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A/N: Recognizable things belong to SM, everything else is mine.

As a word of caution, this chapter is a bit darker. If references to rape or cutting bother you, then proceed with caution.

Otherwise, enjoy, and remember - everyone loves reviews!!

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Bella walked home that evening, a long walk along the shores of Lake Michigan that took her out of the commercial heart of the city and past Lincoln Park. The sound of the water and the evening's warm humid air provided some distraction, and she was grateful for it. When she had left his – Edward's – apartment, she had been angry beyond words. She even tried to slam the front door of the building shut behind her, but its old hinges had resisted her pull, so she settled on thundering down to the sidewalk, shoes slapping the pavement with each step. The agitation that had been bubbling up in that apartment had finally burst, and she spent the first half of the walk venting out her anger in exclamations and sharp, clipped retorts. How dare he? Who the fuck did he think he was? The condescension and insistent questions had been bad enough - she deeply resented how much she had felt forced to reveal to him - but to be dismissed so abruptly, after exposing such a painful, private thing.. He hadn't even bothered to give her a straight answer in the end!

She shook her head, rerunning the episode in her mind for the third time. She shouldn't have done it - she should have left the moment he took out that stupid voice recorder. She wouldn't go back, she decided. Fuck him, and his terms and conditions.

She turned off the sidewalk then, and crossed the thin strip of sand to stand at the edge of the lake for a while. It was a Friday night and still early enough for joggers and couples to run and stroll along the beach. She did her best to ignore them, focusing on the small, steady waves that lapped at the sandy shore. Slowly, the tension began to ease out of her, draining away with each gentle swell of the water, dissipating bit by angry bit. She noticed that her hands were clenched into fists, and released them slowly, mindfully, each finger unraveling to hang heavy at her side. Watching the ripples and eddies disappear and reappear at her feet, she pushed away each unwelcome thought as it came, and found the exercise easier than usual. The water was calm, and calming.

After some time, she turned away and headed for home, less than a mile away now. Not an apartment, but an old house west of Halsted Street, tucked away from the busy traffic and storefronts on a quiet and tree-lined street. There was an elementary school at the end of the block, and some weekend mornings, Bella walked out to the playground with a cup of coffee to sit on a bench and watch children play around her, their laughter and eagerness sometimes amusing, sometimes infectious, but always temporary.

She walked up the wooden porch stairs to her front door and opened it slowly. Inside, silence greeted her, filling the dark and empty rooms completely. Her mother had been gone for nearly a year, and had put all of her belonging into storage when she left. It didn't make sense, she had said, to have Bella fuss with dusting and cleaning her things while she and Phil were away, since she didn't know when they'd be coming for them anyway. Not to be outdone, Bella later went through and removed most of the family furniture and decorations, putting them into storage as well. It was an act of bitterness and anger, masquerading as an honest attempt at a clean start.

Renee Swan had come back once since then and chided Bella for the state of the house. "It's like no one lives here, it's like a ghost house. Don't you at least want a rug or something?" she had asked, pursing her lips in disapproval. But Bella had brushed the subject off. She didn't want to explain to her mother that she would rather live among empty walls than be surrounded by the belongings of a family that had evaporated around her.

Renee wouldn't understand, or at the very least, wouldn't listen. She avoided any of Bella's "negativity," insisting that it conflicted with her own stages of grieving. Except that she wouldn't use the word "grief," she said "personal growth" instead. Each of them had to take responsibility for their own feelings, Renee insisted, and even if she knew how, she couldn't be her daughter's savior. Bella had to learn to save herself. She had to move past her anger and her morbidity, since wallowing in it would only make her life worse. The past was past, and in the meantime, Renee couldn't put her life on hold. She was 57 years young and had seen so little of the world before getting pregnant and married.

When her mother spoke like this, Bella found it difficult to hate her. Never mind Paris or Bali, Renee was just trying to get away, and in Bella's opinion, she need not have bothered with all the excuses. Just call a spade a spade, and admit that all you're doing is putting as much distance as possible between yourself and the house where you raised your two daughters.

It was when Renee wouldn't look her in eye, would find some reason to turn her head aside as soon as they began speaking, that Bella could not hold back her contempt.

It was too late for dinner, and she didn't feel particularly hungry, so she settled on the futon that served as her couch and bed with some fruit and watched the evening news. First the ten o'clock, then the eleven, then a re-run of a detective show from the 80s. She could have gone out - Eric from work had left a message about some bar where he and the guys from the shop were meeting - but she didn't want to. An evening out with 20-something bike mechanics was no different than a day of working with them, and she'd had enough of that for the week. Tonight, Bella just wanted to be alone.

She didn't have cable, and there was nothing else to watch. Turning off the television, she sat in the dark and silent room. She thought about the upcoming weekend and how best to take care of the chores piling up around the house. She worked two jobs, at a bike shop five days out of the week, and three more nights tending bar. That usually left only one day off, but Bella liked it that way. Tomorrow was it, and for a while, she distracted herself with planning how she would pass the time.

Maybe this would be the weekend that she would finally work on the garden and rid it of the weeds that had claimed squatter's rights in the once dense and well-kept plot.

Right. Gardening. Oh a bright and sunny Saturday morning, happily ripping out weeds and hacking away at the soil to plant daisies and lilies and tulips.

"Jesus Christ, Bella, who are you fucking kidding?" she said to the reflection in the darkened television screen, and her voice shook on the last word.

She couldn't garden. Gardening was what she did with her family, and her family was gone. Her father was long dead, her mother was busy trying to forget she'd ever been a mother, and Alice... Alice was worse than dead. Alice was taken, stolen away. The men who took her were free, and she, Bella, couldn't set foot outside of her house without seeing their faces in every person she passed on the street.

Oh Alice...

She missed her sister beyond words. She could empty the house of Alice's things, could avoid the places they had frequented together, but nothing could ease the grief and loneliness. It began that night at the hospital, as Bella waited desperately for her best friend to wake up, and two years later, a part of her was still waiting. She still awoke most mornings to the crushing realization that she would never see her sister again.

She had never known her father, not really, and she and Renee had grown apart years before, so her mother's absence was all but expected. But Alice... Dear Alice - her companion, her confidant, her very best friend - she was dead.

And Bella was alone.

This new life was so strange... had it really been two years? What had she done with them? Filled the day with one meaningless job, then another. Sat in an old empty house. Ate an apple for dinner. Tossed through another restless night.

Bella took a deep breath, and began to fidget with the ring on her left thumb. The thin silver band spun crookedly around her finger. Her stomach had become jittery. She wasn't feeling very well.

Alice wasn't just dead. Alice was murdered. She had suffered, had been hurt, humiliated and violated. And it was him, the bastard that Bella had hated even before bruises began to show up on her sister's body. He, both of them, were free, and just a few miles away. She might have ridden the train with one of them last week or walked past the other on the street.

They knew her, they knew where she lived, they knew what they had done to her family. Even now, they probably laughed about it together. Had a few beers, smoked a bowl, and talked about the girl that they-

Stop it, Bella.

But what was she supposed to do? Just let it go? She couldn't forget, and she certainly wouldn't forgive. Yet, she was helpless – she couldn't set things right by herself, she could barely keep her own life from careening off the tracks. She had gone to the police, and then to therapy. Even tried medication, but it was pointless. Her sister was dead, James Pelzer and Pat Taylor were free, and here she was, awake at one in the morning on another Friday night, unable to think of anything else.

Other people knew how to move on, how to grieve - widows got remarried, children buried their parents, but she, somehow, had gotten stuck. It wasn't just death; Bella had dealt with that before. She may not have known much of her father, but he was still her father, and his passing had been the most traumatic event of her thirteen years. But that was different. Her sister wasn't terminally ill or struck by a car in some freak accident. Her death wasn't an act of nature - it was an act of evil. Someone chose to make her suffer, and to take her away.

Someone killed her.

And for what? The most vile, fucked up, utterly deplorable reasons that Bella could think of. They were sadists and rapists, and they had gotten away with everything because James Pelzer had been a cop.

Could life really be that fucked up? That her sister, her beautiful, wonderful sister, could be destroyed for someone's entertainment?

Jesus fucking Christ, who was running this goddamn side-show?

"Please," she said out loud, "please tell me this is your idea of some fucked up joke." Her heart was beating faster now. "Come on!" she spat at the darkness. "Where's the fucking punchline??"

Goddammit, Bella, you're doing it again. Calm down. Get a grip.

The butterflies in her stomach had turned into angry bees. If dinner had been anything more than half an apple and some grapes, she'd be on the bathroom floor puking it up.

It was so fucked up, she was so fucked up.

God, if she could just stop thinking…!

Her breath grew heavier, rushing past her lips in short ragged wheezes. Fingers gripping thighs, she felt as though her body was spinning. What had Alice looked like to them? Did they undress her first, or only after calling the police? Did she cry, did she fight them? Did they take turns holding her down? Did she know that she was dying?

"Uuughhh," it wasn't a groan and it wasn't a cry, but it tore out of her chest and fluttered around the room like a dying bird. The sound of it was enough to break through the spell for a moment.

"Get a grip, just get a grip," Bella told herself through clenched teeth. She closed her eyes and started to count, trying to visualize the numbers in her head. She spoke each one out loud, and imagined the digit stenciled into the inside of her eyelids, appearing and then disappearing to give way to the next. She tried to time the count to the rhythm of her breathing, one steady inhale for one solid number.

For a moment, it seemed to work, and she felt her pulse slowing down as she concentrated on the rise and fall of her chest and the flow of air through her nostrils. But the anxiety came back, as it always did, first as muddled noise, then louder, barging into the foreground of her mind and drowning out all attempts to sedate it.

She was losing it again. Again, again.

Angry and frustrated tears welled up in her eyes, and her mouth stretched into a despairing grimace as she began to sob. Would this ever end? Would she ever be able to think about her sister without imagining her beaten and torn body?

No, it wouldn't.

She would never find peace, and it was only a matter of time before this house couldn't hold the beast any longer. One day, she would break down at work or on the El, and they would lock her up in some institution because she was fucking crazy. She'd become a ward of the state, and they would sell this house to pay for the useless treatment, leaving her in some cell before she managed to smuggle in a pen or a fork to end this madness once and for all.

For a second time, Bella managed to pull herself away from the ominous and obsessive narrative. She wasn't crazy. She didn't feel this way all the time. It was just a panic attack. It would pass. She should go to sleep. She should try to sleep. Tomorrow would be better. She should go to sleep.

She dragged herself up from the couch, and the fruit plate clattered to the floor, green grapes rolling in all directions. She didn't pause to clean them up. Tomorrow would be better, tomorrow she'd be better. Come on Bella, just go to bed. Just go to bed, lie awake for another three hours, and think about how many times they-

Shit.

She made a sharp detour to the kitchen and pulled some vodka out of the freezer. Not bothering with a glass, she tilted the bottle back for each long swallow. The ice-cold fluid seemed to burn her throat, and after four gulps, she began to feel a ringing in her ears. It buzzed and hummed, and she couldn't really hear anything else, but it was a blissful, empty sort of noise. Back against the wall, she slid down to the floor with an audible thump. The cool tile felt good against her feet and hands, and she wanted to stretch her whole body out.

She sat in the dark for a while, cradling the vodka bottle against her chest. It was cold, too. The tears had stopped, but the thoughts wouldn't. She imagined her sister arriving at their apartment. Surprise when she found them there, then alarm. Then fear, and panic, and pain. It was like some horrific movie, where you knew the ending, but kept watching anyway, hoping that it would change. If Bella had been there, if she had just gotten off her lazy ass and gone to help her sister pack up her things, then none of this would have happened. Alice would be alive, and they would be together. Happy.

Shut up, stop it. Go to bed. First, the bathroom, then bed.

Somehow, the bottle made its way back into the freezer, and she found the bathroom without stubbing her toe - one clear advantage of a nearly empty house. She plopped down on the toilet and took a deep breath, her head spinning, but only a little. Somewhere through the fog, she hesitated. She was trying to quit this, right? She didn't like it, it wasn't good. But it was, it really was, and if it would just shut everything else up, it was worth all the gold in China.

She opened a drawer under the sink and fumbled around for a moment before her fingers found the small leather case. She pulled it out and left the drawer open. She used to share this bedroom with Alice, and Alice hated when she didn't close the drawers. Oh, Alice...

She pulled a razor blade out of the case and held out one arm - the other one, not the one that had been bleeding earlier that day. And when it bled, the man had acted so strange...

Pulling back a sleeve, she lay the little razor against her bare skin and leaned back for a moment. The silver metal gleamed in the light, and she tilted her wrist back and forth to watch the white spot slide along the blade. Like a star or a diamond. Alice had worn diamonds, little stud earrings she'd gotten for her 16th birthday, and she never took them off.

Bella picked up the razor. The sharp edge sat on top of her skin now, and she thought about the pain. The sudden sharp prick and then the dull throb. She shifted her legs so that her arm was directly above the water, which sat clear and still. She thought about the blood that would run down her arm and break that stillness. The red drops falling and spinning and spreading and sinking to the porcelain, leaving streamlines that would dissipate into the water like streaky airplane clouds in the sky.

The anticipation was sweet, almost sweet enough. She pushed down slowly, watching the skin stretch under the pressure of the blade, and curve, rippling. She tilted one edge down, deeper, and when its sharp corner broke the skin, she let out a long soft sigh. The first cut wasn't deep, and it took a moment before blood began to pool around the metal. A drop traced its crimson path around and down her thin wrist before it fell. More followed, and soon, Bella's breathing was as steady as the soft pat of heavy drops breaking through the surface of the water.

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Chapter 5: First Bella, then Edward, then Bella AND Edward!

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