Disclaimer: Twilight is Stephanie Meyer's. This spin on it is from my own crazy brain.

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Waking felt like a sharp shove from behind—that was how fast I sat up, reeling from the shock. I pushed away the sheets, still feeling like something was pinning me down, unwilling to let me go, and quickly slid out of bed and onto the floor.

I had dreamt of being lost, of tearing through a wild forest, knowing someone was after me. Branches and thorns had snagged my clothes, ripping the material and leaving me naked. There were crashes and feral screams behind me, then horrible cracks—trees splintering or bones breaking—and whatever it was, it was clawing at my back, trying to bring me down. In the end, it had.

Blackout.

And then I'd awakened.

The dream had taken nearly every ounce of my breath away, so much so that I fought to maintain composure. I squinted, the light I'd left on like a stab to my eyes, and fixed my gaze on the doorknob just for concentration's sake until the sound of a cough snapped me out of it. I wiped my face in case there were tears and knelt on the floor, reluctant to get up and look above the mattress. I wasn't sure why, but I almost expected to see a figment of my dream still waiting to pounce. Of course, Edward was the only one in bed, asleep and tangled in the blankets.

I relaxed, glad I hadn't woken him, and walked to the bathroom to splash my face. My eyes were pink and puffy—leftover effects from having cried myself to sleep. I hadn't gone to bed until hours after Edward had, only lying next to him in a sort of numb state before the tears had returned and exhausted me. I figured it was probably the middle of the night and Edward's clock confirmed my guess: three in the morning.

Normally when I woke like this, I wanted nothing more than the night to be over. This time, however, I would have preferred it to continue until I could make sense of things; at the moment, I didn't know what to do or how to feel. Being anxious was normal, I supposed, and that was slowly growing inside my stomach. I knew I wouldn't have much luck going back to sleep, so I quietly crept from the room, down the hall, and into my own.

It was about six AM in Jacksonville. If it was a work day for Charlie, he'd probably be up right now, drinking coffee on the sun porch and inspecting his gun. I wanted to hear his voice so badly, but whether it was my wanting to keep bad news from my parents for a little while longer or not wanting to confront the issue itself, I couldn't bring myself to dial home just yet. So, I decided on the only other person I knew who might be awake.

"You are working, aren't you?" I quickly asked as Angela answered her phone, sounding exhausted.

"Yeah. I lost a patient," she said heavily. "They're letting me take an extra break. And after everything that happened yesterday, it's nice to hear your voice."

"Yours, too," I said. "So, you heard about Mr. Miller?"

"On my way to work, yeah. I can't believe it. I just… I mean, I see death all the time here at the hospital, but it's not usually someone I know. It's so strange. So sad." We chatted for a while, occasionally sniffling and sitting in silence, sadness lingering over the slight static. She eventually asked, "How's Edward taking it?"

"Not so well," I answered dimly. "It hit him close to home. Plus, he's not feeling well now, so that's not helping."

"He's sick? What's the matter?"

"Hopefully he's wrong, but he said it felt like the flu," I told her.

"Ben has that right now," she said with a sigh.

"Does he?" Vaguely, I remembered Edward telling me Ben was sick yesterday.

"Yeah. Maybe they've been making out."

There was a beat of silence before the both of us burst into laughter. I was relieved to laugh after so much crying, but ultimately, our contagious giggling slowly subsided and left us right back in heavy quiet.

"I should get back to work," she said reluctantly. "I'm glad you called, though."

"Me too," I replied, somber.

"I'll come by after my shift if you'd like. I told Ben I'd stop by his place and give him some anti-viral medication, but I can bring extra and check Edward first. If he's got the flu, the meds won't get rid of it but it usually weakens the symptoms."

"Thanks, that's nice of you," I said, glancing at the wall between Edward's room and mine. I hoped I hadn't been too noisy and woken him. "What time do you think?"

"I get off at six, so probably six-thirtyish."

"I'll be up." I doubted I would fall back into a deep sleep, but I figured I'd set an alarm anyway.

We said our goodbyes and I glanced around the room, unsure what to do with myself. Seeing the clutter I had let build up was enough to kick me into gear. In the bathroom, my still-damp clothes were strewn over the floor, so I picked them up and folded them over my arm. Something small fell by my feet, clattering and rolling to the bathtub, and I realized what it was with a clean stab to my heart.

The chess piece Mr. Miller had given me. The little white knight.

Like an ignited match, the grief quickly flared. I was unprepared for the intensity; I lost the battle of trying not to cry without much of a chance. I held the little horse in my hand and spent a few minutes going to pieces on the bathroom floor before I got up to go back to Edward's room. His eyes were closed, but he stirred when I curled up next to him. He blinked at me, squinting from the light, his eyes looking glazed and fatigued as though he'd never even shut them.

"What time is it?" he croaked.

"A little after three-thirty," I answered, reaching to smooth his hair. His forehead was hot. "Are you feeling any better?"

He didn't reply right away, which told me the answer was no, but he still said, "A little. Were you crying?"

My eyes must have been red. I nodded glumly, my insides feeling like stretched rubber bands when I realized I was still holding the marble chess piece in my fist. I held it up for him to see. "It was Mr. Miller's."

Edward studied it for a few moments. "Where did you find it?"

"He gave it to me yesterday after our game. He told me every girl deserves one—a white knight."

The tiny creases in his forehead deepened. "He gave it to you?"

"Mm-hmm," I said, trailing my fingertip over the piece.

"Strange." I shrugged, morose, and he clarified, "Not that he wouldn't have wanted to, but it's interesting that he picked yesterday."

I looked up at him. "Well, he thought I was leaving in a few days. Maybe it was a sort of goodbye present."

"Right," he said, an odd look in his eyes as he narrowed them.

"What's the matter?"

"I'm thinking."

"About what?" He was surprisingly methodical for having been awake only one minute.

He sighed and rolled onto his back, wincing as though the movement hurt him. "Nothing. Never mind." I arched an eyebrow and stared at him until he noticed. "It's just… he said something to me yesterday. He told me 'Make things right while you can, that way you don't have to scramble to fix them later when you're running out of time'. There was something about the way he said it, like he knew he didn't have that time. You know?"

I scratched my ear, not willing to think more into Mr. Miller's death than I already had. "He always says—" I frowned at my mistake. "He always said things like that, though."

Edward's eyes seemed far away. "Something about it felt final. Like he knew."

"Knew that he was going to die? How would he have known? It's not like he scheduled it!" I turned onto my back, too, and took a moment to breathe, seeing as I was bordering on going off the deep end. "Sorry," I whispered. "This is hard. I just don't think he thought he might be fatally attacked, so he figured he'd drop goodbye hints."

"Did he say anything to you?" he asked anyway. "Anything that sounded—I don't know, departing?"

Though I tried to ignore it, I couldn't deny that a few bits of my last conversation with Mr. Miller weren't reminiscent to a farewell speech. But then again we had been discussing how Edward and I would be leaving for Thanksgiving. Everything else seemed normal—it wasn't like we'd never sat down for a heart-to-heart at breakfast before. Though, it was the first time I ever saw him eat something other than egg whites and wheat toast. I remembered him saying how he was treating himself: a steak and egg breakfast, a pumpkin latte. Then he told me life was short and to go out and get my hands dirty. He even let me win a chess game.

And it was only now that I fully admitted to myself that he'd allowed me to win; honestly, I never could have outsmarted that man. Maybe he did it because it was our last game before I left and he was feeling grandfatherly. Yet, he might have done all these things because, somehow, he felt like he didn't have much time and wanted to fit them in.

I was too stubborn to tell Edward his inkling wasn't entirely impossible, so we ended up lying in silence.

"Bella?" he said a few minutes later. I turned to find him kneading his temples. "There's a fold-up travel cup in one of my bags. Would you mind getting me some water?"

I almost tripped as I swiftly got out of bed, cursing myself for not offering him a drink earlier, not to mention the previous night. He'd been feverish and sweating, and what did I tell him? To go to sleep. Talk about being a D-class girlfriend.

Even though the guilt wasn't major, tears still ended up in my eyes when I handed him the water. He looked perplexed, but before he could ask me what was wrong, I rolled onto my side of the bed with my back to him so he wouldn't stare. After awhile, I felt him lean over me to turn off the lamp. Though there were patters of rain slapping the windows, the clouds weren't thick enough to completely hide the moonlight; I could see an outline of Edward's shadow on the wall as he reached to touch my shoulder.

"Are you going to let me hold you or are you mad?" he asked.

Why I would be mad was beyond me. "I'm not mad, I'm sorry," I said as turned over, tucking myself close to him.

"For what?"

"Letting you dehydrate."

"That's ridiculous. I could have walked to the sink at any time."

"Noted," I mumbled. I thought he might go back to sleep, but he kept stroking my arm, wrist to elbow, until I finally said, "I'm not saying that what you're thinking is unreasonable."

"You just suppose it's not realistic."

"Well… yeah."

He almost laughed. "But you also think it wasn't a person who killed him."

I had hoped he would have given up on that assumption by now. "Even if it was, you really think Mr. Miller would willingly go into a situation where he might be in danger?" I asked.

"Maybe if he was protecting someone."

"Like whom?"

"You and me."

I tilted my head up to his. "How do you figure that?"

"He told us to go into the woods, didn't he?"

"He suggested it, he didn't demand it."

"But why would he do that when he was always hell bent on never setting foot in there? Do you think he meant to send us into a hazardous situation?"

"Of course not," I said, baffled. "But what do the woods have to do with him protecting us?"

"Because where else would we have gone?" he asked, his voice growing hoarse. I wondered if he was losing his voice or just getting irritated. "Around town, around the other neighborhoods, right? We would have been in the exact same area as John when he died."

"That's not a guarantee," I argued. "We could have walked to the high school instead and used the track or driven to the park. At first I only gave him the impression we would enjoy the weather, not the street names we would take."

"It still doesn't make sense."

"He died, Edward. It was a horrible accident."

"Was it?"

I sighed heavily and moved to turn the light back on. So much for sleeping. I sat up and pulled my legs to my chest. "What else would you call it?" He didn't answer, but I could hear the word in his head like an alarm.

Murder.

"You're scaring me, you know," I told him.

The charged look in his eyes slowly faded into a hard exhaustion before he shut them. "I don't mean to," he said, exhaling as he turned over. After a long pause, he finally said, "I just have a weird feeling. A bad one. I don't know. What about the phone call he made last night? The one to Dr. Cullen?"

"He said he was just worried about you," I said, resting my chin on my knees.

"You said it yourself that you thought it was strange. Why would they need to meet so early in the morning to talk about us?"

My head felt slightly thick, as if stuffed with cotton. I really couldn't blame him for being paranoid when some of his old ghosts were surfacing. "I don't know. But even you said that I might have had the wrong idea."

The silence that followed seemed to swallow us, ending the conversation. Eventually, I leaned over to kiss his forehead and, once again, reached for the lamp. When Edward moved closer to me, I winced. "You're so hot," I said sympathetically, which only earned me a juvenile chuckle on his part.

"You think so?" he asked.

I had to smile. "Your fever."

"Sure," he mumbled and pulled a pillow between us, claiming he didn't want to breathe on me.

I played with his hair until he fell asleep, then rolled onto my back and willed myself to do the same. With all the worry in my head, I managed to hold onto the hope that he would later feel better and we could be one step closer to going home.

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