I slept on and off.

I woke up to Bella, mostly. She would be wiping my face or reading or playing with my hair. I woke up to Esme, sitting in the chair next to my bed, knitting needles and yarn in her hands. I woke up to Keiko as she held my hand and numbed me from the pain. Every once in awhile I woke up to Carlisle as he examined me.

I woke up to the pain, my constant companion. That was always the worst. What felt thousands of volts of electricity running through me, each strike more ruthless and ferocious than the last. I whimpered on my side with it. "Please make it stop." I would rock and beg, my shaky arms around my torso, trying to keep the fire from spreading. "Please."

It would stop - with Keiko's help. She would use her powers and the fire would fade into a dull ache deep in my bones.

A strike hit me like a wrecking ball, yanking me right out of unconsciousness and I groaned with the fire. Against my will, I opened my eyes to Rosalie in the chair next to my bed. She had the television remote in her hand, her feet crossed on my bed, and was flipping through channels as fast as she could. I watched as second of the picture would appear and then disappear. I watched her loop through the entirety of the cable package three times.

"Can you just find a channel?" I creaked, irritated and sore. I tasted blood in my mouth.

She flipped on a crazy game show and sighed. Touchy. Touchy. She thought and a shooting pain ripped through my head. I groaned and pressed my temples with my shaky hands.

"Sorry," She whispered. "I forgot."

"It's not your fault." I groaned again, coughing up blood in the process.

Rosalie moved to wipe my face, her eyes never leaving the television. Florence Nightingale over here blessing me with her superior bedside manner. I thought and rolled my eyes.

"How's the pain?" She asked, her dark eyes glancing at me.

I coughed up more blood. "Seven." Light orange on my pain chart. She replaced the towel with a metal emesis basin and rubbed my shoulder. "What day is it?"

"June fourth."

"We've been here for a week already?" I gripped the sheets in my fists. I was probably conscious for only about a third of it. "How long was I asleep?"

"About twelve hours."

I sighed and closed my eyes. I had so many days to mark off my little calendar now. "Where's Bella?"

Rosalie looked at me. "She's sleeping. It's like two in the morning."

"What about everyone else?"

"Carlisle and Dr. Funai are in the lab. Esme is helping Keiko do laundry."

Another small strike causing my arms to jerk, I accidentally hit the emesis basin Rosalie was holding for me. It flipped up into air, spun and then landed right on top of my chest with a clang! Blood sprayed everywhere - hitting the sheets, my face, Rosalie.

"Edward," Rosalie groaned and stood up, her fingers going to her head. "I have barf blood in my hair now!"

"Sorry," I said and jerked again. "Sorry."

You should be thankful that I'm a forgiving person. She thought sourly.

I groaned at the words jackhammering in my brain, my fingers flying to my temples. I looked up at her. "Can you just speak what's on your mind?" I begged, trying to blink away the headache.

"I promise you, you don't want me to do that."

I rolled my eyes. "Can you at least try? Or is this one selfless act-," I gasped suddenly.

She disappeared. Everything disappeared.

I was plunged into darkness. TS did that sometimes when I was going through a really bad attack. But this was different. That darkness was like clicking the lights off. Murky, foggy, but I still could perceive. This was just black. It was a living creature. It smothered me under its weight, threatening to overtake me. I instantly felt claustrophobic, like someone was suffocating me with a pillow.

I could still hear the television and Rosalie's low breathing, though. I still felt the emesis basin on my chest. The blood running down my face.

"Rosalie?" I croaked, panic twisting through me.

"What Edward?"

"Rosalie, I can't see."

"What?"

"I can't see." I cried, on the verge of an anxiety attack, my hands coming up to grasp at anything. I felt my head roll around.

A hand gripped mine. "I'll be right back, okay?" She said, her voice suddenly concerned. "I'll go get Carlisle."

"No, wait." I said, not wanting to be left alone in the blackness.

I gasped hard breaths, panic twisting my stomach into knots. I touched my face with shaky hands. I felt the NG tube taped to my cheek. I touched my chest. I found the basin. I touched the blood, cool and wet under my fingers.

The anxiety brought on lightning strikes and I cringed hard against the pillow, whimpering with the pain that rocketed through me. It blasted again and again, oscillating searing pain into my limbs. "Please," I started to beg quietly. "Make it stop."

But, I couldn't see and the blackness – the creature – smothered me, sat right on my jugular and pressed the air out of me. I choked like I was drowning.

"Son, we're right here." Carlisle said and a hand touched my shoulder.

Desperation bubbled out of me. Desperation to get away from the pain. From the darkness. "Dad, dad." I cried and grabbed at his shirt, hooking my fingers around his collar. "I can't see. I can't see."

"I know. I know you're scared." He tried to pry my fingers on his shirt. "We'll get you checked out. We'll get you fixed up, okay? You got to let go of my shirt."

"No, no." I begged, the darkness continue to press on me. My breaths coming out hard and ragged. I coughed and felt blood fly out of me. "If I let go then you'll disappear. You can't disappear. Please don't leave me. Please." My voice broke.

There was a sentence of clipped Japanese from somewhere in the room.

"Okay," Carlisle said, scooping me up. He replaced my spot on the bed and held me close to his chest. A towel was pressed under my face and we slowly started to rock. "It's okay. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."

I felt his face press against my hair as he murmured I counted his breaths and focused hard to control my own.

A sudden impending feeling of dread washed over me like a tsunami. Everyone always talks about seeing a light at the end of the tunnel when you start to die. But all I saw was eternal dark. I started to panic all over again, my stomach twisting into knots. This isn't how it's supposed to end. It's not supposed to be this way. "I don't want to die." My voice cracked.

"You're not going to die." He assured, his arms squeezing tighter around me.

My darkness flashed white and I cried out in pain. "I had so much more to accomplish." I sobbed. "I wanted to watch Bella grow old. I wanted a life with her. Kids." I babbled. "Or I don't know, adopt like you guys did. I-,"

"Edward," He said firmly. "You're not going anywhere."

The resolution in his voice gave me small comfort. I clenched my teeth together and tightened my fingers around his shirt. "Don't leave okay." I whispered.

"Never." He started to hum an old hymn.

I focused on inhaling deep breaths and exhaling. I focused on the tiny things – Carlisle's thumb rubbing circles on my arm. I focused on the dripping cadence of the blood bag. The game show host's loud voice on the television.

I blinked and suddenly my vision flooded with light and my hospital came back into view. Rosalie too, a worried look on her face, the blood in hair drying black. And Dr. Funai, her small arms crossed over her chest and a crease in her eyebrows.

"My sight." I touched my face, finding the tube. "It's back. I can see."

I heard Carlisle sigh with relief behind me. "I'm glad."

I looked at Dr. Funai's expression as it became more pained. "What?" I asked and picked my head up. A shooting pain radiated from the base of my spine to the crown of my head and I let it thump back on Carlisle's chest. "Oh, my head."

"Your vision will start going in and out." Dr. Funai explained. "Unfortunately, when your vision starts going, your time shortens into weeks, even days. We must work quickly if we are to see you through this."

"H-how long?" I asked, my mouth suddenly feeling like it was stuffed with cotton.

"Perhaps two weeks." She answered.

I let my mouth pop open in surprise. Two weeks? My eyebrows furrowed. I was filled with a sudden flash of regret. I was such an idiot. If I had just come when she offered in January…

I sucked in hard breath like I was on the verge of tears. But, vampires couldn't cry. We could sob, but we received no relief of tears. Panic and dread and denial and anger flooded through me. This couldn't be it. It couldn't be.

"Edward, we're not going to let that happen, okay?" Carlisle said.

But it's going to happen anyway.

I started making lists. It kept me distracted enough to sit in my bed quietly, otherwise I knew if I focused on the fact that my expiration date was approaching, I would send myself into a fit that would ultimately leave me in a huddled, useless mass on my bed.

I would make lists in my head. Lists of things I did in my life I was proud of. Lists of accomplishments. Lists of people I loved. Lists of people I helped. They were like the opposite of bucket lists – things I already did that eased the burn of dying.

I didn't let Bella leave my side. In light of the Russians coming and my impending demise, I couldn't be without her for more than a couple of seconds. Every time she got up to go use the restroom or get food or change clothes, it felt like part of me was ripped away. I needed her next to me. She was the air in my lungs and the beat of my still heart.

She agreed, of course. She even slept in my little hospital bed at night with me, her head on my chest as I held her in my jerky arms, counting her heartbeats because I knew soon, I wouldn't be able to hear them at all.

Esme never left my side either. Busying herself with knitting baby hats. She made probably a hundred of them a day. Even Rosalie camped out in my room. Everyone except Carlisle, who was working to the last minute in the lab. We all capitalized on the time we had left, because we knew there wasn't much left to have.

When Bella slept on me, Esme helped arrange my affairs. She helped get all of my finances and assets transferred over into Bella's name, arranging it so that Bella would be financially set. I composed shaky letters to my family to read after I died. And then when I wasn't preparing, I was marveling over the slight, brunette girl in my arms, my wife, my hands running all over her face and arms. My lips tracing her forehead, her jawbone. Memorizing every part of her so I wouldn't forget in the next life.

It was ten days after we arrived in Japan when Carlisle suddenly popped into my room, his face neutral except for a worry line between his eyebrows.

"Esme," Carlisle said. "May I see you? Bella too?"

"What's going on?" I asked as I looked between the three faces. I felt my eyebrows pull together in worry.

"It's nothing concerning." Carlisle said, with a small smile. "Just coordinating efforts."

"I'll be right back." Bella said. She pressed her lips in the hollow under my ear and stood up.

"But-," I protested, already feeling cold without her next to me.

I watched them leave. That was odd. What couldn't be said in front of me? If it was about the strikes, I already knew everything. An alarm went off in my head. Did something happen at home with the other vampires?

With my brows still furrowed, I forced myself into their thoughts. I found them in Dr. Funai's lab, two stories below me. My fingers wrapped around the metal of the roll bars as I pushed with great effort to get into their heads.

"…Russians…Japan…"

"Alice…sees…"

"…Emmett…"

A white, hot cattle brand ran through my eye right into my brain. I fell against my pillow, my hands pressing against my forehead as I cried out with the intensity.

The pain wasn't the only thing in my head. Were the Russians coming here? That couldn't be right. How did they know she was here? Did they hear something? What was going on back home? Anxiety flipped my insides and I gasped with a sudden panic attack.

Ignoring the stabbing in my head, I pushed out again to scan for mental voices, looking for Bella. I needed her here, right next to me. Right now. My vision went in and out and I felt the hot stream of blood on my face as it ran from my nostril.

I couldn't find her. Dammit. Why was I so useless? I felt dizzy all of a sudden, but I fought through it as I fished around from my cell phone. I could call Alice. She would tell me what I wanted to know. She would tell me what's going on.

I ended up finding my phone by pushing it off my bedside table. I listened as it clattered to the floor.

"Dammit." I cursed, my shaky fingers finding the bridge of my nose.

I pinched the release of the roll bars and let them swing down. With a stiff push, I turned into a sitting position, swinging my legs over the bed. My feet hit the tile floor and I paused and breathed – inhale, exhale - fighting the vertigo and the nausea and the sizzling burn that ran through me.

I fished for my walker that sat folded up next to my bed and popped it open in front of me. Ugh, I'm such an old man now. I winced. With protesting fingers and a deep breath, I struggled to my feet.

And then I thumped to the floor with a sound that rivaled two boulders being thrown together. My head cracking against the metal bedframe and the walker tumbling down over me.

Well, this isn't what I had planned. I thought sourly as I laid prone on the tile floor.

I found my cell phone under my bed, sitting at a tilt against the mechanism that made the head of the bed move. It was inches away from my fingertips. I reached out to grab it.

"Fuck!" I cursed in a way that wasn't acceptable in any sort of company.

The strikes blinded me with hot white for a second and then I was plunged back into the suffocating dark. Voices flooded my mind, stinging hot and loud like a bunch of angry hornets were released into my head. Mental voices. They rose in pitch and volume, vibrating around my skull like I had jammed it inside a subwoofer.

"…But what about Victoria?"

"I don't know. That's just what Alice saw."

"Do we know when?"

Fire hit me and I saw orange. A scream of a burning man escaped my lips. All the mental voices turned towards the sound and one word echoed through all of their heads. Edward. I closed my eyes and prayed that the floor would open up and swallow me, releasing me from this torture.

"Edward," Esme was the first to get to me. "What are you doing on the floor?"

I couldn't make any comprehensible sounds, so I just whimpered as they lifted me off the ground and got me back into bed. A hand slipped into mine and the pain started to slowly decrease. I sucked in deep breaths like I had been drowning as the fire inside of me died.

"What is going on with the Russians?" I demanded between clenched teeth as I winced through the flares. I still couldn't see, but I could hear everyone's breathing and Bella's erratic heartbeat in her chest. I knew they were still there.

"Edward, please." Esme said. "Just focus on getting well."

"No, no, no." I shook my head. "Stop lying to me. All you're doing is making me worried and it's making it worse."

There was a hard, heavy silence. A warm hand slipped into the one that I wasn't holding with Kotoko. I opened my mouth to demand the truth again, but Carlisle interrupted me with a sigh. "Alice called earlier. The Russians have decided that they are coming to Japan."

"Bella," I whispered, my eyebrows pulling together.

"I'm right here." She pressed in next to me. "I'm right here." I wrapped my arms around her shoulders.

So it was true. I gritted my teeth. "How did they know we'd be here?"

"Alice suspects that one of them heard you talking to the wolves in the woods." Carlisle answered. "We're not sure why they've waited this long, though."

I knew, though. I knew exactly why. They were waiting for me, biding their time. Every second passed was a second towards the end for me.

"What are we going to do?"

"You're not going to do anything." Bella said next to me. "Except get well."

I made a face. "We need to get Bella out of here." It pained me to say it, but moving her away from here would keep her safe.

"No," She said. "I don't want to leave you."

"Bella, my love." I lifted her hand to my face. "Please be practical."

"I am." She assured and then paused for a long moment. "And I'm not separating from you. I don't care what happens to me."

Anxiety twisted through me. "I care about what happens to you!"

"Edward, stop it. Just focus on yourself."

"No! You're my wife. I'm allowed to worry about you." I hissed with a strike, and jerked.

"And you're my husband, my very ill husband." Her hand rubbed my arm. "Please just relax. And don't worry."

I coughed in response. I had lost that argument.

"We should move you, though." Rose said. "Both of you."

"That's a good idea. But, I don't want to stray too far away from the lab, if we can help it." Carlisle said gently.

"Dr. Funai has another facility underground." Keiko bounced on my other side, her powers running like currents between our hands. "We can move Edward-san there! It hasn't been utilized since World War II, so I highly doubt the Russian vampires know where to find it."

"It's not too far from the lab?"

"Directly under it, actually." Keiko said.

"And we'll keep Bella safe, Edward." Rosalie said.

"Yes, she's in very capable hands." Esme said. "Just please rest."

But, I couldn't rest. Not with this new threat looming on the horizon. It kept the panic in my chest and the fire hot in my limbs. I laid awake, trying to make lists. I tried focusing on pleasant things. I tried composing in my head. I couldn't do any of those things, though.

All I thought about was this threat.

And Bella. I thought about Bella.

I don't care what happens to me. Is what she said. All of a sudden I was back in the Forks hospital hallway, standing in front of the directory with her, watching her eyes harden like petrified wood and her tiny fist tighten so tight it drew blood. Contingency plans.

The others would protect her from the vampires, sure. But, could they protect her from herself? What would happen when I don't wake up? Would she live her life or seek to find the means to her end? I couldn't let her do that. She wouldn't be able to follow me. She was destined for heaven I was destined for darkness.

"Bella," I whispered, my fingers tracing her face. "Are you awake?"

She didn't answer. She mumbled incoherently as she slept against me, her hand sliding down my chest.

"Hello?" I called quietly out into the darkness. But, nobody answered me. We were alone.

I ran my fingers through her hair. She was so fragile, so breakable. Each one of her processes tied to delicate balances. Her breathing and heartbeat and brain all hooked up together, all reliant on each other. I picked up her hand and ran my thumb against the row of scabs she put there with the force of her own fingernails. She was so precious.

And I couldn't protect her.

I felt my breath hitch with tears. I couldn't protect her even from herself. My own wife. I sobbed silently, dryly. She was supposed to be safe here, with me.

A liquid dot hit the back of my hand. My hand went to my face and I jerked slightly in shock. I was crying tears. But, they weren't regular tears. They were made out of a blood. Could I be any more of a freak? A monster? I quickly raked my face in horror and disgust, streaking sour blood across my face.

I blinked and suddenly had my sight back. I looked at the blood in my hands, a feeling of disgust and hatred and deep, deep sadness seizing me.

"God," I shakily whispered aloud as more red tears fell down my face. I never prayed, let alone prayed out loud. Who was going to listen to me? But, I was a desperate man coming to the end my rope. I needed a miracle. "God, please protect her." I begged between sobs, my arms circling tighter around her. "Please. Because I can't anymore. I can't protect her, even from herself. Please don't let her die." I pressed my face against the top of her head and rocked gently, breathing her scent in. Feeling her soft, warm hair against my cheek. "Please."

A buzzing sound caught me off guard and I watched through a red haze as Bella's cell phone lit up from the bedside table. I picked it up to click the ringer off, but froze when I saw the name of the caller ID.

I looked up at the ceiling of my room, imagining God laughing at me with cruel irony from His golden throne. I slid to answer the phone. It wasn't a miracle, but it was something.

"Jacob," I answered the phone. "It's Edward. I need your help."

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