This is all for erica who I absofuckinglutely adore with all my heart, who gave me kickass music to help fight the writers block, and who just freaking rocks. You can all thank her for this little outtake.

Also, la strana, I hope you enjoy this. Sah and I are engaged. Just thought everyone should know.

Demetri

Humanity is such a fragile frame of existence.

It's why the world goes and moves and pushes without us, while we pretend we're blind and free and somehow, whole.

Stars wink at us, distract us, dazzling and intriguing—unfairly seducing us to the bonds of fate. The moon simply smirks, looking on, somehow above it all.

Night is a blanket, heavy and pressing, coated blackness around my eyes, suffocating and addicting, this confusion of senses, this inkling of control in a claustrophobic room teeming with wicked chaos.

Its oblivion is enticing, sex and pitch black and anonymous. The reason why there's regret in the morning¾that second in which the body is awake, though not necessarily aware, and the mind squeezes its eyes shut, squinting against the taunting light, wishing and hoping and pleading against all hell for just five more minutes.

Five more minutes of blissful ignorance.

In light, reality is inescapable. There are no more places to hide. No more time for childhood. Night air tastes crisply of adolescence and all those thing of yesterday, when the world breathed easy and the creek behind Jefferson's stupid lot wasn't full of shit and STDs.

***

It was bone-chillingly cold tonight. I pulled out a cigarette, squinting to see the tree I crashed into when I was sixteen and drunk and trying to drive home.

"I thought you were gone already."

I turned to see Edward jump the front porch railing.

"Fuck you." I lit my cig.

"Lemme steal one of those." Edward snagged the box from my pocket before I could say hell no.

"Weren't you quitting?"

"Psssh. That's what I tell my dad." He pulled out his lighter.

I eyed him carefully.

"How is your dad?"

His eyes tightened.

I sighed. "That bad, huh?"

Edward turned away, pushing out smoke. "Whatever."

I tugged a hand through my hair because we were all so stuck. And where did we differ, if we all just couldn't get out?

"Fuck."

"Yeah."

I took another drag. "You need a haircut."

"No you need a haircut, asshole." He lunged at my head and I dodged him, laughing.

"Bitch, I'll have you know my professors dig these luscious locks…" I smirked at him.

"4.0 my ass. Prick."

I shrugged my shoulders at him. "Think what you want, but I am a smart motherfucker."

I watched him pull out his cell phone and check the screen. He pulled at the hair behind his head and I was suddenly terrified.

All these years…I'd never thought.

"What's going on?"

Edward looked away, taking another drag. "If I asked you to tell me something, would you tell me the truth?"

"Hell, Edward, why would you ask me that? It's me." I stopped. "Oh. Bella."

He kind of put his head down, the smoke filtering around his face and neck and oh god I hadn't realized how similar we were.

This scared the shit out of me. I couldn't be responsible for someone else's imprisonment.

Only my own.

Because I was a selfish bastard. But I also knew a chance at hope when I saw it.

And I had seen it.

I just wish…

It was too late.

It was all so binding.

I don't think I even mourned the cementing of my adulthood. Life just happened.

I wonder if I would ever know what it meant to live.

I dropped my cig to the ground, pushing it in with my foot. "She's it, man. She's what you need in this fuckhole."

"What did you tell her?"

"Jesus, Edward. The truth."

"You dickhead, what the fuck were you thinking?" He pushed off the wall, moving toward me. "She doesn't need to know all that shit--"

"I didn't tell her everything. You still need to fill in the blanks…I was just…looking for something." I shoved my hands in my pockets because it was so fucking cold.

He grew quiet. "How's Jane?"

I huffed. "Fine. That is the last time I will ever be jealous of a drug."

Edward chuckled. I was relieved. "Fuckin' Aro."

"Yeah."

"You hangin' in there?"

I thought about it…because I was. I mean, I was surviving, wasn't I? "Yeah."

"When do you go back?"

"I leave tomorrow."

"How is it…being back? Are you a new man now?" Edward asked, his tone sarcastic and harsh and it was just…me.

"Nah. Just older. Being away doesn't let you forget…it's a constant reminder. I'm tied to this place."

"Or your dad."

"Dick."

He put his hands up. "Just sayin'."

"Don't you have some damsel in distress to save?"

"I do, yes." He bobbed his head once. "But she doesn't want to be saved."

I stared hard at him. You will not be me. "Who the fuck cares if she wants to be saved? Grow some balls and save her anyways."

"What the hell do you know about this shit, Romeo?"

"I know that you need her."

Please. Don't be like me.

He looked up at me, serious. "I got a full ride, Dem. For soccer."

"No shit?"

He dug out another cig.

"Slow down there jock, we want you to actually stay alive long enough to get the damn scholarship."

He stared past me, lost in thought.

"And your dad--" I trailed off, not entirely sure what it was I wanted to know.

"My dad doesn't need to know shit, Dem."

I spit the remnants of ash left on my tongue. "Okay."

It doesn't matter. You need a savior. You'll keep coming back.

"And Bella?" I asked quietly.

He sighed, his shoulders hunched forward as he leaned against the railing. "I can't just make these decisions based on her, man."

"I know. But god I just want you to get the fuck out of here and never come back."

I did. I wanted never to see his face again.

That would mean there was hope. There was a way out.

They didn't all have to turn out like me.

And Rosie…she could be free and beautiful and everywhere again.

"I'm not ever coming back," he stated, sure of himself.

"You don't understand, Edward, you need--"

"I know what the fuck I'm doing, Demetri. I don't need a counsel session."

I flinched. "Then think about this rationally, dickwad. This isn't some adolescent show of rebellion, this is your life--"

"Christ, do you think I'm stupid? I'm just doing what you always told me to, I'm just trying to make--"

"Stop right there," I cut in, clenching my fists, "you are not going to be anything like me. Just stop. Stop thinking that and stop acting like this and just fucking stop."

I breathed.

"You need her because without her you're alone. And being alone is not powerful or independent or cool. It's stupid and pitiful and just don't…just live, ok?"

Edward glanced back at me. "I don't know if she'll let me follow."

I looked up at the sky, playing with the flame of my lighter. "I don't care."

He flicked the finished cigarette to the ground and stuck another behind his ear. "Get out of here, you pussy," he said, walking down the steps, "run away."

I nodded at his back.

***

They scream muted, noiseless cries that choke and die off before ever leaving their throats.

I can't hear anything anymore.

The world is racing by with too-loud horns, swearing teenagers and rambling old bums.

It's so sharp and holy and bare but I have no words. It's silence suspended in space and time and what-thefuck-ever.

We're all the same. I don't pretend. I laugh at you plastic, platinum, flawless.

Look in the goddamn mirror.

That's right, my love. I'm still laughing.

It's a lie.

It's those moments when you're lying in bed and it's so dark you can taste it, and the room is spinning and ringing and your lids are heavy and suddenly you feel yourself blink, like your body's trying to half-heartedly remind you that you're still breathing. And you stare, your lids forced wide, and you can just barely make out the door of your closet, illuminated by a more sinister shade of black, and with a start you discover your eyes have been closed the entire time. That you're unable to tell the difference between the darkness in front of and inside you.

That you're blind.

But you see, I just don't think a lot of people realize that. Their eyes being closed. Maybe there is no difference.

Like, maybe it's all the same--living and dying. Opening and closing. Hard breaths and silence.

Maybe there is no difference.

I get that. I accept it.

So may I please take off my mask now?