Chapter Text
She was a beautiful thing, even in her pain.
Her flushed skin of cream and roses, her appallingly luscious scent.
He couldn’t help but look at her, taking in every subtle change that had occurred in only a few short months. She had changed so much, so much that he wondered if he really even knew her.
Humans were like that, they changed constantly. Forgot, obsessed, reviled, revoked, begged and bruised themselves. It was an incessant, unyielding cycle of change that he sometimes had struggled to stay abreast of, even with extra faculties at his disposal.
Even once he knew Bella, he had never fully understood her. He had never been able to truly anticipate her thoughts. Her reactions? He guessed many. Her hopes? He knew some. But he had never truly felt that he understood every part of her - she could forever surprise him.
At one point, he thought this was a good thing. Thought that her silent, unknowable mind was a gift: and yet, he always felt an anxious unease, always felt like he was on the edge of a precipice, waiting for when she would wake up to the monster that he was.
And when she hadn’t, he worried for her. Could he really trust her choices? Could he accept at face value the desires of someone who clearly had such little capability for self preservation? Who seemed more concerned about the wellbeing of a family of practically indestructible beings, over her own base needs?
‘It’s possible to take bravery to the point where it becomes insanity’ he had told her the last time he was by her bedside for days.
It had been after she almost died, after James had nearly turned her, after Edward’s mistake, his carelessness, had nearly killed her.
Even when her own life had been at risk, as James pursued her, she had always thought of him and his family. Always trying to figure out a way to prevent any harm or difficulty crossing their path, even though it had been his fault she was exposed to harm in the first place.
When Edward had watched that horrific video, James’ message to Edward, Bella had been perfectly calm. She had seemed at peace with her sacrifice, her death at the hands of a monster, so as to prevent Edward from interacting with him.
James had been so frustrated with her manner, her patience with his long rambling story, his frustration as she didn’t react, as her eyes remained emotionless. She had seemed ready to die on all of their behalf, accepting of her fate. And she had begged Edward not to intervene, not to put himself at risk, even as she was being tortured.
That’s when he had known he should remove himself from her life, that so long as he was with her, she’d forever be in danger.
He waited until he could finally sever himself from her, knowing all the time that it would destroy her, that she would wake up screaming in the middle of the night and he wouldn’t be there to comfort her. He cut her off, forced his family to move away, just so he could stop ruining her.
He was a vampire, as much as he hated the word, hated to truly acknowledge it. Their every feature, scent, voice, everything about his kind drew humans in, and he wondered if Bella ever would have acted the way she had, put herself in the firing line, if she hadn’t been addicted to him.
He once told her she was his personal brand of heroin, but he wondered if every vampire wasn’t just another drug to their human prey.
He thought of his cousins in Denali, and how they constantly drew men in, the original Succubi… Or the way that every human in Forks, in Knoxville, in New Orleans, in Ithaca, every place his family had ever lived, was drawn to them.
He thought of Jessica Stanley and her sick obsession with him, her explicit fantasies… and how when he first met Bella he constantly misjudged her racing heart - assuming fear when so often it was attraction or anxiety.
Over the past few months away from her, his thoughts had constantly come back to this idea, that perhaps if he had known her mind, he might have found something similar in Bella’s thoughts to Jessica’s repulsive ones… that perhaps the only true difference between Bella and other humans was her addictive scent, and her silent thoughts.
He still loved her, that was for certain. He could hardly change the way he felt about her, couldn’t bring himself to stop loving her despite his fears. And he hated himself for that. Hated how he was drawn to her still, that he couldn’t stop loving her, hated that he was the reason her mortal life was coming to an end.
A parasite, that’s what he was. It was only in his nature, in every cell, every pore of his being.
Bella was beyond reason. She had almost died because of him. And then, she had almost been turned.
So he left. He watched as she believed every word he said, and he felt comforted by the knowledge that her human feelings had never measured up to the intensity of his own.
Immortals rarely changed, but Isabella Swan’s entrance into his life had changed him irrevocably.
He knew she could never truly understand that. Her humanity, although a blessing, and something he desired to never change about her, had been a flaw.
As the hours passed, her skin took on a more pallid hue, her irresistible scent fading like a dying rose.
Edward contemplated, as he had once before, that it might be better to kill Bella, than to allow her to transform.
Alice couldn’t understand what had changed.
Edward had stayed beside Bella’s bed for nearly two days, a silent vigil. Once the rest of their family arrived, they rotated through keeping him company.
Esme would sit quietly, holding Edward’s hand or brushing his hair gently.
Jasper tried to soothe his emotions with a calming aura, but the moment he left the room Edward’s despair and desperation returned in force, almost worse in contrast to the brief reprieve.
Carlisle would talk to him, trying to reason him away from his depressive state, encouraging him to see the positives of the situation, to be grateful that in the end Bella was still alive, even if it wasn’t in a form that Edward had ever desired to see her in.
Alice would sit with him and run through the futures she saw. She could finally see a version of their future clearly, of her and Bella running through an unfamiliar forest, their skin sparkling in the dappled sunlight, bare feet crushing needles underfoot.
She realised now that the forest she had not recognised for all this time, from her very first vision of Bella as one of them, was the forest below the cliffs of Volterra. The one she hunted in now.
She held on to this crisp future, to this version that promised their friendship would not come to an unfortunate end, that Bella would not leave them in time.
Alice had sacrificed her freedom, temporarily, to ensure this future. She was distraught that she hadn’t seen Edwards actions, that she hadn’t prevented this tragedy that had her brother now wallowed in.
“You aren’t omniscient, I do know that.” Edward said at one point, interrupting hours of silence.
“That doesn’t mean I couldn’t have done more”
They went back to their silence. Or, Alice did. Edward still heard her thoughts.
Often, Alice felt Edward was the only member of their family other than Jasper who truly understood her. Jasper could sense her every emotion, but Edward could see her visions, in his own way, could understand her idiosyncrasies without her ever having to explain.
When Alice had first met Jasper, the only reason he hadn’t balked was because he could already sense Alice’s feelings for him, her sincerity, even with her strangeness.
When Alice had first met Edward, she had run through their futures, shown him how they would come to know each other, and he had understood her entirely without a word passing between them. As much as Jasper hadn’t balked, there was still so much she had to explain to him, and had to help him understand before they could truly just be .
Alice and Edward were the true weirdos of their family, and whilst her company most often brought him comfort, she could sense a desperate edge to him, a restlessness that made her uneasy.
In those few days, that felt more drawn out and torturous than almost any other point of her existence, Alice held on to that bright version of their future in every moment she was in Edwards company, and tried desperately not to think of the alternatives that slowly crept into the complex web of futures.
Alice couldn’t understand what had changed, but suddenly, their future spiralled into a dark, broken timeline.
Bella dead. Edward dead. Esme distraught and depressed for millenia, Jasper gone, Alice trapped with the Volturi…
As her vision rocked her, Alice tripped over her own feet and fell to the ground, her palms creating small depressions in the dirt of the forest around her.
She didn’t understand, couldn’t understand.
She couldn’t see what had happened, she only saw the future, not the past.
Jasper darted over to her, helping her up.
She looked up at him, his face contorted in pain, a mirror of the distress she felt.
“What-”
“I don’t know, we have to go, if we do-” her knees buckled as she realised what had changed.
She recovered, and started running, Jasper following her immediately as she sprinted, pushing herself faster than she ever had.
“We have to stop Edward. He’s going to kill Bella.”