Playlist:
A Fine Frenzy - Almost Lover
Cascada - What Hurts the Most - Radio Mix U.S.
Lady Gaga - Million Reasons
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the words. Stephanie Meyer owns the Twilight series, and the songs belong to their respective people.
Almost Lover
Edward toyed with Bella's hair as she slept next to him. After dinner, the group had split up, Jo muttering something about teaching Carlisle to monitor Bella's aura that made his father light up like a shooting star. Carlisle was thrilled to be able to help his Fae daughter, and if he could learn more about magicks and the Fae's special abilities while doing so, well, all the better. He and Josephat had disappeared onto the balcony to talk as soon as they had crossed the threshold of the Attic. Kaedra and Marcos took off too, sharing a loaded look as Bella began to nod off during dinner. They had excused themselves from the table with a nebulous explanation about "state business", heading towards Bella's office.
Esme was still flitting around the kitchen in case every Fae in Camp got hungry in the night. Or at least that's what Edward guessed from the amount of food she was preparing. In her mind, Edward read his mother's feeling of uselessness. She felt small and helpless when she thought of all that had been revealed that day.
Jasper and Alice had gone for a walk after dinner, and Emmett and Rosalie were already in their room for the night. So, Edward called to his mother softly, beckoning her to sit on the couch across from where he and Bella lay together on the futon-bed.
"Hey mom. Are you okay?"
Esme wiped her hands nervously on a kitchen towel. "I don't know. I'll be okay, I think. None of it has really sunk in yet. I keep thinking back to that girl- the red-headed one in the images. It was like everything in Bella's past circled back to that horrific echo of the city square."
Josephat had been subdued when they asked him about the glitches they had seen in the alley as Bella panicked. "Echoes are sometimes intensely personal, my friends. They can reveal memories of their casters, or of the place where they are cast. I must respect Bella's privacy. There are some things which will not be explained until Isabella is capable of explaining them to you. Just know that the girl's name was Adeline Smith. She, Bella, and a boy named Fiore Salem were very close as children. She died as the Master attempted to Bind your Bella to him. The echo must have been powerfully felt to escape the silence's effect on Bella's memories." He had inclined his head at them in a respectful half-bow and would say no more on the subject.
Bella was sometimes unnaturally still as she slept, and tonight she slept deeply with Edward by her side. He knew there would be no half-murmurs of his name tonight. Edward regretted leaving Bella in the medical wing alone; he had missed the feeling of her soft body warming his. He didn't even really notice when Esme reached to brush Bella's hair out of her eyes, but when his mother's cool hand met Bella's face, Bella mumbled softly and nuzzled Esme's hand. If Edward had not been a vampire, he would not have heard the garbled whisper. "Addy, come to bed. Fio is hogging the covers again."
Bella shot forward into a sitting position, half-awake and struggling to breathe as blood filled her mouth. Jo and Carlisle ran into the room, but Bella waved them off; she was already running for the kitchen sink. Edward held back her hair as she spit the silence's cursed blood into the sink. She turned her back to it and slid down to the floor, shaking slightly, but she calmed as Edward spoke soothing nonsense to her.
Before Edward could follow, she got up and entered the room where Carlisle and Esme stayed. Bella went straight to the large desk in the corner and flipped a previously unseen switch inside the top drawer. The surface of the desk opened with a pop, and Bella reached inside the secret cubby slowly; Edward spied a violin in the space before Bella closed it, clutching at the mirror shard she drew from the secret well of the desk.
"What is that?" Josephat asked with guarded suspicion.
"Just a memory, Jo. Quit worrying." Bella held the shard up to the light, and Edward saw the red-headed girl's face reflected where Bella's should have been. The girl was laughing, somehow older than she had been, dead in the echo; as Bella tilted the shard, an angular man with deep brown eyes and facial hair appeared, his face serious. Bella closed her fist around the shard, tucking it into the pocket of her ratty sweats.
She turned to the group crowded in the doorway and addressed Esme and Carlisle. "Sorry, guys. This used to be my room, and I have a few things still stored in here. If you don't mind, I'd like to leave them where they are." She patted the desk as though sharing a secret with them, before she smiled and walked to him.
"Come on, lover-boy. I'm still exhausted, and I don't sleep well without my personal AC. Carlisle, remember Fae are still human, we have to sleep." She patted Jo's shoulder as she passed him, and he watched her cross to the bed sadly.
"Goodnight Carlisle, Esme, Edward. My queen has commanded I sleep, and I must comply."
"Damn straight." Bella's voice called back to him. Jo grinned indulgently and left the Attic. Edward held his love in his arms once more, content to leave the small mystery to rest until tomorrow.
The next day progressed normally, and the one after that. The Fae magicks gave them awe-inspiring control over any physical matter. Three days after Bella's panic attack in the garden, Edward would never have guessed Camp had seen any damage at all.
On the third day after Bella pulled the mirror shard from the desk, Marcos approached Edward during breakfast. Bella had gone to get a second plate of eggs, hungrier now that she was busy from sunrise until long after nightfall. "Hey, Edward. Look, I don't mind your relationship with Izzy, I really don't. Well, I try not to. But if you keep her from training one more time, you and I are gonna have a problem."
"What?"
"Can vampires even be hard of hearing? I said-"
"I heard what you said. Bella's been to train every day since we got here. I know how much she enjoys it."
It was true. Bella loved her sparring sessions with the soldiers. She taught several of the adult classes now, and trained with her regent and commander away from prying eyes in the dojo. She lost track of time easily on the training grounds, her focus sharpening until none of Edward's Bella remained; in her place stood a Fae warrior and Queen.
"Oh. I see. Izzy has always been a sneaky one. Careful, Edward. You know what they say about a lover who stays late at the office." Marcos swaggered away; for just a moment, Edward let himself imagine the taste of the commander's blood on his tongue. Then, he did the only thing he could do with the fear and anxiety rising in his brain: he went to find Bella.
When he finally found his love, she was walking down the second-floor hallway towards her office; it was an hour after she had told him she was going to practice solo at the training grounds. Bella stopped at the room across the hall from her office. He had never seen the inside of that room. He had assumed it was a closet. Bella materialized a small, rusted key from nowhere, and the lock rasped softly when she opened the door.
Just then, Lizzie walked by with a precarious stack of reports about six boxes high. Bella stepped away with the door half-closed to help her carry them. Purposely not thinking too hard, Edward slipped into the room with all the stealth he possessed. He hid himself in a nearby armoire and waited.
The room had once been light and lush; grandiose, as were all the rooms in Camp. Golden wallpaper had peeled and faded, streaked with dirt and bloody streaks forming smeared handprints. Ashes and half burned music sheets covered the floor. Edward spied a broken arm of a guitar, the strings snapped and curled back against the shard of wood. Music stands were bent and mangled, crowded into corners or resting haphazardly against faded and ripped chairs. A long table at the end of the room had been gouged and scorched beyond repair. There was a thick layer of dust on everything but the broken-down white piano; one leg was missing and supported by a stack of books. A spindly wooden chair sat crookedly at the keys. French doors at the end of the room opposite the armoire were half-ripped from their hinges, warped, with panes of broken glass creating hundreds of sharp edges. The tall windows were dirty and smudged, with no shutters and only half of a moth-eaten curtain on one window; the rest had been torn from their rods.
After a few minutes, Edward started to feel silly hiding in the obviously abandoned music room, and he was just about to open the crooked door of the armoire when he heard the rasp of the key in the lock once more.
Bella didn't seem to notice the destroyed and dilapidated room. From the moment she entered the doorway and carefully closed the door behind her, she only had eyes for the piano.
For all the secrets between them, for all the lies that rolled so easily off their tongues, Bella had never given Edward any reason not to trust her completely. Until the moment when Bella placed her hands on the worn black and white keys Edward so loved and began to play.
Edward was wasting away, dying in the cramped and dark closet. The echoes that flashed around the room ripped his heart from his chest and threw it at Bella's feet. He didn't want it back. He thought distantly of Bella's medical file and scars hidden from view; of James; of Rosalie's voice claiming Bella had died. Edward didn't know if this was worse, but it was close.
The images were blurry, a camera out of focus and figures that never quite stepped into view. It didn't matter. Love and loss poured from Bella's lips with every soft note as Bella played and sang. Edward couldn't understand the Fae language that the song was written in, and somehow that was the thought that brought venom-tears to his eyes.
The girl and boy in the image were young teenagers: flashes of eyes and hands, jaw and cheekbones. The echoes were more feeling and color than sight, though Edward caught young male hands strumming a guitar, a bow pulling across violin strings.
It was the red-haired girl now: a peck on the cheek, a ballroom, and a waltz in the center of the street, both girls laughing over their shoulders.
Strong male hands caressed freckled flesh; manicured nails stretched across piano keys; a gilded mirror suddenly shattered.
Bella's hands fell from the piano keys with a discordant note. Tears were rising in her voice now, only to fall down her face. The image was of the Attic, but the main room where Bella and Edward slept was set up differently, with a massive bed taking up one side of the room nearest the French doors.
Two blurry and naked figures lay on the bed, slightly separated but turned to face one another. There was a Bella-shaped gap between their bodies.
Bella took up the keys again, her body swaying as she felt the music of her own creation fill the space; she was more in a trance than Edward's family had ever joked he was in when he composed. It was somehow the most beautiful thing Edward had ever seen, and the most heartbreaking.
The mirror shard from the desk was back. Bella set it on the edge of the piano gently, running a finger along its edge before curling in on herself as she had in the garden, screaming the verse at the top of her voice. The shard flashed the older faces of Bella's lovers at him.
Bella's voice became a whisper, grief and love spent in equal amounts. They were gone now, only blank-faced deadness left behind. When the song stopped, Bella was silent and still for a moment. Without turning her focus from the piano keys, Bella addressed her hidden lover.
"I know you're there, Edward. It's not nice to spy." She heard the crunch of glass as Edward stepped from the armoire.
His voice was angry and accusatory. "You play piano?"
What Hurts the Most (Cascada)
"I do not. I mean I do, but not...not anymore. That is what you got from that?"
"You told me you had never dated anyone before."
Bella shrugged hopelessly. "I lied. How was I supposed to say I had previous lovers, but I couldn't answer any questions about them? Not to mention the massive amounts of blood that would've brought while I was in close quarters with a vampire. I'm not an idiot."
"You lied. You loved them. Both of them. You fucked them. How many others are there Bella? Should I take a number?"
"Oh, well. If that's how you want to play it, that's fine. Let's see. How do you wanna count this, Edward? I mean, how do you define a lover? This isn't 1917, Edward. I didn't even know you when I loved them."
"How many?" Terrible suspicion was creeping into Edward's thoughts. Bella had loved them; she had loved them before him. Had she ever been his? His voice was a deadly whisper-snarl, and he felt his expression turn vampiric. He was going to lose it.
"Well, let's see. There's Addy and Fio, that's two." Blood pooled in her mouth, scenting the air and making control that much more difficult. Somehow, the thought of Bella's pain just made Edward angrier, more possessive. Loving them had hurt her. Only Edward had the right to hurt Bella like that, and he never would.
"I saw Marcos in Miami. We weren't exclusive, weren't in love. Is that the sin here, or just the sex? I mean, if sex is the issue, we're gonna run into some problems. Since this is last century and all, does my consent matter? 'Cause if it doesn't..." Bella choked as her head ticked to the side suddenly. Her voice was hoarse and whisper soft as she continued, forcing the words past gritted teeth. "The number goes up. Demetri was very good at his job."
There was a moment. Just a single moment, where Edward thought his insane anger might end, might be drowned in his pain at her pain. Then, Bella spat blood to the floor.
Edward was pushing her up against the wall before he told his body to move, crowding her against it and punishing her with a brutal kiss, his grip tight on her jaw. "Do not— Do not waste a single drop. Mine. My Bella. My blood. My right. No-one else's'. Mine."
Edward lapped the blood from Bella's lips, his need reducing him to animalistic possession. Every stone muscle was clenched to temper his strength, to keep from hurting her or worse. The taste of her blood in his mouth drove him wild. By contrast, Bella relaxed completely, seduction canting her hips against Edward's. She trusted him even now.
A soft purr rose in her words as she damned him. "Did you know there's a spell, Edward? You could drink from me all day, and I'd never change. Never turn. You could just take everything, until there was nothing left. It could be yours, all of it. Every piece of me. With enough control, you could drink from me. Every. Day. I'd give it to you. You'd be my first."
Shock and pleasure rang through Edward at the thought. And then his thoughts caught up with him.
He stopped immediately, taking just a second to memorize this moment before he stepped away. "But I'm not. Your first. Consensually." The sadness was back, and Edward wanted heat and pain instead.
Bella sighed, fixing her dress and hair. "Just because I love them doesn't mean I don't love you." Edward couldn't help but notice the present tense.
"I don't love you like them. I do love you, Edward. But it's different. I'm different."
"Too different. I don't want to love you anymore. Not broken like this, not when it hurts so badly."
Million Reasons
"That's your prerogative." Bella turned, headed for the door.
"So that's it then? It's over, just like that. Did I mean anything to you at all?"
It was apparently Bella's turn for anger. "You idiot. I've heard those words from you before. In the woods, remember? When you left. You told me you didn't want me anymore then too." Bella spat every word.
"Why did you bring us here then? Why did you take me back? You clearly don't love me as much as them. What was the point, Bella?"
"Fuck you, Edward. I do love you. I love them too. Nothing will, or ever can, change that. It is salvation and damnation, all in one." She backed him across the room now, heat waves rising from her fingertips.
"I loved them, and they died. And now I love you and I can't stop it. By some miracle you love me too, but if you think I care that you mind, you've got another thing coming. My love won't end just because you can't love me back."
She threw her hands in the air in her frustration, throwing scorch marks onto the ceiling above them. The room was sizzling.
"Hell, Edward, the whole reason you are even in Havana in the first place is because it was the only safe place left. I'm dying for you. You owe me nothing, but don't you dare say I don't love you. Even death won't stop me loving you. Nothing will. Not even you. There is nothing you could ever say or do to change it. I know you think I am foolish for allowing Kaedra to stay. I know you don't understand how I can forgive her. But Edward, the truth is? If you had held the whip, I wouldn't have minded the pain much."
Bella's face was suddenly spent, suddenly exhausted. The room dropped ten degrees. She met his eyes imploringly.
"If I were any kind of queen, I would've killed myself two years ago. I was working up to it. But then I met you. I met you and your family, and everything changed. I let Addy and Fiodie for me, for my people. And here I am, asking my people, my precious people to die for you- to die for my love of you."
Bella turned her face away from him, her voice whisper-soft now. "You are something so beautiful, Edward Cullen. If you hate me, then maybe I deserve it. But Adeline and Fiore were beautiful too, before they were destroyed. I lived through the loss of them and because I did, I cannot live to see you destroyed. I don't know how to do this, Edward. I don't know how to give up the people I love for the greater good again. I can't do it, and even if I could, I wouldn't. If you want to walk away from all of this, go. I'll keep you safe from the Master and wish you someone better to love. I can't be anyone but who I am. I can't love you any way other than the best way I know how."
Edward didn't know what to say. Bella turned and left the room without another glance at him, and then Edward was alone.
