Hello! Happy Monday! (Well, happy Monday for this author, not necessarily for our characters just yet.)

Arms WON an Emerging Swan Award for "Best Bella & Edward"! ! ! ! ! !

I just want to say thank you so much for voting this story, out of all the amazing stories out there! I cannot express my gratitude enough as this is my very first win ever! I'm beyond humbled! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

On another note: I'm issuing a pretty big tissue warning the following chapter. We're back with Bella, so it's going to be a bit rocky for a little while. Hang in there and please, give SueBee0619 a high five for keeping her stuff together long enough to beta this! ;-)

Disclaimer: I still do not own Twilight, its characters, or any other copyrighted material. I'm just borrowing. Additionally, I am not a certifed pilot, or anything even close. I did my research once again, but if I get something wrong down below, please don't string me up.

Chapter 14:

BPOV–

Where are we?

With wet cheeks and trembling hands, I look up at the back of Garrett's head and glare.

"Where are we?" I demand.

He doesn't answer and I grit my teeth together.

"Did you drug me?" I yell.

He still doesn't respond and I realize now that my voice is getting lost in the din of noise caused by the engine and propeller. I notice a small microphone attached to the headset over my ears and reach up to feel for a button or something. I find it and press it.

"Did you drug me?"

Garrett turns slightly and looks over his shoulder at me. He raises a finger to the button on his own headset, faces front again and answers, "You gave me no choice. You were hysterical."

"How could you?" I say, choking on a furious sob. "I told you I didn't want this. That I don't want to do this anymore! I don't care what happens to me. I'm done with all of it!"

He sighs into the microphone. "And I told you, that's not something you get a say in right now."

I shake my head, tears falling, my chest burning with the restraint it takes not to become hysterical again. I glance around the cabin furtively, maybe even looking for a parachute or some other means of escape. Instead, I realize that something, or rather someone, is missing.

"Where's Kate?" I ask, reaching up to press the headset again.

Garrett adjusts something on the console and then presses his own button. "She's probably at the bar right now. She took the boat back to Sequim. Somebody's got to hold down the fort while I'm gone. She knows the drill."

"You're really good at leaving people behind, aren't you?" I say disgustedly.

Garrett says nothing in response, so I stare unseeing out the window for a long time. Eventually, I try again.

"Where are we?"

Garrett takes a while to answer. "We're over the Rocky Mountains. About to land and refuel in Montana."

"Where in Montana?"

"A tiny town you probably never heard of."

"Well, why Montana?" I ask instead.

"I didn't want to deal with the paperwork needed to land in Canada."

"Canada?"

Garrett says nothing else and I stay silent for a while, watching nervously out the window.

"Where is our final destination?"

Garrett takes a moment, but then I see him lift his hand to his head set again.

"Alaska."

I frown in confusion.

"Why didn't you just fly straight there?"

Garrett looks over his shoulder, his expression neutral bordering on annoyed.

"Because I didn't want the government tracking my plane and leading them right to us. I happen to own a second floatplane in Tahoe that the FAA knows nothing about, so I took a detour. I knew this baby would come in handy one day."

He pats the console fondly while I try to remember what happened. I vaguely remember his boat pulling up to a long dock and seeing a seaplane on the other side. It was blue and white and I'd panicked when it came into view.

That must have been when he drugged me because the plane we are in now is red and black on the outside.

"How long was I out for?" I ask after a long silence. I feel the plane start to descend and my ears adjust accordingly.

"Three hours or so the first time. I re-dosed you in Tahoe though, so about six and a half hours total."

I inhale a gasp. "What time is it?"

"Just before six Pacific standard time. The sun will be setting soon."

I look to the right and, sure enough, the sun is dipping down, creating a brilliant glare over the tops of the white clouds. It should be beautiful, but I find it ominous. It could signify so many things. Is the sun setting over Edward's life now as well? Has it already gone down?

The feeling of panic returns to me then. Anguish claws at me. Fear, rage, pain... blinding and debilitating pain. I press my hand against my chest. It hurts. My heart beats loudly inside it, mocking the memory stuck inside my head.

"Again! Another round of epi! Charge to three-sixty!"

A long, steady beep echoes too loudly in my ears.

"We're losing him!"

Chaotic sights and sounds fill my mind. I can't breathe. My eyes burn. I close them, but it won't change what comes next.

"Clear!"

A body once so mesmerizing to me —once so beautiful and so strong— contorts and jolts unnaturally. Arms that once held me tight, anchoring me, fall lifelessly off the table. A face, once the object of my dreams, now haunts my waking nightmare.

It won't go away. It won't shut off. The feelings come again now—anguish, fear, rage, pain, anguish, fear, rage, pain. They blend together, an endless cycle of hurt. Tears fall, but they do not ease the ache. My mind is stuck reliving the horror of the worst moment of my life.

A thought that brings everything to a grinding halt.

The worst day of my life.

I watched my parents bleed to death in front of me. I buried them. Put them in the ground and then went into hiding. But this? This is somehow worse.

Perhaps it's a cumulative effect. Perhaps it's because I can well imagine what it would be like to suffer the loss of another person I love on top of everything else.

Despite all I've been through, despite the horror of seeing both my parents die in front of me, or the shock and guilt of killing a man myself, it's this—the oppressive and almost suffocating fear, dread and uncertainty I feel—that will break me.

I don't know whether I need to hang on for dear life and fight my way back to the one thing I have left in the world to hang on to, or to let myself shatter completely because I've already lost him.

Stuck in limbo, I am aware of very little as the clouds fly by. They disappear at some point, but it's only when my body shivers and I take notice of Garrett wrapping a coat around me, that I realize we've landed. My eyes struggle to focus on his face as he slips a ball cap over my head and tucks my hair underneath.

It's nearly dark wherever it is we've landed, making it difficult to determine my surroundings. It doesn't help that my eyes are swollen and blurry from all the crying I've done. Garrett helps me out of the plane and onto a small, rickety dock that seems to be the only manmade structure within sight. There's not even a shack at the end of it. No buildings further up on shore. No nothing –only acres and acres of water surrounded by trees and mountains all around.

I see the snow left on the peaks of some of them and it only adds to the chilling dread I feel. Turning to Garrett, I try to form the words bouncing through my head.

He seems to anticipate my question and begins explaining the dock is a private one, used by the owner during the summer months. He rents out the extra slips and offers refueling service several times a week. Apparently, Garrett radioed ahead and got him to agree to meet us for a hefty fee.

After walking me to dry ground, Garrett returns to the plane to secure it. A few minutes later, the sound of a diesel engine reaches my ears. Several minutes after that, our plane is being refueled.

I stand numb through it all.

I stay numb even when Garrett tells me we're riding into town to spend the night in a motel. It doesn't occur to me until we pass the first vestiges of civilization that there will be a phone there. Quite suddenly, the numbness recedes and is replaced with anxious anticipation and a good amount of fear. I'm afraid to even ask. Afraid to be told no. And even more afraid that I'll be told yes only to find out that the one thing I'm most afraid of has happened.

"Not tonight," Garrett says roughly. My hand hovers over the receiver of a plain black phone. It sits on a nightstand between two double beds, an alarm clock next to it.

"Please..." My voice cracks over the word.

"We can call in the morning. Not before then."

My legs feel like they're going to give out on me. I sit heavily on the bed closest to me, my eyes stinging. "Please. I need to know."

He shakes his head. "It won't change anything. I know this is hard, but–"

"You don't know crap," I growl, my voice more of a gasp. I'm losing control of my emotions again. Anger, fear, desperation, heartache, guilt, pain... anger. Anger...

"Call the hospital, Garrett! I need to know what happened after we left."

"No."

"I'm not asking you."

He laughs hollowly. "I see Her Fiestiness has returned. Good. You had me worried for a while."

I glare and pick up the phone. I manage to dial nine plus the first four digits of Esme's cell phone number before he gets to me. He yanks the phone off the desk, tearing the cord out of the wall. I stand in response and make for the door.

"Dammit, Isabella! This isn't a game."

He blocks my path and grabs my shoulders. I bite my lip and try to keep from falling apart. We've been around this bush before and I know I'll lose. I just want him to do this one thing for me.

"Why the hell do you care what happens to me?" I sob. "If knowing what happened to Edward is more important to me than my own safety, why does it matter to you?"

Sighing, he backs me up and sits me on the bed. "You are my responsibility, and a very good friend of mine entrusted you to me. Now, I'd rather be back at my bar, in all honesty. But it is what it is, and I am going to do this right."

I'm crying too hard to answer, or even beg him once again to reconsider, although I'm fairly sure that a pathetic please escapes me one last time because he apologizes before telling me to try and get some sleep.

Sleep never comes though. At some point my head finds a pillow, but my eyes remain fixed on the fuzzy digits of the alarm clock for hours. It goes off at half past five, and I sit up before Garrett's eyes open.

He takes his sweet-ass time in the bathroom before putting his boots on and sitting back down next to the phone.

His eyes are stern already. "Now, listen to me. Not a word out of you. Let me do the talking."

I nod, but say nothing. I'm quite literally holding my breath in anticipation.

The seconds seem to crawl by at a snail's pace. Finally, he has the hospital on the line.

"Yes, hello. I'm looking for some patient information. Yes, I can hold. Thank you."

He waits. I feel my heart flip-flop and my stomach clench.

"Hi, I'm hoping to get some updated info on a patient there. Thanks. Yes, his name is Edward Cullen."

Nausea builds, tears threaten.

"Yes. Uh, huh..." He sighs and looks at me nervously.

I feel my chest heaving. Please, please, please...

Garrett frowns. "Of course. I understand. I'm actually his cousin, I don't know if that counts."

I furrow my brow in confusion momentarily before realizing that they must have told him they can only talk to family.

"Yeah. No, I get it," Garrett says after a moment. "I just can't seem to get a hold of anyone else in the family and I want to know he's okay. You know?"

The woman's voice on the other line scarcely reaches my ears. "I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do."

I feel sick, but Garrett persists which I'm grateful for.

"Can you at least tell me if he's there or not?" There's a pause. "No, of course... I understand. I'll do that, thank you."

The click of the receiver in its cradle echoes through the room. There's a strong possibility that I'm going to be physically ill, never mind that I've eaten nothing during the last twenty-four hours. I leap off of the bed and race for the bathroom. I don't know how long I'm in there before Garrett comes after me. He pulls me up off of the ground and helps me to rinse my mouth before putting me back in my coat and hat.

"It'll be okay, Isabella."

"You don't know that..." I whisper. "You weren't there. You didn't see how..."

Edward's pale, ghostly face invades my mind. The sight of his blood pooled against a leather seat penetrates my consciousness. I try to shake it off, but fail. It stays with me, hovering just in front of all other thought.

Getting back to the plane is a blur. The same gnawing panic I felt while fleeing Washington yesterday returns during take-off. It becomes overwhelming, as do all of my thoughts surrounding Edward, and my mind eventually seems to find some peace in a semi-catatonic state. The rest of our flight is a complete blank and the next thing I know, we're landing again.

The plane circles round a long, wide canal that looks a lot like a huge river nestled between more, even larger, snow covered mountains. Ice is visible on both sides of the channel and what looks like a white river delta is spilling out from one mountainside and into the water. Garrett tells me it's a glacier and points out several more around us. Not that I find the information interesting or reassuring in any way.

I'm not about to start oooing and ahhing over the sight of cold, barren ice. I've always detested the cold and ice and, if anything, my extreme dislike for the environment we're landing in only serves to remind me how much I hated tiny little Forks when I first arrived.

It's somewhat ironic considering I'd give anything to be back there now. To be back in my bed curled up with Edward. Or stuck in his classroom after getting drenched walking between buildings. Or sitting at the Cullen's dining room table, pretending that that I'm not in love with their son. Anything would be better than the situation I find myself in now.

When I find the strength to ask, I learn we've landed in a place called Hyder, Alaska. It's tiny —tiny enough to make Forks look like a bustling metropolis— and while in another circumstance I might find it charming, I feel no small amount of despair when I think of staying here for very long.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not surprisingly, a good number of people in town seem to know Garrett. While they're caught a little off guard by his sudden appearance, they don't think twice about getting him everything he asks for, from fuel and an in-depth weather report, to hot food and a ride to the general store.

I guess fairly quickly that we won't be sticking around for long, because Garrett nearly buys the place out while we're there. I ask about checking on Edward again while his purchases are rung up. Garrett shakes his head, a sad, conciliatory smile on his face. That's all it takes to bring on the tears once more.

I beg. Again. He apologizes. Again.

"Why not?" I ask, feeling antsy while he loads up the truck he's been loaned with our supplies.

It's freezing out, but there's a payphone on the front porch of the general store and I can't seem to keep my eyes off of it.

Garrett looks at the phone and then off into the distance for a moment. "I just don't see the point of risking someone tracing the call here when the hospital isn't going to tell us anything anyway."

"We could try. Or you could call his mother. Or Alice. She contacted you before right? Maybe she knows something."

I shake with each word, my whole body trembling in the frigid air. My fingers and toes ache too, and my nose prickles with each inhale. In contrast, Garrett seems as unaffected by the cold as he is by my words.

"I'll be hearing from Alice in a few days. We'll find out what we can then, Isabella. I'm sorry. I know this is hell for you."

"It's worse than hell, Garrett. Please... Please do this for me?"

"I can't call the hospital again. And it's not like there's an internet café around here or anything." He gestures around the tiny town.

"Maybe we could ask someone if we could use their computer."

He glares at me for a long moment. I continue to shiver in the cold, my entire body convulsing.

"Fine. Come on," he groans.

I follow him without a second thought when he crosses the two lane road—the only road—that passes through town. He marches up to the Glacier Inn, the town's only bar. Once inside, Garrett saunters to the bar and asks to speak with the owner. A burly looking man eventually makes his way from the back. He and Garrett exchange a few words before the man laughs at Garrett and gestures to me.

"Ten minutes. Fifteen tops," Garrett says, producing a fifty dollar bill. A moment later, they shake hands and we follow the man into the kitchen and eventually out the back door of the bar, crossing a muddy lane to get to a trailer home just on the other side.

Several minutes later, after watching Garrett make random, seemingly unrelated searches on Google and Wikipedia, he manages to land on the homepage of the Peninsula Daily News. When it loads, an ordeal in and of itself thanks to the dial-up connection, the "Breaking News" header nearly stops my heart.

*Update: Shooting victim identified as popular Forks teacher.*

"That's it. There."

"I see it," Garrett says, clicking the link. He begins reading aloud softly. I follow along at my own pace through watery eyes.

-~-The victim of a violent shooting in the usually quiet town of Forks yesterday, was identified as 29 year-old Edward Cullen, a longtime resident and popular high school math teacher. Cullen was gunned down outside the home of his parents, Dr. Carlisle and Mrs. Esme Cullen, early Saturday morning.

A Forks resident since he was a boy, Edward Cullen is a graduate of the school he now teaches at and a military veteran, having served four years in the United States Navy before returning home to finish college and better his local community by becoming an educator.

While police are not saying who or what the still unidentified assailant was after, they are telling us that Cullen was injured while trying to protect another member of the household.

Dr. and Mrs. Carlisle Cullen are the current guardians of seventeen year-old Anna Bella Dwyer, who was also home at the time of the shooting. Officials tell us Miss Dwyer was uninjured, but has been placed in protective custody until the incident can be fully investigated.

In the meantime, the Cullen family has asked the community for both privacy regarding the matter and prayers for their son, as Edward's condition remains grave.-~-

My chest feels tight. "Grave...?"

Garrett looks up at me, obviously waiting for me to fall apart. He won't have to wait long.

"What kind of description is grave! I mean... of course his condition is grave. He was... he was shot!"

"I'm sorry, kiddo."

"You're sorry?" I squeal, standing. "I... I can't... Garrett, I can't do this. I can't..." I gasp an inhale. "I can't deal with this."

He sighs. "Look, at least it sounds like he's still alive. Grave is serious, but it's not dead. Not yet anyway."

My breath catches in my throat and I gape at him like he's just kicked the open in wound in my chest, tears blurring my eyes in the process.

He lets out an exasperated noise. "Shit, I'm sorry. Look, sit down. Let's try to check one more place."

He begins clicking away at the keyboard while I try to temper my breathing and stay calm. It's difficult with the combination of fear and frustration I feel. Not to mention the pervasive emptiness that looms on the horizon of my consciousness. It's like an actual entity, lying in wait for me to hear the words that will render me incapable of escaping it.

"Bella?" Garrett's voice startles me.

"Huh?"

"Are you seeing this?"

"What?"

He points to the screen. "There's nothing else there. It's all the same stuff. This one's just an affiliate post on one of Seattle's news media websites."

I nod, agreeing with his assessment despite the protests of my heart. I wonder briefly if he'd let me check for myself, but then he stands and says we need to get going.

The ride back to the dock where we left his plane feels ominous. Again, it's like the emptiness and loneliness that I felt for so long after my parent's deaths is just out there waiting for me. With each leg of our journey, each mile put between Edward and me, it seems to grow. I can feel it pulling at me as Garrett begins unpacking our borrowed pick-up truck and carrying things to the plane.

My ingrained sense of responsibility tells me I should help out, but I can't make my feet move. It's only Garrett's commanding tone that eventually gets my attention and stirs me to action. Still, my heart thumps loudly with each step as I force my body to comply with his order to get in out of the cold.

The sound of my own pulse gets louder the closer I get to the plane. For a long second, maybe even longer than that, I consider turning and running the other way. A couple of things stop me.

For one, it's got to be all of ten degrees outside. And two, in a town with a hundred people, where is there to hide? If I scream for the people here to help me, would they even believe that this man—a man they knew long before I ever came along— is holding me against my will?

Would they help me?

Is there even any reason for them to?

I wince a little at the last one. I'm not exactly sure I want to think about that just yet –about what my life will be like if Edward isn't...

No, I'm definitely not ready to think about that yet.

One foot robotically follows the other until I'm climbing back inside the red and black plane. We're taking off once more before I can get warmed up. I still shiver slightly as the plane reaches altitude. The cabin gets warmer. The plane levels out. Hours pass by.

The entire flight, it feels like the emptiness is chasing us, or chasing me, I guess. Garrett seems oblivious to it, which does nothing to help my ever growing sense of dread. I know this feeling. I've felt it before. And I don't want to feel this way again.

I don't want to go back to this place again. It was bad enough the first time, the void I felt after losing my parents. I never thought anything could be worse than how I existed in the months between when I buried them and when I met the Cullens.

I realize now that I may have been wrong.

"Are you okay?" a mechanically amplified voice says. I start at the sound, focusing my eyes forward. Garrett turns his head slightly, hand lifted to depress the button on his headset. "You're crying," he explains.

I reach up and touch my face. Sure enough, silent tears had been making their way over my cheeks long enough that they're thoroughly wet. Garrett waits for an answer. I shrug and look back out the window, as if I'm trying to see whether or not the void is any closer to swallowing me whole. As if it's a real thing.

What would Garrett say if I asked him to fly faster to escape it? On one hand, he'd likely think I'm nuts, but on the other, it would get a better response than asking him to fly back to Forks.

"I'm fine," I say instead. I'm far from fine. But what else can I say?

Clouds thicken, then thin and part as the plane descends a little. The sun gets my attention, bright but low against the horizon. It's shooting brilliant colors across the sky and landscape beneath it, but I can't seem to find the beauty I would usually see in it. Instead, I look robotically at the rugged setting beneath the sky, an alternating pattern of snowcapped mountains and deep blue waterways.

We continue our descent, dropping down enough to make my ears pop. Garrett reduces our altitude, lower, lower, further, until...

With speed that's honestly quite frightening, we rise over one final mountain and come down the other side like it's rollercoaster or something. At the bottom is another wide strip of water, similar to the large channel we landed on when we arrived in Hyder –only smaller.

The plane skims over the surface of the water, still high enough to keep me from looking straight down, but low enough to make me think we're landing soon. My eyes track along the wooded shoreline to see if I can make out any vestiges of civilization.

Eventually, what seem to be small houses –most with their own docks– begin dotting the shoreline. They are few and far between at first, but then appear more frequently as we go on.

"Pelican, Alaska," Garrett states as a harbor and more buildings come into view. There are quite a few structures as well as a marina filled with fishing vessels. "We're about 90 miles north of Sitka, 100 miles west of Juneau right now."

I nod but don't respond out loud. It's embarrassing to admit that I never gave Alaska any more thought after learning that Juneau was the state capital in the fifth grade. Not only that, but Sitka makes me think of a Disney movie I once saw called Brother Bear. Brother Bear makes me think of Emmett for some reason, which makes me think of Edward. Not like I ever really stopped thinking of him. My worry for him invades every other thought.

Several more minutes pass before the rocky shoreline opens up to reveal the wide mouth of a small inlet. Garrett flies lower, turning the plane into the cove and slowing. It's not terribly large, just long enough for him to bring the floatplane in for a landing. There's no dock here, so he steers us towards a small strip of sandy beach. As we get closer, I realize it's not sand at all, but snow.

The engines rev again and the extra power forces the plane up onto the snowy shore. I look around once the engine dies, feeling the despair settle over me as I take in the remoteness of the location and the finality of it all. We're no longer flying, no longer running. Which means there is no more escaping the emptiness that's been chasing me.

I fight against it anyway, knowing Edward wouldn't want me to give in. My parents wouldn't have wanted me to give in either, but I hadn't seen it coming when I lost them. I hadn't felt the fight going out of me. I hadn't felt myself turning into a shell of the girl I'd once been.

But then... for a moment, just for a night, she'd been whole again. And now I know the difference.

Garrett eventually insists I get out of the plane. He helps me down and tells me to put my hat and gloves back on before pointing towards the trees. I nod, letting him know I'd seen the outline of the cabin he says will be our home for the next weeks.

My stomach drops at the word. Weeks...

Loaded down with boxes, Garrett leads me through the trees. When we arrive, the place looks almost as desolate as I feel. There is snow on the porch and blown against the door as well. It looks iced over, as if it's been there for some time. Garrett sets his boxes down on a bench off to one side of the door and turns to me.

"I have to turn on the gas around back and get a shovel and broom out of the shed too. I know it's cold out, but we'll get you inside and get you warmed up soon. Will you be okay here for a minute?"

"I'll be... fine." Again, it's a lie. I'm anything but fine. And I won't be fine as long as I'm here.

While I wait for him to return, I look around a little bit. The cabin is nothing fancy, but it's not decrepit either. In another situation, it might even be charming. But in this situation, it's just depressing—like a wooden prison, perhaps just as sparse and hollow on the inside as I'm at risk of becoming.

By the time Garrett comes back, I'm actually a little afraid to see the inside and even more hesitant to go in there. It's like admitting defeat.

And I feel it as I step over the threshold into the cold, dark and stale structure. The acceptance of my fate washes over me. The room itself isn't as empty as I'd feared, but it doesn't really matter. I feel the fight go out of me and the emptiness rise up inside of me.

And as Garrett shows me to the single bedroom in the cabin, the bedroom he's giving to me since he gets the feeling I want nothing more than to be alone, I wonder...

How many times can a person become a shadow of herself and survive it?

Sniff, sniff... :(

Once again, you have my apologies if the tissues were needed. I'm actually in a bit of shock I've written such angsty fare. I'm really a wuss at heart and had sort of planned on glossing over this portion of the story a bit. But... then you all came along and fell in love with these characters just as much as I did, so... yeah, you get them for a little longer. It's just going to be the full experience now, heart fail and all. See you Friday!

-Ginnie