This one was... hard for me. In all honesty, the story sort of just writes itself. I'm just here to do the tap tapping for the characters. But I knew what was going to go down here and I kind of wanted to crawl under a blanket and pretend like it wouldn't. But the story must go forward! We are only 6 chapters from the end (man, I better wrap this up) and I already feel like it's been a hundred years since little Bella came to Forks.
The song for this chapter is With You Til The End by Tommee Profitt. Remember that you can play along with the story on Amazon Music using the special web address below!
HEY READERS! Want to be able to play all the songs from this story in order while you read? Well now you can! Just visit: https colon slash slash .com slash user-playlists slash 83eaf70f5fd2488da12e8f0787411603sune?ref=dm_sh_670a-24ac-70cc-3d48-5036e (Remember to replace the words with the punctuation and no spaces!)
Twitter: teamdemonmonkey
Facebook: teamdemonmonkey fanfiction
Disclaimer: I'm only doing this for a friend. I don't get anything from it but her undying appreciation. I certainly don't get to have fun with Emmett and the boys in my head.
Chapter Forty-Six: With You Til The End
EdPOV
I'd never considered that perhaps the reason my family and I were considered such oddities amongst those of our kind could be because human blood had drug-like effects on the drinker. It wasn't a crazy theory really. I tried not to reminisce too deeply on the years I had spent away from Carlisle and indulging in our natural prey. It felt like sinking into temptation again and I was man enough to admit that I didn't know if I was strong enough to resist. But if drinking human blood creates a euphoria in the vampire drinking it, it would so easily explain why bloodlust is such a strong driving instinct amongst those who operate at a higher level. Drinking from my victims had given me more than just satiation for my thirst and the sense of justice. I felt good after drinking from a victim. Wired, if I had to put names to it now.
Drinking from animals didn't have quite the same kick. I no longer felt thirsty –albeit the way eating rations keeps you from feeling hungry but you aren't happy or pleased with the meal –but there were no accompanying emotions. I drank, I was less obsessed with my thirst for a while, rinse and repeat. But if drinking human blood had addictive qualities? It would explain why someone would risk interference from the Volturi to possess it all. Why the Southern Wars that created and scarred Jasper had escalated to the point they had. It would also explain why a vegetarian vampire's eyes changed immediately to red if they drank human blood again but it took months of consistently feeding from animals to change red eyes to gold. Human blood was clearly more potent than animal blood.
What if human blood wasn't just providing sustenance? What if it gave you a high, had you chasing that feeling endlessly?
I hadn't considered this as a possibility before now.
Before Bella changed.
I blamed myself.
After she'd run from the funeral, I'd chased her into the woods but she was inconsolable. I carried her back to the house and put her in bed, assuming that she would eventually stop and come down.
She hadn't.
I'd seen her laying in her bed, day after day, night after night. Just staring at the wall. Not acknowledging anyone or anything around her. At first, she'd been emotional. She cried a lot. But then the crying had faded until she was the mimicry of a corpse. She hadn't hunted since she woke up.
Another oddity that had Jasper's hackles up.
We'd offered to take her after the initial shock of waking had worn off. But she'd been disinterested. Even in the woods with deer and other animals in sniffing distance, she was apathetic.
Jasper was beside himself.
A newborn that wasn't at all driven by bloodlust the day they woke? Wasn't even tempted?
It was unheard of; impossible.
I'd chalked it up to emotional distress. We didn't know if Bella had some latent gift either. What if her aversion to blood in her mortal life had carried over into the immortal but instead of making her faint, she was immune to it? It would be amazing. It would completely change the way her first year as a vampire would be. We could live anywhere, do anything, no matter how populated.
But after she started to deprive herself and unconsciously clawed the pillows to shreds, I panicked. Carlisle was calling every day, asking about her and I didn't want to fail him.
I could take care of her.
I could get her through this initial struggle until he could come and support her.
She'd be better with him.
He would fix things, the way he always did.
So, I'd used a fake medical company and ordered a supply of bagged blood.
Jasper's thoughts were murderous, and I couldn't say that I blamed him. He'd struggled for his entire existence with bloodlust. He'd argued when he first arrived that we didn't have to eat animals. We could drink from donated blood. No victims, no harm done and we wouldn't have to struggle to fight our natures as we did with drinking animals. But Carlisle said no. It would be taking blood from someone who needed it to live. There would be victims.
And here I was force-feeding it to Bella.
The first time he'd been livid. But after she did it the second time, he'd taken Alice and left.
It was a double standard. But desperate times called for desperate measures.
I didn't know I was creating a monster.
I couldn't read her thoughts, couldn't hear the mania that set in after she drank far past what she needed to satisfy herself. Without Jasper there to pick up on her emotions, we didn't realize what she was doing until it was too late.
She filled up and then overindulged and then she either took off or she put music on in her room and danced around until the high started to wane. When she left, she inevitably ended up in the middle of nowhere doing something reckless, putting her new indestructibility to the test. Someone always followed enough to intervene if she became a danger to someone but she just threw herself off of things and kept moving.
Like she was running.
Had we made a mistake? I'd been so sure that if she'd been able to choose in that moment, she would have chosen this. But maybe Carlisle had been right: I pushed to change her for selfish reasons. Maybe this was more than she could deal with.
I wished Esme was by my side.
She could have talked to Bella. She understood terrible loss and then being granted a new, longer lease on life. Bella had lost her father but Esme had lost her child. She'd thrown herself off the cliff's edge. Esme would be able to get through to Bella, surely.
But Esme was in Forks, preparing for our family's official departure. We'd utilized the rumor mill of the town. They knew that I was too traumatized by what had happened to leave the house. Alice had artfully and skillfully let everyone know that Forks felt haunted for us. Carlisle had told his colleagues that he was looking for work outside of the state and that he would do what he could to ensure a capable doctor took his place. Esme had listed the house for sale. They were preparing for a departure that didn't raise a single red flag. We didn't want anyone wondering why the town doctor and his family, no matter how ostracized they'd been, had left so soon after the police chief and his daughter had been killed and making wild conclusions.
So with Carlisle and the rest of the family unable to help, I was left, panicking.
But enough was enough.
Bella was allowed to grieve and have whatever feelings she wanted but the way she was consuming blood was a problem. It was changing her. And I worried that if we didn't stop her now, she'd turn into someone she hated.
Or leave us.
I couldn't let that happen.
I knocked on her door, the music loud enough to deafen a human's hearing, but I knew she heard me when the music turned down a bit and she swung the door open. It was still jarring to see her with vibrant red eyes. By this time in everyone else's transformations, our eyes were beginning to muddy into an amberish color. After returning to Carlisle, my eyes had shifted from red to amber in weeks. Bella shouldn't have bright red eyes. The fact that she did only served to strengthen the guilt in me.
She wouldn't if I hadn't forced her to drink human blood in the first place.
"What do you want, Edward," she asked flatly and I instantly missed the warm, loving Bella whose eyes lit up when she saw me.
"Can we talk?" She sighed and stepped aside so that I could move past her into the room.
"If you're here to ask me to talk to Carlisle, you're wasting your time," she said, turning the music off and grabbing her tumbler.
So she was mid top-off.
"I'm not. I mean, you should but that isn't why I'm here." I paused, trying to gauge where her head was at. If she was in the middle of feeding, I didn't think this would be well received. "I'm worried about you." She snorted.
"Worried? Why? Am I not the picture of health and beauty? I'm living my best life, Edward! What is there to be worried about?" There was a manic edge to her bright words.
"Bella, this isn't healthy. The blood was only supposed to be enough to snap you out of your funk. It wasn't meant to be a permanent solution and it sure as hell wasn't supposed to be used as your drug of choice so you could avoid your life."
"I'm not avoiding anything," she hissed.
"Really? You haven't talked to Carlisle since you woke up, Bella! Why not? He's the man you love and yet it's been weeks since you woke up and you've ignored every call he's made. If that's not you avoiding him, then what is it? You don't love him anymore? You don't have the heart to tell him that you lied and it turns out changing you did ruin your relationship?" She flew at me faster than I was expecting and knocked me into the wall. I crashed against it with a thud, damaging the drywall.
"Hey!" Emmett and Rosalie burst into the room, ready to intervene. "What the hell, Bella? You're hurting the people you care about now?" His voice was hard and Rosalie was shaking her head.
"Well since you all shanghaied me into the exciting life of the blood drinking undead, I assume that means I can do whatever I want, right? That's what you all do. You don't get to decide what diet I follow, who I do or don't talk to and how I spend my time. I have an eternity to fill however I please and I really don't appreciate you coming into my space and telling me otherwise."
"So, you can't handle criticism," Rosalie said acerbically and Bella gave her a fake saccharine smile.
"I can't handle the people who chose to have me join them, who chose to shove blood down my throat, then try to dictate what I'm doing."
"Is that it, then? You resent us for changing you? You're mad I got permission from the council. Mad that Carlisle bit you. If he hadn't, I would have Bella. Because I know that you wanted this. But not this; not this unhealthy cycle you've locked yourself into, drinking blood past the point of satiation so you can feel that high coursing through you. Ignoring Carlisle, even though he's beside himself."
"If Carlisle really cared that much, he'd have been here finding out why I'm not answering his calls," Bella said with an eye roll.
"He can't leave Forks yet. You already know that. You don't think that if he could be here right now, he would be?" She shrugged nonchalantly and it stoked my anger. "You've changed, Bella. This isn't the girl we met in Forks. This isn't the girl who valued family and friendship. This isn't the girl that spent her nights crying in her bed because she missed her mom: the girl who cried because she had big feelings for the town doctor and didn't know what to do about it. This isn't the girl that was happy to beat us at poker and who bet favors as currency. And this certainly isn't the girl that Charlie thought you were. That he died for." Her eyes went glacial.
"Fuck you," she growled.
"Would he be okay with this? With what you're doing? He died and begged Carlisle to give you a second chance and what have you done with it? Alienated everyone who cares about you. Wasting your time drinking human blood and living between highs. If he could see you now, he'd be ashamed of you. I certainly am." A feral scream tore through the room before she turned and leaped through the window facing the woods, speeding off into the trees. I cursed and jumped out after her, hurrying to catch up.
But she was running on human blood and, even as fast as I was, I couldn't keep up with her when she hit the coast. She jumped into the water and I lost her in the dark waves.
"Damn it," I yelled before pulling my phone out. I dialed and pressed the phone to my ear, dreading the answer.
"What's wrong? Did something happen?" Carlisle's voice was low, already worried.
"I lost Bella."
"What? What do you mean you 'lost her'?"
"I tried talking to her today about this blood problem. I should have waited until she wasn't in the middle of doing it. She was belligerent and defensive. She threw me into the wall. It was supposed to be an intervention of sorts. But maybe I pushed her too far. I was trying to make her see how much she's changed, how different she's become, and not for the better. But she jumped out the window and took off. I could barely keep up with her. She came to the coast and jumped in and I lost track of her."
"Do you think she's dangerous? Would she…" he trailed off, uncertain but I knew without his thoughts where he was going.
"She just fed. Overfed. I don't think she'll hurt anyone. At least not for a while. I'm going to get Alice on this. I know Jasper is pissed but we have to find her."
"Hopefully she doesn't even consider Alice's gift and try to avoid her. I'm coming out. As soon as we have word, I'll be there."
"I'm so sorry, Carlisle. I've made this mess. I was just trying to help her. I just want her to be okay. But I made everything so much worse."
"Edward, this isn't your fault. I know it seems like you're responsible for her wellbeing while I'm still stuck here and I know I've relied on you, probably too heavily, these last weeks while she's shut me out. But I don't blame you. Everything about this has been difficult. It was difficult circumstances for her to wake up to. To attempt to cope with all of it, especially without me… she's in pain. You just wanted her to be better. However misguided your attempts might have been, she made a choice. She didn't have to keep drinking blood after that first time. She could have chosen differently. She's trying to escape whatever it is that she is feeling and this is her outlet of choice. She needs help but she's not willing to accept it because she knows that it means facing all of the things she's disassociating with. We'll find her, Edward. And when we do, we're going to do everything we can to help her heal instead of hide. Because we love her. And when you love someone, you just want what's best for them."
"We don't deserve you, Carlisle," I mumbled, throat thick.
"Balderdash. We're all imperfect people just trying to muddle our way through this mess and unfortunately that means that sometimes we muck it up for ourselves and those around us. Go call Alice and let me know what she says. I'm going to tie up loose ends here. I think it's about time I supported my partner, don't you?" I laughed and pinched the bridge of my nose.
"God help you when you find her. She's as lethal as a cornered tiger and just as likely to claw your eyes out."
"That gives me hope though. It means she's still in there."
