How you can work so hard to resist what you... are. Please don't misunderstand, it's great that you do it, I just don't see why you would bother in the first place."
He hesitated before answering, trying hard not to roll his eyes. "That is a very good question, and you are not the first one to ask it. The others—the majority of our kind who are quite content with our destiny—they, too, wonder at how we live. But you see, just because we've been dealt a certain hard... well, it doesn't mean that we can't choose to rise above—to conquer the boundaries of a destiny that none of us wanted, that none of us chose to want. To try to retain whatever essential humanity we can."
I lay unmoving, locked in awed silence. I had never heard someone lay it out there so... so raw like that.
"Did you fall asleep?" He whispered after a few minutes.
"No... "
"Is that all you were curious about?"
I rolled my eyes. "Not in the slightest." I had to resist the urge to pounce on him, and sat on my hands.
"What else do you want to know?"
"Why can you read minds—why only you? And Alice, seeing the future... that's really weird."
I felt him shrug in the darkness, displacing its ink. "We don't really know. Carlilse has a theory... he believes that we all bring something of our strongest human traits with us into the next life, where they are multiplicated, intensified—like our minds, and our senses. He thinks that I must have already been very sensitive to those around me. And that Alice knew some things, at one point."
"What did he bring into the next life, and the others?"
"Carlisle brought how nice he is. Esme brought her ability to love, passionately. Emmett brought how much he hates bears, Rosalie her... " Fredward blushed.
"Her what?" I urged him on.
"Well, she's sort of... a bit of a... kind of a bitc—" he gasped at himself. "Kind of strong-minded,"

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Chapter 14

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