Sorry this chapter took so long. We had company over this weekend and work was brutal on Monday. I was totally wiped, but here it is.

Buckle up because it's gonna get dark.

As far as a disclaimer goes, y'all know the drill.

(Chapter 7)

"Ivy!" A cold hand shook my shoulder. "Ivy wake up!"

"Huh?" I murmured groggily, my face stuck to my pillow thanks to a bit of drool. So gross! I glanced over and saw the bright red numbers on my clock reading 3:12 before my lamp came on, burning my retinas. I threw my hands over my eyes. "Jasper!" I whined. "What do you want? I have school tomorrow and unlike you, I need sleep!"

"There's an emergency." Jazz laid a hand on my shoulder and clarity and energy filled my brain at once. I blinked as his face came into focus at my bedside.

I sat up, panicked immediately. "What's wrong?"

"Don't worry. It's nothing to do with us."

I relaxed slightly and felt my heartbeat slow against my ribs. "Then why the hell are you walking me up in the middle of the night?"

"Well, you were the one that told us we were wasting our immortality."

"Oh my gosh! Elaborate, damn it!" I said, tired of being confused.

Emmett's rumbling voice suddenly sounded from the other side of the bed. "Hey Ivy!"

I screamed like a little girl, jumping a mile. "Damn it, Emmett! Don't do that! What the hell is going on?"

"Calm down." Jasper said, and calm soothed my mind with his magical powers. I pushed away the peace defiantly.

"Stop that!" I didn't mind if he read my emotions, but I didn't like it when he tampered with them. "Explain, now!"

"Okay, there's a big fire two towns over in Milton." Emmett explained, pulling the covers off of my bed and standing me on my feet like a child. "We're going to the rescue."

"Who? You and Jazz?" I asked, not able to fight the smile as he opened my wardrobe.

"And you." He said cheerfully, pulling random black items from the mass of clothes crammed inside. "Hurry, put this on and meet us downstairs."

"Fine. But I'm skipping first period tomorrow." I said. My brothers were gone before the hem of my nightshirt made it to my bellybutton. I glanced at the clock again. "And second!" I changed into black jeans and a hoodie which I drew up over my face. Then, for good measure, I took some black eye-makeup and smeared it across my eyes and the bridge of my nose like a mask.

Jasper and Emmett were waiting impatiently for me at the base of the stairs, also un in full black. "Looking good." Emmett gave me a thumbs up. Jasper did nothing, as usual.

"Y'all too." I said, "Put on hoodies and let me smear some of this on you." Emmett eagerly complied, but Jasper took several minutes of convincing to don the make-up as well.

"Okay." He said impatiently, pulling back from my charcoal fingers. "That's enough, Ivy. You're enjoying this way too much."

"Come on, you guys! Let's go!" Emmett said looking like a bandit as he practically bounced for the door in his excitement.

"Wait!" Esme cried from the living room, darting to our side in a flash, a camera in hand. "I want to get a picture of this."

I struggled not to laugh. They were acting like we were leaving for a field trip, not a dangerous mission save people from a fire.

Three clicks later, Esme was satisfied with the photo and Emmett slung me across his back. Before I could gasp he was running. The woods were passing by so quickly, water streamed from my eyes. It was odd because Emmett barely felt like he was moving as I clung to his massive muscles, but the wind screaming in my ears was unmistakable. We were moving very, very fast.

"Why so excited about a fire?" I yelled through the noise.

"I'm bored. Helping people seemed like a reasonable activity." He called back.

Jasper was right at our side, "You too, Jazz?"

"It seemed like a good way to kill time." His voice called through the wind.

We were on the move for ten minutes before I began to smell smoke. "There!" Emmett cried, veering sharply to the left and darting down a panicked main street.

The town of Milton was a flurry of ash and tears. People were everywhere, crying and screaming. A large, five-story apartment building was ablaze, fire shooting dangerously from the broken windows on the upper levels. I slid from Emmett's back and we melted into the crowd, keeping our hoods low over our faces.

"My daughter's still in there!" A woman screeched from above the din.

"I can't find my wife!" Another man bellowed as he tried to fight through the barrier the police had hastily put up around the building.

The heat of the fire hit my face and I was frozen for a moment. A terrible memory enveloping me in a suffocating cocoon. My hands started shaking and my mouth went dry, suddenly I was eight years old again.

"Ivy?" Jasper shook me gently. "Are you alright? You feel—"

I shook my head to snap out of it. People needed my help. "I'll be fine." I interrupted. Without further ado, I darted to the burning building, dodging policemen and ignoring cries for me to stop. Emmett and Jazz were right next to me. They tore the front doors off their hinges as we rushed in.

The sprinklers overhead weren't working - a malfunction of some kind. The long hallway smelled rancid with smoke, but there were no signs of fire. It was all on the higher levels then, meaning this building was eventually going to cave in.

First thing's first, I needed water. I placed my hand on the wall and closed my eyes, feeling the pipes of water spread out around me, under me, and above me. I pushed with my mind and the blessed water began to pour out on every level of the apartment building via the sprinklers.

"Spread out!" I told Emmett and Jasper, "Level five is gone. I'll take level one, y'all move onto two and three. Then we'll meet back up and tackle four as a team. Got it?" They were gone before I could blink. I shook my head and placed my hand on the wall again, sensing the energies in the building. I tried to locate other life in the building to make my search easier, but all I could sense was fire. It was so powerful, so alive, it cut off my connection to everything else. I shook my head before I drowned in a pool of my own memories and pulled an arsenal of water around me and began to search room to room.

After a thorough check, I found out that level one was mostly empty except for a few cats. I let them out by opening a window. Cats were smart, they could fend for themselves.

I pushed my way up the stairs and paused at the door to floor four. Jasper was suddenly at my side making me jump. "Are you okay?" He asked, looking me over quickly - probably for injuries. Why couldn't they wrap their heads around the fact that I could take care of myself?

"I'm fine. Have you saved any?"

He nodded, his hair was drenched from the sprinklers and most of his eye make-up had smeared off. "Five."

"Five?!" Dang, I needed to step up my game. "Yeah, I've saved three." Three cats, but he didn't need to know that.

He nodded and braced himself against the door. I pulled more water from around me and created a mask to filter out the smoke and gave him the signal. Jasper threw open the door and we both stepped back when smoke and heat roared out to greet us. I took a deep breath.

"You go left, I'll go right." Jasper said, indicating that I should take the less fiery direction. Sexist. He was the one who should avoid fire. "Make it fast, Ivy. I can feel the building shift, it won't last much longer."

"You got it, big brother." I ran right without a second thought. There had to be people stuck here. I could feel it in my bones.

Despite the fact that Jasper thought this direction was more safe, it was still almost completely ablaze. I tried to put out some of the flames, but the heat was so intense it was turning my water into useless steam. I caught sight of Emmett through the black haze just as he lept from the window to the ground below, a young boy clutched protectively in his arms.

It was hard to hear anything, but I could have sworn there was a cry coming from the room to my right. I kicked it open - man, did that hurt - and held a hand over my face as fire leapt out to grab me. I used a good bit of my water stores to put it out so I could step inside. "Where are you?" I yelled stepping further into a den with fire spreading across the ceiling.

Terrible sobs were coming from the kitchen, I skirted the den and rounded the corner.

And stopped dead in my tracks.

My nightmares had crept up from the depths of hell to destroy me.

The room was on fire in various places, pieces of the ceiling were falling down, but I couldn't move. A little girl, no older than six years old, was sitting on the floor of the kitchen against the cabinets, clutching the pale, bloody face of her mother in her lap.

"M-m-mama!" The girl screamed shaking her mother as if it would wake her up. "Please, wake-up!"

Tears slide down my face, one after the other and my knees crashed onto the hardwood as I sank to the floor. The water I had been concentrating on keeping around me fell uselessly to the floor in bursts of sizzling steam.

"Mom?" My broken voice scratched through my throat. Was I looking in a mirror? Had been hit on the head? Was I hallucinating from smoke inhalation? It didn't matter. It was here and it was happening and I couldn't stop it. The grief took on a paralyzing hold as the room burned down around me.

Someone called my name, but it was so far away. Too far away to matter now.

"IVY!" The owner of the voice yelled again, but I couldn't speak, I could only stare at the little girl, knowing exactly how she felt as she held her still mother in her tiny hands. "Ivy! Where are you?" The voice was filled with panic, but not coming any closer. I opened my mouth but no words tumbled out.

Luckily for all our sakes, a piece of burning ceiling fell next to the girl, wringing a ear-shattering scream from her tiny, terrified body.

"Ivy! Thank God!" A hand came down on my shoulder and let go immediately with a hiss. "Ivy, what's wrong? Where are you hurt?" Jasper's worried face filled my vision.

"Save them." I said in a thin voice. I could barely lift my arm to point at the mother and daughter. Jasper rose to his feet, giving me concerned looks over his shoulder, and quickly moved to the girl's side. His hand touched her tear-stained cheek and the girl immediately fell asleep. He picked her up and darted back to my side. "Come on. We're leaving."

He jerked me to my feet and started pulling us towards the door. "No!" I screamed, pulling away with all my might. His hand tightened around my arm painfully. "We can't just leave her!"

"I can't carry all three of you!" He reasoned. "We have to get out. Before it's too late."

"NO!" I fought him with every ounce of strength I had, but that was never going to be enough. "MOM!" I screeched as he dragged me forcibly from the room and down the hall to the open window. "Leave me! Leave me! Save her, Jasper, please!"

"Ivy!" Jazz shook me hard enough to rattle my teeth. "Stop it! I am coming back for her. You are wasting time fighting me."

But I couldn't see reason, I couldn't let her burn. Not again. "Jasper, please! You have to-"

"What the hell is going on, Jazz?" Emmett yelled from the window. "It's coming down, people, we need to get out!"

"Room 413." Jasper nodded to the side, still holding tightly onto me as I fought him. "Get the woman." Then he pulled me close against his chest and jumped from the window. Fresh air whooshed up to greet me and my neck nearly snapped when we hit the ground with a thud. "Stay here." Jasper growled as he stalked around the corner to give the girl to the EMT's.

Emmett burst through the window a moment later, glass and burning wood raining down around him, the woman slung across his shoulders like a sack. "Is she alive?" I moved to check her head wound.

"Barely." Emmett said, looking at me sideways.

I looked around desperately for water. There was a puddle that looked promising. I brought it to a near lava-like temperature to kill the impurities and moved it to circle her forehead at a much more forgiving degree. The water glowed blue and I felt the healing take place inside her head as well as out.

"It's okay, Ivy." Emmett said quietly, "She's going to live, her heartbeat is much stronger now. You don't have to cry." I dropped my hand and the water fell away from her face, showing me a smooth expanse of flawless skin. I took in a shaking breath and tried to stop the flow of tears I hadn't realized were falling.

"I'll be right back." He said, taking the woman to around the corner mirroring Jasper's actions. I sank to my knees and cradled my head in my hands, trying to get a hold of myself. I had never lost it like this before. Not ever.

Damn it, I could have died! What the hell is wrong with me.

"We're going home." Jasper said at my side again. He reached down and firmly, but gently, picked me up and held me in his arms. "And then you're going to explain to me why you were just about to let yourself burn to death in that apartment."

I closed my eyes and felt the slight motion of his body start to run and the bitter wind whip past my face and dry my tears. We were home much sooner than I would have liked. I opened my eyes to see Alice and Edward run to meet us on the lawn. "What happened?" Alice demanded. "I saw her trapped in a fire screaming for her mom."

I flinched. "It was nothing. Can you please put me down?" Jasper let me sink to my feet, but he kept his hand around my wrist and dragged me to the living room where the rest of the family quickly gathered to meet us.

Rose jumped into Emmett's arms as soon as we entered the room and kissed him passionately before pulling back with a wrinkled nose. "You smell like fire. I don't want to smell that on you ever again." She said sternly, relief plain in her eyes.

"I'm alright, baby." He said, pulling her in for another kiss.

Jasper pushed me to an empty wingback chair and sat me down before taking his place next to Alice on the opposite couch. "What the hell happened back there, Ivy?" I shrugged nonchalantly, but traitor tears were gathered in my eyes.

"What did happen, Jasper? All we know is what Alice saw in her vision." Carlisle's voice was the calm a mist the storm. I held onto it like a lifeline as the gilded irises of my family rested on me, filled with questions I wasn't prepared to answer.

"I couldn't find Ivy anywhere and the building was coming down." Jasper said, taking the attention from me for a moment. I took a breath. "I couldn't track her scent through the smoke, but a little girl screamed and luckily I found her in the middle of a burning apartment - on her knees, crying, while she stared at a little girl and her injured mother." I cringed as the memories swirled in my head. "I tried to take her and the girl away and come back for the mother, but Ivy went insane and tried to convince me to leave her and save the woman who she kept calling 'mom.' I repeat." Jasper said, his eyes burning into mine. "What the hell happened back there?"

My trembling chin dropped of its own accord and the words started to pour out. Some primal part of me wanted to tell the story, wanted someone to know the truth about what happened to me all those years ago. "It was my nightmare come to life." I finally managed.

"Your nightmare?" Edward asked, his head tilted to the side in a frustrated expression as he tried futilely to pluck the information from my head.

"I-I was that little girl once…" I didn't think anymore, I just jumped into the story. It all came pouring from my the deepest parts of my soul as my mind traveled back in time to that tragic day. The day I lost my mother.

The day my world was lit on fire…

The weather was absolutely lovely as eight-year-old me played in the sandbox behind our house. Birds were chirping, the sky was clear blue, and sunny rays shone down on my skin, filling me chock-full of Vitamin D with every warm caress. My sandcastle city was slowly, but steadily coming together, a queendom I decided to call "Ivy Town" when I heard my mother's startled yell escape from the open kitchen window.

"Oh my!" She cried. I jumped up and ran to the screen door leading to the kitchen and peered through to the den where the old radiator had burst into flame, fire licked up the walls, making the yellow flowers in the wallpaper pucker and peel away.

"Stay back, Ivy!" Mama called, her blonde curls bobbing around her face as she searched for the phone to call 911.

She ran outside with me, even through my fear I was struck by how pretty she was in her pink dress and pinned up hair. "Yes, hello. This is an emergency. There's a fire on 334 Silverthorne Lane." My mother said into the phone as she led me to the sandbox, a safe distance from the house.

She chewed her fingernails as we waited, but the fire was spreading and there was no sign of a firetruck driving down the rural country road. I cried because I was so scared. Sometimes I could control water, but right now I was too afraid to concentrate. Maybe if I had been stronger, I could have put out the fire. "What is taking so long?" My mom said to herself before her steel gray eyes flashed. "I'm going in to save some of our stuff before it all burns, stay here Sugar."

"No mama!" I begged, grabbing her skirt. "The fireman that came to school said never to go back in for things in a fire."

"It's not big enough to hurt me yet, Sweetie." She said, kissing my forehead. "Stay here."

I watched, fear robbing me of breath as my mom ran inside not once, not twice, but four times. And each time she came back out her arms were full of random things: photo albums, clothes, boxes; anything that caught her eye on her way in and out.

She ignored my begging when I asked her to stay the fifth time. The fire was much bigger now, smoke was pouring out of the windows as the flames had crept into the kitchen, but she wouldn't listen. "One last time! I forgot Grandma's recipe book!" She called before she darted back inside.

I heard a scream and a crash only moments later. "Mama!" My throat burned as I screamed her name over and over, but she didn't return. I pushed up my sleeves determination surging through me and took off across the yard and burst through the screen door.

She was lying on the floor by the counters. The rug by the sink was rumpled like her shoe had gotten caught on it. Blood dripped down the sharp edge of the counter. I zeroed in on her forehead where the crimson liquid was staining her face so quickly it robbed me of breath. "Mama?" I asked in a broken voice, creeping closer.

Her breathing was so shallow and for the first time in my life I could sense energy. When I touched her I could see it was fading. Fast.

I placed my little hands over her head wound trying to staunch the flow, but it didn't do much good. Fire consumed the room, but I wasn't going to leave her there. I concentrated on the lifeblood pouring from her cut and tried my best to stop it, but it continued to pour down her face and I continued to cry until the smoke got lower and lower and I could only cough.

Then the aliens came, or so I thought when a fireman arrived in full uniform and barged through the burning screen door. I wanted to scream, beg them to help her, but I could barely draw breath.

The firefighter picked me up, his hands too strong for me to fight. I was looking over his shoulder as my mother lay dying, screaming for him to help her. "Don't leave her! Mama wake up!" But he didn't turn back until I was safely in the hands of an EMT. It was only then that I realized I had been burning, I hadn't felt anything, but my entire right arm was burnt to a crisp. The pain was unbearable, but I refused to pass out until I saw my Mama leave the house.

But when the fireman turned back to get mom, it was too late. The ceiling over the kitchen collapsed. There was nothing anyone could do. The flames were beyond anyone's control.

Mom was dead and dad and I had nothing to burry. All we had was the useless stuff she managed to take from the burning house. The last thing I glimpsed through my tears was my father's face, full of an emotion so intense, it made my eyes roll back in my head and darkness consume me.

My jaw was moving up an down and I realized I was talking, I looked up into the golden eyes of my new family. "There's not a day that goes by that I don't wish I could have been stronger, that I could have saved her. Then maybe I wouldn't have ended up alone." I glanced at the Cullen's expressions I saw what I expected: heartbreak, compassion, pity. I wiped tears from my eyes.

"What about your father?" Alice asked tentatively.

More tears burned my eyes, but this time they were tears of hatred. The feeling was so strong it made Jasper wince. "I was badly burned and hospitalized for weeks. One day a nurse knocked a jug of water over my arm. It immediately began to glow and I was completely healed within minutes." My fists were clenched so tight I almost made my palms bleed, but them I remembered who was in the room with me and I had to concentrate to loosen my hands.

"Dad was grief-stricken by mom's death. He couldn't handle it. He broke. And when I healed myself he was there, he saw it all and went into a rage I'll never forget. He blamed me - said it was my fault mom died." My voice broke on the last word. I would never forget the pure, unadulterated hatred in his eyes when he looked at me and the madness that lay just beneath the surface. I had never been more terrified in my entire life. Nothing I had endured so far was worse than that exact moment.

"He said I let her die." I leaned over and allowed myself four harsh sobs before I sat back up, tears dripping down my chin, to face the mixed expressions of horror and sorrow. "When we left the hospital, he took me to the door of an orphanage three towns over and walked away. He just disappeared and left me there. I waited for hours all alone before anyone even realized I was there. There was a manhunt, but the police couldn't find him. I never saw him again."

Now every face in the room was mixed between hatred and sadness. "Oh, sweetheart." Esme said, her wind-chime voice marred with grief for my heartbreaking childhood.

"He sent me to hell and he never looked back!" I screamed, surging to my feet. God, I wanted to break something! I wanted to hit someone over and over again until they felt as horrible as I felt. "All those days alone re-living mom's death, all those nights crying for dad to come back for me. All those years I sat in a pew at church begging God to forgive me." I couldn't resist, I picked up a glass lamp and threw it against the wall with all my might. It shattered into a million satisfying pieces. "Why couldn't he see that it wasn't my fault? Why couldn't he have said that? Just once! I was eight years old for God's sake! I wasn't strong enough to save her and he condemned me for the rest of my life!" I hadn't realized I was hyperventilating until Jasper's arms came around me. I clung to him, sobbing. He didn't try to manipulate my emotions and for that I was grateful. He let me feel what I needed to feel and just held me close until I could breathe again.

Ten minutes passed and my crying finally began to slow and my grief-stricken mind began to clear.

Yes, life had been unbelievably bitter, but I had the Cullens now and they cared about me. I couldn't change my mother's death or my father's abandonment, but I could move forward and try my damnedest to be happy. It was what my mom would want me to do. "I'm sorry." I moaned against Jasper's smoke-smelling hoodie.

"You have nothing to be sorry for." He murmured before placing a kiss on my forehead.

I pulled away after a few moments and pushed away a piece of broken glass with my shoe. "Forgive me, Esme. I shouldn't have lost it like that."

Esme blurred when she flew from her chair to wrap me in a cool hug. "If it would make you feel better, I'd let you destroy the whole house, honey."

I forced a laugh, feeling slightly panicked that I shared so much personal information, but it was too late to take any of it back. And that was probably for the best. "No, I like my room too much." There was still a overhanding shadow of darkness in the room thanks to my confession. "I know I'm not the easiest at times, I have a difficult time allowing personal attachments and I have a lot of cynicism inside of me to sift through, and I'm sorry for that." I met Carlisle's eyes and was happy with the acceptance I saw in their topaz rivers. "Now you know everything."

"You could have told us sooner, you know." Edward said, changing positions on the couch. I noticed that his fists were clenched, forearm tendons standing out stark white, as were Jasper and Emmett's. They were the picture of protective brothers. It was nice.

"I know, but I didn't really know how to bring it up." I resisted the urge to pull water close to me to fight the feelings of vulnerability, I took a deep breath instead and let them run their course. Jasper met my eyes and gave me an approving nod.

"I speak for us all when I say that we'll never abandon you, Ivy." Carlisle said, "You'll be a part of this family forever, a daughter and a sister. That's a promise you can count on, Ivy."

Tears flooded my eyes again and I ran to his arms, feeling like a child when his immeasurably strong grip came around me. I held on with what I had of human strength. I had always wanted something to replace what I lost eight years ago and I finally found it. A new place to belong and a new family, found in the most unlikely of places. A very odd unit, I'll be the first to admit, but a strong one. The bonds here wouldn't be so easily broken. And that thought alone relaxed me enough to lull me to sleep.

"Goodnight, Ivy." Carlisle whispered, I felt the touch of my head against a pillow and the covers from my bed pulled up to my shoulders before he was gone in a gust of wind.

I snuggled deeper into the covers and fell asleep.

Thanks for sticking around. Leave comments if the mood takes you. :)