A/n:

Thanks to dorothysrubyslippers and ladyrip for beta'ing

Jacob

Atlanta, Georgia
April 2010

Bella seemed fine after the seizure. I knew that I didn't want to take her back to Dr. Mason, and that the ER wasn't really an option as all of the hospitals were probably still making it through a backlog of patients. We'd be there for hours if I took her in, and she seemed to need rest more than anything else. She had started to doze off relatively quickly, so I opted to take her home.

I decided to go ahead and call Renee and Angela. The problem was deciding which one to contact first. Renee was essentially a housewife and would likely have the free time to dedicate to driving up and caring for her daughter for a couple of weeks. However, Renee was likely to annoy Bella enough that she would send her packing sooner than needed. Angela worked from home and would likely be able to pack up her office and work from Bella's spare bedroom, but Angela hated me. I really didn't want to call Angela.

After a few more moments of hesitation, I decided to man up and call Ang. She was the most logical choice to take care of Bells and run interference with Renee. Angela was Bella's stepsister. The two were relatively close but had a rocky past. I always thought that Angela was the reason that Bells came to live in Forks rather than moving with the family to Jacksonville as a teenager.

I took a deep breath, grabbed Bella's phone from her purse on the console, and dialed. As the phone rang, I considered chickening out and hiring a nurse. I could probably afford one, but before I could hang up, she answered the phone.

"Thanks for finally talking to Renee!" Angela practically shouted.

"Angela, this is Jake," I sighed.

"Oh, how's it going, dog?" Angela's somewhat icy veneer when dealing with me snapped into place. She blamed the distance in my relationship with Bella on me and insisted that I must have done something to be put in the doghouse. Hence, she referred to me as "dog." It was fortunate that Bella hadn't told her family that the engagement had been called off, just postponed.

"Things are bad," I confessed. "I think that Bells downplayed her injuries to the family."

"How bad is it?" she sighed.

"She has a couple of cracked ribs, and she's having seizures from the head injury," I said. "She needs someone with her all the time and is insisting that I go back to work. I can't leave her."

"I'll be there tonight." Angela didn't hesitate before committing to take care of her sister. That was the beautiful thing about Angela; her family came first no matter what. She might not have liked me very much, but she would do anything for Bella.

"Thank you," I said, overwhelmed with gratitude.

"Yeah, well, I'm doing it for Bella. Speaking of which, has she moved back into the apartment yet, or is she still mad at you?"

"She's not mad, Angela. She wants space for personal reasons, so she hasn't moved back in. Please just drop the subject," I snapped.

"Fine, I just want to know what you did because you had to have done something. This is Bella we're talking about, the most forgiving person in the world," she continued to prod.

"I'll see you tonight." I hung up the phone and tucked it back into Bella's purse.

Traffic still hadn't moved more than a few feet.

There had to be something that I could do for Bella. Her doctor obviously wasn't interested in helping. I was still livid thinking about the visit. We'd gone in for help, and he completely wrote off her condition. That never would have happened back in Forks.

I dug around in my pocket for my phone. If we were going to be stuck in traffic for hours, I might as well make good use of my time and do some research. I started with general head injury information, but the out-of-body experience was what really bothered me. She knew what happened while she was asleep, and that just wasn't normal.

At least an hour later, we were within sight of the complex, and I had uncovered some interesting information. There were a few research studies running that looked at something similar to what Bella was describing. I'd saved the e-mail addresses of a few professors who were close enough to Atlanta to make the trip. Maybe one of them could help.

Bella started to stir in her sleep.

~V258~

Bella

Atlanta, Georgia
April 2010

The traffic and the car faded away. I was aware of Jake beside me, talking on the phone. He'd called Angela. I didn't have to wait for the all too familiar sensation of leaving my body and floating above it to take over. What wouldn't I have given for actual sleep?

I witnessed the conversation between two of the people who loved me the most. It seemed that Angela would be coming to my rescue. I was eventually going to have to come clean with my family that Jacob and I were no longer planning a wedding. I'd already told Charlie, the least judgmental of them. I knew that he wouldn't blame Jacob.

Jake began playing with his phone while we continued to sit in traffic. I watched him from the ceiling for a long time until I felt a pulling sensation in my stomach. It was like a string had tethered me to something or someone, and I was being drawn in without my consent; I was flying to a different destination. The sensation of vertigo took over as blackness and lights swirled around me, forming a sort of tunnel. I landed with an inaudible thud and crashed to the ground in the middle of nowhere.

I took in my surroundings and realized that I must be somewhere in the Pacific Northwest given the vegetation that grew around me. The trees were green, and thick, lush grass covered the ground around me. Wildflowers sprang up from the grass in little clusters. I'd never been good at identifying them, but they brought back memories of hiking with Jake when we were teenagers.

"Who are you?"

I jumped and spun around to locate the source of the voice that startled me. I nearly fell to the ground when I recognized him. Edward stood several feet away. He didn't look like the same Edward I remembered. His face had developed a couple of lines, his hair was significantly longer, and he looked absolutely exhausted.

"Edward?" I breathed.

"Bella?" he said and took a tentative step closer.

I stepped back, and he hung his head.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"What I always do, I'm waiting for you to tear out my heart and leave," I admitted. I'd dreamt of Edward often over the years since he'd left.

"Even the you I create in my subconscious hates me," he commented as he looked around. "The question is: why are you here in my sanctuary?"

"I have to admit the setting is new, but this is most definitely my dream, Edward, not yours. You're the imaginary one here," I sighed and sat down on the grass. It should have been slightly damp, but in dreams, certain details are often lost.

He approached and sat down in front of me. We were both cross-legged and just out of reach. He looked remorseful as he ran his hand through his hair.

"Where are we?"

"Oregon," he replied. "This is a meadow several miles off the beaten path from Esme's parents' house. I found a game trail that led here once when I was a kid."

"I didn't know that Esme was from Oregon," I commented.

"We used to visit her parents for Easter every year. She comes from a big family; when things would get too loud, Alice and I would sneak off here to get some peace and quiet," he explained. "But why are you here, now? Are you in trouble?"

"No," I answered. "Jake is handling me with kid gloves as always. Angela is coming up to Atlanta tonight to help take care of me. I'm a bit scared, and they're worried, but other than that, nothing else is new."

"The accident, that's why. I must be trying to resolve …"

"Listen, I appreciate this front of actually caring about me, but if we could go ahead and get to the part where you leave, I'd appreciate it," I snapped.

These dreams always leave me shaky and broken for days afterward.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

"If you were sorry, you would have come back long before now."

"That's not …" His face contorted. "I have to go … I have a mission."

Edward and the meadow were suddenly pulled away from me. I felt the same dragging sensation that brought me to the meadow pulling me away. I tumbled through the air, watching the blur of darkness and colors pass me until I dropped.

The seatbelt cut into my chest and neck as my body lurched into it, sucking in a breath of air. I was startled and disoriented. I could feel my ribs screaming at me to stop as I pulled in deep breaths of armor-all scented air. My eyes darted around until they landed on Jake. He had turned in the driver's seat and placed a hand on my knee in an effort to calm me.

"Bells? Bells!" Jake's usual calm demeanor had evaporated.

"I'm okay," I managed to say. "Just startled."

"You were dreaming again."

He'd heard me. My face flamed red with embarrassment. How many times had Jacob been forced to hear me dream about the elusive Edward Cullen, the one person whose memory he'd never live up to? I felt like such a jerk.

"It was different this time," he volunteered.

I could only nod in response.

"How did you know about Oregon?" he prodded just a bit further, obviously feeling some latent, masochistic desire kick in.

"Oregon?" My eyebrows involuntarily scrunched together.

"Yeah, Edward's stepmother is from Oregon. I wasn't sure if you knew that. I know you tried to contact her in DC without any luck. I had just assumed that you would have called Oregon had you known…." His explanation left out some key information, like how he had information on Edward's stepmother and how he'd known I tried to call her.

"You're hiding something," I stated calmly, in an attempt not to sound like I was accusing him of prying, which I was.

"Yes," he admitted a hundred times more quickly than I ever thought possible. I stared at him in disbelief. The air in the car hung silently around us for a few moments before he decided to enlighten me. "I searched for him…. after." Jake scratched his chin and refused to look at me; instead he stared at the bumper of the car in front of us. "He's gone completely off the grid, Bells. He's no longer military intel, hasn't been since just before he left. Edward's a spook."

"A what?" I shook my head to clear it.

"He's a spy, Bella," Jacob explained.

"Really?" I scoffed.

"I found out through a contact. He's working for some company that contracts with the CIA." He still sounded serious.

I felt my jaw drop open. Edward was a spy. Truthfully, it probably wasn't that big of a jump, and I didn't know what his other assignments had been prior to the Signal Corps. Perhaps he'd been one before, and I just didn't know it.

When Jacob spoke again, he was looking at me with compassion. "You really need to put him behind you, Bells. He doesn't want to be found."

I closed my mouth and nodded obediently. The problem was that I didn't know how to do that. I still loved Edward whether or not he'd been forthcoming. I still wanted him even if his job was dangerous and would likely keep us apart more than we were together.

Jacob whipped into the complex parking lot, forcing my eyes to open. I must have dozed off for a few minutes. He pulled into the space in front of my apartment and turned off the car, then immediately turned his head to face me.

"You've never allowed yourself to feel the pain, Bells. He was a significant part of your life, even if it was for just a short period of time." He reached over and patted my hand. "When he left, it was sudden, like he died. I think that you need to treat it like that, like he died. You need to grieve."

"But he's not dead, Jake," I sighed.

"He might as well have died. It's been two years. He's not coming back, baby. Let's just treat it like what it is. The man has moved on to a different life. The Edward that you knew, the one you loved, is probably dead anyway. People change when they do what he does."

"So, you're saying that we should treat this like he died, not left me," I mumbled, feeling my exhaustion more acutely.

"Yes. I'm sorry, Bella, but the Edward you know died after he left you," Jacob said with a tinge of sadness in his voice. He was trying to help, to make it real. "It's time to face facts and let him go."

I could feel a tightening in my chest, and the emotional wounds that I'd been hiding ripped open again. The hole in my chest was suddenly fresh. The pain mirrored my physical pain from the explosion. Edward, my Edward, was dead, and there would be no bringing him back.

"It hurts," I gasped like someone desperately trying to pull in one last breath of air before drowning.

"It sounds cruel, but I think that you need to feel that in order to let him go," he said.

I didn't have to wait for the tears to come; they flowed down my cheeks. Jacob unfastened my seatbelt and pulled me into his lap. I sobbed and sniffled, leaving a trail of snot on his shoulder. We stayed there for several long minutes until I must have cried myself out, and everything went black.

End Note:

Happy Memorial Day! Go thank a Soldier.

Just as a point of clarification, Bella involuntarily jumped to Edward, and it doesn't look like either of them realized it.

Thank you for reading!