CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A month (and a slightly nicer Rosalie) later, and I got out of bed to find the whole house empty. Strange… they hadn't mentioned anything about going anywhere to me. I padded around the castle, but the last scent I had of them was yesterday's: they had gone.

Trying to ignore the fear and inevitable abandonment anxiety I was feeling, I went outside to continue the search, only to see a beautiful face I hadn't laid eyes upon since I was human…

Unnaturally still and white, with large black eyes intent on my face, my visitor stood on a knoll not five hundred feet away, beautiful beyond imagining.

I nearly collapsed from fear. He had haunted my dreams from the day they killed James, and now he was back. His eyes were crimson. Oh, no…

My vampire mind immediately turned to logic. My family weren't here; therefore he must have taken them too. How…? But that was irrelevant.

Logic also told me that, while I was a good fighter, no vampire could win against two of their own kind, and I knew that, if he was there, then Victoria couldn't be far behind. Alice had known something was up when the Denalis had mentioned he never came, why hadn't we been more careful? These two would be good fighters. I couldn't win here.

My chest seized in fear… I was going to die too. Despite all my near-death experiences that Edward had saved me from, I knew that I couldn't do this on my own, and he wasn't around to save me this time.

"Laurent."

I greeted him coolly, despite the fact that I would have liked nothing more than to vomit or collapse from fear. Even if those things were impossible for a vampire.

"Bella… at last…"

"Why are you here?" Maybe, just maybe, it would be innocent… but why would he have red eyes if he were still good? And why else would he looking at me that way?

"Victoria sent me – but I would have thought that you would have guessed that. She's sort of … put out with you, Bella. James was her mate, and the Cullens killed him, after all."

Curious. "Why me, specifically? I was just lying there, writhing on the floor, when he died."

"She thought it more appropriate to kill you than Edward – fair turnabout, mate for mate, and I've agreed to help her. I didn't know whether they'd turned you or not, but I like a challenge just as much as I like human blood, and she didn't mind who got rid of you, so long as it happened."

"Things aren't like that for us, anymore. Not for Edward, anyway."

"You're a poor liar, Bella." What? "If he didn't feel the same way as you did, how come he's been tracking the two of us for the past two years? Didn't help you much, mind you. He's terrible at tracking."

I didn't know what to say to that. Maybe it was some weird leftover instinct to keep me safe? That sounded like Edward.

"Regardless, I'll go ahead anyway. And if you knew what she had planned for you, Bella, I swear you'd be thanking me for this." He started his advance, slow and steady.

As I stood in place and crouched to fight, I managed to get out; "What did you do with my family?"

He looked slightly surprised. "Nothing."

He was lying, I was certain, but it was too late. He was too close for me to worry about them anymore. And if he didn't kill me, Victoria would. She'd be here any minute. But I knew I would fight with everything I had, regardless.

He suddenly sprung at me, and we were fighting.

This was different from the fighting I had done with my brothers – it was vicious, and not as perfectly choreographed as it was with them. We both fought for control and I emerged the dominant, lunging at his neck, only to have him escape each time. I heard things breaking as he started to make mistakes… But, distracted by the fact that Victoria had just run over the hill, I nearly lost my footing, and his teeth narrowly missed my arm.

"I'll get her before she wins if she gains the upper hand, Laurent, don't worry," she said.

I had been expecting her voice to be low, harsh, and threatening; instead, it was high, girlish, and dripping with honey. But her words terrified me. If I started winning, I would lose. If I toned it down, I would lose. No way out.

So I kept going, frustrated; hoping for a miracle to occur, I supposed. And I was the better fighter, so, unavoidably, I gained the upper hand. Now Laurent was making more and more mistakes, I would get closer and closer to his neck with my teeth. After a very close miss, Victoria, with a great screech of frustration, started to run towards me. I kept fighting, but knew this was the end…

Then there was horrible crashing sound, and another screech: a different one, not of frustration, but of surprise. I didn't have time to stop and see, though; I had already wasted my advantage in looking up to see Victoria.

Laurent and I increased our pace tenfold, and I think we both now knew that Victoria wasn't coming to help him. There were the unmistakeable sounds of fighting and I was dying to know who it was, but it would be too dangerous, especially with the speed Laurent and I were now fighting at. Anything but complete concentration would mean failure…

Laurent missed my grasp narrowly, and I screamed in frustration. I decided I had had enough of the fooling around, and got reckless, grabbing his waist and throwing him against a tree. It was one of the moves I had used when I had started out fighting as a newborn, and it was skill-less, relying on just brute strength. It never worked against mature vampires, Jasper had said. I never figured out what prompted me to do it right there, with Laurent.

But while slamming him against a tree was horribly risky, it had one advantage; surprise. The rookie move coming from the skilful fighter threw him completely, I think, and the shock made him freeze for maybe one-tenth of a second. Which was too long.

With an almighty shriek, I lunged at him, teeth bared, and tore his head off, followed by his other limbs. I hastily snapped two huge branches off the tree before he could start to put himself back together again, and rubbed them together as fast as I could. There was a single spark, and the branches burst into flame. I quickly dropped the branches and backflipped to avoid the flames that would consume me as easily as they did him.

I watched the flames, never taking my eyes off them as Laurent became a pile of ashes in a huge purple fire. I only paused to say to Victoria's unknown attacker, who I could hear was winning from her frustrated snarls, "Don't kill her, I want to know where the rest of the Cullens are."

But when I heard the reply, it came as if from the other end of a tunnel. The words didn't matter; all that mattered was the voice…

"Victoria hasn't done anything to my family. Trust me, I know. I have a talent for getting things like that out of people."

All I could hear was the voice. I knew that voice. I had never heard it while I was a vampire, but I couldn't mistake it. It was a symphony, a symphony more profound than any created by any man…

I turned, slowly, to confirm what I already knew. But what I saw floored me anyway. It was him.

How many times had I stared at Edward and marvelled over his beauty? How many hours, days, weeks of my life had I spent dreaming about what I then deemed to be perfection? I'd thought this was the one sure physical thing in my whole world: the flawlessness of Edward's face.

I may as well have been blind. For the first time, with the dimming shadows and limiting weakness of humanity taken off my eyes, I saw his face. I gasped and then struggled with my vocabulary, unable to find the right words. I needed better words. Having him here, seeing his face, I felt well. Whole. It was like there had never been any hole in my chest. I was perfect – not healed, but if there had never been a wound in the first place.

I'd never seen anything more beautiful – far away as he was, as mentally exhausted as I was, I could appreciate that. And the last two years meant nothing. And his words in the forest meant nothing. And it did not matter if he did not want me. I would never want anything but him, no matter how long I lived.

My legs didn't work anymore, and I sank to the ground, watching him with my arms wrapped around my legs. I did not fear for him; I could see he was about to win.

She tried to run away, but Edward was there, in front of her, and I heard his voice again.

"You'll never get another chance like this, Victoria, to finish the man who killed him. You can always run later, plenty of time for that. It's what you do, isn't it? It's why James kept you around. Useful, if you like to play deadly games. A partner with an uncanny instinct for escaping. He shouldn't have left you – he could have used your skills when we caught up to him in Phoenix. And I know that's why you felt compelled to come here today, because you sensed no danger."

She screamed incoherently at him.

"That's all you ever were to him, though. Silly to waste so much energy avenging someone who had less affection for you than a hunter for his mount. You were never more than a convenience to him. I would know."

She broke formation and snapped at his neck: a dangerous mistake, and one that would cost her dearly, I knew.

"You'll never touch her. I'm not going to let you. I've been making sure of that for the last two years."

She turned to run.

"Nooo. Stay, just a little longer..."

His teeth made it to her throat, and he could have been kissing her.

But with a vicious snarl, he did exactly what I had; her head came off, followed by her limbs and her torso. He threw every piece onto the fire.

And as the flames burned, he knelt there next to them, looking almost like he was tempted to jump into them, and started talking to himself. He sounded like he was in so much pain that for a second, I almost thought that the rest of the Cullens had been right, that he was in as much suffering as me.

"…but it's done now. What is there left for me now? …But that doesn't matter. To end the last possible way anyone could ever hurt her… I swore I could make her safe, and now I have. But to leave it so close, she nearly made it to my house… but why? That isn't where she is..." Why didn't he use my name?

He spoke, louder, not turning to look at me. "Who are you?"

When I spoke, it was surprisingly level.

"Look at my face, Edward. Try to read my mind."

He wouldn't be able to read my mind, I knew that. And I knew he would know me when he saw me; he had seen me as a vampire in Alice's vision, three years ago now…

He raised his head, slowly, painstakingly, until his eyes met mine.

And his face was shocked for a moment, but then it burst into the most incredulous, happy, confused, loving expression I had ever seen.

But not anger. Not hate, not disgust. And there was so much love and joy in his expression that I couldn't be reading it wrong.

I didn't know what to think for a second. He didn't love me, he didn't! Did he…?

But, slowly and piercingly, a sharp stab of reason resonated through my crystalline body. An epiphany, of sorts.

I thought of that night in Port Angeles, the cool morning just before the cliff dive, when I'd had my delusions. I'd come up with two options to explain them. Insanity or wish fulfilment. I'd seen no third option.

But what if…

What if you sincerely believed something was true, but you were dead wrong? What if you were so stubbornly sure that you were right, that you wouldn't even consider the truth? Would the truth be silenced, or would it try to break through?

Option three: Edward loved me. The bond forged between us was not one that could be broken by absence, distance, or time. And no matter how much more special or beautiful or brilliant or perfect than me he might be, he was as irreversibly altered as I was. As I would always belong to him, he would always be mine.

Was that what I had been trying to tell myself? All the little hints I had given myself, every time I'd slipped and allowed myself to think that Edward loved me… the truth?

"Oh!"

He had walked up to me in the meantime, and now stood maybe a foot away from me. He looked like he'd seen the most wonderful, amazing sight anyone could see. I supposed I did, as well. I was seeing it, too…

"Bella?"

I swallowed. Took a deep breath. "It's really me."

"You're so beautiful… and you're here…" He seemed unable to continue. Without another word, he pulled me towards him and wrapped me in his arms. The words, stuck a moment ago, came tumbling out so fast I had to work to catch them.

"Oh, God… I can't believe you're here, you're in my arms. I love you, Bella, with all my heart, and I'll never let you go again…"

Oh. My. God. To hear him say it like that…

Could a dead, frozen heart beat again? It felt like mine was about to.

But he hadn't finished speaking. "And don't try to spare my feelings, please – just tell me now. I need to know. Can you possibly forgive me? And canyou still love me, after everything I've done to you?"

I grinned and rolled my eyes, feeling like myself for the first time in two years. Finally free of the hole in my chest!

Our foreheads touching, I whispered, "What kind of an idiotic question is that?"

"Just answer it. Please."

"Edward, the way I feel about you will never change. Of course I love you – and there's nothing you can do about it!"

"That's all I needed to hear then."

His mouth was on mine then, and it was like he'd never kissed me – like this was our first kiss. And, in truth, he'd never kissed me this way before. No caution, no restraint. No fear – especially not that. Finally equals, after all this time.

It could have been seconds or days, weeks or years that had passed. I'd completely lost track of time, space: everything, really. Save for the fact that Edward was here, I was in his arms. And he loved me.

(A/N: Awww.

I wanted to go back a bit for Edward's POV, so the next chapter starts off with him tracking Victoria then goes right up until the end of BPOV and then a little further. Chapter On this was ALL taken from Dark Moon by Vampire Girl*aKa Soph*, with a few minor changes. Once again, I take no credit. Dark Moon is a fantastic story, New Moon from Edward's POV. I encourage you to read it. And I hope you enjoy this next part, as much as is possible with Edward suffering so badly… )