Bella was crying again. In her sleep her body was trembling, her chest heaving. She sobbed quietly, tears spilling down her cheeks ferociously. It killed me. There was nothing I could do to help her. I could not change what she had done or take away her guilt. I could not take away her pain, as much as I wanted to. I would have gladly made every single ache disappear if I was able. But I could only watch as her sleep divulged her guilt and pain, as she cried, sounding almost hysterical.

I watched all night as she tears streamed down her face in streams, never ceasing. She kept calling out for someone to help her, begged not to be alone, and she apologized over and over, told the unknown girl she was sorry for leaving her behind. It had never been this bad. Even on the first night I had seen her she had not cried so hard.

Near daybreak I left. She didn't know that I had come in and watched her. I did not want her to know, at least not at this point. I had told her I loved her the day before. It had not escaped me that she had not returned my sentiments. I had kissed her yesterday as well, covered her perfect lips with mine, felt the heat of her skin, tasted her sweetness, reveled in the sensation of her body against mine. I was lost in her. But after that kiss, after the long moment that followed it, after she ate dinner, after we talked for a time, after I told her I should go, after I drove home and parked the car only to return to her house and watch her in her sleep I realized that there was something off about her now. She seemed so sad suddenly, like there was something grievously wrong and I had missed it somehow.

Was it my admission? Was she saddened that I loved her, that I cared for her so deeply? Did she find that distressing? I had hoped she would reveal to me the nature of her sudden sadness in her dreams, but she only repeated what I was used to hearing, the reliving of the night she killed the rapist in the alley. But her tears were furious. They were never ending. She seemed to be pulling apart with every shaking, sleeping breath she took. It scared me. It didn't seem right—it didn't seem fair—that such an angel should be in such pain.

I pondered her sadness while I ran home. I thought it might be advisable to give Bella a day away from me to give all the things she had learned from my family and I some time to sink in. She had been told she was going to die, that we would try to protect her but we might not be able to, and that there was a monster hopelessly in love with her. That was quite a bit to adjust to all at once. She deserved time to think about what she wanted, whether or not she still wished for my company or not. If she told me to go I would leave her alone, but I would not leave until I was sure the Volturi were no threat to her. After that, it was undecided where I would go, but I had the means and the time to go wherever I wished.

When I got home I just wanted to be alone. But my family seemed to have another idea completely. They wanted to spend time with me, talk to me, ask me about Bella. Rose was the only exception to this, and even she was being uncharacteristically quiet. She would not voice her protests of the mention for a girl she was growing to despise more with every passing minute. Her dislike of Bella only intensified when Emmett mentioned her. He thought she was funny; he liked her. Rosalie found this rather distasteful.

Alice though was the most vocal with her inquiries about Bella, mostly through her thoughts, wondering about things she would not ask aloud. Such as if I had told her I loved her, and how the kiss went.

But I didn't want to talk about Bella, nor be barraged with thoughts about her. She was something I didn't feel comfortable discussing. She wasn't just a human, she wasn't a plaything or something we observed; she was the woman that I loved, the woman that had yet to tell me if she loved me back. I answered as equivocally as possible, avoided lying or really telling the truth about any of their queries and left them behind, ascending to my room.

Still though I could not be alone. My sullen mood had not escaped my family, and thanks to Jasper they now all knew I was feeling discouraged, confused, hurt, scared, guilty and lonely. He gave a name to each of the sensations inside me that I could not always identify. Some of them were familiar, guilt was nothing new, loneliness was something I had learned to cope with. But pain was a novel feeling. Confusion was an emotion I had not experienced in some time.

I had forgotten that one person could feel so much. It didn't seem like one body, even one as indestructible as mine, could hold so many emotions, all of them negative and conflicting. It seemed that any minute I would surely explode. The euphoria of love was gone, replaced with the sadness of sure rejection, the guilt of killing the object of my love, the ache in my chest that I felt when I thought of her crying in her bed all alone.

As I pondered what was happening to myself, the conversation turned from Bella or I to the threat of exposure. There were suggestions of leaving for a time to try and avoid the threat, but Alice assured that this was one thing that seemed to occur no matter where we went. She kept seeing the Volturi finding us no matter where we were because of something that happened. Although the event was still unclear to her. It maddened her that she could not see what was going to happen and tell us what it was so it could be prevented.

"We will just have to do as much damage control as we can," Carlisle said, attempting to assuage the fears of the family. I could hear him from where I was. It wasn't hard to hear anyone speaking in this house with my enhanced hearing.

"People are going to die," Alice said, so sure there was nothing we could do to stop that from happening.

"Perhaps we could convince whoever it is that exposes us to keep quiet about it. Then the Volturi won't ever hear about it and they won't come and take care of the situation," Emmett suggested. Alice sighed loudly.

There was more arguing about how to go about keeping the situation under control how to keep someone from going public, how to avoid being exposed in the first place. Because no one knew what was going to happen, we didn't know what we had to be careful about. Would the sun suddenly come out and reveal our glittering skin? Would one of us slip accidentally and move too fast or exert too much strength in the presence of humans?

This added more worry to the pile of negativity I was experiencing. What if I was the one who exposed us? Then I would be responsible for the deaths of five innocent bystanders along with my precious Bella, for publicly exposing my family and calling the Volturi down on us. There would be no amount of time that could rid me of that guilt I would claim for such an action. I was always careful when I was in public. I made sure I didn't walk too fast or do something with unnatural speed or strength. We were all careful. It didn't seem realistic for one of us to do something accidentally to disclose our identities. Which only left doing something reckless on purpose.

None of us were that stupid. We wouldn't be remiss in public; we knew the price we all might pay and the punishment that might befall the humans who would witness us. We did not kill for sustenance; we would not cause the deaths of others for even less.

For a while I sat alone, thinking, listening, wondering what to do next, where to go from the place I was. There were so many direction things could go in now. The choices that needed to be made now would determine what path was laid out. The only problem was I was not the one in the position to make these choices. I had to wait for Bella to decide what she wanted from me, if my love was something she desired or if she would rather I leave her alone. She knew everything now—who and what I was, the dark things I had done, how I loved her—there was nothing left to say or do on my part. It was up to her now.

Aggravation was not an unfamiliar emotion to me, but the strength of it now did not make that any more of a comfort. I was on edge, waiting, wondering what she would decide, what she would want from me. Somehow that not knowing, that uncertainty of my future was more troubling than not knowing her thoughts. I understood now why Alice found it so unnerving to be unable to tell what the future held. When you were so frequently sure of how things were going to turn out, when your life brought so few surprises, when there was uncertainty it drove you mad. Bella frequently caused a feeling of madness in me, her scent, the feel of her skin against mine, her kiss, her laugh…all things that brought me to the brink of insanity with their sheer existence. She knew not the effect she had on me even after I tried to tell her what it felt like to be so affected by someone. It was impossible to elucidate. He swirling mass of emotions, the nervous, wonderful, awestruck feeling that erupted in me, the feeling of being so out of control when I knew I needed to be the most in control drove me nearly out of my mind.

Love was like insanity, I had come to understand. The closest thing to being in love was being completely out of your mind. Nothing was rational. Nothing made sense. You did things for reasons that were completely illogical to all but you. You made choices that seemed completely idiotic, dangerous even, all for a tiny bit of satisfaction. You tried over and over again to make things work even if they were doomed to fail. You risked impossible odds, impossible circumstances all for the object of your love, going against the current, the status quo, what was right, what made sense, what was reasonable, logical or understandable, all for the person you cared for. You fixated on someone for what seemed like no reason to others, but to you seemed to be everything.

The world changed, warping before your eyes to encompass that person of your affections completely, devouring all else in your life to make room for them. All of this makes perfect sense to you, and yet someone on the outside can look at you and be utterly puzzled by you. Love closed gaps that seemed insurmountable. The disparity between a person and yourself, while not going completely unnoticed, seemed completely irrelevant while in love. Nothing mattered, not common sense, not reason, not reality.

Insanity was not love, but it was close.

Faced with my own stupidity, my own near insanity at my love for Bella I felt almost ashamed. She deserved more than this. She needed more than a monster that could only hurt her. She needed someone who could love her right, take care of her, make sure she was never hurt or wronged. I could try and give her these things, but I would be a danger to her. How could I make sure she was safe when I always wanted to hurt her myself?

I couldn't. That was the answer to that question. I could not keep her safe. Vampires and humans were not meant to mingle, neither were we meant to befriend each other. We were certainly not meant to fall in love with one another. It was dangerous. I was only ever putting Bella in danger. I was no good for her. She needed more than me, deserved so much more than the constant danger and exposure to the darkness of the world that I could give her. I wanted her to have a life without the constant threat of death over her head. She should not have ever been pulled into this world. I had dragged her down into it with me for my own selfish reasons. The only thing I could do now was leave her and make sure she was safe behind me.

There would be no real loss there. I was sure she did not return my love and thus she would not be disappointed to learn of my departure. I would tell her I was going. I wouldn't want to just leave and never tell her I was gone. But it would be a short goodbye, a terse exchange of words. She would not know why I was leaving, or where I was going, only that I was leaving the area. It was the only way to keep her safe. My family would stay behind. They would make sure she was not harmed if the Volturi arrived.

In the end the only one who would be losing anything was I. And even that would only be the loss of a woman I loved, not being able to see her again, touch her, kiss her, hear her musical voice. It was not the loss of love itself for she did not love me. It would only be the loss of something I cherished, like a keepsake I misplaced. Bella though was so much more than that. Leaving her behind would be like leaving a part of myself behind. There would always be something of me with her wherever she went, no matter how far she was from me. That was comforting and disconcerting at the same time. It made me feel like even when I was gone she would know that I still loved her and that she was never truly alone. But it also made me wary that perhaps because of that piece of me she was going to keep she would never be out of the shadow I had created on her life. She would be marked, branded almost, as a person who had seen too much of something they never should have seen to begin with.

It was all my fault.

I owed it to her to leave. It was my duty, my responsibility to make sure that she was not involved more than she already was. If I was around I would not be able to help myself and not pull her into my life. She was already too deep in this, it was only right that I remove her from the trouble I had placed her in.

I would do it tonight. The sooner the better. That gave me enough time to hunt and explain what I was doing to my family. As soon as I had taken care of those two things I could go talk with Bella and then I could leave. I didn't think I would be able to go say goodbye to Bella and then go see my family about my plans to leave. It would be too hard to see them after bidding farewell to the most marvelous creature ever to walk this earth.

I jumped from my window outside to hunt quickly. I didn't want my family stopping me. I didn't want them seeing me until I was ready to see them. I still had to figure out what I was going to tell them.

I hunted successfully, slaking the thirst for the moment and then walked home. I needed to think of what to tell them. I knew the news was not going to go over well, but things had to be done. I needed to keep her safe, give her a chance for a real life that was not poisoned with my presence.

As I approached home I realized this was going to be almost as difficult as parting with Bella. I took a deep breath to steel my resolve. It was still the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do. Before I could even get inside I heard Alice shouting.

"Absolutely not, Edward!" she shrieked from inside. Of course she knew what was happening. She had seen my leaving as I made the decision to do so. She was aware of my choices as I was. I should have known this and prepared for the fight that was inevitable. I was going to have to fully explain myself now. I could not hide behind excuses or equivocations. I sighed and continued on inside.

"What are you thinking? How can you just leave?" Alice demanded.

"You don't understand, Alice. This isn't right, for either of us. I can't be what she needs, no matter what I want."

"Did you tell her?" she asked. I nodded and she looked even more puzzled. Then realization came over her face.

She didn't say it back. Her thought came as a statement, not as a question. My eyes locked to hers and she looked apologetic.

"I'm sorry. Please, Edward, don't give up yet. Just because she didn't say it doesn't mean she doesn't feel it," she said quietly. Aside from Carlisle, Alice was the only one who had any idea what was going on between Bella and I. Carlisle knew what she was saying from the beginning, knew what I felt before I did even and understood the confusing discussion between us. But after Alice uttered her last statement everyone else in the room came into sudden awareness. Jasper had suspected I loved her, but he seemed just as surprised to have his suspicions verified. Everyone else looked at me, their thoughts shocked, stunned, disbelieving.

"That is disgusting," Rosalie said finally. I shot a glare at her.

"Rosalie," Carlisle warned. She rolled her eyes and remained silent, but her thoughts were less than savory.

"How did this happen?" Esme asked. I was about to attempt to explain it, try and tell my family what had happened to me the very first time I set eyes on her, the first time I was able to look at her without trying to kill her and every moment after that.

"'Whoever loved that loved not at first sight?'" Carlisle quoted. His answer was simple and explained it better than I could have. I fell for her the first moment I saw her, and beyond that, it did not matter.

"But you're leaving?" Esme questioned. I sighed again.

"I can't stay. I can't pull her into a world that puts her in danger. I was selfish when I told her about us and now she might die because of it. Because I couldn't help myself, because I cared for her, I have brought her death. I can control the thirst around her now; it isn't as hard as it was before, though it can still be difficult. I should never have involved her, and now that I have…she deserves more than I can give her. It wouldn't be right for me to stay," I explained.

"But, Edward―"

"Please, Alice, please. I have to fix this. I created this mess and now it is my responsibility to clean it up. I'm going to Alaska for a while to stay with Tanya. If you need me, that is where I will be. If I leave there for any reason I will send word before I do. I can't stay here. Please, let me go and do what I need to do now before it is too late," I begged.

Six pairs of eyes stared back at me. There was something solemn about them, resigned and sad at the loss of a family member. They knew there was nothing they could do to keep me here. My mind was made up.

"Promise me only that you will keep her safe," I asked. No one spoke for a long time.

"Of course," Carlisle said. I nodded to my father and then to my mother. I smiled at Alice, whose face was set into something determined not to show how upset she was. Jasper could not help but feel the sadness, the loss, of his mate and was doing a worse job keeping his facial expressions in check. Emmett said nothing and his face was blank, but his mind was racing. His memories were streaming by so quickly I could hardly make sense of them. They were all of me, or us. He was trying to make me stay. Rose for her part was just as blank in appearance as Emmett, but her mind was equally vacant. I sighed and sent a small smile her way.

And then I left my family.

I ran to Bella's house. When I got there less than a minute after leaving my house the sun was just about to set. I knocked gently on her door, wishing I could know what I could say to make this easy. I had the distinct feeling that easy would play no part in this interaction.

When she answered the door the smile that lit her face was so radiant, so breathtakingly beautiful that for a moment I wondered what I was doing. How could I leave her behind? What kind of insanity had taken me to make me want to be without her?

But that same smile reminded me what I was doing here. She should smile every day for the rest of her life. She should never need to frown, or crease her brow in worry or fear. If I stayed, if I remained with her, there would never be a day without danger or fear. I owed it to her to give her a chance for something more.

"Hi, Edward. Come in," she said, her voice a warm invitation. I shook my head. Breathe in, breathe out. Inhale that scent while you still have the chance, lock it away in your memory.

"It would be better if I didn't," I replied. Her face flickered and then returned to the pleasant expression.

"Okay."

She stepped out her door and joined me on the step.

"Bella, I'm leaving." The words came out before I thought of them. My mind did not process them; it only forced speech out of my mouth. For a moment she looked like she didn't see the problem, like she didn't understand why this was such a solemn occasion. She was waiting for me to tell her when I was coming back, when I would see her again. Realization dawned slowly on her face, taking time as it passed across her expression. It took hold of her eyes last, dampening them into something almost lifeless. They had looked that way when she told me she killed someone.

"You're not coming back," she stated, as though she needed to say it, to hear it out loud to believe it.

"No, I'm not. This isn't healthy, Bella, for either of us. It isn't safe. I can't stay here. I promise, my family will make sure no harm comes to you. Goodbye, Bella."

I looked at her for a long time and she looked right back. She said nothing. Her face was carefully empty. Her mind had always been blank to me, and so I knew I would find nothing there. I could not help but wonder what she was thinking, though, what she was feeling. How would she take my departure?

Finally I turned and walked off her steps. I was halfway down the path to the road when she called to me.

"Please," she said quietly, though obviously loud enough for me to hear. I closed my eyes and tried to pretend I could not hear the tears in her voice.

"Please what?" I asked, without opening my eyes or turning around.

"Please don't leave me alone."

In all the nights I had stayed by her bed I had heard her say those exact words countless times. I had thought about what it would feel like if she asked me to stay with her when she was awake, if she were to beg for that same thing while conscious.

No matter how much I imagined, nothing could have prepared me for what I felt. A sudden tearing in my body as I almost literally split in half. One half of me was rooted to the spot, determined to finish what it had started and do what it had set out to. The other was already with her, promising she would never be alone again.

I turned around and beheld my lovely Bella standing on her steps, biting her lip to keep it from quivering.

"You aren't alone, Bella. My family will be here, you have your friends, school is starting soon. There are plenty of people here for you," I said.

"You said you loved me," she reminded me. I sighed. I had told her I loved her. And I had meant each and every word. I could not lie about it now. I wanted to. It would have been easier if she didn't know, or if I could tell her that I didn't love her anymore, but I couldn't make myself do it.

"I did," I responded. It was noncommittal. It made no comment either way, whether I loved her still or I had been lying to begin with.

"Then stay."

"I can't."

She stood there for a long moment without speaking or moving. Then she drew a deep breath and turned and walked back into her house without another word. She closed the door behind her without looking at me. I heard her hit the ground on the other side of the door. I wanted to go to her, comfort her, stroke her hair, hold her and love her. But the damage had been done. I had done what I set out to do. She would not want me.

I walked for a while in town without really seeing where I was going. I ended up back on the main street. There not far from me was the florist. Her sign still read open.

I went in and bought a dozen black roses, a dozen red roses, and gloxinia, a flower that denoted love at first sight. I wanted her to know that I loved her, that I would always love her, even if I were gone. Maybe she would take these as an apology, and I was all right with that.

I was walking back to her house when I heard a scream.

Bella.

I dropped the flowers and ran—at a human pace—toward her shriek. I rounded a corner and saw her. There was a man holding her at gunpoint, demanding her money and her jewelry. Hadn't I told her not to walk around by herself at night? Hadn't I warned her to be more careful with her safety?

She was shaking, barely understanding what was going on. She reached in her pocket and fumbled. She didn't have any money. She pulled off her class ring from high school and handed it over. I could hear other people's minds, thinking about Bella and the mugger as they watched her without attempting to help. I ignored these voices in my head as I went to protect her.

I walked, calmly but quickly in her direction.

Calm, calm, calm.

I tried to keep myself from launching at the man in front of Bella and tearing him apart.

"The necklace too," he said. She looked down at herself and still shaking began to unclasp it.

"Hey!" I shouted. The mugger looked over his shoulder at me and Bella caught my eye as well. Her fear was so apparent, so fresh that it only made me angrier.

"Get out of here, kid," the mugger called back. I shook my head.

"Leave her alone. Hand her back her things and leave now."

The man laughed, all the while thinking how crazy I must have been to come up on him while he was bigger and had a gun in his hand. He had no idea what he was up against; it was natural for him to feel as though he was the one with the power in the situation. Humans and their weapons. When I kept walking forward he got nervous. He pointed the gun at me, keeping an eye on Bella at the same time.

"I said get out of here," he reminded me. I shrugged. I continued to walk. I was less than ten feet form him now, fast closing in. He understood now that I meant to finish this and if he didn't act quickly he was going to die.

He fired the gun.

When the bullet ricocheted off my chest it felt like being poked. The bullet lodged itself in the sidewalk and then the mugger quickly shot off another two rounds. I ignored the rules and moved out of the way, getting to him before his finger had even squeezed the trigger for the second time. I took the gun from his hand and threw it as hard as I could into the woods to my left. It was likely miles away by the time it hit the ground.

I was about to deal with the man who had just tried to rob Bella and then kill me when I heard a small voice.

"Oh my God! That bullet just bounced right off of you!"

Oh no.

AN:

The quote Carlisle uses when exlaining things to Esme belongs to Christopher Marlowe.