Sensing that it had been found, it began to move openly. Walking to the stairs below me. It crouched on the edge of the stairs… Smaller than I remembered, but still massive. Muscles rippled under striped fur, its body low, ready to spring. Sky-Blue eyes, ice cold, even though they reflected the flames in the brazier I carried. My tiger. Me.
But not me.
This version was feral, mouth open in a soundless snarl, fangs glinting. My tiger's gaze didn't hold thought or balance. It was pure hunger, pure violence, pure instinct.
I watched it, how it moved, how it was ready to spring in attack, and just as ready to flee into the mountains and wait for another chance to ambush me. I was frozen on the steps, one foot on the step in front of me. I waited and watched as my pulse pounded in my ears. I turned to face it full on.
The beast stood and approached me, one soft, padded step at a time. It climbed toward me, slow and deliberate, its mouth opened wide to release a growl of discontentment. It was angry at me, but I wasn't dumb enough to think it missed on its first attack. It had me dead to rights, I only live because it allowed me to survive. Still, the blood dripping down my arm suggested it wasn't friendly.
Only a few steps from my position, the tiger let out a roar that pounded into me like another physical blow. But wondrously, I could take meaning from its roar.
"Leave here. They have brought doubt and fear to us."
"I am your strength, your anger given flesh."
"Before this place, we were one. Now you try to separate us. Embrace me and we will leave here and return to the mate."
In its voice, I could hear the rage, the pain I had fed it with all my life. I understood what it meant. After the initial fear of not being able to control myself, I had lost all my apprehension about this form. I had grown to love it and the strength and freedom it brought. But when they told me that without this ceremony, I would lose control, I began doubting my shift again.
With another roar, it jumped the final few stairs between us, slamming into me and forcing me onto my back. I held the brazier to the side as my own shift looked ready to tear my throat out. But when we touched, I could feel the anger and fear of my rejection. More than that, I could also feel my love for Edythe. My care for my friends and family.
This was more than just my anger, it was all my emotions, everything that made me who I am.
The tiger shoved harder, roaring again, demanding I give in. My arms shook around the brazier as the flames flickered as if waiting for me to call on them.
"Give in!" The roar shook through my bones, though it was my own voice buried inside it. "Drop the burden. Be what you are meant to be! BE ME"
The easiest thing would have been to let go. To unleash myself and meet it tooth for tooth, claw for claw. Rage boiled in me, answering the call—because rage was simple. Rage was clean. Rage made sense when the world didn't.
But as the fire wavered, I felt more. Beneath the fury, there was sorrow—memories of Denver, of my mother during the good times and yes, the bad as well. There was fear—of Edythe, of Bella, of losing them both. There was joy too—the wind rushing through my fur as I ran, the warmth of laughter I'd thought I'd never hear again. The joy of discovering my new strength with Jasper and even Emmett.
This thing pressing me down wasn't just anger. It was everything.
The tiger's jaws clamped down, its fangs stopping inches from my throat. Its eyes blazed with the same fire that flickered in the brazier, wild and desperate.
"You are nothing without me," it snarled.
My arms trembled, I pulled the brazier closer to us, its heat washing over both man and beast. "No," I gasped. "I am nothing without all of me. You're not my enemy. You're me. My fear, my rage, my love. My fire isn't just anger… it's everything I've carried."
At my words, I felt the tiger relax and its weight begin to lift. I felt just for a moment, the tiger's heart and mine beat in rhythm, then just my own heart hammering inside my chest, its beat was gone, but not gone. It was in me, and I was whole. The tiger began to join the fire in the brazier. Not burnt away like the visions of my father and Bella, but added to what it was that I was carrying. The fire felt hotter, but more under control. It was hard to describe.
I lay there trying to take in all that had happened, but the drive to climb was back, forcing me back to my feet. Once I was standing, I began my climb again.
I spoke out loud to the mountain, "What's next? The ghost of Thomas future? Figures. Bah, humbug."
More boring trudge. One foot after the other. Seems like that's all I have been doing since I left Forks. My arm and back muscles spasm under the weight of the brazier. My legs felt like they were on fire one moment and numb the next. I was focused on my legs, numb when I lifted it to the next step, then fire when I put my weight on it to move forward. Again and again, it seemed endless to me.
Finally, I came to another landing, but this one was more. A massive tiger carved from the stone of the mountain and polished either by the wind or by hand until it gleamed. It gave off the feeling of eternal majesty as it looked over the clearing, watching over the village below. The wind circled the half-cave, half-clearing, giving the impression that the tiger was breathing, and the fire in my brazier was being drawn towards its mouth, as if it wanted to devour it.
The brazier itself felt like it belonged here, it felt as though it was pulling me to place it in the giant tiger's mouth. I felt relieved to be almost done with the test. I needed food and rest, both in large quantities.
But then a voice broke through the silence.
"Thomas."
It cut through the tired fog in my brain, clear, familiar, intimate. I turned to see her standing next to the wall of the cave. She was more beautiful than I remembered. Moon pale skin that glowed in front of the shadowed cave wall. Her copper hair rustling gently like the wind was just playing with it.
I nearly dropped the brazier in reflex; to empty my arms so I could embrace her.
"Thomas," she said again, softer this time. She reached her hand out for mine, "You don't have to do this. Put it down and come home to me. Being without you is torture for me. I can't even dream of you. I will forgive you for leaving, but only if you come back right away."
"Edythe! What are… How. No, you're not here. You are not her."
She smiled, but her eyes and face conveyed sadness at my reaction to her appearance. "Aren't I? Look at me, Thomas. You have carried this weight since the moment you abandoned me. But you don't have to, Thomas. This… this fire you are carrying. It's not who I first met, not who I first fell for. You don't need it to be with me. Look at what it has done to us already, forcing us apart like this.
She took a step towards me, her hand reaching for mine, "Even with this little fire, you aren't strong enough to truly be with me. Just leave it here and come home. I can change you, make you like me. So we would be equals, like we should be. Together forever.
The ache in my chest forced me to my knees, and tears streamed down my face. She was right, wasn't she? All I had to do was let go of the brazier and go home. I wanted nothing more than to do just that, let go of everything and just be with her…Forever.
Her words had sliced deeper than any roar from my shifter side or fear of what I stole from Bella. Even meeting my father for the only time in my life didn't impact me like a few words from Edythe. Even if I kept this fire, was I strong enough to keep Edythe at my side?
My fire in the brazier flared higher, cutting off my view of Edythe for just a moment. I had almost given up… Almost.
I got up off my knees and stood tall, brazier still firm in my grip. Despite what this vision of Edythe said, the fire had been a part of me when she first met me. It had always been a part of me. Giving that up so I could become a vampire isn't something I had ever thought about. If I returned to Edythe with any part of me missing, it wouldn't be me that returned, but a shell of me.
When this realization hit me, another memory filtered through my mind. No, not just a memory but many. Or perhaps it was a piece of a dream, a truth of who I am.
The pounding of paws on wet earth, the surge of power as I ran free through Forks. The tiger's heartbeat in rhythm with my own. My mother's arms around me as a child, Bella's stubborn loyalty when I broke, Jasper's steady grin when he taught me to stand my ground. Edythe's look of fear when she showed me herself under the sunlight. All of it. My rage, my fear, my love, my joy.
If I gave this fire away—to the shrine or to her—I'd be giving all of them away too.
"No!" My knuckles whitened as I held the brazier closer. I looked at the tiger statue, then I turned to the vision of Edythe.
My final look was at the fire in the brazier. White and flickering, fragile, yet furious all at once.
"I won't give this fire up. Not to the mountain, not to you. The real Edythe knows that the fire is a part of me, and she wants all of me, not just pieces of me."
With a twist of my wrists, the brazier was turned towards me. The fire licking my chest and face, but it didn't burn, it sank into me. It roared through me, searing past skin and bone until it filled the hollowness inside, I hadn't realized was there. My knees nearly buckled under the weight of it, but I refused to fall.
The shrine shuddered, the carved tiger's stone eyes igniting with a pale light. The cavern wind howled, pulling at the fire like greedy hands trying to drag it away, trying to claim the fire as its own.
I clenched my teeth and roared back at it. My voice mixed with the fire, the sound splitting the clearing as though it came from both man and tiger. "It's mine!"
The vision of Edythe flickered in the gale, her hand outstretched, her eyes wide with pain. For a heartbeat I wanted to reach for her—wanted to believe. But as the fire surged into me, I knew. That wasn't her. My Edythe wouldn't demand pieces of me. She'd fight to have all of me, even the parts I hated.
The flames poured into me, and when the brazier was empty, I let it go. It tumbled with a loud clang and rolled to the feet of the tiger statue, cold.
When the wind died, silence hit harder than the storm. The shrine's eyes dimmed. The vision was gone.
And I was still standing.
I pressed a hand against my chest, where the heat still pulsed steady, fierce, alive. "I am whole," I whispered into the quiet.
The mountain gave no answer. But for the first time since I began the climb, I didn't need one.
A.N.
I have taken a bit of a different tone lately. I am blaming it on Thomas being out of sorts being on his own for the first time. But it most likely is because or real-world issues. Let me know what you think. I find it a little robotic at points, like I'm writing what I think I should, not where the flow of the story takes me. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks.