Stephenie Meyer owns the Twilight Saga. I own twitchy fingers that enjoy writing for no profit.
Chapter 4: Sex and Sacrifice
After our talk, Charlie and I lapsed into a comfortable silence, me sitting on a small rock on his leeward side, taking what shelter I could from the wind. He seemed relieved, whether it was because he felt hope that things were genuinely going to improve, or because he was simply glad that the emotional conversation was over and he could return to his usual stoic nature, I couldn't tell. For myself I'd be glad to have him back to the way I was used to him being. For one because it would mean he was no longer anxious over my emotional and mental state, but also because since I'd moved to live with him, I'd grown to really love and appreciate his particular way of demonstrating his love for me; the welcome home present of the truck, the clunky old dinosaur of a computer in my room, the chains already fitted on my tyres on icy days, all spoke of his quiet but real love for me, and in a way they spoke louder than the words that Renee would use to express the same thing several times a day. I supposed that in my own way I had, before my birthday anyway, demonstrated my own love for him in similar ways; cooking and cleaning and taking care of him the best I could. I guessed we really were much more alike than I had realised.
Seeing that he was fishing contentedly, I decided now was a good time to turn my thoughts back towards the unpicking of my dream. I still had hopes that if I managed to get to grips with whatever it was I was trying to let my conscious mind know, I might actually get a little reprieve from that dream at least.
I scanned quickly through my thoughts, trying to find the lost thread that I was picking at when Charlie interrupted my analysis earlier. "Ah yes, that was it. The strange bear-like growls and snarls and the bone crunching noises which always come at the end of that scene as it blacks out." I once again mentally compared the noises to the growls and hisses I'd heard before from vampires. They were clearly very different, but no matter how I twisted and turned the idea in my head, I simply couldn't imagine why my subconscious mind considered a bear being present to be of any importance. A bear was no defence against a vampire; I know for a fact that some members of the C... Cullen family found them to be their favourite meal. The mention, even in my head of the family name caused another twinge in my chest, but a much duller one than previously. The family leaving me was upsetting in and of itself. To be considered a sister/daughter by them and then to be abandoned without a word was a painful experience, but it had been driven home to me in the last twelve hours just how much my own flesh and blood truly meant to me, and I to him, so the loss of the Cullen family would soon become something I regretted, but not something to grieve excessively over. "Enough poking at bruises to see if they still hurt." I cautioned myself. "Back to the matter at hand... So the bear attacking was going to have to go into the 'haven't a clue' pile too. Hmm. That pile is growing a bit too quickly for my liking."
After the 'James attacks the village' scene faded to black each night, the other three scenes which somehow formed part of the same dream would repeat in random order.
In one, I was once again in the same ancient Quileute village, and much of the scene was similar to the first, but instead of it being James attacking, it was Victoria. She always seemed to be in such a rage that she barely seemed sane. Striking about her indiscriminately, and not even taking the trouble to feed from her kills. Dream Victoria would be, just as dream James had been, dressed much as I last saw her, in modern clothes, but there the resemblance to the vampire I met at the baseball clearing ended. Her long red hair no longer flowing freely about her shoulders, but snarled up, almost in dreadlocks, it was so tangled, and full of dirt, leaves and twigs. Her face was always fixed in a feral snarl, and her bright red eyes insane with anger as they met mine. She would tear her way through the village, slaughtering tribe members as she went, and I always had the feeling that she was merely cutting down the weeds in her single-minded path to kill me in particular. My dream self would pull a sharp looking belt knife out and, looking Victoria in the eye, would plunge it deep into my own chest; the scent of the blood drawing her away from her indiscriminate killing as she would leap straight at me and then once again darkness would draw the scene to a close. Remembering this scene had my hands trembling and I forced them between my knees as I sat there, trying to disguise the shaking from Charlie.
"Well this one doesn't need a genius to work out." I thought to myself. "It's clear that the message here is Victoria will be back to avenge James, and she won't care in the slightest how much collateral damage is done while she carries out her vendetta." This little fact now seemed so glaringly obvious that I was amazed that neither myself, nor any of the Cullens had thought of it before. "Well maybe they had, but they didn't care enough about me to stick around and offer me their protection." The thought popped into my head before I could stop it, and it was all I could do to keep myself from hyperventilating as I stubbornly refused to give in to the pain and panic that came with the idea. "Oh God. Charlie would be the collateral damage if I'm right and she does come back. I can't let him be hurt or killed because of me." Knowing this, and being only too aware that I'd have no one around capable of protecting me gave me only two choices when the time came and Victoria returned: I couldn't let Charlie be killed any more than I could've let Renee be killed when I thought James had her in Phoenix, so I had to either try to lure her out to the forest or the beach, somewhere away from Charlie so he won't be involved, or run out on Charlie, get as far away as possible, and try to live in hiding for as long as I can, probably putting everyone I come across in my travels in the path of danger until she finally finds me and kills me.
Both of these options were heartbreaking, mainly due to the fact that each would leave Charlie all alone again, and either dealing with funeral arrangements or leading a search for his missing daughter. I hated the thought of either choice, but I guessed that I owed it to Charlie to at least try to stay alive as long as possible, so it looked like when the time came I already had a two stage plan ready and waiting. First try to run and hide, and then, if that failed, lure her to me somewhere alone to get it over with, without getting anyone else hurt. Despite not believing in a higher power myself, I found myself silently praying that Victoria wouldn't make her reappearance for a long, long time so I could have as long as possible with Charlie.
I pressed stubbornly onward with my dream analysis, turning my thoughts towards what I actually found the most disturbing of the scenes I was being haunted by. It was by no means the most violent of the scenes, but it was the most detailed, so much so that I could feel what was happening as well as see and hear it. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, a sex scene. One not unworthy of appearing in a soft porn movie and I found it more distressing than the violence of the James scene and the Victoria scene because, inexperienced though I was with anything more sexual than a few closed mouthed kisses, I enjoyed it. It was hot! It was also more disturbing because I was troubled that my mind could invent something like this; not just a straight, vanilla, missionary, romantic lovemaking but rough, animalistic, dominant/submissive fucking. In this part of the dream a naked woman, face turned so I couldn't see it, but who I could only assume was me, based on the fact that I could feel everything as it happened, was kneeling on all fours, body and mahogany hair drenched in sweat as a large man, his face also obscured, took her roughly from behind. The moans and gasps, the glistening bodies, the straining of the man's large muscular body as he pounded into the woman, all combined to make the scene incredibly erotically charged, and even now, sitting here on a cold, windy, damp beach, next to my Dad, for fuck's sake, I felt my body react with the memory of it; my panties becoming damp and tingles spreading through my lower regions.
In the dream the man wound his hand into the woman's sweat slick hair and roughly grabbed a fistful, yanking her back into his thrusts by it, and then pushing her head forward in submission as he sank his teeth into the back of her neck. "Guess this is another one for the ever growing 'haven't a clue' pile." I thought wryly to myself. I mean it was clear what the scene was about - sex. But why? And why and how the fuck had I managed to come up with such wild and rough a sex scene? Not that I never thought about sex - I was (or I was before my birthday anyway) a healthy young woman, with normal drives in that area and I had experimented with masturbation just like anyone else. And while doing that I had usually been imagining various sex acts. But they were always very gentle, loving acts, much more romantic than animalistic, and I couldn't fathom where this almost violent scene had come from in my imagination, and why even just the memory of it had me so... Well ... Horny.
"Huh. Guess I've got a side of kink to me that I never knew about" I mentally snorted at the concept. It wasn't something I'd ever be likely to get the chance to explore, so why was my subconscious trying to force me to accept the thought so determinedly? "Ok, not really made any progress on that one then. Better try the last scene and see where that one gets me." I decided.
The remaining scene was actually the one that required the least working out, but it despite this I still couldn't see why my weird brain was so insistent that I focus on it. It was barely a scene at all. Just a few seconds of images of a large black wolf, running through the forest until it broke through the trees on the edge of La Push, where it came to stand next to me, staring out across the ocean, completely unconcerned by the wild animal at my side. "So why a wolf then? I why aren't I scared of it?" I wondered.
I began to search my memory for any information I might have learned over the years about wolves. As I ran my thoughts this way and that way, my gaze drifted along the beach until I was stopped short by the sight of a driftwood tree. The tree where Jacob Black and I had sat when I had plied my pitiful flirting techniques to pry his tribe's legends out of him. I was suddenly struck by a clear memory "the cold ones are the natural enemy of the wolf - well, not the wolf, really, but the wolves that turn into men, like our ancestors."* Jacob had named them werewolves, but I knew from the conversation I'd had with Ca... With Carlisle, while he stitched up my arm on my birthday, that there were no werewolves left on this continent. He had mentioned briefly a clan of shape shifters who were also extinct now, and I wondered if the wolves Jacob spoke of might have been closer to that species. The hollow pain in my chest once more warned me that following that memory of Carlisle right now would really not be a good idea. I'd have to re-visit it another time, when I was hopefully able to think on it without pain, so I re-focused on Jacob's legends. "So did the tribe's legend refer to shape shifters who could become wolves? Is that why I was seeing the wolf scene?" I asked myself. A overwhelming feeling of right came over me. I was sure I'd hit on an answer. And, now that I had one answer, something from my "haven't a clue" pile leapt to the front of my mind; "Those bear noises. They're not bear noises at all. They're shape shifter wolf noises!" Again the feeling of right came over me and I was positive I'd solved another part of my puzzle.
I was so lost in thought, that when Charlie spoke I actually jumped a little and slid off the rock I was sitting on, bruising my ass as I landed.
"Coming up on lunchtime, Bells. Wanna reel these lines in and walk a bit further til we reach the diner?" He snorted with repressed laughter as I did my clumsy ass-plant off the rock.
"Sure, Dad. That sounds great. I replied, pulling myself awkwardly to my feet from where I'd landed and brushing myself down. He pulled in both the fishing lines and we began a slow wander further down the beach, me limping a little from my slip, and from the blisters on both heels which the purple boots were creating.
When we got to where the little diner sat by the beach, Charlie ran in to grab us both something, and I sat on the little wall that bordered the parking lot, busying my hands with applying band-aids to my blisters, as I turned my new revelations over in my mind, like a cow chewing the cud. "So the extinct clan of shape shifters were part of the Quileute tribe, their animal forms were wolves, and according to Jacob they were the natural enemies of vampires, which would explain why I could hear them snarling in the background in both the James and Victoria dream scenes." For a third time that feeling of right bathed me in a warm glow. With any luck, these parts of the recurrent dream would not be bothering me anymore now that my conscious mind had accepted what I'd been trying to tell myself.
"I also realise that it's inevitable that Victoria will come back looking to avenge her mate, and that I'm going to have to sacrifice myself to keep Charlie safe." Swallowing against the fear, and against the sorrow of knowing how it would pain Charlie when he lost me, I waited for the warm right feeling to soothe me, but it never came. All I had instead was that feeling of 'nearly but not quite' that you get when you know you're close to an answer, but you're missing something to complete it. "Looks like I'll be having at least that part of the dream again." I thought "And probably the kinky porn too, cos I can't work out what the fuck that has to do with anything either." There was something tickling in the back of my brain about that scene though. I thought it might be something Carlisle had said on my birthday, while he was treating my arm, but the twinge in my chest warned me once more that I just wasn't ready to make myself remember anything about that evening with any clarity. It was going to have to wait a while.
Charlie came out just as I was finishing tugging the laces tight on my boots, with a couple of burgers and large styrofoam cups of steaming coffee, and I firmly set the dream analysis on the back burner for the rest of my day. I'd done enough for now, and it was time to focus on getting things back on track with my dad. We sat companionably, side by side on the low wall as we tucked into our lunch. It was the first time I'd been hungry in months, and Charlie looked happy and relieved as he saw me tearing large mouthfuls out of my sandwich. I gave him a ketchup and mustard laced smile. "Well that's emotional sharing, fresh air, exercise, dream analysis, eating, and quality time with Charlie. It's been a hell of a day so far, and it's only lunchtime."
*Twilight, pg 107