Chapter 11 -The Death Instinct

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A/N WoW, I got over 300 reviews! Thank you so much, dear readers. Please continue, if you can.

With this chapter we are back to Edward's PoV (and his musings). Don't miss the endnote, it is important.

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Bella slept. In my house, on my sofa, apparently untroubled. Sure, she was very tired, sure she was used to vampires - but ones determined to respect human life. I hadn't concealed from her my scarlet eyes, and she knew I was a killer of humans. Yet something had happened in the last hours that had lessened her fears, letting her trust me at least a little.

She was beautiful in her slumber, unruly hair all over her shoulders, coral lips slightly opened, long eyelashes resting on her pale cheeks… My thirst for her blood was no longer overwhelming, true, but the same didn't apply to other urges. To see her so confidently abandoned ignited my desire; I wanted her as a man wants a woman. But I wasn't a man and I couldn't make her mine. Even if she wanted it – and it was highly unlikely – even if I managed to control my inhuman strength and share with her my stony carcass of a body, the fact remained that I wouldn't exist much longer on this Earth.

Each single day since I had met her had confirmed that the unfamiliar feelings I was experiencing were advancing me toward my ultimate goal. A goal that hadn't changed. And I would not seduce and abandon her.

The images of the impossible seduction came to torment me, however, so - with an involuntary sigh - I decided I needed a shower, and not for cleanliness.

After my temporary release, I sat again on my chair, going back to the awful moment when I'd realized she was letting herself fall from the window. Do you expect me to lead you to my friends, so that you can kill us all together? she had asked, but it was an affirmation rather than a question.

Even with no input from her silent mind, it was clear that she had chosen to die rather than be captured by a vampire she suspected to be a Volturi's agent. She must have reasoned that, by letting death sever the connections she had with Alice Cullen and her lupine friends, she would protect them. For herself she had no hopes or expectations.

When I imagined the despair she must have felt, something constricted in my chest, something my cold heart shouldn't be capable of doing. I couldn't imagine her dead. I'll do my utmost to give her back her friends and her life before I go. I owe it to her. I promised myself. She is unique and incredibly brave.

Actually,in the name of friendship, she had managed to overcome her natural self-preservation instinct. In humans, however, this was not unheard of. Because, in humans, self-preservation is counterbalanced by another powerful compulsion: the death instinct.

This, at least, I had learned during one of the more interesting lessons I had been imparted in the two months I was a psychology auditor at Dyson College.

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"When the Great War ended," Professor John Valdez had told us, "Sigmund Freud had in his care some of those veterans generally defined as "shell-shocked"; soldiers, that is, who couldn't get over the trauma war had inflicted on them.

"What these soldiers did was to re-enact over and over in their minds their death, or the moment they came closer to it. Normally we have psychological defenses that keep thoughts of death at bay, out of our consciousness. However, as a consequence of the trauma, the defenses crumble and the full understanding and terror of mortality takes hold, and will return to the victim again and again. The shell-shocked man will relive his experience both in sleep and awake, sometimes even reliving the episode through bodily symptoms.

Freud's observations made him reflect and then define a new theory. At first, he thought that reliving the experience was a way to exorcise it. Discharging the fear would be pleasurable and up to then the scientist had thought that every psychological phenomenon had at its roots the need to increase pleasure, or lessen displeasure. But after a while he realized that men have a compulsion beyond the pleasure principle, a primal instinct as fundamental as hunger or sex drive: the death instinct. It is a physiological instinct present in our body, in our very cells. Today - had the DNA studies been already developed in his time - Freud would have said that it is inscribed in our DNA. Because we are mortal, and programmed for death.

There are two contrasting forces in the universe, Freud maintained. One draws matter toward matter; this is how life comes into being and propagates. In physics this force is called gravity; in psychology, love. The other force is exactly the opposite: it aims at disunification, disintegration. Every planet, every star in the universe is pushed towards the others and at the same time pushed away by a force of repulsion. Within an organism, this force is what drives an animal to seek death, like a moth to the flame.

Men normally are able to keep the two forces balanced: thus we can live, operate and not self-destruct. Per se the death instinct is not bad, mind you. In our organism each one of our cells is programmed to die at a given time. That is the death instinct in operation. But, if a cell doesn't die, what happens? It keeps dividing, reproducing endlessly. It becomes cancer. This is what cancer is, cells which have lost their will to die.

When the buzz of surprise and understanding emanating from the audience had subsided, Prof. Valdez delivered his conclusions:

The presence of this death instinct is what makes people capable to overcome self-preservation, letting them behave contrary to it, in a way that would appear completely irrational, otherwise. Men are capable of self-sacrifice, dying to protect others, doing acts of self-effacing heroism. And they are also capable of suicide.

In that moment I had felt like I were on the verge of a great discovery, justifying the time I was spending in college. Because it was then that I finally realized how the self-preservation instinct worked very differently in humans and vampires.

Vampires are frozen in time. Our physiology is completely different from the human one and is programmed for immortality. Therefore the death instinct is not present in our cells and our self-preservation instinct is supreme. Only extraordinary, exceptionally rare circumstances would make an immortal risk, or actually seek death, because his very body would rebel against it. The more I had thought about this, afterward, the more I was convinced that my theory was valid…

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My musings kept me distracted until Bella murmured something. She was dreaming and, again, I could see images from her dream. It was not something that gave me a big insight into her mind, unfortunately. The poor girl was hungry, as she had every right to be. She'd remained in the library, after all, sending out a friend wearing her coat. From this woman's mind I had gathered that Bella had noticed me, believed I was a stalker and, with her friend, she had thought of a ruse. It hadn't worked on the mind-reading vampire lurking outside, obviously.

Now some ring shaped cakes featured prominently in her dream. Yes, when she awakened, I'd better to procure a breakfast for her. Would I dare to leave her alone? I hoped so, and I didn't think she would try to kill herself again. I needed to be out for a few minutes only, after all.

On 8th Ave I found what I needed. When I was back, I was carrying a box of donuts and - from an open-all-night corner store - some milk and sugar. Meanwhile, her dreams had changed. Amazed, I saw my own face appearing. My irises, however, weren't the usual red, nor blue like my contacts made them. They were a bright topaz. What did it mean? Was she hoping I was a different kind of vampire, like the members of the coven I had helped to destroy? Well, I doubted it would ever happen.

Bella was finally awakening. She made as to stretch, but I could see that it was painful. It confirmed I had bruised her, holding her tight when we fell together from the window. If I could see her arms I was sure I would find the dark imprints of my fingers on them. It couldn't be helped, but I was ashamed of myself.

"Mm, good morning," she said when she saw me. "Sorry, but I need a human moment." I gathered she needed a bathroom, referring to it with a joke she must have used often with her immortal friends. I told her she had to pass through my bedroom and she went there. Too late I realized that, when I had undressed before my shower, I had not bothered to put away the things I had discarded. I had been an idiot, and that was confirmed when, after a few minutes, Bella re-emerged, angry, and with an object dangling from her hand. Her Nike T-shirt, which I had stolen and worn for two days.

"Care to explain?" she challenged me.

Christ!

"I will," I answered, hoping to distract her from the embarrassing discovery, "but you must be famished. I have coffee and cakes. Please sit here, and I'll serve you."

"You, you went out and bought me breakfast?" Bella almost stammered, so surprised that she didn't even wait for an answer to sit down at the table. But, if I hoped she had forgotten about the T-shirt, I was wrong.

After having made short work of the sugary, revolting confections – she ate four out of six – Bella drained a big coffee mug and then looked severely at me. I sat at the table myself.

"So, you stole it from my house, didn't you?" she said, indicating the T-shirt now resting on her lap.

Only the truth would do.

"I had to," I explained, "I'm sorry, but I needed it for desensitization's purposes. Your scent is very, very appealing to me."

Bella gulped.

"How did you know my scent? You were never near me before yesterday night."

"Bella, I have spent two nights on your fire escape. And your window's security latch is broken."

A furious blush covered her face and neck. It was my turn to gulp.

"Did you watch me when…."

I would have blushed myself if I could. But I needed to deny this, lest it undid the progress I had made in her trust. I shook my head. In fact, I had looked only once, and then I had forbidden myself the pleasure.

Fortunately, Bella's attention shifted to something more important. The widening of her eyes indicated that she finally realized to have been – unaware - at a vampire's mercy but, apart from the loss of an old shirt, nothing bad had happened to her. If my aim had been to kidnap and use her to capture Alice, I could have done it three days ago.

"Desensitization, you say? Like Jasper!" Bella exclaimed. "He's Alice's husband, you know. He became a vegetarian because he loves her, but he still struggles with blood lust. Alice used my pillow case to help him getting used to my scent."

Vegetarian? What the Hell? Did they really call themselves that? I had missed that particular definition, indicating a quaint sense of humor. But Bella continued: "It worked too. I never felt threatened by Jasper. He's a great guy, well, vampire. Of course, when I cut myself in front of him, he lost it. But it wasn't his fault, he hadn't hunted… it was a stupid mistake."

I wondered if my face looked astonished as I felt.

"But you are still here. How did you stop him?"

"I didn't. Carlisle and Emmett did. But he stopped fighting them almost immediately. I wanted to go to him, when he calmed down, to tell him I wasn't angry at all, but he had run away. Alice hasn't been the same since. This is the reason she didn't see you coming... God, sorry for the word vomit. But not to be able to speak of those things with anybody has been difficult."

Bella was silent for a while, her gaze lost in space. Then she murmured, "I miss them so much, so much." And, out of the blue, her eyes watered and she started to cry.

She put her elbows on the table and covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders shook. I watched, paralyzed, as the full weight of my guilt descended on me. I wanted to take her in my arms and console her. So ridiculous! I was the last one she would accept comfort from - the monster who had caused her loss.

When the storm passed, Bella rose, and said she was going to take a shower: then we would speak more.

Mirroring her gesture of before, I covered my face with my hands.

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Notes:

I am not an expert of psychoanalysis, therefore am indebted to Jed Rubenfeld and his novel The Death Instinct (where Sigmund Freud is one of the characters). I then did some research on Freud's later studies and reflected on self-preservation and the different attitude humans and vampires have on it - well, if vampires existed, that is.

In the Twilight Canon not only the Volturi, but even the Cullens avoid confrontations that they know they would lose. No level playing field for them! And only the (presumed) death of his mate drives Edward to attempt suicide. Thus, when some friendly vampires decide to stand with the Cullens in BD, what we see is a truly extraordinary event. And, finally, Aro has the Volturi retreat, when he isn't so sure anymore of his victory. Because, by and large, vampires are – in human terms – cowards.

Here I have addressed an issue – vampire self-preservation instinct –that I have been reflecting on for a long time, much before I conceived this story. I am very interested in your comments, if you wish.

(Some of the words used in the chapter are taken from Rubenfeld's book.)