CRASH COURSE IN BONDING

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"When in Rome, Edward..." Irina insisted, trying to touch my head. I angled it away and glared at her, the effect of my strict gaze only managing to bring out a pout on her face.

"I wanted to speak to Tanya, trust me... I have no interest in...this" I sighed, waving at the many little cosmetics that they didn't need, that were strewn on the floor of Irina's bedroom-that had no bed, but a series of lush ancient furniture and silks that reflected her time, and the era she enjoyed the most.

"In fact..." I sighed, rising up and chucking an over decorated cushion to the side with too much force, so it went crashing into a corner, smashing a vase into pieces. I ignored this and was grateful that Irina paid no attention to my desecration of her personal ostentatious space "I think I will go and speak with... Eleazar... you women are trying my patience"
"He isn't here" she said I froze when her thoughts showed this to be the truth "...neither is Carmen"

"Why do you insist on treating us like we have leprosy" Alice whined.

"We only have breast, Edward" Irina laughed.

"Angela has them too" Alice added quickly before I could stop them "If she would let me dress her, you would know this too"
"Who is Angela!" Irina giggled, pressing my shoulders down hard so I was forced to sit back down on the rug. "Edward met a girl..."

"A human girl" Rosalie said sadly, as though Angela was missing a limb or half-witted.

"Oh, that is just like you Edward" Irina tutted

"Why does everyone think that!" I snapped "My falling in love with a human girl is nothing would ever have been predicted!"

"So what was it that you wanted to discuss with Tanya?" Irina ignored me "Last time I checked, you, two were incapable of holding a conversation without you being scared off..."
"By Tanya's boobies" Rosalie droned, flipping through her magazine and searching for a hairstyle she would spend the night trying to keep from growing out. "If only they were not so perfect... if only they were not so visible... if only Tanya looked like a twelve year old boy"
"So I am to believe that your opposition to the full acceptance Angela is due to your loyalty to Tanya?" I asked Rosalie and she glared at me from the top rim of her magazine, warning me not to 'go there' with her but we were far from home, far from any of my personal possessions for her to destroy... "Or do you hate being irrelevant"
The magazine flew across the space and whacked me harmlessly square in the face. I smiled, impressed that her anger had turned the launch of the magazine into an abrupt instinct rather than anything preconceived.

"Boy...!" Rosalie hissed "Do not test me!"
"Oh, come now Rose..." Alice sighed, rolling over and smiling at Rosalie "You technically started him..."
"And I will end him too!" Rosalie rose from her seat, trembling lightly with anger.

"A woman's pride..." I sighed, listening to Tanya's excitement as she smelt my scent in the lounge, she would be entering Irina's room in seconds "Such a fragile thing"
"Who is fragile?" Tanya asked, her eyes sparkling as she saw me being harassed by Irina with a brush and comb "Edward... oh, we have always known our little fleur was a fragile one"

"Rosalie's pride" Alice sighed bored "Once again, we are about to witness the battle of the two most conceited beings in any Millennia"
"More conceited that Caius?" Irina scoffed "Even Aro has enough sense to know when something is a lot prettier than he is..."
"Only because Aro thinks he is God and anything prettier than him, is only that magnificent because it is meant to be possessed by him... and that is what makes Aro the most vain vampire of all time" I sighed. "He thinks anything magnificent is bought about for his sole enjoyment"

"And you, Edward... my little tease!" Tanya drawled, taking the brush away from Irina and locking me in place, her slender arms winding around my front and locking. "Have you come back to me with a little more conviction...?" she whispered by my ear and I failed to hide my displeasure on my face.

"He looks like he wants to hurl" Rosalie never learnt that I would never take her teasing lying down, and she was back on track after the magazine incident seconds ago "It's fitting that our little Fleur would want to venture outside of his species..."
"Pretty virgin Fleur falling in love with a mango tree" Irina tutted "what will your babies look like"
"oh do shut up!" Alice sighed "Angela is lovely! Except her fashion sense... heavens, does she dress in the dark or without her glasses Edward...?"
"How would I know?!" I snapped, although I indeed knew that she didn't get dressed with her glasses on (that would be uncomfortable, regardless) and that Angela's fashion sense began and ended with comfort and not vanity. A little warmth spread through me at that notion, that she was oblivious to any of her many features that should by all accounts; render her immobile in front of a mirror or any reflective surface.

"So her name is Angela?" Tanya asked "I think I am a little jealous"
"You have nothing to be jealous about... you were never a consideration for me!" I growled

"Oh, my... have we found the first vampire to have a memory deficiency?!" Rosalie laughed "Or was what you told me Tanya, a figment of your over sexed imagination?"
"You told Rosalie?" I hissed, flinging her hand off of me, the brush clattering on the little space were the tiling was exposed before bouncing on the rug and landing with precision in Alice's expecting hand.

"Foreseeing one-telepathy zero" Alice murmured, brushing her hair immediately.

"I guess that means it really happened!" Irina laughed. "So what was it you wanted from Tanya?"
"Booty call?" Tanya asked.

"I bet it is... there is only so much one can do with a human... shake her hand, kiss her fore head... hold her really carefully while time passes you by..." Rosalie droned. "But then again, he doesn't even wank...!"
"Oh, if I can have that one thing she can't have... I will be mildly satisfied" Tanya sighed "After all... you have no heart or soul to give her"
"You are being cruel, Tanya" I warned "It is... a colour best suited for other blondes"

"Can I help it" Tanya sighed "You treat me like I carry diseases one moment and the next you leave me feeling like a used condom..."

"Funny story about condoms..." Alice began and I yelled out for her to stop. "What...?" she asked innocently.

"I do not want to know about your sex life!" I hissed.

"Then maybe you should have stayed in Forks?" Alice said innocently.

"Why did you come...?" Rosalie sighed "Besides the fact that you too, contain a frozen uterus"
"I wanted to talk to Tanya" I said "In private..."
"There are no secrets between sisters" Irina mused.

"And he is more like a sister than anything" Rosalie snickered, enjoying my presence in her own way.

"Yes, Edward..." Tanya bought into Rosalie's game "You have four women here, at your beckoning to assist you with whatever hormonal problem you are experiencing as a result of your period synching up with Angela"
"You were saying, about condoms... Alice?" Irina asked, painting her nails a startling pink colour.

"Oh, Jasper received these condoms at school and he actually wanted to use them!" Alice laughed shaking her head.

"You let him?" Rosalie asked "There are some things I just won't let Emmett do!"

"Well, that is understandable..." I laughed, pulled into their odd bonding session "I once saw Emmett poking his finger up his nose...trying to see if he could tickle his brain"

"Well, that is a little more considerable since he wasn't poking his finer up Rosalie's nose!" Alice laughed "I should have predicted that condom's would be eaten away by venom..."
"Argh..." I grimaced, squirming in my seat and contemplating running back to Forks and filling my mind with images of squirrels mating to get the image of Jasper's request from Alice out of my mind.

"I managed to get it on..." Alice continued, Irina noticing my fidgeting and together with Tanya they forced me down-the only way I could truly leave was to fight them off, and I chided myself... I had already seen the worst unlike the others, so surely then I could brave this "But the spit in my mouth disintegrated the whole thing by the third suck..." she said in disbelief while I gagged, wondering beside myself why Jasper needed to know what oral sex felt like with a condom on.

"And before we could head into anything else, the next thing I knew... bits of condom were going down my throat and Jasper was sporting a pink fishnet rubber!" Alice finished and Irina's room erupted in giggles while I felt like I was the one who had swallowed bits of condom.

"Edward, what did you do with your thousand condoms?" Rosalie asked innocently.

"Edward has a thousand condoms?" Tanya asked "Only?"

"Only?" I guffawed "One is too many...!"
"He is right; there isn't much he can do with any..." Alice sighed sadly, on behalf of me. "They are currently in an Egyptian vase of fertility, waiting for the turn in the millennia when they become rare artefacts"

"Imagine the confusion some poor bumbling Indiana Jones is going to go through!" Irina giggled.

"Trying to make sense on why Egyptians would store anti-baby devices in a vase that promotes fertility!" Tanya clapped her hands "Bravo, Edward!"

"It's like parking a Porsche next to a horse carriage in an Amish town!" Alice laughed and I failed to not join her, relaxed enough to allow Tanya her brushing of my hair. "Imagine... the absurdity of it all!"

And with that one word, my empty chest filled with sorrow, as I missed Angela terribly.

"Why the long face?" Rosalie asked, genuinely concerned.

"Nothing" I said quickly, grabbing the scissors from Tanya's dazed hand.

"Oh, just a trim Edward!" she cried

"I am not sitting here with you cutting my hair until it grows an inch!" I snapped.

"Oh, come on..." Alice teased "I am getting my hair lengthened by Rosalie... its fun!"

"There is nothing fun about it"

"Angela will love how you look when your hair is longer" Alice insisted, lying... that wasn't in any future but her own personal opinion on the matter after seeing the relic picture of me with longer hair. "Tanya only wants to cut from the top"
"It's already too long there" I sighed "And I have no hope of it ever being shorter..."
"We could burn it" Rosalie smiled sweetly "Burning is a sure way to stunt hair growth for a week"

"The things you women go through for beauty, when you are vampires... is puzzling" I sighed "Fine, you can cut it Tanya"

"So what was it you wanted from me... that you need to discuss in private... that is not an arrangement for sex on behalf of your little morsel love?" Tanya murmured, snipping away at the same spot continuously.

"Rosalie promises to behave" Alice said "Right, Rosalie?"
"Fine" Rosalie conceded "Angela is not as bad a human as that bumbling giggling fool of a girl..."

"Isabella?" Alice asked and Rosalie nodded "Hmm, agreed. So, Edward...?"

I had never really been bashful... not in a while, and not to anyone who wasn't Angela. They were staring at my face, and the added telepathy was a curse as my uneasiness rebounded in their minds and hit me a second time.

"Ah, he is shy!" Irina giggled "Is it about Angela? It is, isn't it...?"
"It's about sex" Rosalie guessed "And I bet you have already asked my husband... and Jasper..."
"Who wants advice from a man who sticks his finger up his nose to tickle his brain" Alice sighed.

"Who wants advice from a husband who makes his wife chew condoms?" Rosalie countered.

"Touché sister" Alice smiled. "And I suppose Carlisle is the first man to have sex repeatedly and still come out a virgin at the end?"

"What would you even call a porno made by Esme and Carlisle...!?" Rosalie laughed "It wouldn't be hard porn..."
"Certainly not soft porn!" Alice sniggered.

"Liquid porn for the Christian masses?" Irina offered and they burst out laughing. "Sorry, Edward... you were saying... you can't get it up?"
"Can't ever hope of getting it down is more like it!" Tanya giggled before apologising when I looked up at her in warning. She waved the scissors in my face, before continuing her monotonous hair cutting.

"If you are going to tease me..." I began.

"Edward, what was it you wanted to ask!?" Alice cut me impatiently.

"I wanted to know... how it is you are physical with human males" I sighed, closing my eyes and listening to their still unserious thoughts, trickling with little jeers and heckling at my confession.

"It helps when the lie still" Irina said seriously.

"And there is a lot of slow movement..." Tanya sighed, her fingers digging into my scalp before they scooped up the hair that had already returned to its previous length. "A lot... of torturously slow... movement and concentration"

"It can be done, Edward" Irina said helpfully "But you need to not be bursting with desires... well fed and... have been working up to it for a few years"
"Working up to it for a few..." I said absently "I just fell in love... I haven't been thinking about that with a human before...!"

"Well, then start thinking about it now" Irina smiled. "Imagine what she would like..."

"Oh" Alice breathed, her eyes glassing over and thoughts inching away from reality. Rosalie paused her repeated snipping of Alice's hair and looked at me, waiting for the moment I dictated the contents of Alice's mind.

I saw through her mind, as Angela skipped through various planes of the future, somehow getting lost in smokiness before re-emerging with bag held stiffly by her arm at the beach and then lost again before the contents of her beach day were lost and she was...

In James cold arms, at the north cliff that hugged the ocean being shaken and harassed, James demanding her to tell him where I was and behind them... was one still body of a young boy. The image flipped, and suddenly there were two bodies on the tip of the cliff-the boy and... Angela.

"NO!" I cried, rising up and startling Tanya, giving Rosalie one pained look as Alice awoke from her tragic vision. I was out of the house immediately, already damning the effort Carlisle had put in upholding a treaty for wolf-men long gone in time...

I would scoop her from First Beach, I would take her in my arms and into safety... I was running against time, the sun was already dipping and my mind easily calculated that I would either make it in time to watch the light leave my beloved's eyes... or to hold her, finally, as her body became cold.

Behind me, Rosalie and Alice followed their cries of comfort to me lost to the wind.

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"Ngh..." Leah groaned, light popping in her mind and her arm throbbing. She blinked her eyes open and looked to her side, and sighed miserably when she saw an unconscious Angela slumped on the ceiling of the upturned car, a violent purple bruise on her forehead oozing out blood.

"Jake?" Leah whispered, trying to crane her head to the back of the car. Jacob made no sound. She twisted her arm from behind her and freed her seatbelt, and the moment she was free she slumped forward onto the car's ceiling... the car groaned, tilting a little. She peered out and made out thick bushy shadows. Trees, she realised. They were in a tree, she thought miserably.

"Angela?" Leah prodded Angela's arm and sighed with relief when the young girl groaned and tried to swat her hand away "Wake up Angela, we were in an accident and now we are in a..."

As Angela's eyes fluttered open, the car groaned, tilting further down into a nose dive and Leah's eyes widened... they were falling, they were going to crash to the ground. But they didn't, although the car continued to move in a deliberate manner, sliding and scraping over the bark of the tree and underneath it all... she thought she heard a man whistling casually.

"Angela!" Leah insisted and Alice was forced into lucidity. The car thumped suddenly, the right way up and Leah, Angela and Jacob crashed back into their seats awkwardly and painfully , bruises and broken parts sending Jacob into a howling state of conscious. "Jake!" Leah cried, scooting in her seat to get a look at the young boy. He was paling, his face twisted in pain and left hand clutching his side. The moon was out, and the blood on his forehead shone black.

"It's... cold" Angela's teeth chattered, her words slurred and eyes half closed but alert. Leah couldn't feel the cold, her pain consisted only of bruised and aches. She shrugged her jacket of and handed it to Angela before fitting herself through the space between the front seats to get to Jacob, feeling his legs carefully.

"His arm is broken" Leah said anxiously "Shit!"

"Let me help him with that..." a clear voice cut through the ivory darkness of the moonlit night. The door to Jacob's left squelched sickly before being pried from the car and flung into the dark forest. Leah stared at the place were her door was in horror and then gasped when a man crouched by the opening and peered inside, red eyes glowing like pools of metallic blood.

"Hey beautiful" James grinned "Fancy meeting you here?"

"Huh?" Angela craned her head back and cried out when she saw James.

"Ahhh, glad you remember me" James chuckled, reaching a pale hand into the car for Jacob. Leah shouted, scrambling to somehow hold on to Jacob but James half pulled her with the groaning crying Jacob before she lost the battle and slumped defeated in the back seat, watching as Jacob was carried effortlessly into the night, before James placed him down carelessly and leaned dubiously over him.

In seconds, Jacob began to cry out in true horror-fully lucid and fully in pain now.

"Stop!" Leah cried, clumsily crawling out of the car and falling onto the forest floor. She got up and stumbled toward James, her hands shocked momentarily into retreat when they met his frozen stinging skin but she persevered with each plea and cry Jacob gave for James to stop biting him... and launched herself at James, trying to pull him off, to pry him away... but he didn't even budge at the impact she hit him with, that only seemed to bruise her.

"Enough!" James said irritated, reaching behind and slapping her-Leah went flying into a tree, whacking against it sickly before slumping down at its base. He rose away from a twitching groaning Jacob and walked backed to the car casually, lazily. "Care to join us?" he asked Angela.

Her eyes were wide, locked to his red iridescent ones.

"What... do... you want?" she asked him shakily "Is it me? Do you want me? You can leave them... see... I'll come willingly..."

"Like you have a choice, love!" James laughed. "But as adorable as your conceit is you pathetic human... there is nothing special about you. However, there is something special about you... in relation with that yellow eyed vampire"

Angela's fear was momentarily doused with an illogical anger at James, an overpowering sense of grandiose took her over and she felt, in that moment, that she could harm James just to keep her vampire away from such vileness. She felt, she could die... to keep Edward from James and his dreadful eyes.

"What, was he not your lover?" James asked conversationally but Angela remained silent, eyes wide with fear and anger, her soul filling with hate for this one being. Jacob was gasping for air, twitching in quick spasms and Leah hadn't moved from the base of the tree.

"Can't you talk now?!" James asked, frowning. He walked over to Jacob, picked him up by the leg and dragged him up so he was half dangling in the air while his one arm trailed the ground in a horrific slackness. Angela's heart clenched, James watched this. "Is he your friend?"

"Leave him, please!" Angela begged trying to pierce the night with her bad sight, trying to see if the slumping shadow that was Leah had moved at all. She made out Leah standing up and quickly looked back at James-she knew enough that he would be able to hear Leah move, but James made no move to suggest he was aware of this.

"Is he a friend of yours?" James asked softly, and suddenly Leah whacked the side of his head with a sturdy log. All her efforts did was splinter the log, send her stumbling away from James. "You know, you are beginning to irritate me..."

"Huh?" Leah breathed, exhausted by her effort. James tossed Jacob into the air, and he disappeared ahead into the darkness with a muffled thump that made both Leah and Angela cry out.

"Hmm" James reached Leah and held her still before squeezing her arms and causing her to howl into the night. He let her go, holding her easily up with one hand while his other hand went to her head and Angela immediately knew what was going to happen...

He was going to snap her neck.

"No, please... stop!" Angela pleaded rushing over to James. He knocked her back indifferently and she went through the air, her body aching horridly and knocking through small bushes and crashing hard into small trees before her torpedoing body came to an abrupt standstill in cold arms.

"Got you!" Rosalie Hale breathed, and as Angela stared at the indescribably beautiful pale face of the vampire, she heard the whizzing sound of the forest flying by them.

"No, Leah... Jacob!" Angela pleaded, trying to scuttle up and out of Rosalie's arms besides her howling pained body and Rosalie's immovable arms caging her.

"I got her..." Alice yelled from across them in the darkness, the world rushing away as the vampires rushed through the forest "The boy... there was blood! Edward is taking care of James... Emmett and Jasper should be there...!"

"What will happen to him..." Angela asked, her head throbbing and mind slurring into a hypnotic state, moving into unconsciousness "James..."
"He'll be a pile of harmless ashes by morning light" Rosalie whispered to her "Hush, you are in for a hell of a night with Carlisle"

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In Angela's dream, she was back by the little stream in the forest... beside her, Leah Clearwater stood beautiful and fierce, as she had been as she had tried to defend her little adoptive brother Jacob from James the Red Eyed vampire.

And at the other side, Rosalie and Alice stood beckoning them over, begging them to cross the stream and stay away from James. He was coming for them, they were crying... he was coming for with Jacob.

"With Jacob?" Angela asked, looking behind her. She saw them standing together, James sadistic grin in place and Jacob, bruised and battered with his dangling arm as she had seen him but sporting crimson eyes of hate. They stood by the edge of the forest, staring hungrily at her and Leah.

"Leah, we have to cross!" Angela begged, reaching for Leah's hand "We have to cross and get away from the monsters!"

"What are you talking, Angela?" Leah asked her "There are monsters on both sides of this stream, you and I... we are doomed..."

AUTHORS NOTE:

I am still certain that someone is going to die... but that may change, as things tend to as the story moves on its own. I am not sure if I will be writing this exclusively in either Edward's perspective or observing Angela especially with the inclusion of other strong characters as this is a story about Angela and Edward, but we will see... since their interactions with everyone else does affect them in some manner.

Thank you for the support, as always... you are legend!

Xx

TJ