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'Unlike the rest of us you have a choice, and you're choosing wrong.' Wasn't that what Rosalie had said? I wasn't sure. That was back then, from Before. Everything from Before was blurry. Hazy and shimmery like a warm summer afternoon spent under the sun. The kind of afternoon that has you falling asleep on a beach towel, and waking up a few hours later thirsty and disoriented.
Bella had sympathized with Rosalie at the time. Her choice was taken away from her; her future, her dreams. Of course she'd view Bella's decision as incorrect. For all the disdain and dislike she had thrown Bella's way she was trying to be helpful. The sentiment was appreciated, but largely ignored.
Edward was perfect, they ALL were perfect. Immortal, sparkly, strong, graceful, gifted, beautiful. Anything and everything the boring, plain, clumsy, mortal Bella Swan wasn't. She wasn't worthy of them. Their friendship, their kindness, their love. She didn't even deserve to be in the same room as them, but if she changed.. If she became better, something other than herself, maybe then she'd feel like she belonged. Maybe then she'd feel like she was worth something. Worth all this hassle she seemed to attract wherever she went. What was the point of all this anyway if she had died of old age or just due to being a human magnet for trouble?
The yearning to be worthy, special. The overwhelming guilt when faced with everything the Cullens went through for her. In the end there really was no other choice for her. Her deal with the Voltori non withstanding.
Cutting their honeymoon short under the news that Bella was pregnant felt like a sign. She HAD made the right choice after all. She was getting her cake and eating it too. She could be this perfect marble statue alongside Edward while being a wife and mother.
She had desperately wanted a boy. Wanted little EJ to be just like his father, perfect. Not being cursed with any of her own flaws. Instead she had a girl, but Edward had seemed to prefer it that way, so how could she object?
Everything had fallen into place in the end. The Voltori were leaving them alone, for now. Renesmee solved the Jacob problem and the Pack problem. I got to keep Charlie. All's well it ends well, right?
In that little bubble of time, where everything seemed to culminate and sort itself out in record speed, it was easy to agree. Easy to get swept up along in the riptide and be dragged out to sea. In the rush and tumble of everything you don't even realize that you're drowning until everything stills, and you can breathe. Or not breathe, more accurately.
That's where I found myself, years down the line. Too far down the line to change anything even if I'd wanted to. So I smiled in a way that fooled everyone but myself and pressed on. I lived in a cottage filled with furniture and decorations Bella would've never picked out. A closet full of clothes Bella would've hated. A car that would've had Bella scrambling to walk rather than drive. A husband that under normal, human circumstances, Bella would've hated everything about. A best friend that treated me like a Barbie doll in a way Bella would've detested. A family that would've felt suffocating and fake to Bella— again, under normal human circumstances. A daughter that Bella would've felt guilty over being jealous about. A son in law that Bella would've screamed, cried, wailed, and mourned over.
I'd asked him— Jacob. Renesmee's Jacob. Formerly known as Bella's Jake, Bella's Own Personal Sun, Bella's.. Everything. If he had still loved me— loved Bella.
Renesmee was in the midst of her 'teen' years at the time. Dropping heavy hints over which direction she wanted her Imprint with Jacob to go. What could he do but smile easily and go along with it? The ease and certainty at which he did so stung. It would've gutted Bella. I remembered the vague idea that that was a deep seeded fear of hers. Bella was thrusted into the role of Sam the second she ran off to save Edward.
A love triangle she had hated and didn't know what to do about. She was so terrified of things shifting and her ending up like Leah. As a result, she went so far the other way that she circled back around and casted herself in that role. Losing a guy over an Imprint to her daughter. A fate somehow worse than a stranger, close friend, or even cousin.
We were alone in the cottage— Jacob and I, a rare occurrence. Renesmee out with Alice and Rosalie dress shopping for their first date. Edward brooding in the main house with the boys, bemoaning the slow loss of his daughter's purity and innocence.
"Do you still love me— erm, Bella?", the question had come out of no where. Landing harshly in the illusion of my quaint living room. He'd glanced over at me, guarded. Always guarded and like there was a stone wall erected between us that never used to be there Before. Had I still been Bella, I might've stumbled over myself to take it back in embarrassment. Face red in a way he would've laughed at and found amusing. His eyes would've sparkled in that way that only used to be reserved for her and he'd have called her Honey.
"Bella—", he'd started. "Isabella.", I had to correct him, again. Unlike with the Cullens, who seemed rather pleased that I'd taken to going by Bella's full name. It was more mature, more elegant. It showed what I was now: a Cullen. Bella would've hated that too.
Jacob grimaced, so briefly it could've passed as a facial tick. He knew Bella would've hated it, hated everything about me. He smoothed his features with a practiced calmness. "Right, Isabella.", he hummed. Striving for nonchalance but falling flat. He cleared his throat, still refusing to look at me. Perhaps that made it easier for him, to pretend that I was still her.
"Where is this coming from?", if he was truly thrown by the question he didn't show it. He didn't act as if he was stripped raw and laid bare for her to peer into his soul. "I'd been thinking..", I hedged. Unsure how to even begin to untangle the mess that was my feelings.
"Uh oh, dangerous stuff there.", he teased. Easily— so easily, that I had almost forgotten. I had given him a light shove, grinning in a way that felt foreign to me. He stiffened at the contact. My hand too hard, too cold, too dead. He shifted away from me, my smile fell.
"I was just, thinking about stuff, I suppose. I know you were against Imprinting originally—", I trudged on. Knowing that we were on borrowed time. Wanting to hash this out rather leave it as another unspoken thread tying us together. We wouldn't be able to speak freely after everyone returned, and it felt.. Important, to do it then and there. Before things changed even more so.
"AM against Imprinting.", he sharply corrected. Finally turning to face me. All sharp lines and edges and grit. The message was clear, if I wanted to have things out, we would. Didn't mean he was going to make it easy for me though. I didn't want him too either. It felt deserved, given how Bella upended his life in such a drastic and eternal way.
"I thought—", a frown marring my perfect porcelain face at the correction. After Renesmee he'd talked about how it never made sense, how things had played out between Bella and him. That THIS was the reason why, it was always supposed to be Renesmee.
He seemed happy enough, as did all Wolves with their Imprints. Imprinting seemed like one of those, 'you just had to be there' sort of things. You don't know what it's like until you experience it yourself.
"What, that I'd be HAPPY about my free will being taken from me? That I'd throw a party over being told what to feel and when to feel it?", he had snapped. Jumping up to start pacing in front of me. I had stared at him, something akin to dread forming in the pit of my stomach. I had deluded myself into thinking I was the only one unhappy with how things were. That I could grin and bear it and carry the burden alone as long as everyone else was okay.
Bella had gotten me into that mess, and I was strong enough to see it through. I didn't want to be selfish in the same way she was. I didn't want to ruin the fragile, newly acquired peace the Cullens and the Pack had settled into because the shine of vampire life had worn off.
"You know, whenever I used to think about the Sam, Emily, and Leah situation; I used to have empathy for everyone involved. I still do of course, but back then I used to think Leah got the short end of the stick. Watching the love of your life, your fiancé, turn into someone you hardly recognize. Leaving you for your best friend, your cousin, as if your entire relationship that meant everything to you meant nothing to them. Not understanding the injustice and cruelty of it all. Only to learn about the Wolves, about Imprinting. To learn that someone somewhere decided that what you wanted or how you felt didn't mean jack because your cousin had a higher fertility rate and THAT was more important than love. Than real, true love that wasn't manufactured by the spirits and all this supernatural bull. I thought having to live with that, having to watch them through the Pack's eyes as well as your own, was the worst form of torture. Now that I have Nessie, and you FINALLY have Edward the way you've always wanted, I know for a fact that it's Sam I should've had the most pity for. The Imprint doesn't take away your feelings, it doesn't replace them— it can't. I'm not sure why, unless magic can't touch something that pure and genuine. I guess the spirits couldn't make things easy for us, huh? Because I love you today JUST as much as I loved you back when we were fixing scrapped bikes in the garage at the Res. I'm just FORCED to love Renesmee more, if you can even call it love. I'm forced to be anything she wants, anything she needs. I'm forced to be chained to her side, forced to shift as long as she's around. Forced to ignore how I feel about you.. None of this was my choice Bella, it never was, but you already knew that. You know how Imprinting works, but it's just easier to pretend right? Pretend it all worked out just too perfectly in the end. Pretend that I'm happy as can be watching you with him while I cuddle up to your daughter—", I had rose from where I was primly sat on the sofa. Jacob cut himself off as he appraised me.
Perhaps thinking I'd accuse him of taking things too far, of being too open. Which what was the point, now? Now when everything was settled and they had everything to lose and nothing to gain. If Renesmee wanted to take him out of my life completely she could. She could and he'd agree, just as easily as he agreed to be her boyfriend. Then where would that leave me?
Edward was less forgiving now that I wasn't the Persephone to his Hades. Now that I wasn't a silly human with flawed logic, I should know better. Be better. Vampirism wasn't the only thing that had lost it's shine around here. Letting go now and ending up alone would've meant it was all for nothing.
Vampire feelings never changed. Bella and Edward had an addictive whirlwind romance, that love will always be there. That was her guarantee, the Hail Mary she hadn't had with Jacob when he was still a free man. No one ever prepared me for what forever meant with a vampire who seemed to prefer Bella.
Edward's Singer Bella, Edward's Unsolvable Puzzle Bella, Edward's Proof Of His Humanity And Self Control Bella, Edward's Pure And Chaste And Good Bella. Edward didn't know what to do with Isabella. Soulless, monstrous, vampire Isabella. The one thing he'd never wanted for her was a fate that mirrored his own. I knew deep down he resented me for it, for killing Bella.
"Do you ever wish—", I had found myself wondering. Going there, past the point of no return. I was still safe as long as I didn't express the feelings that had been blistering under the surface.
"Every damn day.", Jacob answered. His eyes, always warm and full of life, looked cold and tired. The air around us had felt stale, cheap. As we stood on either side of this 'trendy' new glass coffee table Alice had snuck in there.
"You don't even know what I was going to say.", my voice sounded wrong in my ears. Too melodic, enchanting, the voice of a predator. Bella never sounded like this. She was flawed, but real. Something I had started realizing more and more as the years went by.
"Doesn't matter. Do I ever wish that we could go back and change things? Do I ever wish things had been different? That supernatural creatures like us didn't exist? That Imprinting didn't exist? Any of it, all of it? Yes, every damn day. Every damn day from the second I wake up and feel a tug in my chest telling me to go check on Renesmee, to the second right before falling asleep when I deftly pretend that I didn't just watch you and Edward sneak off to the Cottage with matching twinkles in your eyes minutes ago.", he had ranted. Carding a hand through his cropped hair. I had watched the gesture intently.
"I'm sorry.", the words were a reflex. I was always sorry where he was concerned. Sorry I'm using you, sorry I'm too broken to love you, sorry I love Edward more, sorry I'm marrying Edward and choosing to become a vampire, sorry you Imprinted on my daughter, sorry I ruined your life. He grimaced. I found myself missing Bella's Sun, Bells' Jake.
"Sure you are.", his voice was tinged with disbelief. "I— she made a mistake.", my voice sounded small. Even for a vampire's standards. Jacob had to strain to hear me. He laughed, it sounded all sharp and wrong.
"I'm not saying it to be cruel.", I found myself trying to justify the conversation. Convince myself that this was closure and not me being selfish. "If only you had listened to me way back then, huh Bells?", he mused. He hadn't called me that in ages, not After, only Before. I could've sworn my flawless stone heart cracked inside my rib cage. I rounded the table in top speed, halting when Jacob shied away from me.
"I can't. Whatever it is you think you're doing, think you want, I can't. It's too late.", he sounded as if the words were strangled out of him. "Because of the Imprint?", I had checked. Needing a twisted sort of reassurance. He didn't want to be done with me, this wasn't because Bella and I had hurt him one too many times.
"Because of the Imprint. Because you're married. Because no matter what you say it's always him in the end. Because these sorts of moments only happen when he's out of the picture and no one else can see. I'm done being toyed with Bella. If you ever loved me at all at least give me this one small mercy.", there it was. The words I didn't want to hear.
If I had blood it'd probably be roaring in my ears. He was right, and I was being selfish. I got my closure at the cost of both of us. All I could manage was a nod at the time. Backing away with shaky steps and taking my time during my trek to the main house. I couldn't stay there in that cottage with him a second longer after that.
Later that night, after Jacob and Renesmee had left on his motorcycle to the jeers and whistles from the boys minus Edward, I found myself at the main house again. Standing out on the balcony, looking up at the stars. I heard the balcony door slide open, I smelt who it was before I saw her in my peripheral.
"You were right.", I hummed. Too casually, too conversationally. Rosalie didn't have to ask what I was talking about. "I know.", she acknowledged it. A ghost of a hand brushing my shoulder. Things were softer between us at that point, but that was about as much comfort as I would get from her. She did warn me after all.
I told myself I'd respect Jacob's wishes, and I had, for years. Until Renesmee started leaving pointed comments about how romantic it was that her father and mother married when they did, fresh after Graduation. Jacob took the hint, not that he had a choice. Edward gave his blessing, they were oddly amicable all things considered.
It was the eve of their engagement, Jacob was at his house— Billy's house, getting ready. It wouldn't be a surprise if Renesmee caught him getting all dressed up and heard the telltale click of a ring box snapping shut. I had knocked on the door, Billy answered. He had weathered a bit over the last few years. His face closed off as he assessed what I was doing on his front porch. I was sure he held resentment towards Bella as well, for dooming his son as she had.
"Jake's still getting ready.", Billy's voice was gruff and down to business. The warmth and ease of once being his best friend's daughter lost. "Can I come in? I wanted to catch him before— well, just before.", I didn't bother trying to come up with a good reason. Billy stared at me, long and hard. Bella might've felt intimidated by it, I just felt impatient. I didn't have much time.
"You know why things turned out this way, don't you?", he was still sharp as a tack and ever perceptive it seemed. I nodded, no words were needed. Billy wheeled himself out of the doorway and back into the house. "He's in his old room.", he grunted before returning to the tv. The game was on. He wasn't coming to the engagement party, I didn't blame him. If it was optional I'd have skipped it too.
Jacob must have scented me in the hall, throwing the door to his room open with a quirked brow. His clothes half put on. The clothes he wore to Edward and Bella's wedding. I stared a moment too long. "Nessie's obsessed with your wedding.", he shrugged. Stepping back and letting me glide inside as if I paid him house visits like this often. The door softly clicked behind me. I watched him like a hawk as he finished getting dressed. He didn't rush, I didn't mind.
"Dance with me? Since we're being nostalgic.", his head snapped up. He had just finished lacing his dress shoes. "I would, if you were wearing your wedding dress. It's no fun being nostalgic all by myself.", he grinned easily. It didn't reach his eyes. The ease and camaraderie between us all for show.
Things never went back to the way they were since that night in the cottage, and even before then he had put up walls. Any right I had to him died the second Bella's heart stopped beating on that operating table. I ignored how he tensed when I stepped closer.
"Don't.", he begged. A sorrowful choked out noise that would've had Bella throttling me for hurting her Jake like this. If she was still alive that is. I pressed a hand to his shoulder, he clenched his eyes shut.
My right hand found his left one. As if on autopilot, or perhaps just to get it over with, his free hand hovered over my waist. He robotically lead us in a slow dance. So far removed from the joyful, touching moment Bella and him had shared on her wedding night. Before she had went and spoiled it by letting Jacob know she fully intended to enjoy married life as human before being turned.
"Don't marry her.", I whispered into his ear as he held me close. His steps faltered for a moment. He forced himself to continue. "I wouldn't have to if you hadn't married Edward.", his breath ghosted next to my cheek. He smelled like wet dog and I knew I was probably burning his nostrils by standing so close. Bella would've hated it. I hated it.
"I love you.", the words Bella and I should've said long ago escaping me as if they couldn't be held back anymore. "You love him more.", I was slapped with the parallel words Bella had echoed on that mountaintop. Jacob gently untangled himself from me, smoothing out his already seamless clothes. The words once used to reassure Edward now rang hollow as I had stood there and watched Jacob leave.
Months later at the wedding reception Leah found me hanging around the refreshments table. A cheap tactic when I didn't even need to eat, and just about everyone here knew so. "How do you do it?", I sighed out. She leveled me with a rather unimpressed look.
"How do I do what, Cullen? You're going to have to be a bit more specific than that.", her tone dry but lacking the malice it once had years ago. I didn't say anything. There were too many supernatural ears listening, potentially. I nodded, a barely perceptible gesture, towards a particular table.
Sam and Emily were too busy feeding wedding cake to their toddler and each other to notice any looks thrown their way. Leah narrowed her eyes at me. "You're kidding, right? You chose this Cullen. Out of all the sob stories of the group, you were the one that got a say so. Now you have the gall to complain that the grass was greener on the other side.", she huffed.
My eyes darted around the room. Careful, always careful, that I didn't draw the wrong kind of attention towards the wrong kind of feelings. "I— she thought he'd Imprint—", I felt the need to explain myself. Explain Bella. If anyone could sympathize with being burned by an Imprint, it'd be Leah. She never dated, always hovered on the outskirts. The mask of a sneer covering up a broken heart that never healed.
"And boy did he.", she snarked. I had long grown used to this from her by now. It was amusing, under the right circumstances.
"Everyone assumed it was only a matter of time until he bumped into the 'right' girl, even you had made some colored comments about it in the past. There was no way to predict it'd be her.", the tried and true excuse I pulled out feeling flimsier as the years passed everyone by. "You were a coward, own up to it.", Bella's step sister bit out. Not a big fan of the pity party Isabella was trying to throw herself.
"Right, because Sam could've chosen you over Emily and he just didn't want to.", I matched her snark. She seemed to respond better to that. She liked meeting things head on rather than being soft. Sam and Emily had killed off all the soft parts of her until this was what was left.
"You're right, he couldn't. Neither could Emily apparently. Be whatever you want him to be my ass.", she grumbled. I laughed, the first real sound of enjoyment I had made in a while. "Bella thought it was inevitable. She didn't know it was a self fulfilling prophecy. A vampire's feelings don't change. Edward loved all that Bella was to him, that would be forever. She really didn't have as much of a choice as everyone seems to think. Not with those odds, not with the Voltori breathing down everyone's necks.", I cut Bella some slack. For all that I think she lacked, she did the best with what she had. I doubted any other human could do much better.
"Still referring to yourself in the third person like a weirdo?", Leah teased. She was great at that, cutting the tension and skipping over anything too feeling. Feelings were dangerous in her eyes. Maybe she was onto something there.
"Bella Swan died that night on the operating table giving birth. She was human, horribly flawed, and real. I'm the marble statue some Greek artist carved in her vague likeness. I'm the perfect, unrecognizable, amalgamation of what she used to be. Isabella Cullen.", Leah adopted a rather rare look for herself. It was one she saved for special occasions, pity.
"They really did a number on you, huh?", her voice uncharacteristically soft. I didn't answer her, I didn't need to. Anything other than the blatant truth she already knew would be a boldfaced lie. I wanted to be strong, to grin and bear it like I had been all along, but I was fraying at the seams. Everyone could tell, they just couldn't tell from what. The strain of being a vampire, the thought of repeating high school, the secrecy, the awkwardness of being a mother to someone your own age in body alone..
The moment Jacob and Renesmee left for their honeymoon, I made plans to take off. Borrowing a page out of Jacob's book and mourning on my own, privately— sort of. I didn't want Alice to find me, so I took Leah along. Lonely Hearts Club Road Trip, she had called it.
I had the money— the Cullens had the money, to make it all happen. Edward didn't say a word to me as we left. There was nothing left to say. He knew as much as I did now that we had been a mistake. Edward loved Bella Swan, I hadn't been Bella Swan in years.
Leah kept in touch with Seth, who in turn updated her mom and Bella's dad. I didn't speak to anyone, I didn't have an answer to any possible questions they could ask. I had cut myself off from the Cullens, from Renesmee, from Jacob. It turned out that I wasn't as strong as I thought I was when reaping the consequences of Bella's actions.
We flittered around from state to state before heading to Canada. The wilderness and colder weather perfect for supernatural mistakes like Leah and I. We settled down for a while and went to college, as silly as that sounded.
Jacob's words once again rang true in my head, it was easier to pretend. It was easier to pretend that Leah and I weren't heartbroken. That we weren't ruined by the supernatural. That we were just two bright eyed, bushy tailed, college girls figuring out what we wanted to do with our lives.
It reminded us of simpler times, from Before. Back when there was choices and possibilities and hope. So much hope that you could drown in it. Bella used to equate drowning to living. She'd have hated finding out how wrong she was, about everything. How mislead.
She would've chosen right if she'd known. She would've had the option, the chance to change her mind. To change. Vampires don't change. I wish I was still Bella.