A/N: I'm really sorry for the update fail, guys. There was an unfortunate cascade of real life, travel, and wanting to make the words nicer for y'all.

I blame part of the delay on this genetics conference I was at. The good news is that I kept thinking of ideas for this story whenever a talk got boring. A couple of times, I was doing that, and then the speaker randomly mentioned "maternal imprinting" :-p First I was like, eww, and then I felt like I'd been caught red-handed. Anyway, the next chapter is well underway, and should break the unfortunate pattern of my slowness.

So a lot happened to Nessie while we were in Leah's head, and I wanted to give you a taste of how she reacted. Hope you enjoy!

Still don't own any of the obvious non-ownable things. And you should all thank Reamhar and SecretlySeverus for betaing some comprehensibility into this thing!

"Cadmus's grandson, free of his share of the labor, strays with aimless steps through the strange wood, and enters the sacred grove. So the fates would have it. As soon as he reaches the cave mouth dampened by the fountain, the naked nymphs, seeing a man's face, beat at their breasts and filling the whole wood with their sudden outcry, crowd round Diana to hide her with their bodies. But the goddess stood head and shoulders above all the others. Diana's face, seen there, while she herself was naked, was the color of clouds stained by the opposing shafts of sun, or Aurora's brightness….They say Diana the Quiver-bearer's anger was not appeased, until his life had ended in innumerable wounds."--Ovid, Metamorphoses, Bk III: 165--252.

~Renesmee~

The salt-battered rocks dig uselessly into my knees. Irregular and annoying, but not the least bit painful. I draw my palm along the jagged pool's edge, and the movement is equally useless: the gritty salt that comes away stays wholly removed from my blood, clinging to the wrong side of my indifferently sparkling skin.

I rub hard and fast at my angrily burning eyes, adding the injury of salt to the lingering itch of tears. I cry out, startled, when the chemical burn finally hurts me.

My hands gain courage once my vision clouds up completely, seeking out the more broken of the two bodies before me. En route to another unseeing pair of eyes, they brush several splinters of bone. Lily doesn't react to the salt or the pressure, so I bear down hard with all the mental force I can summon, trying to reach some lingering scrap of her sentience. I flood her with pictures of what she has done: her splayed, broken body, a gaping hole torn in a wolf pack, and the ultimate emptiness of the look in Seth's eyes.

Her violent dying twitches might be a sign that she understands.

My numbing mind keeps looping through the apparent facts of what happened, sending the lovers back up the cliff like amiable moving pictures. Every time they come down again, I scour the image for cracks, willing it to come from a quaint, old movie with lazy special effects. Not even a magician's rabbit can 'vanish' really and truly, and losing Seth in an empty puff is so much more unlikely.

I've never been much good at exposing artistic trickery, pouncing on hints of bluescreen that pepper threadbare action scenes. I rely on Emmett's finger tease apart the real novelty from the fake, later bugging Rose or Jake to tell me how much he's made up.

I suddenly remember that I'm not alone on the beach, and press my salty hand to Jake's cheek greedily.

I assume, when he recoils, that he's reacting to the gritty residue, but then he does something he's never done before, prying away my fingers and gently fisting my hand. His face is sad, but not at all confused, like he understands everything about what just happened and can't bear to see a single second replayed.

As soon as we get home, I dive into Mama's waiting arms, forgetting my vow to call her "Bella" and treat her like the sister that she appears to be physically. She hugs me hungrily; pleased by my forgetfulness, but shies from my outstretched hand the same way Jacob did. My own hurt crashes down on me then, followed by a brush of guilt.

I'd been a little excited, it seems, by the idea of knowing something important, of being a firsthand witness to something too horrible for my family to imagine. By all rights, my gift should make me the world's most talented storyteller, but the problem is that I've never before had any stories to tell. I was an insensitive fool to expect that things would be any different this time; I may be the only Cullen who physically saw what happened on the beach, but it seems I'm still the only Cullen who doesn't understand it.

Mama looks somewhat guilty too when she stops me from touching her face. Her mournful eyes avoid mine, seeking out Daddy's over my shoulder. Their gaze heats up to a sweet and sour burn; a burn that means they're thinking about the time he went to Italy to die.

I pull away from my mother and wrap my arms around my middle. Seth, in my mind, has stopped cycling over the cliff edge, and his killer is no longer some mere insubstantial specter. The air is thick with the kind of love that destroyed him, a love that my parents are both shamelessly projecting. Mourning Seth and pledging allegiance to his killer, all in the same unnecessary breath.

I wait for Daddy to contradict what I'm thinking, hoping that he'll do so even if I happen to be right. I usually hate the way he soft-pedals the truth for me, but right now I'd give anything for some kind of clean, supernatural explanation. A lie that separates what happened to Seth from anything that could happen to my parents. But Daddy only whispers an apology with his eyes, pressing my head to his shoulder without venturing to speak.

I pull away, repelled and scared. If falling in love makes that kind of death seem any shade of sensible, then I hope to God I never fall in love.

My silent declaration is enough to make Daddy release me, holding me at arm's length and contorting his uncreaseable brow. He looks like he might be trying to figure out what to say. After several seconds, he settles for a Charlie-esque gesture, tucking a curl behind my ear without a single word.

"Edward, what is it?" Mama croons in his ear, looking as worried for me as for Daddy. Neither his smile nor his "Nothing, darling" is enough to fool either of us.

I feel a little smug at the thought that Mama understands less than I do right now; I may not know everything about what's bothering Daddy so much, but it can't feel good to hear your daughter is afraid to fall in love.

I urgently need to escape the house, which has just begun to smell like vampire breath again. To me, it has a medieval scent of heavily perfumed body odor. My nausea disperses in the fresh breeze outside, but I find myself seeking out a still-unscented enclosure. The little cottage across the river, where life had once felt so perfect.

I pay no attention to my once-beloved bedroom, but head straight for the worn, slim volume displayed on the mantlepiece. The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedie, of Romeo and Juliet: First Quarto edition. The priciest in a long line of over-the-top anniversary gifts.

I remember Mama's thank-you shudder, and the commensurate shudder that racked me straightaway. Hers a reaction to Daddy's extravagance; mine a reaction to the thank you sex that would follow. Funny that neither of us shuddered at the play's actual content, at the horror of calling a bloodbath 'excellent' and wrapping it up to celebrate love.

The play tops the mantlepiece like a battered angel of death, seeming to cast a shadow over the whole of my parents' first house. I start to feel nauseated, despite being surrounded by the delicious scent of books.

Tucking the quarto under my arm, I trudge back toward the house. Maybe another reading will make the whole thing less grotesque.

En route to the house, I make a left and head for the garage. I always hang out there when I'm feeling lost or broken. Nothing feels more soothing than watching Jake put an engine back together; the way he coaxes little parts into place leaves me feeling put-together too. Even today, with Jake away in La Push, I feel steadied by the slightly anesthetic scent of gas. Nothing about the smell bothers to draw the humans in…even when they're ripping the planet apart with oil drills, they don't write poetry about the stuff they're seeking. Not like the love-gasoline that drenched Romeo and Juliet.

I sit down at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to the house. Several close-eyed deep breaths later, I'm ready to open the play. Except…why on earth would Shakespeare waste is gift on a topic like that? I used to think the topic was silly and unworthy, but now it seems so…criminal. How many people have ruined themselves for love after reading this play and believing in it? If Mama and Daddy hadn't been reading it for school, would they have come that close to dying for each other? Well yeah, probably, but still. What if it hadn't been Mama's favorite all along?

I remember when Daddy gave me Crime and Punishment to read, a move that had inspired lots of Rose and Emmett eye-rolling. Daddy said that after it was published, a real student murdered a pawn broker, reenacting the murder exactly like it happens in the book. He wheedled me into reading The Brothers Karamazov next, saying it wasn't right to read one book without the other. Apparently Brothers K. was a penance book for Dostoevsky, a place for him to explore how guilty he was for inspiring a murder with his other book. That was one death, balanced against the thousands that Shakespeare has probably caused. Words like that could make just about anything sound cool, and who would even think of dying for love without having read them? It's so…so pointless and random. Not to mention broken and gory if you don't have a bottle of poison on you. Or the kind of body that has to go up in perfumed smoke.

I jump when a clear soprano rings down from the top of the stairs. "Drop the book, Nessie! And not in that sticky old oil stain, please." Alice is standing with her hands on her hips, looking mildly put out.

I'm so surprised that I do what she asks. My now-relaxed hands feel cramped and strange. Like I was this close to ripping the priceless quarto in two.

"What gives, Alice? I thought you couldn't see me."

"I can't see you, silly, but I can see your mom and dad trying to decide what to do to you." She shrugs, dancing carelessly to the floor. "Just thought I'd save them the trouble, y'know. All their little 'compromises' can kind of take forever. "

Alice bends over to pick up the quarto, scoring the slightly rumpled cover back into place. "You know this play upsets you. And it's so dark and smelly in here! I honestly thought you'd escaped inheriting your father's flair for the dramatic."

I shrug. "Dramatic stuff kind of happened, and I just…don't get it."

"It's not the kind of thing that you ever really 'get,' Nessie."

Alice is too honest to claim that I'm full of it this time. She settles for snuggling up to my side, and I let myself relax into her silky stone embrace. We sit for a few minutes without talking or moving, and then I feel icy hands hands whisper against my neck, combing through the weighted-down curls that always snarl together there. Normally I'd have squirmed or shrieked in protest, but today I wouldn't dare; I need Alice too much to chafe at the idea of being her Barbie.

After she drags her fingers down to the ringlets at my waist, Alice collects all of my hair into one tiny hand, moving to sweep it over my shoulder. Suddenly, she stiffens up, clenching at me like she's somehow lost her balance. Alarmed, I twist around in her arms and see her looking toward a dusty corner of the garage, eyeing a sheet-covered object with two wheels peeking out from underneath. Bella's motorcycle; a relict from a time that no one seems to remember too fondly.

I try to swallow, but my mouth is too dry. I probably need to hunt. "I know that you're all really sad, and you wish things had happened differently with Seth and Lily, but still…I feel like what happened is such a big part of the way you all love each other. Like, even when times are good, being in love is about being ready to die together like that. I just don't think I'll ever understand. To me, it's like watching the sun rise in the west, or something." I look down at my knees, biting my lip and pinning my hands beneath my thighs.

Stone fingers lift my chin, and golden eyes bore into mine. "Nessie, there's so much more to love than being willing to die for each other. Your parents are slowly but surely figuring that out. They've spent so little time in love, compared to the rest of us…much more time than Shakespeare ever got, though."

She swings her legs as if it slow motion, furrowing her delicate brow, then straightens up in the blink of an eye when she makes some kind of decision. "Want to go to the bookstore? We can get you a tragic love story that's so not your mother's favorite." She pauses for a second, swinging her legs again. "Anna Karenina, I think."

"It won't be all about guilt and stuff, will it? Not like Crime and Punishment?"

Alice wrinkles her nose. "As if. I'll get my purse and jacket, and then we'll--"

Her body suddenly tenses, a familiar blankness overtaking her. The vision is fairly short, but it appears to change her mind about something, and she looks at me apologetically.

"We can't go this evening, unfortunately. There's someone working there who knows me, and we're trying to keep a low profile. We could probably still pass for the ages we're supposed to be--maybe not Carlisle, but everyone who was posing as kids--still, no need to start gossip. I'll take you tomorrow morning. It's late anyway; you should go get some sleep."

She makes it halfway up the stairs, then looks back at me pointedly.

"Give me a minute. Be up soon."

Never one to baby me, Alice blows me a kiss and leaves without a word. As soon as I hear the click of the latch, I get up and walk down the last couple of stairs. Soon I am staring at the Jake-resurrected death mobile, its dusty shroud puddled on the floor at my feet. The motorcycle looks fragile, fragile beyond belief, like it might crumple into its own metal puddle under my touch. Like my mother herself looked in the moment after I was born, just before my father and I took the last of her humanity away.

I run my fingers along the rear rim, half hoping the bike will crumble when I touch it. Maybe then Mama's half death wish would stop being so scary. The bike doesn't crumble though, just creaks very quietly. I close my eyes as I explore the nearly continuous skin of rust. The texture of the oxide is unfamiliar to me, a reminder of how long it's been since we last set foot in this house.

My fingers suddenly exit that forlorn metallic desert, finding an oasis of expensive black leather that's carelessly draped over the seat. Magnificent and incongruous, like a vampire in the middle of Forks.

I bury my face and fingers in the leather, thinking about this town, the place where I was born. I've seen how people look at us here, dazzled by the contrast between our beauty and what they're used to. Apparently the rest of them used to dazzle my mom beyond belief, and I feel a twinge of sadness at the thought that nothing might ever dazzle me that way. How could it, when I've spent my whole life surrounded by unreal beauty?

Part of me knows that beauty isn't all of it. Mama always shivers when she talks about meeting my dad, then closes her eyes the way they all do when they're trying to hang onto human memories. Like she's trying to get off on her memory of what it was like to be afraid of him.

I understand a little because I remember when the Volturi came to Forks; I was too young to believe, in my heart of hearts, that anyone could hurt my family, but even the suggestion of deadly power was enough to quicken my heartbeat. No face has ever entranced me like little Jane's did, burning into my eyeballs with all the force of her terrible gift.

I take the jacket with me when I leave the garage, deciding I should hunt before bedtime. I hate going shopping with an itchy, burning throat.

I had no idea, when I left the garage, how utterly wrong I had been; wrong about the idea that nothing could ever truly dazzle me. I had no idea that I'd shortly see the perfection that was her. A deadly perfection like flowing russet venom, thousands of times more frightening than Jane.

In the morning, her beautiful face burns me like an afterimage, squeezed into the unreal space between waking and opening my eyes. My nose is buried in Mama's leather jacket, and my dreams have what I imagine to be the shape of her final human years. They are shot through with the sense that everything has started to change for me, that I'm about to go forth from my birth-world and claim a destiny that's all my own. Vampires may have been Bella Swan's future, but vampires are my past; they're the walking, talking endings of human stories, stories that stay closed to me because I was never human. They'll always be a part of me, like Charlie's a part of Mama and me, but somehow I know that I'm meant to be elsewhere, somewhere obscured by a phasing canine fog.

Everything makes much less sense, sadly, when the fog of sleep clears from my mind. It's hard to tell what's most disgusting: my un-showered body, the dusty jacket in my arms, or the fact that I feel happy on a morning that should be so sad. The jacket is evidence that something odd happened last night, but it doesn't seem to have much to do with the vision I think I remember, the stunning female werewolf who was hunting and bathing in the woods.

I remember that Alice offered to take me to the bookstore this morning, but part of me doesn't want to spend time with the family right now. As soon as I talk to one of them, it'll be even harder to pretend that my private vision was real. Maybe it'll be like my memory of the suicide; an experience that seemed to belong to me but is actually something that only they understand.

Jasper forged me my first ever driver's license for my birthday, so I decide to set out for the bookstore on my own. I scribble a note for my parents and climb into the old silver Volvo. The biker jacket doesn't fit too well into my girly, Alice-supplied wardrobe, but I feel like leaving it behind would break the spell I'm desperate to preserve. I make the drive to Port Angeles, and soon I'm paying my first ever parking meter fare. The town acquired a Barnes and Noble at some point in the last six years, much to my mother's excitement. I head straight for the classics section, relieved that I know exactly what I want. At least, I thought I knew.

There are at least six translations of Anna Karenina staring me in the face, each one emblazoned with a portrait of a different beautiful, busty woman. How should I know which is the real Anna, the one Alice thought would help me understand? What if the translator didn't even pick the image, or even someone who knows what the text of the book is like? Suddenly I feel like a scared little girl again, fidgeting and sending sidelong glances at people who must think I'm weird.

Other patrons edge past me quickly, plucking booksbrow like expert apple pickers. All except a girl who looks slightly taller and older than me.

She looks much less purposeful than any of the other customers, weaving through the aisles with a slow, vaguely Brownian gait. Sensing this, they edge past her the way they edge past me. Eventually, we end up together like oil drops excluded from a stream of water. A sidestep angles her body toward mine, and that's when I see her employee name tag.

She sees that I see her name tag and gives me a nervously friendly smile. "Do you need help finding anything?" she offers in a low, sweet voice.

"Um, yeah, that would be great, actually." This is already going so much better than my attempts at high school socializing. "Um, how d'you think I should choose what translation of Anna Karenina to buy?"

"Oh!" She sounds so relieved, ecstatic even. Not something one should feel when faced with so many choices. "It's my first week on the job, and I was hoping you wouldn't, like--" She looks down and blushes, ashamed of being a novice. "--ask me for something from the stockroom." She scans the shelf for a second or two, then extracts the only volume that doesn't render the heroine in oils. The New Translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. There's a black and white photo of a flower bouquet, held in place by nondescript hand. But underneath the flowers…I blush and hide my face.

The girl--Angela--turns a deeper shade of red. Her flushed skin suddenly smells delicious beyond belief. "Don't worry; it's just her knees. Everyone thinks it's--you know, her butt or something--but they probably couldn't print that on the cover of a book. Anyway, it's definitely the best translation. Older versions can get kind of stuffy in some places." She moves as if to walk away, then stops, as if encouraged by my awkwardness. "Hey, so are you new to Port Angeles? I don't think I've seen you around before."

The real story would probably be too long, even if we weren't semi-undercover. "I'm just starting out at Peninsula College."

A beat of uncomfortable silence follows, and Angela begins to turn away. Embarrassed, because she braved being friendly and I didn't want to talk about myself. Suddenly desperate not to lose her right away, I try to turn the conversation to safer, more honest territory. "Have you lived here long?"

"I grew up in Forks, just south of here, but I went up to Seattle for college. I just moved back here to do some research." She pauses, like the length of her story is catching in her mouth. "I got my undergrad degree in folklore and mythology, and I really want to write about the Quileute tribe. You know; the people who live down at La Push. I've been poking around there, for the past few months, trying to learn their stories."

I panic when she looks like her story is done, like I'll have to make up stories about myself if I want to keep talking to her. Seemingly encouraged by my look of disappointment, she takes a deep breath and continues on more shyly. "The Quileutes always seemed kind of…magical to me. Maybe it's just that I've been visiting La Push all my life, and people who are different tend to impress a little kid, but--" She shrugs, as if dodging an oft-heard criticism. "So they say you should only do a Ph.D. if there's one research topic you're crazy about. I want to figure out what Quileute magic really is…I want to know so badly, and it seems like the right thing to do. I just have to learn how to spin it in a way that'll land me a thesis adviser." Her face is lit up from within at this point, flushed with excitement instead of silly embarrassment. But her chagrin is seeping back through the spaces between her words, and soon she looks every bit as embarrassed as before. "Sorry, I mean, I always talk too much when I get excited about work. I know it's really dorky of me."

"I think the Quileutes are magical too," I blurt out before deciding why I should think such a thing. Would they ever let an outsider discover their real secret? "I mean…I don't ever really get down to La Push, but I get that feeling from my Quileute friends."

Her face falls. "Everyone in the tribe is so sad right now. Something happened to a boy who was a little younger than me. In small towns and tribes, every death is like losing family, you know?" The sadness builds in her eyes as she pauses, along with a new kind of nervousness. "Hey--you don't have to or anything, but I'm driving down there after my shift, and you can totally come if you want to." She looks horrified at her boldness, and goes on to explain herself. "I've just never met anyone who agreed, before, about how the Quileutes seem magical. I can never explain it right, and people think I'm being racist or something."

I take a minute to debate ethics with myself. Violating the spirit of the law? Definitely. The letter of the law? Well, I'm not supposed to go to La Push on my own, and going with Angela isn't going on my own. Never mind that 'not on my own' has always meant accompanied by family, since there was never anyone else in the picture to think about before. It's not like I'd tell anyone about this outing, anyway. "Yeah! I'd love to come!"

The drive to La Push with Angela is more fun than I've had in a long time. Totally worth the very slight exposure risk, especially when no one has to even know it happened.

My stomach flutters a little when I learn where she went to high school; guess that explains why Alice wouldn't come to the bookstore with me. Angela gives me a couple of puzzled squints and wonders aloud whether she's seen me before, but she seems to believe me when I act totally puzzled. Then we start talking about her long-time boyfriend Ben, whom she met just around the time my parents started dating. From the sound of it, Ben is every bit as protective as Daddy, worrying about Angela living on her own for the first time ever.

'I may've gone straight from the dorms to living in with Ben in Seattle, but honestly! Port Angeles is such a small town, you know? It doesn't seem right to settle down for good without living by myself for a little while, at least."

I feel impossibly let down when we arrive in La Push, considering how long I've been wanting to visit this place. But hanging out with Angela has been such a sudden new gift, and I don't feel any more ready to let her go than before.

She pulls over when two young men start waving from a nearby street corner. Their identically cropped hair makes them look like some kind of soldiers, and their faces are sad, but kind. Angela waves to them and the boys wave back.

"Nessie? I think I'll go say hi to Quil and Embry before I head over to the library. You should come meet them--they're really wonderful; they're starting to make me feel at home in La Push."

As we head toward the corner where the boys are lazily smoking, Angela asks if I'd like to come to a dinner she's hosting. Apparently she's a good cook--if only I could tell the difference--and wanted to make something nice for Quil and Embry and a couple of their friends. With any luck, I can get permission to go without telling my parents any guest list particulars. Over the years, I've learned a thing or two about keeping Daddy out.

A/N: It would be lovely to hear what you think, as always :)

Next chapter will alternate between Leah and Nessie POVs. We shall see how observant Nessie manages to be at the dinner party…okay, excited to go back to writing now!

Not sure if the teaser was helpful last time around. I tend to procrastinate a lot while I think, then just sit down and write once I have enough ideas for most of a chapter, so I guess I have trouble coming up with teasers way in advance. Reviewers should let me know if they want one--I can definitely keep doing that if it adds something!