Summary: AU - What if Alice had seen Bella jump... but Bella answered the phone when Edward called? What if Alice saw a vision of Bella happy... but it wasn't with Edward? What if Edward returned to Forks, with every intention to check on Bella and leave... but when he sees her with someone else, his motives change?

How do you choose between the person who was there to catch you when you fell… and the person who was there to make the jump with you in the first place?

First, I have to give a huge thank you to Katie, because without her encouragement, this would never have made its way out of Word. Quote at the beginning of the prologue belongs to the genius behind all things "Veronica Mars," Rob Thomas.

Chasing the Storm

Prologue - Decisions

Tragedy blows through your life like a tornado, uprooting everything, creating chaos. You wait for the dust to settle, and then you choose. You can live in the wreckage and pretend it's still the mansion you remember. Or you can crawl from the rubble and slowly rebuild. Because after disaster strikes, the important thing is that you move on.

But if you're like me, you just keep chasing the storm.

Decisions. One word. One tiny word, but yet it's full of so many things, holds so many secrets, so many dangerous "what ifs."

It's impossible to know what would have happened if I hadn't made the choices I'd made. What if I had gone running and screaming when Edward told me what he was that day eight months ago? What if I'd run after him the day he left me, begging him not to leave?

Or – and this is the "what if" that has crossed my mind the most often as of late – what if I'd never come to Forks at all?

So many questions, but none of them have answers.

Edward once told me that what Alice sees isn't set in stone – that the future can change if the person she sees changes the decisions they make. Their future – the possibility of tragedy – hinges on that decision.

Clearly, I've been thinking too hard about this, but can you blame me? The decision I'm about to make could either make me or break me, and considering my magnetism for danger, the stakes are high on break me.

But I don't have a choice. In fact, the way I see it, that's the problem – I have to make a choice.

Oh. Things were so much easier when I just had to choose between becoming a vampire or staying a human. This…this just hurts.

How do you choose between the person who was there to catch you when you fell… and the person who was there to make the jump with you in the first place?