Compromise

For a moment I couldn’t speak. It was too real, this face-I’d seen a shadow of it in the house, seen it in her eyes and his, but this made it final. The last nail in her coffin.
“It’s killing her right? She’s dying.” And I knew when I said it that my face was a watered-down echo of his. Weaker, different because I was still in shock. I hadn’t wrapped my head around it yet-it was happening too fast. He’d had time to get to this point. And it was different because I’d already lost her so many times, so many ways, in my head. And different because she was never really mine to lose.
And different because this wasn’t my fault.
“My fault,” Edward whispered, and his knees gave out.
He crumpled in front of me, vulnerable, the easiest target you could imagine.
But I felt cold as snow-there was no fire in me.
“Yes,” he groaned into the dirt, like he was confessing to the ground. “Yes, it’s killing her.”
His broken helplessness irritated me. I wanted a fight, not an execution. Where was his smug superiority now?
“So why hasn’t Carlisle done anything?” I growled. “He’s a doctor, right? Get it out of her.”
He looked up then answered me in a tired voice. Like he was explaining this to a kindergartener for the tenth time. “She won’t let us.”
It took a minute for the words to sink in. Jeez, she was running true to form. Of course, die for the monster spawn. It was so Bella.
“You know her well, he whispered. How quickly you see…I didn’t see. Not this time. She wouldn’t talk to me on the way home, not really. I thought she was frightened-that would be natural. I thought she was angry with me for putting her through this, for endangering her life. Again. I never imagined what she was really thinking, what she was resolving. Not until my family met us at the airport and she ran straight to Rosalie’s arms. Rosalie’s! And then I heard what Rosalie was thinking. I didn’t understand until I heard that. Yet you understood after one second…” He half-sighed, half-groaned.
“Just back up a second. She won’t let you.” The sarcasm was acid on my tongue. “Did you ever notice that she’s exactly as strong as a normal hundred-and-ten-pound human girl? How stupid are you vamps? Hold her down and knock her out with drugs.”
“I wanted to,” he whispered. “Carlisle would have…”
What, too noble were they?
“No. Not noble. Her bodyguard complicated things.”
Oh. His story hadn’t made much sense before, but it fit together now. So that’s what Blondie was up to. What was in it for her, though? Did the beauty queen want Bella to die so bad?
“Maybe,” he said. “Rosalie doesn’t look at it quite that way.”
“So take the blond out first. Your kind can be put back together, right? Turn her into a jigsaw and take care of Bella.”
“Emmett and Esme are backing her up. Emmett would never let us…and Carlisle won’t help me with Esme against it…” He trailed off, his voice disappearing.
“You should have left Bella with me.”
“Yes.”
It was a bit late for that, though. Maybe he should have thought about that before he knocked her up with the life-sucking monster.
He stared up at me from inside his own personal h***, and I could see that he agreed with me.
“We didn’t know,” he said, the words as quiet as breath. “I never dreamed. There’s never been anything like Bella and I before. How could we know that a human would be able to conceive a child with one of us-”
“When the human is ripped to shreds in the process?”
“Yes,” he agreed in a tense whisper. ‘They’re out there, the sadistic ones, the incubus, the succubus. They exist. But the seduction is merely a prelude to the feast. No one survives.” He shook his head like the idea revolted him. Like he was any different.
“I didn’t realize they had a special name for what you are,” I spit.
He stared at me with a face that looked a thousand years old.
“Even you, Jacob Black, cannot hate me as much as I hate myself.”
Wrong, I thought, too enraged to speak.
“Killing me now doesn’t save her,” he said quietly.
“So what does?”
“Jacob, you have to do something for me.”
“The h*** I do, parasite!”
He kept staring at me with those half-tired, half-crazy eyes. “For her?”
I clenched my teeth together hard. “I did everything I could to keep her away from you. Every single thing. It’s too late.”
“You know her, Jacob. You can do something-”
“She won’t listen to me!” My temper flared, and for a second I was afraid I would phase and hurt Edward. Jeez, I was feeling bad for a leech.
Edward didn’t even look up, didn’t even tense. I cursed him silently under my breath.
“She might listen to you. You know her better than anybody here. You know her better than I do myself. You are her lifelong friend, Jacob. She will listen to what you have to say.”
She won’t listen to me trying to get the thing out of her stomach. She loves it because it was his.
“You’re correct, but at the moment I would do anything. Anything, Jacob. You can offer her what she wants.”
What was he? Crazy? Yeah, last time I checked.
“I might be crazy, but I would do anything to keep her alive. I don’t care about anything else. She can have as many babies as she wants. Puppies, even.”
He took in a deep breath, closing his eyes. “Yes, as long as it keeps her heart beating.”
It took me about a minute before his words sunk in. My mouth fell open and for a split second I felt as though someone told me that Bella was actually a mermaid.
Edward spoke fast, almost tripping over his words. “Rosalie is feeding her lies, keeping her minimal strength focused on the fetus, and not herself. It’s hurting her, both Rosalie and the…baby. She’s wasting away! Every minute, second, millisecond. Her heart is ticking away another second of her life. And she’s doing it willingly! She wants it to live! It’s hurting her…”
I wasn’t even listening to what he was saying. I was still backtracking over Edward’s previous words.
Me? With Bella? What? How? Have a baby? Didn’t he think she would mind? Did he think that Bella would like being shared?
“Both. I know, Jacob. I know.”
Well, Bella will sure be pissed off. Being shared by to guys. Like a DVD. Maybe the parasite should just do something to piss Bella off and she’d hate him for it. Then, she’d choose me over him. Smugness washed over me.
Edward glanced up sharply. “What?”
D***it. What did I say? Jeez, it was so hard to be around him.
“I’m not angry,” he said, his tone softer. “I just want to hear your thoughts better. What did you think thirty seconds ago?”
What did he think I was? A stopwatch? A clock? A movie where you can pause, replay, or fast forward?
I could tell that Edward was getting impatient with my mind wandering off track.
“Um, I was thinking that…well…about Bella and an idea…”
“What’s the idea, Jacob?” His eyes were different. Like there was a spark of hope flickering, ghostly shadowing his eyes. “The idea, Jacob?” His voice was softer, pleading.
Then, I got what he was asking me. “You should…make Bella mad…somehow, and then she won’t…love you anymore.” I stared at him uncertainly, wondering why he was wasting time over my thoughts. I mean, it sounded so…Seth-ish.
I could see the works spinning in his head. He looked at the ground, deep in thought. I let my mind wander. He was so vulnerable. Just a single strike away. I could take him down easily. Oh, wait, no. We were comrades now. So, I couldn’t do anything to hurt the stupid bloodsucker. Great. Perfect. Bffs with a coven of vamps. Allies, co-workers, mates-
“Jacob. I am going to ask something of you.” His eyes were still glued to the ground. As if the stupid ground had a simple answer to all of his stupid problems.
I huffed. “What is it?”
“The only way to hurt Bella, is to hurt the people she loves. The people that most care for her besides myself. I need to-”
I snarled. “What? Hurt Charlie? Are you insane? Do you think breaking the treaty and hurting Charlie would do-” Suddenly, it clicked in. Of course, not Charlie. Me, that’s what his plan is. Me. Hurt me to get to Bella. I flinched. As much as it made sense, I couldn’t imagine the pain she would go through. And the lies…
“Lies are better than what is happening to her now, Jacob. It’s the only way.”
I found myself agreeing with the stinking vamp.
“So, how are you going to…hurt me?” I glared at him.
Is this a trick, bloodsucker? I thought harshly.
“No, Jacob. You are the only one who can save her. You have my word that this is not a decoy.”
His word, I snorted sarcastically. The God has spoken! I rolled my eyes.
“Jacob, we need to go farther out so that my family will not…hear. We have to make this sound like an actual…an actual fight.” He kept his voice down so low, that it was almost a breath of air. “Phase, Jacob. I cannot hurt you in human form. It will stain my conscience.”
Ha! His conscience. Like he had one. Knocking Bella up and putting a monster in her stomach wasn’t doing anything to his conscience? And me not phasing was staining his conscience? Sometimes, leeches don’t come with common sense. No, wait. I take that back. All the time.
I let my anger come over me. It quickly phased. Scattering my clothes. I wouldn’t need them any longer.
He broke into a sprint, and I pounded after him on all four legs. We went out a good twenty miles.
“He suddenly stopped and I blew past him. I rolled my eyes and pounded the three miles back to him.
Um, hello? You could have given me a warning? Maybe a friendly ‘hey let’s stop here!’ or maybe a ‘this is a great place to hurt you now!’
“Jacob I do not have time for your impatience with me. We have to get this done quickly and carefully. Now, after I…do it, then I will go back to my house-”
His crypt. With coffins, moats, dragons, blood banks, horror music-
“-And I will tell Bella that we just had a nice little…brawl in the woods. I will say it so that it hurts her and she assumes that you were killed or extremely injured. She, of course will ask to see you and that is when it is you have to come in basically torn apart.”

Torn apart? Gee I’m so scared. Ahh.
“You know what I mean, Jacob.”
Yeah, I do. We’re gonna intentionally hurt Bella, have Carlisle get the thing out of her stomach, and run off with me. Happily ever after. The end.

“Basically.” Edward’s eyes were locked into mine. I fought the urge to look away. “Are you in?”