Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight. You all know who does.

I spent Sunday at the Cullens' again, watching them read the journals my ancestresses had written, answering a question here and there if they remembered one they'd forgotten to ask, and asking a few more myself. That night, when I went to bed, I did so with a faintly hopeful feeling. Edward was staying with me for the third time, and the other two times he'd stayed, I'd slept without Dreaming. Maybe – and I knew it was far-fetched – he had some strange ability to keep the Dreams away. It seemed unlikely, but a part of me couldn't help hoping as my eyes closed.

But even Edward, if he had been what kept the Dreams away, couldn't keep them away that night, and when they came back, they came back with a vengeance.

It was the August of 1942. My name was Lidia. At the moment, I was huddled on a train with my husband, my three children, and many others – as many other Jews as the German soldiers had been able to cram into the train car – but my family and I had lived in Warsaw, Poland. We were all afraid; so much so that the fear seemed to hang over us all like a cloud. We knew where we were going. We were not the first to be deported from the Warsaw ghetto – we knew what lay ahead of us. My husband, Eli, had heard one of the soldiers say where they were taking us as they herded us into the train. I did not speak German, but my husband did, and he had heard our destination. Treblinka. I shuddered. Even if Eli had not spoken German, we would have recognized that name. It was an extermination camp. A death camp. I tighten my arms around my three sons, Isaac, David, and Jacob, and felt hopeless. They were so young! Isaac was eight, David was four, and Jacob, the baby of the family, was only five months old. I looked around the train. I was not the only one with children. There were several families with children. And they were all so thin. The rations in the Warsaw ghetto had never been satisfactory, but the Germans had been progressively giving us less and less..... I had been so heartbroken, watching my children waste away even though my husband and I gave them our share of the food. I had thought that Jacob would die of malnutrition.

But he hadn't, and here we were, being taken to our deaths anyway. The train began to slow. My husband met my eyes, but never said a word. He didn't have to. I knew. He knew. The train slowed more. Simultaneously, he and I began to pray. It was not a plea for deliverance – we prayed the Shema Yisrael, as a last declaration of faith in God before we died. Because we would surely die. "Shema Yisrael," we whispered, and our children joined us. "Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad." Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God! The LORD is One! Other people around us began to pray the same prayer as the train pulled to a stop.

The doors to the car were jerked roughly open, and armed German soldiers pulled everyone out. First they sorted us by gender – I was yanked away from my husband and sons, even little Jacob. Then the soldiers weeded out the elderly, the children, and the sick from each group. I watched with wide eyes over the shoulders of the soldiers surrounding the group of women as my sons were separated from their father and shoved into a line with the old and ill. Two of my sons were crying. Isaac, the oldest, was holding Jacob and trying to be strong for David, who was also clinging to him. He met my eyes for one last second, trying to look brave. But his bravado fell away when several soldiers stepped in front of the line they had been pushed into, and pointed their guns at them. I, and several other mothers with me, screamed just as the soldiers opened fire on the line of children and old people. My eyes never left my children. Their little bodies jerked horribly when the bullets hit them, and, even after they had been hit several times and could not have possibly survived, the soldiers kept firing until everyone in that line had hit the ground. I was still screaming. I forgot that the Germans had guns. I forgot that they could kill me much easier than I could kill them. They had shot my children in front of my eyes. And for what? Because they were Jewish. A mother's fury pounded in my head and misted my vision with red. I screamed again, but this time in fury, with my eyes on one of the soldiers who had shot my children.

I must have moved very quickly, because the line of German soldiers between me and the man I was going to kill was surprised when I charged them, and I broke through their ranks easily. The soldier I was after had his back turned to me. I jumped on his back and wrapped one arm around his throat, grabbing my wrist with my other hand and pulling as hard as I could. My weight made him fall, and that just made it easier to choke him. His dirty nails scratched my arms, but I was past noticing the pain. I vaguely heard shouting behind me, and I suddenly felt rough hands trying to pull me away from the soldier, but I hung on, intent on crushing the life from him like he had crushed the life from my children. But finally, the hands that were trying to pull me off the soldier succeeded, and I was thrown to the ground. I heard a gunshot, and almost in the same instant, something that felt like a white-hot sledgehammer slammed into my chest, knocking the breath from my lungs. Then I felt a warm wetness spread from that point of pain, and I knew I'd been shot. I didn't care. The last thing I saw was the eyes of my son, Isaac, staring blankly back at me.

I woke up breathing hard, with tears streaming down my face. Isaac's dead eyes were still in my mind, making the excruciating pain rise up in my chest. My breath hitched in my throat. I felt an anguished cry rising up in my throat, one that would surely wake Charlie. I managed to suppress it, but not for long. I would come. I was going to explode. "Bella?" Edward whispered. "Are you all right?"

I yanked the tape off my mouth – Edward must have remembered my instructions about the duct tape – and latched my arms around his neck. "Get me out of here," I begged, my voice a strained, high, keen. I could not contain the pain much longer. I needed to be away from Charlie when the inevitable loss of control came.

Edward didn't ask questions. He saw what was coming in my eyes, heard it in my voice, and immediately picked me up and jumped out my window. I felt the wind as he ran, and I strained my eyes open, trying to see something, anything, that would distract me from the images in my mind. The small, emaciated bodies sprawled on the ground, their limbs bent at awkward angles. The blood, warm and fresh, steaming on the cold ground, seeping from my children's wounds. The eyes, staring blankly. The bloody saliva, dripping from gaping mouths, staining little lips, tiny baby teeth. Lidia's children, I desperately reminded myself as nausea made my stomach turn. Not yours. Lidia's! But the gorge rose in my throat anyway, and I retched. Edward stopped quickly, and put me down just in time for me to throw up on the forest floor, not on him. As I vomited, bent over at the waist, I tried to banish the memories from my mind. But I couldn't. They were there, searing themselves into my brain, making sure that they would never be forgotten. Jacob's face, so small, with his sunken cheeks, popped into my mind. There was a bullet hole in his head. I gagged again, but there was nothing else left for my stomach to expel – I'd already thrown up what I'd eaten for dinner.

So, instead, I started to weep. Great, heaving sobs tore from my chest, shaking my entire body. I could feel Edward's cool hands on my face, trying to soothe me, but, for once, it was no help. I could still see my children's bloody, broken bodies in my mind. And I did still feel like they were my children – the Dream was still so fresh in my mind, and I was having trouble differentiating between the two worlds, the two lives – Lidia's and mine. I was about to collapse, so I staggered away from my vomit and dropped to my knees, curled into a ball. The rage and anguish filled me, and crying was not enough of an outlet for it. I started to pound the ground with my fists, using all my strength, beating it because I couldn't beat the soldier who had taken the lives of my children. It was still not enough. A primal scream tore out of me, and I hoped I was far enough away from Charlie that he wouldn't hear me. I threw back my head and screamed at the sky. Eventually, my inarticulate cry formed words, and, because my mind was still half-way in my Dream, I screamed in Polish. "Moje dzieci!" I wailed in between sobs. "Moje dzieci!" My children! My children! My Isaac, my David, my Jacob! Dead. I could feel Edward's arms around me, anchoring me to my real world, and I could hear his words of comfort in my ear, promising me that I would be all right, and that helped.

Slowly, so slowly, I was able to separate Lidia's grief from my own, able to pull myself the rest of the way from the vestiges of the Dream. Then I sat and cried for my sadness, my pity for Lidia, Isaac, David, and Jacob. I cried for them, and I cried because of what humans could do to each other for the most foolish reasons. Edward could tell when I was myself again, and he pulled me closer to himself and let me cry myself out. When my sobs turned to hiccups, and my tears stopped falling, he held my face in his hands and looked me in the eyes.

I sniffed. "I'm fine," I promised shakily. My voice was worn – it cracked, and my throat hurt. "That one was just really bad."

I had never seen so much pain in Edward's eyes. He held me tightly, rocking me back and forth, and whispered, "I wish there was a way for me to help you."

My emotions were all over the place, so I blurted the idea that I'd been turning over in my head for the last few days without thinking of the consequences. "There is."

Edward looked at me with hope flaring to life in his eyes. "What?" he demanded. "Tell me what I can do!"

I was starting to feel hopeful, too. Maybe, now that he'd seen just how horrible and painful the Dreams were, he wouldn't too badly to this. "You can stop the Dreams. You can make me so that I never have to Dream again."

Edward understood. Horror replaced the hope on his face, and my own hope came crashing down at his expression. "No!" he nearly shouted. "No! I will not do that to you!"

I was desperate now. Before I had met Edward, I had borne the Dreams, because I hadn't seen another option. Of course, I knew that I could have gone to the Volturi or to the South to be changed, but that would have entailed either service to the Volturi or death in the Southern wars. Those options hadn't really been options at all. But now I had met Edward and his family, who led peaceful lives away from death. And, also, I was in love with Edward, and my human body would die eventually. If he changed me, I would be able to spend forever with him, and I wouldn't have to Dream. I had another choice now, and I wanted it badly. But now Edward was refusing. I could feel my one chance slipping away. "Please," I begged, the tears starting again against my will. "I'm going crazy, seeing all these things. Please!"

Edward looked away from me, shaking his head, pained. "You don't know what you're asking for," he whispered.

I laughed one, slightly hysterical laugh. Had he forgotten the Dreams? "I know exactly what I'm asking for."

Edward opened his eyes to glare at me. "No, Bella, you don't. I can't – I won't – change you. This is not the life I would have asked for. I will not inflict it on you."

Now I was mad, and anger and desperation don't mix together prettily. I pulled away from him and stood. He did the same. "And I wouldn't have chosen to have Dreams!" I shouted. "You wouldn't be inflicting anything on me – I would be choosing!"

"And you would be choosing wrong!" Edward insisted. "I will not sentence you to Hell!"

I blinked the tears from my eyes so I could see him. He looked determined. "Whose definition of Hell?" I demanded. "I already deal with Hell every time I Dream! I've been a vampire in my Dreams! I know what it's like! I could handle it!" I didn't know that for sure, but I wasn't going to tell him that. This was going to be difficult enough.

Edward pressed his lips together. He would not be budged. "Dreaming something is not the same as experiencing it."

My hands were shaking. I could see my life stretching ahead of me: thousands of stories, thousands of pains, thousands of deaths. The thought made me say something stupid in retaliation. "Well, my hand sure hurt after I woke up from Dreaming about Stephen Dodde."

Edward went whiter than his usual white, and I felt terrible. "I'm sorry," I whispered. "I shouldn't have said that. But I don't want to Dream anymore!" I pleaded. "It's overwhelming. You can make it stop! Please."

Edward's face twisted in anguish. He walked back to me and held me close. "I can't," he whispered again in my ear, and I knew that it was over. For now. I drooped in his arms, suddenly exhausted. Edward sung me up into his arms. "We have school tomorrow," he murmured. "You need sleep." And he ran me back to my house.

Charlie was still snoring, had never been woken up by my screaming. Edward ran up my wall and slipped through the window he'd left open in his haste to get me out of my house. Edward tucked me under my covers, then slid in beside me. I wrapped my arms around him, and he returned the favor. "Go to sleep," he urged. I obeyed, but I slept restlessly, knowing even in my sleep, that my chance to be rid of the Dreams forever and to have Edward forever was pretty much gone.