Disclaimer: Twilight the Saga is Steph Meyers'-sounds so dramatic when they call it "the saga" lol

Chapter 7

Perfection

Time was a blur, a fraction in a Vampire's potentially never ending existence. Time marked the passing of years, days, minutes, the passing of loved ones and lost chances.

I felt the days following Renee's murder and my transformation with the numb indifference of one who has seen too much, too much sorrow, heartache and death. What sort of existence was I condemned leading if I couldn't see beyond the truth behind so cruel and twisted a world?

Edward and Alice were my salvation in the beginning. Alice had seen me in her vision, the danger and evil that loomed over me like a black plague. Moments later and they would have been too late to save me from eternal damnation. I would have probably drained the first human I could find in a city so thick and teeming with life, like placing a starved tiger in a cage filled with cattle. At least, that was what Edward likened me to. Even now the thought of human blood disgusted me. Blood of any sort in fact, though the Cullen's said that would change with time.

The police never found Renee's body and stupidly believed the story I had been commanded by Alice to tell. I had run, as she said, until I passed out in the alley and woke up lucid enough to use my cell phone and called Edward and Alice first thing. Edward told the police he and I had been having a tenuous time in our relationship and he had been determined to fly to Florida to change my mind about returning to Alaska in the fall.

When I learned Renee had been missing I was so "distraught" that I stayed with the Cullen siblings in their hotel while they called Phil and told him what had happened. The police had not questioned me further, curious as to my current condition since I had been inconsolable the first three days after the attack that I refused to see anyone except Edward and Alice. The police saw my ruined dress and tights and it was all they needed to validate my story. No one dared question the daughter of a murder victim, or a "missing person", Phil insisted on believing, not even after Edward and Alice whisked me back to Alaska days later.

Charlie's phone call was the hardest. Alice had phoned him that first night but he demanded to speak with me as soon as I was able. He had broke down on the phone when I told him my version of what happened, cried in violent sobs over the phone until he had to let me go. I promised to call him again, but only enough to calm his fears and to listen to him tell stories of Renee I had never heard before. He painted a very young, different picture of the mother who raised me. I could tell each talk was easier for him.

I mourned Renee. With a faint sense of irony I realized I would always mourn Renee in the way I would mourn myself…

Bella Swan died age nineteen in a dark alley at the hands of a masochistic vampire.

I stared out the stained glass window that faced the sunrise in my room. Summer was nearly over, and yet I could not imagine going back to school or facing my few campus friends. I couldn't face Kaya, whose eyes were too sharp and who would notice the drastic physical change in my appearance. Or perhaps it was as subtle as Edward insisted?

The first moment I had met my own reflection, once we were back at the Cullen's home, with Alice at my side, I met the face of a near stranger. My skin tone remained the same, not the same deathly pale as the pixie beside me. Yet I stood taller. My hair was darker and shone like gossamer and the imperfections I had been so used to as a human were faded. Where before my lips had seemed too full against my small pointed chin, now they were faintly rose red and pouting. My body was harder now, not as hard as it should be, but toned where I had not been before.

"You're beautiful, Bella," Alice had said, smiling sadly as she often did in my presence now. Yet the red and chocolate-eyed monster that stared dully back at me seemed anything but beautiful now…

Summer's last brilliant rays entered my room and splashed across my face in crimson, indigos and violets. I sat frozen, bathing in its warmth. It amazed me how the tiniest details seemed sharper, the colors more brilliant and expanding to ones I had never seen before. My chest rose and fell with my half dead lungs, slowly, but not painfully in time with the steady labored beat of my heart softly thudded in my chest.

My transformation from human to Vampire had not run as smoothly as was intended by my maker. Carlisle believed my will power to be one of my gifts. For the only explanation I could give for my beating heart was that I had fought death inside my mind till the battle turned physical.

The entire family had gathered round me in the living room as Carlisle explained his theory to the remarkable and unique quality to my change. Edward's arm wrapped possessively about my shoulders and Alice held my hands so tightly in her own they ached even with my supposed newborn strength.

"You have the benefits of any Vampire, Bella, immortality, speed, strength and endurance. And apparently the mental shield you held as a human has only manifested further."

"What about the thing beating in her chest, Carlisle? Shouldn't it have died already?" Emmett laughed and Rosalie planted a fist into his chest that quickly silenced him.

Carlisle glanced at him with everlasting patience before grinning slightly at me. "Yes, your heart…within a normal human chest your heart could not keep its systems fully functioning, and yet… Bella I must be frank I am baffled how you managed to reverse the change even to this extent. Perhaps it is another talent? There have been stranger gifts, but with your aversion to blood of any kind and desire for human foods, your ability to sleep even if only necessary a fraction of your former REM cycle…"

"What you're saying then, is I'm basically half human?" My voice sounded light and fluid, softer though not musical as Edward intoned.

Carlisle smiled and agreed, "Basically."

"Bella," he interrupted my reverie. "I wondered if you were awake yet." Edward's velvet voice sounded even sweeter than it had before, his features beyond perfection that my fully human eyes had managed. I did not meet his gaze as I lay upon my bed, my eyes fixated on the dimming sunlight that streamed through the stained glass Esme had created for me.

Edward's lithe frame barely shook the four post canopied bed Esme bought. Jake's black sheets didn't fit this bed. Hesitating a moment, my former boyfriend brushed a heavy curl from my forehead and tucked it carefully behind my ear, his chilled fingers gracing the skin of my neck and sending shivers down my spine. My face remained frozen, captured in the dull aftermath of terror.

As though hearing from a great distance I realized he was speaking in dimly hushed tones, nonsense, really, from what I could tell. He had given up trying to stir my passions to speak and betray my thoughts. For the first time since I'd known him, Edward managed to not ask me what I was thinking every conversation we shared, though the question was never far from his eyes.

"Jasper has actually contributed several articles to the National Historical Society, supposedly based on his great-great grandfather's Civil War diaries." A pause as if he were imagining my response. "Esme is concerned for you. Rose suggested we try cooking your favorite foods." His eyes lit with amusement at the mention of the recently returned Rosalie. She and Emmett had been distant of late. I don't believe either of them knew how to make me less catatonic. "Who would have guessed she would have been as concerned as Esme? Carlisle is still attempting to puzzle out the mystery of your change…Bella," he began, his hand resting gently over my upturned palm. "We haven't asked you before. I know it's been too soon…but has there been anything untoward that happened to you before that night?"

My brow furrowed slightly. I had indeed thought of any and every link to the hunt that ended Renee's life and metaphorically mine. Edward was not going to be happy with me. "I've been getting these weird e-mails the last several months."

Edward's eyes narrowed. "What sort of weird e-mails, Bella?"

"Borderline stalker, I guess…"

Topaz consumed by a cloud of midnight. "What?" He clipped, voice icy and unforgiving as usual. "Bella…why did you not tell me about this? Do you realize I might have been able to put an end to this long ago?!" The last was a mere hiss of air.

I winced and his expression immediately softened, concern and love and the burn of fierce revenge practically piercing through his eyes. He visibly trembled to my new eyes. My breath hitched with fear even as with a desperate sob Edward threw himself at me. He gathered me up as though I weighed no more than a child, was rocking with me upon the bed as dry sobs pulled his walls by the seams.

Tears he could not shed, and tears I should not be able to shed, welled in my eyes. Strange that they were not because of Edward and his obvious love and pain for me, and rather because I knew I would never be held like this again.

After his sorrow had passed he lay with his arms wrapped around me. The sun was setting, I could tell by the faint rosy glow that showered my window.

"To think that I could have ended it…"

"Edward I already told you, it's over. I'm a Vampire and Renee's dead. There's nothing anyone could have done…" I knew if I allowed myself to believe otherwise I'd go mad.

"But Bella, you should have told me…to think that all those months some bastard was toying with you. How long has he watched you from the shadows? Did your blood sing for him?" The last he said with a tinge of bitterness. I was his singer. And because of the half-human blood that coursed through my veins I still was, though he had admitted the desire had dulled considerably.

"There wasn't anything you could have done…" My own voice didn't sound convincing. I felt the cool caress of Edward's lips against my hair.

"At least now we have eternity beloved…nothing can or will part us again."

His arms wrapped more securely about my waist, pulling me firmly against him. I held my breath. His words, like Edward himself, were perfect. Yet why didn't it seem like enough? Two years ago I would have offered all of myself in an instant if I thought eternity with Edward Cullen were possible. His presence was addictive to say the least. He was passionate, a gentleman, self-damning yet endearing, fiercely protective and devoted. Devoted, I thought as guilt enveloped my conscience. He would always be faithful, I realized, always dependable. Our love would never change, only solidify over time…strengthen…

"Bella?" He could feel the tension in my body, coiled like a wild cat prepared to take flight.

Tears blurred my vision. Even now with the ideal future, perfection as I had deemed it, I could not find true happiness because I was imperfect. I gasped lightly as the memory assaulted me.

"You never played fair, you know," Jacob said while enduring my touch as I helped him move his ruined arm in the exercises Carlisle had recommended his last visit.

Wrinkling my brow I continued slowly bending his elbow, ignoring his wince. "What are you talking about Jake?"

"Edward," he spat.

My eyes flashed to his. We had avoided speaking of the choice I had made, the ring in my pocket or the confessions both of us had made only two nights before. Why break our silent rule now?

Jake was grinning at me, his eyes alight with mischief. He knew exactly what I was thinking. "It's hard to compete with somebody you think is perfect Bells. Like standing me next to Mr. Darcy."

I couldn't shield the smile that tugged at the corner of my mouth. "You've read Pride and Prejudice?"

"Saw the movie…" He frowned concentrating on my hands against his skin and a sudden thrill echoed from my core and spread to my fingertips. "Rachel and Rebecca made me I swear…"

"Right." I knew I was grinning foolishly at him now but I didn't care.

His eyes rose above his lowered brow, hot and intense, and burning through my impenetrable shields. "You never gave me a chance Bells… Who's to say I couldn't be the hero too? You keep those guys on a pedestal but, fact is, they were made up by chicks, written for chicks. I bet if you actually knew them in real life they would probably be just as big of an asshole as I am."

"Bella," Edward said as he turned me about in his arms so that our faces were mere inches apart, his breath sweet and cool against my skin. "I must tell you how ardently I desire you. So long I have waited for you, beloved. Surly you know how I feel as you've been reading your letters. I understand that we agreed to keep some space between us for a time. But Bella, I must tell you how I have longed for you…" His topaz eyes darkened slightly as he drew his hands over me caressed my bare arms, my neck, the contours of my face. "When Alice had her vision I thought I had lost you."

I longed to be comforted, held, yet whatever curse which kept me from accepting happiness reared its ugly face once again and I twisted away from my beloved's embrace to face him. "Edward, I can't promise anything…"

"Of course. I understand if you need time love." He reached out a hand to cup my cheek, drawing nearer to me as I held my breath once again. "Just know I'll be here, waiting, when you're ready." And he brought his firm lips to mold mine.