Chapter Twenty: Patience

A/N:

My warmest love to you from beautiful, beautiful Paris! I snuck away and found an internet connection and gladly present you with the next installment that has haunted my dreams, given me nightmares, and challenged me to the point of insanity.

My sincere apologies that I have taken so long to complete this chapter. I have struggled every day with it, and whilst it hasn't been easy, I'm glad I've persevered. Thank you for all your encouragement. I've gotten the nicest messages, and the kindest support. I really appreciate it that you are interested in what I'm writing. If the formatting is a little off or something, please forgive me. It's too hard to tidy it up in the limited time I have.

It's been a long time, so please feel free to take all the time you need and perhaps read the last chapter to remember where in the hell I left you dangling last.

Thank you bookbag for my sanity, carrie3101 for being a sweetheart and thank you to this chapter's guest beta gutterfairy. It is an unenvyable task. (Unenvyable... is that a word? Is that the right spelling? I rest my case.) xo

Calmly, calmly, calmly. Shhhhhhhhh.

Count to ten.

Count to twenty.

Count to….

This is not the time to panic, he chided himself. Keep a hold of yourself.

He tried his best to sit motionless in the colourless chapel, the underlying smell of beeswax furniture polish layered over the mahogany and dust making him nauseous. Her name rang in every heavy echo of his heart. Every single beat was her name. It is how it always was and how it would always be, for as long as this blood threaded through him.

He could be alone for years, he suddenly realised in horror. Decades. The rest of his life without her. He was doomed in the most beautiful way. Time abruptly gaped open, a yawning chasm, and he found himself gripping the edge of the church pew like he was at risk of falling away, vanishing into the dark.

Panic blistered his stomach and her name drummed faster. She was being pulled away by a tide, he could feel her drawing away, and he was completely powerless to stop her. She would leave him; she no doubt had to, even though he was sure a part of her yearned to stay with him. He was lucky he'd had her for as long as he did, actually. A blink of an eye. Never enough. A lifetime, a moment.

He would be haunted forever by everything she had touched, all that she had been to him. His bed was engulfed in her scent. Snapshots of her cheek against his pillow flickered behind his eyelids.

He was finding out the hard way how awful it was to sleep without her. When he'd finally been able to sleep last night, he'd been pressed down flat by the weight of this love, barely breathing. In his dreams, he vacillated between technicolour nightmares of what her loss would do to him, and luscious dove-grey hallucinations of her remaining with him always. Whilst his soul could howl that an army could not tear her away from him, in truth, he knew it was not up to him. If she didn't want to be caught, then he was alone now in every way that mattered.

The need to touch her- her hand, her fingers, just for warmth that he could not find- was splitting him in half, and though he appeared outwardly calm, save his shaking breaths, inside he was desperate and wanted to crawl to her.

How could she leave him behind, here, in this place, alone?

Carlisle raised his eyes to the high, narrow windows. The lack of flowers, or colour, or friends seemed obscene, and he was trying not to let this make the pain worse, but it was spreading through him like a toothache. He was a ship slowly running aground, inch by inch.

He allowed his head to drop forward a little, until all he could see was the first mark, then the next, black on black, as his tears fell on his suit pants.

"Dearly beloved," the minister began after clearing his throat, and Edward's hand appeared in Carlisle's peripheral vision, jolting him back into himself a little.

I'm not alone.

Carlisle gamely took a breath. He took his son's hand, and their roughened palms pressed together and their fingers linked loosely. The tightness in his throat eased and was replaced by the squeeze of his heart as he felt Edward's deep sigh.

Carlisle blinked out another tear ruthlessly, composed himself and lifted his head. He regarded the minister with as much benign courtesy as he could muster, as it began.

The minister was clearly taking creative licence with this funeral. It probably wasn't common to have only six people in attendance, to have no readings or music. He was probably giving the abbreviated kind of funeral more suited to a drifter found in a thawing snow bank, rather than a woman who had been loved more than heaven and earth.

It was impossible to believe Esme had actually wanted her funeral to be this way, and as Carlisle quickly glanced at the tiny white snowdrop he had put on her plain coffin, he felt a small moment of defiance. He could just imagine Esme's mock-frown, which always turned into a smile, and then into a laugh.

"No flowers, no friends. Just my family, and just get it over with," she'd said again and again as she'd laid in bed, her cheek against his palm, her velvet eyes deep with the surety of what she wanted, and what she did not. "I don't want everyone I know to be crammed into a church, wearing black. I've done it before, for people I loved, and it was always so tragic that it overlaid my memories of them a little. I do not want that, Carlisle, so don't let that happen."

And of course he had promised her faithfully. He could deny her nothing as she had slowly unraveled over the weeks and months.

But when he'd sat watching over her lifeless body on the night she'd died, he had already been mentally planning to defy her wishes. He'd wanted to fill a more beautiful church with her friends and the soft waxy scents of candles and lilies. Stained glass and choirs, the voices of her loved ones, stories of her life and poetry written by souls just like Esme hundreds of years ago. He itched to write a list. He opened his mouth countless times to call for his children to come and begin work on the tribute that his heart had sketched.

But final wishes were final for a reason, and he had turned back away from the door to watch her, marveling at her stillness, the way that death seemed to only be the deepest sleep. The fires that had burned inside her had faded out until her skin was as cold as glass, and he was left in ashes.

She'd never really seemed afraid, as the sweeping shadows slid towards her over the months they'd had left together. "Do you remember a time before you were born?" Esme had mused once as they lay side by side on their bed, the silence of the empty house almost ringing in their ears. "Think back to a date in history, some historical event before your birth, Carlisle. You weren't twisting and crying from the unfairness of not being in this world to witness it. You'd just waited, suspended in the dark, with no cares, no pain. I imagine being gone to be like that. Just like returning to a nice dark, warm pocket. Back to the waiting place."

Carlisle's whole career had been about beating back the shadows from his patients, allowing them a reprieve from pain, or being taken altogether. He'd wanted to say to her that he could not remember a time before her, but he did not of course, and as the afternoon sun had cooled and she had finally lain sleeping, her breath shuddering, he knew that soon she would be able to wait for him without care, and it would be his turn to suffer.

Even as he'd sat with Edward and the woman from the funeral home in his study, listening to Edward detail the sparse plans Esme had left, Carlisle had ached to interject. There would be nothing of her there, he wanted to say.

He caught sight of the coffin again and looked away. He'd been right.

"First Corinthians," the minister began after a frankly awkward pause, and Carlisle inwardly groaned. The poor fellow was probably trying to pad out the service a little. He tried to telegraph with his eyes that it was not necessary. But the minister began reciting the passage from memory, his pale eyes half closed and unfocused.

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal."

He cast a glance over the small collection of mourners and added louder, with the surprisingly dramatic timbre of a frustrated thespian

"And if I have prophetic powers, and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing." He left the word hanging impressively in the air, and beside Carlisle, Edward and Bella both shifted in their seats uncomfortably.

If she'd been here, Esme would have found that very interesting.

Carlisle, she would have sighed wistfully. When will they realise that they're in love?

The minister's face was growing visibly redder by the minute, a rising tide line mottling his neck as he squinted against a weak shaft of light. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the lectern.

Carlisle realised that Esme would have positively enjoyed this. "Isn't he sincere?" she would have whispered under her breath, delight making her breathy. "I'm sure he has a wonderful singing voice. He should have ended up on Broadway, not in God's chorus line."

Biting back a snicker at her naughtiness, Carlisle reconsidered. His first thought hadn't been exactly right. What Esme had loved best in life was here; her family. He twisted his wedding ring to distract himself from the inappropriate urge to laugh. He felt like he was trapped in an absurd dream. Any moment, he would wake up.

Please let me wake up.

He allowed his eyes to drift down along his family, observing their various states of discomfort and distress, wishing he could comfort them somehow.

The pew was polished to a high shine by someone very devout indeed, and all of them were finding it hard to remain seated upright. The fine fabric of their mourning clothes simply had no purchase, and almost in unison they would slide down, lower and lower, until the girls' toes touched the ground and the large men became more horizontal. Simultaneously they would hitch themselves up with their elbows or each other and straighten their backs determinedly. Only to begin the infinitesimal slide down once more.

Edward was on Carlisle's left. He was glaring at the minister, a vein on his temple, as though the man were deliberately antagonising him. While he still held Carlisle's hand in his cool, dry grip, he was clearly agitated, or upset, and his knee jiggled in rapid staccato.

He'd been in this mood for the entire drive to the chapel; restless, brooding, though he was attentive and considerate to his father. His dark charcoal suit threw his skin into pale relief, made him look older; his perpetually ruffled hair scraped into as neat a formation as he could manage. He'd helped Carlisle into the car, and had driven off, giving Bella no option but to ride with Emmett and Rose. Carlisle had seen her small figure on the top stair, her hand raised, wilting, and whilst Edward had only accelerated faster, he had barely taken his eyes from the rear view mirror.

During the short drive, Carlisle had felt like the child, being driven, being taken somewhere. The relief of being cared for, after so many months, years, a lifetime of caring and treating, was something he had not fully processed. It was like letting out a breath that had been held for too long.

Carlisle felt a little odd as he remembered sitting in the passenger seat, watching his son's profile as he drove to this place on the outskirts of town. It was strange how in the shafts of light strobing through the wind-ravaged pines and firs how his own son could look like a stranger, but simultaneously so familiar that it was like looking at his own shadow. Was this what it was to love someone?

The thought had been confusing, and Carlisle had closed his eyes, and twirled the little snowdrop in his fingers idly, its petals just a blurred star of white.

Edward was undoubtedly somehow changed over the past few days. It was as pronounced as a history museum's display of human evolution. Knuckle dragging caveman to this straight-backed man in the tailored suit. But being Edward, he could slip between civilised and savage in the blink of an eye when his heart took over. He oscillated too wildly. Carlisle wondered if that heart were tamed for good, would Edward level out into the kind of man he clearly could be?

"Love is patient, love is kind; love is not jealous or boastful…"

Carlisle's eyes drifted down to Bella who next on the pew, and saw her absently press her hand on Edward's bouncing knee. Obediently, Edward stilled, exhaled in a soft huff, and tried to catch her hand before she tucked it away, largely out of habit, not meaning to be cruel.

Carlisle tried not to smile. Nothing had changed; they had always been like this and they probably always would be. They would fall asleep side by side on the loveseat in his study when they were small, coiled together like ribbons, their synchronized breathing the soundtrack to his afternoons of endless paperwork.

Carlisle had commented that it was virtually the only time they weren't taking turns tormenting each other. Esme had countered that it was the only time they weren't running from, or to, each other. They had both been right.

When they had filed into the church, Bella had tried to slide past Edward to the end of the row; her turn to run. Trying to remain on the fringes was too natural for her and she did it without realising. Edward had always hated when she did this, and unsurprisingly had tugged her down gently beside him. She'd clearly had reservations about that, and had glanced behind herself several times, no doubt watching for Michael's arrival. She was pale and drawn, with a tremor in her hands, but she had the stubborn tilt to her chin. Ever wanting to do the right thing, she was listening to the minister as though there would be a pop quiz afterwards.

There was something different about her too, Carlisle thought in between glances as he gave the appearance of listening. Her lovely fragility had a steel edge. He knew that look. She was digging her heels in. He might have been reading too much into her grave profile, but Carlisle prayed it was Edward she was about to fight for.

As if on cue, Bella slid her hand from under her leg and offered her palm to Edward, who took it instantly, stroking her fingers, rubbing them, reminding Carlisle of how he had stroked the snowdrop.

Their heads tilted together conspiratorially, and although no words were spoken, Edward's face twisted in frustration and he let out a groan so loud that the minister paused. He lost his train of thought momentarily before continuing in a slightly disapproving tone, lancing Edward with a meaningful look as he intoned,

"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways."

It was unmistakably an admonishment- the minister had correctly picked Edward as the one naughty boy in every Sunday school class or choir that he'd ever taught. There was always one. The boy who had a mouse in his pocket or a comic book in his Bible.

Carlisle squeezed Edward's other hand, trying to suppress a smile.

"For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood."

Edward's fingers tried to read Bella's goosebumps like Braille, though he was trying as best he could to ignore the soft murmurings of her thoughts.

He told himself he wanted to give her space and privacy, and that he wasn't afraid.

"Afraid?" Bella whispered under her breath.

Carlisle was surprised to see Edward releasing Bella's hand.

"So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."

Emmett sat on the other side of Bella, and wore his old black suit like a pair of pyjamas. He gave the minister his full attention, though he glanced to Rose regularly. She was clearly uncomfortable, perched on this plank of wood.

As Bella had done to Edward, Emmett offered his beefy palm to Rose, who took it gratefully as she tried to balance herself, and their heavy baby, on the edge of the pew.

She sighed inwardly. They did not design this seating for pregnant people. She was glancing about herself, the word why almost visible on her slightly parted lips, her blue eyes glazed in tears that this bland funeral could just not prompt her to shed.

It was the Ikea of funerals. It was practically flat packed. It was perfectly serviceable, put together at a moment's notice, and would blend in with millions of others with no discernible differences; it would never become a treasure. Why was it this way? So impersonal and painfully generic?

Esme wasn't about this place, thought Carlisle as he dutifully tuned in to the minister giving a shorthand sketch of Esme's life. Name, birth place, key life achievements, her family left behind. Nothing at all about the poetry she had infused their life with; no mention of her giggling fits or her almost primitive superstition; the way she chased beauty and fate like a child after a bubble.

Her silhouette, backlit by the hall light in the bedroom doorway as she returned from checking the boys during a storm. Half finished books all over the house, sometimes ten at a time, but she always knew where she was up to, and from the closest she'd remove her makeshift bookmark- a feather, a piece of string, and drop back into whichever world she held in her hand. It was impossible to capture her every tiny nuance, every act of generosity and faith that stitched her life's tapestry into something bigger. In a way, it was probably better that the minister did not even try.

All Carlisle knew was that she didn't want to be remembered in a place like this.

"Send me on my way, then get home and have the kind of party that will make me sad I'm not there," Esme had said. "Have the kind of party that could tempt me back, just for a night, and I'll be there. I'll be with you as long as I can."

Carlisle remembered crying into her neck that night, and every night thereafter. He had always taken care to make sure his tears slid quietly, although of course she would have known.

He felt oddly purposeful as he looked forward to tonight. They would call her back to them tonight. A beautiful celebration of the gift of her life, seated in the only kind of church she'd ever worshipped in. Her home.

If only he could have some kind of sign from her tonight.

With a chill in their hearts, they obediently echoed the word Amen, and it was over, thankfully, barely ten minutes after it began.

Carlisle watched in surprise as Edward rose to shake hands with the minister, his serrated dark energy tamped down behind a façade of grim civility. He was taking his role as family spokesperson very seriously it seemed. Emmett, whilst technically older and perhaps more entitled to the role, merely watched his brother with a soft kind of tolerance. Bella watched Edward too, always unaware of her expression when she watched him. A kind of half-fearful fascination.

Love is terrifying, Carlisle mused.

Bella stood, stretching her stiff back. She met Carlisle's gaze; perhaps a little puzzled by his indulgent expression as he watched her. She caught sight of Michael, seated in the back row. Carlisle had been wondering when she would notice the funeral's sixth and last attendee. She dropped her thin black clutch bag in her surprise, and ducked to retrieve it. From Michael's vantage point, she might have looked like she was trying to hide.

"Carlisle, I—" She took his hand, and he smoothed away the wrinkle on her brow with a kiss. She was a grown woman now, although to him she would remind him of the half-orphaned creature that had crept into their house so timidly. She felt like his daughter, his family, in every way. Carlisle had always felt a pang of guilt when he saw how much she loved him. He always felt that he had somehow taken her from Charlie. How could anyone willingly give up anyone so thoroughly, beautifully good? Maybe he'd thought he was doing what was best for her. Maybe he'd known that he had nothing left in him to give her. Poor Charlie. The loss of Renee had….

Destroyed him.

Carlisle swallowed and abruptly hugged Bella, crushing her, wanting to tell her to not freeze herself over like her father had.

"Do exactly what you need to do, sweetie." Carlisle watched her cheeks bloom into pink, and hoped that his train of thought hadn't changed his expression into one of pity. "Do what is right for you. Do the right thing, whatever you think that is." She blinked, and her eyes filled with tears.

"This hurts," she managed, looking around but clearly meaning something else, pressing her clenched fist into her stomach.

She turned to look at Michael sadly, watching him raise a hand in greeting to Carlisle. Carlisle returned the gesture, and smiled at Bella. "He's a nice man," he offered, feeling somehow obliged to give balanced advice.

The words burned in his chest, but it wasn't right to say them. She'd do anything, agree to anything, and it simply wasn't fair to say it aloud.

Choose Edward. He's loved you with every cell in his body, every day of his life. He's flawed and hopeless and only half of himself without you.

"Michael IS nice." She let out a sigh, squaring her shoulders a little. "Well, he's been awful today, but so have I. I've treated him badly for a long time, but… I'm going to try to do the right thing by him." She glanced to Edward, who was watching her with an unreadable expression as the minister filled him in on the church's fundraising efforts.

"Don't rush into anything," Carlisle warned as she turned back to catch Michael's eye. "Don't think about anyone but yourself. This is your decision. However it impacts on others, they will deal with it."

Carlisle motioned for her to go, and watched her stride down the aisle towards Michael.

Her heels made firm clicking sounds, and she'd never looked so lovely, or so resigned, thought Carlisle.

Edward trailed off mid sentence as he watched her go, and the minister looked at him askance. Emmett stepped forward, his hand on Edward's arm, seamlessly filling the uncomfortable silence and continuing the conversation. Carlisle snapped back into the moment and joined them, thanking the minister for the service.

"Edward," Rose said, her runny nose giving her voice a petulant twang. Edward turned and walked to her, his face blank, giving away nothing. He stood near the pew, rocking back and forth on his heels, his eyes narrowed as he studied the rectangle of light at the end of the aisle where Bella and Michael had disappeared.

"Go after her," Rose urged, taking a tissue from her handbag and giving her nose a vigorous blow. "Please, don't let her make the wrong decision."

Edward shook his head. "I shouldn't." Even as he spoke, he was gripping the end of the church pew.

"Don't give up," Rose pleaded softly.

Edward could not help smiling at the solemn belief and love in her eyes as she moved over, stood on tiptoe to straighten his tie.

"I'll never give up on her," he said quietly, catching Rose's fingers to stop her fussing further. "But I have to… control myself a little. I've been playing unfair for too many years. This is her decision. Whatever she decides to do, whoever she picks, we all have to support her in it."

He squeezed Rose's hand as she opened her mouth to argue. "I mean it, Rose. We just have to trust Bella to make the best choice for her."

Tears welled in Rose's eyes as she took in Edward's heavy resignation. "You don't think she's going to choose you, do you?"

He blinked, and in that moment, Rose saw the depth of his pain.

"She shouldn't," he said softly. "I told her everything last night… she knows now. She knows that I can't offer her the things she needs. Things like a house… stability…" He trailed off, gestured vaguely, looking impossibly tired as he wrenched his tie looser.

"Privacy…" he muttered to himself.

He touched two fingers to Rose's rounded belly, before realizing what he had done and recoiling awkwardly. He changed the subject abruptly, flipping from the intensely intimate to the banal so quickly that Rose was momentarily lost.

"Did Emmett pick up that dry cleaning for me?"

Rose grabbed his hand and pressed it firmly against the side of her stomach, smirking at his look of shock when the baby moved obligingly. "Yes, it's done. But I want to know-"

Emmett joined them. "What are you two plotting over here?" His gruff voice echoed off the walls.

Rose swung her hair from out of her eyes. "Bella's gone outside with Mike, hopefully giving him his marching orders. I hope he's crying." She smirked at the thought and she stamped her foot to try to combat her worry that everything was going horribly wrong. She winced as her baby echoed the motion and stamped a foot too.

Emmett smiled at her petulance, caught himself, and frowned. "Hate to say it, but Mike's done nothing wrong." He gathered Rose to him, rubbing the small of her back with his palm. "Just because you don't like him doesn't mean he's bad for Bella." He shot his brother a look of apology, and Edward shrugged miserably, his clothes drooping as though he were soaking wet.

"Do you like him?" Rose challenged Emmett in a hushed tone. "Do you want him as part of this family? Do you think he brings out the best in her?"

Emmett opened his mouth, and ever the diplomat, cast his eyes to the ceiling as he tried to work out how to answer. He glanced at Edward, who looked like he was in physical pain, his jaw tight. He wanted to shush Rose, to tell her that she was only making the situation worse, but she interrupted before he could say anything.

"He'll make sure she's even less involved with our family. I know his type. He'll gradually cut her off from us. It will start with just a missed birthday or reunion, and then it will be a year gone by, and the baby will be starting school, and we'll just never see her again. We'll get a Christmas card, but she'll just… fade away from us," she trailed off, fighting tears, crossing to the window to try to see out.

She realised that the minister was watching and belatedly pretended to be admiring the early 1970's architecture, which no one had ever had cause to admire before.

They should spend a little less time praying, and a little more time cleaning windows, she thought in frustration, only able to see the grimy outline of Bella and Michael on the lawn beside the chapel. She did not see how Edward had turned his head away, and how Emmett was rubbing his shoulder.

"It's true," Edward said to Emmett under his breath. "He's told her that she's to never see me again. Fucking prick. She did say that she wouldn't take orders from him, but he'll wear her down."

"Just because I don't actually like him doesn't mean that he's a bad guy," Emmett finally conceded to Rose as she rejoined them. "Are you happy? There. I don't like him. He's not a bad person, he's just not the right person for her."

Rose raised her eyebrows in triumph.

Edward studied his cufflink impassively, his eyes narrowed in an expression that could have been misinterpreted as anger by someone who did not know him.

"It's true, Rose. He's done nothing wrong. Trust her like I trust her. I'm going to be hurt I think," he said, holding up his hand to silence Rose, "but I want you to support her, please, for me. Be her friend if she pushes me away."

"You're trusting her to hurt you?" Rose shook her head.

"I'm learning that… loving someone…means just putting yourself in their hands. Blind faith that they will do what is right. That's what ma used to say. And if you know that's what they want, it's easier to bear." His tone grew rough. "Michael isn't such a bad choice, if you look at it. He's done what I should have done for her, all these years. I was too selfish. I didn't think about the future. I didn't go and find her, and I sure as hell didn't ask her to-"

"You should be marrying her," Rose interrupted, their sentences overlapping, their words tangling.

The silence settling like snow around them as her words rang in the cavernous space.

Edward looked down, around himself and realised he was standing exactly where a groom would stand. The floorboards were a paler, wheaten colour here, worn away by the nervous shuffling of shoes.

"Yes, well." There was nothing else he could say. He stared at the ground. He'd done nothing to deserve her, nothing to win her. His passion for her was more substantial than his own skeleton; it was the frame that his entire being clung onto, like vines. This love was like a mythological beast, fanged and clawed, desperate to sleep at the foot of its mistress' bed.

It was a disturbing image, and he felt oddly protective of Bella. Why should she live with someone who was so fundamentally unhinged?

Edward had never had anyone love him the way he loved her. He would never allow it, he promised himself as he straightened, the sight of his mother's coffin giving weight to his vow. If she gave up on him, he would never let anyone else in.

"I'll trust her," Rose promised rashly, alarmed at the bleakness in his eye and the taut silence. "She'll choose you. I know it." She hugged him as tightly as she could, and finally his arm rose to wrap around her shoulders. "She'd be crazy to give you up."

"It's alright, Rose," Edward said quietly, seeming to snap himself to attention. "I need to think about dad, not obsess about myself for once."

Emmett patted Edward's shoulder. "We'll all look after you," he said, clearing his throat twice. "You'll get through this."

Edward looked at his brother, and suddenly flashed his white teeth in an instant of humour.

"You asked me a question a few nights ago when you first arrived. About me and Bella's connection…. About that thing I can do…."

Rose's head swiveled slowly as the two men stared at each other for what seemed an age.

Surely even her baby was pressing its ear to her belly button.

The sun slowly, slowly slid out from behind the cloud cover, and the branches shook the light into confetti. Edward rubbed the back of his neck as he confessed.

"It's always, always, only been her."

Emmett breathed out and nodded. "I think on some level I've always known it."

Rose's face was pink with self control, and she made herself a promise of her own. She would never ask Emmett what that had meant.

(Unless, she reasoned with herself, the conversation was heading in that general direction. Then she'd weave it in. But she wouldn't directly ask him.)

"Thank you for telling me," Emmett hugged his brother. "I knew you'd tell me in your own time."

Edward's face twisted. "I've done too much in my own time. I need to learn how to control myself."

With as much dignity as he could muster, and feeling exposed and yet somehow oddly lighter, like a slate wiped clean, Edward moved to stand beside Carlisle, to join him in the unbearable business of waiting.

Bella shivered but resisted the urge to wrap her arms around herself. She needed to feel this; feel everything. Reality seemed heightened, and as she stood under the sour sky and spoiled clouds, the relief of finally speaking these words to Michael was astonishing.

Whilst she stood steady, her bearing oddly regal, she focused on the task at hand, rather than the terrifying implications.

Truth be told, she felt like she had just leapt out of a plane and was flailing blindly in the direction of the ripcord.

She could do nothing but stand by and wait patiently as Michael worked through this new knowledge, although his asthma attack was taking priority.

"You're okay…. You're okay," she said, regretting that her voice was a little sharp as she put a hand on his elbow. "Do you want me to get you some water?" She wasn't sure if this was the right thing to offer him. He'd never had an asthma attack in the time they'd been dating, and it was frightening to witness his second in as many days. His complexion was marshmallow white and petal pink. The last thing she needed was him passing out. Thank God Carlisle was a doctor.

"Don't bother," Michael replied vaguely. He wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. He had a bee sitting on the edge of his lapel, but she didn't have the heart to tell him.

"I'm sorry. I am so sorry for everything that's happened," Bella said again, beginning to feel unsure if he had even heard her. He looked like he was in shock. She looked around for somewhere for him to sit, but there was nothing but low hedgerows.

"Yes, it's alright…" Michael trailed off faintly, and then seemed to mentally shake himself. "I've changed my flight; I'm leaving tonight. If you want, leave your car here, fly back with me." His face puckered into a smile, and she began to feel alarmed. He had the soft blurred eyes of someone in the grips of a mental break.

She stepped forward and touched his sleeve. "You heard what I said, didn't you?" She caught his eye, and repeated the words again, making herself firm. "I'm staying here."

He shook his head, the sickening little smile forming on his mouth again. "Come on, Bella." He shook his head, as though she were a child making a distasteful joke.

Her gaze did not waver, and she decided to rephrase.

"I'm staying here. I need to stay with Carlisle, and I'm so sorry, but I'm… I'm leaving you, Michael."

Michael recoiled. "What?"

"I'm sorry," she said, and unclipped her purse and scrabbled around for the ring. She pressed it into the palm of his hand, hoping that the action would make him realise she was serious.

He gaped at it incredulously like he had never seen it before, let alone studied it with a jeweler's loupe as he assessed its facets and flaws.

The blank shine of his eyes mirrored the diamond.

Watching him, Bella's chest began to hurt. He turned the ring over in his fingers again, and ever the lawyer, he began to weakly cross examine her.

"Why is this happening?" Michael managed. "Things were fine barely a week ago, and now you're a different person. Where did you go?"

She was not sure how to adequately answer that. "I came home," she said simply. "I should have come back here a long time ago."

"Is it Edward?" His voice was a pained whisper.

She could not lie. "Yes. Of course it's Edward."

She hated herself for it, but she felt compelled to clarify, "It's always been Edward. Only Edward." Michael deserved some explanation for the crumbs of love he had subsisted upon for so long.

Michael stared at the ring in his palm with a disembodied kind of shock. "I can't believe this."

The wind picked up and began fluttering the black dress she'd had to borrow from Esme's wardrobe.

"Michael, things haven't been right with us for a long time. I know I've been hard to live with, but I've realised some things since returning here." She paused, trying to work out how to explain herself without hurting him more.

"I've… never left this place, Michael. No matter where I've been, I've always been here, in every way that counts."

Michael shook his head. "I can promise you, you've been elsewhere. With me. We have a life outside of this place. You're happy." He picked a long loose strand of her hair from the shoulder of her dress. "This place is like a fox trap. If we can just get you out of here, you'll get your clarity back. Come home, Bella. We can work through these issues. I'll go to sessions with you and Angela. I can forgive you for what you did."

She saw he genuinely meant this, and wondered how much this generous offer would cost him. Would it eat away at him? Would she sense him remembering it as they sat opposite each other, eating in their silent dining room? There might be a moment where he would not meet her eyes, and she would know.

At her silence, he began softly firing ammunition, trying to weaken her.

"Your job. Are you going to just quit?"

She flinched. It didn't pay well, but she needed that job.

"And the apartment! Bella, the apartment. What am I going to do? You cannot do that to me. I've made commitments, and I needn't remind you that you did too."

"I know," she said, her temper piqued. "Although you made the decision about the apartment, not me."

Michael tried, his voice rising in desperation as he tried to provoke a reaction from her.

"So what are you thinking of doing with your life, exactly? Work the check-out here in Forks? That's what you'll have to do. There'll be no real jobs."

Bella narrowed her eyes slightly as she remembered something. "You've always been embarrassed by my job. I heard it, when you were talking to Edward earlier."

Michael paused. "What did you hear?" He asked carefully.

"I heard you say I'm not a journalist. You sounded so… disgusted. Like you were embarrassed of me."

Michael glared, his eyes narrowed. "Don't make me out to be the bad guy in this scenario. I'm going to have to go home now, and explain to everyone I know that you've completely lost your mind." He shuddered visibly. "Have you got any idea how humiliated I'm going to be, going home alone?"

He began his closing argument, stepping closer to his jury of one, laying his damp palms on her wrists, and tried to make her take back the ring. He let it go, and she awkwardly caught it as it flipped.

"I'm being damn nice about this, Bella. You've been unfaithful, but I can move past it. I promise that if you come home with me, I will never mention it again." It was all he could say; the only ace he had. "I love you. I have built my life around you."

She felt herself waver for an instant, but her hand was already rising and pressing the ring back into Michael's palm as though she had no control over her own body.

"You say you can forgive me, but I doubt you can. And I really can't forgive you for the way you spoke about Esme."

Michael winced, but she continued, "Your disrespect was staggering. I know I've treated you terribly, but that was uncalled for."

She was trembling, her body zinging with energy and adrenalin and something else, something sweeter. "You have no idea what this family means to me. And if you think you can tell me to not see them, you don't know me at all. You've made me choose, and I choose them."

She had no idea if she and Edward would burn too bright, burn out too fast. But as she watched Michael polish the diamond on his sleeve, she realised that it was fear of humiliation that was making him cling so tightly.

It wasn't love, true love. She had no doubt that Michael loved her in his quiet, sensible way.

Was Edward's love – here, her stomach trilled nervously - the kind she could live with? Or without? What sort of love was his?

Suddenly, although there were none around, she breathed in a lungful of roses, and she remembered the dream she had last night. She had been trying to remember all morning.

What had been that flirty mental itch that was déjà vu, all the dizzying and hauntingly beautiful images, were now twisted into some kind of focus.

The images that had overlapped and teased at the edges of her consciousness were not a dream. They had been Edward's memories.

Edward's sleepless nights, his almost unimaginable loneliness. Roses and topaz and the aching, the aching. The way he had used oceans to stop himself from capturing her, and the deliberate punishment he had so ruthlessly inflicted on himself as he lived in worlds that echoed his insides. Suffering and running and wasted lives.

It had been her name he prayed to instead of God.

The sun blazed bright, warming the grass where they stood, and illuminated everything.

"I don't know how I'm going to explain this," Michael said again, and Bella supposed he was picturing announcing news to all of his stuffy colleagues.

She took a deep breath, and forced herself to be firm. "You will recover from this. You will find someone new- someone right for you."

He barked out a humourless laugh. "Recover from this? Financial ruin, public embarrassment, a career down the toilet?"

He closed his eyes and felt her press the ring into his palm again.

"A broken heart. I don't think I will recover." He said as he fought against tears. "And you're throwing me away for what?" He looked down at her beautiful face, and was gratified to see her tears welling. "For your high school crush. God, Bella, that's so clichéd. I have done nothing but love you."

"And I love you," Bella said truthfully.

The scrape of footsteps was shockingly close.

Edward walked past, his hand on Carlisle's shoulder, guiding him to the car.

Edward was turning his face away.

Even from Edward's profile, she could see his pain. The white flag of defeat had settled down onto his shoulders, and as he turned away she saw the stubborn set of his jaw and her stomach dropped.

Michael stiffened as he saw the way her eyes followed Edward, her expression tortured.

He'd always known in the courtroom when he'd lost, even before the verdict was handed in. And he knew now. He'd lost. He'd lost her.

"But not as much as you love him." He carefully took out his wallet and zippered the ring into the coin pocket, alongside all the dimes and nickels, little things so close to worthless it seemed laughable to carry them around.

Bella watched Edward's car pull away before dragging her eyes back to Michael.

"I'm sorry. So sorry. But I've never loved anyone as much as I love him. And I'm sorry it's taken me so long to realize it. I've wasted your heart, and your time."

Edward's car reversed smartly and accelerated away.

Bella mentally replayed the last minute.

Edward had heard her tell Michael that she loved him; maybe he would think she had chosen.

She wanted to call to him to stop, that he'd misunderstood, she was choosing him, but Michael was teetering on the edge of irate.

"You've both been telling me how much you love each other," Michael spat. "Don't you give a damn about my feelings?"

Bella bit her tongue to stop herself begging him to explain.

Michael turned away, his fingers reaching for the keys to his rental car, completely hollow.

"I've got nothing left now," he said blankly as he walked to his car, leaving her behind. He turned around in the car park, barely registering Rose and Emmett on the stairs.

He turned again slowly, and he suddenly spontaneously combusted into anger, making everyone flinch. Animals higher on the hills behind the chapel lifted their heads, ceasing to chew, ears tilting warily as Michael's voice settled into an echoing rhythm of angry barks.

"I've lost you. I love you, and I've lost. I've been humiliated. You think you're going to be happy? He's a fucking flake. One day he's going to make you feel like I feel right now." Fury, an unfamiliar flamethrower blasting through his gullet, was a far better feeling than sorrow.

He unlocked his car door and began to swing himself in. "You'll feel like I feel, one day. Like an idiot for even trying to be with someone so completely, fundamentally messed up." Tears were streaking down his cheeks as he jammed the key into the ignition, revved the engine.

"Michael- don't-" Bella protested helplessly. She didn't want them to part on such bad terms.

"You both deserve each other." He spun his car around furiously and screeched away, scaring the little sparrows and doves that had been sorting through the fallen leaves.

Emmett and Rose were slack jawed with shock from their vantage point on the top of the stairs.

When Michael's engine subsided into the distance, and the gravel finally skittered to a stop, Bella raised a hand.

"Don't say anything," Bella warned, closing her eyes, choking back the nausea, but in the end failing. She'd been naïve enough to think she could end her relationship with Michael neatly; she'd tried to be civil and reasonable but she'd forgotten that it was his ego as well as his heart that she had shredded.

She hadn't just politely declined her normal life; she had ripped it up and thrown away the pieces.

As she retched weakly into the spindly green hedging beside the chapel, Emmett and Rose held back her hair and rubbed her arms comfortingly.

"It's going to be fine," Rose said to Bella firmly, no hint of amusement or pleasure in her eyes now. She'd said she wanted Michael humiliated, and she'd gotten her wish, but it had left a nasty taste in her mouth. The feel of Bella's fine shoulders trembling under her hand made her feel ashamed. Nothing good could come of this kind of pain.

"Come home," Emmett said, hooking his arm through Bella's.

"I can't," she whispered weakly, digging her heels in as they guided her to Emmett's car. "I'm not sure where…"

"It's with us," Emmett said gently.

"The hard part is over," Rose added, sliding in beside Bella on the backseat.

Bella shook her head but allowed Rose to pull her close, and as she pressed her damp face into Rose's shoulder, all Bella could see was Edward's pained face overlaid on everything she looked at. It was the fleeting look that she knew so well; his need to run from her, or to deliberately ruin things that were so new and beautiful.

"I'm not so sure," Bella whispered into Rose's neck. She knew that Rose was disappointed with her, and she could not forget the disgust in her eye the previous night. But for now, she closed her eyes, and gradually her breathing slowed, and she repeated Edward's name, over and over in her mind, until she felt calm.

As they drove home towards the last night they would all be together, Emmett looked at the girls on the back seat, their eyes closed and their hair slowly sifting together.

He smiled as he turned the car into the secret opening in the trees that was now marked with a red balloon, like a children's birthday party. He couldn't help it, and he knew it probably seemed like terrible timing on the day of his mother's funeral, but joy was lifting him up.

He tapped his fingers lightly on the steering wheel in time to his tuneless humming. He felt like the clarity he'd been searching for, for so very long, had been dropped into his hand like a coin. He watched Bella frown to herself in her sleep, and he finally understood the difficulty of her decision. Tangled selfishness and selflessness that was woven through their love. It wasn't right, and it was hopelessly co-dependent, but it was what it was.

As he parked his car and saw Edward vanish from the porch, he nodded sagely to himself, trying to smother his grin. Run, rabbit, run, he wanted to tease him gently. His poor brother was as exposed as he'd ever been, and probably terrified of what was to come. He had risked his heart and did not yet know if he had won it back, or lost it for good. Truth be told, Emmett wasn't totally sure either, but he was getting more confident about where to lay odds.

And as he gave the girls a minute or two more time to rest, Emmett leaned on his car and looked out at the fields and trees and closed his eyes too, the constant bloom of patience in his chest. The wind eased and the intense delicious pleasure of the moment consumed him, he felt almost like his mother was leaning against the car beside him, savouring the moment and smiling a little too at how vicious and vulnerable people in love can be in the moments before they reveal their hearts.

Patience, Emmett told himself as he unlocked the back door and kissed Rose on her cheek. Nothing needed now but a little patience.

A/N: And now I must ask for a little more of your patience. The last chapter is completed and I will upload it as soon as it's beta'd and I find an internet connection. Who knows where I will be next? Eating chocolate in Switzerland, or sunning myself in Italy?