A/N: So this chapter is fairly long (as in, the longest yet); the remaining bit of the drive, etc, took longer than I expected it to and I'd promised a few of you I'd get past a certain point…though to be honest, I didn't think I was going to make it :-S Thankfully, Wednesday gave me a lovely rainy morning to write in, then a lovely rainy afternoon, and evening…and nine hours later, I had a draft, with Thursday left to edit! It's funny; I got through the initial write okay then cried everywhere editing. Ah well, all I can say is that two chapters time is going to be messy (and no, that's not 'it' :-S There's a whole 2 days of agony before that…). So here it is…attempt number two-hundred-and-I've-lost-count at the end of NM ch1 ;-D Forgive me if it gets a little…madcap :-P I'm not really happy with all of it, but I'm fairly happy with the bits that count. This stuff is tough, lol…I hope you enjoy it! Thanks to all those who sent their support during the week :-)


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Chapter 8: Beat

OR

Don't Breathe – The World Is Burning

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It was September 13, 2005, the fifth year of a new millennium and the one-hundred-and-fifth year of my existence. I was in a moving vehicle—a barely moving, barely functional 1953 Chevrolet truck—and I was driving. Beside me in the cab sat my entire life, my purpose, my reason for being and my undeserved redemption. Beside me sat the most beautiful girl in the world and we were heading for her birthday party—her eighteenth birthday—and she was miserable. And because of that, although I was driving to a party, although I was here with my angel, although my family was together for the first time in over a month, I was not as happy as I should have been.

Thanks to my idiocy and that of my two sisters, few of my current circumstances would bring joy to Bella. She was dreading the party—dreading it almost as much as I had made her dread her birthday itself. And because Rosalie was a child, and because I was unable to control her pettiness, Bella would lack my enthusiasm about the family being together as well. In short, the evening was everything it should not have been, and I was about to make things worse.

I opened my mouth in the brief, tired silence that had spread between us. "I probably should warn you…"

"Please do." Bella's voice held enough poorly hidden trepidation and worse, resignation to her situation to make turning the truck around a tempting prospect. I wondered bitterly why this still surprised me. I was fully aware of what I was doing to her. I let the fact that the truck's turning circle would require a large meadow give me strength. "When I say they're all excited…I do mean all of them."

"Everyone?" Bella choked out, breath tight, and I felt the evening going downhill at the poorly hidden terror on her face. Bella was this scared of my idiot sister? I shook my head and resisted the urge to smash something, preferably something attached to Rosalie. Well, no, some enthusiastically gutless corner of my mind provided, not everyone was excited. Rosalie was jealous and resentful and sufficiently depressed that she'd barely spoken. That didn't help me much, however. They were all here, and I just wished I could give Bella an answer that wouldn't make this worse. I wished my seventy-two years' sister weren't here, and knew the thought was wrong and thought it anyway.

"I thought Emmett and Rosalie were in Africa," Bella managed at last, voice still strained.

She wasn't wrong—they had been until recently. Rosalie and Emmett did Africa like no reasonable person did anything. Rosalie's taste in accommodation required large cities or safari parks, but neither could be used for hunting. Even game parks monitored their herds, making midnight 'unarmed poaching' inadvisable. So Rosalie and Emmett spent a lot of time in Africa driving, and a lot of time running—dirty, smog-drenched city to wild savannah and back again, black market gems and mud and plains where humans occur every hundred miles. Sun-soaked mountains with freezing air. Wide, endless spaces and the wild, furious creatures that were the richest blood we allowed ourselves. The richest blood in the world that didn't beat for a sanctified soul.

Africa had undeniable appeal. I hadn't been there in some time. Bella was happy here, with her father and her horrendous truck and her idiotic friends, and that was enough for me. It was for Bella that the family was still here, of course. We had been in Forks a number of years now and had more than sufficient reason to move on, with all the nightmares of the past eight months. But this was Bella's home, and my family loved Bella. Emmett had proudly reported missing her as much as he had anyone else in the family—I'd ignored the accompanying thoughts, variations on a theme of family togetherness and racial uniformity that made me want to remove his limbs to distract him. Rosalie, on the other hand, was not happy about being dragged back here so soon after leaving. I would never have imagined that her thoughts could be my family's most bearable—vain as they were, self-absorbed and, currently, almost acidic. But they weren't directed at me. Rosalie didn't sit in a room and try to force her naïve opinions into my mind as though I might adopt them by accident if sufficiently harassed. Rosalie wasn't naïve like Emmett was, or like Alice could be. Even Esme's mind, quiet and endlessly compassionate, unintentionally tore chunks out of me these days, softly wishing for my happiness in a way that could never be real. No, Rosalie's mind might be hateful, but it was a relief. She didn't want me to kill Bella. She knew that I was right.

"Emmett wanted to be here," I summarised for Bella's benefit, and wondered whether it was cowardly to gloss over the rest. But Bella didn't need to know the rest. She shouldn't have to. There was nothing wrong with protecting her as much as I could.

Unfortunately, I currently seemed to be doing an impressively poor job. She was biting her lip nervously, not quite forming words. "But…Rosalie?" It was painfully clear that she already knew the answer. I tried not to be too angry. At least Rosalie didn't want me to take Bella's soul. It didn't work. "I know, Bella," I sighed, wishing Rosalie would take some initiative and leave for the evening, since she clearly didn't want to be a part of the celebrations. "Don't worry, she'll be on her best behaviour." Or Alice would have her on a plane back to Africa before I had a chance to send her away myself.

Bella didn't look convinced, but she didn't question it either. I was glad—what was there to say? She stared out her window, face turned away from me, lost in thought, and I tried with as little success as ever to block out those less silent—white noise from the town, predictable whispers from my waiting family. Emmett had wasted no time once he'd returned. "So," he threw at me, bowling in the door like they'd never left—which really, in the scheme of things, they barely had—"are we here at the right time?"

There has to be a chance. Just 'cause Alice can't convince him…well, he really does look as bad as Alice said. But he can't really—

"The right time for what, Emmett?" I threw back mildly, daring him to say it. I knew what he meant. I knew what everyone meant. And if he was looking for me in an agreeable mood, he had not come at anything close to the right time.

"Africa's pretty great, you know. You and Bella could come back with us. Make a nice change, clean break from this whole place…"

"I don't know what you're talking about." I pushed past him toward the door before realising that Bella was at work, I had nowhere useful to go, and I would look like an idiot if I let him drive me out of the house within thirty seconds of getting here.

Rosalie gave me a look that made clear that I was weak regardless. "He's just being as much of a child as you are. Ignore him." At least she was glaring at Emmett, not me.

Emmett's eyes, and his thoughts, flickered to Rosalie for a moment, not remotely as invisibly as he intended, and the honest worry in both mystified me as much as ever. How he could love her the way he did was incomprehensible to me. How anyone could put up with Rosalie's rubbish and still feel…

Hey, Edward. Is Bella mad at you?

The only time Emmett bothered speaking to me in his thoughts was when he was getting around Rosalie. Right now, I was too annoyed with them all to cooperate. "Bella and I are fine," I answered curtly. Rosalie glared at him. Rosalie hated my power with a passion only she could muster, and certainly only she could maintain for seventy-two years.

Emmett nodded uncomfortably, Rosalie's eyes boring into the side of his head. "'Cause I was thinking…" This is probably stupid, he argued with himself mentally. He said it anyway. "It'd be useful if we did all…you and Bella's…significant…events…while Rose and I are here, don't you think? So we don't have to come back again so quickly."

Stupid was a massive understatement. I turned to the piano, realised it would only give away how frustrated I was, and turned to the window instead. "I can't think of any others you might miss, so you should be fine."

"Oh," he supplied, attempting to come up with a direction for the conversation and floundering. Okay, I'll say…"I was thinking maybe Bella might be joining the family this year, though. You know, eighteen's a legal adult in most countries…"

Rosalie cut him off before I had the chance to. "Actually, he wasn't thinking at all. You're taking our bags up, Emmett." Her tone left no argument. Alice, meanwhile, helpfully ran the list through her head—drinking, smoking, voting, vampirism…­—and didn't try very hard not to laugh. I stared hard out the window. Emmett gave me one more pitiful look before disappearing up the stairs, his thoughts clear as ever behind him.

I don't get how he…doesn't he want her to be one of the family? He wants to marry her, doesn't he? So what does he think…if he'd just hurry up and change her…

Change. My thoughts took hold of the word and planted it firmly before all else. Change. Change, change, change, change…

And Rosalie's thoughts beat out a steady rhythm of I hate this, I hate this, I hate Edward, I hate that stupid girl, I hate Emmett, I hate this place, I hate this, I hate this and her thoughts did merge into mine where the others wished theirs would, and we were as miserable as each other and the rest were little better. It was not one of our better reunions. No one was surprised.

The arguments and wheedling and waves of deliberate thought and stupid looks had continued until I was almost ready to leave the house for Bella's.

"Edward…" Emmett had whined, deliberately grating, when marginally less puerile attacks had failed. "Come on…Edward…" Until I lost it, snarling and furious, and stormed out to the porch. The rising moon mocked me. The twilight mocked me, because it had always been peaceful, and nothing was now. Inside, behind me, Rosalie smirked, infuriatingly smug but more just bitter, and I could see her face in Emmett's thoughts but hers were almost all the bitterness.

I wondered what had happened to us and hated that I knew the answer. One of the most important lessons that Carlisle had taught me was that change always holds both good and bad. It just happened that in this, all the good went to me and all the bad went to my family and to Bella.

Little had improved over the day since my adopted brother's arrival. Rosalie was still volatile. My family was still against me. And now, Bella was about to enter the madhouse. She was still facing out the window, out where I knew she couldn't see a thing. She was still turned away from me. She didn't react when I turned the truck into our private drive, and we both needed to stop mulling out windows before we reached the house. I scrambled weakly for a change of topic. "So…if you won't let me get you the Audi, isn't there anything that you'd like for your birthday?" The question felt almost as false as my voice sounded.

And, as always, Bella rewarded with me something about equivalent to a knife in the gut. "You know what I want."

I caught the roar of frustration that pushed itself into my throat, swallowed it, breathed deeply. Calm. Stay calm. I clenched my jaw shut and wished I'd kept it that way to start with. "Not tonight, Bella," I forced out, trying hard not to growl it at her. I wasn't an animal damn it, I could get control of myself this second and behave like a civilised person. "Please."

She smiled mockingly, bitterly, and the calm struggled. "Well, maybe Alice will give me what I want."

The calm smashed. It took me several seconds to rein in the instinctual reaction, the snarl of pain, of fury, of fear, the crushing fear that trailed me now, and I was too disgusted with myself to even try calming my voice. "This isn't going to be your last birthday, Bella."

"That's not fair!"

Stay calm. Stay calm. Calm. Breathe. I clamped my mouth as tightly shut as I could and turned my eyes away from her, focused on the trees, on the massive hemlocks and the smaller pines, on Alice's thoughts from the house—Is everything okay? What did you say, Edward?—she'd obviously heard Bella's shouting. I shut my eyes and gathered my senses. Is everything okay, Edward? Esme, as much concern and less accusation than Alice. Carlisle wouldn't ask, because he'd know, and he'd know that sympathy was misplaced. I was grateful for small mercies. Carlisle and I didn't talk much about Bella. Neither of us liked any of the conclusions we refused to come to when we did. Not that it helped much. We'd been together too long to still need words. We came to conclusions together just by knowing the other was thinking.

By the time I pulled Bella's truck to a stop in front of the house, the thought of Carlisle waiting inside for us had managed to calm me as much as it could. I glanced sideways at Bella, giving her another moment to find her own calm. I regretted it immediately. Her lips were set in a hard frown, her eyes once again wide, shoulders slumped. I took another quick survey of our surroundings in case she was looking at something I'd missed. Nothing. Just the house, decorated rather simply by Alice's standards and with a soft elegance that the women of 1910s Chicago would have done well to learn from. Elaborate parties had been a weekly, twice-weekly thing when I was human. Now they happened when Rosalie wanted to get married again, and rarely otherwise. The girls of Chicago, much like my two sisters, had been intolerably enthusiastic about parties. Bella was not, ever. I glanced at her again just in time to see her groan, apparently recovering from her speechlessness. I stopped myself doing the same. I kept my voice perfectly civil. "This is a party," I stated simply, breathing out my frustration. So Bella was being a little unreasonable. It was still my fault that she was upset. I called up all my long-trained patience. "Try to be a good sport."

"Sure," she muttered, still glaring at the house.

I got out of the truck before I could make things any worse.

Do you and Bella need a moment?

I glanced quickly around me as I walked in front of the truck and located Carlisle a step back from the front window. Bella wasn't glaring anymore, just frowning, but a moment wasn't going to help. I shook my head imperceptibly, glancing left, then right, then left again—Alice would pick it if she was watching, and Carlisle would understand because he was waiting for an answer, but Bella wouldn't know I'd spoken to anyone. Which was good, because I suspected it would take less than that to make her angry again. I opened her door in silence and offered her my hand down.

She didn't take it. "I have a question."

I lowered my hand again, remembered that Carlisle was watching, and gripped my patience like it could fix this.

"If I develop this film, will you show up in the picture?"

For one long moment, I could do nothing but stare. And then I could hear Carlisle and Jasper laughing in the window, and I felt oddly like I wished I could cry, but I hadn't been able to in a long, long time so I laughed instead, and laughed, and laughed, and wished all the questions caught up in this were that simple, and wished that the humanity in that stupid picture were enough, and wished that I could just keep laughing and let that be it. That after all this, the myths being just that could be enough for her like it had been what seemed an age ago. And I laughed, and I laughed, and I kept on laughing as Bella's frown slowly relaxed and the tension ran out of me better than tears.

Carlisle wasn't fooled and neither, with his advantage, was Jasper. They both let me laugh anyway. Bring her inside, Edward, Jasper whispered in my mind, or Alice is going to lose it, and he was right, and it was easy, so I grabbed Bella's hand, threw thought out the window, shut the door behind her and focused on the fact that she was smiling. I pushed the rest away as we crossed the lawn. The candlelight made Bella glow, and every flame cast its own sphere of heat, rippling against my skin in an ebb and flow whisper of bliss. They were all waiting by the time I opened the door, still laughing under my breath, giddy from the heat and the laughter and the day.

"Happy birthday, Bella!"

Welcome home, Edward, Carlisle added silently, and though he didn't say it, I knew his tone well enough to rein in my mild case of hysteria. I didn't stop smiling. It felt good. The house looked beautiful. My family were all happy, genuinely happy, except for Rosalie, who was easy to ignore. Bella was blushing furiously, and I pulled her close and pressed my lips to her hair and wondered how I could possibly have been frustrated with her. How could anyone be frustrated with my beautiful angel, who had made my family so happy, who had lived almost eighteen years before I'd known she existed and whose side I was going to stay by for every second that remained? I released her long enough for Esme to embrace her and Carlisle to follow suit, joking, smiling, thoughts genuinely at ease like they never were. Emmett thankfully didn't hug her, because when he did I usually had to extract her half-squashed from his grip, but he smiled in that way that got him out of anything, like it was his birthday and he was about eight years old, and Bella blushed again as he teased her. Alice was practically glowing as she skipped forward, and Jasper was glowing over on the stairs, cautious as ever, I noted with quick approval, but still easily close enough for Alice to be infectious.

I was too busy enjoying the general humour of my family's thoughts and watching Bella finally begin to smile properly to take much note of what was going on, until Bella shifted beneath my hand on her shoulder and I realised that Alice was towing her away, ignoring Bella's protests, thoughts dancing so quickly that I really couldn't be bothered following. I let them go. Emmett had left the room, so I knew which gift would be first. The elder and more amiable of my sisters planted the largest of the boxes firmly in Bella's hands, holding on until it was clear that Bella wasn't going to drop it. "Open it," Alice prompted, so pleased her party was going well that it was difficult not to be similarly enthused. Bella blushed yet again, ripped the paper off rather quickly for a human, and gave the box inside a very odd look. I edged around until I could see the box, wondering what could possibly be so confusing about a car stereo, and held in a laugh. No one had actually thought to write 'car stereo' on the box. Then I did laugh, as Bella opened the box for further illumination, found it empty, and looked more puzzled than ever.

"Um…thanks," she mumbled quietly, cheeks burning with blood, very obviously still trying to figure out what she'd been given, and I was no longer the only person in the room laughing. Bella was now bright red, and I opened my mouth to explain before I could be scolded for embarrassing her. Jasper got in before I could. "It's a stereo for your truck," he called, still at the foot of the stairs, doing about as well at not laughing as I was. "Emmett's installing it right now so that you can't return it."

Alice grinned maniacally. I started laughing all over again.

Bella thanked Jasper and then Rosalie more graciously than I had even hoped for, and she was still smiling as she called out to Emmett at the truck. And then Emmett was laughing and Alice was still grinning like a madman, Esme was glowing and Carlisle was chuckling quietly and Jasper glanced at me for approval before coming in a few steps to join the rest of the family and Bella, Bella was smiling, blushing, laughing with the rest of us and if it had seemed impossible before, Alice really was right. Now that we were here, the party was making everything better. Just being together was enough. We were going to get through this, and everything was going to be okay.

"Open mine and Edward's next," Alice sang, and I let the anticipation get to me. Thank God Alice hadn't forced the gift on her in the car park this morning. Now, this was going to be perfect. She was happy, truly happy, like she should have been all day. She seemed to be dealing fine with receiving gifts. And she was going to love the CD—my instincts told me so, my limited ability to understand Bella told me so, and Alice had guaranteed it. All eventualities with any likelihood behind them, she said. Every single scenario where Bella opened the gift at the party came up with her liking it. Bella glared at me, but I was too relaxed to let it worry me.

"You promised," she hissed, but she didn't seem sad, just mildly infuriated and besides, I was in the right.

I waited for Emmett to finish noisily bowling into Jasper—who helpfully aimed a half-hearted blow at his face in retaliation, before being stared into submission by Alice and Esme—before replying. "I didn't spend a dime," I grinned, taking one more step forward to stand by her.

She was still frowning, and I brushed her hair from where she'd pulled it round her face to hide her embarrassment. Her eyes moved to mine and I silently willed her to trust me. She shivered as her eyes softened, breathed deeply in, and out. The exhaled breath burned my throat as I drew it in. I felt oddly warm as she turned to Alice, resigned, it would seem, but still smiling, deep in her eyes. God I loved her. She was happy, she really was, and so was everyone else, even Rosalie, a little, for now.

This was mine. This life, this happiness, this wonderful moment and all the others I would make sure followed, all this was real. All this was perfect. We still had this.

"Give it to me," Bella mumbled, trying to glare and failing, and Rosalie smacked Emmett on the arm as he laughed.

Bella turned to me, silver-wrapped CD case in hand, and met my eyes with a tolerant grimace. I grinned, and she rolled her eyes, and I grinned more. I watched her eyes as she pulled her gaze away from me and focused on unwrapping the present.

And then the world stopped.

Time stopped.

Life stopped.

Burning. Burning. Burning.

Don't breathe. Don't breathe. Don't move.

And a breathless, breathing flash of incoherent thought from my right, pre-linguistic, wordless, but bitingly, familiarly clear. Thoughtless, mindless, momentary and endless.

No.

No.

No!

Beat.

Beat.

Beat.

Sound of lights, the flicker of a song and pain, pain.

Beat.

Beat.

DJ chatter thoughts, scrub on, scrub off, long trails of meaningless and burning flesh and burning throat and burning skin and—

Beat.

Beat.

Thought and no thought. Still and moving and burning and something screaming No! Wordless thoughts and wordless nothing and something screaming too slow, too slow, please, please no…no…

Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat.

Crash and burn, burning, burning, rushing pain and burning throat and burning tongue and burning lips. Crashing glass and burning skin and burning thoughts and burning, screaming mind. Snarling mine and snarling not, sound that was the enemy and teeth marks in Bella's hand and cold, white skin and pain, and pain, and pain and the crushing, smothering fear.

And no. No. No. Please no.

Thought. Thought? Thinking. The struggle for thought. The struggle for words. What?

Breathe. Don't breathe. Don't breathe—the world is burning.

Edward. Thoughts. Edward!

Carlisle.

Waves of thought and too much thought and screaming thought and bitterness and fury and pain and Carlisle's voice calling my name. Calling me back? Again?

Pain in every fibre and Carlisle's voice like God.

Edward. Listen to me. Edward!

Blink. Blink twice. Where is he? Where is my father? The second father, a better father, if more resented and less fairly. The second father my mother gave me, my mother gave him to me he says and I believe him because everything is gone.

Edward. Edward, can you hear me? I'm right in front of you, Edward. Look at me.

Blink. Haze. Blood. Pain. Burning. Screaming. Fury. Protect. Protect. Protect…Carlisle?

"Edward." Relief? Relief like that last time, relief that mirrored mine as I opened my eyes and the pain was gone. "Let me by, Edward."

Protect. Protect. Protect. Blink. Blur. What?

Carlisle. Carlisle's face. Carlisle's eyes staring at me.

Stand up, Edward.

I stood up.

I kept standing.

I wasn't breathing, so I began to take a breath and it burned and roared and made something in my mind scream at me to stop so I did.

Alice moved past me and back again.

"Edward?"

I turned my head to find her by my ear. I blinked.

"Edward. Snap out of it."

It was difficult to speak with no breath, but there was a little in my lungs from the last one. "Alice."

She shifted so she was in front of my eyes. Pause. "You're completely out of it."

Was I? The fact that I didn't know would probably suggest that she was right. I searched for some trace of reasonable thought and discovered that my mind was not operating in a reasonable way.

"Edward, Bella's hurt. She's bleeding a lot."

Blood. Yes, that was the burning. That's why I wasn't breathing.

Bella's blood.

Bella.

No. No.

My head began to spin again and I struggled to stay in control. Focus. Focus, Edward.

"Edward." Edward?

"Bella." I tried to force something coherent out of my useless, burning throat. "Alice, Bella—"

"She's fine, Edward." A pause. She's fine.

"She's okay?" I felt my head settle back into order, just a little.

Yes. She's fine. Look in front of you. She's right there. With Carlisle.

And Alice was right. She was with Carlisle, and he was taking care of her, so it had to be alright.

"I'll get your bag," Alice murmured, and I didn't realise that she wasn't talking to me until Carlisle turned around.

Edward? I looked back at him. Edward, come here and help me move Bella. Let's take her to the kitchen table. He spoke the last words aloud as well, and I saw Bella nod, and my head was spinning again but I knew that as long as I did what he said Bella would be okay, because she had to be okay, and everything was going to be alright.

Even though she was bleeding. Even though she looked so pale. Even though she was lying in Carlisle's arms again.

Edward…

I stepped forward and clamped my mouth firmly shut as Carlisle motioned me down. Bella was staring at me with wide, wide eyes and I couldn't get mine to meet them, and I wasn't sure why. I felt like I was on a different planet. I felt like I was drowning, or she was, or we both were, drowning with a world between us and an ocean that wouldn't let me reach her. Skin I couldn't touch, and eyes I couldn't see, and a heartbeat I couldn't hear, even though I could hear it, pounding a million miles an hour centimetres away. I wondered briefly whether I was losing my mind. Then I was touching Bella and there was no time to wonder about anything else, because she was bleeding, and the world was burning, and everything was falling apart. 'Give it to me,' she mumbled, and rolled her eyes at me, and I grinned. I smiled, and then she was bleeding, and she was bleeding and I wasn't sure how and I stopped breathing and I heard the blood in Jasper's mind and then he was out of control and so was I and everything was blood and everything…I shut my eyes and opened them again and pulled Bella the rest of the way into my arms. Bella needed me. Bella needed me to look after her. Bella needed me to take care of her now. I could think about the rest later. We walked toward the kitchen. Bella was very still. Her head rested on my chest and I wanted to kiss her forehead and tell her that everything was okay but she was still bleeding and I needed to focus on not breathing.

"How are you doing, Bella?" Carlisle asked quietly as we crossed into the kitchen.

She shifted a little against me. "I'm fine."

She was in pain. I could hear it. Not like she had been in March, but…don't breathe my head reminded me, and I focused on that. Just focus on that.

Carlisle motioned to a chair and I sat Bella down as gently as I could. I stayed close to her as possible while Carlisle leaned forward and began to work, watched him inject the local anaesthetic, watched him calmly go about fixing the damage done, damage I'd once again allowed to put Bella's life at—

"Just go, Edward." Her voice was tired, strained, and for one breathless, horrifying moment I thought she was finally sending me away, away from her, away from everything that would ever matter—

She knows you're not breathing, Edward. Alice's tone was sharper, now she was sure I hadn't lost my mind altogether. She's not stupid. You're worrying her.

Worrying her? She thought…I took the smallest breath I could, just enough to speak. "I can handle it." I tried to put all the certainty I had in that fact into my words, to let her know, to make her know that she could be bleeding out and I could handle it, I would save her, she could be bleeding from all her major arteries and I would never hurt her, never, never…

"You don't need to be a hero." Her voice was tight—it sounded more painful than before. "Carlisle can fix me up without your help. Get some fresh air."

She's worrying about you Edward! Really, stop being such a—

Bella winced, with an audible intake of breath, and we were both distracted. I tried not to glare at Carlisle—I could hear how hard he was trying to make this painless.

I pushed Alice's voice out of my head. "I'll stay."

"Why are you so masochistic?" Bella sounded so tired, so very tired, and so weak, and her eyes were hard, and her face was tense, and there was so much blood…

"Edward, you may as well go find Jasper before he gets too far." I turned to glare at Carlisle for speaking instead of concentrating, but he was only wiping blood from the skin around the wound, which I had to admit probably didn't require his full mental capacity. I ignored the spike in Alice's thoughts at Jasper's name. I ignored the quiet, almost, almost tentative murmur in Carlisle's thoughts—it's not his fault, you know that, Edward. "I'm sure he's upset with himself, and I doubt he'll listen to anyone but you right now."

I was about to send Alice off to find him—I was hardly in a state to reason with my brother, however aware I was that this was my fault, not his, when Bella turned her head to me again. "Yes," she mumbled, trying to sound enthusiastic but losing most of her voice in her throat, "Go find Jasper." I reached as carefully as I could and shifted her face back toward Carlisle so that she didn't move her arm. Her blood was too close. Far too close. Touching her was a bad idea.

"You might as well do something useful," Alice chimed it, thoughts a mess behind the lightness in her voice, and I wanted to yell at all of them that I couldn't, I couldn't protect Bella, I couldn't do what Carlisle was doing because I was too weak to be like him, I couldn't give Bella a birthday without endangering her life, I couldn't even breathe in the same room as her. But Bella was still glancing up at me and back, turning her head, shifting, and I couldn't touch her again to hold her still. I couldn't touch her. And so I nodded stiffly and left before I could make things any worse. Before Bella could become convinced I was going to kill her. Before Bella had to put up with any more of my impressive inadequacy.

I'd been running in the same direction from the house for several seconds before I remembered I had a task. I stopped in the night, the feel of grass beneath my shoes, almost half a moon in the sky, barely a wind. The rain, for once, had mostly let up. The silence felt oppressive, a soundboard for the thought-streams foremost in my mind. Carlisle, calmly pulling pieces of glass from Bella's arm in a way that I never could. Alice, thoughts wild, throat burning, almost distracted by her panic about her husband, sending mad ripples through my mind of Jasper, Jasper, Jasper. Jasper was several miles away, Emmett and Rose half a mile behind, both focused on giving him space while following him closely enough to stop trouble. Emmett's mind was hard, half angry, half pitying and worried for us all in a brick wall, great protector sort of way that I knew I'd never manage. Rosalie was so furious at Jasper and at me and at Bella and at Alice and at us all that her thoughts made no sense. And Jasper. Jasper whose thoughts I tried the hardest to block out, because I had enough guilt and enough pain and enough fury on my own without his as well. I could hear in Emmett's mind, less confused than Rosalie's, the stress of Jasper's emotions pressing outward, the failure in control letting things spill over. I'd have to be mad to get closer to that. But I was mad, wasn't I? It was my thoughts that were the most insane of anyone's. What had I been thinking, bringing Bella here? Almost daily? For months? Had I forgotten that Jasper couldn't do this? No, no I hadn't because his thoughts played through mine every day. What was wrong with me that I had taken that risk? What in the world was I doing? I knew I was breathing too fast and I tried to stop, tried to focus, tried to stop letting Alice's panic and Jasper's, and even Esme's infect me. My own thoughts were strangely empty, but that only left more space for panic. What was happening? What was anything? Anything. I forced myself to breathe deeply as I turned toward the river. Fresh, damp air. Pine and mud. The start of autumn decay past the evergreens. Time to find Jasper. Nothing else to be done. See if I can destroy anything else.

So I turned my back on the house and raced into the darkness, used the trees to cross the river and hit the dirt beyond, flew toward the faint echo of Jasper's retreating mind. The night was still too silent. My mind still made no sense. And I still couldn't block out Alice's thoughts, bouncing through the air like wildfire from the house.

Everything's going to be okay. Everything's going to be okay. Everything has to be okay.

Bella's fine. Jasper will be fine, and so will Edward. We'll all be okay.

We have to be okay.

-


A/N: So, a short note (EDIT: short was probably the wrong term here :P). This chapter was particularly troublesome because Edward isn't really thinking coherently for the entire second half. I tried doing the 'moment of truth' conventionally, it didn't work, thus I went slightly less conventional. If you hate it, tell me :P If you don't, also tell me ;D Sometimes less straightforward writing just works better, even in simple narrative prose stories like the Twilight saga. If you don't believe me, look between NM chapter 3 and 4 :P But yeah, tell me if you hate it. The bit that really had trouble for me was directly before that, 'cause I couldn't get the knowledge of what was about to happen out of my head, and the bit after, because well, as you probably noticed, Edward kind of lost it :P Anyhow. The final edit on this kind of died about an hour ago along with my brain, so I'm hoping there's nothing too terrible I've missed ;D All feedback/suggestions are very much appreciated!

Other than that…thanks for reading, thanks for reviewing, and see you next week for more pain, suffering and life-changing devastation (isn't New Moon great? :P)! You are all the most awesome readers ever – how many fic readers would sit and chat with me about character analysis like half of you do? Not many :P Therefore, you guys are awesome.

Also, a quick note on moon phases, in case anyone picks this up; in NM ch3, it says that two days after this Bella thinks there is a new moon, which would, of course, make the moon phase I have given near the end of this chapter incorrect. Having looked up 2005's moon phases, however, I can report that while Bella, disorientated in the dark in the forest, thought there was a new moon, there was in fact just over a half moon that night. Bella was just confused :P Yeah, I know it'd be more poetically effective and awesome if I just went with it being a new moon. But I normally (outside of fanfic) write historical fantasy, so being obsessive with details is wired into my blood :P

K, I'll stop prattling at you now ;-D That was a really long author note (it was longer, too. I shortened it :-P). Reviews much appreciated :-) (Let me know if this chapter was too long, as well. Chapters won't usually be this long, but if 6200 words is too much, I can split any future long ones in half).

Love and cookies to all! J.