RR Sneak Peek

A brief teaser of Chapter 10 - The Road to Hell:

“I am not turning her. We don't know what will happen if I bite her in her current state.”

“There's no coming back from this, son. If you aren't willing to change her, then it's time to let her go,” Carlisle said gently.

“People have come back from being brain dead before.”

“Yes, there are cases where, a girl after being taken off of life-support and being transported in a jet in a sub-zero cooler to where she's to be buried, somehow wakes up. But those types of cases are extremely rare. And none of them were dealing with someone who was shot in the head at point blank range and then left for dead for days. The reality is, how she even survived till you found her, I'll never know.”

Alice looked away at Carlisle's words, blinking hard. She couldn't physically cry tears, it was one thing vampires simply weren't capable of, but the feeling – one she didn't a hundred percent understand as she had no memories of being human – was still there.

RR Sneak Peek

A second brief teaser of Chapter 10 - The Bottom:

She spoke over her mate, “You. Your kind is making my sight blind. It's why I wasn't able to see the future when we went to Forks. Why my family's future is currently blank. It's probably why that one time I had a vision of Bella in the meadow after we'd left, it disappeared almost as fast as it appeared. It wouldn't surprise me if it's been the reason why I've been unable to get a lock on Bella's future. What are you planning to do? Have Edward turn her and then poison her against us?”

Jacob snorted. “Hardly, even if she was still human... Most of the wolves are not a huge fan of her, and it would never work... Forget about her being a baby vampire. I've seen how volatile and insane your kind are when they're new. My imprint is in La Push and the tribe is in La Push. If she's turned I would have to wash my hands of her. But at least she'd be alive in some form, if she was a vampire. And I may not love her the way I once did, but she's still my friend – my best friend in the whole world – even after all this time.

“As for poisoning her against you, I don't need to. All of you need look no further than a mirror for who would poison her against you. You can't begin to fathom the damage you did to her when you left. She's human, clearly incapable of handling the paid of your kind's mate bond once it was broken by that asshole leaving, but that's exactly what she had to endure.”

RR Sneak Peek

A brief teaser of Chapter 10 - The Bottom:

Alice had been wandering the hospital for a good eight hours or more when her vision of her family went completely black.

For a moment she stilled completely, fear keeping her from churning into action the way she knew she should.

A human – maybe a doctor or nurse – touching her arm and asking her if she was alright had her spinning and racing away from the mere mortal. In that instant, she didn't care if she revealed her true nature to the whole damn hospital.

She was already pretty sure she was going to lose her best friend – her sister in all but blood. She was already losing Edward, with every moment that passed she was more and more sure of that.

She refused to lose anyone else that mattered to her.

She couldn't let it happen.

Alice darted down one hall after another, hearing some startled breaths as she passed by the foolish humans – even though she knew they couldn't really see anything, just a blur rushing by. It would be concerning to her... if she wasn't so worried about her family at the moment. But her family was all that mattered to her.

When she reached the hall that nested Bella's room, she heard it, a voice from just a couple days ago – a voice she never thought she'd hear again.

RR Sneak Peek

A brief teaser of Chapter 9 - Descent to Purgatory:

The Los Angeles Community Hospital proved difficult to get into as they had to wait until evening, after the sun set, to actually leave there car and go inside.

But they'd finally made their way in... and now Alice wasn't sure what to do.

She knew exactly what room Bella was in, and she'd told her family where to go, but she'd turned and walked the other way.

In some ways Alice felt bad for her choice to walk away - not only from her family but from the only human she'd ever thought of as a friend as well – but the truth was she simply couldn't handle it. Often times her family thought of he ability as a gift, and she wouldn't deny that there had been times in the past where she had felt the same, but the truth was that it was a curse.

Because, in truth, if she'd never had her ability, she never would have seen the car wreck back over six years ago, never would have had the chance to form emotions for the human who would have died at that point... never would have known the wrenching pain she felt now.

She wouldn't already know what she'd find if she decided to go into that hospital room. After all, she could already see it in her mind.

RR Info

RR is winding down. I know that will shock quite a few people, but it's the truth.

So I want to talk just a little about RR. I'm going to be honest, when I first did the one-shot, in spite of the fact that I advised I might continue it someday which was why I was leaving it with an open ending, I never intended to continue it - because in my mind, I truly saw her as dead.

And then the reviews hit demanding more... followed by the dms. 

And I caved. 

So I had to rework my mind to allow me to continue the story. 

The original plan that came to me, is more or less what you see. Originally, I planned to write every chapter just like I have, with Alice's side in the present and Bella's in the past. Until they collided. Now here's where the plan fell off course. Because, when I first saw the story in my head I was going to draw out the suspense a lot more. I was actually thinking something like thirty chapters... But by the time I wrote about three chapters I knew it wasn't going to happen that way. The story as a whole is so painful to write that extending it into a full length story just isn't possible.

As such there are only about two or three chapters and an epilogue left.

Now I will say this: the last chapter and the epilogue were always going to be exactly what you will read, it just would have taken a lot longer to get there.

And for those that want the HEA... it will be part of the epilogue but it's not a sunshine and roses type HEA. 

RR Sneak Peek

A brief teaser of Chapter 8 - Misery Loves Company:

“I'm sorry to hear Bella's been injured, but she's an adult and responsible for her own well-being,” a man who Alice couldn't immediately place said coldly as he stared at their family.

“If we could just speak with her mom, Renee. This is really important, Phil,” Carlisle stated, his voice extremely calm, placating even.

“I'm sure it is, just as I'm sure Renee would do anything for her prodigal daughter who could do no wrong – even after she essentially ran her own father into an early grave with her wild whims – but Renee has late stage stomach cancer and she's not in the physical health to help Bella. So whatever trouble Bella has found herself in, she can get herself out of it.” Phil stood in front of a door to a relatively large beach house and it appeared as if the sun had only barely gone down.

“I remember Bella used to talk fondly of you. I'd have thought you'd have felt the same,” Alice's future self said to him.

“I liked her when Renee and I were dating, but she turned into a real troublemaker later in life. Honestly, I suspect now the accident in Phoenix was actually of her own creation. I won't have her ruining what's left of my wife's life.”

“You don't understand, Bella was shot in the head. Renee is Bella's next and only living kin.”

“That's not our problem.” Phil stared them down for a few seconds before finally opening the door behind him to go back inside.

RR Sneak Peek

A brief teaser of Chapter 7 - City of Heat:

Alice did not like the way Charlie's house looked. The vines – the ones that had always grown up one side of the house – seemed to have completely overtaken that wall, the paint was chipped and peeling all over the house and completely gone in certain areas, the drive was overrun with roots as if no one had parked in it in a long time, and the roof had giant sections with the outer shell missing. His house looked, in a word, abandoned.

She wasn't the only one to reach that conclusion either, because Carlisle stated, “I don't think he lives here anymore.”

“We should still check,” she said softly.

After all, Charlie had never been that much of a neat freak to begin with and perhaps after Bella had left, he'd simply stopped caring about appearances. Besides, humans were weird, and he'd hardly be the first person to live in rundown junk.

Carlisle pulled to a stop and she quickly got out of the back seat. She could still smell Charlie's lingering scent, but it was old, extremely so. Yet, she couldn't stop sniffing. She'd never smelled something quite as rank as what was currently in the air. It smelled like wet dog that had rolled in a skunk bath.

RR Sneak Peek

A brief teaser of Chapter 6 - A New Blow:

As they were driving from Port Angeles to Fork, everything went completely black for Alice.

“Stop the car!” she shrieked.

Carlisle immediately pulled over and turned to stare at her. “What is it?”

“Our future completely disappears when we reach Forks and I can't see us coming out the other side. I have no clue what it means.”

She felt Jasper's eyes on the side of her head. “What about Edward's future? Or one of our friends? Can you still see their futures?”

Alice closed her eyes and focused on Edward's immediate future, she could see him staring down at Bella's unresponsive form – hooked up to far too many wires.

“Yeah, I can still see Edward's future.”

“So it's something to do with the town then? Has this happened before?” Jasper asked.

“No,” Alice said instantly and then frowned. “Actually, maybe.”

“What do you mean, maybe?”

“Aside from one time, shortly before Edward came back to live with us, I never deliberately looked for Bella, but in the first eight months after we left I got an occasional half moment vision of Bella before I managed to pull myself out, but there was one time when I saw her at Edward's meadow and a shadow in the trees and then the vision just ended. I didn't pull myself out, it simply stopped. At the time, I didn't think much about it, but now I'm wondering.”

RR Sneak Peek

A teaser of Chapter 5 - That Pain To Keep:

“What do they call you?” a man with ashy blonde hair asked. He was dressed in very simple black clothes – the type of outfit that could be anywhere from a few months old or several hundred years old.

“Bella, my name was Bella when I was human.” She didn't sound like the Bella that Alice remembered anymore, instead she her voice was more of a soprano. Definitely a vampire, but Alice wasn't at all sure where Bella was or who the other vampires were.

“Then it's still Bella...”

“... or it's not,” another man with dark hair said.

Both of the men had deep red eyes but Bella's were pitch black.

She wrapped her arms arms around her waist. “I don't know who I am anymore.”

“Why is that?”

“Why are you here?”

The two males asked the questions in tandem.

“I... I was abandoned by my mate. I should be dead. I shot myself. But he turned me, or my hallucination turned me. I'm not sure anymore. He should have let me die. He already destroyed me. I don't get why he did this to me.”

“A hallucination?” the blonde one asked.

“I think so. I don't know what's real anymore.”

RR - Chapter 1

While I am not officially going to be posting this story on FF yet, I thought I'd tease the people who want to see RR continued, and show the first chapter. Apologies for any errors, but it is completely unedited.

________________________________________________

AN: Each chapter is going to be split into two sections. The first section with the focus on the now (five year after Bella jumped, so 2011) and the other section will focus on Bella's past. Unlike most of my works, the entirety of this story will be in third person, but ultimately focuses on Bella and Alice. It is Bella/Edward, but may or may not be a hea. This starts out five days after the vision/event in the Prelude

Chapter 1 – A Different Beginning

Alice hadn't heard from Edward since he left five days prior, and as she tried desperately to garner his future, it was so jumbled and unfocused that she couldn't be certain what he was going to do. For half of a millisecond she'd see him in some hospital room, then next she'd see him standing in front of Aro, the next in front of a blazing fire – already a hazy purplish-gray from that of a vampire burning – after that she'd see him back at home, and so on. She'd seen hundreds of possible futures, all pertaining to her brother, all without Bella, and all within a matter of seconds. Then they'd all repeat. She had no way to make sense of them.

She groaned, massaging her head from the headache she was getting by just trying to grasp onto something solid.

Jasper's hands reached up and started massaging her neck, reminding her she wasn't alone. “I'll protect you from everything I can, love, even our family, but eventually you are going to have to tell them what happened.” He left out the tell me in his words, but she knew it hurt him that she was keeping what she saw to herself. But how could she explain to any of them the vision that she'd had when she didn't fully understand it herself?

True, she understood that she'd been watching a game of Russian Roulette, she wasn't unfamiliar with the practice, but what she didn't understand was the why and the how. Why had Bella, her sister, been at that table? How had she gotten there?

More than that though, Alice could not wrap her mind around the expressions Bella had made, the way her eyes had lit up when her opponent had been first given the gun, the callous look to her face when he pulled the trigger, the defiance in her eyes when she pulled the trigger herself... it had been as if Bella had been communicating with someone, but she hadn't said a word the entire match.

She sighed, “I don't know how to explain it, Jas.”

“Start with the basics, what was it about?”

She could tell that her four family members were all listening to their conversation from different spots in the house. She couldn't blame them. The way Edward had taken off like a bat out of hell.. Well, she'd be curious too if she didn't know why already. It was the most animated he'd been since he'd come back.

“It was about Bella.”

“You're not supposed to be looking into her future. You promised.” She knew Jasper wasn't referring to her promise to Edward, he was referring to her promise to him. After Edward had come back, she'd had a moment of weakness where she'd wanted to taunt him with the vision of Bella's gravestone, acting out in petty anger, but Jasper had realized what she was contemplating before she followed through with it and had made her promise to let her brother's old wounds heal.

“I wasn't looking, but that doesn't mean I don't see. And once I was in, I couldn't get out.” Not until she'd seen too much, heard too much.

“What was she doing?”

“She was at a table somewhere, I'm not sure where, and she was... I'm not sure what she was doing.”

“Yes you do. Tell me.” Jasper turned her to look at him.

“She killed herself.” The words tumbled out before Alice could stop it. She knew it was wrong to say that as she wasn't certain that Bella was dead, she hadn't been able to see Bella pull the trigger after all, but it was the only thing that made sense in her mind.

She heard Esme gasp from the study downstairs, and from the others, it was complete silence, which was telling in itself.

“What happened?” Jasper said it calmly, but Alice knew her husband and she was well familiar with the fact that it was forced.

“She was playing Russian Roulette, I didn't actually see her kill herself, as all my senses were cut off in the vision right at the end except sound, but she'd been holding the gun just before everything went black. Right after that there was a resounding bang and then I was able to yank free of the vision.”

Carlisle was at their bedroom door before Alice had finished speaking. He'd grasped almost immediately what Alice had been trying desperately to determine for the last five days. “And what does that mean of Edward?”

“I don't know, because he doesn't know. Not yet. I couldn't tell him that she was dead, that it was too late for him to save her. For now, he's searching, but once he realizes she's dead, if he ever realizes it, I am relatively sure he'll follow. I can't be sure though, because he hasn't decided to go that route, not yet. It's flickered a few times, but mostly there are just hundreds of nonsensical visions – some that make sense, others that don't.”

“We need to go find him.”

“And what do you think he'll do if we show up and he reads our thoughts? Right now, he has hope, no matter how fleeting and small. It's enough to keep him going. If we show up, he'll lose that. And then I don't need a vision to know what he'll do next.” Alice didn't add that they couldn't stop him if he really wanted to die. She suddenly had a sick understanding of what the vision of the pyre had been.

“You're telling me that there's nothing we can do?” Carlisle demanded, there was a tension in his body that she rarely saw. At times, she forgot just how much Carlisle loved Edward, but times like this reminded her that he had been Carlisle's first creation and first companion.

“Some of my visions show him coming back to us on his own. I think that maybe if we stay out of the way he might come to terms with losing her and come back, though he'll never be alright again. But if we try to force that choice on him then I assure you he's already lost.” As she said the words, Alice knew she was right. If they so much as took one step in the direction of getting involved then all would be lost.

She could hear Esme quietly sobbing downstairs, saw Jasper open his mouth to speak, and then she wasn't there anymore. Instead she was flung into a vision of Edward's very immediate future, one she'd wish for the rest of her life she could have gotten away with not seeing.

June 2006

Jake wrapped his arms around her waist. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Was Bella sure she wanted to die? No. What choice did she have though? “I won't let there be another Leah because of me.”

“You're avoiding the question, Bells. Talk to me. We can find another way.”

“Sam wants me gone, Jake.” Victoria had sent five vampires after Bella just a month and a half earlier. The werewolves had managed to kill them all, but they hadn't been prepared, and the cost had been high. Leah, who had only been a werewolf for a little over a month, had died, her body torn into pieces. Bella knew, because Sam had made her look after it was all over.

“I'll fight him on that if you want to stay.” She knew he would, which was one of the many reasons she had to go.

“And what happens when Victoria gets even more inventive and manages to kill a human, like Kristy?” Brady Fuller's little sister who had been born a mere week and a half ago was the only reason Jacob had finally agreed to let her go. After the fight that had killed Leah, Bella had received a letter in the mail, it held only one line of text:

“Come to Seattle and no one else has to die.”

It had been the fanciest cursive Bella had ever seen. She didn't need anyone to tell her who had written it. When she'd told the wolf pack about the letter, the pack had become pretty divided. Seth and Jacob had been determined she would stay, and Quil and Embry had agreed though she had seen the truth in Embry's eyes, that he actually thought she should go, but he wouldn't go against his best friend. On the other side of the table were Sam, Paul, Jared, Collin and Brady. All of them believed she should leave. None of them wanted to bury another one of their own.

Behind her, she felt Jacob shudder. She'd hit below the belt deliberately. “Then that blood would be on Victoria's head, not yours.” He held firm.

“Jake, you say that now, but we both know that if she killed your imprint then you'd blame me. You'd probably kill me yourself. I won't let you lose your reason for being just because I'm stubbornly clinging to the only family I truly have left.” She didn't bother to say she'd already lost hers.

That March, after she'd jumped for the first time from the cliff she was standing on now, she'd tried to make it work with Jake. They'd kissed a few times, went on a couple dates, but at the end of the day when she went to bed at night, it left her feeling worse than it had before. It was as if she was betraying her very soul. When she'd explained it to Jake, he'd understood, and helped her to understand better than she had before.

He'd explained to her how wolves imprinted, and also explained to her the legends that talked about vampire mates. He suspected that even though she was just human, somehow she'd formed the mate bond with him.

After that they went back to being just friends, and Bella explained to Jake about the voice she heard. He once again had understood and ultimately helped her chase them by being with her every time she jumped off the cliff.

Still, until he saw Kristy for the first time he hadn't understood her desire to leave. In fact, he had been adamantly against it.

“I wouldn't do that.” Jake sounded horrified by her words.

“You may not think you would now, but if something like that happened...” Bella didn't finish her sentence. She didn't need to, she knew Jake would get it.

“I don't like it, Bella. There has to be a better way than this.”

“She sent five last time, next time she might send twenty. You guys wouldn't survive, and I can't bear it if yet another dies because of me.” She closed her eyes, remembering the sight of one of Leah's light gray hind legs in a bush, the other thirty feet away, blood everywhere. “Victoria wants me dead in the worst way possible. I need to go, before more of you get hurt.”

Jacob sighed. “I don't like it.”

“You don't have to, just be sure and protect my dad after I'm gone. More than likely he'll never hear I died, because she'll destroy the evidence of my death afterwards. You need to make sure it stays that way. It's bad enough that I'm going to emotionally ruin him.”

Jacob shuddered violently. “Don't say stuff like that. You'll make it through this. I have to believe that.”

“Jake...” She said the word indulgently, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “Come on, jump with me. One last time. For me.” She pulled away from him.

She heard him pull his shirt off and proceeded to yank off her own. She took two steps back and then raced forward, flinging herself off the cliff. She didn't hear his voice doing this anymore, but it was at least a way for her to forget everything, at least for the two point three seconds it took her to hit the water.

She righted herself in the water and kicked up to the surface just as Jacob splashed down ten feet to her left. The small riptide caused from his mass displacing the water sent her reeling under the surface again. She once again kicked to the top.

Jacob surfaced beside her a moment later. “Did you hear him this time?”

It was an intimate question, one that felt more invasive now that he'd imprinted than it had before. “No.”

“Maybe you're finally moving on.” He said it softly, hopefully. She knew that even though he'd understood what was going on with her better than she herself had, he thought it was unhealthy. She knew he believed that it couldn't be healthy for a human to have such a strong bond with an immortal being

“I'm not, the gaping hole in my chest is an ever reminder of my loss. I don't think it's possible for me to move on. Do wolves that lose their imprints ever move on?” It was only comparison she had that she could give Jake.

“No.” He growled, not an actual growl, but a human imitation of one. “I wish he was still here. I'd kick his ass for leaving you like this – half-dead and eternally chasing a memory.”

She shrugged. “It's not his fault that the mate thing was apparently one-sided.” She started swimming to shore.

She could practically hear Jacob biting his tongue as he swam behind her and normally she would tell him to spit it out, but she honestly didn't want to hear it. She didn't want to hear him. She knew her decision rubbed him the wrong way. She knew he disagreed, but he didn't understand, it was horrifying enough to have the blood of one on her hands. And it didn't matter what Jake said, Leah's death rested solely at her feet and she knew it.

When they got to shore, he walked with her to her bike. “Are you sure?” He asked again as they arrived at her bike and she pulled on the leather jacket he'd bought her as a graduation present.

She knew, he'd ask it every fifteen seconds if he thought he could get her to say no just once. She knew that him seeing one moment of indecision would be all that it would take, and then she'd never leave. “Yes I am,” she said resolutely.

“Please. Stay.”

She closed her eyes against the pain that his plea caused her. She knew he understood better than before why she had to leave, but he was stubborn and resisting. “I'm sorry Jake, I can't.” She stood up on the tips of her toes and kissed him chastely one last time before she got on her bike.

She started it up and took off, heading home, also for her final time.