A/N: My dear, dear readers.

I know. I'm a horrible person. I've heard your cries. You're right. It's too much. It's too mean.

Bear with me. I have a plan. I don't think it's "typical" or cliche, but you're gonna have to tell me. Buckle up. Keep an open mind. I have an...interesting ride ahead for you.

Bella had discovered that if she lay with her head facing away from the door, toward the window, people would naturally assume she was asleep. Normally, Bella wasn't the type of person to deceive, but if it meant they wouldn't ask her stupid questions and she wouldn't have to see that pitying look on their faces, she was all for it.

How was she feeling? That was the most popular question.

The truth was, she had no idea.

When she finally woke fully from the nightmare of the tossing sea, calmed by nurses rather than her father, Bella had been set upon by Dr. Snow.

She remembered Dr. Snow. The woman had stitched her up more than once. One of the negatives of having such a rambunctious best friend when she had two left feet was the increased likelihood of injury.

Bella's lower lip trembled.

She closed her eyes, wishing she could sleep for real. Then maybe she could wake up and the world would make sense again. Nothing made sense now. It was worse than her nightmare of being lost in a violent sea. At least, if that nightmare were real, it would match physically what she should have been feeling - if she could feel anything at all. Instead, the room was sedate. People walked in carefully and spoke to her in soft voices. Maybe worst of all, Bella said nothing. When the doctor and her parents softly told her how she ended up in the hospital, each factoid hit her like a hammer hits a nail on the head, driving her deeper and deeper down below the surface.

It was as if her mind and heart simply couldn't accept their words. They had to be wrong.

Her most recent memories, before waking up in her hospital bed, consisted of all things summer break. She would start her Senior year of high school in just two short months. She worked at Newton's Outfitters part time and spent most of the rest of her time with Angela or Jacob.

Jacob, who was her best friend.

Often, when they hung out, people would mistake Jake for her boyfriend. It annoyed Bella to no end that people assumed girls and boys couldn't be just friends. Her friends at school were constantly trying to get her to admit that she liked him like that.

The thought of kissing him just seemed... weird.

That was the first hit of the hammer. The night before, after the doctor asked her random questions - do you know where you are, do you know your name, who's the current president - Bella had gotten frustrated. She was sure she'd been doing something stupid with Jake - maybe he'd finally been able to convince her to go cliff diving - and she bumped her head. What was she doing, she'd asked. And was Jake okay, or did he have a concussion too?

Taking her hand, her mother had told her there were some things she needed to know. First and foremost, she and Jake were a couple.

They had been for nearly six years.

She'd shaken her head vehemently. They had to be wrong. They had to be mistaken. "Where is he?" she'd demanded. If this was some elaborate joke he was playing, she was going to beat the crap out of him.

"Bella..." Charlie's voice had been low and gravely as always, but it was the emotion she heard in his usually plain tone that sent a chill right down her spine.

He said there was an accident. Jacob and Sam were arguing. Sam pushed Jacob through a glass door, and she fell off a cliff.

Obviously, Bella understood there were huge gaps in that story, but she couldn't deal with those questions yet. She was stuck on the most devastating part.

Jacob was gone.

Her best friend was dead.

Dead and buried.

She was too stunned to react, too numb to let those words sink in.

Then they'd delivered the final blow, and Bella hadn't said more than three words since then.

"Is she asleep?" Bella heard her father's voice ask.

It was afternoon. She'd been awake from her coma for about twelve hours. Her mother had been by her bedside for the last three, uncharacteristically quiet. "Yeah," Renee replied softly.

"Has she talked at all?"

Renee sighed. "No. This is... Charlie, she's almost catatonic."

"How would you feel?" Charlie returned in a gruff whisper. "She's missing six fucking years, Renee. She thinks she's a kid. Even without a head injury, this is way too much to put on a 17 year old girl." Bella felt his tender touch at her cheek. Though she knew her father was worried and hurting, she couldn't bring herself to roll over and reassure him.

"With everything else that's going on, I'm worried that this pregnancy will be traumatic for her," Charlie said after a moment.

At the word pregnancy, Bella squeezed her eyes shut tightly, her mind automatically shutting down.

It was almost as if the word had been spoken in a foreign language. Since they'd told her she was pregnant the night before, the term had lost all meaning.

Oh, it provided a logical explanation for the things that were happening with her body. Intellectually, she knew it was the reason her tits were sore and she was constantly nauseated. Viscerally, she had no emotion. She simply couldn't think about it, couldn't wrap her mind around what pregnancy meant. For her it was simply a word thrown in with the rest of her diagnosis.

Traumatic brain injury.

Retrograde amnesia.

Pregnancy.

It all added up to this fog in her mind that seeped at her will to even move. Too much. How a situation could make her at once want to run away as far and as fast as she could while rendering her too exhausted to think was beyond her.

"Bella?"

Her parents must have been alerted to her wakefulness by the stutter of her breath. Resigned, Bella rolled her head away from the window to look at them. Part of her wanted to attempt a smile, but she simply felt too exhausted to try.

"Hi, honey," Renee said softly, her voice hardly more than a breath as she smoothed a lock of Bella's hair back.

"Hi," Bella answered back.

"The doctor said you could try some real food in a little while," Charlie said, trying to smile. It looked more like a grimace.

Bella nodded slowly. The thought of food wasn't appealing given that her stomach was churning unpleasantly in her gut. "Good," she said for her parents sake more than her own.

As her parents tried to make small talk, Bella did her best to pay attention. Still, she found her mind wandering. She was still confused as to what point her nightmare the night before became reality.

Replaying the befuddling, chaotic events of the night before, Bella's eyebrows suddenly furrowed. She looked up at her parents. "Can I ask a really stupid question?"

Her parents exchanged a surprised glance. Bella supposed it was the longest sentence she'd uttered since she woke up. "Anything," Renee said too eagerly.

"This is... Well... was Edward Cullen here last night?"

~0~

It had been pure chance that he was with Bella when she awoke in the middle of the night.

He couldn't sleep that night, no matter how he'd tried. The itch to be at Bella's side was a need so powerful he felt like he would go right out of his skin if he couldn't go to her. Admittedly, he hadn't put up that much of a fight, giving in to the want to see her easily. He waved at the security guard and dodged the nurses to duck into her room. Even when the nurses came in, startled to find him in her room, he flashed his badge. They stopped asking questions after that, and because he knew he was going to come clean in the next couple of days, Edward didn't think twice about the repercussions.

Soon, everyone would know what Bella meant to him.

But as he held her hand, talking to her about nothing and everything, he felt her fingers twitch against his skin.

Then her eyelids started to flutter.

He called her name, scarcely able to move, so afraid he was dreaming.

Her body went rigid, her breath wild, and he heard a pain-filled whine at the back of her throat. When she began to thrash, he panicked, calling for the nurses because someone needed to help her.

In the chaos that had ensued, he was pushed out of her hospital room. All of a sudden they were a lot stricter about their rules, and no amount of his yelling, pleading, an threatening got him access to her room. He'd only backed off when her parents arrived, resigning himself to wait.

She would ask for him. He was convinced of this fact.

Renee came out of the room before everyone else, her hand pressed tight to her mouth and tears running down her cheeks. Completely fearful that something had gone terribly wrong, that she'd slipped away again, Edward had gone to her.

Not caring how it looked, he begged her to tell him what was going on. Regardless of what she thought - that his obsession was borne of his work - Edward and Bella were friends, and he cared about her.

Through tears, Renee managed to convey the doctor's suspicions. Then she'd asked him to leave, telling him Bella was resting now and she didn't want him to bother her with questions about the case.

Devastated didn't seem like a strong enough word for what Edward felt then. He was struck absolutely dumb by the implications of Renee's words. He would have fallen right on his ass if there hadn't been a chair behind him. As it was, he slumped forward, his head against his knees, as if he had no bone mass in his upper body. Bowed... he was literally bowed by the news.

Out of pure necessity to do something, Edward eventually stood and stumbled out of the hospital, to his car. He hardly remembered the drive home, only that when he got there, he was a degree of furious he had no name for.

Sitting alone in the garage, he writhed with the injustice of it all. Why? Why did Bella have to suffer this after everything? And after struggling alone for two long weeks, why did this happen to them?

Them.

There was no them.

No one else knew. The only other person who knew they were together was dead, and now, Bella didn't remember.

They'd been erased.

Edward had never stopped to understand what people meant when they said it felt like the walls were closing in on them. He did then. Walls tumbling down, encroaching on his space, left him feeling panicked and claustrophobic. A crushing weight was hovering, and if he stopped moving, it was going to kill him.

He could feel it.

Edward's trembling fingers pulled at the handle of the car door. He ran for the house like he was being chased. Once he was in the house, he slammed the door shut behind him, not giving a damn that it was three in the morning and the rest of the household was sleeping. At the moment, time was meaningless to him. Everything was meaningless except for the fact the world was falling apart.

And the damnable thing of it all was that he'd asked for it.

How often in the last two weeks had he offered up anything - everything - if only she'd open her eyes?

Well, wish granted.

Breathing raggedly, Edward tried to wrap his mind around that concept.

If this was the price of her being awake and alive, it couldn't be too much.

He crouched, feeling dizzy, and wrapped his arms over his head as if that could stop the world from spinning so crazily on its axis.

And their relationship, what they'd been to each other, wasn't erased.

There was something very tangible that proved it wasn't all just a dream.

Edward let out a low moan. He was still agonized, but it felt like something he could hold under his skin. Tolerable, though only barely.

"Edward?"

Startled, Edward looked up just as his parents knelt by his side. His father pushed his hair out of his eyes, searching for signs of trauma. Taking another steadying breath, Edward carefully pushed Carlisle's hands away.

"Edward, what's wrong?" Carlisle asked urgently. Esme touched his cheek with the back of her palm as if checking for fever.

"I'm fine," he said shortly, climbing to his feet. He had to laugh then, the sound vaguely maniacal. "No. No, I'm not fine."

Carlisle placed a gentle hand on his arm, leading him to the table to sit down. Immediately, Edward buried his head in his arms, still trying to gather his thoughts.

"Dad..." he began, his voice small even to his own ears. "For um... When someone has amnesia, how likely are they to... I don't know, snap out of it? Remember?"

When his father didn't answer right away, Edward lifted his head. Carlisle was watching him with a soft but suspicious expression. "Amnesia after a head injury?" he qualified.

Edward nodded.

"Well, head injuries are notoriously difficult to predict. Often it's a matter of time before memories begin to come back," Carlisle said, in full on doctor mode now. "I can't say I have a lot of experience in the area, though. That's a question for a specialist."

"But generally," Edward pressed. "Can anything be done to help them remember?"

Carlisle pursed his lips, glancing first at his wife before turning his gaze back to his son.. "Edward... does this have anything to do with Bella Swan?"

Edward stared at the table top, feeling ashamed. He knew his parents were going to wonder how he could have kept this from them. Part of him still thought it was a good idea to keep it a secret; after all, what could they possibly do to help him or Bella? But he realized suddenly that he was desperate to tell them. He needed them to know because he needed their support.

He needed his parents.

"Yes, sir," he finally answered, his head still bowed.

He felt his mother's hand on his back. "Sweetheart, you can tell us."

Edward took a deep breath. Though he'd done nothing wrong - he and Bella had been involved in a loving, adult relationship - it felt strangely like he had to admit to getting a girl in trouble. "We were... I'm in love with her," he finally said.

"Oh, honey," Esme sighed. "How difficult this all must have been for you... watching someone you care for with another man..."

Edward shook his head vehemently. "You don't understand." He ran his hands over his eyes, digging his fingernails into the flesh of his cheeks just trying to ground himself. "The baby? Her baby? It's mine. Not Jacob's."

His mother gasped. His father murmured a low, "Oh, God."

Leaning his forehead on his palms, Edward sighed and told them the whole story.

~0~

Gradually, the night turned into morning and morning faded to afternoon. Jasper, after he heard about Bella, had covered all of Edward's official duties, something Edward was grateful for as he was having trouble concentrating on much of anything at all.

Mid afternoon, Jasper came back. Edward didn't acknowledge his presence. He didn't even turn from where he'd been sitting in the living room, staring out at the trees behind the house.

It was better now that his parents knew and worse at the same time. They could help him shoulder the burden of his heavy secrets, but at the same time, telling them hadn't flipped a magical switch.

How he longed for the days when Mommy and Daddy could fix everything from scrapes to problems that seemed bigger than the world.

He heard Jasper sigh, but still didn't look up, even when his partner sat down on the couch opposite him.

"You know, moping isn't going to solve anything either."

Edward chuffed. "What is it you want me to do?" he asked, his voice raw. He had no idea what his next step should be. The agony that Bella didn't remember what they had weighed heavily with Alice's words from a few days previous. He wanted to be a part of his child's life, especially if decisions had to be made before he was born. The problem now was that he would inevitably add to her confusion, and therefore, likely set back her progress, if he were to attempt to explain the situation to her.

Bella would need to lean on others to restore the last six years of her life. The problem was, everyone else in her life had a very different experience of the last few months.

As Jasper attempted to suggest courses of action, Edward repeatedly shot him down. Why his partner was not getting exactly how helpless he was in this situation, Edward couldn't fathom.

But it was pissing him off.

"Don't you get it?" Edward finally exploded, turning to glare at Jasper. "She is not in love with me. As far as she's concerned, she's 17 fucking years old. Her best friend is dead and she's pregnant, and you want me to tell her she's in love with me?" He shook his head. "I can't do that. She's got to be completely stressing out. I can't add to that."

Feeling like he was skating the edge of madness, Edward drew the pads of his fingers down his cheeks. "I don't know what to do," he admitted to his friend. "On the one hand, there's the baby to consider. It's my child, I should have some say, and I know that. That feels like the right thing, and maybe that should be the most important thing. But I want her, Jasper. God help me, I want her back. I don't want her to feel obligated to love me, or to even try to love me, just because I love her, or we're having a child together."

For a prolonged minute there was silence between the two friends. "I don't envy your position, Edward. I really don't. I promise I'm not trying to be a dick, here. I wish I knew the magic words to make this all right again.

"But that being said, I will tell you what's not going to work: you doing nothing." Jasper gave a little chuff of laughter. "You got her to fall in love with you once. Don't you think you could do it again?"

Edward's eyes snapped up to his partner's. "You want me to pursue her?" He gave a wry laugh. "Are you fucking crazy? I didn't even pursue her the first time, and you want me to woo her when she thinks she's a teenager pregnant with another man's baby?"

"Well, fuck, Edward. You have to do something," Jasper said, throwing his hands in the air. "This clusterfuck isn't going to unravel itself." He tapped his chin. "Although, all things considered you probably should at least talk to the girl first. Who knows. Maybe seeing your face again will make her remember."

Tilting his head all the way back, Edward stared at the ceiling. "You know I'm not that fucking lucky."

"Stranger things have happened," Jasper said mildly.

Before Edward could answer to that, his phone rang. Feeling as bone weary as an old, old man, he brought the phone to his ear. "Cullen."

"Agent Cullen? This is Chief Swan," the uncomfortable voice on the other end of the phone said.

Edward straightened up in his seat. "Yes, sir?"

There was a sigh and a pause. "Bella's asking to see you."

A/N: Thank you to barburella and jadedandboring. They love me, even if you don't ;)