Their walk down to the house was slow, Edward's arm across Nessie's shoulders and both of hers locked around his waist. Alice trailed behind them.

The house was a huge, whitewashed lodge; it looked like an English nobleman's hunting estate. Nessie's mother was standing in the wreckage of the doorway, her yellow eyes huge in her pale face. She had one hand against the post, and her fingers were sunk into the wood up to her second knuckle.

Nessie disentangled herself from her father's arms and stepped forward.

"Hi, mom," she said.

Bella's arm came up from her side and hovered for a moment near Nessie's face. One finger made contact with her cheek, and then the rest of Bella's hand, tracing the contours of Nessie's face with a feather-light touch.

"It's you," she said, in her wind-chime voice. Seeing her parents again, hearing them, smelling them, it was like discovering she'd been starving without knowing it.

"It's really you," Bella said again, her hand rising into Nessie's hair. "You've grown..."

Nessie nodded, feeling the tears track down her face. "I'm sorry you missed it."

Bella pulled her in and held her, rocking back and forth. It wasn't like her father, whose grip had been frantic and tight. Bella held her lightly, gently, and Nessie could have been a baby again, asleep while her mother watched her dreams.

"All this time," said Bella into Nessie's ear, "the only thing I thought about was this."

Nessie cried harder. "I'm so sorry, Mom. I missed you so much. I can't even tell you how sorry I am..."

"Shh," said Bella. "It doesn't matter. You're home, and that's all I care about. We never stopped looking for you."

Nessie pulled back a bit, hiccupping. "I hid well. I'm sorry."

"It doesn't matter," she said again, smoothing down Nessie's hair. "We have forever to talk about it."

Nessie gave a watery laugh. "Yeah, I guess we do."

Bella smoothed a hand over Nessie's hair and stepped aside so Nessie could walk through the door. There, standing still in the stone-walled, vaulted living room, was her whole family. If she thought she'd been tongue-tied before, she had absolutely no idea what to say now.

"You kept me waiting," said Jasper, his eyes over Nessie's shoulder.

"I know," Alice whispered.

"A long time."

Alice made a sound that was half choke, half gasp as Jasper continued to stare at her. Then, in a rush of air, they were both gone.

The silence continued for another moment.

"We're, um, we're home," said Nessie.

Emmett got to her first, lifting her into the air with a whoop and spinning her around. Then Rosalie, beaming, pushed him out of the way and crushed her in a fierce hug, and then Esme was holding her, trembling but laughing at the same time, and then there was another hand on her shoulder…

And Nessie turned to look into her grandfather's ever-youthful face.

"I said this to Edward three quarters of a century ago, and I'll say it to you." He brought his other hand up to her opposite shoulder, so that she was held there in his too-bright gaze.

"Welcome home."

He pulled her in and his familiar, spicy scent enveloped her. She wanted to tell him so many things, and as her hands locked around his neck it all came out in scattered, half-finished images: all the books he gave her, and what he meant about God and the things people could do in his name, and sin and hiding things…

She felt him sigh and when she pulled back his smile was impossibly wider. Was she ever going to stop crying? There was a river of snot cascading to her chin. Her father handed her a tissue.

"Well," said Carlisle. "No doubt Edward knows everything, but for the benefit of everyone else… what have you and Alice been up to?"

Nessie was suddenly conscious of the Volturi cloak she was still wearing. She wanted to tear it off and throw it in the loch, but it was the middle of winter in the Scottish Highlands and she was half-human.

"Our daughter would like to take off the Volturi costume," said Edward.

"Volturi costume?" said Bella. "Volturi costume? Why are you wearing..."

Nessie's face must have given her away, because Bella just said, "We'll find you something else, come on."

Nessie followed her mother up the grand staircase and down a hallway to a wood-paneled bedroom that reminded Nessie of their cottage in Forks. There was one floor-to-ceiling window that looked out over the loch in the distance.

"Is this your bedroom?" asked Nessie. "I could probably wear some of your clothes now."

"No," said Bella, "It's yours." She pulled open the closet door and Nessie saw all the familiar racks of clothes she'd always had at home, right down to her baby dresses. Each one had been pressed and starched and was lined up in color-coordinating patterns, increasing by size.

"It's all my stuff..." said Nessie in disbelief, fingering a cream wool sweater with roses on it that she'd worn almost every day a few winters ago.

"Well, I just wanted to make sure you had all your things, and all your favorite clothes, so when we had to move I just..." she shrugged, trailing off.

Nessie knew her mother. She knew that her mother had ironed every one of these outfits, placed them in order, made sure that everything came from Forks to Scotland that had been Nessie's, insisted on the paneled walls so that her room would look as much like the one she remembered as possible. Her stuffed wolf was even sitting on the bed, like it had been placed there to complete a hopeful picture of welcome.

"You kept this all this way, for me?"

"Of course I did," said Bella, looking genuinely confused. "You would have to have your room, whenever you came home."

Nessie threw her arms around her mother and hugged her. "Thanks," she whispered.

Bella patted her back. "I'm your mother."

"I don't deserve it."

Bella pulled back and frowned at her. "Okay, this stops right now. Sit down," she said, pointing at the bed. Nessie sat immediately, months of absence having had no effect on her natural obedience to that particular tone in her mother's voice.

Bella sat down beside her. "I have had a very long time to think about this, and I have things to tell you. You just got home, but this can't wait."

Nessie swallowed.

"Your father has always told me that I have a problem with... seeing myself clearly. That I don't have an accurate picture of who I am. That I'm too self-deprecating or don't understand my strengths or something like that."

Nessie frowned.

"I think I passed it on to you. No, I know I passed it on to you. It's just that, sometimes, whatever's wrong with you is a hard thing to help in someone else, because you're too close and you don't really understand..." She shook her head. "I've spent so much time thinking about what happened, about how we let that day turn into what it did, and here's what I think I know: You thought that you were less than all the rest of us, because you're half-human. You thought you were weaker than the rest of us because you felt bloodlust when none of us expected you to. You thought you were less attractive than I was, less good, less interesting... and you found out about my history with Jacob."

Nessie was picking at the comforter of her new bed. She did not want to have this conversation. She wanted to run far, far away, but she wasn't running anymore.

"Yes," she whispered. "All of that."

"And we just loved you so much…to us, you were perfect. So you couldn't not be perfect, except you weren't perfect…"

Nessie had never seen her mother look so flustered.

"Okay, I'll say this once and then I'll leave it be, because me saying it over and over isn't going to help anything." She shifted a bit, so they were facing each other.

"I am undead, Renesmee. I'm a vampire. I gave up my life and my humanity to be frozen in a stone, blood-drinking body for the rest of eternity. I will be an unnatural, undead being until the end of the world." She grabbed hold of the hand that was worrying the comforter and placed it over her own silent heart. "I'm here, and I'm happy, but I'm a crystallized, animated corpse."

"I'm sorry," said Nessie.

"That's not what I mean." She pulled their hands away from her own chest and moved them instead to Nessie's, finding the place on her chest where her fluttering heartbeat was strongest, and sat there for a moment, both of them feeling the pulse of it beneath their intertwined fingers.

"But you," Bella finally said, "are eternally alive. Don't you understand? You're not half of what the rest of us are, you're the only one who's whole. You're alive, you're human in a way none of us will ever be again. You grow. We cut your hair…"

Bella stood up. "Here," she said, her head in Nessie's closet, "I got you a fleece jacket a few weeks ago. Try it on."

oOo

For a few days no one asked questions. They hovered, they smiled, they gave her hugs and ran fingers through her hair. Whenever Nessie woke up in the morning either her mother or her father or both were sitting at the edge of her bed, watching her sleep.

She didn't know how much her father knew. He didn't talk about it. She wasn't used to that—when she was younger he had monitored her thoughts constantly, questioned whatever concerned or disturbed him. Nessie had sometimes felt that if she thought something she might as well have done it, for the way he reacted. But now, it seemed, he was trying to treat her as though he couldn't hear anything at all. They were all so careful, and it felt almost too fragile to be real.

And then Alice came back.

She and Jasper were in the living room when Nessie came down one morning for breakfast, sitting on the couch with their fingers touching. They looked like they always had to Nessie—easy, sure of each other, a lake still and deep. "Hey," she said.

"Hey Nessie! How'd you sleep?" said Alice.

"Uh, fine. How was…your…"

"Good," said Jasper, smiling. His fingers lifted to tangle in the close-shorn hair at the base of Alice's neck.

"Good," said Nessie, nodding her head. She pointed to the kitchen. "I'm gonna…"

Alice laughed.

Her family seemed to have only been waiting for Alice's return to start with the questions. After breakfast, she found herself on the loveseat between her parents, the rest of her family facing them on the couches and armchairs by the fire.

"So," said Carlisle. "How was your year?"

Nessie snorted, then covered her mouth. "Sorry," she said.

Carlisle smiled at her.

"Wait," said Edward. "Before we get into this…" and he shifted off the couch and knelt in front of her.

"Renesmee," he said, his hands on her knees, "I am sorry. I have been sorry every moment of every day since your accident. I thought I knew all there was to know about you, because I could read your mind, and I wronged you so deeply I don't deserve to be forgiven."

"Daddy…"

"But I am going to ask you to forgive me, because I cannot live without you any more easily than I could live without your mother."

Nessie covered her mouth again. Bella's arm reached around her shoulders, and she felt her mother's breath against her ear. "And I am sorry. We should have seen. We were afraid because we didn't understand what was happening to you, and we never should have said the things we said before you ran away. We should have treated you like we would have treated anyone else in the family who made a mistake."

"Can you forgive us?" asked her father.

Nessie lifted her hands in exasperation. "Forgive you? What about everything I did?" she asked, her voice clouded with tears.

"Yes, forgive us," said Esme. "All of us. We all failed to love you like we should have. We weren't ready to hear the things you had to tell us, but they needed to be said. You were right, Renesmee."

"Yes, okay, sure," said Nessie, before Esme could say anything else. "You're all forgiven."

Edward pulled her into a hug. "Thank you," he whispered. "I'm going to spend forever becoming a better father, now that you've come home and given me the chance."

Nessie sniffed and shook her head. "I wasn't even mad for a whole day. But once I was gone, I just couldn't come back."

"But where did you go?" asked Emmett. "We've been running all over the globe trying to find you. Seriously, we barely took breaks."

"Paris," she said, and she told them everything—stowing away, hitchhiking to France, meeting Fatima, destroying all the stolen cars. "That's my girl," said Rosalie, grinning.

Nessie glanced at Alice, who nodded. "And then I found her," Alice said.

"What?" said several people at once.

"When I went shopping last summer. I didn't say anything because she was almost ready to come home, and I wanted her to be able to make the decision herself."
"Did Edward know?" asked Jasper.

"No," said Edward. "I didn't. She managed not to think about it."

"Wow," said Emmett.

"But she didn't come home," said Carlisle. "That was seven months ago."

"I was going to," said Nessie, "but…" This was the hard part. Edward took her hand in both of his and patted it gently. She told them about Felix, about the house in Toulouse and finding the Debhis dead, about running to Italy to convince Aro her family hadn't been responsible.

Bella's head was in her hands. Esme's eyes were huge, her fingers digging into the fabric of her chair. Rosalie had stood up and turned to look at the fire, her shoulders rigid. Edward was still patting her hand.

She told them about joining the Volturi, about her assignment in Bulgaria. "I thought he just wanted to mess with me," she said. "Punish me a little bit for how I'd messed things up. But," she looked at Alice again, "I was wrong. He sent me away for a few days so Alice could see."

"That was when you left," said Jasper. "That weekend?"

"Yeah," said Alice. "Jasper and I were out hunting and I… saw stuff. I saw them coming, and telling us they had Nessie, and then…" she shook her head. "There was only one way for it to end. He wanted me, so I went."

Silence fell as they all digested this information.

"I don't understand," said Emmett. "How the hell did you two get out of there?"

Nessie chuckled and rubbed a hand over her eyes. "Well…"

oOo

Being home wasn't easy.

It was good. It was wonderful. Esme had discovered Nessie's newfound appreciation for human food and drove back and forth almost every day from the city, picking up ingredients for gruyere paninis and stuffed mushroom caps. Edward played her songs on the piano and she watched movies with her mom and her aunts. Carlisle came and went from the night shift at the emergency room. The sun set early enough that even on clear days they could all go to Inverness in the late afternoon and wander around.

Alice, Rosalie and Bella took her shopping almost every weekend. "We should go down to London," said Alice from the other side of the changing room door at River Island, "go shopping for real."

Bella heard her mother snort softly.

"Oh please, Bella. She's not going around in your flannel for the next three months. You should have seen what she was wearing when I found her."

"Well, Barbie twins, it looks like she's my daughter after all. Practical at heart, aren't you Renesmee?"

Nessie laughed. "Yeah, when I have no money it's amazing how practical I can be."

And even through the door she felt it. When she came out of the changing room with a new dress on, they were all looking in different directions with somber faces. They hated everything she'd put herself through, and she didn't know what to tell them.

And then the next day Emmett got tickets to a bagpipe concert.

"This is where my people came from," he said. "I need to experience my mother culture and you're all coming with me."

"Not a chance," said Jasper. "If I want to hear noises like that I'll go kill something."

Emmett shook his head. "How about the rest of you? Who's coming with me?"

"Emmett," said Rosalie, "there will be a lot of people there."

Edward's fingers stilled in the middle of a fugue as a tense cloud descended on the room. Nessie turned to look out the window, her fists balled at her sides. They'd discussed this, hadn't they, when she wasn't around? How they were going to have to treat her like a newborn. But had any of them even thought to ask her what she could handle? She'd lived around people for months.

And sometimes almost killed them.

She wanted her family to know. She wanted their help, but the thought of them all coming up with a plan, discussing how weak she was…

The piano bench scraped against the floor as Edward stood up. "I'll go," he said. "You want to come with me, Renesmee?"

She looked at him.

"Tomorrow night, right?" he asked Emmett, who nodded. "Let's go hunting now, so we don't have to worry about it later." And he put his hand on Nessie's back and propelled her out the door.

He didn't slow down for her, so she followed his trail along the edge of the loch until she crossed the spooked remnants of a herd of deer he had flushed. She took down three of them, and then followed his scent to the edge of the water and sat down beside him.

"Thanks," she said. He ruffled her hair in response. Water lapped gently against the rocks at their feet, and the wind bit through Nessie's jacket. She zipped it up and crossed her arms over her chest.

"May I ask you something, Renesmee?"

She turned her head, but Edward was looking out at the water. "Sure."

"When you told everyone what happened in St. Denis, you didn't mention all those nights you spent saving people. You went straight to the murders you saw and didn't tell everyone why you were sitting on the roof in the first place."

"No," said Nessie. "I guess I didn't."

"Why not?"

She placed her hand on top of his. He could hear her anyway, but she wanted to tell him. She thought of the man in the flannel shirt with the ruined throat. Edward sighed.

I wanted to make it better.

"I know," said Edward.

She thought of the alleys, the criminals, her own eyes staring out from the darkness, and then a different pair of eyes, red ones, and colder, snowier streets and copper hair. And then all the times her father had told her his story, and how he learned he couldn't play God…

I didn't learn anything. I made your mistakes all over again.

"No, sweetheart. No."

She tilted her head.

"I fell into playing God because I wanted to indulge my bloodlust, Renesmee. I wasn't trying to do good; I wasn't trying to make anything right. I was giving in to my worst instincts and telling myself there was nothing wrong with it. I was dealing out death and calling it justice. Do you see the difference?"

I guess.

"You've always wanted things to be fair. Always. Injustice has always made you angry. I'm so proud of you, but I have to say I'm not really surprised."

But…
He waited as she gathered her thoughts.

I thought it would make me feel better.

Edward sighed.

"Does it ever go away?" she asked out loud. "You've killed more than a hundred people and you're happy. How did you get over it? How are you okay now?"

"You," he said.

"Me?"

"Yes, you. When you were born I saw the beauty that could come from my existence."

"But what about mom?"

"Even after I married your mother I still hated myself, Renesmee. Especially then. I had decided to give in to my selfishness, but I still hated myself. And then she got pregnant and we didn't know what you were, and I thought I had killed the only beautiful thing I had ever been allowed to touch.

"But I didn't. I looked at you, so clearly my own biological daughter, and I didn't feel damned. And I knew I hadn't doomed your mother, either."

He squeezed her hand. "The guilt doesn't go away. I remember every face, and I still think about it sometimes. You're not going to forget it, but you can try not to do it again."

But what if I do it again? I might. I almost have.

"Oh, Renesmee. I'm sorry. I've thought every day about that moment when I told you that you should have held your breath, and you just looked at me, so furious, and asked me if I'd forgotten that you can't hold your breath like we can. And, of course, I'd never thought about it. What happened that day was as much our fault as yours, because we weren't there to help you. But from now on, we will be. You're not doing this alone. None of us is doing it alone."

I love you, Dad.

He kissed her forehead.

oOo

For the first few days she was home, it didn't come up. She thought about it with embarrassing frequency, but her father mercifully said nothing to her or anyone else if he noticed.

It was just that Alice said that he sometimes came back. Nessie had this conversation etched on the inside of her eyelids whenever she closed them, it seemed. He hated Scotland, and he went back to La Push a lot, but he came to visit, and if they went to look for her somewhere he would go with them.

She couldn't imagine what it must have taken for him to take the Cullens' money for all those international trips. He definitely couldn't afford it himself and he hated, truly hated owing them anything. He always had. He must have been really desperate to agree to them buying him plane tickets and whatever else for all of that.

But now that she was home, was he going to come anymore? There was no more looking to do. But did he know she was home? Had they told him? And why had he gone with them in the first place? Why was it that he wanted to find her? Did he want to be her best friend again like he was before, or had things moved on and he was going to live in Washington and she was going to live here and that was going to be that? What did it all mean? Where was he?

Being home again, getting to know her family and watching the awe in their eyes every time she did something to demonstrate how much older she was than she had been when she ran away, it felt more and more like something was missing. There was a hole in her life, a hole in her family. When she had been alone and terrified and miserable and missing all of them it had been easier to pretend like it was all one big loss, but it wasn't. Now that she had them all back and she didn't have him, she was forced to admit to herself just how much she missed him, how much worse the pain of not seeing him smile or telling him about her day or curling up between his paws for a nap in the woods was getting as months wore on.

But it was all a giant mess. He wasn't her big brother anymore. Before she ran away she had tried to kiss him. A year and a half later she still wanted to stab herself every time she thought about that. And she didn't know what he would think of her and how much she'd changed. Her suspicion was that he would think that it didn't matter what she looked like, she still wasn't even seven years old and that was wrong and gross and what was she thinking...?

If she ever saw him again.

Where was he?

She finally caved three weeks after her arrival in Scotland, and unfortunately it was her aunt Rosalie she ended up asking.

Rosalie, as always, spent a lot of her time in the garage. There was always at least one engine that was more than five minutes old. Nessie sometimes came and sat with her like she had when she was younger, handing Rosalie tools not because Rosalie needed help but because Nessie liked to pretend she was useful.

"The dog once told me he could tighten these with more precision than I can. He's lucky I didn't tear his head off and toss it into the trunk of Emmett's jeep." said Rosalie from under her BMW.

"Really?" said Nessie, her voice unnaturally high. "Where is he, anyway?"

"Somewhere over the Atlantic, I guess. He's supposed to be here in a few days. And I just got the smell out of my clothes from last time."

Nessie swallowed. Over the Atlantic. Why hadn't anyone told her? Did they think he could just show up without warning at her front door and everything was going to be okay?

"Uh, does he know I'm back?"

Rosalie rolled her eyes. "No. I don't think it was safe to tell him. Who knows what he'd do if he was sitting around in La Push and he suddenly got a call saying you were in Scotland. He's coming like he always does, and then he'll see you and it will be a really big party."

Nessie was rocking back and forth a little bit on the bench. Rosalie watched her for a minute and then walked away to toss her wrench into the toolbox with a little too much force.

"Damn," she muttered. "I was hoping you'd end up wanting something else for yourself."

"What?"

"Oh, never mind. Just go get me a rag, okay?"

oOo

Rosalie's prediction turned out to be a little bit inaccurate. She was off by a couple of days, which meant that Nessie spent almost a week on tenterhooks.

When he finally did show up, Nessie was in a moment where she had stopped paying attention. She was upstairs with Alice, painting her toenails purple and listening to The Beatles.

She was wiggling her toes and pointing a hairdryer at them when the latch on the front door turned and clicked open.

"Was somebody out?"

"No," said Alice, "Everyone's home."

Nessie's heart started pounding. There was no sound for a few minutes and then she heard Emmett say, "Hey man, welcome back."

"Thanks," said Jacob's tired voice.

Suddenly there was Electric Lavender nail polish all over the floor, spreading rapidly in an iridescent puddle. Nessie looked up at Alice with wild, desperate eyes, but Alice just looked back at her as if to say, "What? You know what you have to do. There's no one who can help you with this."

More voices from downstairs. Bella was walking out of the library to say hello.

Nessie was panicking, plain and simple. She stood up and walked awkwardly out of the bedroom, trying to keep her wet toes from touching each other. She stood there in the doorway and listened to his voice, her face hot.

"What are you playing? Call of Duty?"

"Yeah," said Emmett. "Not much else to do today, really."

Nessie heard the rustle of fabric as Jake sank down onto the couch and picked up a controller. "I want in on the next one," he said.

"Aren't you jetlagged, man? Don't you need to, like, sleep or something?"

"I don't sleep much these days."

He was her dearest, dearest friend. He always had been. And he was here, and it was the only thing that could fill her head, and she had no idea what to say or do, so in the end she just walked down the stairs.

He looked exactly the same. Same height, same broad shoulders, even the same length to his hair. His lower lip was between his teeth as he stared intently at the screen, jamming down the buttons in his hands. Emmett and Bella were both there, and were watching her, waiting for her to announce her presence or do something. Jacob grimaced at the screen and looked up.

His eyes locked with hers and he froze, the controller falling into his lap.

Eternity passed.

"Hi," she said, barely recognizing her own voice.

"Nessie..." he breathed. "You... you're...was anyone going to tell me?"

Emmett just shook his head and left the room. Bella held her ground.

"She just showed up, Jake, after you'd bought your latest tickets. This was the best way."

Jacob was just shaking his head like he was trying to wake up.

Nessie stood there, her arms useless at her sides. She had no idea what to do.

"I think the two of you should go for a walk," said Bella.

Jacob looked at her like she was crazy.

"Now," she said.

Nessie tried to catch her mother's eye, to see what she was thinking, but Bella was very resolutely not looking at her.

"Jacob?" asked Nessie tentatively. He was staring at her.

"Let's go for a walk, Ness," he said.

So they did. She followed him out of the house and down a dirt path toward the loch, and they'd only gone a few feet when he stopped and closed his eyes.

"Tell me this is real," he said.

"What?"

"I... see you lots. I kind of don't even know if this is really happening."

She took a moment while his eyes were closed to just look at him. His shirt had an Old Navy logo on it, with a hole wearing through the right shoulder seam. His feet were bare, and his face... it was so familiar. She came up to his chin, now. She could almost look him in the eyes.

She had no idea what she meant to him. She had never understood imprinting. It always seemed so weird, so inexplicable, and sometimes it was this romantic thing and sometimes it wasn't, and Jacob had always talked about it like he had seen it in other people's heads but not known it himself, which she knew now he had done purposefully and carefully.

She still wasn't sure why he hadn't wanted her to know.

She reached out a hand and laid it lightly over his right fist, coaxing it open and twining it with hers.

I'm real, she told him.

He opened his eyes, a bewildered look on his face. "You are, aren't you?"
She nodded. "I'm home."

"I kind of don't even know what to do right now."

She smiled timidly. "Neither do I."

"It's like... you look so different, but I know it's you, and when I see you in my head you do kind of look like this, but you still look kind of like someone else but just like you at the same time..."

She laughed. "That doesn't make any sense."

"You're almost as tall as me now."

She drew herself up. "Yup, I totally am. I can take you now."

He snorted. "Sure, Ness. I'm gonna let you believe that for a while."

They walked on in silence, drawing slowly closer to the water. "Why the hell were you gone so long?" he suddenly asked.

She looked up at him, startled. "A lot of reasons," she said.

"Where did you go?"

She sighed. "A couple places. France, Volterra..."

His frame started to blur and quiver like he was about to phase. "Volterra?"

She laid a hand on his arm to calm him down. "It's a long story. I'm here now."

He shook his head as he calmed down, and flopped down on a rock that jutted over the loch, letting his feet hang off the edge. "I feel like the last time I really talked to you was at the edge of a lake."

"This is a loch," Nessie said automatically.

"Yes, thank you. You should know. Weren't you named after it? Or something in it?"

She threw a rock at him. He caught it without looking.

"I missed you," he said.

"I missed you, too."

"I feel like I haven't seen colors in fifteen months. And you left thinking... you left thinking that I barely cared about you at all, and the whole time I felt like someone had cut all my insides out, and I had no idea what was going to happen to you..."

"I'm sorry..." she said.

"I did stuff. My sister found me this GED class, and I got a job, and I ran patrols and god, I have never felt so terrible in my whole life. I wanted to sleep all day because sleeping was the only thing that didn't just suck. And you were out there somewhere... thinking that I was following your mom around like a puppy or something." He flicked his hand in frustration and a handful of rocks splashed into the water.

Nessie pinched the bridge of her nose. "I was a little preoccupied with what happened right after that fight we had, to be honest."

"God, why didn't you tell us? Why didn't you say something?"

She pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on her hands. "I should have," she said.

"Yeah, you should. We could have done something. We could have helped you. Your whole family deals with the blood drinking thing all the time."

"Exactly!" she said. "They deal with it. They handle it. They don't kill anyone, and they thought I was too good and sweet and wonderful to ever even want to. The things I wanted to do... there were a bunch of times I almost killed a whole room full of little kids, Jake. Tell me how you would go about explaining that to your parents."

"I know, I know. I'm sorry. There have been so many conversations about this, believe me. Nobody should have assumed anything about how you were going to turn out while you were growing. It's not your fault that they made it so you felt like you couldn't tell them."

"It's still my fault, but, I was really confused, and I was ashamed, and I tried really hard not to do anything wrong."

"Why did you go?" he asked. "I get that what they said was awful, but you kind of had just killed someone and you were acting like you were pissed that they cared...I know that wasn't what was going on," he said hastily, seeing her face cloud up. "I know you were really, really freaked and you felt terrible and you didn't know what to do. I knew it then. But if you had just gone and stayed in your room for an hour and your dad had come to find you, everything would have been fine. It would have been okay."

"I can't change it now," she said, looking at the castle ruins on the other side of the water.

"I know. I've just thought about this a lot, okay? I have a lot of time on my hands these days."

Nessie didn't respond. They were sitting a few inches apart but she could feel the warmth coming from his body. She shivered a little in her sweater and wanted to move closer, to press in against him and see if he would put his arm around her...

"So, the whole time you were in France or Volterra or whatever, what did you think about what happened right before you made a meal of that guy?"

"I...I don't know. I tried not to think about it."

"Well that's nice. I wasn't thinking about anything else."

"I didn't think I was ever going to see you again, did I? Thinking about anything to do with you when... well, I guess the only thing I really thought about was what you must think of me."

"What do you mean?"

"I murdered someone. You watched it happen."

"You lost control of an instinct no one had taught you to rein in. If you could have seen the look on your face when you figured out what had happened...It was an accident, not a murder."

Nessie pressed her forehead to her knees. She didn't want to argue with him. "I don't know, Jake. I don't know what was what, still."

He picked up a pebble and skipped it across the surface of the water. "What do you think about the, ah, the imprinting?"

"I want to know why you didn't tell me about it, why no one told me."

He sighed. "It was your parents' rule. They wanted to be really, really sure you grew up like a normal kid. Well, as much as possible, anyway. And your mom was really concerned about your free will. She'd never really bought the whole imprint thing. Even before she changed she didn't see how it was fair for the girls who... you know..."

Nessie nodded. "What's it like?"

"Imprinting?"

"Well, being imprinted. Having an imprintee. Being imprinted on me."

He rubbed the back of his neck. "I guess we have to talk about this, don't we?"

"Not if you don't want to."

"No, it's time. Not talking about it before made a huge fucking...freaking mess. I just don't really know what to tell you. I don't know what you want to hear."

"Well, okay then, don't tell me what I want to hear. Tell me the truth."

He sighed. "All right, then. You matter more than anything. I told you a little bit already. With you gone everything is in grey and black and white, and I can't find a way to care about anything, because everything about me is about being there for you. It's like if you were the world's most awesome guitar player and somebody broke all your fingers, or something. Except worse."

"I'm so sorry."

"I really thought I'd lost you. And I was looking at the rest of however long my damn life decided to be with nothing to live for. Absolutely nothing. That's what it was like. And you were out there somewhere, all alone and with nowhere to live and no money, and you probably needed someone so badly and I'm wired to be that someone and it hurt, like real, physical hurt in my body, not being able to help you. And wherever you were, whenever you thought of me all you probably thought about was how I wanted to be with your mom."

Nessie groaned and dropped her head. "I still can't believe that."

"Look, you know how, before you ran away, you did a bunch of stuff that wasn't really smart, and kind of crazy?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. He held up a hand to pacify her.

"And you did it because you kind of weren't a kid anymore and at the same time you kind of still were, and you didn't really have a lot of control over your emotions, and everything seemed like a really big deal and you were kind of scared and you didn't know what was what?"

"Yeah..."

"Well, you were a teenager. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm sure it was worse for you than it is for anybody else, but you get my point, right?"

"I guess."

"Well, when I had a thing for your mom, I was a teenager." He was looking at her like this was very significant. She waited for him to elaborate.

He huffed. "How would you feel if all the stupid things you did, all the dumb decisions you made when you were still a kid got thrown at you like you had been a fully-functioning adult when you did them? I was a kid, Nessie. I was fourteen when I met your mom, and she was nice and she was pretty and she was really cool and I had a crush on her. And then, your dad skipped town and I was fifteen by then, so way older and wiser, right, and your mom was all broken and messed up and I kind of helped put her back together because that's kind of what I do, if you hadn't noticed, and there was a thing. There was a thing, and I thought I was in love with her or something, and yes, I kissed her and I tried to get her to leave Edward. I did some dumb things and I'm not proud of any of it, but it was years ago and what matters to me now is so different it's not even funny."

"What do you want, then?" she whispered, afraid to look at him.

He shifted forward so he was leaning with his chin in his hand, matching her gaze out over the water. "For a long time I didn't really know," he said. "Imprinting messes with you. It reorders everything inside of you so all of a sudden all you can think about is being there for this one person, and you sort of lose whatever you wanted before and you kind of lose yourself because you're all about them and what they need."

She picked through the little gray pebbles at her feet compulsively, not liking where this conversation was headed. It was starting to feel too much like the first one.

"But with you gone...I had to think about it. You weren't there, needing things all the time. And no matter what sort of biological wiring was making me want to be what you needed, there wasn't anything I could do about it except get depressed and lie around all day playing video games with Emmett."

There was a pause as he rubbed his thumb across his forehead. "Wow, this is harder than I thought."

She looked over at him, brow furrowed. "What is?"

"Telling you that I want to be with you."

A warm, prickly feeling started coursing down her arms. "What?"

"I want to be with you. I want to be, you know, your, um..."

"I thought you said I was a kid and you weren't, and things didn't work that way."

"Yeah, well, look at you now."

She blushed.

"I'm serious. I know this is messed up but everything is different now. It hasn't been that long, but it's been forever at the same time and I can't deal with not having you around anymore. And you've... you've turned into the most... god, you're beautiful. I had no idea you could be so beautiful, Nessie. I want everything you wanted, all right? I want it now and I'll ask you for it, but you don't have to give it to me, you got that? Your parents have been right about this whole stupid situation. You need a chance to decide what you want like a normal woman who isn't the imprintee of a werewolf who's known her since the day she was born."

She laughed. "I already know what I want."

"What do you want, Ness?"

She leaned minutely towards him. "I want you to kiss me."

For a moment, he just looked at her, and she started getting nervous. But then he smiled.

"Okay, then," he whispered. His hand came up around the back of her head and he pressed her forward gently, until her lips met his. The breath he let out against her mouth was shaky as his hand wove into her hair and his other arm came around her waist to scoot her closer, and he kissed her. She lifted her hands to either side of his face and kissed him back, and he was holding her like he thought he was going to break her, but kissing her like he thought she might vanish in ten seconds and this might be his only chance.

And then he pulled her close and she nestled right into the spot she'd always loved, under his arm and against his chest.

"What happened to you?" he asked, and the gentleness in his voice made her want to cry.

"I don't know how to even start to tell you," she said. "I don't even know if I should."

He reached out and took hold of her hand, rotating her wrist so that her palm turned up and her fingers spread out and rested against his. "Can you show me?"

So she did. They sat unmoving by the edge of the water as the sun dipped below the highlands, Nessie calling up and sending through her fingers every flickering, technicolor image of the life he hadn't seen. His head was bowed toward hers, his eyes closed as he watched it all dance through his mind and the energy of her flowing memories rose around them and almost made the air seem warm, and though there were times when his fingers went rigid or his breath caught in his chest, he never said anything. He just kept watching as the tall, willowy woman who had walked so unexpectedly back into his empty life showed him her world.