"Oh God, Emmett."

"You're so incredible, Rose. Hey, Edward, check out Rose's hot ass body."

Edward squinted against the sounds flooding his head from the upstairs rooms as he pounded harder on the piano to try to drown them out. He wasn't sure what was worse. That for the millionth time he had to listen through the night to the sounds of all of the worshipping couples upstairs or the fact the Emmett seemed to be proud of sharing. Most nights it was easy to ignore, he had a ton of practice blocking them out, but on nights like this...

His fingers moved steadily and quickly over the keys, seeming to play, even without his thoughts being with the music. He focused on the sheet of music in front of him, a piece that had been giving him a little trouble until tonight. He had been hoping that the harder he had to concentrate on the correct notes, the easier it would be to ignore. Unfortunately, he was a quick learner and the night was just really too long.

He was slammed with images of Jasper, one of the new members to this crazy family, as he continued to kiss each inch of Alice's naked body, and that was the last straw. Edward pounded his hands down onto the keyboard, snapping the baby grand in half as if it had been made of straw. "Damn," Edward thought as he picked up the only recognizable key from the floor and crushed it between his fingers. "Now what?"

It didn't normally do him any good to leave, especially since he was so intuned with most of his family members, even the ones that had so recently joined. Besides, typically they weren't supposed to hunt alone. For safety. From themselves as much as others. He hadn't hunted in a while, and the warm copper taste flooded his mouth again, scorching his throat and clouding his thoughts. Perhaps she would go with him. She had wanted some alone time with him, but he found himself stopped at the top of the porch stairs. She would read too much into it, he knew, but he needed something to get his mind off of other peoples thoughts.

He stepped out into the brisk winter air, trying to remember the feel of the biting wind on his cheeks as he slowly paced himself to walk across the street. It would be time to move again soon, he knew, but at least it had been a nice quiet run. They had, nearly ten years ago, moved from England where the fog proved a useful adversary to their sun problem, as well as offered Edward a few years to study at Oxford, to Alaska to be near a family that Carlisle had known that was like them. Half of the days of the year were spent in darkness, giving them the chance to live normal lives, Edward chuckled at the word normal, but the sun was coming and it was getting boring, not being around people. At least they kept life exciting. They were the only change to drive them from the dull, boring nights. He wouldn't miss Alaska. He had worried about Jasper, him being still so new, being around people, but they would be able to keep him under control. Hopefully. He had taken a break from his studies, knowing that he would have to start high school again soon. Carlise had thought it had been a long enough time that they could start their circle over again and return to a little hole in the wall off the Olympic peninsula. "Forks," Edward said out loud as if saying it would make it sound more interesting. It didn't. "Again." He had long gotten over the thought that there would be something there for him every time they moved to a new area. There never had been. It was possible that there wouldn't ever be.

He had reached the steps of the house he had been heading for and, hesitantly, knocked on the door. His hand had barely left the wood when the door flung open and she stood there, as if she had been expecting him.

"Evening, Tanya. I was wondering if you might accompany me on a hunting trip." Edward said, sounding more formal than even he normally would.

"Emmett and Rosalie at it again, are they?"

If Edward could blush he would have. "As well as the others. I just needed to get away."

Tanya seemed only too eager to follow him into the dark as she closed the door firmly behind her. The wind picked up the snow and blew it roughly in their faces, but neither reacted to the bitter change. Their clothes, unseasonable and suspicious if they were seen by any humans, billowed around them, exposing their skin to the elements. Edwards stomach matched the cold, icy slopes of the nearby cliffs. He pulled his shirt down, out of modesty and habit, and tucked it deeply into his pants.

"God, he is so beautiful," he heard Tanya think behind him and for a moment he had seen himself through her eyes. It was embarrassing. If she only knew him, the real him, the depressed lonely pessimist that lived within his stone facade, she wouldn't look at him that way.

He couldn't look her in the eyes as they ran, the world a blur of snow and ice as it flew by. He stopped and changed course suddenly as his nose began to pick up the scent of his prey.

"Bear? Feeling a little ambitious tonight?" Tanya asked as she picked up the scent a few steps behind him.

"I just have a lot of energy to get out," Edward said as he took his hunting crouch just feet from where the bear stood, oblivious to the coming attack.

"I can think of a better way to get out your energy," Tanya said as Edward was in mid leap, and she was able to take him off guard enough that he missed his strike, biting the bear just below the shoulder. Not a critical mistake, but not one Edward liked to make. The bear growled in pain as it turned it's gigantic paws to rip it's attacker from off it's back as Edward took another hit at the massive throbbing vein, just beneath the skin of the bears neck and drank deeply of the vital fluid that would sustain him, just as it had been doing for the bear.

He continued to drink as he heard Tanya take down the second bear that had come up behind them in one quick motion. After his thirst was quenched, although not completely diminished as it never seemed to be, he sat back to examine the damage of his moment of confusion. The Dolce and Gabbana shirt that Alice had forced him into this morning was saturated with the blood from the first wound. He was gonna be in trouble, but at least he could get back into his normal clothing, granted that she hadn't already raided his closet as she had done for Emmett.

He had obviously irritated Tanya when he had briskly returned her home, without even so much as a word of thanks. She had served her purpose, to accompany him to hunt, and with her remark in the mountains, he knew that she would only continue to try to get him to return home with her. He had no intentions, or interest, to join her for anything more tonight. He felt the need to be alone. But at least he hadn't heard Jasper or Emmett for the past hour.

He felt the rejection burning in Tanya's mind as he silently walked away, but he couldn't even feel bad. She knew his stance on their relationship. If she was feeling rejected it was because she had set herself up for it again. He wasn't interested. She just wasn't right for him. He began to wonder, as he walked the wrong direction home, if there would ever be someone that he would feel the way that he heard Emmett feel for Rosalie, Jasper for Alice, or, and he knew even if he didn't deserve it, as strong as Carlisle felt for Esme. He had seen her through his eyes, and he longed for someone to feel that way for. He knew that he wasn't exactly the best of the pick, but nearly ninety years was a long time to run into someone, and it hadn't happened.

He quickly pulled himself up a tree, careful not to break it's weak trunk as he swung from the branches, and snow fell in loud heaps from the boughs. He looked out of the barren wasteland that he had called home and realized it was the perfect metaphor for how he felt inside. With not even a soul to comfort him, he truly felt dead for the first time in years.

"Edward?" Alice's sweet, almost too sweet, voice awoke him from his self-hating session. "I know you can hear me. You're supposed to come home now. I see myself hugging you and I can't do that if you're up a tree somewhere." Her tinkling laugh annoyed him at her own private joke. Her ability could sometimes be a curse when you wanted to get lost somewhere. She could always see you, no matter where you went. He hadn't really thought about leaving again, he had gotten used to the family ties, but the thought had a least crossed his mind. "You can't leave, Edward. You have to come with us to Washington." There she went again, reading a path that he had not quiet decided on yet. Sometimes, he thought longingly for the days before Alice, to when he didn't have to know what life was bringing him, but at least it gave him reason to believe, sometimes, that good things were yet to come. Alice seemed to think that Washington was the answer to his depression, but he couldn't see how. She hadn't been to that town. True, he hadn't been there since it had changed into the town it would be now, but it never had the feel of a place of great importance.

Edward finally made his decision. Nothing good could ever come to him. He was a hollow being. Even if, by some chance, there was another vampire in Forks, which he highly doubted, he knew he couldn't care. He had a deep feeling, one that had nearly driven him crazy for the last century, that there was someone for him, only one someone, and when he did find her, he wouldn't be able to keep her. It was almost deep enough of a feeling that he decided it was time to stop torturing himself. He was going to stop looking. It was time for him to become a nomad again, live for the kill, the hunt, and nothing else.

"Edward? What the hell do you think you're doing? You are not leaving now get home NOW!" Alice's voice screamed in his head and then he was slammed with the vision that Alice had been having for months now. It was strong enough that it nearly knocked him out of the tree, a good hundred foot fall, not that he could get hurt, but he was overwhelmed by the green of the trees, the grey's of the sky, and the blue's of the ocean. It was beautiful, not at all as he remembered it, but he knew that this was where they would be living. He saw a white house, lined with huge glass windows, hidden in a thicket of trees next to a bubbling river that looked more comfortable than any other place he had called home. He saw them moving a brand new grand piano into the front room where he knew he would spend most of his nights. But the overwhelming feeling, more than anything else in the vision, was the thought that Edward wouldn't be alone on his piano bench. As he watched his hands move over the keys, to a tune he had never heard before, he saw a soft, pink hand placed over his stony white one and hold onto it. Not as Esme did when she was overwhelmed by one of his songs, but with tenderness and admiration. True deep feelings and compassion. He saw the blood flowing through the blue veins at the top of the curved slender fingers and he heard a soft steady rhythm that he knew to be a heart beat. His hands stopped playing as they reached over to grab onto the hand that had appeared, to hold it tenderly, and carefully, between his and noticed that they didn't shy from the cold that he knew must be nearly burning them. He heard the heart excellerate at his touch and realized that he wasn't the only one that had stopped breathing. He longed to look up to see the face that belonged to those hands, knowing that it would be the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, but as he looked over, the vision ended.

"Now come home, Edward," Alice said in a whispered voice. "We have to pack for Washington."

Edward jumped the hundred feet to the ground, landing with not even a soft thud, as for the first time he felt excitement fill him about his future. Maybe having Alice around wasn't that bad after all. He didn't knew if she really existed, if he would even find her in this century, but she was out there. Born yet or not, he didn't know, but he could feel her soul fill him, and for the first time ever, he felt that he may be able to be whole again. He just had to find her. As the dawn crept up on the horizon, the first glance of sun he had seen in months, Edward actually smiled. His dawn was coming. He could wait forever now. But he knew he wouldn't have to. She was coming. And he would never be lost in darkness again.