Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I’d never given much thought to how I would die.

If I had, though, this wouldn’t have been my first choice. In fact, it probably wouldn’t have even made the top ten.

It wasn’t until the van began to slide towards me that I realised I’d always had some vague, romantic notion of dying in a way that meant something - perhaps in the place of someone I loved. There wasn’t enough time to resign myself to the reality - that I was about to die alone, too young, before I’d really had a chance to have a life. 

In my last, helpless seconds, I found myself dwelling not on how my death would devastate my poor mother, or on how my father would no doubt blame himself. All I could think was that this wouldn’t be happening if I’d never come to Forks at all.

The van’s brakes squealed uselessly as it filled my vision.

...

In the state of Washington, on the tip of the Olympic Peninsula, there is a small logging town named Forks. This town is unremarkable in every way, except for one. Forks, Washington receives more rainfall, on average, than any other place in the continental United States. This small town is nearly permanently overcast, smothered under a constant blanket of grey cloud. 

It was Forks from which my mother, seventeen years ago, had escaped with me in tow, leaving my father behind. And it was to Forks that I had now exiled myself.

I had come from Phoenix, Arizona, a city so different from Forks in every way that it might as well have been on another planet. I hadn’t wanted to leave. The year I’d turned fourteen, I’d put my foot down and refused to spend any more summers in Forks with my father, Charlie, and I hadn’t been back since. Forks was a cold, wet, dim, green purgatory from which I felt lucky to have escaped. Despite my sickly pallor and general aversion to all things athletic, sunny, sporty Phoenix was where I belonged.

And yet, it was Forks where I was now dying.

I had no one to blame but myself, of course. I’d chosen to move to Forks, rather than play the third wheel to my mother and her new boyfriend as they travelled across the country for his baseball training camps. Renee had protested, but I knew they’d both be happier without me tagging along. And Charlie had been more than glad to have me stay with him. He’d never been one to cling, but he’d hung around like a lost puppy at first, until I’d convinced him that I wasn’t going to evaporate in the middle of the night. 

And I’d chosen to start at Forks High School in mid-March, rather than waiting until the start of the next semester. I’d thought that the social consequences would be worth not shooting myself in the foot academically. 

I shouldn’t have been worried about my grades - my high school in Phoenix was at least a grade ahead of Forks’. I should have been more worried about my peers.

More specifically, I should have been more worried about a bunch of seventeen-year-olds driving on sheer ice during the one freak snowstorm Forks had seen all winter. The snow had been worse than the rain - cold, in addition to wet - but at least it had broken up the monotony. For the span of a few minutes, I’d even foolishly allowed myself to be charmed by the sight of huge, feathery clumps of snow drifting slowly from the (as always, overcast) sky. 

That had turned out to be my last mistake.

I hadn’t seen the van pulling into the parking lot. I hadn’t seen its driver try to stop, hadn’t seen it start to slide on the ice. I hadn’t noticed it until it was too late to move.

Later, Dr. Cullen would explain that I’d been pinned between the van and the bed of my ancient truck, a ‘welcome-home’ gift from Charlie that had been the one bright spot in my exile. The crash had shattered my pelvis and severed my spine in two places. If I’d lived, I never would have walked again.

I didn’t know that, of course. I was a little preoccupied with being unconscious. 

“They’re going to notice.”

The voice was what drew me from the stupor I had been drifting in, watching the ceiling swim overhead and quietly contemplating my own imminent death. I had been wondering, I realised, how long I had been dying for. How much longer it would take. 

The voice spoke again, tugging me a little closer to the surface of consciousness, and for the first time I felt a twinge of pain from somewhere in my abdomen, around my waist. I tried to raise my head, to see what the damage was, but a kind of sleepy heaviness overwhelmed me. I focused, instead, on the voice. Words were still too difficult to pin down, but I thought I recognised the cadence, the pitch. However, my mind, full of fog as it was, couldn’t quite seem to close the gap between the voice and who it belonged to.

“This isn’t the nineteenth century, Carlisle. Someone will ask questions when she’s declared dead and no one can find her body.”

Somewhere in the room beyond my vision of pale, greenish ceiling, something was beeping incessantly. I wished that someone would shut it up, but I couldn’t seem to form the words to ask. Just drawing breath to try took a monumental effort.

Another voice, this one radiating calm and composure, entered the conversation. “Unless she receives three major organ transplants within the next hour, she is as good as dead. And you know as well as I the chances of that happening.”

I wished that the strange heaviness that made it impossible to move would at least let me breathe a frustrated sigh. At least now I had a timeline for how long I could expect this dying thing to take.

The first voice spoke again, and this time a terrifying coldness came over it, sending chills down my back even through the warm and dreamy haze that had settled over me. “Then perhaps we shouldn’t interfere.”

“Edward,” the second voice said, sternly, and my sluggish brain finally gave a jolt of comprehension. Edward. Of course. I recognised the voice from my very first biology class. Edward Cullen, the boy who’d been so repulsed by my existence that he’d fled the entire school and never come back.

I tried to summon a groan of exasperation. Really, it was just my luck.

“You can’t save them all, Carlisle.”

“My boy, I know that better than anyone.” I was pretty sure I wasn’t imagining a tinge of sorrow in the second voice, the one belonging to ‘Carlisle’. “But don’t I owe it to her to at least try?”

“Don’t you owe it to her not to condemn her to an eternity of suffering just so that you and Esme can pair me off?” Edward snapped, and I felt a wave of heat beginning, slowly, to rise up my chest towards my face. The sudden, overwhelming feeling that I shouldn’t be hearing this conversation overtook me, but I couldn’t seem to get my arms to work to come up and cover my ears. “Remember Rosalie? Don’t put us all through that again.”

“Your concerns are noted,” ‘Carlisle’ said lightly. “But I do consider more than your romantic prospects in these cases, you know. She’s still so young, she has so much more life ahead of her - to let her die like this would not only be cruelty, it would be an injustice. Besides, wasn’t she your -”

It was about then that I was distracted by a throb of pounding pain from my abdomen. Suddenly, my voice decided to work. I managed a decent yelp, and the two voices shut up instantly.

“She’s awake - you didn’t tell me she’d be awake.”

“She’s not supposed to be.”

Something cold flooded through the back of my hand, spreading quickly up my arm, and the ceiling began to swim again, the pain slowly dissolving along with the rest of my body. As my vision started to dim, I saw a beautiful face - the kind of face Botticelli might have dreamed of, the kind of face that would have made Michaelangelo weep - lean into my line of sight, and smile.

Then a tidal wave of sleep dragged me under.

...

When I woke up, I was on fire.

There were no words to describe the pain, even if I'd been able to speak them. It would have been like trying to describe a sunset to a person who's been blind all their life. No matter what I said, it would never quite measure up to the real thing.

When the burning finally faded enough that I could focus on anything other than how much I hurt, the ceiling had changed. Rather than the pale, antiseptic hospital green I’d seen before, this was a pleasant shade of warm white, welcoming and soft. 

It took a moment for me to make sure all my limbs were where I remembered them being. 

When I finally managed to sit up, I discovered that the large, elegantly furnished room I'd found myself in was occupied. I vaguely recognised some of the alabaster faces gathered around my bedside, but in this strange setting, I couldn't place where I knew them from. Most of them - three girls, three boys - appeared young, not much older than me, but there was something in the way all of them held themselves, something in their beautiful amber eyes, that made them all seem much, much older. The thought whispered through my head that, apart from their clothing, none of them would have seemed particularly out of place in a sepia photograph.

“What happened?” I managed to ask, shuddering at the rasp of my own voice. My throat ached, stung, like I’d swallowed an entire bottle of hot sauce and chased it with sand. 

The apparent oldest of the boys, the one all the others seemed to turn towards without even realising they were doing so, pushed himself up from the armchair he'd settled into and approached my sickbed. He flashed me a dazzling smile, his sparkling white teeth only the palest shade lighter than his marble-fine skin. I had to stuff down the urge to reach out and run my hand along his forearm where the rolled-back sleeve of his button-down shirt exposed it, to see if it was really as smooth and unblemished as it looked. 

Now that I was looking, I realised that all of them had the same colouration, as though they'd never seen sunlight, and the same tawny, almost golden eyes. And, of course, they were all breathtakingly beautiful. Despite their apparent physical differences, they almost looked like they were all related.

It finally occurred to me where I'd seen them - at least, most of them - before. I'd been struck, before, by how beautiful, how otherworldly, the Cullen siblings - foster-siblings, but no one would know it to look at them - appeared against the drab, mundane background of the cafeteria of Forks High School. Even without anything so ordinary as a high school cafeteria to contrast against, I still found myself fascinated, by the play of light on Rosalie Hale's cascade of golden hair, by the swanlike arch of Alice's slender throat, by the sculpted angles of Jasper Hale's marble face.

Edward, I noticed, was conspicuously absent.

The one woman I didn't recognise, I decided, must be the siblings' foster mother, Esme. Which meant that the man who'd approached me had to be Dr. Cullen. Neither of them, strangely, looked much older than their charges.

In fact, everything about this was strange. Where was I? Why was I here? Was the conversation I'd overheard between Dr. Cullen and Edward - could it possibly have been real? How else could I have come to be here? A multitude of questions rushed forward to the front of my mind, but they all crashed up against each other before they could make it to my tongue.

I couldn't, I realised, hear my own heartbeat.

Despite the burning rasp in my throat, I managed to choke out, "Am I dead?"

Dr. Cullen's brilliant smile looked almost apologetic as he said, "The answer to that is somewhere between yes and no."

...

In the end, the Denali agreed to come to us. I couldn't stay in Forks, not with everyone believing I was dead, and even with seven of them, the Cullens still didn't want to risk traveling up the coast alone with a newborn vampire.

A newborn vampire. The most powerful, bloodthirsty, dangerous being in existence.

Me.

It didn't quite seem real, and the endless, oppressive green dark of Forks didn't help me feel any more grounded. It also didn't help that my new eyes could see a thousand different shades of green, the constant monotone gloom of Forks transforming into a rainbow of light and shadow before my eyes. Forks had always seemed a little otherworldly, a little unreal, but now it was practically bursting with colour and scent and sound and light - an impossible fairyland. I couldn’t imagine seeing the whole world this way. 

It was almost unfathomable to think that I didn’t need to imagine it. That I would experience it, firsthand, soon enough.

“Don’t worry,” Alice said, sweetly, reaching up to rest a hand on my shoulder. “It’s going to be fine.” 

“Because you...saw it.”

Alice winked, and tapped a finger lightly against her temple. That was another thing I was going to have to get used to. Superpowers. 

“And don’t worry about Edward. He’s only avoiding you because -”

Just like that, any hopefulness I might have felt about the whole situation evaporated into the chilly grey pre-dawn air. “Thank you, for the reminder that I’m literally so repulsive that the sight of me drove your, uh, brother away for good.”

Alice let out a little huff that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. “It’s got nothing to do with you. He and Carlisle just need to bare their teeth at each other for a while, get it out of their systems.” Her smile turned knowing as she added, “My ‘uh, brother’ finds you anything but repulsive. Trust me.”

I was beginning to learn that a knowing smile from Alice was far worse than a knowing smile from anyone else.

It took a moment for me to find my voice again. “Oh. Great. Because this was all just going too well already.”

Alice’s laughter was bright as delicate silver bells. She patted my shoulder, once, before reaching up to tuck a lock of my hair behind my ear. “Don’t worry, we’ll be right there beside you all the way to Alaska. Have fun, make new friends!” she trilled, before pirouetting away.

She didn’t mention that the only reason she and the Cullens would be beside me was because they would be flanking the truck - according to the plan they’d put together over the phone the night before, two driving ahead, two following, and the other three on foot - in case I went berserk on the highway somewhere. I could understand why. The burning in the back of my throat was incessant and insistent, barely calmed at all by the entire doe Emmett had dragged back for me after Carlisle had decided there was too much risk of me meeting hikers in the woods to go - hunting - myself. In a strange way, I found it reassuring. Maybe I hadn’t asked for this new life, but now that I had it, I didn’t really want to start it out by literally biting someone’s head off.

Still, there was no way I was going to make new friends. I approached the huge black mud-spattered pickup truck that pulled into the driveway of the glass-and-steel phantasmagoria that served the Cullens for a house feeling pretty much the same as I imagined someone would walking up to the executioner’s block. So, about the way I’d felt on my first day of school.

This was different, though. At least facing down Forks High School on that first morning, I’d known that, six hours later, I’d be heading back home, to a quiet dinner with Charlie, who probably wouldn’t ask any awkward questions I didn’t want to answer. That I’d call Renee, my mom, that night, endure her prying about whether I met any cute boys, find out how she and Phil were liking Florida, just talk. That I’d be able to go out on the weekend and maybe talk cars with Jacob Black. That, even if I was alone in a sea of new faces, even if everything went terribly and everyone hated me, I still had somewhere to go back to. Still had someone on my side.

Staring at the impossibly beautiful strangers piling out of the truck to take me away to my new life, I realised I’d never been so entirely alone.

Chapter Text

The cab of the truck was too close. 

I found myself wedged into the narrow, rigid backseat, my knees pushed up against the rough fabric covering the front seats, between two women who were both solid contestants with Rosalie Hale for the most stunning blonde I’d ever seen. A third Amazonian blonde sat in the front, with the driver, a man who looked like he’d just strolled out of a magazine ad, and a brunette with the most luxurious thick curls cascading down to the middle of her back. Next to all of them, I felt like a circus clown who’d somehow inadvertently wandered into the middle of a runway show. 

The driver had cracked a joke about red not being my colour when he’d introduced himself - Eleazar, if I recalled right. It was the kind of old-fashioned name I wasn’t likely to easily forget. I hoped the laugh I’d managed in response had been convincing. The woman to my left - Tanya, the smallest of the trio of golden Graces, her amber eyes huge and doe-like in her elfin face - had given me the most challenging look I’d ever received when Eleazar had helped me up beside her, and then had turned to look out the window and refused to acknowledge my existence.

It was going to be a long ride to Alaska. 

And not just a long ride - I could expect, from what Carlisle had told me, to spend at least the next year in isolation with these people. Only these people. To have made an enemy of one of them already - I couldn’t imagine that that was a good sign.

The woods whipped past us as the truck tore up the winding road that led into the Cullens’ home, tucked away in its hidden clearing like a woodcutter’s cottage in a fairy tale. Eleazar took the hairpin turns at a speed that I knew I would have found terrifying before. Now, it seemed almost natural. Even seemed, though I could tell how fast we must be going, could see the speedometer over his shoulder inching up towards 100, a little slow.

I didn’t want to think about the paradox any longer, about what it meant. Instead, I turned my attention out the window to my right, past the taller blonde - Irina, I believed her name was - to the evergreens flickering past, blurring into a curtain of deep green drawn between me and the world. I realised I was holding my breath. I didn’t know how long I’d been holding it for.

“We have to go through Forks to get to the highway,” I said, shattering the tense stillness that lay over the rumble of the engine and the rattle of gravel against the undercarriage. For a moment, I thought of my own beautiful old beast of a truck, its rusting, faded cherry-red paint and the animal roar of its engine, and had to swallow the unexpected lump that rose in my throat. Would the truck default to Charlie, now that I was dead? Would it even be drivable anymore, after the crash? Would Charlie keep it, painful reminder that it would be? Would he sell it for scrap?

“She’s right,” Tanya said, the first words I’d heard her speak. Her voice was surprisingly low, and smooth. I could imagine her singing jazz in a smoky club somewhere, jewels in the gentle, flowing waves of her dark-golden hair and dark lipstick outlining her narrow mouth. 

“True,” the third blonde - Carmen? - agreed. “Carlisle told her family that she was airlifted to California. I can’t remember if he’s told them she’s died yet, but either way, she’s definitely not meant to be driving through town in a pickup truck, in the company of strangers.”

“I was thinking more of the possibility that she’d launch herself out the window and rip someone’s throat out with her teeth,” Tanya said, turning back towards the window. It didn’t take my new, supernatural hearing to catch the derisive edge in her words.

“There’s an old logging road up the mountain,” Eleazar said, with a darting glance in the rearview mirror. “We should be able to go right around the town.”

It seemed fitting, somehow. After all that Forks had put me through, I wasn’t even going to get a chance to give it one last look. 

“Still,” the Amazon in the front seat said, with a quick glance over her shoulder at me. “She must be starving. If we come too close to a logging camp -”

“That danger is why we agreed we had to get her north as soon as possible, Kate,” the brunette said, a hint of warning in her tone. So she must be the one named Carmen, then. “We can’t risk taking her hunting so near so many trails, so many hikers…”

I had to shut my eyes, forced myself to hold my breath again, try to focus on the engine as it roared up through the gears and not on the voices around me. It was no use. I couldn’t shake the image from my mind, couldn’t dispel the thought of all the warm, living, human bodies trekking through these very woods, right now, soft and slow and unsuspecting, so far from civilisation that nothing human would hear them scream - 

I pressed a hand against my mouth, digging the fingers of my left hand into my leg just above my knee until both the tendons in my hand and the muscle under them were aching. It didn’t work. I doubted even a railroad spike through the head right now would be enough to distract me from the agonising burn that clawed up the back of my throat.

I just needed it to stop. To go away. And there was only one thing that I knew would soothe the pain.

Before I could so much as make a sound, though, a hand wrapped around my left wrist. The grip was just a little too tight for mere reassurance, but somehow, that wary, warning grasp was more comfort to me than a simple held hand would have been. The pressure on my wrist reminded me, not only that I was not alone, but that the people who were now trying to support me also wouldn’t hesitate to stop me if I lost control.

“Hold your breath,” Tanya’s voice said, short and clipped, from beside me, and the grip on my wrist tightened before slackening again. “It’s not as though you need it.”

I wanted to answer back that I’d need it if I wanted to speak, but I didn’t dare take in the breath I’d need to say it. The uncharitable thought crossed my mind that maybe this was what she’d wanted. I shook it off. I didn’t even know her. There was no reason for her to hate me this much.

A memory of Edward’s look of pure disgust, that first and only time I’d sat beside him in biology, the fist he’d held clenched under the desk, the way he’d looked at me on his way out of the guidance counsellor’s office, sprang unbidden to my mind. I tried my best to brush it aside. 

…

We had been driving for about an hour when Carmen asked, slowly, like she’d been thinking about it for some time, “How are we going to get her across the border?”

“We’ll take the ferry,” Eleazar said. “Avoid the lineups at border patrol. Isabella, how are you with confined spaces?”

“It’s just Bella,” I said, to my knees. “I’ve…never really had a problem with them. I’m sorry, what does that have to do with crossing the border?” 

Beside me, Tanya let out a derisive huff. I ignored her. 

“We’ve all got ID to get across into Canada,” Eleazar explained, kindly. “But you’re supposed to be dead.”

“And you’re much more likely to eat the border patrol officer,” Tanya said, to the window. 

I bit my bottom lip. “So…how are we going to get around this?”

Tanya raised her head from the hand she’d been leaning it against, turning to give me a big, mischievous, not entirely friendly smile. “We’re going to put you in the coffin.”

“You’re putting me in a what?” I exclaimed. 

“It’s not a real coffin,” Irina sighed. “The back seat folds up. There’s a space underneath it. It can be a bit cramped, but…” She looked me up and down. “You should fit.”

I swallowed down the protests that bubbled up, threatening to burst from my mouth. The Denali were right - if I wasn’t hidden, somehow, getting through Canada to Alaska was going to be nearly impossible. Still, I couldn’t help but feel that Tanya seemed a little too amused about putting me in something they called a coffin.

“Okay,” I said, instead, biting my tongue and nodding to indicate that I understood. “Okay, if it’ll get us through safe.” 

“I’m not so sure it will,” Kate said, shooting me a sympathetic look from the front seat. “That many humans, packed into that tight a space, with no way out except overboard? Are we really planning to take a newborn into the middle of that?”

“Well, let’s ask Isabella,” Tanya said, tossing her golden hair and grinning at me. Her smile still seemed a little too mischievous, but this time, at least, I felt like I was being included in the joke. “Bella, how do you feel about walking along the seafloor to Alaska?”

I had to shake my head, trying to clear my thoughts. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Well, it’s not as though we need to breathe,” Tanya said, fixing Kate with an intense stare that Kate returned, unblinking. “You won’t need to come up for air. And there’s no other way to get you back home to Denali without going through a border crossing.”

I bit my bottom lip, unable to tell if Tanya was joking or not. “Sorry, I - don’t think I’m ready to look at the world from a crab’s-eye view.”

“Whyever not? You’ve been a vampire for almost ten full hours already,” Tanya said, still not taking her eyes from Kate’s face. Kate’s eyebrows rose, and she shrugged as if to admit defeat before turning back around. “We’ll be there, we’ll keep an eye on her. So long as she stays in the coffin and doesn’t breathe, everything should be fine.”

Irina gave me an uneasy look, which she turned into a pitying smile when she noticed me looking back at her. I bit my bottom lip and turned away, into Tanya’s glittering grin instead. 

…

The coffin was everything it was promised to be. I lay still inside it, my knees drawn up close to my chest, holding my breath, as the muffled sound of voices lapped over me from outside. I wished I could fall asleep, but Carmen had warned me that we didn’t sleep. At all.

Alone in the dark, with nothing to focus on but my own thoughts, the full weight of what had happened to me started to settle in.

I was a vampire.

The thought was too big to take in all at once. It came, instead, in short bursts of realisation, as I tallied up everything I’d lost.

My parents thought I was dead. I’d never see Charlie or Renee - or even Phil - ever again. Charlie would blame himself. Renee would blame herself - and, if I knew them, she’d be much more dramatic about it, but at least now she had Phil to take care of her, to make sure she ate and slept and got to work and that there was food in the fridge and the bills were paid. Charlie had no one.

I didn’t want to think of him, alone, in Forks, having lost now not just the woman he loved but the daughter he’d tried so hard to hold onto, any more than I wanted to think of Renee falling to pieces without me, after I’d been her anchor for so long. I made myself move on from the thought. But I only stumbled onto more tragedies.

I’d never see Phoenix again. I wasn’t certain how these vampires worked - most of my knowledge came from the dreadful horror TV shows Angela liked - but the one thing that seemed to be common throughout vampire mythologies was that they couldn’t go out in the sun. Come to think of it, I was pretty sure the only days the Cullen siblings had skipped had been sunny. I was doomed to an eternity of Forks’ gloom. And, of course, that was only if I didn’t tear out anybody’s throat with my teeth and get justifiably ripped to shreds by the Denali.

No matter how you looked at it, I was dead.

I drew my knees up towards my chest, tucking my arms in close to my chest, and shut my eyes, taking slow, deep breaths. The corners of my eyes burned, but tears refused to come.

…

The truck shuddered to a stop, and the rumble of the engine died. There were scuffling sounds overhead as Irina, Kate, and Tanya climbed out of the backseat, and then the sound of the doors opening and shutting. The voices I’d heard faded into the distance, and then, I was alone in the dark.

I’d only just begun to relax into the silence and the gentle motion of the ferry in the water when the seat suddenly swung open and Tanya’s voice said, loud and clear, “You can come out now.”

The gasp was reflexive. I knew as soon as I opened my mouth that I’d made a mistake, but the damage was done. Clapping both hands over my nose and mouth, I tried not to breathe, not to think about the tantalising thunder of heartbeats all around me, the rich, heady perfume of hot, living, pumping, human blood - 

“Do you want me to snap?” I managed to rasp out, around the sickening burn in the back of my throat.  “To murder a bunch of innocent people and have to be put down like some kind of rabid animal? Because if you do, this is really the way to do it.”

Tanya’s stare was piercing. 

“Of course I don’t want innocent people to die,” she said, in a tone that implied anything but. “I’m a vegetarian.”

“So it’s just me you have a problem with,” I said. Tanya shrugged one marble shoulder. “Why?”

Tanya drew back, looking affronted. 

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” she said. “I don’t know how you bewitched him, but I won’t let you get away with it.”

I blinked. 

“I don’t -” I started, but Tanya tossed her hair back over her shoulders, a wave of honey-gold that sent a smell of ice and vanilla sweeping over me. 

“Please, don’t play dumb. You enchanted Edward with your demure, quiet, thoughtful act and your perfect skin and hair and your - girl-next-door charm, just so you could become one of us, didn’t you?” 

I could feel my own mouth hanging open, but I couldn’t seem to bring myself to close it. 

“You think I wanted this,” I managed, at last, pushing myself up out of the coffin so that I was face to face with Tanya. “You think I planned to get run over by a runaway truck, so that Dr. Cullen might turn me into a vampire without asking me.” I ran a hand through my hair, unable to believe the evidence of my own ears. “Sure. What sane, rational person wouldn’t?”

Tanya’s eyes narrowed, and she canted her head to one side to glare at me.

“Do you really think I’m stupid? Edward couldn’t shut up about you the whole time he stayed with us.” Tanya rolled her amber eyes, leaning on one arm so that her golden curls fell over the curve of her perfect breasts like silk. “Bella’s shining cascades of chestnut hair, Bella’s perfect porcelain skin, Bella’s lips and how she bit the bottom one until it was flushed and practically begging to be kissed, Bella’s mysterious, shielded mind - you’d think no other woman had ever existed.”

I held up a hand to stop her. “You think…I…seduced Edward Cullen.”

“I thought it was preposterous, too,” Tanya said, swaying her shoulders slightly back and forth, like a big cat prowling towards her prey. I pressed myself back against the back wall of the coffin, and she smiled, all teeth. “But now I’ve met you, and I’ve seen your little act…no, I’m not surprised you wormed your way into Edward’s head.” She sucked in a breath, her smile fading as her fascinating eyes flicked up and down, taking me in in a glance. “At all.”

I had to pause, to shake my head. 

“Do we know two different Edward Cullens?” I asked, and Tanya looked at me like she’d like to set me on fire. “The one I met dropped out of school and apparently moved to Alaska just to get away from me, after we made eye contact twice.”

I shrank back a little when Tanya literally bared her teeth, her rosebud lips curling back over her gums like a feral animal. She tossed her head back, drawing in a deep breath, and obviously composed herself, shutting her eyes for a moment before she locked gazes with me again.

“You expect me to believe,” she said, her voice tightly controlled and furious, “that, after all of these years I’ve known Edward, after everything I’ve done to try to get his attention, it took you only two glances to completely possess his heart and wipe all thought of any other woman from his head.”

“Is that why you’re so angry?” I asked, the realisation striking me like a thunderbolt. “You have a crush on Edward, but he doesn’t like you back?”

Tanya scowled. She pushed herself up from her perch on the edge of the coffin, staring down at me like I was a butterfly and she was holding a pin. 

“You’d better stay in the coffin,” she said. “It would be just awful if you got out and something went…wrong.”

She slammed the coffin’s lid on me.

…

With Tanya gone, the coffin seemed too close, stuffy and hot and restrictive. Even with my eyes shut, holding my breath, it was harder to hear the faint slap of water against the ferry than it was to hear the chatter of voices out on deck. It still felt strange and unnatural not to breathe, and I couldn’t help feeling like I was about to choke, but I didn’t dare take a breath. I could still feel that burning at the back of my throat. I almost wished Tanya would come back, just so I could hear the sound of another person’s voice. 

It took me too long to realise that I was hearing the sound of another person’s voice. Two other persons, actually. And they weren’t chattering up on deck. 

I pressed a fist against my mouth, biting down hard on my knuckles as the conversing couple drew closer to the truck. It didn’t help. I could hear blood pounding in my ears, and it wasn’t mine.

The lid of the coffin lifted, almost like in a dream, a pale arm pushing it up from inside. I watched, transfixed, hardly recognising it as my own. I shouldn’t be doing this, I knew, but I couldn’t seem to think of why. 

The coffin’s lid fell open and I rose, feeling a little like I was being helped to my feet by a kind stranger. The parking garage smelled sweet and fresh in comparison to the stifling air of the coffin, with a hint of brine from the ocean around us barely noticeable under the smell of exhaust and hot, fresh, living blood.

The truck door gave a heavy thunk as it swung open, and the young couple walking through the rows of parked vehicles turned to look. I wondered, absently, what they must think they were seeing as I slipped down out of the backseat. Unnatural pallor, blazing red eyes…a predator’s gait, as I started towards them -

A hand locked around my wrist like a vise. 

I spun to face the interloper, wrenching my arm free, and Tanya stared back at me. It wasn’t the bitter glare she’d directed at me before, just a stern and serious look, like a warning.

“Hold your breath,” she said, darting a glance over towards the young couple, who started to hurry away from us, watching fearfully over their shoulders as they went. I took a step towards them, away from Tanya, and she gripped me by the shoulder, tugging me back and spinning me around to face her. 

Again, I wrenched myself out of her grip. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” Tanya demanded, in a tone so low I was certain the human couple couldn’t hear her. “The ferry ride is almost over. All you have to do is not kill anyone until we hit Canada.”

I turned to look behind me, towards the leaving humans, and Tanya snapped her fingers in my face. “Hey! Are you still in there?”

I turned back to the humans, ignoring her. According to the Cullens, I had a newborn’s strength, which would be more than enough to overpower a single vampire. Not to mention the two humans. And even with their superhuman speed, the others were out on deck and wouldn’t be able to reach us before I’d already drained both of the humans dry, already satiated the burning need clawing through my throat and starting to work its way down into my chest. 

Tanya couldn’t stop me.

Behind me, Tanya let out a long sigh, and I knew she was thinking the same thing. 

“Fine,” she said, and then pulled me around and slapped me across the face with surprising force.

While I was still blinking in surprise, Tanya shoved me back towards the open truck door. “Get back in the coffin, and don’t come out. I’ll stay here. Obviously you need supervision.”

The coffin was the last place I wanted to be, but I complied. Tanya shut the coffin lid on me again, hastily, and then I heard the upholstery creak as she sat down on the backseat.

I lay in the dark for what felt like an eternity before Tanya’s voice said, from somewhere overhead, “Just so you know, that meant nothing. I had to do something to startle you.”

“I thought you wouldn’t care if I killed someone and had to be disposed of,” I shot back. 

There was a faint huff, and Tanya’s voice drifted in through the coffin’s walls. “I couldn’t do that to my family.” There was a pregnant pause, before she added, “And…Carmen and Eleazar gave my sisters and me a chance. You deserve one as well.”

The darkness of the coffin seemed to press down on me.

“Thank you,” I managed, finally. “For not letting me murder innocent people.”

There was a smile in Tanya’s voice as she said, “Don’t mention it.”

…

After that, it was as though a spell had broken. Tanya sat and talked with me until the ferry docked. She seemed reluctant at first, but once I told her that it was much easier to listen to the sound of her voice than the heartbeats out on deck, she barely stopped for breath. She told me about Alaska, about her home, about what I could expect for my first year as a vampire. The longer we talked, too, the more my horror at the end of my human life started to turn to a strange sort of…anticipation. Even excitement. 

As I turned it over in my head, the prospect of life (unlife?) as a vampire only grew more appealing. I’d never age. Never get sick. Never die. Never, if my new instincts were anything to go by, trip over a blade of grass again. And even if I did, it wasn’t likely I was going to be breaking any bones. More likely I’d break whatever I fell on.

I’d never have to see any of my old classmates again. As far as they were concerned, I no longer existed. Any grudges or crushes or high school politics that involved me had died with me. And - if I understood correctly what the Cullens and the Denali had said about Alaska - I might never have to set foot in another high school, ever again. It seemed almost too good to be true.

Thanks to the Cullens, I no longer had to worry about money - or time. I could do whatever I wanted, go wherever I wanted - so long as I could learn to control myself, of course, but as the minutes ticked by and I finally felt able to breathe again, that seemed less and less of an obstacle. I could travel the world, learn a thousand languages, study history and classic literature. Nothing was beyond my reach.

I was faster now. Stronger. More sure. And maybe I had yet to see it in myself, but - all I had to do was look around me, to see what I could become. What I was becoming. Graceful. Powerful. Beautiful.

I had forever to become the person I wanted to be.

The one thing I wished, as the truck bumped onto the ferry that was to take me to my new life, was that I’d had a choice.

The drive up through British Columbia and the border crossing into Alaska were thankfully uneventful. Tanya, who’d been so eager to pretend I didn’t exist, suddenly couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of me. Every time I turned, every glimpse I caught out of the corner of my eye, she was staring at me, first with an intense, vicious glare, then with this laser focus that I couldn’t quite pin down. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to figure me out or planning to slap me again.

The Cullens were waiting outside the Denali house when we pulled up and piled out of the truck. I recognised Dr. and Mrs. Cullen, Alice and Rosalie, Jasper and Emmett - and Edward. 

If my heart had been beating, it would have frozen in my chest. 

Edward’s eyes fixed on me, and didn’t leave my face for an instant. I caught myself shrinking back, all but hiding behind Kate, and forced myself to step forward, trying to ignore his gaze. I wondered, briefly, if this was how the human couple on the ferry had felt when I’d stepped out of the truck to chase them down. 

“Bella,” Edward said, leaving his family to saunter over to me, ignoring the others and their greetings. I squared my shoulders and met his unwavering stare. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Tanya stop, but I didn’t dare break eye contact with Edward to look over at her.

“Edward,” I said, and he broke into a brilliant, disbelieving smile.

“I’m sorry - I can’t believe you’re here,” he said, reaching out to brush a stray lock of hair away from my face. I took a half-step back, but he didn’t seem to notice or care, softly rubbing my hair between his fingers with an expression like a man seeing snow for the first time. “I can’t believe this is real. I wish -” and his expression went dark - “I wish that Carlisle had never sentenced you to this life, this damnation…but if we must be damned, at least we can face eternity together.”

I couldn’t move. It took me what felt like an eternity to find my voice.

“Do you also make a habit of smelling strangers’ hair?” I managed to ask, finally, and Edward looked at me like I’d grown a second head. 

“Bella,” he said, in a tone that implied his patience was strained by my inability to comprehend, “you’re safe now. Safe from me. I - I may be rushing things, but I can’t stay away from you. I can’t resist you.” He let go of the lock of my hair, reluctantly, his eyes never leaving mine. “I never could.”

“Thanks for letting me know,” I said, taking two large steps backwards, away from him. I glanced over at Tanya, expecting to see her glaring daggers at me, murderously angry once more that I’d somehow caused this fixation Edward seemed to have on me. 

And Tanya was glaring. But she wasn’t glaring at me.

Edward took a step forwards, towards me, his eyes never leaving my face. I planted both feet against the ground, tossing my hair back over my shoulder the way I’d seen Tanya do on the ferry, and stared him down. He seemed to hesitate, for a moment, but then he stepped forward again and laid a hand on my shoulder. “Bella -”

Before I could shrug him off, Tanya’s hand was on his wrist. 

“You made eye contact with her twice and then vanished,” she said, shortly, to Edward, still glaring at him like she wanted to impale him with her gaze. “You’re a complete stranger to her. And I think you’re frightening her.”

By the look on his face, Edward seemed almost as stunned as I felt. His disbelief quickly shifted to rage, though, that darkness creeping back into the ambery gold of his eyes as he shook Tanya’s hand off of his wrist, thankfully letting go of my shoulder. “If this is another attempt to work your way in between us -”

“What ‘us’?” I asked, unable to believe what I’d just heard. Edward, at least, looked a little contrite at my words, though he quickly recovered. 

“Bella, I’ve wanted you since the moment I first laid eyes on you,” he started, and I interrupted him before he could go any further.

“You’ve got a funny way of showing it.”

“You don’t understand.” The look in his eyes had turned pleading, a softness to their honey colour that I might have melted for if I hadn’t just seen how quickly they could darken in anger. “I had to stay away from you for your own safety. Your blood - it was irresistible to me. But now - I love you, Bella. And I have all of eternity to show you that.”

I shook my head. “You don’t know anything about me.“

“I want to learn.” Edward’s gaze was powerfully intense, and I could almost feel myself shrinking beneath it.

“Edward,” Rosalie said sharply, drawing Edward’s attention. She had her arms crossed over her chest, shaking her head, but Alice beside her was beaming. 

“I told you!” she chirped, clapping her hands together in obvious delight. I could practically see the wedding bells chiming in her eyes. 

I looked around, but no one other than Rosalie seemed at all disturbed by what was happening. As usual, I was on my own.

Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe I really had misjudged Edward, and if I got to know him, I’d discover that I really did love him. Maybe this really was what my whole life had been leading up to. Maybe this was my forever.

But, I realised, this time, the choice was mine.

“No,” I said. 

“Bella,” Edward said, a note of threat in his voice. “Don’t be foolish.”

“I’m not the one talking about eternity with a girl I’ve never spoken to,” I shot back. There was an audible, scandalized gasp from somewhere behind me, and I caught a glimpse of Rosalie with a hand over her mouth, obviously hiding a smile. 

Tanya looked from me, to Edward, and back at me again, her expression dark and her bottom lip between her teeth. 

“You know what, you two should really give each other a chance,” I said, looking back up at Edward, under my lashes, like I’d seen Tanya do. “Get to know Tanya better. I think you two might really get along.”

Edward shook his head, and I could see barely-restrained fury in the tense lines of his shoulders, the slight movement of his jaw. “Of course. She’s poisoned you,” he said, darting a wicked look in Tanya’s direction. “Bella, I know you’re too kind, too selfless, to stand in the way of another, but you don’t have to step aside for her sake. It’s you I want, not her.”

Tanya’s eyes narrowed. I could feel my own narrowing as well.

“Fine,” I said, my mind whirling as I tried to think of a way out of this. “I wanted to let you down easy, but…”

Tanya met my eyes as I turned to her, and I could tell that she was thinking the same thing I was. I let out a breath of relief, and leaned forward, cupping her face in my hands.

She leaned in at the same time I did, and our lips met.

I’d expected the kiss to be awkward, uncomfortable. I’d expected to have to pretend to enjoy it, to act like I had fallen madly in love with Tanya. But after only a second of trying not to knock our noses together, the kiss was…nice. Tanya’s breath was cold and sweet, a little like vanilla and mint, and when she caught my bottom lip between her teeth, it sent a little electric jolt down my spine.

When we broke apart, Edward looked practically incandescent with fury. I held my breath, waiting for the explosion, but he only turned and stormed away, towards the house. Rosalie stepped aside to let him by, and I thought I saw her shoulders shake with barely-contained laughter.  Alice let out a short wail of despair, before stamping one foot against the ground and running after her brother. “Edward? Edward, wait -”

Tanya met my eyes, and I saw a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “Well. I didn’t know you felt that way,” she said, her golden eyes sparkling with mischief, and I let out the breath I’d been holding, long and slow.

“Thank you,” I said, looking down at my hands as I tucked a lock of hair behind my ear nervously. “You didn’t have to -”

Tanya reached out, catching one of my hands in hers, and I looked up, surprised, to see her smiling.

“I’m not sure that was convincing enough,” she said. “I think we’d better practice, in case we ever need to do that again.”

I had to press a hand over my own mouth to hold in the burst of laughter. 

“I think you’re right,” I answered.