Chapter Nineteen
TW: mentions of Suicidal Ideation (TW section will be marked with {TW} before section begins and {E} after section ends.)
"Nothing to concern yourself with." Edward said with a smile and turned up the TV where George Bailey was busy flirting with a girl over a candy counter. How I hadn't realized we made it that far into the movie already I didn't know.
"No Edward, don't lie to me." I sat up, placing the bowl of popcorn that was in my lap on the coffee table in front of me.
"Alice's visions are never the only path we can go on, this was just a variant it's fine." He said dismissively, turning the television up another few notches, only because he knew the louder it was the less I could focus. I could tell he was lying to me, I wasn't sure how I could tell, but I could tell.
"Edward." I said his voice with such intensity it shocked even me. I was gripping his arm now, my eyes deadest and my brow furrowed. He turned his gaze to me, shocked, and I looked him dead in the eye as I set my jaw. "Tell me. What. Is going. On." I spoke each word with conviction, I was tired of secrets and not knowing the whole truth.
"Alice had a vision about you being in danger. Someone, our kind, is coming, they are angry with you and we aren't sure why." The words seemed to fall from his mouth despite the look in his eyes telling me he didn't want to say what he was saying. "We had been going through possibilities as to what this could mean and what we could do to avoid them but none are working. She is coming."
My hand shot up to my mouth in shock, releasing my grip on him and at that exact moment his face changed to a look of confusion and shock. "How did you do that?" Jasper's voice spoke from behind me, scaring me as I didn't realize he and Alice were still there.
"How did I do what?" I flipped my gaze to Jasper, who sat bewildered on the edge of the couch.
"Do you... do you really not know what you just did?" He stood up and walked over to Edward, setting his hand on his shoulder and looking into his eyes with pure concern.
"Ara," Edward's voice spoke slightly broken, as he tore his eyes from Jasper and looked at me. "I couldn't stop myself from saying what I said. I had no control over it." I jumped up from the couch horrified, my mind racing as to what any of this could mean. I didn't want to be different, I just wanted to be a normal human, and yeah it was always going to be different now that I knew about the hidden world- but I didn't have to change.
"What." My voice broke as I backed away from him. I felt Alice's cool hands grip my arms.
"Ara, calm down, nobody is mad, we are just confused." Her tone was serious, and suddenly the rest of the Cullen's were in the room. Carlisle's face looked concerned but excited about the unknown as he looked at me. Esme had a face full of sympathy, and Emmett and Rose just looked confused. I could feel my legs becoming shaky as the anxiety set in, the pure undiluted fear and the confusion placing my mind into shackles. It soon became evident that the only thing stopping me from hitting the floor was Alice's hands. My legs had gone numb and my mind still reeled, the Cullen's blurring around me and somehow I was on the couch again laying on my side. I was unable to move as the hooks of anxiety sunk deeper into my existence, but Jasper was at my side, his hand directly on my temple, I could feel the effects but they wouldn't stick. I was trapped in my own mind. Eventually the world faded and I fell asleep, no doubt the effect of Jasper's efforts to calm me.
When I woke again I was laying on my back, and Carlisle's face hovered over me, a pen flashlight balanced delicately between his long pale fingers. "Welcome back." He smiled his infectious smile. Panic raked through my body again like a series of knives.
"Oh no you don't." Jasper's voice spoke as he placed his hand on my forehead. "You never have loud emotions and when you do they are impossible to control." He shook his head, looking frustrated with the idea.
"What happened?" I spoke once the calm aura washed over me and filled the wounds that anxiety left.
"You had a severe panic attack and passed out." Edward said from across the room, worry knitting his eyebrows together.
"Oh... that's all?" I said as if I were carefree. "I do that like six times a week." I joked, earning a half hearted chuckle from the bronze haired ice cube across the room.
"Arabella how are you feeling? Do you think you can sit up?" Carlisle asked, and shakily I nodded, allowing Jasper to remove his hand from my forehead as I moved to an upright position.
"Edward?" I asked as I looked him in the eye. Are you mad at me? I... I really didn't mean to. I had no idea that I could.
Edward sighed, standing and crossing the room in an instant, sitting down next to me and grabbing my chin between his icy fingers. "I understand what happened more than anyone in this room. How could I be mad when I know you didn't even know." I felt tears carve a path down my cheeks and Edward wiped them away without a second thought.
I nodded, Edward dropped his grip and grabbed my shoulder pulling me into a half hug. I turned my attention back to Carlisle while coiling my arms around Edward. "Have you ever heard of something like this?"
"I've heard musings of humans having extraordinary abilities but never this one in particular." He clarified, crouching in front of me to check my eyes with the penlight. "Follow my finger." He mumbled absently as he began to examine my eyes.
"I guess this solves the mystery of the nurse." I grumbled under my breath, earning a laugh from Edward and confused looks from the rest.
"I'll explain later." Edward clarified.
"Okay, be honest with me." I turned my attention to Edward once Carlisle was done with the exam and seemed satisfied. "What do you mean coming for me?"
"Alice has determined that in nearly 5 weeks we will have a visitor of our kind, the visitor fully intends to either kill you or not survive the trip." He clarified begrudgingly.
"Gotcha... suicidal vampire. Any particular reas-" it clicked, suddenly it made too much sense. "The visitor. It's the same one from my room?" I looked to Edward, replaying that night in my head, the one when I realized someone had broken in and rifled through my belongings.
"That person wasn't one of us, which is why I didn't realize it wasn't someone you knew, if it is them, they were turned with the intent of revenge." His words were rough as he also connected the dots.
"What does this mean?" I asked in a panicked tone. I was on my feet suddenly, I wasn't sure how, but I knew I had done it on my own. I was pacing sure enough, and I felt the effort of Jasper trying to calm my anxiety, but I felt my body burning it off faster and faster. This was going to be an attack, I could feel it coming.
"We will take care of it, there only appears to be one." Edward's hands caught my shoulders to stop me in my tacks.
"But she was in my house!" My eyes met his and a blaze of worry.
"But she was alone, this is a single mission, she hasn't recruited forces, she is all by herself and doesn't know how to control her own strength or abilities. She's a lone newborn without training, even though she's at her strongest, she is weaker all the same and has no idea how many of us there are." His words were meant to soothe but they did nothing but worry me more.
{TW}
The cycling of my thoughts weren't the healthiest, and when certain notes hit in my head I heard a low growl roll through Edward's throat. "Arabella please."
"What?" Jasper asked, probably unable to separate my cyclone of feelings.
"Just some rudimentary thoughts and images, but I'm not liking the route it's heading down." He clarified, he didn't need to say it out loud for both Carlisle and Jasper who still stood in the room to understand where my mind had gone.
It was Carlisle's horrified expression that broke my thought process. "Arabella, if you're struggling-"
"It's not like that," I grumbled and walked back to the couch, crashing down and folding my legs under me.
"It seemed pretty much like that." Edward said with a pained expression painted onto his face.
"Honestly Edward, have you not noticed there is always that slight tint to my thoughts? Regardless I'd never go through with it, my dad would be heartbroken and I couldn't bear the idea of someone finding me like that." I waved my hand dismissively and pulled my phone out.
"What? What do you mean it's always there." He looked bewildered, but I had chosen to ignore the line of questioning further.
"Arabella?" Carlisle's voice was wary.
"She's ignoring us." Edward spoke stiffly.
"She's not to that point though." Jasper said, I'm sure trying to ease Carlisle.
"What was her... plan?" Carlisle found his voice again.
"It wasn't precise, more and the overall concept. I saw a bridge though, that was the most vivid image, I've never seen the bridge before- there it is again- Arabella please."
"You were the one that brought it up- I didn't even realize I was thinking of that place." My words seemed to be dipped in poison as I spat them in his direction as I scrolled meaninglessly on my phone. The unwelcome memory of that bridge kept flashing in my head, I was unable to escape it now that he had brought it up.
"Wait... what are these... these are memories?" Edward asked, he was now crouched in front of me, his hand on my cheek as my face blazed red from the effort of trying to hold myself together, I was cracking. "What is that?" He asked as another image raced through my mind. "Ara?"
"That bridge was where my mom died. Car crash, remember?" I didn't hold back. I let the images fill my mind again. I knew he was only seeing half of it, he couldn't see the car that sat at the bottom of the river, or the other car that sat on its hood. The way the red and blue lights atop the police cars made the entire scene seem unreal, bathed in a flat light that gave no definition to the body they pulled up from the river on the pulley system. "I wasn't going to throw myself off it. I go there to think about the big things. I haven't been since she died though. I used to walk there."
"Then what was that feeling you had?" Jasper asked curiously, he must have been a piece of the puzzle to why Edward thought I was going to be throwing myself off it.
"Always happens after an anxiety attack." I grumbled, curling into myself more. "I just want to curl up and sleep afterwards and when I can't my brain tries to make a solution- no matter how stupid." I could feel the tendrils of exhaustion grabbing at me now, and realization dawned across Edward and Jasper's faces. Suddenly my behavior somehow made sense, how they hadn't realized I was petrified I was unsure, but I would chalk it up to them being so alarmed about my show of force before.
"Can I just go home?" I sighed and looked at Edward with pleading eyes. "I want to go to bed."
"Yeah, I'll get the car." His lips were a hard line as he exited the room and left me with Jasper and Carlisle.
"Really. I'm fine." I looked at them, pointing a more determined gaze at Jasper. "I promise."
"You mean too much to us for those thoughts Ara." Carlisle spoke, and then suddenly Esme was by his side, she looked almost as if she was crying, though no tears worked their way down her perfect face.
"I don't want you to ever think that's your way out of things." She was clearly pained by the unspoken tone of the conversation.
"I don't, I promise, it's just chillin there, the feeling, I'm not going to act on it." I crossed my arms and shoved my phone against my side. "I could never leave my dad, and after everything my friend Gi went through I couldn't imagine it for myself." I thought of visiting Gi last summer after nearly losing her. "Even if I can't hold on for myself, I have others that I would never want to feel that pain. Really, I'm fine, I'm honestly better than I was last year." I stood just as Edward stepped through the door again. Esme walked over and pulled me into a hug, she smelled of puff pastry, and my heart broke as I realized she had planned a dinner for me but that I was bailing before getting to try it.
"We will see you tomorrow?" Carlisle asked as Esme finally relinquished her hold on me.
"Maybe." I gave a half hearted smile and then accepted my coat from Edward as we exited the door. I looked at him after we sat in the car, his expression was still incredibly pained as he drove down the driveway. "Can we just... not talk about this again?"
"Ara I-"
"No no! I know! But unless I seem like an actual threat to myself or others, can we not bring it up?" Eventually he turned to look at me, meeting my gaze and holding it for just long enough, then nodding. Whatever he was searching for in my thoughts he seemed satisfied with the answer he got.
Another week passed, Christmas being rather uneventful, and I got the sneaking suspicion that Edward had Alice watching my decisions to make sure I wasn't planning anything. It took another week after that, now into the new year, for the Cullen's to stop walking on eggshells around me. I had taken a break from going over there every day, hanging out with Gi as she returned from her trip to her grandparents that always left her annoyed and exhausted. Edward seemed wary of my time with her as well, now that he knew a piece of her and I's personal history. When he found out that I had been the one to find her plan before she had a chance to complete it, he was bewildered.
{E}
Once we were through the two week period of wariness that Edward felt, we only had three weeks left, which did absolutely nothing to soothe me. Then the discussion I was entirely unprepared for came. "If this doesn't work." Edward began, gauging my reaction as he spoke. "And I can't get to you before..."
"Edward, I don't want to be a vampire." I guessed where his words were headed. "I don't see a point in eternity, without a time limit life has no meaning. I don't want to waste my time but I don't want that time to seem endless... if that makes sense?"
"No it does, I wasn't sure if it was something you had placed thought into. Honestly I would much rather you stayed human as well." I looked at him curiously, he was sitting beside me on my bed as the nearly full moon shone through my window and bathed my room in a half silvery glow while the Himalayan Salt Lamp sat on my bedside and added an orange glow to the other side of the room. I had my twinkle lights that were strung above my four poster bed on the blink setting and they chased themselves in spirals overhead like shooting stars. "I don't mean I don't want you to be with me, just... your soul, I couldn't damn it with me."
"I... thank you?" I thought for a moment before sitting up. "Wait what?"
"I could never cast your soul to hell along with mine." He shook his head, his eyes being annoyingly brooding.
"Edward what the hell?"
"What!" He looked at me in shock.
"Have you not looked around this room?" I asked curiously.
"I've done my share of snooping." He admitted guiltily.
"Not close enough to notice one very key detail." I shook my head and climbed from my bed, motioning him to stay still. I walked across my room to the top of my three shelf bookshelf that sat squeezed against the wall next to my desk. "These candles, and the rocks, and the plants. What do you think I have them here for? And the smell of lavender that seems to cling to every fabric in this room? Or the palm stone of amethyst under my pillow?" I saw his hand fish under my pillow and pull out the purple stone that was always as cold to touch as he was.
"I thought you just... liked rocks?"
"While yes, I do enjoy them, they are crystals and half of the book on the shelf immediately under aren't books I think you would ever be inclined to pick up."
"I thought they were just normal works of fiction?" He was now confused and curious.
"Edward, I don't believe in Hell because I don't worship the Christian god." It was amazing how supernaturally thick his skull had to be in order for him to miss every detail. I pulled my tarot cards from the window where they sat in the moonlight. "The first night you spent here was a full moon and I had every single crystal I own sitting in this window sill." I sat on the bed across from him. "The night after our first kiss you had come in here and my tarot cards were still spread on the floor." I was so intrigued by his apparent obliviousness.
"I didn't realize that's what those were..." he shook his head as I shuffled them absentmindedly.
"I'm not Wiccan, that doesn't fit my beliefs, but I do place my trust in my ancestors." I clarified. "I don't have a god or a goddess. Not right now."
"Is that why you always have untouched bowls of food on that table?"
"Usually yes. If it's on that shelf, don't touch it." I clarified as the tower card flew from my hand like the universe had plucked it itself. It landed perfectly between Edward and myself, and I stared at it in wonder. "Well." I silently slid it back into my deck and placed the deck back into the windowsill. "We are just going to ignore that one for right now." I grumbled to myself as I walked back over and slid under my covers once more. "This was just a long winded way of me saying, don't worry about my soul, but I definitely don't want eternity, at least not right now."
Edward still sat bewildered on the edge of my bed, turning and looking at me once more as I nestled into the heated blanket that I had underneath my comforter.
"I know, I know, Carlisle hunted witches back in the day and you were born and died just before the rise of Wicca, yadda yadda, I want to sleep." I found myself crabby when I was cold, and my floor had frozen my entire body in a matter of seconds when my bare feet had hit it. Despite the cold I was determined and on a mission so I hadn't let it stop me or slow me down, though now I certainly regret it. Edward laughed and pulled me into his arms, allowing me to slowly fall asleep, though I was sure his mind was racing.