Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight or New Moon or any of Stephenie Meyer's amazing charictors.


Bella's PoV:

I didn't want to leave yet. If I could have, I would have stayed like that all night, just lying in Edward's arms, but I knew I had to go fill my family in. They deserved to know everything. For the past ten years, they have been there everytime I needed them, and have helped me in every way they could in my quest to remember.

I ran swiftly down the stairs, saying goodbye to everyone as I went. Outside, it was cold and raining. Though Edward told me I had hated the rain as a human, I had come to love it as a vampire. It was soothing, and since I was already cold, the temperature didn't bother me. I took off running into the night, not bothering to take my car. I would be back before I needed it, and I loved to run. The wind zipped past me, and a thousand different scents assulted my senses.

It only took a few minutes to reach my house, and I could tell immediately by the squeals I heard inside that my family had been anxiously awaiting my arrival. I had barely stepped onto the front porch before a very excited Holly ran up to me, knocking me laughing to the ground. "Eeeeek, Buffy, tell us what happened," she cried from on top of me. Her red hair was wild and her eyes were wide with excitement. "Is Alice Cullen the same Alice you called for in your dreams? Did she tell you about Edward? How did you know them? What's your real name---"

I stopped the flow of questions by putting my hand over her mouth, and looked over to see Evangeline, Roan and Basil laughing from the doorway. Still smiling and looking very impatient, Holly got off of me and helped pull me to my feet before grabbing my hand and dragging me into the house. Within moments, Basil, Roan, Holly and Evangeline were seated and looking expectantly at me. "Where's Ash?" I asked looking around, just as he came into the room.

Unlike the others, he didn't seem excited to find out what had happened to me. His face was hard and cold, and he glared around before sitting down and crossing his arms. My eyes narrowed when I saw him, but I ignored him. If he didn't want to be happy for me, there was nothing I could do about it. Whatever his problem was, was just that, his problem. I wasn't going to deal with it, so I began, just as Evangeline shot him a look that looked a lot like a warning.

"First of all," I smiled at Holly. "My name is Isabella Marie Swan, but I preffer being called Bella. Yes, Alice Cullen is the same Alice I asked for in my dreams, and she didn't tell me about Edward, she took me to him."

I had planned on answering all of her questions before embellishing on anything, but with that last part Evangeline gasped, Holly squealed, and Roan and Basil stared gaping wide-eyed at me. Ash scowled from his corner and his hands curled into fists, but I hardly noticed as a flash of red clouded my vision as Holly had sucessfully dove across the room and pulled me into a crushing hug. "Oh, Buffy--I mean Bella! I'm so happy for you!" She sobbed into my shoulder. "I was so worried he was your soul mate and you would never even get to meet or remember him!" She looked up at me, and her happiness turned to horror in a moment. "Oh my gawd!" she exclaimed. "It's been ten years! We have to hurry up and change him before he gets too much older than you!"

I laughed, and she looked at me incredulously. "What!" she asked. "You do love him, right? I thought he must be your soul mate. Especially when I saw how happy you were when you came home just now."

I smiled at her. "Yes, I love him," I answered. "Very much. That's not why I was laughing. I was laughing because he's already a vampire. He has been for almost one hundred years!"

Everyone was shocked. Even Ash stopped scowling to gape at me. "What the hell do you mean, almost one hundred years," he asked. Ash was really starting to get on my nerves tonight. He didn't have any right to be jealous or upset, and he certainly didn't have the right to talk to me that way. "That's absurd! Vampire-human relationships don't work!"

I rolled my eyes. "Well, apparently they do," I replied in a menacing voice. "Because we were together quite a while when I was human, and I was even his singer." Evangeline and Roan exchanged a meaningful look while everyone else furrowed their brows in confustion. Basil shot a look at Ash before smacking him in the back of the head and going over to pull me into a hug then lounging at my side with his arm around my shoulders. I smiled up at him and hugged him. He was in every way my protective older brother, and my trusted confidant.

"Wow," Evangeline breathed. "I've never heard of anything like it."

"I've never even heard of a vampire and human becoming friends, let alone falling in love," Roan said in wonder. "With you being his singer on top of everything, I really don't know how he managed!"

Holly huffed and put her hands on her hips. "Is anyone going to tell us what a 'singer' is, or are we supposed to read your minds?" I couldn't help but laugh at her apparent frustration, and hugged her around the middle as she stood in front of me facing Roan and Evangeline. Her face softened a bit, and she smiled at me.

"Basically," Roan explained. "sometimes, though very rarely, a vampire will run across a human that smells different from everyone else. Far more delicious, and its nearly impossible to resist. Actually, Bella's case is the only one I've ever heard of where the vampire managed to not to suck the human dry. I don't think I've ever even heard of a vampire trying to resist, and the call to that human's blood is irrisistable."

Her eyes widened and her mouth fomed a little "O." "Wow, Buff---" she began, but Ash interrupted her.

"So basically," he said smoothly, "This guy's a total freak---"

I knew he was just jealous. I knew I should probably just ignore him and let him get over it, but I was angry enough to want to hit him. He didn't even know Edward, and he was already judging him. Edward resisted because he loved me. Because he would never want to hurt me or lose me. It was sweet and amazing that he found the strength to fight that side of him for me. Ash was my brother, but I would choose Edward over him if it ever came to that without a moments hesitation.

My eyes narrowed dangerously, but before I could do anything, Basil was up and had kicked his chair over. "Shut up, Ash." he snapped, and I was filled with appreciation. "You don't even know what you're talking about. You're just jealous 'cause you were hoping whoever she loved as a human couldn't compete with you. You're the one who obviously can't compete."

I'm sure Basil didn't mean to sound so harsh, but the way Ash had acted towards me in the past several years had been getting on everyone's nerves. I had made it very obvious that I wasn't interested in him that way, but he wouldn't let it go. He threw a fit every time another guy looked at me when it wasn't his place to be jealous or possessive. It wasn't as if he didn't have enough girls as it was.

If Ash were a human, his face would be purple, but he wasn't, so instead he turned a sickening grey color. "Ash," Roan warned. "Calm down."

"I don't have to compete," Ash spat. I swear, he was such a child sometimes. "I love you, Buffy, and he can't! That's right, I called you Buffy, 'cause that's your name. You may have been Bella as a human, but you aren't a human anymore, and you don't know him anymore. You know me!"

"You're wrong, Ash," I said in a dangerous voice. "I am Bella, and I love Edward. And you know what? I did before today, too. I remembered him, even if not clearly. Have you been in my room lately? Have you seen the pictures that cover my walls? Meet Edward." It was a good thing Ash and I didn't have Holly's power, or the house would have gone up in flames a long time ago. "His face is permanently burned into my mind. I've seen him every time I've closed my eyes in the past eight years. And guess what else? That year I took off to search Oregon and Washington? I wasn't searching for my past. I was searching for him. I wanted to find the town I was from so I could see if he was there. To see if he ever existed or if he was just a beautiful figment of my imagination that could never be matched in real life."

"It's easy to say that now---" Ash began.

"No," Basil cut in for me. "She told me all of that before she left. She was already sure she was in love with her 'daydream angel' as she put it. She just wasn't sure that he was real."

I smiled a thanks to Basil then turned to Ash. "Ash," I began kindly. "You don't love me. You think you do, but its just a stupid infatuation. You don't really know me. You've been too buisy crushing on me to get to know me. It's like you already had an image in your mind of what you thought I was, and you fell in love with that...not me."

I chewed on my lip and looked at him with sympathy. He was shaking, and I think if he were human, he would have had tears running down his face. Angry tears, but he was still my brother, even if he didn't think of me that way, and I loved him. I wanted to go to him and hug him, but I knew he'd take that the wrong way, and it would only make things worse.

"You'll always be Buffy to me," he choked out before running from the room. I hated to see him leave. I wanted everything to be okay between us. I wanted him to be happy for me. I didn't need his permission or his blessing, but that doesn't mean I didn't want it. He was still family.

Holly looked torn. She and Ash argued all the time, but they were especially close. I could tell she wanted to go to him and comfort him, even if she thought it was only a crush, too, but she also wanted to hear what happened to me tonight. After a few moments of indecision, she finally decided to stay here.

"He probably needs some time alone now, anyway," Basil said as he wrapped his arm around Holly and kissed her forehead. "You don't agree with him either, so I doubt very much that talking to you will make anything better for him. He just needs time to realize that instead of loving Bella, he's been using her as a target for his feelings. He'll come around eventually."

Basil and Holly understood eachother so well, it made me smile just to see them together. Evangeline and Roan were the same way, and I was beyond overjoyed to finally have the same thing as well. Maybe if Ash found someone he would understand, I thought. I know that more than anything else, he probably felt left out now.

She smiled weakly and turned back to me. "So..." she said. "Tell us everything!" I rolled my eyes. Her moods switched so quickly, it was impossible to keep up with.

"I bugged Alice, Jasper and Emmitt all day to tell me something," I began, purposely not mentioning Rosalie, who I had felt too awkward with to question. "But they refused. Alice just kept telling me it wasn't her place, which made me crazy, but insisted that if I went to her house with her after school, her brother would tell me everything." That much they already knew, I'm sure, from seeing the Cullens at lunch. I told them everything Edward told me, with Holly grinning the entire time, and Evangeline's lips curling into something that looked suspiciously like a knowing smile. With Holly sitting next to me, I couldn't help but give up all the romantic details, and by the time I was done, she was wiggling around and clapping her hands with glee like a small child.

"So as much as I love you guys," I finished. "I'm going back now."

Evangeline ran up to me and hugged me just as Holly did. Holly I was expecting, but Evangeline hardly ever got excited like that. "Of course," they said in unison.

"Actually," Roan said. "If you don't mind, I think we'd probably all like to go." He grinned, and I couldn't help grinning back at him. "We never really got a chance to meet Edward when we were there."

A few minutes later, Holly finished scribbling a note telling Ash where we were, and we all took off running for the Cullen mansion.


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