The fight was over.

James was dead.

It was a strange feeling. Everything Edward had been fighting for throughout these past several decades had finally come to fruition.

So what came next?

Rebuilding their lives and beginning to mingle with society again was easier said than done. After all, emotional scars are much slower to heal than physical ones. They're a lot harder to forget, too.

But, before that, there's something else Edward needed to take care of first.


Saving Grace

Chapter Eight:
If you fall, you know I'll be there for you.


Edward sat on his leather couch, watching Bella sleep on the mattress they had put together just yesterday afternoon. It felt like such a long time ago—before the final showdown with James.

A delicate ray of sunlight filtered through the glass of his bedroom window and shone down on her sleeping face.

Bella had had nothing to do with this, but was dragged in by nothing but ill luck. She deserved to know what this had really been about. And Edward resolved to tell her. She needed to know it wasn't her fault her father died; it was his.


It was well into the afternoon before Bella began to stir.

The setting sun hit her eyelids and she instinctively shut them tighter, before coming to her senses and pulling them open, little by little. She then saw something on the periphery of her vision which made her sit up and rub her eyes clean of sleep. "Edward…?"

She heard a soft chuckle. "You're not talking in your sleep again, are you?"

"What happened?" she asked, barely aware of where she was.

And then it came crashing down on her. "Oh, right."

Edward chuckled again, amused by the fact she could actually forget what they had been through last night.

"Edward."

The seriousness in her tone halted his chortles. "Yes, Bella?"

"How did you know where to find me last night?"

He turned away, reluctant to answer.

"Tell me, Edward, what are you?" It sounded like she already knew; she just needed confirmation.

He looked back down at her, reading her eyes for clues. Among them, he found fascination, longing and just a hint of fear. It was clear that James had spilled the beans. "You already know, don't you?" he said. It was an empty and resigned accusation.

Bella felt a light brush color her cheeks. "Perhaps, but I need to hear it from you."

Edward couldn't deny her heartfelt plea. He captured her gaze, making sure she could trust him, and told her as seriously as he could, "I'm a vampire, Bella."

She kept her emotions in check and continued in a neutral tone, "And your family?"

"We're all the same," he answered.

She nodded. "I see."

It was silent for a while thereafter, so Edward decided to reveal a little more about himself now that the cat was out of the bag. "There's something else that sets me apart from ordinary people, too. It helped me find you last night." He shot her a subtle smirk. "I can read minds."

Her eyes sparkled with renewed curiosity. "You know what I'm thinking?" she asked, feeling a little self-conscious upon learning this new fact.

He shook his head. "Unfortunately, no," he replied. "For whatever reason, yours is the one mind I can't read. I thought it was a bit strange that first night how I wasn't getting anything from you, but I figured it had something to do with the shock of it all. Since then, though, I've come to accept that maybe your mind just doesn't take well to strangers trying to intrude upon its privacy."

The sentiment made Bella a little embarrassed. "Oh, so I'm… weird."

He laughed. "If it makes you feel any better, Alice can see the future. I'm sure you can consider yourself by far the most normal person in this household."

That caught her interest. "Alice sees the future?"

"Well, it's a little more complex than that," he corrected. "She… sees things; flashes of what the future may come to hold. But they're very vague—even more so because she tries to block them out."

"Block them out?" she asked, perplexed.

"Yes," he answered. "She's never really taken well to her special power. So, in a way, she sabotaged her own abilities." He read the confusion in Bella's eyes, and added, "As they say, you can't see something you don't believe in."

"She doesn't believe in her powers?"

"More like she doesn't want to believe," he said. "She just wants to be normal. But I guess, in a way, that's what we all want."

"What's stopping you?" she asked. "Apart from the obvious, I mean. You guys seem normal enough to me. Why can't you pretend to be like everyone else and live out there?" She tilted her head in the direction of the main city.

He smiled a bittersweet grin at that. "We used to, actually. But then… things got in the way."

"Things?"

"Yes," he said. "James."

She looked up at him, her eyes glistening with repressed hope. "He is gone, right?"

As a sign of reassurance, Edward reached down and took her hand in his own. "He's gone, Bella. He's not coming back. Never again."

"Are you sure?" She couldn't let herself feel relieved just yet. Or, more accurately, she couldn't let go of her insecurity quite so soon. She needed proof; cold hard evidence that he was gone—for good.

Edward met her gaze with pure honesty shining through his amber irises. "I promise you, he will never be able to hurt you or anyone else ever again."

Bella let herself relax—just slightly. "You have no idea how much I want to believe that."

His eyes tightened a little. "Then believe it, because it's true. I'm sure of it."

"I know, I know," she said, looking up at him with a sort of self-pity. "I believe everything you say; it's just hard to convince my heart of the same after all that's happened."

Edward couldn't say that he understood, but he nodded, nonetheless. Bella could see the frustration in the motion, and suggested, "Maybe it'll help me believe if you tell me the whole story behind James."

"It's a very long story," he said.

Bella pushed herself up from her improvised bed and took a seat on the couch, crossing her legs in front so she could now look Edward straight in the eye. She then folded her hands and rested her arms on her thighs, and took a breath. She was ready to listen. "Tell me."

He sighed. "Where to begin?"

"Tell me about him," she prompted. "Surely there must have been another side to him."

He thought it over a little. "Well, believe it or not, he was once in love."

"With Victoria?"

He shook his head. "No. She's barely been with him a year. She's nothing more than a pawn to him."

"Then who?"

He sighed again. "I guess I'll have to start from the beginning then." He smiled gently at her. "Ten years after Carlisle changed me, I ran away from home. It was just us and Esme at the time, feeding on mere animals to quench our thirst. I understood enough to know that Carlisle's intentions were right but I was still young and foolish. And thus followed my bout of adolescence, you could say—away from my family.

"Up until one particular night, I simply travelled from town to town, targeting anybody I happened to come across as my prey." He laughed with dark humor. "My life—if you could even call it that—held no meaning whatsoever. There was only blood, murder, and more blood. But, one day, it changed—somewhat."

Bella noted how Edward's eyes seemed to fog up at that, as if recalling the distant past by reliving it in his head. She couldn't pinpoint the exact emotions it was evoking, though. She guessed something along the lines of nostalgia, regret or guilt; perhaps a mixture of all three. While she continued to try and examine his expression, he proceeded with the story.

"I came across James that night. Up until then, I had run into one of my kind once or twice but we vampires aren't the most sociable of creatures; we never stopped for a chat or a cup of tea, and I was glad for that. I was doing just fine on my own. But this time, it was different.

"I had just finished a meal and disposed of the leftovers. That's when he approached me. 'Isn't it better to eat with company?' Those were the first words he said. And that was the basis of our friendship: dining partners." He laughed again, though this time it sounded more of self-pity. "Now tell me that isn't pathetic."

Bella didn't smile; didn't laugh. She watched his eyes and said, "It was a good friendship, wasn't it?"

He didn't lie. "It was—in the beginning. Of course, that was before I knew any better. Then, one night, we were hunting down this one girl. It was as easy and unnecessary as breathing; we'd never needed to put any effort in at all. However, it wasn't our skills that got in the way of killing this particular prey; it was our hearts, you could say.

"I couldn't tell you why or how it possibly happened, but James felt something towards this simple human girl. To this day, I still don't understand the attraction he described—even if I can see into others' minds, it doesn't mean I identify with everything they feel—but I did what he asked of me and let her be; kept her safe for him. I never did recognize why this one girl meant so much to him; she wasn't particularly beautiful and she seemed quite timid, too. When we first set our sights on her as a late-night snack, I thought he would just go for the kill and finish her off there and then; a quick and painless finish. But that's not how it turned out.

"He approached her that night, making it seem like any other chance encounter, and introduced himself. She was a little confused at first, but it seemed she was an open, honest person; she answered his pleasantries without question and went on her way that night with a fleeting desire to see him again.

"However, she didn't actually believe the ephemeral wish would come true.

"From that day on, he started visiting her quite often at sporadic times of the day, always finding some reason or other to explain his sudden appearances. She began finding it a little strange and, at times, frightening. He didn't notice her fear, too immersed in this sensation he called 'love,' but I knew what she was thinking: he gave her the creeps; the way he always knew where she was and what she was doing.

"And then there were the gifts. Flowers, jewelry, books—he gave her all kinds of things. Unbeknownst to her, however, they had all been personally stolen by James, and the original suppliers had all mysteriously died from loss of blood. She had no idea of this; no suspicion of the kinds of deeds he was committing just to earn her love. To her, they were merely trivial symbols of a passing fancy from a mysterious admirer. She never imagined his feelings for her would go any deeper than a simple crush.

"Somewhere along the way, though, their relationship got more serious. She accepted it; took it in her stride. But, had it gone her way, their first kiss would have been their last. He wasn't gentle with his caresses, not that he realized. With every kiss and every touch, he hurt her. But she was too scared to tell him.

"Despite his uncanny tendencies, she believed that, deep down, he was a good man, and wished not to hurt him, though it was still mainly fear controlling her actions then. She told him she loved him, over and over again. It started out as a lie to protect them both, but eventually, even in her mind, she couldn't tell if it was the truth or not."

Edward paused for a moment, and Bella sensed the story approaching its climax.

"One night, James came to me and said, 'I'm going to turn her into one of us.'

"I had been expecting it; he'd been thinking it over for the past few days, putting great consideration into the decision. Still, I couldn't help but feel it was the wrong choice to make. Neither of us had any experience turning a human, and trying it out for the first time would, in all likelihood, lead to the victim's untimely demise. I told him of this, and yet, he still insisted. So I did the only thing left to me.

"I tried to appear as harmless as I could to the girl. I waited outside her school and offhandedly caught her attention as crowds of students left for home. At first, she tried to walk away and pretend I had mistaken her for someone else. After I mentioned James' name, however, she stopped and agreed to listen to what I had to say.

"I told her the truth; the whole truth. It was the only way she would understand and take the situation seriously. She called me crazy, she called me a liar, but I could see, in her mind, that everything I said was making perfect sense to her. She knew it was the truth.

"She asked me how I knew; why I was telling her all this. I didn't tell her what I was, though she already had her suspicions, but I did tell her of James' plans. She was horrified. She asked—no, begged—me for a way out of it. My advice was to tell James herself. Surely, he would listen to the one whom he claimed to love with his entire being.

"Things didn't go as planned.

"James chose to change her in an old abandoned warehouse so they wouldn't be discovered. I waited outside in case anything went wrong. I could see into their minds and knew exactly what was going on. I paid close attention. However, I had underestimated James' resolve; I was focusing too much on the girls' thoughts and not his. That's why I wasn't there to stop him when he hit her.

"Their conversation had started out with the girl revealing to James what she found out about him from me. She told him she didn't want to become like him. And he lost it. The type of love he had for her was addictive; toxic. His first priority wasn't whether she was happy or not; he just wanted her to be with him forever. From the very start, their relationship was bound to end in tragedy.

"She cried out in pain for him to stop his strikes, but he was long past the point of reason. His eyes flared with a frenzied madness as he shouted at her to stay with him. In that moment, she knew she did not love him. And she told him. He didn't know what to do, so he beat her; he beat her until she could no longer attempt to dodge his blows.

"I went in there and tried to stop him, but the strength he commanded in blind madness overpowered me. After it was all over, he realized what he had done and it drove him further into insanity. He still believed she had loved him; he accused me of manipulating her into rejecting him; that it was my fault she stopped returning his feelings. He said it was my fault she died.

"He called me a monster. He said I had no heart. And I agreed with him. Even if I knew I hadn't been the one to tear her away from him, all those things were still true. It may have just been a coincidence, but in the many weeks prior to that night, I had been feeling more and more guilt from my daily consumptions of human lives build up within my conscience. So I told James he was right, and I went back to Carlisle to change my ways.

"A decade or so passed, and everything was going just fine. I had learned to follow Carlisle's approach in controlling my instincts, as did the rest of our family who gradually joined us. We were living in an apartment in the city then, all of us leading relatively normal lives. The whole incident with James became nothing more than a bad dream I desperately longed to forget. But I soon found out that the issue hadn't quite been resolved yet.

"My family and I came home from a hunting trip one day to find the fresh corpse of a teenage girl strewn across our living room floor. There was a note, too. It read, 'It's your fault, Edward.' And immediately, I knew it was James. I could practically hear him hiss those exact words at me as if he were right there beside us.

"Naturally, we were compelled to alert the authorities—to give the poor girl's family some closure, at the very least. And then the media got involved. Our family ended up as the primary subject of headlines and live broadcasts across the state. We were even taken in for questioning for many months before the police finally ruled us out as suspects. It couldn't be helped, I guess. After all, we were getting dead bodies delivered to our address like roses on Valentine's Day. That was sure to get people jumping to the wrong conclusions.

"As you would expect, this all took a very severe toll on our family. Many doctors and nurses at the hospital lost their trust for Carlisle, always distrustful and suspicious around him. Esme's friends all but abandoned her. They were afraid to be around her; afraid of what rumors might spread about them, too.

"And then there were the rest of us. I believe you must understand—as I'm sure you've experienced high school long enough—the kind of treatment one receives if a single blemish appears on their immaculate social image. Think of how these little 'incidents' looked to the high-class students at our school. They wanted nothing to do with any of us. It was certainly a dark period of time for all us Cullens.

"In the end, we couldn't take it anymore, and chose to leave. We decided to travel around for awhile, but James always managed to find us again, leaving the presence of death on our doorstep. Eventually, we gave up on blending in with society. We chose secluded areas like this as our home, moving house every now and then to try and throw James' off our trail. It didn't work. And by that point, I was sick and tired of running.

"He knew I would go looking for him sooner or later. But his scent only led me to more of the innocents he'd murdered. After awhile, he decided killing them was not enough. He changed his approach to rape and torture, hoping to get a stronger reaction out of me. I thought this might be a good thing; maybe I would have a chance to save them after all.

"I soon discovered how very wrong my assumption was.

"There were times where I got to the women whilst they were still breathing, but the effect James left on them didn't give them much hope to survive. For instance, I remember the first time I found one who was still alive and conscious. She was quite young—a junior, I presumed—and had been left by a dumpster with only a thin dress to keep her warm. I reached out, expecting to bring her back and save her, but she didn't let me. She screamed at me to get away. She swiped at me not to touch her. It was James' doing. He knew exactly how to leave scars that never fade.

"I couldn't help that girl. So I left her my jacket and prayed for her safety. When it began occurring more often, though, it got harder and harder to just leave them like they told me to, knowing they wouldn't live through the night. So, one day, I didn't listen to what the girl was saying, and took her home. She was kicking and screaming the whole way there. It didn't hurt me, but it did make me doubt whether or not it was the right thing to do. Saving someone against their will is a tricky situation to get yourself into. It made me feel like the criminal.

"For several years after that, I continued to take the girls back to our home, though none of them survived more than a few days. I guess you can't expect someone to keep living if they don't have the will to do so.

"On quite a few occasions, I asked Carlisle if he thought what I was doing was right. He, as always, came up with a complicated list of pros and cons and moral views on the issue. But he didn't have the thing I needed most: a straight answer.

"James continued playing that game with me for several decades until, two nights ago, I found you.

"I thought it would turn out the same as all those other times: you would scream, I would forcibly take you back, and you would die—all because of me. That obviously didn't turn out as I had expected." He smiled then, and she smiled back. "You could say, you were in the wrong place at just the right time."

She tilted her head in curiosity.

"You see," Edward explained, "the fact I was finally able to beat James this time around was due to two vital reasons that somehow coincided because of fate or luck or whatever else you may believe in.

"Firstly, it was still one of James' earlier experiences working with Victoria. Normally, the woman he picks as his accomplice is satisfied with fulfilling every order given to them without question. Victoria, on the other hand, cared too much for him. Instead of caring about what he wanted her to do, she did whatever she could to earn his love. The way she foolishly interfered with our fight is ultimately the reason for James' demise. Although," he added, "I guess I do owe Alice some credit, too, as well as Emmett and Jasper. On second thought, you could sum this one up in a single word: teamwork—something my family used to our advantage, while it was the one thing James and Victoria couldn't handle."

"And the second reason?" Bella asked.

"Yes, the second reason," he repeated. He held out his hand and molded it into the curve of Bella's cheek. She was so warm; it made his next sentence sound like a soft, velvet sigh. "The second reason is you."

"Me?" The shock and disbelief was evident, even in that single word she spoke.

"Yes—because you trusted me and let me help you; because you were determined on living; because you were stronger than those girls before you." He leaned in close to her. "For that, I must thank you." He pressed his lips to hers.

For a second, she was too stunned to move. It was as unexpected as it was mind-blowing. His lips were cold and hard—just like the rest of him—but, against hers, they seemed to soften just a little and even warm in the heat of the moment.

It took her a minute, but, eventually, she caught hold of her emotions and kissed him back.

She was a little inexperienced and rusty, but with Edward, it felt natural—right. She let herself sink into the moment and forget about everything else.

The healing process had begun.

She wasn't sure how long it would take. She wasn't even sure things could ever really go back to the way they were.

But she had time.

And she had Edward.

Would that be enough, she wondered.


A/N: Sorry about the wait. There was this anime convention/festival on August 21-23 that I'd been looking forward to since last year, so I spent the preceding week preparing my costume and the following week recovering from the awesomeness of it all (and catching up on schoolwork, of course, since I skipped class that Friday just to attend). Anyway, this chapter was a real pain to reread. There's probably some plot hole or innaccuracy or some detail I was planning to add but forgot about. But, I'm too tired to fix any of it now.