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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.
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