Reminder: Due to some rather complicated issues (not necessarily good), I'll be updating this story more often (somewhat good), but it means that input from a couple members of my usual team may be missing occasionally and I'd therefore like to make it clear than any screw ups are entirely my own.

Also, a thanks to Emergency Beta Service for their Boot Camp service, because I needed a kick in the butt to get some things written.

Special POV Note: This chapter starts in Bella's POV, but is mostly Edward's via his journal entries. Edward's entries are italicized.

The team of greatness: cookEgawd, Blackjacklily, Detochkina and MunkeeRajah.

*double muah* to KayMarieXW

Lastly, much love to you wonderful few who have been recommending this story in various places. Please know that these things do tend to get back to me and I sincerely appreciate your kind words.

A wonderful holiday season to everyone!

Chapter Glossary: (you might want to look at this)

This may surprise you, but Edward's an old fart. (Shocker!) When he's speaking to the mundanes, he tries to adjust his formal speech to the times, but there's no need for that in his own journals where it's just him and his thoughts, so he's free to use idioms and euphemisms that were popular when he was a child & young adult back in the early 20th century. It's hard to figure some of these out even in context, and I'm going to assume most of you haven't buried your noses in 19th century texts as I've often been forced to, so in case you need some definitions, here's a glossary:

Beyond the pale: beyond what is socially acceptable.

Cogitations: unpleasant thoughts.

Defile: a noun meaning a narrow area where few can pass through at a time.

Demency: wrath.

Fag end: last, dying days.

Graveled: perplexed.

Gull: to trick, to fool.

In close neighborhood: nearby.

Inveigling: luring, cajoling.

Obloquy: false accusations or malicious gossip.

Pusillanimity: cowardice.

Rectitude: honesty, morality. Honor.

Shoat: a young pig.

Something in train: something planned.

Verdant: lush, fertile.

Well over the bay: drunk.

Heretic's fork: (torture device) a metal rod with two prongs at both ends, attached to a leather strap worn around the neck. The top fork would be placed under the fleshy part of the neck under the chin, and the other dug into the bone of the sternum, keeping the neck stretched and the head erect at all times.

The Chrononaut.

The very next moment I had alone, I locked the door behind me and limped over to my closet, scrambling to reach the cambresine sack I had so carefully hidden. Once my fingers found the bag I tenderly pulled it towards me, then proceeded to clumsily hoist myself up onto my bed.

I opened the first soft, light-tan, leather-bound, hand-stitched book and turned to the first page. It was thin and delicate, reminiscent of rice paper, and the script written upon it took my breath away.

I had seen Edward's handwriting before, but only via the occasional sentence. This was page after page of flourishes, uniquely drawn letter combinations that were more beautiful than the most interesting typographic ligatures I had ever seen. It was pretty but strong—masculine—and I got lost in the image of the words for a spell before I was able to pull myself back and read the actual text.

The Journal of E.M.C.

January 2

I knew I would at some point read every word, but at that moment I had a specific need to fill and had to skip to the relevant parts. I turned the pages until I saw the date that interested me most.

September 13

I'd found it. I braced myself and tried to prepare for whatever I might discover.

The inevitable has finally happened. I had always known that she could never flourish around us. How could she live when constantly surrounded by harbingers of death? In this one place I can speak without reticence, let me not mince words—we are killers, try as we might to be otherwise, and I, he who has stolen the most human life save for one other, somehow managed to forget how much of a danger we pose to her. Earlier this night, she nearly paid the price for my folly.

I have asked myself many times: with so many things in the world that I can protect her from, why can I not safeguard her from us? Perhaps I could manage to erect the most intricately gilded cage for her, but for every safe there is someone who can and will find a way to crack it. Besides, it wouldn't be a life for her, and that was the crux of the issue, wasn't it? A human lifetime—one with all the changes, opportunities, and possibilities that made each day an adventure—this was what I wanted for her. It was what she deserved. This existence that I have introduced her to is a trap, and I unintentionally lured her in. My actions have been criminal, and I can't let her pay for my malfeasance. I won't.

The nature of Alice's visions were dynamic and vacillating, but her vision of my Bella as one of us has remained constant, and there is no worse fear for me in this world. My default reaction was to deny the possibility, my conceit having convinced me that I could redirect predestination onto another path. I suspect that tonight was a divine warning, a lesson to firmly remind me of my power's limits. My repudiation has come to an end; I cannot see any way to remain at her side without dooming her to share my fate.

I know what I have to do. No one will want to accept the solution. I do not want to accept the truth of it, and I am not remotely certain I will survive it.

The only question to remain is how to repair the damage I have caused. I have no doubt that I will have to hurt her in order to leave her—a temporary and superficial pain born of her belief that she desperately loves me—but surely I can count on her youth and the limitations of the human mind to help me in this sin I must commit, yes? She cannot understand that which time and my surfeit of experience with human nature has taught me: her love for me is temporary. It will change; it will lose its luster. She will move on and find someone that can make her happy. He will not be able to love her as I do, that is simply not possible, but he will be enough, and I will only exist for her as a series of scenes that occurred in such a short period of time, so long ago. We will have been little more than a dream. The only solace I can imagine I may take from this is that I can rest assured, knowing that eventually I will fade to memory, and it is certainly I who will bear the brunt of the repercussions of dissevering us.

How will I manage to follow through with this? Even now, as I write, it feels as if I'm plotting to rupture my—my what? My soul? Perhaps I will find I am wrong after all, and I might still possess a spirit. Something inside me is aware that the potential pain of this plan goes beyond the emotional or even a tangible, physical threshold; this is something more. I do not know what it is in the whole of me that will attempt to absorb the damage if it is not my soul.

Tonight, I will ask everyone to prepare to leave. They will argue, but they will also understand. Of this, I am certain. Tomorrow, I will tell her I am leaving. I must steel myself to become the monster she has refused to believe is inside of me, and I will prepare myself for my self-destruction.

My chest tightened and my stomach grew unsteady. I thought I would lose my breakfast any second, my body's muscle memory recalling each detail of how I felt at what I knew was coming. I braced my pillow against the journal to keep it open while I wrapped my arms around myself, wondering both how I would continue to read and how I could possibly stop. I stared at the period that finished his last sentence for what felt like forever. The sun had started its descent behind the eastern horizon when I finally gathered the courage to continue.

September 15

It is done. I am breaking her, and I have ruined myself.

With that one line, the floodgates opened. I couldn't go on. A fresh torture began as everything I'd experienced on that day bombarded my memory.

The nightmares didn't find me that night, because sleep did not come.

Still awake though dawn was fast approaching, I decided I had no choice than to read on. I wouldn't be able to find peace again otherwise.

January 12

What possessed me to think I could follow through on my intentions? Forcing myself to remain functional through this becomes less realistic each day.

I have been following Victoria's trail down through the Americas. I thought it would keep me occupied and focused, as well as ensure Bella's safety against the last threat my world would pose to her, but how wrong was I! I can think of nothing except her. In fact, a curious thing has begun to happen to me regularly: when I stand in stillness, I lose all sense of time and place in favor of reliving every touch, each time she looked at me, and recounting each instance with wonder. When my awareness returns to this tiny, stuffy hovel I inhabit in Ecuador, I find that I am no longer standing where I started. If I am a being that is capable of complete control of my body, why is it, then, I find I have unintentionally shifted inches, always in the direction of Forks. I am being pulled to her, and only a very determined, active resistance keeps my resolve from cracking.

Each hour is an assault on my senses. Without being able to feel her warmth, I have begun to lose my sense of touch. Unable to look at her, I notice little. Prevented from kissing her, my tongue has atrophied; I do not taste, even when I feed. I have retained only my ability to smell, and solely because I need it to track Victoria. I fear this, too, is broken, as I have not been able to catch her scent in at least a week.

I am so incredibly weary.

I could give up. Perhaps it is not too late—I could be at her doorstep in twelve hours. Good god, the relief that would come from being able to see her!

That moment of peace for me would result in an endless hell for her.

I cannot!

I have to remain, even though I feel myself slipping further into the abyss.

November 27

I have taken up temporary residence in a studio apartment in Porto Alegre. There is a small boy in close neighborhood. I notice him only because he is watchful and vigilant. I feel his eyes on me from his apartment window on each rare occurrence of when I leave to hunt. This morning I heard him ask his mother why the man next door cries so often. I hear him wonder why the man is always sad. I am only slightly curious as to whom he is referring to; I have heard no sobbing.

February 30

I have lost Victoria's trail. This has all been an exercise in futility. I am sure she is gone, content to have escaped me and my attempt to tie loose ends. I am failing Bella.

I heard little Egídio thinking in his bedroom earlier this evening. In his bed, preparing for slumber, he was trying to think of ways he might be able to cheer up the weeping man. I wonder if the man lives on the other side of the boy, and if that was why I could not hear him. Regardless, I am not surprised that I know not of whom the boy speaks; it has been so much harder to stay aware of things lately.

September 13

Today, like every day, I lost myself in my memories of Bella. Closing my eyes and drawing on my perfect recall is, in many ways, close to a state of slumber. It is the only time I am close to contentment. Unfortunately, on this night, I was unable to restrict myself to the happier scenes from our time together; it is Bella's birthday, and I found the cogitations seep in. I was forced to recount every second of the night I heard the desperation of each one of my siblings as they momentarily thirsted for her blood.

I was jolted from my waking nightmare by someone thinking clearly and loudly. It was Egídio, projecting his sympathies to the mystery man.

I am sorry you have such sadness, Mister. I wonder what you have lost that makes you cry so much. Today must be worse, somehow. I have never heard you grieve so loudly.

I felt the tenor of his mind change as he slipped into his subconscious. Once he was soundly asleep, I pulled my attention away in order to leave him in the privacy of his slumber. Once I opened my eyes and reaffirmed my surroundings: I still lay on the bare mattress in the corner of the room, the only piece of furniture I had bothered to obtain. The lights were off and the room was empty save for me, the walls, my abandoned cellular phone, plugged up and dangling from the kitchen island, and the bright beams of green, red, yellow, and blue light that pierced the darkness through the gap in the curtains, reminding me of the city's bustling nightlife; all that existed outside of this cage. There was, however, one new sensation—a wetness on my naked chest. I ran my hand across my collarbone before lifting it to my nose. Blood. When I narrowed my eyes to focus my eyes onto this sight, I felt a stickiness on my face. I swiped across my cheeks. More blood.

It is finally happening. I'm disintegrating.

I realized that I would welcome the thought of the "final death," if that was, indeed, what this was. I actually smiled as I slowly made my way to the bathroom to investigate this mysterious bloodletting. When I stood in front of the stained, dirty mirror, I couldn't comprehend what it was I saw there. Thick, dark streams, the color of wine, started from the corners of my eyes, lined my face and had fallen to form a pool on my sternum.

I was graveled. This wasn't supposed to be possible. I must be mistaken—it simply wasn't possible. Could I be the man for which the little Brazilian boy felt such great sympathy?

January 5

Today I made yet another new discovery. Not only could we cry if our pain was great enough, but we could also sleep if our privation was deep enough. I had not fed in months, and I suspect my body had begun to enter a stasis of sorts—a hibernation. I found neither dreams nor peace in this unconsciousness; I only ceased to exist for some unknown amount of time, there having been nothing in my hovel to reveal to me the day or time. I would have been content to remain there, pleased to fade away into non-being, but I awoke eventually, and when I did, I came-to with the most ravenous yearning for blood.

I cannot adequately describe the thirst, and my only comparable experience was what I felt when I first caught wind of Bella's smell. I wanted to take her then. This time, I wanted to take the world. The city was verdant with blood; I could smell the contents of the seven hundred jugulars that surrounded me within a quarter mile, and I wanted all of them.

While my essence has been that of a monster for almost a hundred years, this was the first time my appearance reflected it. A brief look at my reflection revealed that which was unrecognizable. This face was gaunt and drawn, my features distorted, and my eyes—disturbing even to me—were spaces that were no longer filled with an iris. I could see, but could not find what enabled my vision. They were orbs of solid black.

My opinion of myself and my nature shifts and adjusts over time. I have at various points hated myself, reveled in my own glory, and accepted all that I am. Throughout that time I have never, ever feared myself the way I do this night. It is like being intoxicated on the most potent of drugs—I have no control of my emotions or actions, and there is only a minuscule fragment of Edward left. I am holding on tight in the back of this consciousness, hoping and wishing that we—the demon-Edward and I— will not massacre half this city. It is this fragment that allows me to say this now, having just enough power over this fiend to recognize the importance that I write this down because I do not want you to have to figure obloquy from truth. You will know exactly what happened here, tonight. If I am soon to be destroyed, you must know that I did not wish this. I have allowed myself to wallow in this self-pity, and I apologize that I have allowed it to push me to harm others. This was never something in train; I gulled myself into thinking that I could waste away. I suffer from such pusillanimity, and I only wanted relief from my pain, and was unaware that my self-serving wants could land me here. I am beyond the pale, and am unsure there will be any return.

I am about to leave my room for the first time in months. This being no longer has rectitude, and I know that something, someone might feel my demency this evening. I can only pray they not be human.

Father, Mother, & my Love —

I am sorry.

January 7

The boy. He had decided to defy his mother, wanting to play beyond the moment the street lights turned on and far past the point where his mother could watch him from the apartment's windows. He was just a shoat in our eyes, inveigling me down into the defile of nearby alleys. We followed him until our patience wore out, and reached out to grab him. We were well over the bay on just the bouquet of him; the liquid flowing through his veins more than just blood, it was ichor, ambrosia, and we were entirely prepared to partake. My hand reached around his neck, my fingers forming a heretic's fork at his throat. We caressed his burgeoning adam's apple, the beast within wanting to drink his fear in addition to his plasma, the last vestige of my sanity horrified and disgusted by the entire affair. We leaned in for the bite, our teeth ready to tear into the flesh of his neck like a hot knife through butter, tongue ready for the flood to come, but the motion, the obsessive yearning to witness his terror, required a passing glance into his eyes.

In that moment, I recognized him as human—and I did not care in the slightest.

We pulled him to us, ignoring his shallow cry. He spoke, a shallow pleading for his mother, for mercy. I recognized his tenor immediately. Egídio!

I, Edward, the still barely sane part of me, pulled forward and forced the demon to let him go. I stumbled backwards and watched him run back towards his home, unaware he only ran towards the nest of the monster that would, from here until his fag end, haunt his dreams. I stayed in control just long enough to run. I raced through the the city until I had reached the countryside, and there wasted the last of my will. The demon took control again, and laid waste to every mammal we could find within twenty miles of where we stood. It wasn't enough for him, but it was enough for me to regain control. We were satiated for the moment, but who knew how long it would last? Had I awakened something that would never go away? Would the demon refuse to return back to the bowels of my spirit where he would subsist only as a flicker, a flame hoping to take advantage of my weakness again?

I stumbled, demon subdued, back into the city, doused in blood and gore, ragged and half-blind, both cowed by the experience and acutely aware of what task lay before me. I cannot allow this to happen again. How could I risk living without control of myself? My mind reeled with a myriad of scenarios that could play out, all of them ending in bringing danger to my family or bringing harm to Bella. I am not selfish enough to allow this to come to pass. I have to find a way to end this, but I am of a breed that is incredibly difficult to exterminate. There is Bella, and there is the demon, and I want to possess one as much as I want to dispossess myself of the other.

I know of only one way to eliminate the risk, and only one method that will not allow me to renege on this decision.

I return to my hovel and pick up my phone for the first time in over a year. I ignore the fifty message indicators of calls from my family, and I ask to be connected to NHT Linhas Aéreas. I book a ticket to Gal Gallilei Airport in Pisa. From there I will make my way to Volterra, and I will embrace the demon within as we both burn in hell.

May 1

I have done all I needed. My loose ends are tied, all legal matters have now been secured in a manner that will default to the Cullen estate when I am declared deceased. There is one last thing that I have to force myself to do, and I cannot ignore it any longer. I owe them a goodbye. Actually, I owe them far more, but this will have to suffice. It is all I have to give.

I am a coward. I called, but hung up before anyone could answer. How could I tell them I was resigned to this fate? How would they respond? What would they do? Why put them through the added agony of knowing I was soon to meet my demise? Would it not be cleaner, easier for them to find out when it was already over and nothing left to be done?

My breath caught. I detected a faint heat start to swell within me. It creeped up my spine and blossomed at the base of my brain. It was hysteria, and it was going to take over in any given moment. I trembled.

The entry is old, Swan. He's still here, and he wouldn't have given these to me himself if he were going to follow through. Calm yourself.

Had he really intended to end it all? And because he couldn't bear to be without me? I wasn't sure how to feel, how to think. It was surely after the date of the entry, so something must have changed. What was it? Did it make me feel any better to know he had become so despondent?

So lost.

Was it comforting to me to know that he, though so far away, had to face his own ... demons? I thought not. I was inclined to think it made everything far worse. What was the purpose behind it all? Why such unnecessary pain?

However I allowed my anger to build over the futility of the situation, I couldn't ignore that the entries from his own pen told me everything I'd so longed to hear.

He needed me. Wanted me.

Wants me.

One last page.

May 3

I do not know if this is divine intervention or an infernal power determined to prolong my hell on earth.

I was about to check out of the hotel in Pisa when my phone rang. I left the call to voicemail, but my guilt nagged at me. I pulled the phone back from my pocket to listen to the message. It was Esme. It was a long message, but it conveyed exactly what I didn't want to hear: a plea for time. I might have been able to ignore it had it not been for her expression of grievances. It was made clear that the entire family is suffering because of me, and she is at her wit's end. There was one thing she said in particular that hit me hard.

I have given you all the love I have, and I have never asked anything of you in return. Today, I am asking. I am asking you to come home. It is time to make a new start, an it will not work if we cannot do this together.

She was asking for one month. If I could not be settled in that time, I was free to leave and carry out my plans as I intend—with her blessing. She had no idea what she had just approved, but I would give her what she asked.

Please, Agapatos ... do not give up. Not on us, and not on yourself.

I shoved the phone back into my pocket, frustrated that just as I thought I had found clarity, I was being directed upon another path. She was right—she had never asked anything of me.

I thought of Carlisle. When I thought of him I recalled the times he endured my intractability, my tantrums, my pointless, immature rebellions. After each and every time he welcomed me home with open arms, and what had I learned from these experiences? Had I become a better person? How did I show my appreciation? What had I done this time but what I had done every other time—crawl into myself and pretend the world did not exist. Was I, perhaps, even more selfish and despicable than I had previously imagined?

I stopped just inside the doors of the hotel lobby.

A bellboy entered and made the mistake of looking directly into my eyes. His innocuous stare quickly widening to reveal a twinge of fear behind his eyes.

"La macchina è qui, signore" He had come in to let me know that the car I requested had arrived.

"La macchina per portarmi a Volterra?" I asked if it was the car I requested to take me to meet my end.

"Sissignore."

"C'è stato un cambio di programma. Ho bisogno di una macchina per portarmi in aeroporto." I informed him of my change in plans. It was time to go back to my family. I still had the demon to worry about, and the ache of being without my other half would never dull, but I would give Esme her month. I would spend that time putting forth whatever effort she asked of me, I would pretend I had a modicum of self-control, and I would try my best to convey to them all how much I loved them, but I knew there was no solution to the problem that was innately me. This was a postponement of the inevitable, but I would see it through.

"Sì, certo, signore." He ushered me to the awaiting car. "Buona fortuna, ovunque si finisce, signore."

If he only knew. There wasn't enough good luck in the world to fix the messes I had wrought.