Author's Note:

Here's my second one-shot. Enjoy! Please, please, please, please review! I've just started experimenting with my writing, and I'd love to hear some feedback on what everyone thinks.

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Up the long, expansive driveway and through the ornate front door of the Cullen home, a girl lay curled up on a sofa. This girl is pregnant and her name is Bella Cullen. Her pregnancy is not like ones you'd see or hear about or witness in daily life. Hers is different because her baby is killing her. Painfully so.

Despite the attempts of her loved ones, including her very distraught husband, Bella has decided to leave the baby be. To let it grow full term and for it to be delivered when it was ready. She didn't care that this baby was unnatural and a possible threat to all human life. She didn't mind that it was brutally assaulting her from the inside. She was not concerned in the least that no one wanted this baby except for her and a very selfish sister-in-law. She was not troubled at all by the fact that as her own life was slipping away, she was inadvertently causing her husband to die as well, along with her best friend. No, none of that mattered. Bella loved her baby, and she was going to risk everything to protect it.

The girl was sleeping now, receiving a small reprieve from the pain brought on by the swiftly growing fetus inside her. She was starving, aching, exhausted, and dying…but her baby was safe. Her baby wasn't hungry because it had been pilfering its mother of all her nutrients since the day it was created. Sucking her dry of them and not leaving a thing behind.

It's creation. Bella saw this day of conception as a beautiful and memorable moment in her life. After all, that moment had provided her with the child she had not even known she was wishing for. Her husband, Edward, however, saw that time in a very different light.

Bella viewed the memories from the time they spent on Esme's Island through a bright and colorful radiance. This light reminded her of the happy times she had had, back when her family and friends weren't being torn apart. But when Edward recalled those same memories, they were obscured by a heavy dark cloud of despair and regret. The cloud pushed down on his chest, suffocating him and reminding him of where this mess all started. To him, the suffering and pain and hatred all seemed endless. And it was so massive that surely, he thought, the pain was only his. That all the pain in the world was being shoved onto him, and him only.

Now, as his broken and bruised wife slept, Edward lay on the floor, just below Bella. His arms were folded across his tightly closed eyes, and his form was entirely motionless.

Emmett, who sat on an armchair observing his brother and new sister, watched Edward and didn't like what he saw. Edward's hair was tousled and unkempt, more so than usual. His lips were mashed into a hard line, trying to hold back the choking sobs of agony that threatened to erupt at any time. His shoulders were stiff and tense, no doubt caused from stress. He wore the same clothes he had returned home in from his and Bella's honeymoon. And Edward's legs lay weak and lifeless, stretched out parallel in front of him.

Emmett felt sorry for his favorite brother. He wanted to help him, to do anything. But he knew there was nothing that he could do. His brother had finally found someone he wanted to be with, and now, cruelly, it was being take away from him again and again. Emmett had never experienced such pain; he didn't know just how great it was. And so he continued to sit, helpless and afraid.

Inside Edward's mind, there was turmoil. Images floated around. Images he'd rather not think about, but knew would not go away, no matter how hard he tried.

Edward hated himself. He hated himself so much for doing this to Bella, his one and only love. Against his better judgment, he was pathetic and weak and allowed to try with Bella. It turned out that that was more of a mistake than anyone was prepared for. He hated words like lust and desire for propelling him to make love to Bella. He hated the fact that he was a vampire, a vampire that could not ever be the human that his Bella deserved. He hated his strange sperm and venom mixture for impregnating his innocent wife with a baby that did not deserved to be loved. He hated that he had created the monster that was destroying Bella. And Edward also hated the monster itself.

Oh how he wanted that thing terminated. Gone. Erased. Killed. But he couldn't, not with Bella's 'bodyguard' protecting her and watching his every move. And he wouldn't, knowing that this is what Bella wanted.

He could not deny his wife anything.

So day after day, hour after hour, and minute by minute, Edward fought for control over his emotions, for he could not allow Bella to see the burning man he had become. It would upset her. His wife was dying. His love, his heart, his soul mate…dying. Dead.

One sob broke free from his pale lips. But that was the only one. He had promised himself that he was going to be strong for his Bella. And though he certainly wasn't strong on the inside, a mask was carefully arranged onto his features, giving the impression that he was fine. That he wasn't completely upset and depressed and worried and hurt and miserable and weak and guilty and broken…That he wasn't dying alongside his beautiful wife.

Esme, his mother, had silently entered the room just seconds before that solitary sob had been released from Edward's mouth. Watching her son in such pain was unbearable. But, like everyone else, she was helpless to do anything to save him. She crouched next to her son's head and tugged at his arms across his closed eyes and patted at his bronze hair. But the arms did not falter.

"Edward, please get up off the floor, son," she pleaded in a detached and heartbroken voice. She could plead and beg and scream and shout, but she could tell that Edward was too far gone in his misery right now to acknowledge her.

Edward made no response, as was expected. He was too lost in the ferocious magnitude of the excruciating pain engulfing him.

Esme began to sob. She sobbed for her son, for her new daughter, for their unborn baby, for the love that was fought so hard for but lost in the end, and for her family being torn and divided. She could not take watching Edward suffer and Bella convulse in pain-even unconsciously, in her sleep- anymore. She stood and ran from the room, leaving Emmett alone with his dying sister, his dying brother, and the unborn monster that was unquestionably the cause of this hideous mess they had all been suddenly and unexpectedly thrust into.

The pain did not let up. No, the pain settled itself into the minds of every single one of the people that had ever stepped foot inside of the Cullen house. And it would continue to remain.

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Alright, that's the end guys. Lemme know what you think! I know that is FAR from perfect. It's really not even that good in my opinion…

Every review is appreciated.