This is the newly revised and reposted version of my original story "Role Reversal". Enjoy and let me know what you think!
DISCLAIMER:
This goes for all the chapters: I do not own any Twilight characters nor themes, Stephenie Meyer does. I just make them fall in love and develop their personalities.
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Chapter 1: No Answers at Hand – Edward's point of viewWhile I was normally the epitome of calm and collectedness, meeting my singer had certainly unhinged me. I knew that this was something that wasn't easy to deal with. Carlisle had told me about this and Jasper had killed his singer almost immediately. But I prided myself in having more self-control than my brother. If I could even call him that. His thoughts often betrayed that while he felt safe with us and Alice made him happy, he didn't really feel like he was our sibling. He certainly didn't respect Carlisle as a leader but treated his decisions rather like recommendations. I was not going to give in as easily as my weakest brother, but I surely wished I had never met this human girl. She was the one who came here disturbing my peace and troubling my conscience.
Never before had I felt such a violent need to kill anyone, to bite, bite, bite and drain her. When she walked into that room, it took all I had to leave her alive, to leave all of those poor witnesses live. It had been a Tuesday Biology lesson, but I couldn't for the life of me remember anything but the red haze clouding my vision and trying like never before to rule in the beast within. I had not killed her during three of those lessons now but I couldn't bear to go to school anymore after last Tuesday. I had been so close to killing her then…
Why did she even have to show up? Why her? She was nothing special, for all I knew. Her father lived here, of course. I had heard the rumors about a new girl being in school from everyone. There are few things which could really surprise a vampire like me, especially one who knows how to read the minds of everyone around him. So I did not technically hear them tell me as they avoid our kind, but I listened to their buzzing thoughts. They were so stupid and primitive, they jumped at every rumor, any news at all. What in the world did they have a brain for?
I wasn't at all excited to meet just another human when I heard the others' thoughts after we returned to school from our 'camping' trip. I thought her to be nothing but some poor girl suddenly in the limelight because she brought some life into the dull trot of school life. Most likely she was stupid and loved gossip like the rest of my classmates.
Time proved me wrong.
Over the decades I thought that human blood had lost its appealing smell to me, that I was somehow different from all the other vampires. I had been proven wrong on that firm belief as well. This fact made me feel like the soulless monster I really was underneath the glamorous exterior. Not even music could calm me down now. I was so beaten by my thoughts, so miserable, that it failed to have the usual calming effect on me.
In order to calm myself any other way, I tried to be rational. You've met your singer, so her blood is very appealing to you, I thought to myself. That part was logical. Jasper had told me that it was harder to fight killing her yet because we were denying our true nature. Maybe he was right and it would be the easiest to just get it over with, to give in. The thought of having her blood on my hands, running down my throat, was all it took to detach from reality. A red haze began to spread over my vision and I slipped into a violent fantasy.
I was hovering over her, her eyes full of terror at my bared teeth. Venom dripped from them and filled my mouth. So mouthwatering! Bite her, drain her, it screamed within me. I relished in her terror, it would make this so much more exciting. I willingly gave into the urge, grabbed her throat and slowly sank my teeth through her thin skin which was pale from fear. Her heart was throbbing hard and she started crying. This made me even thirstier. I moaned as I hit her artery and drained her until nothing was left. SO GOOOD! All the while she kept screaming, but the sound soon ended in a gurgling whimper of pure terror and pain.
Restraining arms brought me back into reality. Alice, of course. She had probably just seen me murder, seen me drink that delicious, hot blood.
"Edward? It's okay," Alice soothingly thought. My eyes snapped back into focus as Jasper hit me with a wave of clinically detached calm.
Hate and self-loathing washed over me when I realized what I had just been thinking about. Not only thinking, but planning, I realized as I looked around myself. I had unconsciously drifted as far as the driveway without noticing it. My sister had been able to stop me, but had she not had a vision of this, the girl might have been dead five minutes from now. Oh, no!
I didn't want to talk about this with them, I didn't want to hear their thoughts, their understanding. For how could they understand this if even I couldn't? I nodded to Alice and ran to my room with inhuman speed.
Why couldn't the girl go back to where she came from? I didn't want anyone to do with my body what she was doing by merely existing. She turned me into a monster, a killing machine. She forced me to give into my evil nature. But it was not only this strange longing for her blood that unsettled me. It was also that I could not read her thoughts. Of all the possible people to block my ability, she was the one where it did the most harm. If I could read her thoughts it would be so much easier to think of her as a person, not as a blood bag. Maybe I would have to start thinking of her as Bella, as a person. Without my gift, I was a little helpless. It had guided me through all situations, good and bad, for decades now.
My determination to stay away from human blood had not been shaken for almost a hundred years, but all solutions to this problem were unbearable. What to do?
Kill her? I didn't think that I'd be able to live with my conscience!
Leave? And start with High School all over? Leaving meant making my family suffer for my weakness.
Live with it? It would be hell. But I had to do it, didn't I?
What was even more unsettling was the strange curiosity I felt regarding her personality. Why on earth couldn't I read her mind? She wasn't like a riddle that could be cracked by thinking about it. More than anything I wanted to know what she was thinking. It would help to protect her from me. She was so fascinatingly different from anyone I had ever known or heard of. First of all, when I had given her the death-glare in the cafeteria, she had been frightened. But then, in Biology, she tried to talk to me. And had been really hurt when I didn't.
I wanted to know more about her with every second that passed by. Not knowing her secret frustrated me. Infuriated me. Who was she to turn me into a monster and not reveal anything about herself?
I'd talk to her. I'd find out. I had given her the silent treatment for three Biology classes now, unmoving and not daring to breathe and maybe that it was time to do something about my problem. I would ask Alice and Jasper to change their schedules so they would be with me. Even if they wouldn't let me transfer, Jasper had his ways to make them accommodate his needs and wishes. And we had all gone to school enough times that it shouldn't matter to them which classes they were taking. Maybe I should leave too, at least for a few days to calm myself. I'd return to school the next week, maybe on Thursday. That was one week from then and should give me enough time to mentally prepare myself for this.
Immortality really was a curse beyond imagination. Speed. Beauty. What did it matter if I was damned and not even able to rest just once? To forget? If these few advantages meant that I would be a monster until the day I died? And only hell awaited me thereafter?
Nothing could take this blemish from my soul even if I managed to resist my singer for all of her human life. Even if I resisted killing Bella Swan.
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