Spitefic: Down the Rabbit Hole

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

Title: Down the Rabbit Hole
Author: gehayi
Fandom(s): New Moon
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,944
Summary: When Bella overheard Charlie having a conversation with a female visitor, what she heard wasn't what she wanted to believe.
Chapter Inspiration: Chapter 17 – Visitor
Author’s Note: Charlie’s speech to Alice makes NO sense--so I’m going to make sense of it!

The italicized bits are all Meyer.

***

"I've never felt so helpless," Charlie began slowly. "I didn't know what to do. That first week--I had to hospitalize her. She wouldn’t eat or drink, she wouldn't move."

Hospitalized? I’d been hospitalized? But...that wasn’t possible. I’d remember that--wouldn’t I?

"Dr. Gerandy started throwing around words like 'catatonic' after I let him up to see her. I was afraid it would scare her--the word sure as hell scared me--but he pointed out that Bella being scared when she was in that state was...well, pretty much impossible. In fact, her being scared would be a good sign. Because fear would be a response to the world."

"She snapped out of it though?"

I blinked. The speaker was a woman, all right--but she wasn't speaking with Alice’s bell-like tones. In fact, I could have sworn it was Renee. But what would she be doing here?

“No. She didn't. That's why, after she got out of the hospital, I asked you to please come to take her to Florida. I know it wasn’t a great choice. I just didn't want--”

To be the one...if I had to go to a hospital or something. Yes, clearly that was the reason. Not the lies he was telling my mother!

"I didn't want her to be here in a town where everything seemed to remind her of her creepy boyfriend. And there was something wrong with him, no shit. I've seen people with no pigmentation who aren't as pale as he was. And his skin was cold and hard. I wondered if he had some weird disease and was a drug addict in the bargain. I didn't mind seeing him leave." He sighed. "I hoped being across the country from Forks--and with her mother--would help.

"But when we started packing her clothes, she woke up with a vengeance. I've never seen Bella throw a fit like that--and I've seen her throw some epic ones since she got here."

I gasped. How could Charlie say that? I’d been utterly, utterly patient with him and his tiresome attempts to make me feel better--as if anything could make up for the loss of my tragic love!--and this--THIS--was how he repaid me? How dare he? How DARE he?!

"It wasn't the most violent tantrum she's ever thrown, mind you," Charlie continued. "She'd been on sedatives and tranquilizers for two weeks. And she hadn't eaten or drunk anything for three days before I called the ambulance. God help me, I thought that she was sick to her stomach or dieting or something. It didn't occur to me that she was trying to starve herself to death."

"So she didn’t have much strength."

"No. She tried to throw her clothes everywhere--not that she had the energy to do much throwing, but she tried--and screamed that we couldn’t make her leave--and then she finally started crying. It was very Veruca Salt. I was torn between being glad that she was at least responding to the world a bit more and being terrified. Because she was saying that she didn't intend to move on. She was going to stay right here in Forks until Edward came back, and if he didn't...well, there wasn't any point in trying to build a life anywhere else." His voice dropped, and I could barely hear what he was saying. "I went through something similar a few years back."

"But you did move on," Renee said, and I could almost see her frowning.

"Which is why I hoped that Bella would too, with time. At least until I saw that reaction. After that...well, it was obvious that Forks was a bad place for her, but I had a horrible feeling that sending her away would be worse. She would probably get off the plane at the first stopover and wander into some city because Edward mentioned it once. I already knew that she had no sense of self-preservation. Her girlfriend Angela told me about Bella walking deliberately into a circle of low-lifes AFTER remarking to Angela that one of them looked like a guy who'd tried to rape her.”

"What! Why?"

"To make Edward re-enact his Saving-the-Princess routine, most likely. Because obviously he would know magically if she was in danger."

"For God's sake, Charlie! That's insane!"

It was NOT. It was the sanest thing I could have done. Edward always knew when I was in danger; if I was in danger and he chose not to respond, clearly it was because he didn’t love me anymore.

"Yes," Charlie replied grimly. "It is. But at least around here, there are folks who would look after her. Picture that mentality on the streets of New York. Or Detroit. Or San Francisco. And she would have run away, Renee. You know she would. And gotten herself killed in the process." His voice broke, and for a moment I thought that he might have been crying, though I didn't understand why. "There just wasn't a good choice.

"So I didn’t argue when she insisted on staying here…and she did seem to get better at first. She went back to school and work, she ate and slept and did her homework. She answered when someone--like me or one of her teachers--asked her a direct question. She wasn't talking to the other kids at that point--they were sick of Bella’s melodrama and of Bella ignoring them, and had started ignoring her right back. So things weren't exactly perfect. But...baby steps, y'know?

"But she was...empty. Her eyes were blank. There were lots of little things--she wouldn’t listen to music anymore; I found a bunch of CDs broken in the trash. She didn't read; she wouldn't be in the same room when the TV was on, not that she watched it so much before.

“I tried. I dragged her to doctors and therapists. She wouldn't talk to them. She just...sat. I'm not sure she even knew they were there. A lot wouldn't agree to see her because she was eighteen and no longer a minor; there was no way I could force her to get treatment unless I had her declared legally incompetent. And God, I didn't want to do that. I wanted--needed--to believe that she could get better. That my daughter hadn't completely lost her mind.

"So when she woke up shrieking every night for four months, I tried to be there to reassure her. I tried talking to her, taking her to museums and stuff. Once I offered to take her to a local baseball game, but she became hysterical.

"I finally figured it out--she didn't want to move on. Because if she could get over the Epic Teenage Love, then clearly it wasn't such a big deal. The only way to convince herself that her love for Edward Cullen was the stuff of legend was to cling to her misery like it was a security blanket and to avoid everything that might remind her of...him. Like life."

I could almost see him shuddering. I shuddered, too, remembering. And then I sighed. I hadn't fooled him at all, not for one second.

"When she started hanging out with Jacob Black, I noticed a real improvement. She had some color in her cheeks when she came home, some light in her eyes. We had actual conversations. She made plans to do things the next day with Jacob--and she'd actually look forward to seeing him. Her grades went up. She was acting less like a zombie and more like her old self. I had hope.

"And then she jumped off of that goddamned cliff.” There was a pause, and then I heard the ugly choked sound of someone trying desperately not to weep and failing.

Renee's voice was filled with both tears and rage, and I couldn't figure out why. “How's she taking it?”

“Hell, you saw how she is tonight. She doesn't even know that you're her mother! She thinks that you're her ex's sister! It's not normal, Renee, and it...it frightens me. It’s bad enough that she's going to be spending years in Laurel Park starting tomorrow because it's the only nursing home within 50 miles of Forks that offers rehab services so that someday she could live independently. But--I've told her what's happened. Her doctors have told her. She just smiles and says, 'Yes, I understand.' I get the feeling that Edward Cullen is more real to her than being permanently paralyzed from the neck down..."

And that was when my mind stopped taking in anything that Charlie said. It was nonsense. I didn't remember falling and hitting both water and rocks with a bone-shattering blow; I'd wafted gently into the water. I hadn't struggled for air or breath as I sank into the ocean; I hadn't felt iron bands crushing my chest. I hadn't felt something in my neck give a sickening snap. Death had come for me gently. Charlie couldn't be weeping.

Because if Charlie was weeping, that would mean that what he had said was the truth.

"It's not true, Bella,” said a bell-like voice as I felt something hard and cold pressing against my cheek. “You imagined all of it. You're fine! But we have to hurry! Edward's in danger! You see I...well, Rosalie told him that I told her that you were dead, and I just had a vision that he’s going to commit suicide by Volturi, and he's turned his phone off and he's not responding to e-mails or IMs, and I don't think he'd believe me anyway if I told him that you're not dead, he's too depressed, and I don't know anyone over in Italy and--please, Bella, we have to go to him and show him that you're fine! We have to go NOW!”

I got up from the couch as effortlessly and gracefully as Alice ever had, hurried to my bedroom, grabbed my purse and passport and sailed out the door. As I hastened toward Carlisle's car, I wondered briefly why I'd imagined such a horrible conversation in the first place.

***

Several hours later, Charlie and Renee entered the living room to said good night to their daughter. Renee was the first to notice that Bella’s blank stare and slack mouth.

"How can you not notice that?” she raged at him. “How?!"

"Even awful things become normal if they happen for long enough,” Charlie replied. "Come on, Bella. You're scaring your mother. I know you can hear me." He snapped his fingers in front of her eyes. There was no response.

Renee reached out to touch Bella’s neck, thought better of it, and felt for the pulse in her wrist instead. "She's breathing. She's...she's just not reacting.”

Charlie sank onto an ottoman and punched the speed dial code for the emergency number. "It's happening all over again," he whispered--though whether to her or to himself, Renee wasn't sure.

He took a deep breath. "Hello. This is Chief Swan in Forks, Washington. Here's my address." He spelled it out carefully. "Could you please send an ambulance from Forks Community Hospital there? My daughter is staring at nothing and is unresponsive. I-I don't know if it's physiological or psychiatric...No, she didn't take anything. Yes, I'm sure! ...Because she's paralyzed from the neck down and hasn't had enough rehab to regain any mobility yet, that’s why!

"Yes. I know. You're just doing your job. But..." He gazed first at Bella and then at Renee, whose eyes were filling with screams. "Please. For the love of God. Hurry."

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