AN: Hello, friends. I know, it has been ages and ages and... I was out of the country summer 2016, and when I returned I did not mentally come back to this story until only about a week ago. It is one of my chief regrets that updating has been so irregular, and that this chapter comes so long after many of you asked for it. Y'all are so wonderful to me in the reviews, and with the favorites/alerts/etc, I owe some more regularity to you and I know that. I am planning to update more in the coming weeks, and I am also looking into revising the first fourteen chapters of this story to better reflect where I see it going. I had a come-to-Jesus moment of sorts and realized y'all need far more detail as to what these two have gone through before we can move into the healing. So expect plenty of past POV, with some sprinkling of current events, just so that we can get a better understanding of where Bella and Edward will move forward from. Some bad shit happened to these two.
-disclaimer that the characters are not mine, etc etc,
-a humble request for reviews (constructive criticism pls) I know I don't deserve them! *hangs head*
BPOV
Moving my hand over my belly, absentmindedly. I stare at the moment where the tile meets the trim, and the trim gives way to the wall. There are small bits of dirt, maybe a stray hair... this room is of course clean, since I am in a hospital. But my hyper-critical eye seems to seek these things out just to frustrate me. I cannot exactly get on my hands and knees to remedy the situation.
I lean back, listening to the soft hum of the air conditioner. I can hear the guard posted outside my door tap, tap tapping his foot. He sits in a squeaky chair that I wouldn't like to sit in at all. I wonder how it is that he can be so vigilant all of the time, and hope that he really is. I know it's selfish of me to demand his protection, but I did not ask for it. He must think terribly of me, though. I'm sure he does. Laying in here while he must stand, occasionally sit, watch and guard. Guard the whore! It sounds like a children's game.
These thoughts and endless more circle through my mind. I am only trying to fill a mental vacuum without Edward's company. The man who helped me through the nightmare I faced... the man who was also part of my nightmare. A complicated relationship. Edward, the sometimes too-quick to anger. Edward, the sweet angel who treated me far better than I deserved. Edward, the unwilling participant in my torture, but its main instrument nonetheless... it is not such a wonder that they keep us separate, for now.
I have not directly asked to see him, or at least I don't think so.
Not every moment with Edward was torture. But each time we attempted some human contact, the voice would be watching and exploit our actions to his advantage. We were just part of his sick game, and we unknowingly enhanced it at times...
(Bella's flashback)
It's hard for me, but I meet his eyes.
Eye contact is part of my conscious exercise in trusting Edward, my sole ally in this hell. He told me to try it with him, and I am of course thoroughly comforted at receiving some direction. Edward knows that I do best when he expresses his preferences. After all, despite our largely self-imposed silence, we must pass the time here.
The time, the time. It slips away from us both. I cannot help but feel responsible in part, as if I ought to be keeping track of the time for us both. So much of what Charlie asked of me was fixed to a rigid routine. I was responsible for having meals prepared just so just then, I was responsible for making sure he was up for work at the just the right time, I was… these are all tasks that are lost to me. My new task seems to be surviving here, with Edward, for the voice.
I suppose I am here living for him, in a sense. Who else am I living for? Edward has had others before me and will surely have others afterward, so I am not living for him. Although I am eager to please him, I do not live for him in this sense. He is lowered to my position by punishment, although he receives preferential treatment. This treatment is surely deserved, since the voice, who knew my name, must know how bad I am and how I have done bad things in the past.
I must be living for the voice, then. For his pleasure. For his purpose, although he has not expressed one. Perhaps it is not my place to know.
Edward is studying my brow, which I am sure is furrowed unattractively as I think these thoughts. Charlie used to scold me, tell me to smile more. Smile more, and his new complaint would be that I was prancing around neglecting my chores in a whorish daydream.
Edward is so fundamentally male.
His eyes are a deep and endless green, and they move over me carefully, with a curious accuracy and strength of intelligence. His eyes are calculating, and predatory. That is not to say they are predatory in a way that is threatening to me, although they are. I know that Edward does not want to hurt me, but indeed must. They are predatory in the sense that this captivity has reduced us to our feral state, and our bare-bones animal character. He looks at me with a spirit of coveting. He looks at me like I am his.
This is a thought that sends me into shaking.
It is a dangerous thought, because then I am here, in a sense, at Edward's pleasure. He does take pleasure in my body. But I take pleasure in his…
…but that is because I am wanton, and depraved, and a disgusting…
sometimes, it is just so exhausting to think within my mind.
I am meeting his gaze, though it makes me tremble.
I sit, with my legs folded together in front and to the side of me, the bones of my ankle uncomfortably cracking against one another. I have my hands in my lap, twiddling them nervously. This position is much too open, but I chose it to mirror Edward's. That is the exercise, for us to be more open with one another.
We are going to have a normal conversation, he says.
He clears his throat and I jump, squeezing my angular thighs together painfully and crossing my arms. With a conscious thought, I uncross them and place them down again.
"Hello, my name is Edward. What's yours?" He smiles his crooked grin at me in an attempt to get me to smile.
"Isabe-Bella. Just Bella."
"Hello, Just Bella," he grins more naturally, but the sight of his perfect white teeth gleaming at me reminds me only of danger and I imagine how much it would hurt if he-
He sticks out his hand and I flinch, before remembering to fix my reaction and offer my own. He looks down with a certain sadness at my skeleton hand, wavering in the open air between us. I cannot grasp his. I am not that forward, I can never be. My skin stretches over the bones and tendons of my hand in such a way that must just be revolting, I know that it must. Charlie said that I have disgusting hands. I wonder what the voice thinks of my hands. I know what Edward thinks, because he hesitates before taking mine.
The moment my hand is in his possession, I feel vulnerable. If I were to try and get away from him just now, a sharp yank would pull me right down. He could snap my wrist, Charlie has done that before. He could pull me down by my hand and force me to the ground and-
He only shakes it, gently, and releases it. In my shock it falls dead-limbed to my lap.
"My favorite color is brown. My favorite children's movies, growing up, were the Lion King and Bambi, because of all the animals. My favorite food is a plain ham-and-cheese sandwich. What are some of your favorites?"
He says so much so quickly that I have trouble processing any of it. I worry at the personal information he is revealing, since the voice could be listening in on us. But I try to shake my fears once more.
"I love animals too," my voice is quiet, since I cannot bring myself above a whisper. Making noise in this sleek, perfect room feels like an affront. We spend so much time in silence…
"What is your favorite animal?" He is enthusiastic, quickly seizing onto this admission of mine.
I don't have to think long, but I worry over telling him. "When I was a girl, I always wanted a kitten…" I choke off, remembering what Charlie had done when I asked him for one.
I am sad because I am all wet, I peed on accident because Daddy is so mad. He is mad because I asked for a kitty. He has been gone a long time…
I squeeze my eyes shut as if that will force out the memory, but gasp and pop them open again, finding Edward wild-eyed. Closing my eyes only darkens the theater for the cinematic horror that was that night.
Charlie left me alone for several hours- I was so young, I have no way of knowing how long exactly. Long enough for my nose to stop bleeding and for me to have dried, sitting there in the closet. Charlie, when he got back…
Daddy is coming in now. He is sososo drunk, which is what he gets when he is gone for a long time. Daddy is mean when he is drunk. Ouch! He is pulling me out by my wrist and laughing. It's not funny!
He has a kitty for me but it's not moving. The kitty is stiff and cold. He shoves it in my arms and I scream. "Look what I saw on the road tonight! HA! You'd just kill the damn thing anyway, you stupid shit! This way I skipped a step!" I scream again…
Edward pulls me to my chest, hushing me and snapping me out of the memory. I know he is disappointed in me… we cannot even have one normal conversation without my dissolving into a complete wreck. He is only trying to bring normalcy into our lives. His heart thuds against my ear, its regular rhythm lulling me into a more calm state.
Some time later, Edward and I are lying on his bed. There is an almost imperceptible change in the air, the hum of the air shifts. The microphone and camera are live, I know it deep within my bones. My heart leaps, catching high up in my throat, weightless in its arc, before crashing down to the pit of my stomach. He begins speaking to us.
"Close your eyes, now."
We are obedient, of course. At least, my own eyes snap shut. I cannot speak for Edward, who may be foolish enough to peer through slitted eyes to try and see what the voice is doing. Sometimes he provokes the voice in this sort of way…
There is another shift in the air, and a seamless noise of something slipping against another something. Then a stillness. Then a small, almost, almost…
A meow. A tiny meow.
I quake and bit my lip hard so as not to scream. Blood trickles down my chin and into my mouth, coppery and disgusting. I fist my hands at my sides into the bed.
"Open."
A kitten, Idon'tknowhowoldIwantitoutofhereIwantitoutofhere
It islittleanditisblackanditissosmallit'salittlekittylikeIwantedDaddy
"Kill it, Edward."
Edward stands with a gravity, my eyes are pinned wide open, I cannotclosethem I cannotclosethem the voicesaidtokeepthemopen he said to keep themopen
It is done long before my panic flees me.
(end flashback)