Author's Note:

(WARNING: THIS IS GOING TO BE A LONG ONE)

So. I haven't been on here in a while, have I? Well, I'm back lol. I'm back and I have plans :)

(I have plans for several things-but mainly for this story. This story, for this account, is going to be my main focus for a while).

I also have a few things I would like to discuss.

For starters, I would like to talk about the fact that I have taken down all of the chapters for Burning Ice and replaced it with this one chapter.

Okay, before you attempt to tie me up and poke me with sharp objects, hear me out.

I am incredibly grateful for everyone who has had anything to do with this story-those who read, reviewed, followed, alerted and favorited it. I love and adore every single one of you. I am especially grateful since I went back and read the material that was posted on this story-and realized just how cringe-worthy it was to read. I am so very sorry that I ever posted something of that quality-and that you, as the reader, endured it. The story was far too embellished; there were inconsistencies with the details in it, the pacing was rushed (which I think I had a reason for at one time...?) and, well. Overall, the writing just wasn't very good. I really, really did not like what I read when I went back and read through the material-which makes me all the more appreciative of the reviews that were posted that said people liked it. I simply adore you for liking my writing and giving it a chance when it sounds like it was possibly written by a pretentious thirteen year old that was trying to sound like she was twenty five and knew more about the world than she actually did.

Hopefully, my writing skills have improved since the last time I posted on this site; I hopefully no longer sound like a pretentious thirteen year old trying to act like a grown up.

I would like for my writing to sound like the real me-like the twenty-something year old that I am.

And, honestly, I really do hope that my writing skills have improved because, to prove how grateful I am to the people who have read, reviewed, alerted, favorited, and followed this story, I am doing a total and complete rewrite. I am completely scrapping what's been posted and posting new (hopefully better) chapters that have a more cohesive plotline (and don't read like I'm a teenager trying too hard to sound like a grown up).

I have, generally, all of the story outlined and I know what direction that I want for it to head in. It's been somewhat easy to write so far and updates should come fairly often. I make no promises, though.

If you care to know what I'm going to do with this story plotwise, after having erased all of it and replaced it with this one chapter, please continue reading.

If you don't care and want to skip to the chapter, please feel free to do that also :)

Now. Onto the next part of the Author's note.

What is going to happen in the story this time around:

Okay. So, this is how I see it. Bree, while being a seventeen year old girl, is not going to be the wide-eyed new vampire girl that just wants to fit in with the Cullen family and immediately falls head over heels for Jacob.

Just... no.

Really, no.

That would not make a very good story and that is what I want for this to be- a good story. I want for this to be something that, if I came across it, I would want to read it from the summary and then keep reading past the first chapter.

In order for it to be a story that I would read from the summary and then keep reading past the first chapter, it needs to have a plot; it needs to have substance to it. For it to have substance to it, the story needs to have a realistic take on Bree Tanner and how she views the life she's forced to live because of a feud between a coven and a rogue vampire that's intent on getting revenge for the death of her mate. Bree isn't an idiot; she's an intelligent teenage girl. Granted, teenagers can be idiotic at times-but Bree isn't going to be that kind of teenager in this story. She's going to have a past that forces her to act more mature than her years. She's going to be the kind of girl that doesn't like being a vampire and is bitter about not getting to choose to be one. She's going to be bitter-and she's going to blame the Cullen family and Bella Swan for what her life has become. She's not going to be particularly pleasant all the time-and she's probably going to end up being friends with people that you wouldn't expect because of her bitterness.

Another thing that it would need in order for it to be a good story is for it to have a slow and realistic build up to the romance of imprinting, kind of like with Sam and Emily.

It may not be everyone's cup of tea how it played out-but, personally, I like how Meyer's wrote Emily's character. Rather than becoming a mindless idiot from the onset of the imprinting, Emily didn't immediately cop to the idea of being with Sam Uley; instead of becoming a starry-eyed idiot from the moment that Sam imprinted on her, she detested him. She was loyal to her family, loyal to her cousin, Leah; she hated him for dumping Leah and going after her-so she refused his advances, initially. It was only after the accident that she decided to be with Sam. She wasn't some mindless girl that didn't stick up for herself, that just let things happen to her and took them as they came.

I want for Bree to be like that, too-not necessarily reluctant (which she is, given the experiences that she's had with the male gender that you'll find out about later on in the story), but more-so realistic. I don't want for her to be a strong, independent person that knows who she is one chapter and then have her brains turned to mush and her be a doe-eyed, cliched Mary-Sue character because of the "magic of imprinting" in the next installment. I want for her to fight; I want for her to be bitter and then slowly come to the realization that maybe romance isn't so bad-and maybe, just maybe, she has a shot at happiness if she'll let herself move on. I think that both Jacob and Bree deserve a chance to grow and to get to know each other before they fall in love and let the imprinting take it's place in their (somewhat tumultuous) relationship.

And... Well. That's what I plan on doing with this story; that's how this story is going to go. If that isn't your cup of tea, then I apologize. Perhaps, one day, I 'll write something you like. :)

-.-.-

If you read all of that author's note, I applaud you. Seriously, I do.

You might possibly so bored that you want to leave this page, forget the chapter (and the story) entirely, and never read anything that I have written (or will write in the future) ever again.

Hopefully, this is not the case.

And, if this is not the case-please enjoy the update :)

...And, if you'd like to, leave me a review when you get done reading. :)

Disclaimer: I, as the author of this work of fiction, own nothing that is recognizable. No profit is being made off of this work and no copyright infringement is intended. I have taken material from other wonderful people who are more creative than I am (and smarter, because they're making a profit off it instead of me) and simply playing with it for a while. No harm is intended, so don't sue me. :)

Chapter One: Time In The Army

Pain. Fear. Agony.

They were all things that she, at one time, had thought that she knew well. She had thought, at one time, that she had experienced each of them in turn and had come out on the other side of the experiences a better, stronger, wiser person. She had been wrong. While she had come out of the experiences a better, stronger, wiser person, she hadn't really experienced the emotions to the point that they seemed to be overwhelming; she had experienced them-but when she had felt them, it had been in small amounts compared to how she had felt them recently. She had experienced them in small doses up until a month ago, had been given only a small taste of what it was like to feel each of them. Though, to be fair, she honestly thought that she had known how physical pain felt, having been bullied by the man who was supposed to protect her from the people who wanted to cause her harm; she had thought that the pain of those blows was not only the worst pain that she had ever felt-but that it would continue to be the worst pain she had ever felt, physically. She also thought that she had known fear as a small child when she would lock herself in her closet and then hope that theman who had once been her daddy wouldn't find her-that he would pass out before he remembered that she liked to hide in the closet to get away from him and his hands, that would leave bruises on her skin.

She also thought that she had known what it was like to feel emotional agony over a loss, having gone through one as poignant as her mother's death at the tender age of ten. She thought that her mother being taken away from her because of a man's decision to drive when he should have been parked somewhere sleeping rather than driving a semi had caused her a great deal of emotional agony... And it had. But, recently, she had come to know a pain even deeper than the loss of her own mother; a pain deeper than being betrayed and abused by her father before she had been taken away from him and put into the foster care sytem. She had come to know a pain that ran so deep it seemed to have settled into her icy bones, clinging to the charred remains of what were once her veins; she had experienced a loss that was like no other loss she had been through... And, roughly a month after it had happened, she still wasn't sure how to cope with it. She hadn't lost something trivial like a cell phone or a tube of lip gloss. She hadn't simply misplaced something like a set of car keys. She hadn't lost something like that; no, she had lost a life. No, she hadn't just lost a life. She had lost her life.

No, she corrected herself yet again, she hadn't lost her life. Her life had been taken, had been ripped away from her. Her life, and so many things with it, had been taken away from her with one felled swoop. Her life had been taken from her without her consent and had been replaced with a hellish nightmare that she didn't know how to escape. She felt like a prisoner looking out through iron bars, trapped in an extremely durable jail cell... She swallowed, practicing the reflex and winced as she felt the burn in her throat pulse, low and intense. The burn, the burning sensation in her throat, had been there since she had opened her eyes and greeted her new vampiric life with no small amount of fear and confusion. She tried not to think of the moments before she had opened her eyes for the first time as a vampire; they were painful, something she didn't like to think about. Trying to distract herself from the memories, she closed her eyes, taking in how the breeze blew gently over the water at the docks, ruffling her hair and tangling the strands. It was quiet as she looked at the grey, rippling surface and wondered how many of the fish below were swimming down there, peacefully unaware of all that was happening above them...

All of the chaos that was being cause by the people who had been bitten and changed into monsters that prowled the shadows, watching for helpless prey.

Prey that would be unable to fend them off once they decided to attack...

"It doesn't help, I think."

Idly, she glanced at the blonde haired young man standing beside where she sat; her eyes returned to the water as he continued to speak, like she had invited him to sit down even though she hadn't so much as twitched an eyelid. She listened half-heartedly to him as he settled in beside her. "Thinking about the things you could have had, I mean... The life you didn't know you had until you didn't have it anymore. It doesn't help to think about it. It doesn't make the loss you're going through any easier, I think," he said as he sat down, folding his legs Indian style. A small sigh escaped her and she didn't bother to give him the look of disdain that she thought that he deserved. He had been around her long enough to know what she would have done, though, and he grinned at her, the look on his face easy and playful in it's frozen and unaging crystallized perfection. A beautiful smile from a boy like the one beside her would have made her blush a month ago... But, then and again, she thought bitterly, a month ago I would have been able to blush. And she would have. A month ago, she would have been able to feel blood flush her cheeks when she felt embarrassed-and, had she felt any embarrassment and blushed, she probably would have ducked her head to hide it.

Now, though... Now her cheeks would never flush with color again.

She would never have to suffer from how prone she had been to blushing when she had been completely, 100% alive and human-and now her head remained held high, her dark magenta irises trained on the relatively still and darkened water just beyond the wooden dock she sat on.

Now, she thought as the blonde boy fell silent beside her and his smile faded, the only red that would touch her skin would be the blood of her prey on her lips when she drank from a victim.

...Well, if she drank from a victim.

She was a vampire, yes, but she wasn't a monster. She didn't want to do something as gross as drink blood-and she hadn't done anything drastic yet. She hadn't... hadn't managed to actually kill anyone yet. She hadn't actually drank from a body; the idea of killing someone really did make her feel squeamish. The thought of drinking blood from a body as the life in it dissipated was repulsive to her, no matter how good the blood smelled. She shuddered mentally at the thought-and, as if he could tell what she was thinking (about how appetizing blood from a human smelled-and yet how repulsive it seemed to her to drink it; it was like being addicted to the smell of coffee but hating the taste of the coffee bean), he spoke into the relative silence. "Are you ready? To go hunting one more time?" Ah, hunting. The bane of her existence. She frowned as she looked over at him, the color of her eyes closed to onyx than crimson as blurry memories shot to the forefront of her mind -memories of her childhood, memories that had a trace of how her father was like before the alcohol consumed both his life and his paycheck. To be honest, she hadn't liked hunting, even when they had lived in the South, prior to her mother's death. She hadn't liked the idea of killing a small and innocent creature before eating it.

She had gone vegan for a while at the age of eight after her first hunt until her mother had convinced her to eat chicken. She could remember, even through the murkiness that surrounded what her mother's smile looked like, that it had taken a week of persuasion before she had relented and agreed to begin eating meat again. She looked at the grey and smooth water, remembering how pleased her mother had seemed when she had eaten the chicken that she had cooked for lunch on the Saturday that she had stopped being vegan. She was brought out of the memory by the sound of Freddie clearing his throat. She looked over at him, taking in how the breeze that had been blowing had ruffled his blonde curls and rolled her eyes at how he smiled at her. For people to feel repulsion when they walked a little too close to Freddie, he certainly was a very... amicable person. Or, well, she thought he would be if he would let other people be near him. Given the situation that they were in, though, she didn't blame him for wanting to keep his distance from the other people that they were around. If she had the ability to mentally repel them too, she would.

With the thought of being able to repel everyone in the army away from her easing some of the bitterness in her mind towards what she was about to do, she sighed and said, "Sure. Let's go."

She stood to her feet in one fluid movement; Freddie rose to his own, looking at her expression of disdain with no attempt to hide his own amusement. She ignored him and headed away from the place that she had been sitting, thinking as she went that her relationship with Freddie was an odd one. He seemed to think of her as the younger sister that he didn't have in his human life... or maybe he'd had a little sister and had lost her, she thought as she ran next to him through the city, looking for an unsuspecting victim. Had he had a sister? How big had his family been? She didn't know the answer to either of those questions. There were so many things that she didn't know about the guy who had helped her out since she had joined the army (unwillingly). She didn't know how or where he had grown up; she didn't even know if he was from Seattle. She wasn't even from Seattle; she had only moved to Seattle a little over a year ago. She didn't know if he was going to college, if he had a job-what he had planned for his life...

She knew so little about him and had been around him for almost an entire two months. She glanced over at him as they darted into an alleyway behind a club, wondering why she didn't know what the answer to her questions were. She could have asked him before this point-and she should have. Because it bothered her that she didn't know. She didn't know how many siblings he had-or if he had any at all. He could have been an only child, for all she knew. Either way, he had taken a shine to her. Well, after she had taken a shine to him, he had certainly become more fond of her, she amended mentally, remembering how it had all happened. It was odd because, at first, she hadn't even noticed Freddie being there. She was a newborn and she was scared; she saw the fights, the rage and the bloodlust and she was terrified. She just... tried to stay out of the way and make as little ruckus as possible.

She tried to be in the shadows, tried to keep out of the way of people like Brenda, a blonde haired girl that looked like she woud have been a model even as a human but tended to be a little more on the sadistic side of things-or people like Tyler, a dark haired young man that had truly become a monster, someone who loved to kill for the fun of it. She shuddered at the thought of Tyler; he was someone who had made her experience in the army (if it could ever be counted as a good thing) completely and utterly terrible. He had tried about fifteen times to kill her since she had been inducted into the army about two months ago-but, thanks to Freddie and his ability to repulse people, he hadn't yet managed to. Whenever Tyler would get too close her with a murderous gleam in his bright red eyes, he would start wretching, dry heaving... or sometimes actually cough up blood if he had recently fed. Freddie would use the repulsive force that he kept around himself on Tyler whenever he would focus on her and for that, she was grateful. She really, really was, she thought as they stopped in front of the back door to a club.

Flashing her a dazzling smile, Freddie slipped into the club through the unlocked back door and she sighed, hardly using any effort as she bent her knees, launching herself into the air and onto the roof of the building. It took a couple of seconds for her to flit across the roof top-and then half of a second to leap onto the next one. She moved from building to building, going through a familiar pattern until she came to a building she knew well. She landed noiselessly on the concrete top, looking around with dark red, almost black eyes. It didn't take long (another half of a second, perhaps) before she spotted the small stack of books that she had left from their last hunting excursion in the city. She walked over to them at a normal human pace, sitting down Indian style beside the medium-sized stack of reading material. She leaned against the low wall that had been built on the roof top, relatively hidden from the city below as she picked up the top book-a green colored, hard-backed novel. She opened it carefully, using gentle fingers to turn to the page she had stopped on; taking the bookmark out of the novel that she had borrowed from the book store, she sighed quietly to herself and settled in for what would be the next ten or so hours.

It was as she turned to the first page of chapter one that she heard, through the music of the club pounding nearby and the life of the city as it pulsed around her, the first high-pitched, terrified scream of the night peirce the air.

She sighed, focusing on her book.

It was gonna be a long night.

-.-.-

Looking down at the city below her, Bree Tanner wondered how her life had come to this-how she had, in such little time, become more of a monster than her father or her boyfriend had ever been to her.

She was trying to fight it. With every particle of her being, she was trying to fight the urge to feed on a human's blood. She didn't want to be responsible for someone losing their life. She didn't want to have someone's blood on her hands. and, admittedly, she knew that either she would get weak enough that someone in the army would attack her and rip her to pieces and then burn her or she would end up caving and finally kill someone... But, well. She wasn't going to cave in yet. She wasn't going to be the person who became a total monster, using what they had been forced into becoming as an excuse for their actions like others were doing. She also knew that there were people in the army that judged her for her decision to not hunt humans like everyone else. She knew that they thought that she was being naïve, that she was acting like she was about five rather than the seventeen-year-old girl that she physically was. She frowned as she thought of Riley and how he, in particular, didn't like that she wouldn't feed on the blood of humans like the other vampires would; he kept telling her that she was acting like a stupid little girl, like a child that was throwing a tantrum about eating her vegetables on her plate.

Well, Riley, humans aren't like broccoli, she thought bitterly as she looked down in what appeared to be an empty alleyway from the street. She sighed lightly as she leapt down from the roof of the building she had been perched on for the better part of an hour and onto a dumpster just below it. She landed silently on the metal in spite of her weight-and then landed just as silently in the narrow concrete path of the alleyway half of a second later. Straightening her jacket, she walked over to the doorway that she had been staring at for the past forty-five and a half minutes and placed her hand on the knob, attempting to gently turn it. She frowned down at the silver contraption in frustration; she hadn't wanted to cause property damage-but the owner of the place had locked the door behind him when he had left. The door, which was firmly locked, would have been a deterrant in a normal situation. As it stood, she simply shouldered the dooor open, the wood and metal of the frame splintering and breaking under the pressure she pitted against it. She let go of the knob once the door was open, walking through the doorway calmly and into the clothing store that she had been spying on for the past couple of hours.

She needed new clothes, different ones than the ones that she was currently wearing. The ones she had on were ripped and dirty; she had been wearing them for a while-almost two weeks, she thought as she walked into the front area of the store. She didn't like to take clothes, didn't like to steal. Even if she was a vampire, she still didn't like the idea of taking something that didn't belong to her. She had been bitten-basically injected with venom-not gotten her brain removed. She flitted from rack to rack of clothing, looking at the different items as she wondered when Freddie would get back from his hunting with the other two. There had been two other people that had come with them-a girl that had blonde hair and pale skin (she kind of reminded ber of a Barbie doll and she wasn't 100% sure about her name; she thought that it might be Sarah) and a guy that she was about 75% positive was named Dustin that had coal black hair and tan colored skin. The guy or the girl didn't seem to be too bright to her-they seemed to be the kind who waited for instructions and then followed them as best as they could. Which, she supposed, would be a good fit for Freddie in the end. Freddie, though he seemed to repulse everyone around him, was a smart guy. He would be the kind of guy that would be a good choice for a leader for them. ...He would be a good choice for a leader for the army, too, in her opinon.

He definitely would have been a much better choice to lead the army than Riley, she thought as she walked through the store, picking up the clothes she needed as she went; finally, as she finished about two minutes after having walked in the store, she headed for a dressing room to change into a new outfit. It felt good to shed the dirty clothes that smelled like the water at the docks, she noted as she slid on new undergarments and then pulled on a pair of dark jeans, buttoning them. She pulled the black, long sleeved shirt she had picked up last over her head, straightening it before pulling her hair up and away from her face and into a messy bun. She remembered few details about her human life, most of it having most likely been erased by the venom... But she could remember that the way she had worn her hair had been indicative of the lifestyle that she was living. She would almost always wear her hair down; she rarely wore it pulled up and away from her face. The reason why was simple: she had worn it down to hide the bruises that her father would put on her when he would get drunk and hit her... and she wasn't going to do that anymore. She wasn't going to hide her face or her pain.

She wasn't going to lurk in the shadows anymore when it came to trouble.

It was her new philosophy on life-and it was why, when Riley had told her that she had to feed on a human two nights into her being a vampire, she had told him to go sit on a cactus and rotate a couple of times to make sure it was nice and spiny.

He hadn't tried to force her to feed off of a human since then and she hadn't made any more rude comments about what she felt that he should do with his spare time.

It was a nice arrangement, in her opinion.

Briefly, she debated getting new jewelry to go with the clothes-but no. No, she wouldn't take jewelry too. The jewelry she had in was good enough already. Besides, it wasn't like the holes in her ears or the piercing in her nose were going to grow up, was it? She wasn't going to physically change anymore, ever. Well, not unless someone yanked her hair out or she chose to cut and/or dye it. The hair wouldn't grow back if it was yanked out-and she definitely wasn't going to risk dying or cutting her hair. What if the color ended up being wrong or the style she chose ended up looking bad? She wasn't going near that area with a 39 1/2 foot pole. She folded her old clothes neatly, putting her socks and shoes ontop of the pile of foul smelling cloth, and carried it with her as she walked out of the dressing room area barefoot. Once out of the dressing room, she scanned the store with nearly onhx irises until she spotted why she was looking for-A rack of jackets with holds on them. She picked one up, briefly inspecting it. It was a plan black jacket, made of cotton; the size was a little big for her-but, oh well. It wasn't like she was going to keep it for long anyway-and she only needed it for the purpose of covering her face. She didn't want the security cameras to catch her-and that was why she had picked this clothing store. The security cameras were being worked on and she didn't have to worry about seeing her face plastered all over Seattle once the robbery was reported to the authorities.

She weaved her way through the racks of clothes easily once she had the jacket that she needed, exiting out of the store's front door and into the chilly Seattle night air. The store that she had been in didn't sell shoes-she would need to go next door for that, unfortunately. She debated on what kind of shoes to get as she walked back out of the store and into the alleyway beside it. She tossed her clothes gently into the dumpster before pausing in the alleyway. She slid on the jacket, zipping it up over her long-sleeved shirt; she pulled the hood on over her head, shoving her hands into the pockets of it as she walked across the concrete, heading soundlessly to her next destination at a brisk pace.

The chilled temperature of it against the soles of her feet was more amusing to her than it was bothersome as she went to a shoe store not even twenty five feet away. The interior of the store was dark as she looked in through the glass, peering to see if anyone was inside. Her crimson eyes detected no activity from where she stood-but she lingered, knowing that the owners of the shoe store liked to stay late sometimes and were tricky about how they left the place. She hadn't been around for when the owners had left the place, too busy being bitter as she sat on the docks to consider the advantage she would need in order to be able to get fresh clothes without being detected.

Sighing to herself, she dug under the mat that was infront of the doorway and found the key, pulling it out of the small pocket that had been sewn underneath for the purpose of keeping the key. A small, smug smile was on her lips as she opened the door and slipped in, quietly closing it behind her. She padded through the shoe store to the very back, where they kept the shoes that she had been thinking of wearing-and as she slowed down, her blood red eyes landed on the black combat boots. They might have looked clunky and they might not have been the most fashionable... but they had been told that they were going to be going into a battle and that they would be going into the forest to do it. They had one last night, tonight, to do whatever they wanted before they would leave-and she was getting as prepared as she could. She looked through the boxes of the boots carefully and quickly, picking out the size that she would need and carefully sliding it out of where it had been stacked. A small sigh of relief escaped when the boxes didn't fall and make a mess on the floor. She would not have been happy if that would have happened; relief coursing through her like blood once had, she turned and headed for the door.

She paused, though, grabbing a package of socks before heading completely out of the store and locking the door behind her.

-.-.-

Ten minutes later, she sat underneath a street lamp on a park bench, waiting for Freddie and the other two army members to come back from their hunt.

She sat there with one leg crossed over the other and her arms wrapped around herself as she looked around; she tried to avoid thinking of the impending battle that she would literally be running into as her foot tapped a pattern in mid-air. She tried not to think of it-but attempting to do that made her feel like ants were crawling inside of her... Which, really, was kind of how she felt every time that she went away for hunting and got too far from the safety that the army gave her. 'Safety net' was a term that was used in the loosest sense of the definition-because, even in the army, a person had to fight for their life or be torn apart by opposition within the group. But, even though she completely and utterly despised the army and the life that she had been unwillingly roped into, she also didn't like the feeling that being away from the army gave her. The truth of the matter, plain and simple, was that without the army she was completely alone in the new life that she was living. Without the army, she had no one else like her-she had no one else that she was able to relate to. And while maybe that wasn't entirely a bad thing (considering what she had become), she still didn't think that she liked the idea of being completely alone very much.

She shifted on the bench, frowning as her eyes scanned the fronts of the stores once again and tried to ignore how she felt on the inside. The feeling inside of her was restless; she was antsy to get back to the house where they had all been staying-mostly because of how close it was to sunrise, even though they had been told that going out in the sun was okay. She still didn't like the idea, even if Riley was a hundred percent certain that going out in the sun wouldn't set them on fire. If Freddie would hurry up she wouldn't have to worry about being back at the house in time before the sun rose, she thought as she looked at a small ice cream parlor across from the park bench (which, she thought, idly, was a smart business maneuver, putting an ice cream shop next to an area like a park). She had just begun contemplating going and looking for the blonde haired ball of repulsion when she felt a slight movement beside her. She looked over to her left calmly, being greeted with the sight of the dim light from the street lamp shining down on Freddie's blonde curly hair. His smile was wide, a gleaming rainbow even in the dim lighting that they were in, and his eyes were such a bright red that they almost glowed as he looked at her.

She liked to think that they were glowing because he was happy and not because of the four, possibly five, victims that he had just taken down behind a club or a restaurant. She looked at him, taking in his beautiful, glowing red eyes that reminded her of the color of a rose, and waited for him to speak. What he said to her, though, kind of threw her off guard, because his words were: "I have a compromise." She blinked, waiting for him to continue, to elaborate... to give some kind of clue as to what he had a compromise for. He sat there for a moment longer until one of her eyebrows arched, changing her facial expression, and he seemed to snap into the present. "Right! Compromise! Here, drink this!" She blinked as he thrusted a thermos in her face and she wrinkled her nose at him. Was he insane? Had he drank from an addict or something? He seemed to sense the disdain and the skepticism she felt because he continued, saying, "Just... Please? Please just try it and then I'll explain." She really didn't want to... But the expression on his face was so eager and so beautiful that it was difficult to refuse him. She took the thermos from him gingerly, fingers wrapping around it as she raised the container to her mouth.

She had kind of expected for it to taste bad, for it to be some kind of practical joke that he was playing on her. She had even thought that it might taste okay-that it would be cow's blood or the blood of some kind of animal from a local butcher shop in Seattle. What she hadn't expected was what she tasted as soon as she tipped the container the slightest bit, the warm lquid hitting her tongue. ...She didn't like to use curse words, but fuck. She couldn't recall anything having ever tasted that good before. It was... It was definitely something she wanted more of, she thought as her throat muscles flexed while she swallowed, trying to drink it as fast as she could. She had drained the large container in seconds-and when she tilted her head back into a normal position, the look on Freddie's face was smug. "What was that?" She demanded in a bell-like voice, a voice that still creeped her out a little. It didn't... It didn't sound right. It didn't sound like a normal, natural voice with it's chime-like quality. How her voice sounded, however, was the least of her concerns as she waited for Freddie to give her an answer to her query.

Freddie still looked terribly smug-possibly even more than before-as he replied, with his arms crossed over his chest:

"Donated blood."

She blinked, her expression smooth for a long moment. Her throat muscles contracted as she swallowed, processing what he had told her. "Donated... blood?" He nodded once, appearing just a smidge too proud of himself as he sat up and began to explain. "I was out hunting with Brian and Elaine-" Ah, so those were their names, she thought absentmindedly as she watched him grow more and more excited. "-And I kept thinking about how you wouldn't feed like everyone else because you didn't want to kill anyone. So I thought that if there was just a way for you to get human blood without killing anyone, you would feed like the rest of us and be ready for the battle tomorrow, right? And right before I was about to-um, bite a girl-" She nearly snorted at the editing. He had probably been at a club and they had been about to hook up-but because of his manners, and the fact that she was seventeen, he wasn't going to say that. He pressed on, ignoring the flicker of amusement on her facial features, saying, "An idea came to me: a blood bank. It's cheesy, I know. A vampire going to a blood bank? We've heard the jokes before. But it works, right? That's human blood and no one died for you to get it. It was donated to save a life-and itis. It's saving yours."

She was completely, utterly still as she held the thermos in her right hand, processing what he had sat beside her and explained in quiet, excited tones. After a beat too long, she lowered the thermos, the bottom of it resting against the material of her jeans. She wondered how red her eyes were as she looked at him, taking in his familiar features. "You care," was all she managed to get out, instead of what she was thinking. Her thoughts were about a hundred miles ahead of what she was saying, wondering why he bothered to care as much as he did. Why would he when she was basically competition, when it came down to the nitty gritty? She really was. Even if she survived off of donated blood (which was a good solution for her at the moment), she was still competition. The donated blood was blood that he could be consuming, too... and yet, he had been trying to think of a solution for her and had come up with the idea of a blood bank. He had gone and gotten the blood for her to drink; he had gotten the blood for her to feed on so that she would be strong for the battle that they would be gong into in a matter of hours.

He cared and she, frankly, didn't get why. Finally, as another second ticked by, she pressed her lips together before asking him, "Why?" It was a simple question, yes, but it was one that he seemed to understand the implications of. It was one that maybe he had thought that she would ask-because he seemed to have already prepared his answer. "You remind me of a girl-someone that I should have been there for but wasn't when I was human. I know that it's probably strange and a little sad that doing things for you and protecting you eases the guilt that I feel for not being there for her when I should have been." That... was a little sad and a little strange. But she wasn't going to tell him that she agreed with him, not when he had provided her with a means to feed that didn't make her feel like a mass murderer. He seemed to see her conclusion in her expression though, and his smile was soft he looked at her, waiting for her to respond. She didn't, though, opting to keep quiet. They sat there, side by side as the world around them lightened in the chill of early morning... and, when the street lamps began to dim as the sun rose further and further in the sky, he spoke again.

"I'm not going to participate in the battle, Bree."

She didn't show shock or surprise-she had surmised as much by now. Freddie, for as much as he claimed that he wanted to be there for her and protect her, wasn't the kind of guy that seemed to enjoy a fight. "I'm going to leave-I'm going to head in a different direction as soon as I stand up from this bench." He paused, ruby eyes glowing in the dim golden light of the street lamp above them. His tongue darted out, swiping over his lips before he continued. "You could go with me, if you want. We could start a new life, somewhere else away from all of this. We would have access to all of the blood that we want-we could travel, could go and see places and have adventures." He looked at her, expression pleading with her as he angled towards her. "Riley won't care if we disappear-we'd just be two less people that he has to tend to before battle; he's gathered enough people that he'll probably be glad to be rid of us-the girl that won't eat and the boy who makes him wanna puke." She found herself smiling at the description he gave of them. It was fairly accurate, in a general sense... But still. She frowned, looking down at her knees as she contemplated her options and then made her choice.

When she looked up at him a moment later, he saw the answer in her eyes before she spoke.

"In my human life," she began quietly, and paused to gather her thoughts. She cleared her throat when she had decided how to continue and said, "I wasn't a very... confrontational person. I suffered abuse and, rather than standing up for my self or going to someone for help, I suffered in silence. I tried to hide, tried to draw up inside of myself because of all of the pain I felt. I'm not like that anymore; I don't really like the idea of leaving and not going into battle because that feels like giving in. Leaving right now would feel to me like I'm quitting, giving up-like I'm not facing the people who bulllied me into being something I don't want to be. So... I want to go with you, Freddie. I do-I want to go places and meet new people and have adventures... But I'm not going to. Not yet." He nodded, not immediately responding to her small speech. "So... in a year, then?" He prompted as the sky slowly lightened into a pearly grey color, the clouds a smoooth sheet aboce the city. The lights on the streets were off and people around them were beginning to stir from their sleep, the breathing patterns from around the two on the bench changing.

A bird, quietly, began to sing in the distance and she wondered what kind of bird it was.

"Will you keep in touch?"

The question came, a quiet murmur in the dim morning light as she smelled the strong scent of coffee and saw the interior of the ice-cream parlor light up. She hadn't looked at him as she asked it-and when she did look over at him, his smile was gentle at the question-like he knew she would ask. It was also the kind of smile that gave her the impression that he knew he needed to be careful with how he phrased his answer. "I'll send you a post card," was his gentle offer-and she would take it, even though she knew that it wouldn't happen. She didn't have an address for him to send the post card to, even if she did want him to keep in touch. It was a farce, a façade that they were going through-him humoring her more or less to ease the guilt in both of their chests for abandoning the other. The possibility of a future where they kept in touch was enough to ease the guilt for both of them, she surmised before she finally responded. "Deal. Just make sure you don't have too much fun without me," She said with a small smile. He looked at her for a long moment after her reply, simply observing her-and she could see a sadness in his expression that she didn't like, that she didn't want to be there.

He looked almost wistful, like he had genuinely wanted for her to say yes and go with him even if he had known that she wouldn't agree to it before he asked.

With a sad smile that she hated to see still playing across his face, he leaned in, kissing her on the cheek.

The touch was feather-light as her eyes closed-and she cringed away from the physical contact, both from the memory that had been evoked by skin on skin contact and the instinct she had to protect herself from other creatures like her.

When she opened her eyes a second later, he was gone, the street around her deserted in the grey early morning light.

-.-.-