write. I'd love to know what you think.
one-shot rec - A Voice in the Darkness by katinki. It hurts to read but it has an important message to it.
Soapbox: April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Write, donate, read! fandom4saa . wordpress . com
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