Disclaimer: If I owned it, I would have invented some other things. Like flying cars. I am not whizzing in the air. Ergo, no ownage on my part.

A/N: Hey, folks! I hope you've all been having fabulous weeks. Here's the next chapter of "Ivy Tree", one that I know will make a lot of you very, very happy. It's also one of my favorite chapters simply because of Emmett. I identify a little too well with Emmett, and that probably came out here. If some of you British folks don't understand some of my hillbilly references, let me know and I'll be happy to clarify.

Please enjoy! And review!

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"Edward, I've been thinking…"

I looked up from my book, a dog-eared copy of the Oresteia, and found myself looking at Jasper. I could hear him wondering anxiously how much of his earlier conversation I had overheard with Bella. That was a question I didn't want to answer yet, so I played stupid. "You're always thinking, Jasper," I remarked. "What, among the myriad of topics floating around in your brain, do you want to concentrate on now?"

"You can be high and mighty about your mystical mind powers in a minute, Edward," Jasper said cynically as he sat down beside me, capably hiding his relief that I wasn't going to bring up the conversation he really didn't want to discuss with me at all. "Just hear me out. I've been thinking about Bella a lot lately. I know that you've talked about this with both Esme and Carlisle some, but I was wondering…do you think conversion would heal Bella of this…thing?"

I blew through my lips in frustration. "Honestly, Jasper, no, I don't think it would work. I just don't think the venom would touch the mind—we've never seen any evidence to suggest that at all. It would heal her body of all its physical problems, sure, but when it comes to the mind, I just don't think that venom's going to cut it…" Jasper was shaking his head in the negative emphatically, trying to get in a word edgewise and failing as I rambled on, mostly to myself. "Oh. That's not what you were thinking? Sorry, didn't mean to run you over…"

"Oh, just read my mind already!" Jasper grumbled. "It's what you always do anyway… Besides it'd be faster than you attempting to be polite and have a real conversation for once."

I listened to Jasper's thoughts… and then I nearly jumped from my chair at the suggestion I found there. "You think the pain would bring her out of this?" I asked incredulously. "Are you crazy?"

"I don't like the idea of it any more than you do," Jasper replied hurriedly, his brow furrowed in concentration. "But still…it makes some sense, doesn't it? Pain like that simply can't be ignored. It might shock her out of the catatonic state. It wouldn't be a pleasant way to wake up to the world, true, but you never know. You bite her, and she wakes up healed and active three days later. All our problems are solved, and Alice is planning a wedding. Hopefully," his mental voice added unintentionally.

"She's hiding in there, Edward. I can sense that much. We've tried bringing her out gently… maybe pain is the only thing that can touch that different kind of pain…"

My mind whirled at this—could the pain of transformation possibly bring Bella out of her stupor? I hated the very thought of it—Hi, Bella! I left you behind supposedly for your own good and you tried to deal with it. Then the only way I could selfishly bring you out of your safe place again was to torment you with the worst possible pain in the world, and oh! Please believe that I still love you—but would it possibly work?

I pinched the bridge of my nose, the irritation of the action allowing my thoughts to center on the critical points. How much of the pain of the transformation would Bella be able to experience in the first place? She already didn't react at all to any of the needle pricks Carlisle and I had tried on her fingers and toes in order to test her reflexes…but I knew all too well that needles pricks had nothing on vampire venom.

Could anything be strong enough to veil the pain of conversion?

But then…if the pain didn't shock her out of the state…Bella would be frozen in that state. A vampire body didn't change, and the vampire mind changed only rarely. It would be exponentially harder to bring Bella out of herself once she was stone and bloodless, if not utterly impossible. Would it be worth the risk?

After a few long minutes, during which time these thoughts and more rushed through my brain, I finally answered Jasper. "It's a good thought, Jazz," I said carefully, "but I'm not willing to risk it unless there were no other options left to us. I'm afraid that if we were to try and bring Bella into awareness that way, if the pain didn't work, then she would be frozen like this forever. Only when she was at death's door would I be willing to try something like that, and even then I would have to decide what would be fairer to her."

"What do you mean by 'fairer to her,' Edward?"

I ran a hand through my hair at the tenseness of his tone. "What would you choose for Alice, Jasper, if you were in my place? Would you give her a short, painful life that ended in heaven…or an eternity as a physically perfect but soulless vampire? Bella wouldn't even have the intellectual pursuits as the rest of us, if she were unable to leave a bed. How would she feed? Can you force-feed blood to a vampire? If Bella was dying in this state, I would have to make that choice for her. I'm not sure I can make that choice to begin with, but I'm even less sure that I'm willing to risk condemning her to a forever of utter emptiness."

"I see your point…" Jasper admitted, his nose wrinkling in frustration. It caused some of his scars to ripple across his face—Alice would have laughed had she seen it. "I'm glad I'm not in your position."

"Wish I wasn't either," I said dryly. "But we reap what we sow."

"Yes…we do…" Jasper thought, gazing sadly at Bella's bed.

But before I could hear Jasper's thoughts on what he saw there, I heard Emmett's mind come into the foreground of all the other minds around me. He'd been singing the Brady Bunch theme in Italian constantly all morning, in a blatant attempt to keep me out of his thoughts. I hadn't even realized that he knew Italian…

Emmett's rather obvious way of being deceptive was excessively annoying, but I had tried to ignore him for the most part. When he made a mistake, I would hear it—I was sure this all had to do with whatever was keeping him in the forest for hours on end.

Today was the day when he finally goofed up.

Thankfully I was paying attention when Emmett thought gleefully to himself, "Oh, boy, just wait until Bella gets a load of this…it'll knock her socks off!"

I was out of my seat in half a millisecond and headed into the woods behind my younger brother. I could only just imagine what Emmett might be doing, all for Bella's apparent "good." The end justifies the means, that was Emmett's personal philosophy. After all, it had worked out well enough in his own life, what with Rosalie justifying the taking away of Emmett's soul in order to have true love and all that.

I made a mental note to myself not to follow in their footsteps.

Emmett heard me following him and foolishly tried to shake me off his track, but I kept up with him easily. After all, I was the fastest in our family. The skill came in handy every once in a while. My brother lead me on a merry chase for what seemed like forever, until he finally decided to just give up and head back for the house, thinking that he would rather me lose my temper there instead of near his secret project. Interesting. He was afraid of my anger. This should be good.

We burst into the living room with an enormous bang as the door hit the wall, Rosalie and Esme rushing in a blur down the stairs to see what was going on. Alice was already curled up on the white leather sofa in a prime viewing area, grinning delightedly at the commotion unfolding.

"All right, Emmett, enough's enough," I said grimly, blocking the exit with my body. I tried to ignore the obvious fact that Emmett was about as big as a house, and far less easily moved. "What are you working on out there in the woods, anyway? You can't hide it from me for all eternity, you know."

Emmett locked his jaw with unusual determination and crossed his massive arms across his chest. "Nope, buddy. It's my idea, and I've worked really hard on it. I'm not saying a word no matter what you say or do."

"Better give up now, Em," chirped Alice, obviously enjoying herself hugely. I could tell from her thoughts that she had orchestrated most of this herself, even though she was still keeping Emmett's part of the deal from me in order to prolong the suspense. "It'll be much the better for you if you tell us here, instead of letting Edward just go off and find your little secret weapon by himself. I can see that one for myself, dear brother, and it doesn't end well for either you or for your new toy."

Emmett clenched his jaw and remained unmoved. I stared at him. He stared back.

Rosalie hid a yawn behind her gracefully perfect hand. "Good Lord, you two, why bother getting so worked up about whatever it is?" she griped. "Nothing, in my opinion, is worth this amount of melodrama."

In unison, all of our heads snapped around as we heard a door open down the hall. Carlisle came out of Bella's room, looking bemused. Emmett and I straightened up a little, very much like human children do when their father comes home and they know they have to hand him a note saying they'd been fighting at school.

"All right, boys, what's going on?" Carlisle asked, eyeing us each individually. I knew from his thoughts that he was enjoying his family acting somewhat normally again, but that he was also missing the uncharacteristic calm that had been over the house lately. "Did Emmett lose a wrestling match with Edward again?"

"No!" growled Emmett viciously, his arm muscles flexing tightly as if he longed to prove himself then and there. "And if Edward didn't cheat all the damn time, I would beat him easily! I could squash him with one hand tied behind my back!"

"Untrue, but not the point at the moment," I reminded my brother, unable to hide a brief grin at Emmett's anger. He considered losing a wrestling match a sacrilege comparable to drowning puppies or knocking old people over for their canes. "Carlisle, Emmett was just about to tell me what he's been doing out in the woods that Bella would, according to him, enjoy to no end." I leaned against the doorway and gazed steadily at Emmett, who was presently singing the lyrics to Grease in his mind.

"Emmett?" prodded Esme gently, her golden eyes inquisitive.

Emmett took one look at his mother figure and melted, and in that same instant I understood what he had been doing. I didn't know whether to laugh, be proud, or be just outright annoyed. "Well…with Bella being so off her feed and all, I kept remembering what Ma used to tell us," Emmett said, a touch of his old Tennessean drawl coming back as he remembered his human years. "She used to talk all the time about how a swig of good whiskey would cure anything. Edward doesn't believe it, with all his hoity-toity medical study and all, but it used to really work. I remember Ma curing my little brother of ague with just one spoonful. Sure, he was a little tipsy for a couple hours, but then he got well real fast. And then another one of my brothers got bit by a rattler—"

"Emmett, spare us the countless brother stories," said Rosalie witheringly, even though her eyes were twinkling with something very like humor. "Just get to the point, please. I'd like to get back to work on my car at some point within the next decade. You had enough brothers to start your own football team."

"Sorry, Rosie," Emmett apologized sheepishly. "Anyway, I knew Edward would never agree with what Ma told me, because he's an idiot like that," he added just a little too happily, "so I decided to go ahead and do it by myself."

"How very Little Red Hen-ish of you, Emmett," said Carlisle with a smile that he quickly smothered in order to keep Emmett from getting angry. "Pray tell, continue."

Only too happen to continue be the center of attention, Emmett persisted in telling his story. "Anyway, I remembered that Bella relaxed and stuff when Alice laughed. I didn't want to do anything too awful, Edward, I swear it, man. I just wanted to make her laugh. I know you guys think I'm a grade A goof-off, which I am, but I'm still pretty attached to Bella myself, you know. I miss her tripping over nothing but air and starting fights with everyone without even meaning to and making Edward almost…well, not human, I guess, but at least somewhat livable." He grinned in my direction, unaware of the wisdom in his words. "She took you and changed you from a grouchy hundred year old geezer and made you into…whatever it is that you are now." He waved a meaty hand airily at me, narrowly avoiding knocking over a lamp as he did so.

There was a curious lump in my throat—a vampire had no business having a lump in his throat. I'd had no idea that Emmett felt like that about me and Bella…granted, I knew that he was one of my supporters when it came to my relationship with her, but I hadn't known that he felt so strongly about wanting to help her. I'd been wrong to put him down so easily. Emmett was just a big kid in a lot of ways, but I guessed there was more maturity there than I had previously given him credit for.

A huge, childlike grin spread across Emmett's face as he finally got to reveal his genius plan. "I've been working for days on…well, on my very own still. I'd almost forgotten how to make one in all this time of just sleeping in high schools, but a little research on the Net, and bang! I commenced to work, and I've got a still any old revenue agent would be proud to raid. Too bad those guys aren't really around anymore—this place could use some action of the governmental sort." I could almost see reruns of The Dukes of Hazard going through his brain as he talked. It was far too easy to envision Emmett driving a car with a Confederate flag on the hood… Jasper would undoubtedly be his stalwart companion in just such an enterprise.

Emmett shuffled his gigantic feet, and then looked around hopefully at the family for their approval. "I figured that if anything in the world could make Bella laugh again, it would be Edward finding out that big old Emmett—the goofball brother—had kept a still hidden from Mr. Freaky Brains. That's the kind of manipulation Bella used to enjoy… I wanted to give some of it back to her. And to you, Edward," he thought to me privately. "If Bella laughed again, then so would you. I've missed that, bro."

In his mind, I could see Emmett's still, and it really did have a unique kind of beauty to it. He'd obviously put a lot of time and care into his secret project, things that Emmett didn't usually have the patience to do. He'd sacrificed his free time in a misguided, but heartfelt, attempt to make Bella better again. The thought of Bella laughing again was…intoxicating… I hadn't realized that anyone had missed that blithe, uninhibited laughter as much as I had, and they truly hadn't. But Emmett, who so appreciated the joyous side of life, would have been certain to have missed this quality in my girlfriend. He would have missed what Bella's laughter did to me. He might have come in second place with me for missing her laughter, then.

I might have to let Emmett win a race or something sometime, just to thank him for caring so much…no, not a race. My pride, absurd though it was, couldn't take that much of a blow. Maybe a wrestling match…

Finally I said, "Thanks, Emmett. I'd like to see your still sometime, if you wouldn't mind showing it to me. It looks like…" I struggled to find an appropriate term. "Well, it really looks like something."

Emmett beamed. "Sure thing. You don't have enough appreciation for us hillbillies, Edward. We're pretty smart when it comes to the vices of life."

"Oh, I'm positive that that's true, Em," I agreed, really fighting a smile now. Sighing, I started walking back to Bella's room, feeling warmed by my family's caring. Alice got up and danced behind me, and somehow the entire Cullen clan ended up crammed in Carlisle's little study that he shared with Bella. It felt comforting to be like this again with one another…normal. If only it were possible that Bella could share in this moment with us—then our family would finally be complete again.

"So, Edward! When do I get to use the still, huh? I was supposed to make Bella laugh, you know, and I seem to remember some drunks laughing pretty hard in my day," Emmett commented eagerly, rubbing his beefy hands in a way that would have caused any hardened criminal to run crying for his mommy.

"Emmett, I love what you did. Really, in a hick sort of way, it was quite generous and amazingly sophisticated. But you know very well for yourself that I can't let you give Bella your half-crap moonshine!" I said exasperatedly.

"But Ma used ter say…" howled Emmett in protest.

"Maybe you should give some of that moonshine to Edward instead, Em," interrupted Rosalie with a sarcastic glint in her eye. "It just might cure all his ills."

Emmett's boisterous laughter filled the room for just a moment; right up until Alice leapt pell-mell onto his back and clamped her tiny hand firmly over his mouth. It was a stretch to fit her hand over his face, but she managed.

"Alice! What in the—" Esme started to ask.

"Quiet!" commanded Carlisle in a tone only vampires could have heard as he leaned over Bella's bed, his hand at her wrist.

Something felt different in the room all of a sudden…the feeling was familiar, but totally unexpected. What was it?

Then I heard it.

The breathing…so steady…so quiet and peaceful.

"She's asleep," breathed Alice, her wide, butterscotch eyes darting around the room and through the future without discrimination. "Really asleep, Edward, I mean. She's out of the catatonic state!"

I looked quickly over at Bella's bed. She had relaxed out of her tight curl and was sprawled all over the bed, her shortened hair spilling messily over the pillow. She looked alive again … real.

In her sleep, Bella suddenly sighed. It was the deep, relaxed sigh of a human girl at rest…and it was soulful. I'd never heard anything more beautiful in all my long life.

Jasper was suddenly holding me up by my elbows—otherwise, I would have been on the floor. "Steady, private—things are finally going right.

"I can feel it too, Edward. She's feeling very peaceful…I think she might even be dreaming. There's something there now." Jasper's face was alight with a brilliant happiness I'd only seen there a few times before. It was just like his face when he'd realized that we would take him and Alice into our family. It was very like the face that I'd only seen in memories, the memories that told me what his face looked like when he saw Alice holding out her hand for him on a rainy day in Philadelphia. "I can feel her again. Bella's there now. She's not hiding any longer. She's as clear as anybody else in this room to me."

Carlisle looked up from his work at Bella's bedside, his face both puzzled and happy. "I have to admit that I have absolutely no medical explanation for this turn of events. Why now? What brought her back to us now of all times?" He looked over at Jasper and me, and then at Alice where she was still perched on Emmett's back like a canary on a rhinoceros. "Jasper? Edward? Alice? Do you have any theories at all?"

Alice shrugged. "I've got nothing for you. This wasn't a future, decision driven kind of thing, Carlisle. It just…happened."

"I really can't say right now, Carlisle," Jasper murmured, looking suddenly nervous at being asked to give an opinion. "Maybe she just finally decided that she was safe, and that we weren't going to leave her."

I just stared at the bed blankly. According to Rosalie's thoughts, I looked like a fool. Fine. Like I cared. Bella was awake! It was real! Everything would be all right! It was too much to take in…

Nodding thoughtfully at what my siblings had told him, Carlisle gazed back down at Bella's relaxed body on the bed. "Well, the next step in this is obvious. We have to let her sleep as long as she can. Her body needs to recover—it's been a long, hard road for her. After that, I have no idea what should be done." He looked around for guidance, and his eyes settled on my sister. "Alice? Do you see when she'll wake up? That might give us some ideas as to how we should proceed."

Alice finally drifted down from Emmett's back as lightly as a feather floating on the wind, and nodded so fast that her black spikes of hair flopped all over the place in her exuberance. "Yes—I can see her now, just as clearly as I ever did. She's going to sleep for exactly thirteen hours, twenty-six minutes and seventeen seconds."

"Excellent. Thank you, Alice. With that in mind, everybody but Edward needs to leave the room now, please," Carlisle ordered kindly in a soft undertone. "Quiet though vampires may be, I don't want to run the risk of waking Bella when she needs this rest so badly. Knowing you lot, Emmett will end up chasing a grizzly bear in here just to keep us all entertained, and that kind of behavior always ends with Rosalie throwing something at him. Either that or Alice will bounce on the bed to speed things up. It's far better just to prevent that kind of thing from happening at the beginning, so march, troops."

At the quiet moans of my siblings, Carlisle lifted a consoling hand. "We have the rest of our lives to be with Bella—let's give her this time to recover, and let Edward have some time to be alone with her. They'll have a lot to discuss, I'm sure."

Did we ever. Part of me dreaded the coming conversation, but a larger part of me rejoiced at finally having the chance to have everything out in the open. I couldn't wait for the opportunity to redeem myself in Bella's eyes… But I couldn't bear to think what might happen if she didn't accept my apology. How could she? What right did I have to hope for grace from her when I'd hurt her so badly? What would these next few hours hold? That thought just made me feel even weaker.

After Jasper had kindly helped me to a chair, he followed the rest of my family out the door. Through Jasper's gift, I could hear the emotions that each member of my family was feeling. Esme's joy was nearly overwhelming, causing a smile to cross my face, relieving my nervousness for a moment. Rosalie was feeling strong relief, and Emmett was experiencing a mixed amount of happiness and chagrin. The chagrin was because he hadn't gotten a chance to test out his moronic whiskey hypothesis, I'm sure. Jasper was odd. He felt…liberated, for some reason. Carlisle was rejoicing both as a doctor and as a father.

And Alice…Alice's emotions were probably the closest of all to my own.

When the room was finally quiet and empty, I crept over to Bella's side and knelt on the floor beside her. "Bella?" I said, so softly that there was no danger of waking her from her natural slumber. "Bella, it's me. It's Edward. I love you, Bella. I promise you that I will never leave you again."

I looked at Bella's face in its childlike peacefulness, and knew that I would never get tired of seeing it. Forever wasn't long enough to hold her. Forever wasn't long enough to love her.

If only we could have forever…

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A/N: You have three choices. 1.) You don't review. I'm very sad and I don't update quickly. 2.) You don't review. I'm very sad and I don't update quickly. 3.) You review. I'm happy. I update.

I'd review. But that's just me. Thanks bunches, my peeps!