toffeetaffy

[toffeetaffy]

Beast at My Side [final]

The Metronome Stutters

For a while I was haunted. Every dream was a nightmare, and every waking hour filled me with an unspeakable dread. Jane would come. I was sure of it. She would come and tear me limb from limb with her tiny hands; she would taste my blood on her pretty pink tongue. She would end me. Each morning I woke in a silent scream. The days were long, spent trembling and quaking, and praying for the end. But each end only came when I shook myself apart, the pieces of me too tired to continue quivering.

And then, one night, I dreamt of Luc.

It was easy to lose myself, to float away with him in to the night. Easy to hang myself from his smile and let the fear wash away. I hoped to awaken unburdened. New and clean. I wanted to tear my chest open and flood it with light, paint my bones a warmer shade. But things are never so easy. It is three whole months of shaking and shivering. Three whole months of wreckage and ruin.

Then came Tuesday.

Tuesday is pancakes, and short-shorts, and learning to breath again. Tuesday is classes, and friends, and thinking of him. Jasper's a fire-coloured sky when I imagine him. Stars and smoke signals. He's a thumb across my cheekbone, a mouth pressed to my own. For the first time in so, so long I ache to have him near me, but I have kept the promise I most wanted to break: I let him go. I did not follow him. I did not stop him. No matter how fervently Bella had insisted I go to him, I had left Jasper to carry out his foolish errand alone. So I make a wish. Nothing happens, of course, because wishes are little more than futile hopes. They are things we say aloud because they hurt too much to hold inside. But the thought is small and soothing so I keep on thinking it. Five words, five tiny words. I wish you were here.

Also on Tuesday, I fix things. Fix my hair, fix my nails, fix the unsightly hole in my bedroom wall. It was a childish attempt to regain control. My fist through the plaster, my fist through the grief, my fist through the unspeakable terror of being alone. But I can fix all of it. I will paint my life with a shiny new coat of Hot Pop Yellow, of Riverland Blue. I will start my life again. This story will be my own.

Tuesday is a phoenix born of Mondays ashes. It is a light in my chest. My ribs, my heart, my tender flesh and umber skin all warm and glowing. Even as the sunlight dims, I feel the heat of it. By dusk I am done. Golden and glorious. No longer half of a person, half of a pair.

On Tuesday, I am whole.

Night comes late, the tender dark drawn slowly like a veil. It feels like an omen. My phone rings in familiar staccato beeps, and I hold it up, breath thick and slow against the screen.

"Could I get a lift?"

His voice is strange after so long, softer than I remembered. Sweeter. We have three months of silence growing between us. It has bloomed and blistered in to something twisted and prideful, something almost impossible to make peace with. With silence we wounded each other. Perhaps it should have been me who spoke first, who pierced this solemn thing, but I would forgive myself my petty grudges. I have forgiven so much worse.

"Just... tell me where you are."

He does. I snatch up the keys to my ugly orange van and tear out of the apartment. The stairs are narrow. Where once the concrete walls felt like a vice—crushing, closing, clamping—there is now comfort in their closeness. My sneakers hit the tiles with a screech. The foyer is blue and grey, no more than smoke as I tear my way through it.

Then, I am driving.

Traffic's sparse until I hit the marketplace. I watch my own hands drum restlessly against the wheel, fingers stained pink by the row of stop lights. It is purgatory. Trapped in a moment, a liminal space, held motionless by the rush around me. These nerves are strange. Misplaced. The dampening neck and quickening heart are relics of a forest, a riverbed, a cabin in the snow. I draw air into my nose, into my lungs. It's sharp, and hot, and stinks of gasoline. Warm and foul. A horn blares behind me and my stomach flies in to my throat, coating my neck in a new, slick sheen of panic. I have no plan, no schedule, no idea what unseen force pulls me forward. But it's there. A thrilling compulsion to advance - no matter what. And so I do.

There are ten more minutes of queer and curious agony, of stopping and starting, of fingers tapping, before I see it. It is a strange and dusky outline. A cap drawn low, a dusty duffle slung across narrow shoulders. My heart hammers in my chest. It shakes all of my bones in turn as I steer the van off the road, as I fling open the door, as I run headlong in to the arms of the boy made of stone.

"I still hate you," I say.

"I know," he replies.

But I don't. Not any more. I spent three months learning how to forgive Jasper, learning that I cannot despise him for the man he was, a man he cannot even remember. Though fairness seldom seems to pair with judgement, I resolve to only measure the man he is today, the life he lives right now. When I tell him that, he smiles small and slow. It isn't hard to imagine that the expression is crooked from disuse, but I cannot find the courage to ask where he has been, what journey could have ruined even the smile on his lips.

He slouches low in the passenger seat of the van, lazily pulls the cap from his head. We waste a few minutes on awkward small-talk, my eyes darting between the road and him, still captivated by the sight. Greasy hair frames his face - tilted toward the windows, his eyes superfluously pulled closed. He looks human. Not just scripted, not just a series of perfectly composed affectations. Messy. Tired. Human. It would be foolish to let myself believe it, to fall prey to one of their greatest snares, but I can pretend. Just for a while. Just while his cheeks are stained red by the stop lights, just while my hands are still restless against the wheel.

When we get home he showers and changes clothes. Jasper's inhuman charms have never seemed more conspicuous than sitting at the tiny pine table in my dinky old flat. I wonder again how it is they pass for human. Their bodies too strong, their minds too quick, their pretty skins too poorly stretched to hide what lurks within. Just trying to imagine him in an ordinary classroom sets the blood roaring in my ears. People must be blind.

"Bella said you were in Volterra." He only nods in response, my disbelief is full and staggering. "Why? Why would you go there?"

"I went to fight a war."

It takes all my strength to look at him, to force my eyes on to his. When I draw air in to my lungs it feels wet and warm but comes out cold. Frigid and salty like an ocean spray. Another war. I wonder if he could ever live without battle, without bloodshed.

"It was passed time someone ended Jane's grudge against Bella." He seems troubled by his own thoughts, by even the force of gravity on his anchored form. "And that meant getting rid of Aro, the one who pulled her strings."

Regicide. Air bursts in to my chest in sickly hiccups, my fingers twist and flex. Jasper has killed a king. The story he tells is dark and treasonous, rich with blood and woe. Aro, it seemed, played the part of Mad King. He seethed and raged in secret, plotting to destroy Bella for embarrassing him, for birthing an impossible child. I think of Ren, soft and small and strange. She should not exist. None of them should. It ends with the deaths of Alec and Jane, of Aro and Caius.

"Marcus keeps his throne for now," he says, "at least until he gives the new queens of Volterra a reason to end him."

It is a terrifying thought. Four powerful, immortal creatures torn down and ripped apart; a secret society and ancient government both forced in to reformation. And at the heart of it: Bella. Beautiful Bella. I wonder if she knows how many lives she has destroyed, how close she came to destroying mine. Wet, cold, and blue all-over. I nearly died to please the Mad King, and Beautiful Bella had never even told me why. The betrayal of that stings me. It pierces my chest, and fills my lungs with a fractured fury, the heat of it burning in waves, rubato, like the beating of my injured heart.

In time I will forgive her. That sting is greater still.

___

My predator's gaze is heavy, heated. It scorches my skin and warms the flesh beneath until the origin of my aching is muddied with desire. I run. I keep running. Four more laps, then five. Soon, I am laid out at his feet, panting and breathless, my pulse a throbbing distraction. He follows me here every morning. He risks being caught by the first slip of day just to watch me run. I am fast, he tells me, as though I don't already know. As though this track is not the only place my winter bones feel truly warm.

"I could make you faster."

His offer holds little temptation. For now, I am content. They can keep their ritual, their alchemy, their eerie perfection; I will choose to ache, and to age because the pain of living has never felt so good. His offer will come again. It has come before. For weeks now, Jasper has offered strength when my limbs grew weary, tirelessness when I slept through my studies. Most tempting though, are his offers of eternity. Forever, when he kisses me. Forever, when our fingers lace. Forever, as he presses his body into mine. For too long my strength was a lie, my bravery an illusion. My humanity was all I knew to be true, knew to be mine. And forever means surrendering that to him. I am not ready for forever.

He is gone before the sun's made real. Burning lips and nervous hands waiting for the dark. But my days are full. I have classes, and friends, and the rapturous feeling of a life becoming whole, becoming real. The nights are better still. Tangled limbs and fevered kisses, cupping and clenching, our skin turned blue by the light of the television. My palms over his ribs are like an epiphany. As though my hands had no purpose before they wrapped around him, as though my fingers were meaningless before they knotted in his hair. We spend weeks like this. Breath in concert. Flesh to stone. Every part of us becoming something stronger, something better, while we pretend I'm not a ticking clock. Forever is never more tantalising than when the room turns silent, and the clock is all I can hear.

We are carving our time in to seconds, making notes on how best not to waste it. But we are wrong - the chronology of us. Somehow, even entwined, we use a line to divide ourselves, keep my insides from his outsides, and it leaves us out of sync. I wonder if we can transcend this. I wonder if I will ever let him convince me of the fallacy of my death. For his kind the end is a beginning, a painful pause to mark the birth of something new. For me, it is just the end. When the night drains from the sky they flee for the shadows, but I cannot imagine a life without the sun on my skin, without the exhilarating hammer of my heart within my chest. The metronome stutters.

Forever.

___

There's a feeling growing inside me, something unformed and unknown, that threatens to make me useless when he looks at me. It beats inside my chest. It warms me slowly. It's a taste, not a word, somehow, but contorts around my tongue and squeezes between my teeth with all the weight of wanting. But what more could I possibly want?

Apparently we'll hike today. Plot a course, do a climb, make a mountain ours. For a creature whose survival depends so heavily on the masquerade of humanity, Jasper seems dangerously at ease with our planned excursion. I am far less certain. Where once I may have thought this brave or defiant, I now wonder if he's simply stubborn or foolish. But it doesn't matter. I am helpless to deny him. Wanting, wanting.

Our trail is covered in stone and sand. And though the sun burns above us, bright and dazzling, he is unafraid here. No thought of discovery, of danger can keep the smile from Jasper's face. Pleased and pleasing. His skin glows dully, as though a fire burns just beneath. It sparks and spreads and rolls in waves. When his hand grips mine it is warm and strange, never more like real flesh. These hands, this flesh, this love will ruin me. Love. It is far too soon for the feeling. I feel it just the same. I swallow the word down deep before it can crawl right out of my mouth.

We hike for hours, steady and slow. When we reach the rock-face, he takes my hand again, gives it a gentle squeeze. He climbs with ease. Nimble hands dig pits and pockets, sure holds for my nervous feet and fingers to follow in. The climb is hard. The rock is sheer. Straining muscle and grasping hands drive me to the top. There, I collapse exhausted, exhilarated. A sweating, ruddy tangle. I have never felt more powerful, more incredible, more human. He lays down beside me. Stony fingers drag through the dirt, through the sand, then paint a dusty trail upon my face. There's an ache in my chest. I wonder if he feels it.

"Tell me what can I give you." There's a dull pain in his voice, some sort of ancient misery that makes his meaning incomprehensible to me. "I know you're tired of forever—of eternity—but I have nothing else to offer." His lips are a tight line. An effort to make the words stop. "So please, Lena, tell me what I can give you."

I throw myself against him, press my lips to his, and hope that time just ends. He turns. He covers my body with his own. His mouth draws a line up my neck, whispers into my ear. There is no story I could write for myself better than this one. I am fully and truly satisfied. What can he give me, then? This desert. These rocks. Each part of him that presses flush against me. He can give me these. I need nothing more.

"Give me this," I say, my palm against his chest. "Give me you. For just as long as you want to."

He traps my hand with his, creates a cage around his heart. "Forever, then?"

Behind him, all I see is the sky, the sun in his hair like a fiery crown. Forever. Finally, it doesn't sound like a curse. "Forever, then."

We stand, not quite sure of what comes next, of where forever starts. But we have this. This desert. These rocks. His hands across my skin like a river, like a promise. Our descent is clean and quick, the mountain somehow softer from my longing, but we ramble the return path slowly. The minutes smear together. Everything casts a shadow. I wonder aloud if there was even any escape from them, the alluring monsters who captured my heart.

" 'The more I saw of them,' " he quoted, " 'the greater became my desire to claim their protection and kindness.' "

I laugh, the sound a distant echo off each surrounding stone. " 'My heart yearned to be known and loved by these amiable creatures.' "

Jasper turns to me, his brow quirked in practised interest. "But doesn't that make you The Monster?" He laughs softly, quietly, and then simply walks away.

Perhaps he's right. Perhaps I am The Monster. I suppose I'll have forever to find out.

___

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[toffeetaffy]

Beast at My Side [8]

Plucked from the Frost

Darkness. Only darkness.

Then something. A feeling. Small at first, then greater, more urgent. A tugging in my gut. Like the floor falling away, like sinking into space. Black, blacker, blackest. Later, there's a sliver of light. It stretches out across my vision until it's ripping and tearing, sending the shadows haemorrhaging from everywhere at once. It all fades in and out, keeping perfect time with the throbbing in my head. The world feels wet, cold, and blue all-over. Blue sky, blue hands, blue lips. I scrub at my eyes with stinging fingers, useless from the chill, and find myself sitting in a sea of stars. Not stars. Snow. It sparkles in every direction, blinding and white, numbing my legs, soaking my skin. I make three failed attempts at standing before I hear the voice.

"Hello, young thing."

Two cloaked figures, hand-in-hand, stand perfectly still behind me. I do not know which of them spoke, but it is clear that neither is entirely human. The pair are small and strange. Bodies petite, cheeks plump. Remnants of their stolen youth. When I open my mouth to respond, the noisy, uncontrollable chatter of my teeth seems deafening.

"It will freeze... it will die," one says.

"Oh, it will die," the other responds, "but we still have time." Their faces turn back to me, blank, unblinking. "Do you know who we are?"

I shake my head, no.

"Do you know what we are?"

One nod, yes.

The inquirer smiles. She tells me that I may call them Jane and Alec, that they are here on Volturi business. I am that business. "There are laws, young thing. You broke them; you, Carlisle, and his mangy brood."

What exactly does it cost me to know your secret? Alice: brutal and beautiful, I wonder if she saw me here, on my knees. I wonder if she saw me die. Whatever lenience her affiliation with the Volturi affords the Cullen's does not seem to extend to me. They mean to punish me, to snatch away my life like a simple petty theft. At the top of a tree, at the edge of a building, in the hands of a monster I had wished for death. But now, with my palms pressed to my chest, I can feel my brothers heartbeat. I'm sorry, Luc. Sorry that I couldn't save you, sorry that I couldn't save myself.

"Make it quick, make it clean," the boy says.

"No. We make an example. They overstep their bounds. The law is immutable."

My veins begin to itch. My skin heats, sweats. And then my mind is on fire. Everything ceases to exist beyond the cutting, the burning, the constricting; a pain so pure it is beyond imagining. A stream of relentless torment floods my body and saturates my psyche. I can hear myself screaming, feel it tearing up my throat, rushing between gritted teeth. When I am certain I will die, the agony wanes. I breathe. I cry. I fall onto my hands and knees, shaking and shivering, the snow stained pink with blood. And though I would swear to the reality of every slice, every rupture I endured, I can see no visible wounds. Then I taste it. Coppery and foul, blood oozes from my eyes, my nose, my ears. The agony of Jane's gift is unfathomable. This will not be quick. This will not be clean.

Behind her, the boy stands motionless—this is not his crusade, is not his choice—yet there he is, at her heels like a shadow. Now I see them for what they are. Not just demons made of living stone, but family. He will let me die to please her. Somehow, sickeningly, I understand.

I cough into my hands, splatter them with gore all warm and sticky. "I had a brother. I used to follow him everywhere. Until I didn't... until I couldn't. I loved him more than anyone, more than anything. I just wanted him to be happy."

He looks at me. It's the first time I've really felt the weight of his gaze. It is pained, and ancient, and powerful. I am not foolish enough to imagine it may also be merciful but there is something, something when he speaks again. "Return it to its patriarch, or deliver it to our masters. I do not wish to linger here."

"No. What? No!" Her first loss of composure. A naked stutter of fury.

"This is not how it's done," he says, "the law is immutable."

Pacing, clutching, hungry, and hollow. She seethes in silence for one minute, then two. There's a low growl to signal her approach, a guttural sound that vibrates through her lips and struggles to pierce the freezing winds. When I think I have mustered the courage to speak again, she grabs at my collar, gathers it tightly in her fist, and hurls me through the air. Beneath me, the snow glitters like smashed glass; above me, the cloudless sky is blue, then purple, then blue, then black. The descent is fast. Too fast. I drive into the snow with my shoulder, my cheek. There's a sound like a snapping twig, a rush of warmth as I bleed anew. I cannot move. Not an arm, not an inch. Sinking deeper, snow fills my mouth, my nose until it is all I can breathe.

___

I am plucked from the frost, gathered up like a child. The one who carries me has dark skin, blanched a peculiar olive by his undead curse. Deducing what he is is simple enough. The eyes are a giveaway; where Bella's are a ruddy brown, his are as vivid as sour cherries. The cloak across his shoulders is dark and familiar - Volturi. Another. More. Always more. I may never escape them. He seems to find my sobbing and shaking as unwelcome as I do. There is little I can do to halt either. My head lolls to the side and I see another figure, clad in black, forging the path ahead.

Struggling is futile. I try it just the same. And though I doubt he struggles to restrain me, he stops. He places me on the ground in a jumble of limbs. In three deft swipes he removes his cloak, wraps me in it, and has me back in his arms. He tells me to be still. He tells me we are friends.

We travel through the woods. The trees grow thicker and taller, cluster together until we're weaving between them at an entirely human pace. We stop at a cabin. It exists in a clearing so small and perfectly formed that I have no doubt it was created to hide this place from sight. Its log walls are mouldy and grey, the front of it barely wide enough to contain the single door and shuttered window. Inside is as sparse and colourless. The only reprieve - a dimly glowing fire. My captor deposits me there and flees the cabin, leaving me alone with his companion. She turns to me then, and I find myself staring blearily at the face of Alice Cullen.

"I'm sorry, Lena. I know you have a million questions, and I'll answer what I can later, but I can't wait here with you. There's too much... much too much... I'm sorry." She disappears in a blur, desperate to escape the much-too-much blood that drains from my body, soaks the boards beneath me.

Later, there's a tinny little sound like a voice from a radio. It crackles like static in my ears, urges me to open my eyes. I do. Carlisle Cullen—patriarch and protector—kneels before me, probes at my skull with practised hands. He removes my clothes, strips me down to my underwear with less regard for my pride than my health, and begins. There are needles to numb and stitches to bind. Limbs are stretched, muscles flexed, and tissue tested. When his work is complete I notice the moonlight, pale and silver. The dying of the day.

"How long?"

Though it is barely a question, he intuits my meaning well enough. The tinny fizz of his voice grows thicker, more real. "You went missing yesterday. Alice and Demitri found you."

He spends some time helping me dress. The clothes, he tells me, Bella picked from my bag. The largest, warmest things she could find. I fumble with the laces of my boots, my discoloured fingertips struggling to comply. This task he completes for me too, before guiding my hands into a bowl of water warmed on the hearth. He gathers up the bloodied gauze and cotton, pitches them into the fire. Then, my clothes. I want weep and wail, to thrash about, but all I do is stare. My dead brothers sweatshirt smoulders, then sparks. Soon it will be gone. Ash and dust like he will be. The patriarch leaves me alone with my thoughts, my pain, my burnt and blistered skin.

When the mess of my mortality is squared away, his family arrives. Bella rubs at my hair with a damp cloth while Edward stares through narrowed eyes. It's a familiar expression. He picks my brain clean, pinches his face in displeasure. Jasper and Alice chatter softly. The only evidence of this exchange are quivering lips and hurried glances. She smiles at me, small and lovely, with a hint of condescension. He does not meet my gaze. I've never seen a thing more captivating than the two of them. She's a jar of starlight, he's a ray of golden sun. Together they are heaven. Last is Demitri, the Volturi who calls himself my friend. I track the line of his body—curved and lean—to find his hand entwined with Alice's. There is no great mystery as to what brings him here. It is love. As clear on his face as the moon in the sky.

Alice tells me she is sorry. She stutters and stammers in her human affectation. This guise is just one of many - a soft and humble skin to make me feel bigger, feel braver. And I do. "It wasn't supposed to be like this. I didn't see- Don't know how I missed it." She kneels before me, hardly deterred by my conspicuous flinch. "You don't have to worry about Jane anymore."

"She's gone?"

As Alice answers 'yes', Jasper responds 'no'.

"We don't know how Jane found out about you," Edward says. "Alice will speak to the Volturi, she'll explain your situation. Whatever decision there is to be made, we still have time."

"My situation?"

The room floods with silence. It comes up to my chin, laps at my lips, threatens to sweep me away. Bella ceases her grooming and stares into the fire. I look at her face, all perfect and pale, and void of pretence. No more holding hands, no more climbing trees, no more laughing until our lungs ache. I am wrecked. I am ravaged. Whatever secret she still keeps could be the one that finally kills me. Though I should have seen it sooner, it is only now that I realise just how unsuited I am to keep her company. I am a gentle heart, wrapped in the softest skin, far too fragile for games such as these.

"Fine. But why not just kill me? Why drag me all the way out to... wherever the hell we are?"

"Too close to home," she says, "we're not her only enemies out here. She can't afford to get caught by the pack."

The pack. I think of Jacob—the boy, the wolf, the warrior—trying so hard to warn me from danger. He was right. Bella can't fix me, can't save me. She can barely keep me alive. "Should I- I mean- Is it too late for me to just drive home and pretend I don't know about any of this?"

"Could you?" The doctor asks.

I want to say yes; make the word like a box and stuff my concerns inside. But a lie like that is a considerable burden. My heart is heavy enough. Any lingering doubt dissipates as Edward and I respond in unison, "no."

They chatter on around me in a storm of words loud enough to hear, but too quick to comprehend. There is an itch under my skin. The smeary irritation of being spoken about and not spoken to. Wobbling lips, tapping tongues. These six strange things cast their shadows, roll their dice, decide my fate, and only one will look at me. Jasper. He approaches the fire. He stares at the odorous remains of my oversized sweatshirt as though it means something more than it does. For me, it is an ending. The bloody resolution of a weeks long nightmare. For him, it is Saturday.

He takes my hands in his. It is not a romantic gesture, it is not comfort or companionship. It feels dutiful, the way he examines my hands, the way he dries them gently and binds them loosely. But there is something intimate in his gaze. As though he stares in to the centre of me until he sees the light inside. The astronomical light that flares and burns, that heats my chest with each press of his skin to mine. But it isn't real. It can't be. No blush on my cheek or swell in my chest should survive his brutal past. My fragile skin and feeble bones barely survive his present. I was a fool to build a heart of twigs - too easy to burn, too easy to break. More foolish still to give it to him, to set the thing ablaze.

"I'll fix this," he says.

If Jasper says more aloud, I do not hear it. Edward argues against something unspoken, and suddenly the silent creatures are loud and livid. The noise of it is like a kick in the teeth, like a slap in the face. No more secretive whispers, no more furtive glances. Whatever information Edward has stolen from Jasper's mind, he does not care for it. But no one does, it seems. Their voices overlap, winding together like an ocean of sound until I am fully submerged in it. When I've finally had enough of their sniping and scoffing, I leave. They let me.

My nose burns and my eyes water. I feel small, and empty, and tired. So terribly tired. The towering trees and sparkling sky paint a mockingly beautiful landscape, but I have little time to enjoy it before the cabin door opens and Bella follows me outside. She doesn't tell me why they argue, and I am too cowardly to ask. Even if I wished to be, I cannot be like Bella. Keeping the company of monsters will not make me capable, will not make me courageous. It will make me dead. These creatures are violent, their desires are dark. I would not trade my bleeding heart or my racing pulse to live forever, made of stone. No, even if I wished to be, I cannot be like Bella.

Breathe, she tells me, before hoisting me onto her back. I fold my arms over her shoulders, wrap my legs around her waist. It feels like so long since she taught me to fly, so long since we scaled a tree and imagined a new world. The thought makes me cry. Just a little. Because even though I want to be ready, I know that it is still too soon to fly, to climb. It is still too soon to heal.

She cuts through the air like a knife. The path she carves is narrow and light, twisting further away from her angry family, the mouldy cabin, and my blood-drenched clothes. I see their cars in the distance. Three of them, covered in snow. Bella sets me down and takes my face in her hands. There's a crease in her brow—an ugly furrow through her pristine skin. She scrutinises me like a stag in her sights. And then, she backs away. It's slow, palms forward as though she expects me to raise my hooves and lunge. She's doing something stupid. Something she'll regret. I don't have time to figure out what it is before she is gone, and Jasper stands in her place.

There is something urgent in the way he grips at my arms, my shoulders. He clenches and clings, he squeezes tighter than he knows he should. I know that he won't apologise for his long forgotten life. He knows that I don't regret my judgement of him. This hole we've dug is a curious thing. It is somehow furious and desirous, and no longer recognisable as a petty crush on a pretty boy. We made ourselves strange. We made ourselves cold.

"Would you promise me something?"

It isn't a demand. We both know he has no right to such a thing. I am small and mean, and eager to deny him for nothing more than the taste of power it would bring. But still I say yes, and the lie lingers on my lips, sticky and sour.

"I'm fixing to do something foolish." He laughs. It isn't a sound he means. But decades of pretending to be human have taught him that it's the perfect place to put a grim chuckle. "And Bella's gonna beg you to stop me. All I need you to promise is that you won't."

Foolish means dangerous. Dangerous for him means deadly for me, and I am neither silly nor lovesick enough to follow him to my death. Not like Bella was. "I won't stop you." My answer seems to satisfy him, and I cannot help but feel like I have passed an unspoken test. "So when... when will I see you again?" I offer him something a little like hope. A trail to follow back to me.

"The very second you wish to."

I suspect he knows that won't be soon.

He lets his hand press against my face. Fingertips trace the curve of my cheek, the slope of my neck, before he presses his mouth to mine. It is delicate work. Slow, cautious, seductive in a way I have never felt before. This is the breadth of his evil, the depth of his darkness. He brazenly plunders willing prey. My cheeks heat, my lips chill. I am the scarcely smothered flame of vulgar human desire.

He doesn't speak another word. But he walks away with my heart between his teeth.

___

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[toffeetaffy]

Beast at My Side [7]

The Foolhardy Girl

Drive. Drive to the stump knotted and gnarled, blistered with evergreen moss. Turn. Turn at the fork sandy and grey, barely damp from ocean mist. Stop. Stop at the shore pebbled and light, worn by the caress of the waves.

Guided by a shadow with venom-soaked teeth. I should have questioned her motives, her sincerity, her sanity. But I had simply nodded at her direction, trembled like a child until she took her leave of me. I am weak. I am frail. I am only human, after all. The place she has led me to is beautiful beyond words. Stones, wood, ocean, and sky. Every part of it is silver and slate. If indeed this is a trap it is a most desirous one. Even with my weight on the hood the tyres barely dip into the stony sand. I lie there and let the cold wind wash over me, I lick the salt from my lips. My fear ebbs with the tide.

"You lost, Lena?" Jacob is just as I remember him: a towering wall of muscle with too-white teeth. Now flanked by a pair of wiry boys, not a shirt or shoe between them.

"It's funny you should ask," I say, "I thought I was for a while. But I followed her directions so carefully..."

He asks who sent me, why I came, implies my presence is a mystery unto itself. So I tell him. His face gives a single violent twitch. He is not as well-versed in composure as the Cullen family, or perhaps he does not care to be. Every emotion my tale elicits flickers plainly across his eyes, his lips, until I have spoken my very last word. He grips my shoulder tightly, his fingers squeezing with a strength I am not sure he knows he possesses.

"And you just did what she told you? Even knowing what she is?"

"At least I know what she is."

Guilt is the next thing to contort his expressive features. His hand falls away. His lackeys wander off. We sit in silence. Eventually the sun dips low, pink and orange smear across the sky, traces of it diluted in the water - still and dark. When I start to shiver he inches closer, pressing against me until he fits. He is warm. So warm. Too warm. The heat of his body is an invasion—my bones were born for the cold—but he has kind eyes and a pretty smile, and the only people close to me now are corpses. Bella's arms around my shoulders. Jasper's lips against my wrist. Luc's hand knotted in my own.

"Tell me something, Jacob." The words put distance between us, distance I need to clear my muddled heart.

"What should I tell you?"

"Tell me something that will save me."

I expect him to laugh, to shrug off my raw, earnest appeal. But he does not. Instead, he tells me the story of a boy desperately in love with a girl who is sworn to another, a girl who dies because she loved the wrong man. The cast are easy enough to discern: Jacob as the lovesick boy, Bella as the foolhardy girl, and Edward as the very definition of the wrong man. He seems oddly unembittered.

When I lay back he lays back with me, and I stretch my fingers out towards the fire-coloured sky. I probe and pull at the invisible force tethering me to the world, my hands aching to grasp gravity, to cast off its shackles and see once and for all if the weight of my heart is all that keeps me here. But I cannot. So I lie still. Still beside the boy whose warmth is as constant as the waves. Right now we are the only two people in the world, so he tells me another story. But this time it's cruel and dark. It kicks me, and keeps on kicking. This story is about a boy who is a wolf, who is a warrior. This story is about a creature who stalks the forest, tearing monsters limb from limb, his fangs and his fur bloodied and black. I want to ask if he is the boy, the wolf, the warrior. But this truth is a dangerous thing. These beasts all violently romantic are not poetry and song; they are darkness and wrath.

As I make to leave his hand grips me again—forceful and firm—and my skin starts to itch like prey at the hunt. "You can't trust them," he says.

"But I can trust you?"

He says that I can, and his smile is as bright as stolen silver. I know what he's trying to tell me: he is the lesser of two evils. But Bella is strong and her heart is true. If I cannot put my faith in her then coming here was for naught.

"Thanks for the concern, Jacob, but I'll be okay." I place my hand on his, pry his fingers from my arm. "Better the devil you know."

His laugh is barely loud enough to pierce the encroaching twilight. For the first time I see him as Bella had described: younger, softer, blushing and beautiful. I wonder just who took that innocence away from him: the wolf or the warrior. He asks if he can tell me one more thing. Not a story, he says, but a truth he has learnt from a hard life lived.

"My mom died when I was young," he says, "and it left a kind of... hole inside me. I spent years trying to fill it up. I was so damn busy trying to make myself whole, make myself normal again, that I didn't even notice it had stopped hurting. It just... didn't ache anymore. You might think being with Bella is the best way to stop feeling so... hollow but it's not. They can't fix you. They wouldn't know how. The best a human can hope for in that house is a quick death." He walks away taking the last of the heat, the sun, and the colour in the sky with him.

Inside the car I turn the heat on low. Navigating the streets of La Push is a simple affair, away from the beach there is a single road to follow. It slopes gently between the trees and soon the smell of salty air gives way to the gentle scent of pine. Ghastly shadows dance about the underbrush, flickering in the corner of my eyes, silently stalking alongside me. I hear something strange—like a hum—and then a piercing trill. My phone. I pull off the road, the car dipping dangerously into the menacing gloom.

Another flash. Another shake. A familiar name lights up the amber display.

"Don't be scared," the caller says, and a slender shadow weaves its way out of the trees and into the harsh glow of the headlights, before slipping silently into the passenger seat. Though her warning did little to ease my thundering heart, Bella's appearance is a welcome one. "Thought you'd appreciate the warning; heard you had a run-in with Volturi road-side assistance earlier."

I spare little time being astonished by her apparent clairvoyance before I launch in to my retelling. I've barely begun when she stops me with a gentle shush. My encounter with the cloaked stranger, she tells me, isn't a surprise at all.

"You were never in any danger. I promise."

She reaches across and takes my hand. I believe her every word.

___

When I wake the house is dim and grey, silent but for the birds. I lie in bed, slipping through the minutes, drinking in the air until the tips of my fingers grow cold. Eventually, I muster something that can pass for courage and make my way downstairs. There's a pleasant smell in the kitchen. Today there is no attempt to play at perfect families, to pose themselves like models in a catalogue; there is only Bella and the matriarch chatting quietly over the stove top. Perched at the counter with my messy hair, my bleary eyes, my dead brother's sweatshirt, I feel a flop in my stomach. Such a simple thing. So familiar. It's nervous and warm and makes my heart flutter. I assume she's heard the sound of it when Bella turns to me, a strange grin in place, and asks if I'm feeling well. I am. That's what the flop is. Contentment.

Esme pours tea from a dainty white pot. Bella serves me French toast with brown sugar. We wash dishes as the sunlight grows golden.

I dress in boots and a coat with a mind for adventure. My own thoughts distract me from the sound: ever decreasing until there's nothing more than a whisper of wind, a rattle of rain. I call for Bella, once. Once more. One final time. The first sign of life comes when I fling open the front door. Jasper sits on the steps—shoulders hunched, fingers locked together—a look so carefully composed I almost mistake it for nonchalance. But it is theatre. It always is. No matter how tempting it can be to imagine otherwise. I ask him if he's seen her, my Bella, faded into morning fog.

"Actually, I'd hoped you might spend the day with me."

Seated beside him I can plainly see all the reasons I should not: his eyes, his hands, his teeth all conspire to undo me. It takes every ounce of self control to wrench my gaze from his. Try as I might to remain aloof, the truth comes spilling out. "I'm not so sure I should."

"I'm not so sure myself."

We agree he's a danger I cannot afford. All I need to do is walk away but I find my body unwilling, my traitorous legs fixed firmly beside his.

"Thing is," he continues, "this is my last chance. I tell you any later and it all goes to shit."

There's something fizzing through my veins, a morbid curiosity that makes my skin itch. But not a single question has time to fully form, to reach my lips before he drops the bomb. Alice. He tells me she has seen my futures, that of every possible outcome this one, on this day is the most favourable. To whom, I ask. To him, he replies. Something gnaws at me, a tiny suspicion that gives itself voice.

"When did you last speak with Alice?"

"Two minutes after you did."

The girl. The shadow. The eyes like mulled wine. You were never in any danger. It answers one question and raises ten more. And though I ache to know why she seeks out my future, I am determined to be more than my desperation. Standing in the pinch of a hairpin curve, two clear roads to choose from. "So what is it you have to tell me," I ask, "before 'it all goes to shit'?"

"Who I am, what I did, and why you'll leave here hating me."

He holds his palm up in a gesture that could be either invitation or placation, and begins his story. It's all noise and silence in gentle waves. A perfect ebb and flow. He tells me he wanted a battlefield, to march off to war, to fight and to die. Youngest major in the Texas Cavalry. A flicker of a smile. Pride. Next was Maria: he loved her, he hated her, he smeared the night with blood for her. Each man he destroyed, each woman and child, destroyed a piece of himself. His gift is his curse. Their pain is his pain. He watched armies fall, sent streams of soldiers from this world to the next, painted the ground red. Red, red, and a little more red. When he was done carving he was scored and scarred, crowned with ruinous sin. Without him, Maria's empire fell to dust and ash.

Then came Peter and Charlotte. The pair preached coexistence. Coexistence, he says, is a constant battle. Restraint is key. In their company he slew fewer people but there was still no reprieve from his gift. Each death was weighed fairly, his pain was deserved. Before long he shed his infatuation with destruction and embraced salvation. Alice—his perennial protector—gave him a new family, a new life. Alice gave him peace. He speaks of the following years fondly but with little detail until finally there are no words left to speak. His story is exactly what I expect. It is cruel, and bloody, and flooded with rage.

Beside me, his profile sparkles dully in the sun like unpolished quartz. How long we have sat I do not know, but the rain has long since passed. My knee aches. My back aches. My chest aches. Standing and stretching does little to clean the cold from my bones but I'm overcome with the need to do something. He stares, unblinking, all painted in gold as he rises beside me. Too tall. Too close. This must be the part where I ask my questions, or voice my displeasure. Perhaps this is where I comfort him.

"I kissed you." Disappointment taints each word.

"You did. But you knew what I was."

He sounds angry and sharp but whether the rage is his or mine, I cannot yet tell. It keeps growing - redder and hotter until I ball my fists in his shirt, until I shake at his chest. I wish he would bruise. I wish he would break.

"Why would you tell me this? What do you expect me to say?"

"Tell me," he says, "how much of that story can you forgive?"

There's gravel in my mouth, lead in my lips. "I won't be your absolution."

He's dark, and ruined, and crumbling beneath my fingers. It isn't fair. But nothing is. I cannot carry the weight of this while my brother still rests upon my shoulders. So I give him the truth, dig to the root, cut myself open, and lay it all bare. I tell him there is strength in what he did, what he became. Man kills for survival and for sport; his kind does the same. They are the pinnacle of the food-chain but still struggle to do better, to be better. In that, there is no shame.

"It's what you were before. What you were when you had a choice. You looked so... proud."

"Because I fought for the South?" Pity doesn't suit him. He has the gall to wear it anyway. "I remember little of my life before the change. I've no real memory of my family, my friends, or even of the man I was." The change does that to them eventually, he tells me, takes any memory they don't hold tight. "But I remember signing on. Too young, too dumb to see the bigger picture. I fought to defend my home, not to to keep men in chains."

He reaches out with tendrils of calm: slick and smooth, seeking to quell my fury. I bury it deeper. I cage it in my ribs and let it burn out of control. This knowledge should hurt, he has no right to take it from me. My eyes sting, my face blushes and throbs. Perhaps I am angry at myself. Perhaps I built a bridge between us with my lips and hands, conjured reciprocation from fabrication. Perhaps I imagined it all.

The space between us closes. His fingers are in my hair, on my neck, holding me still while the heat escapes my chest. He digs my hatred out, leaves me drowning in gravity. Then I am numb. By the time his body retreats from mine all I have left is a ghost of my anger. It costs him something to steal this from me, leaves him painted in sadness. Now I am no more than stone—heavy and unfeeling—left to shoulder the burden of his corpses, his history, his absent pulse without so much as an emotion of my own. I am tired. I am broken. I am ripe for ruin.

"You said I'd leave here hating you."

"And don't you?"

"I can't if you won't let me." I won't if you don't make me.

I feel the weight of his stare on my retreat.

I'm in my van, turning onto the main road when I feel it: the elastic snap of his gifts expiration. It floods my lungs, crushes my heart, stings my eyes. Each dry sob leaves me shaky and breathless, wondering if I should have just stayed with him, just stayed numb. But this fury is like any other. Soon enough it will seep in to my skin and rest inside my bones.

The road I follow slopes and sways, bending gently toward a destination I have yet to choose. I'll know it when I get there. I always do.

A muddy blue river snakes beneath a bridge, rushing away as I look on enraptured. Either side is covered in trees: all thin and white, adorned with yellow leaves. I park on the shoulder and walk to its bank; its stones are shiny, slippery, and glisten in the sun. Here, I could lose time. I could stay and stare until the river rises, until the whole world washed away. One minute becomes two. Then five or ten. Before long, an odd sense of dread washes over me, prickles at my scalp. There's a whisper in my ears, static creeping through my skull. My vision darkens, narrows, and then just fades away. I wipe at my face, stumble and sway. When I crash into the water I feel wet and cold. Then, I feel nothing at all.

___

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[toffeetaffy]

Beast at My Side [6]

An Unfinished Sky

Alice. I imagine her as a paper crane. Unblemished wings folded with a peerless precision, a delicate shell to house the heart of the sweetest songbird. She was once a Cullen, I am told. Once, a lot of things. Edward's sister, Bella's friend, Jasper's wife. Now they call her Volturi. That word so small and insignificant to me saturates the room with a rage that is both dark and tempting. My heart gives an irregular, sloppy thump and their eyes all turn to mine. For the first time I am truly experiencing the fear—the thrill—of being here without the numbness of my loss. Wherever this discussion now leads it is not for my ears. I gather my wits and my jacket, then make for the door.

Dark mud and thin fog are canopied by leaves of green. The woods are damp and warm, rich with colour and sound. Breath slow. Eyes closed. I feel a calm in these trees that I can find nowhere else. Too soon it is broken by the snapping of twigs, the dragging of feet. I hear her only because she lets me. Each sound a deliberate warning of her approach.

"That was a whole new level of tension, huh?" Even here in the bowels of the forest, knee-deep in weeds Bella is beautiful. Too beautiful.

I nod in response. There is no tactful way to enquire about Alice, to slake the burn of my curiosity. All I can do is arrange my face into a look that urges and implores.

She takes pity on me then. She tells me the story of Alice: a broken girl left to wither in darkness, turned cold by a stranger and preyed upon by a demon, saved from her torment by a vision of the future. A future with Jasper. "And they fixed each other," Bella continues, "they loved each other until they were whole again." She wears a smile that would once have seemed dopey. On her immaculate, snowy mask it looks only serene.

"Then why did she leave?"

"To make a new future."

Two creatures whose hearts would beat forever, stitched together by the threads of fate - suddenly undone. That even her kind were not guaranteed love eternal must have been a sobering revelation for Bella. I ask how she feels about it all and her smile takes an enigmatic curve. It's better this way, she tells me. Better for whom, I do not know.

___

The Cullen house is filled with open spaces, dusted with creamy carpet, and spotted with golden sunlight. Patterned china and priceless works of art line the white walls but nothing under its roof is quite as stunning as Rosalie Hale. Startled by her invitation I hover near the door. My hands sweat. Sitting at a vanity, her reflection greets me with pursed lips and narrowed eyes. She looks breathtaking. I look awful.

"You look awful," she says.

I laugh and she counters with a rueful smile. Creatures as lovely as her say what they please. She extends her arm in a placid appeal and I drift to her side without further thought.

"What must you think of me?" Her tone implies an inquiry but questions such as these are rarely answered to satisfaction, and I would be loathe to dissatisfy her. "Perhaps you think me cold," she hums, "cruel? Many do, Bella among them. I'm not... adept at first impressions, or so I am told."

"Guarded," I say, "not cruel. To protect a family like this I imagine I would be too."

A quirk of the mouth, a pinch in the cheek. Rosalie Hale wears her affection with a practised subtlety. She beckons me closer, pats my hair like a child. There is something in her touch that is almost warm, almost maternal. But it is only an echo, a shadowy remnant of a woman who no longer exists. Much of her seems this way. Glossy varnish coating the muddled brush strokes of an unfinished sky.

When I enquire as to why she has summoned me, she looks at my hands, my throat. Anywhere but my eyes. Profound sadness, she says, is something she knows and knows well. First, she speaks of the ephemeral nature of joy; likens human elation to the slapping of waves, the changing of tides. To know utter devastation, she explains, one must first have known complete and total exaltation.

"And did you?"

Her response is no more than an unschooled expression but it answers my question without the burden of words. Yes. For all her poise and power, Rosalie hid something inside herself that was soft and scarred. It was not damaged from a darkness that had taken over, but from a bliss that had been snatched away. I understand now that she holds a sadness so deep that I may never comprehend it.

"But that's not why you're here," she says, "give me your keys."

Outside, she appraises the Kombi with a tsk and a tut. She circles it slowly, grimaces at the paint, the upholstery, the mats on the floor. "It's a Type Two," she runs a neatly manicured hand across the blistered orange door, "popular in the sixties and seventies." For a moment she appears lost in one of her perfectly preserved memories. "The seventies were exciting," she sighs. "Not the fashion, mind you, or the music. But there was something. Something that made even creatures like us feel... alive." She smiles with all the warmth of a stolen sunbeam. "But the most memorable thing? Carlisle's wavy perm!"

When she laughs the sound is as deep and rich as the bell of a church. Stunning. Hopeful. Real. She is more striking now—parted lips, crinkled eyes—than I have ever known her to be.

Inside the van, she turns the keys and the thing roars to life, lurches forward at her command. We drive to the garage—so much larger than it first appeared—and park inside. The dark walls are spotted with cars, all new and polished, spectacular even under the rows of fluorescent lights. One corner is filled with metal chests and lined with lockers painted cobalt blue, in another sits a pair of motorcycles, a pile of rags, and an assortment of dented tins.

She wastes no time in talking. Instead, Rosalie sheds her creamy woven sweater before plunging her arms under the engine lid. For close to an hour she guts the machine: picking, pulling, and plucking at its gizzards with little effort or exertion. She speaks only to instruct, praise, or direct my hand as she sees fit. Another hour passes as I watcher her work, mesmerised by the vibrancy of her eyes and the dexterity of her fingers. At her request I hold a piece in place. The metal is round, heavy, and slick with grease but she fastens and fixes before it has time to slip away. Her dead hands work at twice the speed of any living, and her eyes see in to even the darkest recesses. Scotopia, she tells me, gives them something akin to night vision.

"Like a cat?" I ask.

"Like a cat," she replies.

With her work complete, Rosalie starts up the van. For a time she sits with her eyes closed and her lips pursed, listening for something beyond my divination. Eventually her face slackens with satisfaction and she silences the motor once more. I am caught in the act of replicating her faraway smile.

"You're rudderless," she says, "and you're sad. And you're starting to wonder if there's any point at all."

I do not question or deny. She allows me only time enough to scrunch up my nose, to wrinkle my brow, before she speaks again.

"The sad truth is: there is no point. There never was to begin with. Beyond the acts of living and loving, of sharing and dying, a single human life is of little consequence or significance. You'll spend your meagre years accumulating knowledge, friends—perhaps even wealth and status—but one day soon your body too will rest beneath the earth." She wipes down her hands and arms, picks her nails clean. "But find comfort in this: I would trade every single decade of my deathless existence for even one more day of real human pain, of real human life. Embrace it. Awful, dark, and terrifying as it is, because there will be a day when you will know incomparable joy. And that day will make these worth their bitter taste."

My arms hang at my sides, weighed down by grease, grime, and the burden of her words.

In her sister, Bella sees only mist and frost. But I can see something else. Something more. Pink and warm and resilient. A blushing rose caught in a drift of snow.

"Thank you, Rosalie."

She tilts her head in an increasingly recognisable gesture. "We're wanted inside."

A soft whistle and sharp gust of air are the only signals of her departure. I make a small attempt at ridding my arms and knees of the filth that cover them before starting towards the house at a dismally human speed. By the time I arrive the entire Cullen family is waiting, arranged around the living room like a row of teeth.

"Hey, what's up?"

Bella huffs and shrugs in a poorly practised attempt at exasperation. "I could really use a favour," she says, "Ren's going to stay at Charlie's for a while and I was hoping you could drive her there. We've got a few things that need finishing up around here."

"Sure."

My response sounds sceptical at best but Bella forges on. She stores the address in my phone, tells me Charlie is expecting me. Edward fixes his daughters backpack in place and ushers her forward with a kiss on the head and a quiet warning to behave.

"So... you have some super secret family business to take care of and you'd like it if I could myself scarce for a while?"

My assumption must be correct. The matriarch and the behemoth both laugh out loud while Edward's shoulders shake in silent mirth. Bella's face is stuck oscillating between a grimace and a pout. She appears unlikely to respond with either.

Edward produces from his pocket a ring containing a single key and fob. "Please, take my car." His saccharine smile does little to hide his intent. Impervious to harm though she may be, Edward's daughter is cargo too precious to travel in a car like mine. I'm too intrigued to be offended.

I load her in to the back seat. She's small and smiling and it somehow doesn't look right. Yesterday she was smaller. Five days ago, smaller still. A month from now she may be full grown. I worry for her. A child trapped in a woman's body. Ren reaches out and touches my cheek; her gift shows me a wisdom and strength that surpasses her frail form. She asks why that makes me sad. I tell her that I do not know.

"Tempting." He says it with a sigh. Propped against the wall of the garage, Jasper paints a long, lean shadow. Green, blue, black.

A curious combination of fear and attraction heats my skin. It crawls up my neck, pinches at my ears, renders me dumb. I remember all too well his lips on mine. Cold and smooth. Sour and delicious. I can think of little else while I stare at his well-formed mouth.

"Honestly," he says, "I am sorely tempted to just get in the car and let you drive away with me."

Ren giggles from the back seat, shaking me from my stupor. I ask him if he would like to join us. A question he seems oddly troubled by. He makes an approach—soundless and slow—his eyes always on mine.

"Never offer me something you don't truly mean to give."

Though more riddle than response, I can see his statement for what it truly is: a warning. Of what precisely, I am not sure. But I nod my head sharply. I turn away on unsteady legs.

With a little direction from Ren, and one or two lucky guesses, I find the home of Charlie Swan. It's small and white with uneven windows and a smudge of front yard. A short drive of muddy brick winds up the side, drowning in lashes of decaying summer leaves. The porch steps creak. I take them one a time and the sound makes my chest grow large, my heart feel warm. Every single thing about this house screams home. An unfamiliar feeling. I knock on the door in a short staccato, brittle chips of paint loosening at my touch.

When he answers the door I am immediately struck by how little he has changed. A few more greys in his mop of curly hair, his moustache a little more severe. But he is Charlie Swan. A plaid shirt, dusty jeans, and demure smile worn like a uniform. Perfect as a second skin.

"Hi, Mister Swan. Bella said you'd be expecting me."

Ren darts forward and offers her grandfather a brief hug before disappearing over the darkened threshold. A woman's startled laughter rings in the distance.

"Lena King." The offered greeting is little more than a mumble. "Been a long time." His arm waves lazily in a gesture that seems to beckon. I follow him inside.

He leads me in to a kitchen with stark white walls, cabinets that beam a cheery yellow in the afternoon sun. A quaint invitation. The little table we sit at is a solid slab—oaken, brown—rimmed with mismatched chairs and scored with shallow cuts. He makes tea from cheap bags. It's strong, hot, and prepared by hesitant hands. The chief of police offers me his condolences with a practised ease and I am furious to think that such a thing should ever become so simple, so straightforward. He talks in to his mug. The kitsch thing—chipped and lightly stained—is so much easier to look at than my bloodshot eyes, or my quivering lip when he asks about my future. I tell him I have no plans beyond the very next breath I'll take. No design greater than to simply survive the coming days.

"But I can do that here," I say, "with Bella. Plot a course for my future, finally figure out what it is I want to do with my life."

"Wish Bells had spent a little more time doin' that."

"Don't worry Mister Swan, we're still young. Bella's got plenty of time to figure out who she is."

His eyes meet mine. They urge, implore, they burrow away until my throat feels dry, my shoulders feel heavy. "She was just so young." And though he could be talking about her marriage, her child, her retreat into a whole new family that he is not a part of - I know that he speaks of her death. We both understand that this Bella is not his Bella.

There is little to say after that. I leave with an odd sense of foreboding.

I drive until the trees close in on me. They tower and twitch, they blot out the sky, they cover my darkness with their own. Then I see it. The thing. It's black and oily, and streaks across my vision like a shadow made flesh. I gasp without thought. The car lurches then halts. Tight against the wheel my fingers fold and flex, my knuckles pale and pop. The car fills with a sound like a rasping wheeze. It scratches at my ears. It claws and scrapes until I crush my hands to my head to dampen the din. But the noise is inside me. It is me. My own terrified breath struggling out of my mouth, burning my lungs. When I finally think I have regained my composure there is a rap on the window—short, sharp—that starts my panic anew.

The girl is pale and narrow. Her cloak hides all but her face: thin and grey with a broad, toothy smile. Such a haunting vision. She leans forward to tap the window again. It would be quite a pretty picture were it not for her eyes: brilliant and vibrant, stained the colour of mulled wine. I know what she is, what to expect, but my end does not come. Instead, she motions with her hand, one bloodless finger twirling in place. Lower the window. But even as I'm thinking no my hand obeys, the partition falls.

"Hello Lena." This smile is small, close-lipped, and barely dimples her sallow face. "Looking for a little direction?"

___

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[toffeetaffy]

Beast at My Side [5]

Crimes Against Courtesy

At first light it was like a bullet lodged in my chest, Luc's name carved crudely in to the side of it. My tears were like blood. My body was an open wound. I raged, I wailed, I tore my hotel room apart. The broken glass glittered like starlight. Deep inside my chest I held on to the last sliver of grief, angry at the thought of parting with it. It was late in the evening when my fury finally died down, my eyes finally dried. I wrestled the remaining heartsick shard with shaky hands. And then it was done. Then, I knew the worst of it to be over.

At the hotel reception I pay extra for staying in past check-out time. Charges for damages will surely come later.

I drive for hours through the dark. Luc's ghost is like a passenger beside me and somehow I know that it always will be. Somehow I know I will always carry this part of him with me. It will make me strong. It will make me brave. I roll down the windows and turn up the stereo, long fingers clutching the wheel too tightly, wind slipping under my skin like the touch of so many cool, clean hands. The roadside is dotted with little white flowers. I sing loudly and off-key, my fingers drumming hopelessly out of time, and I smile. It feels defiant. It feels too soon to smile again; too long since I last smiled. Then I am laughing and blushing and trying to remember the exact definition of hysteria.

It takes two more songs, four more dopey smiles, and one inelegant yawn for me to close in on the town of Forks. I pull into a rest stop and turn the key in the ignition. The headlamps blink off, the stereo goes silent, the world around me plunges in to darkness. For a time all that exists is the sound of my own breath and the stunning purple sky. Spindly green vines cover the lamppost, strangle its busted globe, and grow through the length of chain-link that separates me from the wilderness. I feel a pull. I know not what it is, only that it wishes to draw me close, longs for me to wander in to those woods and never come back. I close my eyes. When I open them again I am outside the van, white-knuckled hands gripping the rail of the fence. It's like sleep walking. It's like a siren's song born of the trees and whispered to the wind. Then I hear it: my name. The sound is hollow, like an echo, as though it only exists in my mind. Then louder, more insistent. Then it is there, behind me, and as real as the gravel at my feet.

"It's good to see you again."

I close my eyes expecting to wake up. I do not. Instead, when I turn to face him he is standing far too close, his hazy shadow smothering my entire body. I whisper his name. It is a question more than a greeting and the fear it holds makes him smile. He delights in my dread. For the first time since meeting him I am able to truly reconcile what Jasper is with the way he treats me. He is a predator. This is predatory. Without the numbness to douse my fear I am left to wonder if his civility will always transcend his hunger. It seems cruel that even now his smile makes my chest ache, makes my knees weak. His eyes are enough to set the sky on fire, to deafen me with the roar of the flames.

So his companions went unnoticed.

They stand on either side of him, a few steps back, a comfortable distance. The woman—more beautiful than Bella; the man—more intimidating than Jasper. I mumble some sort of greeting, the words stumble over my lips, taste bitter with fear, and hang dead in the air. Be brave. You were brave once: when he had his lips on yours, when he clutched you in his hands. I square my shoulders. I raise my chin. Each gesture is, I am sure, as transparent as it is futile. Cold air draws shakily into my lungs and when I finally find the strength to speak he silences me by taking my hand in his, twining my fingers in his own.

He eases me forward. He draws back his hand. "I'd like you to meet some people."

Flawless. Each curve and dip of her body, every length of hair, every scrap of skin has been chosen with an artist's eye, moulded with a master's hands. Rosalie is such an alluring apparition that she makes my stomach twist in to knots, and my palms greasy with sweat. She is undoubtedly the most stunning, most unnatural creature I have ever laid eyes upon. I want her to speak. I want her to smile. She appears likely to do neither.

Even next to her the brute with the boyish smile is captivating. He is a giant, a behemoth. He is a colossal wall of twitching muscle and I do not know how his skin manages to hold it all inside. I do not think Emmett is a mind-reader, but when I imagine him crushing my skull in his hands he smiles a little wider, dimples frame his thin lips.

"It's nice to meet you." I say, but it comes out in a stutter.

I edge towards the van. Cold, nervous sweat trickles down my spine, dampens my rigid neck. There is no deception to my escape attempt, no practised nonchalance, and when my gaze sweeps back to Jasper his usually stoic features seem pinched. I am not so deluded as to believe that what I see there is concern. It is offence. For which of my crimes against courtesy I am not sure. I do not care. He asks if I am on my way to see Bella. I nod.

"And where are you three headed?" I reach the van and pull open the door.

"Why?" Emmett's smile draws up on one side. "Offering us a lift?"

No. I climb inside, I close the door.

The siblings speak softly, quickly, privately. Wind whistles and wails, hides their whispers from my ears, and whips at the little white blossoms lining the road. Their petals pull, their stems strain. The whispers stop. Turning to me, the behemoth waves his farewell with a sort of mock salute. I sigh in relief, raise my arm to copy the gesture. Before my hand can return to the wheel I register the sound of the passenger door, feel the bench seat depress. I keep my eyes on the trees, on the chain-link fence, anywhere but on the creature beside me. We pull out of the rest stop. We edge on to the road. We carve our way through the night.

When I open my mouth there is no sound but the wind. My eyes pinch closed and my throat clenches as I try to swallow the persistent lump lodged within. It freezes, and burns, and cuts like crushed ice. I choke it down. My eyes water. Remember when it was easy. The muddy dress, the ruined book, your legs brushing against his. The courteous killer. I take one deep breath, then another, then one more as I replay that afternoon in my mind. And that is how I think of him: in long silences perfectly punctuated with pointed teeth.

"Scheherazade."

"Scheherazade?"

"Your story," he says, "ever think you'll get around to telling it?"

There was a bargain struck. My story for my safety. "You asked me what was in Seattle, I told you: my family. You wanted a story so I gave you one. I told you the big things, the important things. What more could there possibly be?"

When I fix my eyes on him I expect to see a smirk, hear a laugh. But there is no condescension, there is only his steady gaze locked on mine. Something about that shames me. I assume the worst because of what he is, assume I must to stay alive. Be cautious, be careful.

"But that wasn't really your story, was it?" He possesses an insight humans are incapable of. My heart beats in my throat, makes me sweaty and faint. "I know what it means to have your life defined by someone else. That story was about your brother. That story is over."

I should cry. I should scream. I should slam on the brakes and beat my fists against the wheel but all I do is sigh.

"Tell me," he continues, "the first thing you did—first decision you made—that had absolutely nothing to do with him."

It should be easy. There should be one million answers, one million memories, one million little things that Luc didn't touch. But when he drew breath my brother was my world.

"I'll be sure to tell you when I do."

I have wasted my life thinking I was half of a person, half of a pair, half of something whose value is only as a whole. But I can no longer be burdened by my brothers greatness. I can no longer live as his shadow.

The beast at my side is cool and still like stone, ashy and pale against the purple night. Tender and terrifying as it suits him. Catching his eye is easy, catching my breath is not. I apologise for being rude, for trying to flee from his friendly introductions. A ghost of a smile. A trace of amusement. Behind his curt nod is a genuine acceptance. It pecks me to pieces and stitches me back together, washes my guilt away.

"And about the other day..." I remember the heat in my chest, his breath on my neck. As foolish as it was I would do it all again.

He tells me that I have nothing else to apologise for. We continue our journey in perfectly imperfect silence. ___

Light cuts through the wall of glass, barely concealed by papery blinds. The room I have awoken in is familiar. Similar but not the same. Edward's room. His couch replaced by a bed: broad but plain. An attempt by Bella to make me 'feel at home', give me 'my own space'. I wonder how long she thinks I will stay.

When I arrived the previous night I had only the time to turn off the van and pull my keys from the ignition before I was wrapped up in Bella's stony embrace. She scolded me in a mothers voice, stroked my hair with a mothers touch. Guided in to the main house under her sheltering wing, I soon noticed the masculine simplicity of Edward's former room had been transformed. I didn't comment. Folded in her arms, I cried myself to sleep.

Teeth clean. Hair tidy. A fleeting glance in the mirror. If I look any longer I will see his face, and there could be no crueller thing than that. I distract myself by folding the bedroom blinds neatly, pushing the windows open wide. Sun covers my face and heats my skin: brown and warm behind a tight, cold smile.

There's a rumbling like thunder, a laugh, and a growl that draw my attention downward. Three impossible creatures grapple in the tall grass. Shimmering skin. Stretching shadows. They run at each other with arms like masts, teeth bared like snarling hounds. Then they drive their hands into each others bodies. Over and over. A punch, a push, pummelling each other in a savage stream of fists. Emmett is stronger. Jasper is faster. Edward is three moves ahead. They crash together in violent waves, slam into the dirt, and begin again. The brutal display makes my heartbeat throb in the tips of my fingers. I press them to my lips. It feels like a half-remembered kiss, an imagined surrender. I keep my eyes closed tight until the feeling stops. It stops too soon. When I look again the ashen figures are gone.

There is a knock at the door. The sound is so soft it seems almost imagined. It opens to reveal Bella wearing a faded shirt and torn jeans like a costume. Nothing from her old life suits her newly crafted skin. "Come downstairs," she says, her voice a sublime invitation.

The family sit around the living room. They are each folded neatly in to the furniture, posed like mannequins. Their beautiful, bloodless bodies make me ache.

"Tea, dear?" Esme asks, her voice as soft as the consoling smile she wears. I nod and take a seat at her side, waiting for the inevitable consolation. She does not disappoint. "We're all very sorry to hear about your brother."

This is where I should thank her. For the tea, for the room, for her kindness. But I don't. There is nothing affable or courteous left inside me. All I am is rotten and ruined.

"It occurs to me," I say, "that there must be a price. What exactly does it cost me to know your secret?" The question hangs crooked in the air, unsightly and strange against the pristine walls of their home.

I wring my hands, grind my teeth.

When the doctor finally speaks his voice is a sombre, distant sigh. "Not quite so much as it once did." A truth he seems resigned to. "It's a long tale," Carlisle tells me, "even for those of us unhindered by time." He embroiders his story with a cheery romanticism it scarcely deserves; an undead government, shadowy enforcers, the conception of an impossible child, and a narrowly avoided war. This story—Bella's story—is terrifying. None of them seem to notice. "Of course, these days our family is afforded a little... lenience."

My head throbs. I pull at my hair with both hands. Here I am in a straw house, flicking matches at the wall. If I say the wrong thing now I could set this place ablaze. "And why is that?" There it is. The smouldering ruin of my human curiosity.

Edward twitches, ticks, and shifts his eyes. Where his family is perfectly impassive, he is a tornado . "My sister," he says, "Alice."

___

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[toffeetaffy]

Beast at My Side [4]

This Is the Montage

They talk in straight lines. All uniform and neat. A conversation should have bends and folds, turns that make you want to wrap your arms around it. This charmless civility is clearly well practised between the two. Somehow I know that they are having another conversation underneath this one. One I cannot hear. Once he realises who I am Jacob is quick with consolation. He should have recognised me, he says, he has heard so much about me. I mirror his words back but they are not wholly true. There is no way to reconcile this boy with the one that Bella has described. Her Jacob is lanky and shy, a giddy smile on a childish face. But this Jacob is a wall of muscle, a twitching fury in a coat of skin. She loves him. I wonder which of the two she fell in love with. The boy gives me a tentative smile and a wave goodnight before starting off towards the cottage.

Jasper is perfectly still and quiet as the grave. My body shakes with unspent adrenaline, blood rushes in my ears. I have a dozen questions but not a single one can fight its way past my teeth while I am still looking at him. A lingering embarrassment.

"So, which classic movie monster is he?"

He smiles, amused. "Guess."

I consider it carefully. It is obvious that he is something else—something more than human—but I do not yet know what. His skin had appeared warm and dark, his face was round and youthful, he had emerged shirtless from the trees. "Woodland nymph?" It is such a peculiar thing I find myself doing - mockingly guessing at what creatures I surround myself with.

His responding laugh is deep and brilliant. "No, no. But I'll be sure to tell him you thought so."

A minute stretches out between us and it becomes obvious that he will not tell me. Either they have some sort of agreement or Jasper suffers from supernatural scruples. Would I? I wonder if I drank blood and lived forever, would I bother to burden myself with congeniality? I hardly bother now. The minute stretches in to another, and then two more, and then I am no longer counting.

"It's my family," I say. He looks bemused so I answer his stare, "You must have asked me a dozen times. I'm going to Seattle to see my family."

I tell him about my parents who love without affection, about moving from England to America as a little girl. I tell him about Luc—my fraternal twin—born only six minutes before me but every inch a protective big brother; about how on the night of our high school graduation, he and his boyfriend boarded a plane for Seattle and never looked back. He's so brave, I say, so much more than I could ever be, and my lips feel heavy from the admission. I have lived nothing but a mixture of cowardice and conformity. The stupidity, I think, is new. I let a dead girl carry me to the top of a tree, I kissed a monster on the mouth. But what a beautiful monster he is.

A few hours sleep are all I need. The air is warm, the rain is light, and I am looking forward to the drive. I say goodbye to Bella and whisper a promise to return in her ear. Her answering smile is too magnificent for words. She is comely and cadaverous.

I follow the 101. It is all mountains and trees, golden sunshine and delicate rain. The windows are rolled down and the tinny echo of the stereo fights against the roar of the wind. I close my eyes for a heartbeat. My face feels warm. Only now, truly detached from their syrupy scent and their exquisite features can I see how great a danger they pose. The Cullens are a death that you walk to willingly. They do not want to eat us. We want to be eaten. The sad reality is that their impeccable manners and respect for human life are the only things keeping breath in our lungs, blood in our veins. They are dangerous. Somehow that is alluring in itself.

More than half of my journey is complete when an odd anxiety creeps across my shoulders. My hands sweat. My fingers are chilled. By the time the drive is finally over I am clammy and pale, shaking at the thought of seeing them again. It will be the first time that we have all been in the same room together since my brother left home. I need armour. I need to summon up protection against the barbed tongue and heated steel of my mother's savage inquiry. She sharpens her knives for family. This time will be no exception. She cuts through flesh and strikes at bone until we are no longer her children, no longer human, no more than twisting smoke. There is no cruelty quite like that of a mother, but her words can only hurt me if I let them. God knows I always do.

My wounds have healed but my skin grows no thicker.

That one grim thought lodges itself in my mind. It burrows deeper as I enter the city, a little deeper as I park the car, deeper still as I check in to the hotel. By the time I collapse against the stiff mattress in the foreign room I can imagine my skin to be no more than tissue paper, imagine that all too easily I will be torn apart.

I awake from a sleep I do not recall entering. Outside, the city has darkened, the buildings lit up, the day has slipped away. The incessant hum and chirp of my phone begs for attention.

"Hello?" My voice is thick with remnants of sleep. Inside my head it sounds like glass, feels like breaking bones. I shield my eyes and probe at my temples with fingers painted grey from the twilight. "Hello?" There is not a single sound to be heard from the other end of the call. Not even breath. "Bella?"

"Why are you really here? What's going on?" She speaks with a sort of wispy stutter. It is a pale imitation of her old human defect.

Her questions are easy to answer, difficult to explain. "It's a family thing." How do you justly convey the the desire—the need—to see someone as I did her? The throbbing in my head calms. I open my eyes to find every speck of dust illuminated. "I just needed to see you. You used to be family too, you know? Before you disappeared." Before you met the beast. Before you fell in love.

"You can tell me," she says, "you can tell me anything." I can keep a secret, she says without speaking. "I mean, you must have been pretty desperate coming to me for guidance. I've never really... had my shit together."

I laugh so loudly my vision blurs. "Tomorrow."

"You said that yesterday."

"Tomorrow." ___

It's almost like a mirror. The face that stares back is mine, but not mine, more beautiful than mine could ever be. It has wider eyes that crinkle at the edges, a softer jaw to frame its unblemished skin, and fuller lips that lie closed in the promise of a smile. But Luc is not smiling. Not this time.

My father acknowledges my entrance with a nod of his head. My mother does not even turn to look at me - her profile a severe carving in cold stone. I stand beside her and we let the silence spill out between us. It comes up to our knees, pulls at my thighs, and I can feel it threatening to drag me beneath its waves, bury me at the bottom of its depths. I panic. Wish as I might to be struck dumb, I am instead filled with voice.

"You're a grim looking lot."

No other word is spoken until the room begins to fill with people, and I reach out to take Luc's hand. We are both so cold. The voices chatter in whispers as they take their seats and turn their eyes to me - now alone at the end of the room, a corpse's fingers laced with mine.

I have no memory of the words spoken. I cannot recall the series of events that lead me here. All I have is the memory of his hand in mine, and this persistent clenching in my chest, the burning in my throat. Before anyone had ever lain eyes on me, Luc had breathed in six minutes worth of air, had drum out six minutes worth of heartbeats, he had shared six minutes of his fragile life with the world. But now he is gone.

I have no memory of the words spoken at his service. I cannot recall the series of events that lead me here, to the edge of his grave. All I have is the memory of his cold, dead hand in mine. And this persistent clenching in my chest: a heart learning to beat without him. The burning in my throat: lungs struggling to draw breath.

Slowly, my pulse steadies and my eyes dry, but my chest remains hollow. My brother's grave is full of dirt and devoid of life. Hours pass while I stare at it in the vain hope that it is all a delusion, that I am the victim of a cruel, elaborate hoax. I am not. I drive my hand into the sun-warmed earth of his grave. If I close my eyes tight enough I can hear him breathing, hear his heart beating. One more sob. One more dry, tearless heave. When I open my eyes his breath has stopped, his heart has stilled once more. Silence. It wasn't until I pulled my arm from the soil—saw the dirt clinging to it—that I realised both hands felt unclean.

Clumsy fingers manage to seal themselves around my phone, search out the numbers Bella has stored in there. A single ring. A silent greeting.

"How dead is too dead?"

When I fear that my question will require explanation, he speaks. "That dead is too dead." Of course he understands. He has seen my mind. "I'm sorry, Lena. We don't bring the dead back to life, only infect the living before death can truly take them." He is saved from awkwardly denying my request. Edward cannot save my brother, would not if he could.

"I know."

"But you needed to ask."

"I needed to ask." ___

I pause with my fist in the air outside their apartment door. His apartment door. He lives alone now. Skin pulls tight across my knuckles, the taste of gravel clings to my mouth. I knock lamely and hate myself for how weak it sounds, hate myself for existing. When he opens the door, Jorge looks much like he did at the funeral. His olive skin is sickly pale, and his eyes are sunken and dull. The door swings wide open but he does not move, does not breathe. I'm sorry, I want to tell him, sorry that I wear his face. But the moment passes and he leads me inside.

We stare a while longer—unspeaking—the pair of us inconsolable, our bodies possessed by sadness. He takes my hand. He rubs a long thumb over my knuckles, squeezes my palm. He is thinking about my lips, my eyes, trying not to let me obscure his vision of Luc. I ache. I yearn. I feel lost under the weight of his gaze. My dead brother's lover looks at me in a way no other man has. It's sick and it's sad, but I'll take it because I am desperate for this sliver of affection. Even if it is a lie.

"Lo siento," he says, and he takes his hand from mine. "I put together some boxes, gave one to your folks. It had some photos in it, some of Luc's school papers, his graduation cap..."

"You didn't need to do all this. It could have waited."

"It's okay. I needed to keep busy. And besides, he would have hated me moping about, too precious to part with his shit." He laughs but the sound is dry, empty. "Did a box up for you, too. Some of his records, his sweatshirts, that ridiculous fucking photo of the two of you from forth of July, remember that?"

Of course I do. We spent the whole night covered head to toe in paint, drunk as skunks on stolen wine. We danced like we were drowning, we sang like sailors at sea. I nod. I do not have the courage to smile or speak. He continues talking but I cannot make out many of the words. He tells me that their lawyer will handle everything else. We are too young to have lawyers. We are too young to need wills. We are too young to die.

I drive back to the hotel while the sky is still bright. Scenery cuts past the windows in a blur. I take the box up to my room and spill its contents over the comforter, imagining the perfect melancholy tune to accompany me. This is the montage. This is the part of the film where they cobble together all the footage of my grief. See, that's me getting the phone call, that's me at the funeral, that's me crying over a box of my brother's junk. What you don't see are the hours I spend lying in the bathtub, screaming underwater, desperate to be ripped in two.

Smash cut to me standing on a roof ledge. The Slug Line reads:

EXT. LENA'S HOTEL - ROOF - NIGHT

But the metaphor can no longer shield me. There is no script, there is no film. There is nothing but the numbness in my heart and the concrete at my feet. The feeling is familiar now—it has lingered since Luc died—smothering my chest and attempting to conceal the grief, the shock, the rage. Dams such as this are built to break. And it will. It always does. Soon I will see with unflinching clarity. Soon I will have to accept that my brother is dead, and that horrors I once thought merely imagined are as real and definite as the city below me. I can smell exhaust, I can see stars, I can fling myself from this world to the next. Before I can step closer to the ledge, further from the act of living, my pocket chirps.

"Hello?" The phone is in my hand, pressed against my ear before I even think to look at the display.

"So," she says, "it's tomorrow. Again. Are you ready to answer my questions?" Bella possesses a mothers voice. It is a sobering revelation.

I tell her everything. It starts with the phone call from my mother, how she told me in her clipped tone that Luc was dead. I do not remember the words. I barely remember the day of the week. What I do remember is that I was peeling an apple with a buck-knife, cutting slices and chewing them slowly even after I had hung up the phone. I remember the paint swatches on my desk: Hot Pop Yellow and Riverland Blue. I tell Bella about the funeral, about calling her husband, about visiting with Jorge. The story ends with me standing on the edge of a hotel roof, phone-in-hand, truly realising for the first time that she is an impossibility. And there it is. The dam has broken.

I fall to my knees in my best black dress - the kind you only wear to a funeral. Bella's voice buzzes in my ears, the sound oddly consoling for a creature who drinks blood. A creature. Not human. Not living, not alive, not anything that should exist in this world. She was right all along. I should have been afraid.

"I kissed Jasper," I say, "I kissed him and he didn't move, he wouldn't pull away. What sort of demons are you? Why would you let me leave that place alive?"

Bella laughs. The sound is watery and sad. She realises that I was not brave, I was not accepting of her situation. I was numb. She won't hold that against me, and that knowledge fills me with shame. I tell her that I have to go, that I have things to do. Pack up the box, tidy the room, throw myself off the building.

"You won't really." She wants to sound confident, but every syllable stings with doubt. "Just come home."

"I can't just go running back to you, Bella. I can't spend another day in the top of a tree, pretending my brother is still alive. And you... you can't spend another day with a bag of blood wandering around your house." And that is what I am: a walking temptation, an exercise in restraint. The line is silent for the longest time. "I'm sorry that I imposed on your family. It's just that I missed you and... I think... without Luc, I just needed something-"

"Familiar?"

I nod even knowing that she cannot see it. And I cry because it does not matter what she is now, she is still familiar, is still Bella.

My soul feels as though it has been rubbed raw, left exposed and throbbing in the dark night. This anguish cannot last. Choking down the feeling of anxiety is easier than I expect it to be. Somehow I am certain that everything will be easier with her as my anchor. It is selfish to name her as my salvation. I will do it just the same. I will cling to any strength she has to offer me until I can stand on my own, until the crushing weight of my despair has lifted. Weak, sad, and wretched as I am, I will let her carry my burden. Only for a while. Just a little while.

"Bella-"

"Lena. Come home."

___

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[toffeetaffy]

Beast at My Side [3]

Manners for My Killer It's perfect. Being here with you, our fingers interlaced, lying in bed, talking just like we used to. Soon it will be midnight. The droop of my eyes and slow slur of my speech are reflections of every hour that I have been awake. You have been awake for months. You look better than you ever have. You are dead.

I write it like a letter in my mind while I stare at her inhuman beauty. I don't want to find her so captivating, and I tell her as much. She wishes I didn't have to either. It's all a part of the 'package', she says. A little taller, a little curvier, straightened teeth, thickened hair. Unquenchable thirst for human blood.

I want to drift off, give in to the sleep my body is calling for, but Bella won't let me. She's giggling nervously about something. You could almost forget that she is a monster. Having waited long enough, she leans in close and speaks in a whisper. She wants to know about Jasper. Where did we go? What did we talk about? The questions are flying past her lips even as I try desperately to cover her mouth. She giggles, I shush her, there's a gentle rapping on the bedroom door. Bella calls for them to enter before I can clap my hands back over her face. Esme lingers in the doorway. She informs Bella that Ren is sleeping soundly, and that Edward will stay with her at the cottage. She turns to leave when the thought occurs to her.

"Careful, dear," she points to her own mouth before gesturing back to us, "sharp teeth."

A little shamefacedly, Bella zips out of my grasp and starts tucking me in before I can protest. She tells me she should never forget how frail I am. I tell her I want to climb another tree. It is then that she tells me how I sound just like she used to: reckless and stupid. It's easier for her to infantalise me than to engage in a serious discussion about our predator-prey relationship. I want to tell her that she sounds just like Edward but my eyes are heavy, and my mouth is full of cotton. ___ Breakfast is a quiet affair. I am the only one eating though Bella, her husband, and daughter all sit with me making idle chatter while I chew. I have never enjoyed idle chatter. When I finish my meal I wash the dishes. The crockery is modern and white, and it looks perfect stowed away next to its counterparts. All seldom used, all expensive beyond my estimation. I am weary for the early hour.

When their conversation lulls I clear my throat. I have an appointment in Seattle, the time has changed, I cannot stay as long as I have promised. I provide them with little more detail and this upsets Bella. It upsets me, too. It might only have been one more day but we could have made that day last forever. Could have written it in the sky.

She tells me to come back. She says it without consultation or hesitation, without any regard for a life that is not hers or mine. Come right back, she pleads, meet Rosalie and Emmett. At that statement, Edward grimaces. Whatever dark thought he has captured in his pinched face - it is not for me to know. I tell her that I want to, that I would if I could, that returning here would make me happier than I have ever been. The truth of that leaves me raw. In the end I acknowledge that it is a family matter, she should discuss it with them.

Exiting the kitchen, Carlisle crosses my path.

"Bartók," I greet.

"Frankenstein," his reply.

I laugh all the way up the stairs.

My hands are clammy, resting on the handle of the bedroom door. The air is thick with a feeling, I swallow it deep. It is heavy like mud in my lungs. Before I can turn the handle he opens the door and beckons to me, shutting us in. This is part of his gift, as I understand it. A cloud of emotion that he is prone to wearing around as though it is his Sunday best. I cannot name it, only feel the weight of it upon my shoulders. It will crush me to death.

"Please stop," I plead. And it does. I know better than to expect an apology. If I have found my emotions twisted and strange it is because he wants them to be.

He asks me what is in Seattle. We appear to have moved beyond formality and in to familiarity. I do not like the change. I do not think he cares. Rather than answer him, I take a seat on the bed. It still smells sweetly of the creatures who normally reside here. The scent is a trap. One weapon in a thousand.

"You know," he begins, "some humans are gifted with a quality that grants them exceptional power. Those qualities are what evolve in to the supernatural gifts we possess after our transition."

"Do you think I'm gifted, Jasper?"

"Perhaps." He stares at me for a time, my heart gives an irregular thump. "We're all surprisingly willing to share our secrets with you, yet you seem to share so little with us."

I tell him I am an open book, that there is nothing more to me than what can readily be seen. Ask me anything, I challenge, knowing he will. He asks me what is in Seattle. An impasse, apparently.

"Come on. You get one question, one guaranteed answer, don't just throw it away!"

He asks again why I'm going to Seattle and again I stare mutely in to his eyes. Edward could pluck the thought from my head, he tells me. I imagine he already has. There is nothing for him to gain from that answer other than the knowing, but my only power lies in the withholding. It is childish. But I am little more than a child. He asks me again as I climb off the bed, he asks me again as I put on my coat, and he asks me again as I am leaving the room.

The clouds are bruised, ripe with rain. My boots squelch in the sodden earth, sinking deeper the closer I move to the tree line. I want to be angry. I want to hate him just a little, but I can already feel the lethargic creep of his manufactured calm upon me. My legs are heavy. My feet are dragging. I do not know exactly how far I have walked carrying the burden of my own body but I hope that it is far enough. I turn to find him behind me. He was always right behind me.

"Can they hear us?"

"No," Jasper says, "not from here."

He is waiting for me to tell him my secret—a secret he is sure I have—but I am frozen in front of him. Always. Crushes are cruel like that. So awful to the heart that holds them. His eyes pin me in place and scrawl illegibly on my lungs, stealing my breath. I want to embrace the panicky euphoria that should be here in my ribs where all I feel is cold calm. I plead with him to stop again, and he returns my emotions to me. Sweat crawls across my brow, hidden in the rain. He has perennial patience and I wonder if my silence will ever find the end of it.

"If you don't plan on tellin' me, why come all the way out here? Why care what they can hear?"

"Scheherazade."

"Scheherazade?"

"I'm worried. What if my story isn't interesting enough to keep me alive? What if you kill me before I get to finish telling it to you?"

"Why would I kill you?"

I press my chest against his, I clutch his sweater in my fists, I kiss him with my eyes closed. He lets me. Even damp, strange, and disgustingly human as I am - he lets me. I shouldn't have. Never without permission; maybe never at all. I step back and the air is electric. His jaw twitches, his fingers flex, his skin can barely contain him. This cannot be fixed if it is broken, it is the sort of bridge that burns too easily. I tell him I am sorry, and he asks me why. The answer is obvious. The answer is manifold. The answer is a many-splintered thing.

It happens too quickly for me to comprehend. His hand is inside my coat, resting on my hip; the other on my nape, knotted in my curls. My body aches and my mind is stained when he slants his mouth over mine. I gasp. He captures one lip between his two. I shatter. My hands reach out for him, my heart pushes up into my throat, my blood boils. When I imagine that there are no more thoughts left in the universe, I hear it.

Careful, dear. Sharp teeth.

I am choosing from one million ways to die by moulding myself against him. The panic strikes me, and blood that once burned with rebellion runs cold in my veins. I am frozen in front of him. Again. Always. He hovers around my unresponsive form, lips linger over my pulse before his body makes an earnest retreat. My lungs are full of coal and I am breathing in fire. I want it to burn forever.

He reaches for me and I flinch. Before I can finish the end of my breathy apology he is reaching again. Slowly. So slowly. His thumb ghosts over my cheek, and drifts under my eye. His eyes were brown once. Dark, like mine.

"Am I in danger?"

"Always."

"Do you think that you'll kill me?"

A crooked smile stretches up one side of his face. It's all sharp teeth and southern charm. "Well, not on purpose."

And just like that he has ruined me. My hand is not my own when it reaches out and presses against his mouth, fingertips lightly tracing. My thumb draws back his upper lip. My body shakes. It could be the cold, it could be my nerves, it could be my end. He steals my wrist away, grips my pulse in his fingers. I am saved from the inconvenience of tearing myself open on his teeth, from bleeding into his mouth.

We walk back towards the house and I am slowed by the damp. He makes no move to aid me. There are some things, he says, that we must do for ourselves. But he opens the door for me. He offers to take my coat. ___

I am in pieces by the time the rain stops. I worry at my lips,and rub at my eyes. She issues me some kind of warning but I cannot process even a single sound. There is thunder in my ears. She milks me for information even knowing that I cannot hide from her husband's gift. He has picked my brain clean. I want to be principled, keep this memory safe because it is not mine alone, have them take it forcibly if they must at all. There are no secrets kept from them, only the secrets that they keep. So why does he keep my secrets?

Edward must have told her, I say. It is a statement, and a question, and a mystery beyond my imagining. She shakes her head. There is a lot he doesn't tell her, she says. It is both sad and true. What she doesn't know can't hurt her, ignorance is bliss. He thinks that he protects her. He shelters her like a child.

I tell her she is a supernova, that she is whisky and wine. I tell her that if she lets me keep this secret, lets me hide it in my heart just for now, that tomorrow I will tell her anything. But I won't. Because I am tomorrow what I am today, and today I am a liar. If she sees that I am shot full of nervous holes—or too transparent to her eyes—she does not say. Instead, she asks when I will return from Seattle. Wednesday, at the latest. We spend the afternoon running, talking, and biding our time.

At night they light a fire in the yard. It is hot, and bright, and it scorches our names into the horizon. The doctor and his wife dance to the music, the stereo swells with a tune I cannot name. Ren perches on her uncle's shoulders, weaving flowers through her mother's hair. They are all beautiful. Each one of them so perfect in death that living seems like a mistake. I close my eyes tight and try to burn this memory there, keep it etched on the back of my eyes. Let it haunt me in my sleep.

"Would you do me the honour?"

His hand is outstretched, his expression almost sombre. I want to carve a smile on to his lips just to prove that they exist.

"Of course, Edward." The name sticks like glue in my teeth. I knew an Edward once. I had disliked that boy, too.

With my hand wrapped in his, and another on my back, he moves us gently to the music. I feel weary and calm when our dance becomes no more than a subtle sway, and Bella's smile is a blur hidden deep within her silhouette. There exists a peculiar temptation to rest my cheek against his chest. I do.

"You're such a hypocrite," he says. "You hate Bella's choices, and then you mirror them. You can't stand the way I treat her, but you treat her much the same." He takes care to keep his voice low, his lips close to my ear. "If you come back here you'll be making the same mistake she did."

"Her only mistake is loving you." It is a stupid thing to say. It is ugly, and mean, and I believe it with every cell in my body.

"I know," he says. It sounds like defeat.

I take his face in my hands and our dance has ended. I call him a fool and his cheek ticks, his jaw grinds under my palm. The beast is awake. If only it will listen. I tell him that his daughter is proof of his kindness, that his music is proof of his soul, that his family is proof monsters are only what we make them.

"There's only one thing I truly hate about you, Edward. You torture them when you torture yourself."

My hands move to his chest. There's a hole here where a heart would fit, I tell him, it's a perfect place to keep one.

"And what about you?" he asks me, "Don't you need one, too?"

I stand outside long after the fire has died down, long after the Cullens have retreated into their warm, wooden homes. I stand outside until my fingers turn blue and my lips are numb, heavy with regret. The sky is punctured with stars, swollen with life. I could almost feel immortal. Out here I bleed moonlight.

Darkness settles around me as I close my eyes. The memory is there—scratched inside, inked with fireflies—the perfect family on a perfect night. Forever is not long enough to stand here watching the doctor twirl his beautiful wife around the fire. And besides, I do not have forever. All I have is now and everything that came before it. It will have to be enough. Even open, my eyes can see their ghosts, see the smoke, see their souls. It fills me with a longing that tugs at my sleeve, begging for me to let it wash me away. For a second I think that I might.

There is a rustling in the trees. I hear the snap of a twig. Fear grabs me by the ribs, shakes bile in to my throat, and sends my heart crashing against my chest. One careful step backwards is all I can make. My legs turn to jelly, I am sinking in sand. He emerges from the tree line: he is tall, he is big, and he is entirely unknown to me. I whisper Bella's name. I draw a jagged breath in between my teeth and hiss her name again. My lungs are filled with broken glass, it shreds my attempt at a scream. If my terror is reflected on my face, it does not bother him. The stranger narrows his eyes to take me in. He stalks closer until I can plainly see each muscle working under his dark skin.

"Stop."

My voice is thready and hollow. As I draw in breath to try again, he speaks.

"Haven't seen you here before. You a friend of the family?"

There are questions in his questions, there are questions in his eyes. If I am meant to know what they are - I do not. Two more steps back. His one giant stride forward is worth any three of mine.

"Please stop." Niceties with a stranger. Manners for my killer. "Just stop and tell me who you are."

"You first." His voice is a bark, a gunshot, a fire under my feet, and I am running for the door.

I take all of the steps in two long strides but I do not reach the door. Between the beats of my heart it opens and closes again and I am caught up in stony arms, slammed firmly against a chest. My bones jar with the impact. My teeth rattle. The stranger halts his pursuit and my rescuer murmurs in my ear. Jasper.

"Easy Jacob, you're scarin' our guest."

___

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[toffeetaffy]

Beast at My Side [2]

The First Rule The first rule is: breathe. Every game has rules, she tells me, and this game is especially dangerous. Breathe. We need these rules because we're breaking another. One of Edwards. If he finds us he'll be furious, she whispers, and though she smiles as she says it, I can plainly see that it is true. Breathe. It's an easy rule to remember. Even as Bella wraps my legs around her, and digs her fingers in to my exposed upper thigh, I have no trouble drawing breath. When I press my face into her hair I want nothing more than to inhale. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. And we're flying.

The world has disappeared; replaced instead with a never ending canvas on which we paint our own futures. Out here we can make mountains. Each slow, methodical stroke of the brush erases a part of who we were and replaces it with the promise of who we could become. Her legs slow minutely, and just when I think we are done running - we begin the climb. It takes no time at all for her to scale the tree, even with me clinging desperately to her marble frame. Near the top she releases me. My arms unwind from around her neck and I slide slowly down her body. She holds me close. It's strangely intimate, but not uncomfortable. A streak of thick tears roll down my face, settling on my wind-chapped lips before I can remember the rules. "Breathe." Bella laughs. The sound is at home here among the other birdsong. I want to tell her that I'm terrified. That I'm not ready to live in a world where monsters are real, and my best friend is dead, but the words are lodged in my throat. My heart smashes against my ribcage. The weight of knowing, the shame of pretending, burn me. "Breathe," she says it again. "Breathe." Back on solid ground we talk about our lives. Brilliant, golden rays of sunshine slash through the leafy canopies above us, igniting her skin as she speaks. She tells me about how she wants to go college one day—maybe in Alaska—about how being a mother has given her patience, and about how all this would be easier if Alice were here. I would hate Alice, she tells me, and rolls her eyes. Before she can elaborate on why, the words are bursting from between my lips. "Where is Alice?" "Gone." Is the reply. She does not tell me much more than that. Only that it has been a long time, that it was not much of a shock, and that they do not expect her back. I know how hard it is to lose a best friend. I wrap my arms around her, squeezing tight, and whisper my condolences in to the wind. At the cottage, Bella takes her daughters hands in hers and they converse in voices so quiet that I cannot make out a single word. They are a Christmas card. They are a magazine cover. They are everything that every mother aspires to be, captured in a single, eternal bell jar. I am tired beyond my years. Ren wants lunch. The concept is simple but Bella's face looks grave, and I am left to intuit the things that remain unspoken. I tell them to go. I smile cheerily and wave them away and try not to be afraid of the man left behind. He knows that I am. I feel him picking at my brain. It is not something that he can always control, I am told. Sometimes even he wishes that our secrets were our own. "Edward?" I ask quietly, unnecessarily. "Would you walk me to the main house?" As we walk, he tells me more about himself: pieces of his history, fragments of his dreams. I do not think that he tells a single lie but I suppose I will never truly know. His perfectly chiselled face shines dully in the late morning sun as he speaks. Like Bella; not like Bella. I hate him. He smiles at me ruefully, bringing me a stop with a gentle hand. There are no words spoken as a nervous sweat breaks out across the back of my neck. None spoken as I wrap myself up tighter in my sheepskin coat. There is a single word spoken when the wind whips across my knees, the skin exposed between the top of my tall boots, and the hem of my cream coloured dress. "Lena." It's a curse. He speaks my name with the soft admonishment of a father. Though I do not know his exact age, I can hear one hundred weary years in that name. "I could tell you that you're wrong about me. That every fear you have is unfounded. I could lean in close and tell you that I have never treated Bella poorly... and you would believe me." His nose is touching mine, his breath is in my mouth. I believe every word. "But all I really want is for you to know that I am trying." Mercifully, he draws away from me. "I'm trying to be a better husband, a better father. A better person." He's smiling, and it's shy and honest. Inside the main house, I rifle through my things in search of my paperback. The pages are yellowed, warped from the damp, and more than one vital passage has been torn away. Ravaged as much from my affection for it, as time itself, the book is a sad reminder. We hurt the things we love. Soft piano music lingers in the hallway - too muted to be real. I follow the sound. My footfalls are quiet, though never silent in this house, and my fingers flex nervously around the discoloured tome. The door is ajar. A single pale hand emerges, fingers closing over the door's edge and pulling it wide. The ashen face of the doctor greets me. "Bartók," I state. As though answering a question I was yet to be asked. "Frankenstein." His reply, gaze lingering on the book in my arms. "Would you like to come in?" The study is richly decorated; every wall covered in books and paintings. This would be my haven too, I think. An eternity could well be lost in countless books, fine paintings, and Hungarian composition. The doctor repeats the title of my book again. I tell him that it's my favourite and he makes a sound that is almost a chuckle, but just short of a laugh. He asks me if I am fond of monsters. Honestly, I do not know, but I answer him as best I can. "I'm trying to be." What I think might be a glimmer of understanding catches in his eye. He takes a deliberate step toward me. The reflex to take a step back is hard to fight, and were it not for his serene, youthful face, the way he looms over me might be menacing. But he has studied us for a long time. Humanity. He knows how close is too close and he is not yet there. When he reaches out, taking my face in his long, bony fingers, I close my eyes. I am safe in his hands. He inspects my wound and tells me that it is 'healing nicely'. For a time I follow the river. When it splinters off in to a series of smaller streams I follow one of those. Eventually the water is little more than a trickle through its muddy banks. The air is warm and damp. Everything in the shaded glade is slick with moss and ripe with summer. Verdant. I take off my boots, then socks, stuffing them inside and rest my book atop them. At the edge of the water my feet sink deep and the chipped red paint on my toenails is sluggishly consumed by the rich brown mud. I lay my coat out on the grass and sit: my book in one hand, the other picking absently at the dirt spotting my dress. It dries slowly on to the fabric, my outstretched legs, and even my hands. I feel content. ___ My phone beeps. I'm surprised it has a signal. Bella. I tell her not to hurry, that I'm enjoying the time alone. I tell her that I'm happy. It is only a text message, and they are not the best conveyance for emotional tone, but I hope that she reads it and knows that it is true. Being here, seeing her again - it's healing me. I imagine telling her that face to face. All too easily I can picture her replying that she think it's ironic, never having really understood the word. The imagining makes me laugh out loud. "Now that's what I call a smile." He stands at my feet, his faint shadow creeping up my muddied calves. A bell rings soundly in my brain: alarm. "I was beginning to think only Bella got to see those.” My mind struggles to string a sentence together, and my legs go uselessly numb. Even if I wanted to—even if I could—flight would be pointless. He crouches there at my feet, watching me with golden eyes and a crooked smile. Jasper is positively leonine. "You're filthy." His gaze makes a lazy sweep up my legs and I feel my own eyes widen to the point of discomfort. My silence stretches too long to be considered polite, and even though the toothy smile slips off his face he doesn't look offended. Blush creeps up the back of my neck. My ears tingle, and just as I worry that the heat of it will set my face ablaze he speaks again. "Am I making you uncomfortable?" "Yes." This should be where it ends. This is supposed to the part where the civilised monster takes his leave of me because humans are friends, not food. But he isn't. He's laughing. The sound is low, it makes my stomach feel heavy and I don't want it to stop. I hastily shuffle aside as he sits next to me on my coat, shoulder to shoulder, our legs stretched out, my feet brushing against his shin. The chill of his skin reaches my bare arms. He takes my book and begins leafing through the pages, smiling to himself. The stretching silence grows comfortable. My fear ebbs. "Jasper?" He faces me, one eyebrow raised in surprise as though he assumed I would never speak again. I continue, "If I insisted that you leave, would you?" For a time he considers me. "Yes. I suppose I would." Something about his answer feels unsatisfactory. The displeasure must be written on my face because he qualifies his statement. "Not because it's the right thing to do, mind you. Not because you asked me nicely. I would leave because that would be in my best interests. Offending you would upset Bella, and that has the potential to... disrupt our family dynamic." "That's painfully honest of you." He smiles again, "I thought you might prefer honesty." "I do. I just wasn't sure you did." He has the decency not to lie to me then. His silence is response enough. We sit together for a long time as the air slowly cools. The silences are punctuated with short conversations, or the beeping of my phone as I continue to text Bella. At one time I began to read aloud from my book, stopping when I reach one of the larger tears in the page, only to have Jasper recite the missing words back to me. Fascinating. Eidetic memory, he tells me, tapping his honey coloured curls. I read aloud a little longer and he continues to fill in the gaps until I reach the next sheaf of undamaged pages. For a solid minute I can feel his eyes on me. I close the book. He's too distracting. When I finally turn to face him he is so very close, his gaze scrutinising. "My eyes were brown once." I'm filled with a strange sort of melancholy at his tone. "Not bright like Bella's were. Dark, like yours." He swipes his thumb once across my cheekbone, under my eye. Were it not for the cool trail left on my skin I may not have noticed the feather-light touch. It's happening again. I'm drowning in his eyes. I reach out to touch him—return the gesture perhaps—when I catch myself. My skin a meagre centimetre from his. It is easy enough to withdraw my hand, less so to contain my babbling apology. It's just that it's all so terribly interesting, I tell him, and he smiles again. Then I simply cannot stop myself. I tell him every single thought I have had since learning their family secret, ask every single question Bella won't answer, and gripe about every single inconsistency in their existence. I feel such relief. I should probably be mortified at the prospect of him knowing all of this, scared at the thought of offending him. The embarrassment—the fear—never comes. Finally, I stop talking. He waits for me to catch my breath, that good-natured smile still firmly in place, before reaching between us and taking my hand in his. Slowly, he lifts it to his face, pressing my muddy palm against his pallid cheek. "Ask me again." He says, as my fingers lightly probe his unyielding skin. "Every question Bella doesn't wanna answer for you." With his perfectly sculpted lips resting against my small wrist, the pulse thrumming steadily within, I ask the question I least want answered. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. "Why am I still so afraid?" ___ ← prev  -  next  →

[toffeetaffy]

Beast at My Side

They Call This Summer

This story was originally published under the working title 'Temporis'. Purists should consider this very much AU.

--- It is immediately obvious that I have said the wrong thing.

She looks puzzled—or perhaps surprised—but certainly not happy. I don't know what answer will make her content so we appear to be settling for bemused silence. Later I can make another attempt at a response that will satisfy her, but for now at least, I'm far too cold. I feel the chill deep in my bones. They call this summer.

She's still staring at me, watching me shiver in my thick sheepskin coat. Her bare arms as pale and as perfect as her heart-shaped face. This is what she's trying to tell me. This is what should frighten me.

"Can we go inside, Bella? I'm freezing."

The incredulity is etched plainly in her features. If my previous response had startled her, the current question had her nothing short of alarmed.

"Did you not hear what I just said?" She stutters then gapes, her mouth working open and closed soundlessly for a time. "I don't think you understand what I'm telling you. I know it's a lot to take in..."

When she trails off she looks completely lost. In that moment alone can I see her as she used to be: fifteen years old, all gangly limbs and shy smiles. We're not fifteen any more. We can never be fifteen again.

My teeth knock together noisily, ruining the force of my exasperated sigh. She's disappointed, and I know how she feels. I came here expecting a cheerful reunion; to find the awkward, somewhat sullen girl that had been my only friend, and hold her in my arms while I told her how beautiful she had become. How she had grown into her skin. But you know what they say about best laid plans.

"You want me to be shocked? You want me to be appalled?"

She doesn't seem to know how to answer me, just watches as I finger the gash over my eye, my fingertips coming away stained with fresh blood. It had been some sort of attempt to protect me. Bella's husband, Edward, had shoved me out of the way of what he had perceived to be impending danger. 'Déjà vu', Bella had laughed. Edward had not found it amusing.

"Shocked would be appropriate! Do you even understand what I've said to you?" She asks me again, I feel like she has asked me a thousand times.

Behind her shoulder, Edward evaluates me with a pinched face and one narrowed eye. He's appraising me, and every time he considers me, my words, it means something. Even if I don't know what that is. Their daughter wrenches her hand free from his, and with a single wave in my direction, dashes off into the woods. She is terrifying and beautiful. At her mother's behest she had laid her hands upon me and shown me their story. Her secrets still echo in my mind.

"Of course I'm happy that you're here," she starts again. "Very happy. And I'm glad you're being so... understanding. It's just that I also want you to be cautious—be careful—where I wasn't."

I know what it is that she's saying. I can turn around, climb in to my shitty old Kombi, and drive back to wherever-the-Hell it is that I came from, or, I can stay. I can stay and hope that her secret doesn't kill me.

To her credit, she doesn't flinch when I wrap my arms around her, my cold lips whispering against her ear. "Please Bella, inside. Before my fingers fall off."

I start towards the house. Its tall, off-white walls are spotted with windows that glow with promised warmth. Edward strides out ahead of me and holds the door open with a sweeping arm. An antique gesture. Inside there stands a couple, arms wrapped around each other. From her correspondence alone I can tell that these are Bella's parents-in-law. Her emails were often dotted with romantic descriptions of the Cullen family. The patriarch in particular.

"Edward, Bella. We were wondering when you were going to invite your guest in." Her voice is a soft hum, she has a mothers smile.

She shakes my hand gently, once. I can barely feel the pressure, the tips of my fingers are purple from the cold. When she introduces herself and her husband, her face shines with curiosity. They don't get many visitors, she explains. Of course they don't.

Bella tells her new family our shared history. At length she talks about how close we were in Arizona, how our mothers had become friends, how we exchanged secrets in the sun. She even goes on to tell them how my emails and phone calls stopped her from 'going crazy' in Forks.

"Until you stopped calling," I say, "I didn't hear from you for months."

Bella and Edward both have the decency to look ashamed. We don't really talk about the dark time. Those four months when Bella lost the love of her life, and the will to live. Knowing what I do now, I should wonder if there isn't so much more to tell, some darker truth buried within those stolen weeks. The subject is quickly changed, and as I remove my coat the low sound of central heating reaches my ears.

"I should take a look at that." The patriarch gestures to my face, the cut across my eyebrow.

Edward explains, "Carlisle's a doctor." I knew that already.

My fingertips are still stained with blood.

I nod my consent and the doctor disappears. While we wait for his return, Edward hangs my coat by the door, Bella guides me to the sofa, and Esme offers me a drink. Bella tells her that I drink tea, that even as my accent fades my drinking habits remain wholly English. I don't have time to ask if they even have tea in the house before she is gone from sight, leaving me alone with my friend and her husband.

"I'm sorry I missed the wedding."

The invitation I am certain was sent only as a nicety, she never truly expected me to attend. She tells me as much before wondering aloud—not for the first time—what I'm doing here, why I'm not back at college. It's difficult to explain. How can I not tell her this, when she has told me everything? For years she hedged around it. Wanting so badly to tell me the secret that in the beginning was not hers to share. When finally it was, she left electronic clues, and spoke in cellular riddles that my rational mind could not comprehend. Secrets like hers did not exist.

When the doctor returned, Edward rose from his chair. "I should go and find that daughter of ours. Before she gets herself in to trouble." He leaves with a smile on his face. Toothy and charming. Probably the only genuine part of him that I have seen.

Carlisle sets his things down and waves me to him, a reassuring nod soon after. With gloved hands he cleans the gash and I gasp when it stings sharply. Quietly he apologises, and assures me that I won't need stitches. He sees my fingers tipped with blood, long ago dried, and takes my hand gently in his. Something in his slow, unnecessary exhalation of air makes me feel sad. I clear my throat and he releases my fingers.

"Bella, could you show me to the bathroom?"

She smirks. "Need a human minute?"

I loathe the expression at first utterance. I loathe the face that shaped it, the lips that formed it, the voice that spoke it. All perfect and grotesque. All at once Bella and never less like her. I nod because I'm too nervous to speak, too angry to form a polite sentence.

The whole house is immaculate. Right down to the polished porcelain of the lavatory. When finally my hands are clean I splash some water on my face. I look tired. I feel exhausted.

Back in the living room everyone is seated again, and on the coffee table rests a dainty china cup, nestled in it's saucer, teabag dangling over the edge. I thank Esme as I sit down and take an experimental sip. My throat loosens, my lips hum. She spares me only a glance before turning her attention back to Bella, and the girl upon her knee. They have their fingers laced together, and Bella's eyes are closed, lids fluttering.

"She prefers it to talking." Edward explains.

I lean closer to the girl, close enough to feel the heat radiating from her small, pale face. "I imagine I would, too."

She smiles at me, wide and bright; the very picture of childish glee. But she isn't a child. Not just a child.

"You never told us what brought you here." Bella says, "Are you taking a break from college?"

I'm certain now that she has seen through each of my evasions. This heavenly creature is too canny to be Bella, but I'm desperate to have my friend back so all I can do is pretend.

"I might go back. I'm just not sure yet. Bella," I fairly whine, "I don't know what to do. I don't know who I am." I want to tell her I'm scared. Not just of her secret, of her family, but of life. Of living. But here, in front of her husband, her child, her in-laws, and in the wake of her revelation... it seems too trivial.

Perhaps you'd have to be a mind reader to know my discomfort, to sense how desperately I wanted to talk to Bella. My Bella. Alone.

"You haven't even seen the cottage yet. Bella should take you for a walk, it really is lovely down there." Edward gives me a small, knowing smile. My cheeks heat.

I'm finishing the last sip of my tea as Bella hands her daughter off to Esme and snatches up my coat, telling me the story of their marital cabin. She plucks the now empty china cup from my fingers, whisking it and it's saucer away. I haven't even had time to stand before she's at the open door, waving my coat excitedly. Whether or not she witnesses the shocked exchange of her family, I do not know, but it is hard to imagine she misses something even my dull eyes can see. I thread my arms through the heavy sheepskin and she sweeps me out of the door in another extraordinary display of speed. --- It is immediately obvious that I have said the right thing.

She's doubled over with laughter, shaking and heaving as I tell her the story of how I left college to start driving aimlessly all over the country. My journey of self discovery seems silly sitting here, next to her. We exchanged stories for hours wandering around her cabin, their family home, and along the banks of a river, weaving tales through the trees. Standing at the bottom of an especially beautiful cedar, I told her I wished I could climb to the top. She told me how she often did. When I asked her to haul me up, even to the lowest boughs, she shook her head sadly. It's dangerous, I'm fragile, Edward would be furious.

In the years we exchanged phone calls and emails Bella spoke a great deal about Edward. In the beginning at least, she seemed to tell me everything. It's because you can't see me, I would tell her. Can't see me judging you. She would laugh at the truth in that. And I knew it to be true because I felt the same. Over time she grew more distant, gradually able to tell me less and less about her life. I had blamed Edward. When the dark time came and the emails stopped, I worried for a time that he had killed her. The portrait I had painted of Edward was abusive and cruel. Even now, it is not what he is, but how, that makes me feel as though I was right all along.

If telepathy is his shield, manipulation is his sword.

"So where are you off to next? Think you can stay in Forks for a while?"

"Oh yeah," I nod with sarcastic vigour. "I'll blend right in 'round these parts. You know, between the zombies and the regular old pasty locals." The rich brown of my skin and the natural curl of my hair had never been more pronounced than in the lush, green town of Forks.

Bella laughs, baring her perfect teeth. "You'll wish I was a zombie by the time I'm done with you!"

She runs circles around me, flinging herself tree to tree, pretending to chase me. I'm trying to do what she asked of me, trying to exercise caution, but when we reach the porch of the main house and collapse in to a giggling pile of limbs I can barely even remember what it is I'm supposed to be afraid of.

She's a monster, I think. "You're a monster," I laugh out loud.

I'm nervously excited when she tells me I should stay for a few days. It seems her sister-in-law Rosalie and her husband Emmett are away for a while. A second honeymoon, she tells me. They have been together since the thirties, and desperately in love the entire time. She tells me that Rose is the most beautiful creature in all of creation and I don't doubt it for even a second. There is no more room in my life for scepticism.

The peculiar living situation of the Cullen family had been relayed to me over Bella's first few months in town. She herself thought it no more gossip worthy than her neighbours new lawn mower. But me? I had thought it thoroughly scandalous! An opinion not entirely changed since the revelation of their true familial nature. They weren't just a family. They were a nest. A coven? If there is a word for what they are collectively known as, Bella has not told me what it is. I don't think she wants to.

In the space of three heart beats she has run to my van, collected my bags, and offered me a hand. I take it. She smiles. It's like we were never apart.

She puts my bags in Rosalie's room. It's beautiful. It seems surprisingly feminine for a shared space, and is pristinely clean. Bella points out the spacious bathroom before flopping down on the enormous bed. They don't sleep, she tells me. I don't need to ask why the bed is here.

We lay there on our backs, the late afternoon sun filtering in through soft curtains. Her skin sparkles. Her perfection pains me.

"I want to hate you." I say.

"I know." Is her reply.

It's a strange scene in the kitchen. Esme and Ren are working in tangent, preparing dinner for the 'breathers'. Ren, Bella tells me, is the name I am to address her daughter with. If there's more to that story—and I'm certain there is—she doesn't wish to share it. We're having veggie burgers, Ren informs me. When I ask if that's her favourite, the child's mouth clamps shut and her mother grimaces. I can only imagine. --- In the very early hours of the morning Ren is fast asleep in the cottage, watched over by a vigilant, loving grandmother, while Carlisle is beginning his shift at the hospital. Bella and Edward left hours ago to get their own meal and share some time together. I cannot sleep. The potent mixture of excitability and fear races through my blood, keeping me awake. I wonder, not for the first time, if any of them can hear the erratic beating of my heart.

There is every chance that I am alone in the house but still I tiptoe down the stairs. There's water in the fridge. I take out a single bottle and press it to my throat, cooling my nervous blush. I catch my reflection shining back at me, warped and distorted in the polished steel of the toaster. What a mess. Setting down the water bottle, I probe my injured eyebrow experimentally. My fingertips come away clean.

"I am sorry about that."

A sharp stab of fear tears down my spine. Every single vertebrae rattles in turn until my whole body is shaking in earnest. When I turn to face him, fully illuminated in the moonlight, my tremors are yet to subside.

"It was hardly your fault." My tongue feels heavy in my mouth. I have no idea how long I've taken to respond.

"No. True enough." He smiles, lips never parting.

Earlier, Ren had laid her hands on my face, spilling her families secrets into me. I was dumbstruck. A little cold, and more than a little afraid, I stumbled back, tripping over my own feet and striking my face against the headlight of my van. It had been a tiny cut. Jasper had reached for me, Edward had pushed me away. At some point the tiny cut tore open. Soon it will just be an ugly scab.

He's staring at me with that same tight lipped smile. It's almost a smirk. Almost. It makes me yearn to know what would have happened if he'd gotten his hands on me.

"You weren't planning on biting me, were you Jasper?" I want the question to be playful but it sounds thin and fearful. His gaze slides down my throat and back up my face. I'm drowning in his eyes.

"No, Lena." Is all he says.

And whether it's the intensity of his stare, or the fear of what I suspect is his lie, I shiver again. I feel the chill deep in my bones. They call this summer. ___ ← prev  -  next  →

[toffeetaffy]

Ma Vhenan [2]

Arla Merrill would think me mad if she could see me now, hear the things I am saying. She is a dear friend but insists that I turn in to another beast entirely when I am with Tamlen. With that twinkle in her eye she would tell me how we turn in to wild animals, creatures content to play in the tree tops and howl at the moon. Right now, as I double over, swallowing greedy gulps of air in to my breathless lungs, I think she might just be right.

“Come lethallan, do not tell me you are already tired. The day has just begun!” Tamlen shouts with that enthusiasm we only possess in each others company.

I smile my greatest, brightest smile, the one that he earns only on days as beautiful as this. It is clear he is pleased with himself but impatient to be on with our merry making. Even as I take the bow from my back and hand it to him he hops from one foot to the next. Then, as I place my quiver in the long, dark grass he eyes me sceptically and stalks closer. I banish the smile from my face and replace it with mock distress before concluding my performance with an over-the-top gasp and faint, buying myself precious time to rest on the cool forest floor. So sweet a friend is Tamlen that he plays along, even knowing my game.

“Dear lady!” He can not help the small chuckle that shakes him, ruining his charade. “What ever is the trouble?”

I flutter my eyelashes at him as best I can, trying hard to play the part of the noble woman, but my knowledge of such things is limited and I may look like rotten fruit instead of a wilting flower. “Why kind sir, I am ever so faint. I simply cannot press on.”

My false sobs must be a little too melodramatic for Tamlen, who snorts derisively, shedding the bows and quivers and laying on his back beside me.

“Who could love such a woman?” He ponders, eyes skyward. “They sound all together like too much trouble.”

“Too much work.”

“You said it.”

A few long minutes pass, carried away on the lightest birdsong and the softest breeze before I work up the courage to turn my face to Tamlen and speak.

“So lethallin, what sort of woman is it that you could love?” I admit I am surprised to see that he considers my question, I expected him to shrug it off with a laugh and an elbow to my ribs.

“Well,” he begins, lips pursed, “she would have to be resourceful... and smart. Fun but not needy.”

He glances at me, amused by my obvious curiosity. A small blush tints my cheekbones, I have of course, been caught in one of my shameless attempts to coax sweet compliments from him. If today is like any other now will be the part where Tamlen encourages me to get up and let us be about our appointed tasks for the day.

“And beautiful.” His smile is unwavering. “She should have hair the colour of golden moonlight. You know, the one that casts it's reflection so incredibly on the water's surface at night? And her eyes should be enchanting.”

“Enchanting?” I can not help but interrupt him.

A deep chuckle rumbles up from his chest and he faces me now, the tips of our noses grazing. “Yes, enchanting. The colour of the violets that grow wild in the shade of the forest's tallest trees.”

However flatteringly exaggerated, his description fits me well enough. And now that I finally have the sweetest of compliments that I have everbeen able to pry from him, I have nothing to say in return. My nerves have frozen my lips shut. All he does is stare patiently at me, waiting perhaps to hear the very words I have long wished to say to him. How many times have I hoped to have just such a chance to tell Tamlen how I feel? When my jaw finally loosens and my lips part, all that comes is the sound of my breath - heavy from the drumming of my nervous heart. His smile grows weary. I am certain he knows exactly what I wish to say but it is of little comfort to him while the words remain trapped in my throat, fluttering against the walls like a bird in a cage. There is only one more course of action.

I ease my face closer to his, the newly stirred grass perfuming the air with its clean scent. My nose rests upon his, my forehead pressed against his and we stay like this for moment, nerves and the newness of it all holding me firmly in place. Light sweat begins to form on his brow and I can only hope that it means he is as nervous as I am. Fighting back the rather inappropriate urge to laugh, I muster my courage once more and gingerly press my lips to his. It isn't perfect but it is almost too sweet to bear, and in only a second the chaste kiss is over and we're left there - staring in to each others eyes, hidden away in the tall, dark grass.

It is the most painful silence of my life so far and I wish he would say something, anything. I feel a strange shame and the back of my eyes begin to burn with unshed tears, desperate to escape and betray my stony exterior. The seconds continue to tick by and holding everything in check is becoming too much. My bottom lip begins to tremble.

“Lethallan.” He whispers so low I can barely hear him.

Thrusting my bottom lip between my teeth does little to stop the quivering that seems to intensify with each beat of my heart and blink of my eyes. But every twitch, tear and shiver dissolves as he runs the back of his fingers along my cheekbone.

“Lyna.” My whispered name doesn't sound like the betrayal I expect it to.

Tamlen lays on his stomach and props himself up on his elbows which he rests either side of my face and there is little else to do but look straight in to his eyes. They're the colour of a perfect storm. Grey and blue like a rumbling thunder cloud before it breaks. I think he whispers my name again but I'm too lost in his eyes, they are the only thing keeping me from breaking.

I hear him this time. “Lyna.” There's a smile in his voice. “Stop being so melodramatic.”

In an instant his lips are over mine and his hand is in my hair, his own little fistful of golden moonlight. He pulls my bottom lip in between his and nips at it gently with his teeth. My lips vibrate in a soft hum and his mouth smiles against mine. It is obvious now that Tamlen is not without skill and I am fumbling along, driven by instinct alone.

The only other real kiss I have shared with a man was two winters ago, with Fenarel. Kind and generous as always, Fenarel had volunteered to help me mend the clan's Halla pen, a task I had been assigned as a punishment. After many long hours of dull labour we collapsed exhausted and Fenarel, despite my protests sought no reward. Later than night when the camp was still and quiet I found him alone. I told him I wished to offer him some token but he shook his head and smiled, saying he needed no reward for an act of friendship.

“But there must be something, Tamlen.” I frown.

His eyes were everywhere but on mine as he whispered his request. “Well. Perhaps a kiss?” My eyes flew wide open and even in the dark of the night I could see him pale. “Well- I mean- Just a small kiss on your cheek.”

Before I could lose my nerve I strode forward and pressed my pouted lips to his and closed my eyes. A few seconds of gentle pressure and his awkward hand upon my waist was all the reward I could give him and more than he had asked for.

Tamlen pulls his face away from mine and quirks an eyebrow at me. “Lost interest in me already lethallan?”

“No Tamlen, of course not.” My voice is deeper, thick with something I don't quite understand. “This is just...”

“Strange?”

“New.”

“New. But not bad?” He asks.

“No, of course- wait. Do you think it was bad?”

One of his usual chuckles bubbles up and he smiles wide but he does not answer. That annoys me more than it should but before I can tell him, Tamlen is kissing me again. This time his breath is on my neck and his lips press against me urgently. The deep, thick voice I never knew I possessed moans in delight; the sound is low and rumbles like the growl of a timber wolf. I can feel his hand snaking slowly up my thigh, fingers probing tentatively at my leggings until he reaches the top and kneads at the bare flesh hidden beneath the leather of my skirt, his thumb working slow, careful circles. A whimper is the only encouragement I am capable of offering him but he stops at the sound and stares shocked in to my eyes.

“Did you hear that?” His brow is knitted in confusion.

“Sorry, I couldn't-”

“There.”He pulls himself to his knees and listens to the wind. This time I hear it too.

“Too loud to be an animal.” My voice shakes with the concern I was trying so hard not to taint it with.

“A forest animal, anyway.”

“You don't think... shemlen? Out here?”

He's torn. I can see it plainly on his face. His want to stay here with me and his need to get himself in to trouble. I sigh, knowing that wrapping my arms around him and pressing kisses to his throat will only buy me a moment and what I really want is forever.

“Come on then.” I laugh at the thought of it. Shemlen this far out in the forest. “Let us go hunting.”

We gather up our things and Tamlen helps me secure my quiver. It isn't the first time he has ever done so, but it is the first time his hands have lingered over me, the first time he has planted a gentle kiss behind my ear as he pulls away.

A mischievous smile firmly in place, Tamlen bounds off ahead in to the trees. I follow behind, watching his back as I have since we were children playing at tracking and hunting. It doesn't take us long to find them, the shemlen. They are loud, crashing through the undergrowth and they smell, the stink of alcohol and village life upon them. Just out of sight I crouch down, scanning the trees to make sure there are no more. These three are enough trouble.

“Let us pass, elf. You have no right to stop us!” One shem speaks. He cowers less than his friends.

“No?” Tamlen asks, his arrow trained upon one of the hapless humans. “We will see about that, won't we?”

His temper will get the better of him, and though Tamlen has a gentle nature, he has no love for humans. I draw my bow, pulling the string taut and stalk out of the shadowy canopy and to his side.

“You're just in time.” He sneers. “ I found these... humans lurking in the bushes. Bandits, no doubt.”

“We aren't bandits, I swear! Please don't hurt us!”

I leave Tamlen to continue addressing the flustered men. He seems to be enjoying himself, scaring them with pointed arrows and dark glares. The shemlen try to convince Tamlen that they were merely exploring a nearby cave but he isn't pleased with their tale. How could they possibly know of such a place? A place that is unknown even to us? They stutter and stammer and as I watch them I can see the last of their anger ebbing. They're finally seeing the very real threat Tamlen poses. He could kill each of them before even one thought to run. And he still might.

Their leader – his pale brow sweating heavily under a mop of russet hair steps forward, his arms outstretched, to offer something to Tamlen. My fingers twitch on the nock of my arrow, ready to let it sail at any second.

Tamlen slung his bow over his shoulder and accepted the offering. “This stone has carvings.” He raises his eyebrows in disbelief. “Is this Elvish?  Written Elvish?”

“Th- there's more in the ruins. We didn't get very far in though. There was a demon! With black eyes! Thank the Maker we were able to outrun it.”

“Hah.” Tamlen snorts. “A demon? Where is this cave?”

“Just off the west, I think. There's a cave in the rock-face and a huge hole just inside.”

My friend slips the stone in to his pouch and nods at the shem. The three of them relax as I lower my bow, making sure to hold the arrow still in place.

“Well... do you trust them?” He asks me with some trepidation. “Shall we let them go?”

I smile proudly at his restraint. “You've frightened them enough. They won't bother us.”

“Run along then, shems.” He sighs. “And don't come back until we Dalish have moved on.”

My anxiety melts away when I catch a glance at the wide, cheeky grin spreading across his face. Tamlen is not nearly done with today's mischief. I secure my bow and return the arrow to my quiver, silently praying that whatever other adventures lie ahead of us today, they will go unneeded.

“Well, shall we see if there's any truth to this story?”

Before I can even answer him, Tamlen has my fingers knitted tightly between his as he races off toward the western tree line, dragging me along behind him.

--- Thick with dust and heavy with heat, the air in the cave is hard to breath. Dark blue stone follows us everywhere and each room is filled with giant spiders, fangs glistening. My hands are coated with the viscous blood of the creatures and it makes disarming the ancient stone traps that much harder. Tamlen paces behind me impatiently as I worry at my lip and curse to the Creators. I yank off my gloves, tugging violently at the tips of the fingers and throwing them to the ground, a spray of sweat from my brow slashing across the rigged tile in front of me.

“Why is it so hot in here?” My shrill whine echoes off the stone and the trap beneath my fingertips shakes ever so slightly. The mechanism ticks and for a brief moment I worry that I may well lose my hand.

“It is not so bad lethallan.” Tamlen assures me. “I really don't know why you fear the stone the way you do.”

Of course, I know he doesn't actually mean the stone. “Because it is everywhere.” I know he means my fear of these enclosed spaces. “B- because it is a fool who does not live with the sky above them and the grass below!”

Flicking my eyes from one wall to the next I can almost see them moving closer, hear the dull grind as stone moves against stone, compacting in all around us. The heat is oppressive, sweat stings at my eyes and my fingers tremble. Of course I know that it is not real. If I concentrate hard enough I can make myself believe. Drawing in a long breath I close my eyes and carefully flex my fingers in turn. This is what I'm good at. This is what I'm best at. Confidently I brush my fingertips around the edges of the square tile, over each protrusion and in to each crevice until I can feel it. A final bead of sweat rolls over my closed eyelid and tumbles harmlessly down my cheek when I hear the click.

“See?” Tamlen slaps me on the back enthusiastically. “Nothing to fear.”

“Right... nothing at all.”

Tamlen bounds off in to the next room, sword in hand while I dust myself off and pull my gloves back on. The spider blood begins to dry and the awful smell of it is fading. If I clean them very thoroughly they may last me the remainder of the season.Bright white light floods the centre of the room. Looking up in to it I can see creases of sky and smell the scent of soil and seed.

“This place makes me nervous.”

I can see in his eyes that he really means it but I cannot help but bark out a little laugh at his expense. “What happened to 'nothing to fear'? So talk,” I reach out for his hand, patting it gently, “if that will calm you down.”

“I suppose so.” His frown etches a deep crease in to his brow but it is gone as soon as it came, replaced instead with a wide-eyed query. “Hey, weren't you supposed to be assisting Master Varathorn today? How did you end up coming with me?”

“I wanted to be with you, of course.” I'm trying so hard not to blush, trying so hard to pretend that the words don't mean a whole other thing today than they would have had I said them yesterday.

“I... thought that might be the case. I'm glad.”

And here it is again. My lips feel feel heavy and my stomach twists in knots, truly I had never thought the nervousness of romantic advances would feel so sickly sweet. Tamlen pulls gently on our joined hands, urging me closer. Somehow he extricates his fingers from my desperate grasp and folds his arms tight around me. I follow suit and wrap my arms around his neck, pressing my body flush against his. When we part, the distance feels like more than I can bear. He's going to kiss me, I know he is. I see it coming like a vision, feel it crashing down on me like a tidal wave. When he does, his lips are dry and cool and tangy from his perspiration. It is agonising. It is burning and beautiful.

Each passageway is darker than the last and the air becomes musty. I run my hands over the stout roots that have swollen so incredibly that they burst through the very stone surrounding us. We have wandered for far too long, much further from camp than we should. We have fought an army of spiders – larger than any common hound and, much to my disbelief, a handful of the walking dead. Their bones creaked and they stank of the oddly sweet smell of decay. Mere bones of the creatures that once walked here, they stood and fought, animated by some darkness unknown to me. All my fears are compounded by the narrowing archways, slim corridors and increasing darkness. I prepare myself to tell Tamlen of my cowardice, of my desire to leave when he pushes open a door, revealing the next room and inside it, a large, brilliant mirror.

Blue like a pale moonlight, the mirror shines even in the darkness. Though it is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful things I have ever laid eyes upon I know I cannot trust it. It simply feels wrong.

Tamlen's eyes are wide and he appears somehow humbled as he stares up at it. “It's beautiful, isn't it? Odd that it isn't broken like everything else.” He treads upon the first of the steps leading up to the mirror's surface and small splinters of the rock crumble underfoot. “I wonder what this writing is for.”

Another step closer to the mirror and he doesn't take his eyes from it. The hairs on my neck bristle and I can hear a faint buzzing in my ears, like that of a mosquito.

“Tamlen. We should leave this place, send for the Keeper and-”

“Hey. Did you see that?” He takes another step closer, another step further from me. “I think something moved inside the mirror.”

Goosebumps spread across my arms and a strange, light numbness seems to bite at my toes and fingertips. “Get away from it, Tamlen!”

“Abelas, emma lath. I just want to see what it is.”

Taking the final step he reaches out with trembling fingers to touch the mirror's surface. He says something about an underground city, something about a great darkness but it's getting harder to hear him over the buzzing in my head.

“It saw me!” He shouts.

And it is the last thing I hear before all sound dies and my mind explodes in to a million shards of light. ---

← prev  -  next  →

[toffeetaffy]

Ma Vhenan

-ᴍᴀᴛᴜʀᴇ ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢ- Halamshiral I always knew there would be days like this. Ashalle had said as much. Kind enough to raise me after my parents were slain, a Dalish orphan could have asked for no finer surrogate than Ashalle. Sweet, wise and strong. It is probably not so surprising that I think of her now, clutching at my neckline for the necklace she gave me. The necklace my mother had left for me. Under my groping fingers I can feel my skin- slick with blood and beneath that my pulse- slowing finally. Finally.

My people are all nimble and I, myself, possess an almost preternatural level of agility. That is why I am more than a little surprised to find myself here, lying on my back in a pool of blood, my hands upon my chest, an arrow piercing my leathers, and Alistair's sword at my side. The deep breath I take in cools the raw scratching in my throat but does little to aid the deep burning in my lungs. There's nothing else for it. The arrow has to go. A broken sigh escapes my lips as I turn on to my side and brace the arrow protruding from my flesh. With what little strength remains in my left hand, I snap the bottom half of the shaft off (with the stained and grimy fletching still amazingly in tact) and toss it aside. Worse than that, the final task remains: to extricate the last piece of the arrow, its rusted metal tip passed through my body to protrude from my back. Though I can barely see the offending object, I can feel thin slivers of my flesh clinging to it's jagged head. Deep breath in. Long breath out. Deep breath in. Then I yank the arrow out with a grunt. This I assure you is no dainty bark. This is not even the sound of a woman lost to waves of carnal pleasure. It is a guttural sound so deep and dark I can scarcely believe I uttered it. The important thing is that the arrow is out and I can plop on to my back once more, spent. Slowly the pool of blood is cooling and though it seems a strange thing to do, I can think of nothing better than using the goop to cool my feverish forehead. Swiping a long streak of crimson across my brow I trace the pattern I know rests there. My vallaslin shows two trees stretching out from my temples to embrace and entangle their branches in the centre of my forehead. A simple design that my Keeper Marethari once told me suited me so very much that it was as though my soul was drawing upon my skin and she had merely to trace along the path it forged for her. Thinking back on that day is truly bittersweet. My whole clan was happy for me, as we always are for one receiving their blood writing, but no one brimmed more fully with pride on that day than- “Tamlen.” The hoarse whisper is barely audible even to my own ears but it still prompts me to raise my head just a little to be sure no one heard. It is the first time since I awoke, caked in blood, that I have really taken in my surroundings. Opposing forces are clashing steel in the distance, thinning hordes of darkspawn fall under the combined might of dwarves, elves and humans. It is clear that my allied forces are winning. The splash and spray of spell blankets the battlements, the whole of Fort Drakon is coated in a magical gloss that is as terrifying as it is glorious. Still, though the tide has turned our losses are not trivial. For as far I can see the corpses of my men are knitted just as thickly as those of the darkspawn. A macabre tapestry. My wits are slowly returning to me and I am horrified to acknowledge even to myself, that it has only just occurred to me to seek out my companions, to be sure they are all of sound health. Amidst the crashing waves of fighters I can see Zevran striking out with unbridled exuberance, he is clearly of fine health which surprises me a little, flirting with danger the way he does. But of course, that would explain it: Wynne. Some small distance behind him Wynne casts her stream of healing magics, her whispered words and helping hands invigorating her allies; empowering, emboldening. Or who knows, maybe Zevran was right. Maybe she just has a magical bosom. A weak crackle of laughter shakes my ribs. I’m curious but nevertheless pleased to find that they do not hurt at all. And now it must be time to sit up. Running my tongue over my chapped lips introduces the faint metallic taste of blood in to my mouth and that is also a curious thing. No blood in my mouth, no aching in my ribs and no visible wound other than that of the arrow piercing, I can not help but wonder where all this blood is coming from. So at last I sit up. Turning fully around, my rear end slipping in the thickening blood, I can at last take in the full sight of the battlefield. I press my dripping red fingers to my lips to keep the desperate sobs at bay but I can not stop the stream of tears escaping my swollen eyes. Bodies. Piles upon piles of bodies. So many more than I had at first thought. So many more than I hoped possible. I struggled to pull myself up on to my knees and finally my feet but the ability to walk would not return to me. Like a newborn Halla my legs slipped and jerked about until I halted my attempts and stood motionless, legs splayed and took in the scene once more. My eyes track the pool of blood at my feet to the source: the Archdemon. Finally I let free a series of sobs and stumble a few steps forward. We have won! The tears stop and I bark out a breathy, wretched laugh that does not sound my own but I am overjoyed. The Archdemon is slain, Ferelden is saved. Then it hits me. I remember just how I came to be so ungraciously on my back, floating in a pool of the Archdemon's blood. “Alistair!” My shout is so loud and shrill I feel my own ears ringing with the intensity of it. “Alistair!” During the second attempt my voice breaks and a single tear falls from my eye. A ghastly sound, a mixture of my wretched laughter and pleading sobs comes unbidden and refuses to stop. I lean down, skimming my hand along the surface of the crimson pool and grasp the hilt of Alistair's sword in slippery fingers. Fumbling steps and buckling knees I finally manage to circle the Archdemon, dragging the tip of Alistair's sword along behind me. Those desperate sobs finally stop.

Everything stops as I remember... “Wait.” Alistair begged of me as I threw my bow to the ground and stole his longsword from his grasp, clutching it tightly to my chest. “Let me. There's no need for you to die. This is my duty, I should be the one to kill it.” Enraged blush mottled my tanned cheeks. “And what about becoming king?” “I do want to be king. I didn't,” he smiled, “ but now I do. And I want to be a good king.” A faint smile ghosted across my lips. What a brilliant king he could be. “And this right here is the best king I could be, my first and last act being to stop the Blight before it really starts.” He reached out for me, his gauntleted palm cool upon my burning cheek. “No one could blame me for that, could they?” I tore his hand from my face with trembling fingers, my ire causing my whole frame to shake. “That's not the only reason and you know it.” “You're right. I know how I feel about you. I won't let you die, not when I can do something about it.” “Wait,” I cried, my pleading soaked in desperation, “this is crazy!” A crooked smile grew across his lips. The last of his crooked smiles. “Sanest thing I've ever done.” Before my speeding heart could beat one more time his lips were against mine. With a mixture of fierce passion and crushing despair he plundered my mouth, taking what little strength he could from me, leaving me broken, wanting and unable to force my limbs in to action. Unable to stop him. He sped forward across the rooftop, toward the Archdemon. Still held tightly against my chest was my last hope, Alistair's sword. All I could do was pray. He couldn't kill the Archdemon without a sword. Closing my eyes I prayed for my wishes to be made real, for him to return the people of Ferelden as a leader, not a legacy and for the second time in my existence, I prayed for my life to be taken in place of the man I loved. I opened my eyes in time to see him pluck a discarded greatsword from atop a pile of corpses and sprint toward the Archdemon. The tainted creature beat it's shadowy wings and screamed it's sickening dirge, sensing his end. Alistair planted the tip of the blade in the creatures piebald neck and slid down on to his knees to work the sharpened edge the full length, extracting the blade finally from it's stomach. Wildly the dragon's neck flailed before crashing to the ground with a dull thud, spraying blood all around. Alistair cast one final melancholy stare my way and I sprinted towards him, certain I could still make the ultimate sacrifice for him, for Ferelden. I raised his sword clumsily in to the air, a few short strides from his side, and pressed on. Alistair pointed his sword high in to the air and spoke his last words to me. I could not hear them over the vicious thumping of my own heart in my ears, but I could see his lips pull in to a frown and whisper “I love you” before he plunged the blade in to the creatures head. A great shaft of light shot out of the bloody skull and stretched all the way in to the sky, a pillar of gold to show the world their salvation was at hand. As he removed the sword a final burst of energy exploded from the Archdemon, the shockwave sent us both flying and then, all I knew was black. I'm shaking my head because it is all I can do to make the flood of memories stop. I'm closing my eyes because it is all I can do to banish the sight of him now, limp, sailing away on a sea of demons blood. I always knew there would be days like this. ---

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[toffeetaffy]

Untitled Vincent Valentine Prompt - Ch 1

The prompt: An all too inviting nightmare. ---

Somewhere on the Western Continent...

“Lucrecia. Everything's alright now. Omega and Chaos have returned to the Planet. Thank you. It was you. You were the reason I... survived.”

One year later...

I had slept for too long, I know that now. And while at first I did not slumber voluntarily, the full length of my respite was indeed my choice. When Cloud and his company stumbled upon me there in the basement of the Shin-Ra mansion, I was little more than a monster. The experiments Hojo had performed on me were painful, cruel, and beyond mortal comprehension. He left me broken, a man filled quite literally with demons. As if these things alone were not enough, the greatest and most hurtful of these atrocities, I suffered at the hands of the only woman I had ever loved.

Lucrecia.

A petri dish of Hojo's failures and near-misses, he left me to die. For once, I thought, he would grant me what I truly wished for. My death freed me. It was after this I suffered my greatest pain, endured the cruellest irony. Lucrecia, the woman I loved, found my body and resuscitated me, infusing me with the Chaos gene. And that is what I became. Chaos itself. The last of her macabre trials was to put Protomateria in my chest, allowing me to negotiate a small degree of control over Chaos. It were these things however that caused my condition. I was immortal.

My suffering and anguish consumed me and for a long time I was driven only by revenge and rage. Hojo's death at my hands did little to assuage my pain, my anger far greater than I had ever realised. When finally I put Chaos to rest and forgave my sins I found some peace. I was mortal. I am mortal. Mortality after these many years is strange. And while I still do not look my age, one day I will perish, I will fade from this world. It was in this mortal shell that I was able to sleep... truly sleep for the first time in over 30 years.

And I dreamed.

Immediately I knew I was lost in dream. Trees bare of their leaves surrounded me, covering a long, deep valley. The sun hung low in the sky but I was surprised to find that even though it was bright, it emitted no real light. All was sepia. I looked down at my hands, palms upturned. Without my shining gold gauntlet or black leather gloves my hands looked alarmingly fragile. Alarmingly human. In the waking world I appear no different, my fingers are long and thin and now marred with the wear and tear of my ailment, my living.

As I stood there, consumed with my own indecision, I heard a voice.

“Vincent,” it whispered. The voice was soft and loving and somehow familiar. “Vincent?” It called once more.

It was then that I realised the voice was not speaking aloud.

“Where are you?” I asked. “Who are you?”

“Vincent?” Was the only reply.

I pressed my palms to my temples trying to free the caged whispers from my mind. Concentrating as hard as I could, I closed my eyes tightly and squeezed my head in my hands. A dull thudding pervaded my mind and then silence. Cautiously I opened my eyes to the forest and found that things were not how I had left them. Some distance away I could see a woman standing under one of the trees. She was tall, thin and radiantly, incalculably, immeasurably beautiful. Her wide eyes sparkled the rich colour of honey and a soft river of golden brown hair cascaded over her otherwise naked form.

“Vincent?” She called to me, her lips unmoving.

“Lu- Lucrecia?”

Gently, she smiled and then she reached out for me. Purposefully I strode forward until I could take her outstretched hand in mine. Once I grasped her slender fingers I immediately began to plant small kisses all over them, tears stinging at the back of my eyes.

“Lucrecia,” I choked, my voice suddenly hoarse, “for many years I wished for only this. For only you.”

The sweet smile fell from her face and she took her hand from my desperate clutches. “Vincent.” I heard her voice in my mind once more as her fingertips traced along my cheekbone, her light, ethereal touch setting my skin ablaze. “I came here,” she continued, “to give you something.”

I watched as she grasped the low hanging branch above us and lightly brushed her hand along the smooth bark. In the wake of her touch spots of the tree budded to life until resting in her hand, was a shiny red apple. It was the only thing of real colour and vibrancy in the amber landscape. She gently plucked it from the tree and offered it to me, her smile returning. Dumbfounded, I took the apple from her and stared at it mutely.

“You've been given a gift.” Her whisper was barely audible at the back of my mind. “Cherish it.”

With my free hand, I reached out to cup her cheek before tangling my fingers in her hair. I pulled her forward and inhaled deeply, letting the scent of her assault me and the first of my tears fall. In that moment I could feel nothing but my need for her, the raw heat I had repressed for many years began bubbling to the surface and I was aching to let it consume me. I choked back a sob and let the apple slip from my fingers so that I could grip her face between my hands and plunder her lips. My kisses were rough and smeared with my fallen tears but she said nothing. My hands were all over her bare skin, kneading, pressing and urging but she did nothing. Slowly she tried to extract herself from my embrace but I pulled her close once more and covered her mouth with mine, stealing her kisses until my lips felt bruised.

My hold on her faltered when I broke in to choked sobs and whimpers, unable to contain all the emotions I had suppressed for so long. She lingered for only a moment in my shaking embrace before retrieving the discarded apple. Her sad eyes examined it, the glossy red skin was deeply bruised and a long cut blemished its previously immaculate surface. She stilled my quaking form with her comforting touch and wiped at my reddening cheeks. Once more she offered me the apple and when I took it, her frown deepened.

“Vincent.” The whispers came again. “You've been given a gift. Cherish it.”

Then I was torn from the dream. The trees seemed to fade away and her glorious face fell into darkness. I woke up suffocating, strangled by my own anguished cries.

“Lucrecia.”

[toffeetaffy]

Flesh & Steam

-ᴍᴀᴛᴜʀᴇ ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢ- It's been like this for so long. Flesh and steam. Thrashing and bending. Spike doesn't love me, but I never asked him to. All I asked was that he bury himself inside me, strip me of any remaining wealth and take what he saw fit. He took a lot, and like anyone as lonely as me, he still takes what he can get. That's how it all started. Two lonely fuck-ups just needing to feel close to someone- anyone. But there's no one left for people like us. We both carry a taint; spreading like a plague into the hearts of everyone we touch. I guess we're both immune to the disease the other one carries, so damaged already, so close to breaking. The break, the release, never comes.

An agreement was made. Always in the dark, always without feeling and always our secret.

This time in the pitch black I've never been more torn. As his hot, sweaty fingers dig into my flesh to pull me closer, tears well up in my eyes. God, I'm not this weak! The darkness won't shroud my eyes forever, if he focuses he'll see my tears, my betrayal. With a moan and flick of my hair, I arch my back; he still has me pinned too close to the wall. He's staring at me, he's done with the games and he's ready to go. Fuck, don't let him see my tears.

Fuck!

Don't let him look right at me. I have nowhere else to turn. --- It's been like this for so long. Flesh and steam. Thrashing and bending.

She's playing games with me again. Faye plays all the games I like. When we started this I never thought I'd feel the way I do now. It was just meant to be sex. Empty. It was always empty. I don't even want to think about telling her how I feel, telling her I care for her. She's twisting away from me now- another one of her games, I guess. Her skin feels cool as I press closer to her, holding her bare form against the cold steel of the wall, a short gasp escaping her ruby lips.

An agreement was made. Always in the dark, always without feeling and always our secret.

Shit.

She knows what I'm doing. She knows I just want to hold her. Great, here we go. Now she'll chastise me; she'll squeal on about the rules, about how there's “no fucking place for my feelings” here with her, in the dark, inside her. But... but she isn't. There's no tirade. Her body presses against mine, her arms falling over my shoulders. This isn't how it normally feels- holding her close. The closeness is normally only for convenience, only so we can start the dance again; thrusting, writhing, coming... and then going. I think I hear- I think I hear her crying. ---  It's been like this for so long. Flesh and steam. Thrashing and bending.

An agreement was made. Always in the dark, always without feeling and always their secret.

But this time, in the pitch black, she's never been so torn. This time, holding her body close, he thinks he hears her crying. Perhaps... this time... they'll tell each other, “I love you”.

[toffeetaffy]

Dove

When you choose not to end the curse but instead take your place at The Wall, serving Kelemvor. --- Soft like ash, black with almost liquid shadows, the Dove's feathers fell from the flesh of her wings and dissolved into the sepia distortion of the Shadow Plane.

Failed crusader. Betrayed companion. Caged bird.

So long ago Kaelyn's grandfather had told her the gruesome tales of the Betrayer's Crusade. The great solar spoke of Myrkul, God of the Dead, and of the Wall of the Faithless that surrounded his vast city. This caliginous construct housed the fallen souls of those without faith, those with no patron deity to gather their lifeless wisps into their arms and carry them to the afterlife.

Kaelyn wept at the stories, and with each shining tear she shed, the Dove's mind became cloudier. There, atop the breath-taking heights of Mount Celestia, she vowed to make a change. Hand on heart, she had whispered a silent thank you to Akachi, and vowed to finish what he had begun.

Kaelyn guarded her friend, the wielder of the Silver Sword, with strength of heart and wisdom of experience until they reached the Betrayer's Gate. With a new resolve she could lead this band to the City of Judgement, and finally tear down The Wall.  Will unwavering she would save the suffering faithless from their slow dissolution into oblivion. 

She would bring them justice.