AN ~ OH MY GOD HOW AWESOME IS BREAKING DAWN?!
Needless to say, I died several times over watching that. But I'll say nothing more about it now, because apparently there are some people left on Earth who haven't seen it. And of course, Stars is entirely spoiler-free since it completely follows the book canon.
Plus – I'm alive! Sorry I've been so long, but year 12 was REALLY taxing (I finish in 3 days YAY!) and what time I have had I have been mostly channeling into Doctor Who fics. Anyway, BDII inspired me to write some Twilight stuff but its all frameworks for now coz I'm in the middle of NaNoWriMo – 50K novel in a month! I'm nuts!
Anyway, you guys have BDII and a guest reader who dropped me two inspiring reviews the other day to thank for this chapter. I know it's not the best, but I plan to bring you some new, more original and better stuff in a few weeks (ie after NaNo)
If anyone has stuck with me through this accidental 5 month (?! SORRY) hiatus, I LOVE YOU
Chapter Sixty Eight: Building Half a Lie
Carlisle:
"Jeez Bells, you didn't used to be so melodramatic. Is that a vampire thing?" Jake asked, apparently trying to lighten the mood. It didn't work.
"Twenty six seconds," Bella growled. Jacob rolled his eyes and flopped into the nearest chair. Seth and Leah shifted closer to their leader, still ready for the attack.
"So I knocked on Charlie's door this morning and asked him to come for a walk with me. He was confused, but when I told him about you and that you were back in town, he followed me out to the woods. I told him you weren't sick anymore, and that things were a little weird, but good. He was about to take off to see you, but I told him I had to show him something first. And then I phased."
Bella forced her jaw to keep shut. Edward was twitching with rage. I'm sure that, if it weren't for Bella and the fact that the Chief of Police would arrive in a few minutes, he would have no trouble tearing out Jacob's jugular. His eyes flickered to my face and he too clenched his jaw.
I appreciate the restraint, I told him. He nodded slightly, unable to make himself smile. Esme slipped her hands onto my lap, staring Jake and Bella with the most horrified expression on her face.
"…he wanted to know what I meant by 'change,' and I told him that you looked a lot more like Esme now than you looked like Renée," Jake was saying. Esme started at this, her eyes darting to Edward's face. Edward's eyes tightened and he let out a low, controlled hiss.
"After a few minutes he asked, real quietly, if you turned into an animal too," Jake continued, apparently unfazed. "And I said; 'she wishes she was that cool!'"
Rosalie gagged. I twitched in my seat. When Bella finished with him, I might just give that boy a piece of my mind. I could understand asking Charlie over when he did not understand the consequences, but hadn't it been expressed that we could all die because of this? A low growl began to build in my throat – no threat to my family was going to sit on my lounge chuckling about it.
"I started to tell him more about werewolves," Jake continued, "but I didn't even get the whole word out. Charlie cut me off and said he'd 'rather not know the specifics.'"
Esme sighed, all the tension in her posture released, and her head fell onto my shoulder. I took deep breath: so Charlie didn't know everything. Crisis could be avoided.
"Then he asked if you'd known what you were getting yourself into when you married Edward, and I said; 'sure, she's known all about this for years, since she first came to Forks,'" Jacob continued. "He didn't like that very much. I let him rant till he got it out of his system. After he got calmed down, he just wanted two things. He wanted to see you, and said it would be better it he gave me a head start to explain."
Bella took a deep breath.
"What was the other thing he wanted?" she asked, focusing on staying calm.
"You'll like this," Jacob said with a smile. "His main request is that he be told as little as possible about all of this. If it's not absolutely essential for him to know something, then keep it to yourself. Need to know only."
"I can handle that part."
Jacob's smile became a smug grin. "Other than that, he'd just like to pretend things are normal."
"What did you tell him about Renesmee?"
"Oh yeah. I told him that you and Edward had inherited a new little mouth to feed. She's your orphaned ward, like Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson. I didn't think you'd mind me lying. That's all part of the game, right?" Jacob waited for Edward to respond, but he did not, so Jake went on. "Charlie was way past being shocked at this point, but he did ask if you were adopting her. 'Like a daughter? Like I'm sort of a grandfather?' were his exact words. I told him yes. 'Congrats, Gramps' and all of that. He even smiled a little."
"But she's changing so fast," Bella whispered, her voice trembling a little.
"I told him that she was more special than all of us put together," Jacob said in a soft voice. Esme lifted one of her hands to her mouth, and I thought she might start sobbing at the sweetness of the moment as Jacob approached Bella, waving off his guards.
"I told him; 'trust me, you don't want to know about this. But if you can ignore all the strange parts, you're going to be amazed. She's the most wonderful person in the whole world,'" Jacob continued, his voice still soft and calm. "And then I told him that if he could deal with that, you all would stick around for a while and he would have a chance to get to know her but that if it was too much for him, you would leave. He said as long as no one forced too much information on him, he'd deal."
I let out a deep breath, emptying my lungs completely. Esme squeezed my hand with her free one; the other, she had curled under her nose in an attempt to stop herself making a sound as Bella and her best friend looked at each other with a level of understanding and respect – love, even – that no werewolf or vampire had ever shown the other before.
"I'm not going to thank you," Bella said quietly, as thought the words were hard to say. "You're still putting Charlie at a huge risk."
"I am sorry about it hurting you," Jacob added, as though the topic had temporarily slipped from his mind earlier. "I didn't know it was like that. Bella, things are different with us now, but you'll always be my best friend, and I'll always love you. But I'll love you the right way now. There's finally a balance. We both have people we can't live without. Still friends?"
He held out his hand in a gesture of offering, and Bella allowed herself a tiny smile. Esme shuffled in her seat so that she was leaning diagonally, her head on my chest, looking at Bella and Jacob as though she had seen nothing sweeter in all her years as Bella took Jacob's hand.
"If I don't kill Charlie tonight, I'll consider forgiving you for this," Bella said.
"When you don't kill Charlie tonight, you'll owe me huge." Bella rolled her eyes good-naturedly, but when Jacob asked to hold Renesmee, Bella's reply was a firm warning. He did not risk pushing the idea. Wise of him."
Alice sprinted back into the room at that moment, and glared at the wolves.
"You, you, and you," she instructed briskly, "if you must stay, get over in the corner and commit to being there for a while. I need to see. Bella, you'd better give him the baby, too. You'll need your arms free, anyway."
Jacob grinned in triumph. Bella looked terrified. Her eyes slowly widened, and her controlled breaths turned into gasps.
"Take her," she whispered, surrendering Renesmee immediately. Jacob and Seth slouched on the floor in the corner, but Leah stiffly asked her leave, before storming off into the forest. She was not prepared to be ordered around by vampires – it was fair enough. In fact, it was probably for the best. Charlie's amiable acceptance of this whole situation could just be a stage of shock; who knew what might happen when he realised it was all real.
Esme sat upright again, but now with a warm, comfortable smile. Here came the challenge of attempting to teach Bella techniques that had taken us each years to perfect, in a matter of minutes.
"You can do this," Edward assured Bella quietly. "I know you can. I'll help you; we all will. If I didn't believe you could handle it, we'd disappear today. This very minute. But you can, and you'll be happier if you can have Charlie in your life."
Esme nodded fervently in agreement, her face bright with hope. Alice offered Bella the small white box containing the contacts.
"These will irritate your eyes – they won't hurt, but they'll cloud your vision: it's annoying. They also won't match your old colour, but it's still better that bright red, right?"
She flipped the box into the air, and Bella caught it in a flash.
"When did you-?" Bella started.
"When you left on the honeymoon. I was prepared for several possible futures," Alice explained.
Bella nodded and opened the container. She put the first contact in, and immediately started blinking and tearing up as her eye tried to dislodge the obstruction. I was glad I had never had to use them.
"I see what you mean," she muttered, putting the other one in. This time her reaction was not so bad. Still, I didn't need to be a vampire to notice the distinct rusty colour that the contacts had picked up. It was not like Bella's old colour at all, but it was the best we could do.
"How do I look?" Bella asked, showing off her new eyes.
"Gorgeous," Edward replied. "Of course-"
"Yes, yes, she always looks gorgeous," Alice interrupted impatiently. "It's better than red, but that's the highest commendation I can give. Muddy brown. Your brown was much prettier. Keep in mind that those won't last forever – the venom in your eyes will dissolve them in a few hours, so if Charlie stays longer than that you'll have to excuse yourself to replace them. Which is a good idea, because humans need bathroom breaks – Esme, give her a few pointers on acting human while I stock the powder room with contacts."
"How long to I have?" Esme asked, springing effortlessly to her feet.
"Charlie will be here in five minutes. Keep it simple."
Esme nodded and slid over to Bella, taking her hand.
"The important thing is not to sit too still or move too fast," she instructed gently.
"Sit down if he does," Emmett added. "Humans don't like to just stand there."
"Cross your legs for about five minutes, then switch to crossing your ankles for the next five," Rosalie suggested.
"And blink at least three times a minute," Emmett finished. He turned the television on and his attention was absorbed by a college football game. More and more, I was relaxing into the situation: Charlie liked football, so if he needed something normal to turn to - as many patients I had encountered with extreme shock did – at least that was freely and inconspicuously available. Unfortunately, my ease – and the apparent ease of the whole family – was in itself making me nervous. This was not right...but there was nothing I could to about it but help, so how was I supposed to feel?
"Move your hands, too," Jasper suggested anew. "Brush your hair back or pretend to scratch something."
"I said Esme," Alice complained as she returned. "You'll overwhelm her."
"No, I think I got it all," Bella said. "Sit, look around, blink, fidget."
"Right," Esme approved, hugging Bella's shoulders for encouragement. Jasper frowned uncomfortably.
"You'll be holding your breath as much as possible, but you need to move your shoulders a little to make it look like you're breathing," he explained.
Edward murmured encouragement to Bella, and Alice dragged her over to the sofa. Bella was apparently trying to appear more clumsy; Alice simply rolled her eyes.
"Jacob, I need Renesmee," Bella said, trying to stop herself from panicking.
"Bella, that doesn't help me see," Alice refused.
"But I need her. She keeps me calm."
"Fine," Alice groaned. "Hold her as still as you can and I'll try to see around her." She sighed wearily. I could understand her pain: she lived with those visions, and had done for nearly a century, so to have her sighed blurred was, I imagined, the equivalent of myself with dyslexia. I could not imagine that kind of existence, even for a short while. It was good of her to put up with it.
Edward sat down beside Bella and put his arms around them both, then locked his eyes on his daughter's.
"Renesmee, someone special is coming to see you and your mother, but he's not like us, or even like Jacob," he explained, gentle but serious. "We have to be very careful with him. You shouldn't tell him things the way you tell us."
Renesmee touched his face.
"Exactly," he confirmed. "And he's going to make you thirsty, but you mustn't bite him. He won't heal like Jacob."
"Can she understand you?" Bella whispered, as if she were afraid of the baby overhearing.
"She understands," Edward replied. "You'll be careful, won't you Renesmee? You'll help us?"
Renesmee reached for his face again.
"No, I don't care if you bite Jacob. That's fine."
Jacob chuckled, and Edward's cold air immediately returned, his whole body tensing with hatred at the insolent young werewolf.
"Maybe you should leave, Jacob," he suggested, glaring.
"I told Charlie I'd be here," Jake objected. "He needs the moral support."
"Moral support," Edward scoffed. "As far as Charlie knows, you're the most repulsive monster of us all."
"Repulsive?" Jake gasped with mock horror. Then he chuckled quietly to himself.
The room fell silent as everyone listened to Charlie's police cruiser pulling onto the drive.
I rose to my feet and tried to configure my expression. The other sounds faded into the background, and overpowering them all was the crunching of the dirt under Charlie's tyres. Would he be mad at us? Would he be in tears? Would he ever forgive us for what we were taking from him? I took another deep breath, and tracked every smell flowing in. I focused on the cinnamon and roses: Esme's scent. It was so warm and comforting…I needed it.
Knock, knock, knock.
The sense of anticipation, of looming danger, was overwhelming, but I'd had years of training for this. I lit up my expression, pretending for the moment that the last half-hour had never happened, and forced my tongue to shape the words.
"Hello Charlie."