Title: Frozen

By: Maverick88

Disclaimer: well, obviously I haven't written the books, so none of these lovely characters belong to me. I'm just borrowing them for a while. No profit is made from these harmless dabbles.

A/N: there are a lot of fics with speculation about what will happen to Bella in Breaking Dawn. None of them are mine, so I thought I might as well let my thoughts run free along with the rest of you. This is going to be a multichapter story, so please review. Every comment, idea or rant is appreciated. Even if you don't like it, tell me! We've got freedom of speech here. Might as well put some use to it.

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"Three days, no big deal."

I should've kept my big mouth shut. How wrong I was. It was easy to underestimate physical pain. It doesn't linger in memory the way a hurt ego does. When your body stops complaining, your mind does as well. That's the beauty of it. Otherwise we would be sitting down with shrinks explaining the significance of a bruised pinky we had 5 years ago. No, it's when we're reminded how horrible pain can be that we wish someone had warned us beforehand. The worst part of this was that Edward actually had warned me. I was just too stubborn to listen. Or maybe I was scared that if I did, I wouldn't have had the spine to go through with it.

After Edward bit me, after the initial excruciating moments of experiencing the kind of pain equivalent of being thrown into a frying pan, Carlisle's morphine kicked in and I lost consciousness for 2 days, though it seemed like mere hours to me. Or maybe it was all just a memory gap. When I awakened, I was in Edwards—and soon to be mine-- bedroom.

Opening my eyes seemed a near impossible feat. The lids felt heavy and swollen. When I finally did, the room swayed in and out of focus. I blinked and tried to lift my head. Bad move. Pain exploded behind my eyes and I groaned in agony. It took a while before I had rustled up the courage to do it again.

It was so quiet, it made my ears hurt. But they weren't the only ones burning. My throat ached, hell even my teeth hurt. But it was my head that took the front row. It was pounding so much and so loudly I began considering someone was actually hitting it.

I slowly opened my eyes again and carefully took in my surroundings. Carlisle was on a chair beside my bed. I turned my head toward him, then winced shortly after. He then looked up briefly, met my eyes and walked towards me.

"Where's Edward?" I asked, though it came out sounding muffled, like my mouth was stuffed with feathers. I swallowed and repeated the question with more success this time.

I then let my head sink back into the pillow, exhausted by this small effort.

"I sent him out, after--" Carlisles deep voice had taken on a rough quality. Concerned Topaz eyes framed his flawless face. "After you started screaming."

That certainly explained why I wasn't able to manage any small talk. A pang of guilt washed through me as the that special night flooded back into my head. It's magic was completely lost now. Edward gave me everything and I gave him this back in return. But then, I had allowed Alice to plan that catastrophic wedding….

I gritted my teeth as I tried to move. Noone was going to hear anything coming out of my mouth unless it was decipherable speech. But Carlisle pushed me back onto the bed.

"No Bella, you must rest, let it run it's course. Fighting it will not help."

He looked at me with those damn unblinking eyes and I surrendered, letting my head fall back onto the pillow. I sought compromise instead.

"Can…Edward…come?" I managed, my eyes boring into his, hoping to convey the message my screwed up mouth couldn't. I'm going to be a good girl, I promise.

"Please?" I added for good measure, knowing I was hitting below the belt. The magic word really did do magic in the Cullen family.

He nodded and I closed my eyes. Sleep didn't tug at me this time. Even though my head felt like someone had stuffed it with marshmallows, it felt clear at the same time. It was then, that I realized I must've been past the worst. It also meant that those nightmares, or hallucinations, or whatever you want to call it were the last dreams I was ever going to have. I swallowed hard.

I peeled my eyes open when a cool hand brushed along my forehead, raking its fingers through my hair. I managed the smallest of smiles when I stared up into that face. Impossible to forget. But it wasn't his face, nor his touch that was the first to mark his entrance. I smelled him first.

He lowered himself into a chair next to me, bringing his face on eyelevel, but he didn't stop stroking my hair.

As always, his flawless face continued to baffle me. The ache that had been constantly present all over my body took a back seat. As my eyes ran over his troubled features, I took in the dark shade of his eyes and the shadows beneath them. He hadn't fed since my Transition had begun. I swallowed as I pictured him pacing outside of the room, unable to cope with my screaming and trashing any longer, but unable to really leave either.

"Are…you…alright?" I rasped, feeling the worry rolling off him in waves.

He smiled my favorite uneven smile, though it didn't reach his eyes.

"Shouldn't I be asking you that?" His voice was soft, gentle, almost a whisper. I picked it up clear as day. I realized then that no one had risen above the level of my raspy speech, yet I had no problem picking it up. Slowly it began to dawn on me that my senses had improved dramatically. Normally I had to strain to pick it up.

"I'm…okay." Edward obviously sought reassurance that my lack of noise wasn't some Morphine side-effect, because his eyes flicked to Carlisle before resting on my face again.

The blonde vampire eyed me thoughtfully before formulating a reply. "The venom has spread throughout her body. You can see some changes have already occurred." To prove his point, he strode over to me and gently lifting my right hand, pointing at the barely visible scar of a nasty cut I'd gotten at the wedding. "She's healing." Still, there was an underlying presence of anxiety in his words that I couldn't place.

"It's the 3rd day," Edward said. He tilted his head as if listening to something. I then realized my heart was still beating at a normal rate, but receding.

Fear raced through me as I recalled what I had been told me about the process of becoming a vampire.

"The greatest pain begins when the venom is all the way through the body, through the heart, and it starts meeting itself in the veins again and then burning them dry. It moves slower than blood because it's thicker. Each beat of the heart can only push it so far. The changing/burning process is slow. The venom has to leak through to every cell before it ends."

God, I was only half way through the conversion. The worst was yet to come. My panicked gaze flickered to Edward, who had by the looks of him come to the same conclusion. His marble features had paled even further—if that was even possible. The shadows under his eyes were more prominent and suddenly it occurred to me that he looked tired.

I cut my gaze to Carlisle. "No more…morphine." He looked at me with doubt in his eyes, seemingly weighing the options. More morphine would dull the pain, but it seemed to stretch the process at the same time.

"The pain of transformation is the sharpest memory vampires have of their human life." I suddenly remembered and wondered why the hell my cluttered mind chose now to become organized. I looked at Edward and made up my mind.

I was a big girl, I was going to take the pain in stride like the rest of them did. I just hoped I wouldn't scream bloody murder in the process.

I met Carlisle's gaze and he nodded. Suddenly I wondered if Edward wasn't the only mind reader in the Cullen family. I concentrated on my heartbeat, which was slowing by the second. I could feel the new pain boiling, like an animal waiting to be freed of it's cage.

I was standing before the gates of hell. I told myself I could handle the explosion, as long as no innocent bystanders would be hurt by flying shrapnel. I had to be fast.

"Edward." As if he wasn't looking at me already. He stroked my face, as if knowing what was about to come, bracing himself for it. "I heard Emmet….found a place…where there's mountain lion." I threw him a lifeline. He was hesitant to take it. "You shouldn't…pass up…such an opportunity."

TBC……

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A/N2: I know this first chapter might've been a bit of a drag for you, but I simply couldn't skim over Bella's transformation. Tell me what you think, please. Positive or negative.