2024-10-15 A/N: Trigger warning: abusive relationships. This chapter will be darker than the rest of the story, but I don't think it's any more explicit than when Rosalie tells her story in the books.
"I was born in Virginia in the late 1800s," Miranda began. "I don't remember much, but I know my family was poor and unhappy. There wasn't always enough to eat. My parents didn't want a daughter, and when things went badly, they took it out on me. I was never strong enough to fight back, so I became well-practiced at disassociating. Time always seemed to fly by when they were beating me. Looking back, I think my power had already started to manifest when I was human."
I shuddered. Edward's and Alice's faces were bleak but unsurprised. Of course–they both had advance notice of what Miranda was about to say.
"Nobody missed me when I was taken by a vampire one night. They wanted to use me as practice for other vampires–a test to see if the newborns could improve their self control over time. One of them snapped and bit me. The sire pulled him off me and punished him, leaving me for dead. But I hadn't lost as much blood as he thought… I transformed instead.
"The transformation stretched the limits of my power. Never before had I wanted so badly to fast forward through the pain… and never before had it been so difficult to focus. With that kind of motivation, I found new depths to my mental control. It's impossible to tell time amidst that agony, but looking back, I would guess that my suffering was much shorter than a typical transformation."
Remembering my own torture just a day ago, I was immediately jealous. If I ever needed to turn someone else, I was going to track Miranda down and beg for her help.
"The start to my immortal life was no smoother than my human life," she continued. "The South was full of warring vampires. Nobody wanted to recruit me to their side–I was scrawnier than the other newborns, and my power wasn't of any use in a fight." Seeing my raised eyebrow, she added, "Well, it wasn't back then–I hadn't figured out yet how to apply it to other people.
"That didn't mean I didn't get into any fights. I can't tell you how many times I got on the bad side of other vampires. I had to hunt somewhere, and there wasn't anywhere that wasn't someone's territory. Usually, I managed to run away. A couple times, I ended up as a pile of body parts on the ground. I was lucky that neither of those vampires bothered to start a fire to finish the job." She grimaced. "Honestly, you three are one of the more peaceful groups I've met."
"Let me guess," Alice chimed in, "You headed north after that?"
Edward snorted. "It's not guessing when you do it, Alice."
"I did, eventually," Miranda confirmed. "I didn't know it was any different up there, or I would have gone much sooner."
"Different how?" I asked.
"In the northern half of the United States, the vampire population is mostly nomadic," Alice explained. "Whereas in the South, covens stake claim to lands and fight over territory. You should ask Jasper about his time there."
I nodded, and motioned for Miranda to continue her story.
"I had a healthy fear of running into other vampires. But after a couple years, I met Joham, and he was different. He convinced me that he just wanted to talk, and we ended up trading life stories. We got along well, so I decided to travel together with him. I figured if I had a partner, other vampires wouldn't be able to beat me up so easily.
"Joham was fascinated by my power. He always liked to experiment with things until he fully understood them, and then figure out how to extend them. For a while, I was the center of his attention… it was a new feeling for me.
"It was his idea to try to apply my talent to other people. I practiced on him for hours and hours. We tried everything he could think of. One day, it finally clicked. I could feel that I was affecting him too. I was jubilant." Miranda chuckled at the memory. "Joham didn't understand why I was celebrating at first–he couldn't feel a thing. I was only slowing us down by a few percent, which wasn't really noticeable. It took me months to be able to affect him enough that he could observe the surrounding wildlife moving faster than usual. And that was only when I was touching him. Eventually we worked on my range, too, and on being able to affect multiple people at once."
"How many can you affect now?" I asked, fascinated. As I became absorbed in her story, my earlier animosity toward her had all but vanished.
Miranda pondered the question. "Probably dozens, but I never see that many vampires gathered in one place. My range is only a couple hundred yards."
"Impressive," Edward commented.
She inclined her head at the compliment. "What's your radius on the mind-reading thing?"
"A few miles, at most. It's easier for people I know well."
"What about you, Bella? Have you tried extending your power?"
"You mean my immunity to your power and Edward's power? Is that possible?"
"I don't know," Miranda shrugged, "I've never seen anyone else who wasn't affected."
I was stunned by the possibility. If I could have extended my mental protection to Edward and Alice, the fight with Victoria would have been trivial. "How do I test it?" I demanded.
"Try to stop Edward from reading Alice's thoughts," she suggested. "Take her hand. Imagine your power like a bubble around your mind, but more elastic. Try to stretch it to encompass her mind, too."
I spent the next minute attempting to mentally push against an imaginary bubble. I couldn't feel anything, and I could tell from Edward's expression that nothing was happening.
"Let's practice this later," Alice suggested impatiently. I supposed that meant she wasn't predicting any short-term breakthroughs on my part. "I want to hear what happened with Joham."
Miranda's face grew tense again. "Well, after a while, it became clear that he was looking for a partner, in more ways than just a traveling companion."
"And you weren't interested?" I guessed.
"Well, I wasn't necessarily opposed to the idea," she amended. "I had never really been interested in anyone, and Joham was kinder to me than the rest. He made me feel important. He didn't seem like a bad choice of partner, not at first. I didn't really enjoy… being intimate… but I didn't mind satisfying him occasionally. To be honest, after the first few times I started using my power to fast forward through it."
I couldn't think of anything to say to that. I knew that many women–especially a hundred years ago–saw the physical side of a relationship as an obligation, so I tried not to judge Miranda's relationship by my own standards, but I couldn't imagine sharing my body with someone unless I was truly passionate about them. I chanced a glance at Edward's face, wondering what he thought about this. He was looking at me with an unfathomable expression, so I quickly dropped my gaze.
"I could tell Joham was hurt that I was fast-forwarding through those moments, and I felt a bit guilty about that," Miranda admitted. "I knew I wasn't being a very good partner to him. Eventually he decided that if I didn't enjoy it, there must be something wrong with me. He did a lot of research, promising to find a cure for me. He sought out other vampires with powers–even tried creating a few himself–thinking that someone out there must have a gift that could fix me. I wasn't sure how I felt about that, so I mostly tried not to think about it. He didn't end up finding anything."
She spoke about it with such nonchalance. I grimaced.
"Joham had a power, too. When we first met, he swore he would never use it on me without my consent." Miranda's eyes flashed. "I should have known that someone with so much knowledge about how to expand my powers had plenty of practice using his own. He can remove other people's memories."
After spending the past six months terrified of forgetting any detail about the Cullens, I cringed at the idea that memories could be supernaturally taken from a person. Miranda must have seen my expression, because she added, "Only recent memories, for the most part. If he tried to remove something from longer ago, he'd also have to remove all the later times the person thought about that memory. It's a difficult ability to use."
"And he used it on you?" I whispered, dreading the answer.
Alice put a hand on Miranda's shoulder. Miranda flinched at the contact, then relaxed as it became clear the gesture was meant to be comforting. I had already suspected that the next part of the story would be unpleasant, but now I was certain.
"It's hard to say when he started manipulating my memory," she sighed. "I first became aware that there was some time missing from our coupling. It was hard to tell, with my own perception of time sped up as it was. I asked him about it, and he said he was doing it as a favor to me, an augmentation of what I was doing with my own power. I supposed I was grateful to skip over moments I didn't particularly enjoy. But sometimes I was strangely weak and hungry afterward, like my body was using up its energy to heal. It wasn't until much later that I realized he was hitting me."
We were all silent for a moment as that revelation sank in.
"After my perception-warping ability had developed enough to be useful in combat, Joham tracked down an old coven of rivals. He picked a fight with them, trusting me to slow them down so he could butcher them. I hadn't known what he was planning. I didn't want to attack anyone, but they quickly had me pinned to the ground and I knew we were fighting for our lives. So I gave him the advantage he wanted. I could manage a factor of six or so back then, and it was more than enough.
"I spent weeks remembering that fight… especially the coven's screams for mercy at the end. Finally I found the courage to confront Joham about what he had done. He didn't like me challenging his decision. I had always followed his pursuits and interests before that, content as long as I was safe. We argued for hours. Finally I told him I wouldn't help him if he did it again. He sneered at me. 'What are you going to do, let them kill us both?' He had me there, but I figured I would at least leave afterward."
I didn't need to be Alice to see where this one was going. When understanding dawned on my face, Miranda smiled sadly.
"You're smarter than I was, I suppose. It didn't occur to me that he would just wipe any future fights from my mind. Years later, I caught the smell of a strange vampire on him–one I had no memory of meeting, even though Joham hadn't left my side. I looked back and realized that I couldn't account for part of the afternoon.
"When I brought it up, he told me that I'd run into another vampire's hunting grounds and been ripped to shreds. He'd rescued me and put me back together, but I was traumatized by the experience and begged him to remove the memory. It was a very convincing and detailed story–maybe it was even true. But this tiny voice in the back of my mind asked me, how would I know?
"I figured I was being silly. Joham was a good partner. He had saved me, and I was being ungrateful by doubting him. But I decided–just for my own peace of mind–to come up with a signal I could send myself, if Joham ever did something bad enough that he'd want to make me forget. And then if I did find myself missing memories again, I'd know it was okay, because I wouldn't see the signal."
"What was the signal?" I wanted to know.
"Biting my own left wrist," Miranda answered.
"Scars from vampire bites never heal," Alice clarified, preempting my next question. "Joham wouldn't be able to remove the evidence."
My eyes darted to Miranda's wrist. She held it out obligingly. The perfectly white skin was marred by seven crescent-shaped scars.
"It was a year before I noticed the first of these," she recounted. "I have no idea what it's from. I felt fine, and I didn't smell anything odd, and when I combed through my memories I was only missing a couple hours. I wanted to believe it was a misunderstanding, or something minor that he had deleted… nothing worth picking a fight over. I decided I'd just wait and see if it happened again.
"After the third one, I decided I didn't want to know anymore. I promised myself that I wouldn't send the signal again unless it was so bad that it was worth breaking it off and going my own way. But seven months later, there was a fourth scar on my wrist. I knew exactly what my past self was telling me… and yet I couldn't just leave. I was too scared to be on my own again. Looking back on it now, it hardly makes sense to me–I've gotten in way fewer fights alone than I did when I traveled with Joham–but at the time it was unthinkable. I don't know why it took me so long to act."
"It wasn't your fault," Edward reassured her, drawing on her thoughts that only the two of them could see. "He was doing his best to portray the world as a dangerous place, and himself as a protector. I would guess he was even deleting many of your peaceful encounters with other vampires."
Miranda nodded. "I ran into a couple people later who knew me, but I didn't remember them at all."
"You did end up finding the courage to leave," Alice reminded her. "Be proud of that."
Miranda grimaced. "Eventually, yes. After the sixth time I bit myself, I made up my mind that I was going to leave in exactly one year. I figured if I waited that long to tell Joham, he wouldn't be able to delete my memory of the decision." She sighed. "We had been together twenty years at that point. On the night I had chosen for my departure, I confronted him, and told him I knew about the memory deletions.
"He insisted that he had done nothing wrong–that I had asked him for it every time. He didn't want to do it to me, he said, but I was scared and weak and I avoided my problems instead of facing them.
"It was all things he had told me before, and he wasn't wrong about me, but the scars on my wrist were incontrovertible. So I mustered all my courage and said I didn't believe him: I didn't ask for the deletions. And then I told him I was leaving.
"He slapped me across the face. It took me aback–but he didn't look at all surprised by his own actions. I realized he must have done it before. He said I was ungrateful, undeserving of all the hard work he'd put in to keep me safe and remove my traumatic memories. And then he said he was going to prove to me that there were things I wouldn't want to remember.
"He started beating me, and I tried using my power to speed through it, but he just kept going, for what felt like hours and must have been days. That's when I made my seventh scar. 'Beg me to delete it,' he kept saying, and finally I caved, just to get him to stop. But even after I pleaded with him to wipe the memory, he left it in my brain. It was his proof that at least once, I had asked him to remove something."
I saw Edward wincing as he listened. Miranda's story was painful to hear; it must be so much worse for him to see all the details inside her head.
"After that, I was too weak for a while to go off on my own. And then he was constantly at my side, supposedly to make sure I was recovering okay, but I saw it as an unspoken threat: if I tried to leave, he would hurt me again.
"I didn't bring up separating again. Joham was still very sweet to me when he felt like it–giving me the tastiest kills, stealing pretty gifts for me when we were in town, calling me 'love'–but at other times he was cruel. He hit me when he was angry or frustrated–it was always my fault somehow–and he stopped bothering to erase my memory of it."
I'd suffered a great deal of heartbreak in the past year, but I suddenly counted myself lucky. Miranda had never known love at all. She'd been beaten by her parents, attacked by other vampires, and finally abused by her partner.
"Decades passed, and I became more and more miserable. I resolved that next time he picked a fight, I wouldn't help him. I would let us both die.
"Our next combat wasn't what I expected. We were passing through northern Washington when a pack of three wolves attacked us. I know what you're thinking–what damage could a wolf do to a vampire?–but when Joham tried to swat them aside, the biggest one ripped his arm off."
"I've met the wolves in question, actually," Edward interrupted. "They certainly can kill a vampire. My family has a treaty with them."
Miranda stared at Edward in surprise. My mind raced. A treaty–did he mean the one with the Quileutes? What was it Jacob had told me during our walk on the beach, a lifetime ago? His people had descended from wolves? I had thought that was just a legend–but then again, vampires were supposed to be a legend too.
I suddenly recalled Victoria's comment about wolves in Forks. The pieces clicked into place one by one. Huge creatures sighted in the woods. Sam Uley's growing cult–no, pack–having the favor of the village council. Jacob mysteriously cutting off all contact with me. And, previously inexplicable, the fact that Victoria had not found and killed me in the months I was undefended.
I was suddenly certain of three things. First, the wolves in La Push weren't an ancestral myth; they were alive and well. Second, my human best friend was one of them. And third, while I had been frustrated with him for ignoring me, he had been out chasing after Victoria, risking his life to save mine.
My heart would have stopped if it had any beat left.
The conversation had continued while I was having my silent epiphany, and I forced myself to refocus.
"Well, I took that as my opportunity to bolt," Miranda was saying. "One of the wolves ran after me, but it was easy enough to escape once I made it to the ocean. It seems they can swim, but not nearly as well as we do. I suspected that Joham would either kill the remaining two wolves or make a similar escape. Either way, he'd come after me… I didn't have much time. I knew that the only way he'd let me go was if he believed the wolf had killed me.
"I returned to shore and built a small fire out of driftwood–just the right size for burning a vampire corpse. I crushed up more wood into powder to leave the right amount of ashes. I threw all the jewelry Joham had given me into the flames for good measure. And then I launched myself twenty feet into the water, so that my scent would seem to end at the bonfire.
"That was fifty-six years ago, and as far as I know, Joham still thinks I'm dead. I've been avoiding our usual haunts, and steering clear of other vampires who might know him. It was working great–until yesterday, when Victoria found me. And apparently, she would've been cruel enough to tell Joham about me if I refused to help her settle her stupid grudge," Miranda concluded bitterly.
She looked around at us at the conclusion of her story, no doubt gauging whether we would keep her secret.
Edward spoke first. "I've already promised not to use what I saw in your thoughts against you, and I mean it. I don't blame you for going along with Victoria." His tone rang with sincerity.
"I don't blame you either," Alice chimed in. "I'm not going to blackmail you, and if anyone else tries, call me. We'll help you." She rattled off her cell phone number.
It was my turn to say something, but all the words I could think of seemed woefully insufficient. I looked Miranda in the eye. "I'm sorry about earlier. I should have heard you out before threatening you. Of course I'll keep your secret."
Miranda looked taken aback by my apology. I supposed that in all her years of being threatened by vampires, it might be the first one she had received. After a long moment, she replied, "You're a newborn. I remember how it is–a constant struggle to control your emotions. And I did help attack you three." She gave me a half smile. "Thanks for not killing me."
I tentatively smiled back.
Suddenly, I remembered my own recent experience talking my way out of death, and the favor I'd ended up owing.
Could Miranda's power be the solution for Laurent? At first I'd thought that maybe he could take advantage of Alice's gift the same way I had… but that hadn't worked out so well for me. It was hard to guarantee that a fight would occur under the exact conditions Alice foresaw; knowing the future made it easy to inadvertently change it. Honestly, I was surprised that my fight with Victoria hadn't diverged from the visions until halfway through. It was a testament to Victoria's predictability that the slight difference in timing and location didn't have much impact on her behavior.
Miranda's gift, though… it could easily be the deciding advantage in a fight, with no element of unpredictability. Of course, Irina would notice if one of her suitors was moving twenty times slower than usual, and suspect foul play. But would she notice a slowdown of a mere ten percent? Five percent? I'd watched videos at 1.25x speed a few times as a human, and it seemed mostly normal to me; at 1.5x it was still intelligible but obviously sped-up. A vampire would have better senses, but there were also fewer reference points. We had no heartbeats to measure the time. We could be more or less sluggish depending on how recently we had fed. I felt confident that no observer would notice a small difference in time perception.
And best of all, if I didn't involve Alice, I wouldn't need to explain to her why I owed Laurent a favor. I would just take Miranda aside privately and beg her to come to Denali with me.
Actually, there were a lot of flaws with that plan. First, she had no reason to help me, except maybe some vague gratitude that I hadn't dealt the killing blow. Second, it would be hard to explain why I wanted to go off alone with her. Alice would be curious, and she'd be able to see what we were doing. Even if I could somehow convince Miranda to go by herself and fix the situation while I stayed here, Alice would still see us talking about it. It was going to be hard to send any help whatsoever to Laurent without Alice finding out, I realized. My best hope was to keep the other girl around until I found an opportunity.
All this passed through my head in less than half a second.
"Would you like to travel with us for a while?" I asked Miranda with forced nonchalance.
My words must have triggered a vision for Alice, because she squealed in delight. "Oh, you've got to come with us. The rest of the family will love you."
Miranda raised her eyebrows. "Well, I didn't have any plans. Where are we headed?"