Twilight Fan Fiction / Twilight Fan Fiction ❯ I Know My Duty ❯ Her ( Chapter 6 )

This is as good a time as any to say it: I'm writing this story out of order. This was actually one of the first scenes I composed, which is why it is ready so soon after chapter five. So if there's a long gap between updates, often enough it will be because I'm working on something that will happen down the road. Sometimes I have to knuckle down and get that next connecting bit—like the last two chapters—out of the way, but more than half the time, I write what the spirit moves when it moves it. This is another reason why you can expect that I'll go back and forth making new changes as the continuity gets tweaked.

 

Not her! -Edward, Midnight Sun

 

.

.

.

.

.

 

I barely felt the stones beneath my feet. The furious energy that I'd fought to keep inside my skin these past few days had left me, shrunk down to a cold and quiet buzzing in the pit of my stomach. I watched the hallway open up as we walked steadily toward the stairs. I was perfectly capable of moving faster; by now I'd pieced together a pretty good mental map of the compound from Felix's and Demetri's thoughts, enough to know the way without a guide, but instead I walked, one foot in front of the other, one step at a time. It was the next best thing to a heartbeat.

I tried to prepare myself. I knew it wouldn't work, but I tried. Even if Heidi's message hadn't said it straight out, I could count. It had been three days. What was I going to find when I reached the hidden room on the lower levels? Was it possible that I would find Bella there? Could she even still be Bella without her soul? I closed my eyes for a moment. Carlisle would have told me to hope. But hope wouldn't help me now.

I put those thoughts aside and ran through every memory I had of Jasper's time with Maria. There weren't many. It hadn't been a pleasant subject for either of us.

My "guide" was not helping, but for once my own thoughts were dark enough to swallow up most of his.

"It's just down here," Felix said as we rounded a corner. My heart tightened. I had seen this hallway in Heidi's memory. It was empty now and as unremarkable as Marcus could ever wish, but I could smell the stone and steel in the air, feel the heaviness of the earth and concrete around us. This place had been built like a fortress in reverse, meant to keep enemies in.

We reached the cell door. It was steel nearly all the way through, supported by the reinforced foundations. Even I wouldn't have been able to move it without some difficulty. Inside, I knew from Felix's memory, steel bars sunk into the stone crisscrossed the granite like a web.

No sound came from within.

Felix pulled a great metal key from inside his cloak and held it out as if to hand it to me. I could see his intent in his mind, though, and did not reach for it. Fluidly, he placed the edge of it inside the lock.

He had a key to Bella's space and I did not. He liked that entirely too much. And I could tell from the look on his face that he knew what it did to me. Behind that smirk I could see his thoughts. Rage glowed like a white-hot iron inside me at the images he held out to my mind. Bella's sweet body, still flushed with her own human blood, limbs twisting, underneath his hands.

He didn't know how to lie with his thoughts. The images were constructs, only his filthy imagination, not to mention that Bella's scent was nowhere on him. Felix was trying to lure me into a fight. Yes, a young vampire still in her transformation would be a very vulnerable target, in too much pain to fight back or even know what was happening.

But Felix would want her to know. And he wanted me to know.

Fool. Stupid ox. He was as strong as Emmett, certainly a more experienced fighter than Emmett, but he didn't have my brother's drive or imagination. Without Demetri to back him up, I could defeat him without too much effort. But of course, he would make sure that someone was there to back him up. And I had no allies here.

"Are you sure you want to go in there?" he smirked at me. Felix smiled tauntingly, but I didn't budge. He would not be able to return to Aro with any story of my misconduct. For now, until his anger cooled, I was the model prisoner.

But Aro wouldn't need any informants on my behavior, I remembered sickly. He craved seeing the world through my eyes, knowing the thoughts of all around him. It would be a long time before he tired of the novelty.

I kept my thoughts on Felix. It was better than thinking about Aro or about ...whatever I was about to see. He was a brute but not an unsophisticated brute. When he slipped his meaty fingers through the handle and pulled the door open, he positioned himself so that anything inside the cell would see me and not him blocking the exit. If he hadn't spent so much time thinking about it, I might have been unnerved. I ignored him. Aro had told him to see me to the cell and then report back, returning only when it was time for me to resume my duties. Anything that he thought about anything was about to become moot.

I stepped into the room, the cell, and slipped my gray cloak from my shoulders as I checked behind me. Felix sealed the passageway with no tricks. The inside of the security door matched its outside with one major exception: it's surface was scarred with jagged, finger-shaped streaks left by decades of hunger-mad newborns trying to claw their way out to the human servants in the hallways. Most of the marks were dulled by rust and cobwebs. Others couldn't have been hours old. I closed my eyes and turned around.

I saw a figure huddled in the corner, arms wrapped around its knees, face turned away.

I was sure that Felix had led me to the wrong room.

A moment later, I knew he hadn't. The figure didn't hold herself the way Bella had, but it was wearing Bella's clothes. And it was utterly quiet. I took a step closer. In a way, it was fitting, perhaps the only thing about this whole sick scenario that was fitting: The silence of Bella's mind had been the first thing I'd noticed about her as a human. It was how I recognized her now.

She didn't move, though she must have heard me in the room. Her posture was completely defeated. Every frozen line of her still body radiated shame. For a second I was sure I'd misread Felix. I felt my vision go black with anger. I would kill him. I would run him down and tear his black, rotted heart from his body.

And that was when she looked up.

Two eyes like red coals, newborn-bright, stared back at me, and in that moment, they were all I could see of her. I watched as they grew wide.

At first, I couldn't read her face. Then I realized that she was reading mine. One smooth hand drew back from her knees and she leaned away, as if she were trying to push herself into the wall.

Of course, of course... I thought back to my own first days. It had been nearly impossible to hold a thought, to remember where I was or even my own name, and I'd had Carlisle's voice in my head to guide me. I realized with a pang that she probably didn't fully comprehend who I was. I steadied myself and pushed the anger off my face. Felix's time would come. For now, she was more important.

"Bella?" I said gently. I knew it was foolhardy, but I moved closer. A cornered newborn was capable of anything, and the human blood still sweetening her veins made her strong enough to tear me apart before she realized what she was doing. Still, I sank to my knees beside her, reaching out with one hand. "Bella, it's Edward," I managed. I had to get my voice under control, remove all agitation. Even if she couldn't piece together exactly what I was saying, she would still read my tone. I remembered Rosalie sitting beside Emmett, speaking, just speaking in her beautiful voice as he made his way through his change. I'd thought it another of her conceits. The memory seemed bright and perfect to me now. "I don't know if you can understand me," I said, and my own voice was thick and tense. I paused to steady myself. I had to be Jasper. I had to project calm. "But it is going to get better. Time will pass and you'll be able to think clearly again," I promised. "Rosalie and Emmett were both through the worst of it in a few days."

She looked down, as if she were thinking about what I'd said. I noted with a mix of guilt and relief that it was easier to look at her without the eyes pointed at me. Alice's vision this past spring had only given me one angle, but now I studied the line of her cheek, the turn of her nose. It was Bella and not Bella. There was just enough human imperfection in her for her to be recognizable to someone who knew what to look for. Even here, even through all this, I didn't want to look away. Her face was different but felt like it wasn't. It was the only thing in this whole city that was familiar to me.

I carefully laid my palm against her shoulder, not wanting to frighten her. I tried not to remember the warmth I'd once felt there. Her near hand slid up and grasped my wrist, holding my hand against the dusty cloth of her shirt. With an unnatural peace inside me, I recognized the gesture from three days earlier. She'd held my hand against her face, trusting me not to draw her life out through her skin. Her grip was stronger now, and colder, but somehow it felt the same.

She knew me. She was herself.

Relief surged up inside me, clean and warm. I took her in my arms and she fit her strong new body against mine, pressing her forehead against my shoulder like a child. I realized that I'd been holding my breath, a nervous, countereffective human habit. Now that I was surer of my welcome, I breathed in. Something in the air nagged at me, but I ignored it, focusing on Bella. There was some trace of the flowers I'd known, but the petals were flecked with venom. This was her scent now. This was her scent and I would learn to love it.

There was no trace of Felix in this room or on her skin. He'd been bluffing. He'd been lying just to get to me. I would let him live so long as it stayed that way.

"Edward," she said. Bella's new voice was graceful, every bit as sweet as Esme's or Rosalie's, but its music was marred by fear and sadness. She drew back and looked at me with her terrible eyes. "Edward, I'm so sorry," she said.

She tucked her chin around my shoulder, holding on to me as if her life depended on it. I shook my head. This was my fault, my fault. It was my fault for leaving in the first place, for staying away, for endangering her and my family by seeking death from the Volturi. None of this was—

"She was so scared!" Bella's breath shuddered out of her in tearless sobs.

And then I recognized the other scent in the room.

I felt my arms go slack around her shoulders. Suddenly, I couldn't take my eyes off the wall in front of me. The bars weren't spinning. The room should have been spinning around me. The ground should have opened up to pull us both in.

No.

No, no, no, no, no...

"Edward, I didn't want to," Bella was practically begging now as her fingers tightened painfully on my upper arms. "I swear I didn't want to."

She began to pull back but I recovered myself enough to hold her tight against me. I didn't want her to see my face. If I'd been human, my mind would have blanked out, shut itself down so that I couldn't hear what she said next. But I wasn't human. I heard it all.

"I tried to hold my breath like you did—" The words tumbled out of her and into me. I couldn't stop them. "—but it was still there in the back of my mouth and I could still hear her heart beating and my throat just hurt so much!"

If I'd been human, she'd have killed me.

Bella.

Not Bella.

I felt my eyes close. The world had become a heavy place.

"They locked a human in here with you?" I asked, but it wasn't really a question.

My Bella.

A killer before she was an hour old.

"Edward I'm so sorry," her voice broke. Her shoulders shook.

Not her, not her.

I pulled my arms tighter around her and began to rock us back and forth. Hopefully, she wouldn't realize that I wasn't doing it for her.

"Why can't I cry?" she asked the empty air behind me. "I think if I could cry—"

"It wouldn't help," I said, too quickly. I didn't know how to comfort her after what had just happened. There was a part of me that didn't want to.

She was gone, the Bella I'd known, the Bella who had never hurt an innocent person. I had killed her and they had buried her within these walls and now she was gone. In her place was some other creature, as soulless and stained as I was, unable to even cry for what she'd done.

I finally identified that feeling. I understood why it had taken so long. I hadn't felt it since I'd been human, watching other men go to war while I waited and then seeing my father and mother sicken and die from the influenza.

I was helpless.

Up until now, I'd always had a way out. Before Rosalie's phone call, I knew I could return to Forks, confess all to Bella and hope she would take me back. Afterward, I knew I could come to Volterra and ask for the end. For this, there was nothing I could do, nothing. It could never be mended or undone. Even if Felix had carried out the filthy threat in his mind, I could have at least brought her his head and watched her burn it.

I breathed deeply. Bella's scent was sweeter now, and it gave me no pain. I would have taken her old scent, the old thirst, rather than know what I knew. I would have taken a thousand white-hot pokers down my throat rather than have these thoughts inside me. But for now, her scent was sweet, and it gave me no pain.

I breathed again as she touched her cheek against my shoulder. The movement was so sudden, so childlike and trusting that it took me completely by surprise. I rested my face against her neck. Her skin was smooth and only barely gave under mine. No pain. I closed my eyes. It was a poor trade for Bella's innocence, but it was all we would get. She was mine now in a way that nothing else could have made her, changed by my same blood and stained by my same sins.

No... No, I realized slowly, not the same. I'd hunted humans once. They'd been monstrous humans, but I'd gone looking for them and ended their lives. Bella had killed the human, but they'd locked it in with her first and then she'd— Something else pushed its way into my consciousness.

"You held your breath?" I asked.

I felt her nod her head against my shirt.

"Why?"

Bella put her hands on my shoulders, pushing out my grip. I noted mentally that she was stronger that I was now. Her eyes met mine and for the first time, I could see through the flames. I could see all the way down inside her.

"I told you," she said, as if she were afraid of what I might do. "I didn't want to."

I took her face in my hands, running the pad of my thumb along her cheekbone. Her expression didn't change. "How did—" I stopped. I had to compose my thoughts. "It occurred to you to hold your breath?" I asked.

She nodded. "You said you did it with me. In Biology."

"You remembered that?" I asked in wonder.

"Of course I remembered that," she said. "I'm still alive because of that."

"Bella..." the thoughts swirled and collided in my mind. "On your first day of this life, you shouldn't have been able to think about anything but the thirst. You shouldn't have been able to even try. You shouldn't have been able to not want to."

"But I didn't," she said, too fast. "Edward, I swear I didn't."

I couldn't believe that it had taken me this long, but I finally realized what she needed from me.

I held her face in my hands. "I believe you," I said.

It was harder without either her thoughts or her heartbeat to listen to, but I could almost feel her growing calmer. "I believe you," I said again, not bothering to mask the undercurrent of wonder in the words.

She looked away, staring past my shoulder at nothing. I pulled her against me again. I reached up with one hand and gently stroked her hair. It felt the same beneath my fingers, a bit cooler, a bit stronger. Under my touch, Bella quieted. Her shoulders shook, but her breath no longer caught and snagged in her lungs.

"You're not like them," I told her. It was true. And that almost made up for it all.

I had been wrong.

I did have one ally here.

 

.

.

.

.

.

 

drf24 (at) columbia (dot) edu

 

I'm looking for a high-level beta.  I need someone who can work with things like story structure and long-term planning.  I don't mind when people point out my typos, but I need more than just good copy editing skills to pull this off.  A high tolerance for horror-quality violence may come in handy.