A/N - Oh, Bella is falling into insanity. Spiralling down into a black hole of it. :)

Enjoy.

I regretted my decision as soon as the first road-signs that pointed through the rain towards Ithaca appeared, dotted along the road at annoyingly varying intervals.

Explain that please. Edward inquired inside my head. I shot a glance at Jasper, ignoring the tantalizing voice.

I'm not telling any-one. He promised earnestly. I shook my head and tried concentrating on something, anything else. I envied Jasper. If I was driving, it would have been much easier to dismiss my own delusions.

Thats not fair....What's the point in having a mouth if you don't use it? He groused as I turned away, studying my reflection disinterestedly in the tinted windows of the rented car.

It had been too long since I had last fed. The last vestiges of blood were fighting tooth and nail to keep my body functioning in some semblance of the vampire I had once been, trickling stubbornly through my body until the very end...when the blood would run out and I could crumble and wither away into nothingness...

I wish.

I couldn't quite fathom the emotion that hung, ever present, at the back of my ebony eyes. I knew Jasper knew, but any inclination I had to ask him was minimal because, in keeping my mouth shut, I had effectively given myself a new form of twisted and deranged occupation.

I would benefit from a set of visits to a psychiatrist.

That thing haunted me as I continued to stare at the reflection, my image tainted only by the city lights as they twinkled congenially off the pane of glass, bouncing again off of every mirrorlike surface that littered the car.

What was it? That elusive emotion that hung over me like a shadow that would forever block out what little sun I was straining to see.

Helplessness? Anxiety? Powerlessness? Worry? Doubt? Envy? Frustration? Guilt? Shame? Anger? Contempt? Self-Disgust? What!?

As I watched my eyes shifted, their keen slanting shape morphing into a more subtle and infinitely softer beauty as they stared curiously back at me, coal falling through the spectrum to a gentle green and a twinkle in the endless sea of colour.

I turned my back on Edward's face, studying my shoes now as though Galileo's map of the Heavens was intricately etched into the leather.

He was like a lost moon, circling the gaping chasm I now was, ripped away from my planetary bounds and forced to become less than the most meagre of stars. Always there, forever following the routine we would both surely be doomed to repeat for eternity.

His voice would trail me forever as I stalked the earth, my life evermore without meaning, reason or point. I would live as though one condemned, silent and painfully full of regrets that my heart longed for me to put right yet my head had enough obstinacy to continue denying me. For eternity.

Jasper shivered as the stench of grief everlasting, one that lies beyond the capacity of human words and that pervades our existence so very precisely, swallowed him up mercilessly. The scent of a thousand years of hope's rotting corpses lined up to march to the rhythm of a never-ending drumbeat. The odour of surrender in the face of something much bigger than anything anyone anywhere can even begin to imagine. The reeking scent of sorrow reigning victorious.

He didn't say a word as my ache, so acute it was almost physical pain, swept over him like an unrelenting sea, dragging us both down to the darkened depths of despair. He watched me, testing the air as he stared at me in stunned paralysis. I couldn 't even bring myself to bring up a minuscule illusion of a facade by smiling at him. Instead my eyes locked with my brother's, letting the blackness of his pupils and the silence of his heart draw me under as he fell victim to my grief, truly understanding for the first time, as we neared our family, why I longed to stay away.

Just thinking of Alice made remember the last time I saw her smile...with him.

Imagining Esme's doting face brought back memories of her scrubbing hard at a floor splattered with the unforgiving colour of blood...his blood.

And my father...Oh my father.... If you stayed, say another year, you would never have to worry about harming him again. You could be together for eternity. I would even help you

Forbidden pleasures and seductive promises. Castles in the air.

Will the ghosts go away?
Will she will them to stay?
Either way, there's no way to win!
All I know is I'm lost!
And I'm counting the cost!
My emotions are in a spin!

Senseless lyrics of rich baritone and cherubic soprano slithered into my brain before I pushed the visage of two actors away from my eyes, their 'pain-stricken' expressions foolishly depicting mere mortal anguish. Neither measuring up to the pure, unadulterated torture that sang through me.

Jasper continued his unending vigil, confusion evident in his thoughts as he attempted to keep up with my violently varying emotions as I swung from one end to the other.

But I didn't care. All my senses could keep themselves keyed onto was Edward. My memories that still burned in my mind as though they happened only moments ago; his eyes reflecting the emptiness as they looked at me in that awful forest, his heartbeat stuttering to a stop before picking up in double time as my mouth formed painfully, excruciatingly around the words 'Edward, I don't want you to come'

My mouth reformed the executing sentence, my breath coming out in a soundless whisper as I forced my lips to allow the words passage.

A soft sobbing brought my attention away from the words stabbing into my throat and towards the sidewalk. A small child sat on the edge pavement, tears falling down his chubby cheeks as he stared at the ragged and dirty flesh on his scraped palms.

In vampiric grief, there is no greater pleasure than watching an innocent child cry the dozens tears you cannot, faintly echoing the sadness that you feel in the honesty of their youth. The disbelief that something has managed to hurt them, the raging hopelessness as they come to the slow realisation that their parents couldn't do anything to stop it.

I knew every small and fleeting emotion in that small child's mind, every cry clawing at his larynx, because I felt them too. The only difference was that he could weep while I cannot.

Jasper turned to me, feeling the pleasurable pain that now coursed along my skin like fire. I could see my eyes reflected in his, eyes speaking of tears that could not be shed, days that could not be reclaimed, desire to move forward and desire to stay in the past.

In the distance a coyote howled and my mind wandered onto every poem and song and requiem of loss I've ever happened upon.

Loss Unbearable, Loss Irreparable...

These tears I shed will never go away
The tears that fall, will remind me of that pain
The pain of loss is what I speak
The pain that made me fall to my knees...

Time can bring you down, time can bend your knees.
Time can break your heart, have you beggin' please beggin' please...

I carry a smile when I'm broken in two
And I'm nobody without someone like you
I'm tremblin' inside and nobody knows it but me
I lie awake it's a quarter past three
I'm screamin' at night as if I thought
You'd hear me
Yeah my heart is calling you
And nobody knows it but me...

When the night has been too lonely
And the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only
For the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter
Far beneath the winter snows
Lies the seed that with the sun's love
In the spring becomes the rose...

So tired of the straight line
And everywhere you turn
There's vultures and thieves at your back
And the storm keeps on twisting
You keep on building the lie
That you make up for all that you lack
It don't make no difference
Escaping one last time
It's easier to believe in this sweet madness oh
This glorious sadness that brings me to my knees...

Bittersweet recollections of another's loss. I drank it in greedily as Jasper finally turned off into an almost unnoticeable junction, leading through forests towards where the minds of our family sang in undulated harmony and sorrow.

The sound of engine of our car sliding to a halt echoed in the silence of the evening and five pairs of vampiric ears pricked up in curious anticipation.

The car door slammed.

Our feet echoed across the sludgy ground.

The door-knob twisted.

Pandemonium struck Ithaca.

Shouts of our names echoed through the house as we stepped across the threshold, our scents registering in synchronism, before a pile of bodies headed towards us.

My mother was kissing my cheek, weeping tearlessly. Alice was hanging onto Jasper by the neck, their lips joined in an embrace that looked unlikely to untangle for some time. Emmett picked me up, swinging me around in jubilation, Rosalie grinning at his side. Carlisle being smothered by his wife's joyous hug.

And, as much I loved hearing their voice's again, wanted their smiling faces to be all I could see, I just watched in detached emotionlessness as they swarmed around both Jasper and I, their voices blending into white noise around me.

It was Rosalie who noticed it first, her eyes watching me in careful evaluation as he mind whirred, unable – like myself before her – to place the elusive emotion in my eyes.

"You need to hunt," She told me, satisfied that that was the reason for the inexplicable being hidden almost successfully at the back of my eyes.

I nodded once, my jaw tightening from the onslaught of venom the scents of the vampire's around me induced. Whatever humanity was left within me was draining. fast.

The coyote howled again.

"Go," Esme smiled, too happy for words. "We'll hunt too," Her honey orbs watched me unwaveringly as I turned and sprang out of the door, their footsteps falling into tandem with mine as I raced into the forest.

At this point I choose not to think of what the others would say or believe about my animalisticly carnal actions, or try to even justify them as I tore through the undergrowth, because I know my own thoughts, and frankly I've ceased to care.

Vampire's do not know death, decay, age, or fear; only glory, triumph, a flash of heartbeats and eyes in the forest of ages, are there. Vampire's are soulless, ageless, living at the core of those shadows always seen at the edge of the sight in the Devil's hours and at the last breath of sunset.

And now, we ran for what felt deep in our chests like the last time. And still, after all this time, we were breaths of air, of eternity, of lives transcending human limitations, extending past the molecules of air and skin between them, becoming one another in the harmony of footsteps, breath, heartbeats, the reverberation of a snarls, honey and fresh earth and oak trees and new grass and cleaning products and leather and old books and ink melding together in consonance, the flashes and touches, the vision of a smile in a memory, laughter and shouts and calls of long-forgotten panic, coming fresh from adventure and danger, blazing, afire, smoking in triumph—daring Fate just for one more day—

I suppose that's the Nights real triumph— that even after death, it still keeps it's victims. They remain immortal, ageless eternally.

The last howl broke the dusk. I chased the prey down, circling the whimpering cattle as they lined up to be fed to the creatures at the top of the monumentally high food-chain, forcing their fur throats to my senselessly snapping teeth, tasting their bitterly copper blood on my tongue. Their strangled mewls brought a laughter, a laughter that rang with sanity bursting free of it's banks, out of me. Mine was the last face they ever saw.

I opened my eyes.

Dead coyotes surrounded me. So many dead. I frowned, I had only remembered the one kill.

I could only stare in shock, slowly inhaling and testing the air for the sweet cloy of human blood. How far had I fallen into the insanity that seemed to grip me so mercilessly, so ruthlessly? But all that greeted me was the dull piquancy of animal blood.

I fell back into the grass still speckled with blood, surfeited for the first time in months. The burn that had been raging sank into soothed depths of cool.

What's your favorite 'wildlife' Edward sang to me. Though my senses had benumbed while I was thirsty, his voice had never faded.

"Definitely not Coyote," I whispered to the starry sky, scrubbing my skin with my palms.

A small cough broke through the haze I had created around myself, I whipped up, crouching in defence. As I saw the shocked faces of my family, I straightened up out of my crouch and waited as they approached me.

Carlisle watched me with cautious eyes as Emmett and Jasper set to work disposing the remains of my hunt.

I'd experienced what Carlisle had, centuries ago. My thirst had taken final control, like a demon forever suctioned to my mind. I had to be more careful. Next time it might not been coyote's. Next time, it might be human.

The embers of the fire began dimming to a somber glow when two o'clock chimed, and I found myself down in living room, stiff but not alone. Instinct rose within me as I heard the gentle footsteps of another approach, a warm presence, familiar and caring, if sometimes annoying.

I blew out the candle at my side. In the remaining firelight, I watched tendrils of smoke curling around one another tantalizingly, daring the other to come close enough to merge, in a dance up to the ceiling, curling like snakes of fog.

"You know," came the voice that so often worked as the whisper of logic and caution, speaking from the flickering shadows, "I'm surprised at you. You never used to like sitting in the dark."

"What're you doing here, Alice? Haven't you got a Jasper to be taking care of?"

Alice sauntered out of the shadows and a mock-scowl on her face "He's out hunting with Emmett, since someone was greedy enough to take all the coyotes for themself" She said with a playful air, plopping down beside me and pulling a cushion to her lap, fiddling with the tassels. She licked her lips, smirking slightly, "Besides, I couldn't get a wink if I wanted to,"

I almost grinned before getting up and making my way to the staircase as the embers of the fire gradually died away. "I'm going to my room."

Alice narrowed her eyes. "Oh no, you don't. You're talking to me tonight," She decided, skipping lightly to my side as I continued up the stairs.

Without saying a word, I shook my head and strode over to where her door was hanging ajar, slipping into the room.

"You're so blasted stubborn," I groused flatly, sitting at the end of her bed as she sprawled herself across the duvet with a grin.

Alice watched me calmly for a long while, nestling herself tighter in the blanket. My eyes had fixated on a spot just beyond her, focusing on a dull patch of the gaudily decorated wall she had evidently decided not to paint.

Even though this house in Ithaca - one which I haven't visited for decades - is entirely different, in this vast house, with its many silent unused rooms and vast shadows, I couldn't help but wallow in misery.

I can't help but hear his laugh in the echoes through stray memories of my family, see his face in the dusty and long-empty photo-frames. Privately, I think I actually want to see his ghost in every darkened corner that Alice had refused to let Esme clean, in every dust-ridden footstep I take, every prolonged shadow edging closer to me...

Sometimes I don't look up, just to hold onto a thin illusion.

Evidently having decided that she had allowed me to wander for some time, Alice made her first attempt to try and get a conversation going again.

"I suppose I might already know the answer to this, but how are things with Victoria? You haven't really said much about her since arriving."

I felt my face harden, my expression becoming guarded. I avoided her gaze pointedly.

"Bella…" Alice reprimanded in a stern, mothering sort of way.

"You know how things are! I lost her! I failed!" I said snarled, clenching my fists together.

"You didn't fail," She soothed. "It was never your path," Alice tapped the side of her spiky black head. "You'd created your own future, Bella, it was destined to fall through." She smiled softly. "Trust the psychic,"

It was silent again for a long time after than. As the seconds lengthened, I attuned the sounds of the gently ticking clock to our breathing—in, tick, out, tock—sitting and not moving. The breathing and the clock continued as we sat there, lying wordlessly across her bed.

What would it feel like to slip in and out of conscious thought, the drifting sensation before the dream?

"Will you talk to me?" She whispered softly as I curled up in on myself.

I raised my eyes to hers and, with a sense of a executioners blade at my throat, shook my head.

I looked at her crestfallen face—in the flickering light of the candle she had lit. I could easily make out every gentle curve and slope on her face, the rise and fall of her lashes as she blinked and continued to watch me. The intelligence, perception and vision beyond any on the earth was truly terrifying to see. It felt particularly disconcerting to be examined by those tawny eyes – ones which had dissected me a thousand times before.

But talking to her about him would be admitting to a fact that I want to bury in the back of my brain and let it suffocate there—that I failed him, that I couldn't protect him and that I'd forever lost him. That I'm alone.

She sighed loudly and broke eye-contact, heading for her closest and pulling out a deep-blue robe. As she swung the door wide open, a flash of silver caught my eye.

A curiosity that had sat forgotten at the back of my mind stirred, though I couldn't put any name to it as I slid off of the silks sheets and made my way to the darkened cupboard.

My head snapped up upon recognition, my muscles froze, my feet fell heavily in mid-step and my arms went limp.

The photo frame.

Alice's gift to Edward. The one I had never found when hiding his possessions lay in the midst of clothes fallen from their hangers, the silver frame twinkling genially in the candle-light.

But it wasn't the frame that caused the intense agony to fill through my being like ice, originating in the very chambers of my heart, more pain than any mortal could possess.

It was the photograph.

A different Bella had her hands wrapped around the neck of someone much taller than her, her amber eyes filled with love-smitten joy. Edward stared back at her, their heads inclined as though their lips soon would meet but now never would, forever frozen in time by the flash of a camera.

It was as though cold fingers had placed themselves around my heart and squeezed at the lifeless organ holding my chest and wanting to claw at it. And the hand that had been twisting in very centre of my being wound around to my back, tracing deadly patterns along my spine and ribs. My stomach contorted in excruciating, harrowing pain as Alice and I both stared at the image, one in pain, the other in horror.

"Bella...I"

"I have to go," I whispered, my eyes not moving from the picture as the death-like hands continued to claw their way through my chest, into my stomach, down my spine. "I thought...I thought I could do this. I can't. I'm...I'm not strong enough."

It is hard to be brave when you feel that the gods have turned their faces from you

"Goodbye, Alice,"

My feet hit the ground running as I flew through the house, clutching my backpack to my chest for a seventh of a second before it was on my back without my knowledge of ever putting it there.

What was it like, to run without as a human would run, to run until one's lungs burned for oxygen and forced the body to the ground with exhaustion, to run without the capacity for feeling anything else?

"Bella!" My name chorused from the house as I fled through the clearing. I could hear every broken sob as I avoided muddy trees and dipping branches.

"Why? How could she?" Esme cried to the skies with such a heart-wrenching shout that the world held it's breath in respect for a grieving mother.

I heard Carlisle fall to his knees beside her. "Not even the angels could stop themselves from falling."

I'm selfish. I want to run wild and savage, where I and I alone can seem so beyond death, so invincible. Aways invincible.

Poor Bella - She really needs her Edward : ) Thank you to those who did review last week, it really encourages me.

XxX