Hellooo you wonderful people! Thank you for reading! You're the best! Sorry for the unrelenting angst!

Ooh mllebojangles, you make me live.

SMeyer owns everything you recognize - which, really, is most of it.

10

When Alice pulled up to the house, Bella barely waited for the car to stop before she leapt out and ran up the front walk. She burst in through the front door, yelling, "Edward?"

"He's with Carlisle," said Jasper from the living room, jerking his head in the direction of Carlisle's study.

"Hi, Bella," said Emmett.

Bella didn't stop to return his greeting before heading for the study at a dead run. The door was open.

Edward was slumped on the sofa against Esme, who was stroking his hair with a worried look on her face. Carlisle was perched on the edge of his desk with a book open in his hands. All three of them looked up as Bella arrived, breathing heavily. Alice drifted in behind her and stood in the doorway.

"Bella," said Edward, getting up and putting his arms around her. She buried her face against his chest and breathed in his familiar smell with a sigh of relief. He seemed to be all angles and edges in her arms, but he was there, and he was whole.

"I was so worried about you," she mumbled into his chest.

He pulled back and looked down at her. "I know," he said. "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I freaked out in class, and I'm sorry I wasn't in touch afterwards. I only really got calmed down a little while ago." He released her and collapsed back onto the couch, scrubbing a hand through his hair. Bella sat beside him, uneasy, and Esme wordlessly took his hand.

"It was the blood, wasn't it?" said Bella. "Before you snapped. You were saying, 'It's everywhere.' You were talking about the blood, right? The hunger has gotten that bad?"

Edward nodded, miserably. "I thought I could control myself."

"There are certain things that are beyond our strength, Edward," said Carlisle somberly.

"You should have told us it had gotten so bad," said Esme. "We had no idea."

"Does…" began Bella hesitantly. "Does my blood… bother you too?"

Edward turned to her, meeting her eyes with a pained expression. "No, Bella, of course not," he said. "Never that. Never again."

But Carlisle just said that there are things beyond our strength, she thought. The words seemed to hang unspoken in the air.

Alice spoke up from the doorway. "What worries me most is that I couldn't see it coming. I knew this morning that something was wrong, but my vision was muddled. I didn't know until the instant before you snapped that anything definite was going to happen." She paused, and the frustration was evident on her delicate face as she searched some inner landscape for signs.

"One thing is for certain, and that is that you cannot go back to school," said Carlisle. Edward drew breath to protest, but Carlisle held up his hand. "Only Alice's quick action today prevented tragedy. This is not a reflection on you – in fact, I am amazed that you have done as well as you have. But I cannot in good conscience allow you to put the other children in danger."

Edward sighed. "It was only two more months. I would have graduated."

"I'll take care of it with the school," said Esme. "We'll have to tell them that you're sick. We can figure out a way for you to keep turning in your work from home – I can tell them that I'm tutoring you."

"Alternatively, we could call this whole suicide mission off," said Alice testily. He scowled in her direction, but she continued. "Edward, it scares me that I can't see what's going to happen to you. Something about this – something about what you're doing – is clouding up my vision. I can't see you clearly now. Do you really want to keep on with this madness if we're flying blind?"

"Has something changed in your vision of the future?" Carlisle asked.

"No," said Alice unhappily. "I still see the same split possibilities. It's just getting harder to see… harder to see Edward himself. He's all blurry now, somehow. I can't see what's going to happen to him until just before it happens. I couldn't tell you what he's going to do later today, or tomorrow, or next week, like I could with any of you if I focused on you hard enough. It's just muddy now, and I don't know why."

"Maybe it's because what he's doing doesn't make sense to your vampire vision," said Bella suddenly.

"What do you mean, Bella?" asked Carlisle, frowning.

"Well, your visions are part of your vampire powers, right?" she asked Alice. Alice nodded assent. "Maybe those powers just can't fathom Edward's transformation. Like on some level, you yourself can't believe what's going on."

"Because it's completely antithetical to our nature," Carlisle murmured.

"That doesn't make sense," said Alice.

"No, it makes perfect sense," said Edward. "Your vision mostly has to do with our kind, right?"

"Yes, but I can also see human actions. Bella's, for instance."

"That's true. But you were never able to see the Quileutes – and in a way, they too are antithetical to us," said Edward.

"Even if that is true, it doesn't make me feel much better," said Alice, frowning. "It doesn't change the fact that we won't know what's happening to you until it happens."

"Which is how the world is supposed to work!" burst out Edward. "Maybe we have gotten too complacent, always knowing what is going to happen! It's so comfortable having that advantage, isn't it? It's so easy to make decisions when we know in advance that they're the right ones! So you can't see the future about this one thing. You know, that's how everyone else has to make their decisions all the time."

Alice looked hurt, and Esme made a sound of protest. Edward relented. "I'm sorry, Alice. You have always been our safety net. Just because the safety net is gone doesn't mean I'm going to give up."

"I understand," she said softly. "It just scares me. That's all."

Carlisle stood up from the edge of the desk, clapping shut the large book in his hands. "Perhaps Alice can't see the future, but that doesn't mean we can't plan for it." He tossed the book into Edward's lap. Bella looked at the cover: Blood Transfusion in Clinical Medicine. "We need a strategy," continued Carlisle, going to a bookshelf and pulling down more books, "and strategy requires research. If I were performing any other dangerous and complex medical procedure, I would have a team of doctors reading and preparing and planning. Here I have something much better –" he grinned at them – "my family."

Esme smiled. "Most of us have been to medical school at least once."

Alice examined the organic chemistry reference that Carlisle handed her. "Didn't Rosalie get really excited about neuroscience at one point?"

"Back in the seventies," said Esme, nodding. "When women were finally making their way into graduate programs in the sciences."

"And Jasper was so angry when we had to move away from Massachusetts before he finished his microbiology degree," said Edward. "It took him years to get over that."

"So we make a plan," said Carlisle, "and when the transformation begins in earnest, we'll be as prepared as we can."

"I want to help," spoke up Bella. She felt the eyes turn to her. "I mean, I haven't been to medical school or anything, but I'm going to go crazy if I can't help somehow."

"Of course, Bella," said Carlisle, smiling. "We will need everyone's help, and we can start right now."

Together they transformed the dining room into a sort of control center. The vast gleaming dining table, generally unused, was soon covered with books, papers, a cluster of open laptops, charts and sketches and ledgers. Rosalie and Jasper argued about the best way to wire up the network of computers; Emmett contributed a huge whiteboard from his room.

In all the commotion, Bella never noticed when Edward slipped away, but she did realize that she hadn't seen him for several minutes, and she went looking for him. She found him nearby in the living room, sitting wearily on the sofa with one long hand over his eyes. She sat down beside him. He never moved, but he seemed hyperaware of her presence. His very skin was listening to her.

"Is it so bad?" she asked softly.

He didn't answer right away, but after a moment his hand dropped into his lap and he met her eyes. The blackness, as always, startled her.

"It's very bad," he said.

She took his hand, not knowing what to say. He played idly with her fingers as he spoke. "I feel like my body is at war with itself. Sometimes I want to tear myself to pieces, just for an end to the hunger."

Bella winced. He saw, and reached up to stroke her cheek, as gently as if it were made of eggshell.

"Sometimes it's manageable," he said, turning his attention back to her hand, which lay curled in his, "but sometimes I feel like I'm burning alive, from the inside out. There are moments that I start to panic and I know I'm going to die unless I drink right away. This morning was one of those times." He paused, and the pain was clear on his face. "It was too much for me to handle. The worst part, though, was feeling myself slipping away – feeling the thirst take over my mind. Part of me wanted to stop it, but part of me wanted nothing more than to snap, to drink…" To kill, thought Bella, though she stayed silent.

His eyes were trained on their interwoven hands, and she looked down. He was tracing the branching veins on the back of her hand with his fingertips, over and over. She stiffened instantly, her hand closing involuntarily into a fist, and she turned her hand over, but the result was only to expose the translucent skin of her wrist where the dark indigo lines showed even more clearly. She started to pull away, but he held her hand, gently but inexorably.

"Bella." His voice was soft, and she looked up into his face. "I'm not going to hurt you," he said. "I can't. You're what I want most in the whole world."

In far too many ways, she thought. But she left her hand in his grip, willed her muscles to loosen, and told him that she loved him, which was, after all, the truth.

This became her new reality. She went to sleep alone; she woke alone. She went to school, and she talked to Alice; she sat with her friends at lunch and tried to stay involved in their conversations. After school she went to the Cullens' where she sat with Edward and did homework, and when she finished her homework she read books from Carlisle's bookshelf about transfusions, about blood types, about circulatory systems and blood-borne pathogens. She didn't understand everything she read, but she began keeping notes, and Carlisle patiently answered her questions, which she asked with more and more confidence. She went home and had dinner with Charlie, and tried to fill the long evening hours with mindless activity. She went to sleep alone; she woke alone.

Bella's locker wouldn't open. She tried for the third time, but it stayed stubbornly closed. She wanted to yell in exasperation, but instead she bit the inside of her cheek and started entering the combination yet again.

Lunch had been painful. Lauren had been particularly unpleasant; apparently Jeffrey Lewis, the boy she'd lately had her eye on lately, had asked someone else to the prom, and she took out her spitefulness on Bella instead. She had asked pointed questions about Edward, whispered suggestively behind her hand to Jessica, walked roughshod over the conversation when Alice tried to change the subject. Alice had squeezed Bella's hand under the table. Bella wondered why Alice continued to put up with it.

It's because of me, she thought. She puts up with them for my sake; there's no other explanation. And why did she herself continue to put up with the meanness, the obliviousness? There were times when she was hard-pressed to give herself any reason.

The padlock finally fell open in her hand, and she yanked her bookbag around off her shoulder, emptying it of books and stuffing more in. She didn't want to be in school; she didn't want to be anywhere but at the Cullens', with Edward, sitting near him, talking to him, touching his hand occasionally, making the most of whatever time they had left –

"Hey, Bella," came a soft voice beside her, and she jumped. It was Angela.

"Oh. Hey," she answered.

Angela fidgeted. "I'm sorry Lauren was being so awful at lunch today," she said. Bella shrugged. "I think she's just jealous of you – of what you and Edward have," she added.

Bella snorted. "Really? That seems pretty unlikely. I think she just doesn't like me."

It was Angela's turn to shrug, looking off into the middle distance. Bella felt awkward. Her relationship with Angela still hadn't settled back into the comfortable friendship it had once been.

"How is Edward?" Angela asked.

"He's ok," said Bella automatically.

Angela looked skeptical. "Is he really?" she asked. "He's been out for a while now. I know when he first started missing school, Alice said something about a disease he caught when he was traveling."

Feeling profoundly uncomfortable, Bella avoided Angela's eyes. "Um. Yeah. They think he got bitten by something." She zipped up her bookbag. "His dad thinks he might miss the rest of the year."

"Wow," said Angela softly, the concern plain on her face. "Jeez, Bella, I'm so sorry. But he's going to be ok, right? He's not going to –"

He's not going to die, is he? Angela gulped back the rest of the sentence, but Bella heard the words hang in the air as plainly as if they had been spoken aloud. She found herself blinking fiercely at tears. "I don't know, Angela," she said, her voice trembling. "I… I hope he'll be all right. But I don't know."

"Oh God," said Angela. "I had no idea." Bella saw the enormity of what she had said dawning in Angela's eyes, and the stress and anxiety of the past days hit her all at once. Numb, she let Angela pull her into a hug. "Let me know if there's anything I can do, ok?" Unable to speak, Bella just nodded, and together they moved off toward their classrooms.

After that, no one asked about Edward again, and when conversation drifted in that direction, whoever was speaking would get an uncharacteristically fierce glare from Angela. Bella wasn't sure whether she preferred this new arrangement. She knew Angela meant it kindly, but there were times when she felt that Edward had disappeared from their lives as easily as if he had never existed. The thought of him disappearing from her own life, so fully, so neatly, kept her awake through long hours of darkness.

She spent afternoons sitting beside Edward at the dining room table, reading book after book from Carlisle's shelf. She filled one notebook and started another, then filled that one as well. One evening she realized she had looked over a whole chapter's worth of pictures of needles and intravenous injection sites and blood transfusion bags without flinching once. The dining room was getting crowded; medical equipment was arriving bit by bit, monitors and rolling carts hung with cords and wires, bins of small packages in sterile wrappings, a CPR dummy whose blank sexless face made Bella uneasy.

She leaned back in her chair, stretching until her back cracked, and Edward looked up and gave her a tired smile. She got up and kissed him on the forehead, and felt him freeze in his chair. Keeping her movements slow and careful, she stroked his hair once and moved away without saying a word. Their tacit truce held, minute by minute.

On the way back from the bathroom, Bella overheard low voices from the kitchen as she walked through the shadowy hallway. It was Jasper and Emmett.

"He looks so awful," Emmett was saying. "Honestly, he looks like he's dying. There are times I want to just bring a damn deer in here for him and end this whole thing–"

"Bella," said Jasper softly, a warning in his tone. She had paused involuntarily just behind the doorjamb, but he must have heard her, so she stepped into the light. Emmett looked mortified.

"I'm sorry," he said sheepishly. "I shouldn't have said that."

"It's ok," she said automatically. She cleared her throat and spoke with more sincerity in her voice. "Don't worry about it, Emmett. I'm worried about him too." She moved off down the hall, but she felt their eyes follow her, and she straightened her back a trifle. She felt as if she were watching herself in a play, noble and tragic, the widow, the bereft.

Still preoccupied, she reached the dining room and sat down in her chair, moving swiftly, unthinking, stirring the air. Edward had been twirling a pen in his fingers, and it dropped from his hand, clattering first to the tabletop then to the floor. His whole body coiled on itself, and he gripped the edge of the table with both hands so hard that it cracked and splintered. A horrible strangled sound came from his throat. Not again, not again, please not now, Bella thought, horrified, trying to scramble away, her feet tangling with the legs of the chair.

There was a crash somewhere on the other side of the house, and Alice appeared in the doorway, followed closely by Jasper. A heartbeat later she was at Edward's side, seizing him by the shoulders. "Edward!" she shrilled in his ear.

He convulsed once, like a rubber band snapping, and he let out a great breath all at once. Slowly, slowly, the tension went out of his body. He was panting as if he'd run a race.

"I'm ok," he whispered. Looking up and meeting Alice's eyes, he repeated, "I'm ok, Alice."

Bella stood, shaking. "Maybe I should go."

"No!" said Edward vehemently, seizing her wrist with a grip like a vise. She started, and he loosened his grip, but still held her firm. "Don't leave," he said more gently. "Please, Bella. I need you here. I need to remember." She didn't move, and he said softly, "Don't leave me."

She didn't. She couldn't. She held his hand while his trembling subsided, and her heart gradually returned to its normal pace. Neither of them read any more that night, but they sat facing each other in their chairs, one of her knees trapped between his. He held her hands and they talked softly. Occasionally he leaned forward and pressed his forehead to hers, his breath mingling with hers.

Alice sat near them, watching him closely. After that day they were never alone.

The very next afternoon Alice drove Bella to the Cullens' after school, as usual. They were a few minutes from the house when Alice suddenly gripped the steering wheel harder and said, "Oh, no."

Bella had been lost in her own thoughts. She jumped, saying, "What? What's wrong?"

Alice pressed down on the accelerator and the car jumped forward. "Oh, please no," she said, then glanced over at Bella, who was growing increasingly frantic. "It's not Edward," she said, and Bella's fists unclenched from where they had involuntarily clutched the armrests. "But we need to get home. Oh, I can't believe it."

Bella badgered her for more information, but Alice wouldn't say more. They pulled up to the house with a screech and Alice dashed into the house, Bella following as quickly as she could.

Edward and Carlisle were in the dining room. Edward had his head propped on one hand, and he looked up wearily and smiled when they came in.

"Where are –" Alice began, and got no further.

"Carlisle!" came Emmett's voice from the next room. He burst through the opposite doorway, towing Rosalie by the wrist. She was pulling at his hand, trying to free herself. "Carlisle," Emmett cried, panic in his voice, "you have to make Rosie hunt!"

Everyone froze, staring at them. Rosalie finally dragged her hand away from Emmett's grasp and stood breathing hard, the challenge plain on her face.

"Oh, Rose, no!" said Alice, breaking the silence. Rosalie glared at her with obsidian eyes.

Carlisle stood. "Rosalie," he said gravely, "is this true? Have you stopped feeding?"

Rosalie's lovely forehead wrinkled. "If Edward can turn himself human, then so can I," she snarled.

"No, no, you can't," cried Emmett before anyone else could speak. "I won't allow it! Carlisle, tell her!"

Carlisle and Rosalie stared at each other. She was nearly as tall as he was, and both were fair as cornsilk, but his face was calm and somber while hers was increasingly desperate. At last she broke. "It's true," she said. "Carlisle, this is no life! I don't want you to think I'm not grateful to you and Esme for everything you have done for me. But I never should have been made this way. I don't belong here. And here is a chance for me to reclaim the life – the human life – that was taken from me." Her voice trembled, but she spoke fearlessly, black eyes flashing. "This is my decision, and no one will tell me otherwise."

Her words hung in the air. Bella looked at Emmett, whose anguish was written plain on his face. Edward had his head in his hands.

"Rose," said Alice softly, "we don't even know if it's going to work on Edward."

"That's true," said Carlisle.

"But it is working," said Rosalie, gesturing to Edward. "Look at him. He's getting weaker. He's changing. I can feel it." Edward looked up at her warily, but said nothing.

"We don't know that!" burst out Emmett, as if Edward couldn't hear. "For all we know, he's dying, Rosie! How could you do that to yourself?" His voice broke. "How could you do that to me?"

Bella found that she couldn't breathe.

Emmett dropped to his knees, his massive frame humbled before Rosalie's straight slim figure. "Rosie, please," he breathed. "I couldn't change with you. I love this life. And I can't lose you. I can't."

His arms went around her hips and he buried his face against her stomach. She raised one hand as if to stroke his head, but it hovered butterfly-light above his temple and she stopped short of pushing her fingers into his hair. Bella felt her face go hot and cold, feeling as embarrassed and unwelcome as if she were trespassing on their most intimate moment.

"I love you, Emmett," said Rosalie softly. "But I want my life."

The room was silent for a long moment. Then Carlisle spoke, his voice somber. "Rosalie, it gives me nothing but grief to know that you are unhappy. I know you never took to this life the way some of us did. But this is unwise."

"Edward is doing it." Her voice was barely louder than a whisper.

"You must see how his case is different," he said gently. "He is transforming because he cannot otherwise be with Bella. You already have a family – you have Emmett to consider."

"I don't see how it is so different," she said.

"And Emmett is correct – we don't know yet whether the transformation will work for Edward," Carlisle continued. "We may yet have to abandon this attempt. He has known the risks to his life from the beginning."

"Edward can make choices about his life, and I can't?" Rosalie burst out, looking mutinous. "Edward gets to decide what's best for himself, and I don't? You have some old-fashioned ideas, Carlisle. This isn't the Victorian age anymore."

"Rose…" said Alice softly, despairing.

Carlisle looked down sadly. "You're right, Rosalie." He paused and sighed softly. "Can I ask you at least for a compromise? Wait. Put this on hold. Return to hunting normally, and we will wait to see what happens with Edward. If he is successful, then – and only then – we will revisit your decision."

Rosalie looked at him for a long moment, then nodded slowly. "A compromise."

Emmett sat back on his heels. "No!" he said in a strangled voice.

Rosalie continued as if he hadn't spoken. "I'm not going to forget, Carlisle. I'm not going to change my mind. I'm holding you to your word."

Carlisle nodded once.

Without a word, Emmett got to his feet and moved silently out of the room. The house seemed to echo soundlessly with his footsteps. The room was unnaturally still.

"Now go and see to him," said Carlisle with a note of command in his voice. Rosalie acquiesced, leaving as silently as Emmett had. Bella felt herself sway in the wake of her going, and put out her hand to steady herself on the back of a chair. Instead she found Edward's hand in hers, but he wouldn't look up to meet her face.