AN: This was a lot shorter/wittier in my head. Oh well, it's just for kicks. Also, this has been festering so long the ending was written in a spasm of frustration and desire to actually complete something this month, so sorry if it's not as jokes as it could be. There may be continuity errors. And lots of them. Just like the real thing!

For Quinsenberry and for victory!

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"Oh come on! Try again!" I smirked and looked up teasingly at the bemused if slightly sullen Cullen in front of me. Edward curled his beautiful marble-yet-still-pink-and-inviting lips in a tired smile. He gracefully crawled over towards where I leaned against the dark trunk, mottled with moss and lichen. Bits of me tingled as his upper arm brushed my shoulder. "I told you Bella, I can't read your mind." I looked up at him and nuzzled his arm with my cheek, it was cold and I felt him tense and suck in a deep breath of forest air, knowingly I tipped my head back and pulled away. "But you can do anything, Edward." He signed and gazed out into the forest, his liquid gold eyes dripping chagrin. "No Bella. I can't. You're… different," he looked into my eyes, my heart gave it's standard thump and flutter routine, "you're special Bella." Rendered mute I looked down at my knees, clean and un-grazed despite the seven times that I tripped over on our walk out here. After the sixth time Edward has proffered to carry me on his back, but I had fallen over a root upon dismounting. Edward had gently brushed the soil and crushed worms from them with his sleeves. Sitting next to him now I could hardly breathe for my heart palpitating into my ribcage; but Edward seemed not to notice. Edward shifted and murmured distantly, "What are you thinking?" I lay my palms sky facing in front of me and the corner of my mouth pulled into a conniving smile, "I know you could hear it if you tried." Edward chuckled and put his strong hand over mine, "Bella, trust me; it's as though my power becomes… disabled around you. You absolutely overpower me." He was quiet for a moment letting this digest. I suppressed my urge to crawl into his lap and fall into a coma of bliss. A thought occurred to me.

"What's it like?"

"Mmm?"

"Hearing people's thoughts." I sat staring ahead waiting for an answer. I hoped he didn't think I was mocking him. "It's… as though everyone is totally honest all the time. And no one has any regard for other people's sentiments." I rolled my eyes; he had utterly missed my genius point. For someone so sensitive, intelligent and conscientious he could be pretty basic sometimes. "Holy crow, Edward." I elbowed him in the sandstone cliff where an un-vampire would have ribs, "I meant what does it sound like?"

"Oh." He considered this and then said, "It's like hearing what people would say under their breath, or whisper. Generally it sounds like a continuation of what they were saying, but with a different tone depending on what they're not saying."

"Okay. What about when people are just thinking to themselves?" He responded immediately this time. "It sounds like people are talking to themselves." I blinked three times in rapid succession.

"Do people's thoughts get louder the closer you are in proximity to them?"

"Yes and no. Volume depends both on my closeness to them and how much I am concentrating on their thoughts." I mulled this over.

"How do you make thoughts as loud as possible?

"What?"

"Like, do you close your eyes and breathe deeply, clench your fists, press your ear against the ground and hum—"

"I just get closer to them, Bella, and concentrate, but I usually don't have to. People don't normally try to think quietly." I was put out for a moment. Then, inspired, I crawled around into Edward's lap and pressed my forehead against his. His amber eyes widened for a moment, his perfect cherub-bow lips parting in a silent expression of exclamation, then closed. He frowned at me and chuckled. I swayed slightly, the severely shortened distance between us dizzying me. His crowbar like forearms came up to steady and I clutched into the thick, corded muscle gratefully. The last time I had felt a feeling even close to the vertigo yanking at my ankles now was when I was seven, and on a rollercoaster. I was moving at about one hundred and fifteen kilometers an hour. In the still, quiet, dim forest now I felt like I was moving at light speed.

Below me Edward shifted, straightening his back against the tree, so that now, while I was still upon his hips he was at a level height with me. We stayed like this. Edward's breath fanned over my face, so although he hadn't moved it was as though he had gently kissed every part of me. Being this close to him, to this impossibly perfect beauty I was totally, utterly saturated in awe. The tiny flecks of black artfully flecked through his boiling caramel irises seemed to open and engulf me into their tiny infinite universes of reflection. The perfect, petite curves of his eyelashes rivaled those on a priceless ancient vase from the Ming dynasty. His eyebrows arched delicately, expressive, thoughtful, and insightful, as though brushstrokes from a Botticelli or Michelangelo. He was like a pure blue flame. Unadulterated, unblemished, untainted, he was pure. No, not a flame a sequin, one pinned to my chest, and I was forever in fear of losing him.

He leaned forward, a pushed his lips onto mine. It was like kissing a smooth, icy cold shell, pink and pale and frozen from arctic seawater. His hands came up and cupped my face, like a flower, or baby bird, as though you were afraid to bring harm to it, but at the same time wanted to shelter it from the world, hold it up only to the caress of the sun. He broke away, breathing out. "I think I heard you." His voice was oddly flat.

I edged back slightly. "What was I thinking?" I could feel the air of animosity about him. Something was wrong. I didn't mean kissing a shell in a bad way. "No, Bella, I mean…" he trailed off broodingly, I think his was trying to think of a way to explain. It must be bad, Edward never had to think to sound philosophical or wise. "What is it?" My hands fumbled around, not knowing what to do and feeling a burning sensation in the center of my back. "I didn't hear your thoughts Bella." I opened my mouth to say something then stopped upon seeing his face. "What—do you mean?"

"I mean… I could hear your consciousness, but it wasn't thinking anything."

I laughed. "I was a little distracted." I rested my forehead against his again and thought about the arch of his eyebrows. "Try now." He centered himself, closed his eyes and became still. For a moment I thought I was sitting in the lap of a statue. Then he opened his eyes. "Bella, I think… your thoughts are missing."

"What?"

"And this is why I haven't been able to hear you."

"Missing?"

I looked at him, his eyes a mixture of fear and confusion. His mouth was like an open wound, stammering like a kicked puppy.

"I don't understand, Edward." He nodded quickly to himself and leaned forward interlacing his fingers them un-latticing them again. "Okay, when I hear people's thoughts, it's like… imagine a radio channel, okay, crisp, clear, etcetera. Sometimes there is the minutest amount of static but that's the extent of the technical and meteorological interference. With you, it's as though the entire radio has been put on standby and all I can hear if that, is the high pitched frequency sound it emits simply from running." He finished out of breath and with a frustrated waving motion. I swallowed slowly.

"What you're saying is… I have no thoughts. They aren't there?" Edward looked past me shoulder. "I know! It's not logical! It's not scientifically possible!" He thumped the ground with a clenched fist and left a five-inch deep crater. Startled I scrambled of his legs and back two steps away, "You're saying you can't hear my thoughts because I have none‽"

"Bella, no that's isn't what I said—"

"Shut up Edward; what is this? Your snide blood-sucking way of saying I'm stupid?" The b-word seemed to slap Edward in the face. Good. I hoped it reminded him of Jacob. Suddenly the statuesque Adonis before me was leaping to his feet. "I don't understand it either Bella, okay; but could you please refrain from plastering all your insane, paranoid deductions over everything I say."

" . . ."

"Thank you." Edward ran a flawless hand through his perfectly tousled hair and exhaled loudly.

Inside, my mind was gibbering with insane paranoid deductions. Not that he could hear them of course. As if I don't think. The smug bastard sitting there all high and mighty, thinking his superior hearable thoughts was obviously hiding another agenda. Hideous disfigured thoughts raced through my head. Most of them involved my beloved Edward being blackmailed and harrowed into breaking up with me by some dreaded other girl. God. What if it was Rosaline? Lord knows that hulking mass of muscle and tendons must get boring after a while. I was shaking with rage. My eyes filled with perfect tiny, crystal tears and the back of my throat burned, deeper in the pit of my stomach I could feel my breakfast trying to escape though my ribcage, violently. Edward was standing up saying something his perfect lips etching noiseless words. All I could hear was haze, I turned on my heel and started to run. I should have known; he was just toying with me. This was all probably some sick dare or prank to him. This new callousness, this blatant insultation was torture, if this was the true Edward Cullen I couldn't bear to know what other disfigured snide, caustic sides he had to him. I just ran.

Behind me he made sounds of protest but the fell on deaf ears. "Dumb" ears according to him. Through the fallen leaves and twigs on the forest floor I raced, I knew once he decided to catch me I would be tenuous but for now I could at least show some vehemence. Suddenly I was flying. The ground flew below me, rushing past in blur of deep moss green, decaying leaf brown and dark, almost black soil. The biting pain in my right shin informed me I must have run straight into a log or stump hidden in the undergrowth. I started to scream but instead felt a colossal pain envelope my body, something cold and wet filling my mouth and throat, muffling my scream. My eyes were shut tight and I waited for the dry sobbing and heaving in my chest to subside. Slowly, I pulled my tongue back into my mouth and pushed out the invading soil and plant matter, feeling the grit of the back against the back of my teeth and the disgusting sludge of saliva and dirt forming against the roof of my mouth was horrifying, but not as much as the single thought that ricocheted around in my throbbing, grazed skull: why hadn't Edward caught me?

My eyes still closed and still face down in the dirt I whimpered and prayed I had gotten far enough for Edward to be oblivious to my fall, so that I could brokenly crawl home with dignity. To my chagrin my sense of logic chided me and said I had only been running for twenty seconds or so. Whimpering slightly I pushed my upper body up from the mulch and onto all four, finally into a sitting position that minimized most the searing pain from my grazes. Finally stationary and orifices dispensed of dirt the world spun. Dry heaving I hugged my arms around my knees as if to stifle the spasms echoing outwards from my core. Looking behind me, over the small path I had sifted of crushed leaves on my run Edward was nowhere to be seen. I promptly fainted.

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"Bella."

"Bells?"

"Isabella, can you hear us?"

"Wake up Swan. You've been laying there for twenty minutes."

"Shut up, Rosaline. No wonder she's still unconscious, no one would want to wake up in a room with you."

"Oh hush now. Giver her some space—that's it. Let Edward sit near her."

"Thank you, Mother."

"Bella?" The soft, soothing voice washed over me like rain, my heart pitter-pattering like droplets of angel tears on a rooftop, slowly becoming joyfully saturated, dancing in it's cool atmosphere. My eyes blinked open, slowly adjusting to the pale yellow light of the room. I felt the vestiges of a long held in sigh and heard Carlisle announce, "She's fine; she's waking up."

I tilted my head to the right, feeling the soft leather of the lounge against my cheek and opened my mouth. "Where—"

"Our house." Edward's voice was like velvet. "When we were in the forest you tripped and when I caught you, your head knocked against one of my pectorals. You've been unconscious for about nineteen minutes and six seconds."

"You… counted?" My voice was broken and croaky. How unattractive. I tried to subtly smooth out my hair.

"Bella if I had done anything to harm you I would have killed myself."

I tried to sit up, felt my stomach try to leak out from under my ribcage. White haze drifted in front of my eyes as I tried to remember what had happened. Something was there, flitting around in the recesses of my short-term memory, but I couldn't trap it and examine it. I looked up into Edward's solidified amber glistening topaz jewels of eyes searchingly, something was there but I didn't know what.

What had happened in the forest? Something in the beautiful way he breathed relaxed me, like a lion sensing that the danger to her pride is dissipating. I felt the concern and tension in the room recede and shapes moved out of my line of vision. It didn't matter, I decided. There was only Edward, he was here with me and that was all that mattered, Edward.

Edward Cullen. Edward Anthony Masen Cullen. Edward. Edward. Edward. Cullen. My Edward Anthony Masen Cullen.

Edward's golden eyes widened.

"Bella… I can—!"