"You should hunt," Carlisle said. He stood next to Edward at Bella's bedside, his mind taking in all that his senses had to offer about her state. Her heartbeat had returned to its regular rate. Her breathing was even, and as far as he could tell, she was peacefully asleep. He'd lessened the morphine dosage, adding a new bag of saline. She would be fine for a few hours. It was an opportune time for the two of them to leave.

"I'm fine," Edward told Carlisle.

Carlisle studied him, reflecting what he saw through his thoughts. Edward's eyes were fully black, these offset by the telling purpling beneath them. Carlisle recalled how uncomfortable he'd felt seeing Edward near so many humans in the airport, let alone in a closed room with Bella. He'd feared for her safety, given the state Edward was in. He marvelled even now that he hadn't needed to step in.

"I'm fine," Edward repeated. He was. He could not hurt Bella if he wanted to. His body would revolt at the notion, not that it would be one he could even consider. Not that her words only a few moments ago hadn't reminded him of how much he had already hurt her emotionally.

"Given the very high cost of yours and Bella's lives, I would like to think that you would take every precaution in preserving them." Carlisle spoke the words so softly but with such reproach, he might as well have punched Edward in the gut.

His father's bereaved thoughts revealed how dissevered Carlisle felt his family had been.

Edward had been so focused on Bella, he hadn't even given mind to this. "I'm sorry," he said. "I—"

"You're not thinking clearly because you haven't fed well in months. I know." Again, so gentle, so reasonable.

Alice had seen him in Volterra, then. Carlisle was imagining what she'd described to him and the others.

"Let's go, then," Edward mumbled. He wanted to distract Carlisle from remembering what else Alice had seen. He did not need imagined versions to augment the reality he'd witnessed both first-hand and through the eyes of the other Volturi. He did not want to witness his own shame.

"I'll come with you," Emmett called from downstairs. He was looking forward to spending time with his prodigal brother, Edward realized with a pang. He'd barely spoken with his family with all that was going on with Bella.

The rain was a noncommittal pattering that splattered the canopy trees' leaves and needles unevenly as they ran, obscuring many of the sounds for which Edward, Carlisle, and Emmett listened. Edward did not care. He wanted to hunt as quickly as possible and then return to Bella.

When the first animal scent met his nose, Edward veered in its direction, the surprised and fat raccoon only having time to start curling its lips into a snarl before he'd drained it to limpness. He threw the carcass into a bush and then turned to stare at Emmett, whose shocked thoughts felt loud for the relative quietness around them.

He could see in Carlisle's face and thoughts that he was surprised, too. Both he and Emmett were holding their breath and trying to swallow back venom, their thinking scrambled with the smells of nearby humans and Edward's hunt.

"I'm so sorry." He hadn't even thought of how this would affect them. He was so used to hunting in proximity to humans and to hunting alone that the discipline required to do so was almost second-nature now.

Carlisle nodded, gesturing toward the west with his hand. They'd all be safe to hunt just a few minutes away. As his brother and father darted in the direction Carlisle had pointed, Edward held back slightly, letting them set the pace for him to follow.

It was his habit now to quarantine certain thoughts, several specific topics and ideas tightly boxed away from his conscious mind. He preoccupied his mental prowess with examining Carlisle's gait, watching the flex in the soles of his shoes, calculating the force in his calf muscles, gauging the impact of each footfall. For a brief moment though, his discipline failed, and the image of Bella sleeping flickered in his inner sight. He shook it away and then swallowed, realizing he didn't have to curtail such thoughts anymore. In Volterra, with Aro privy to his every thought, he'd striven to excise any instance of Bella from his head. And when he'd failed . . . well, she'd been punished for that, along with his other misdeeds, too.

How she must loathe and feel betrayed by him. At every point when their paths had crossed in Volterra, he had been forced to walk the tightest of lines to protect her. Her features had been so easily read in those circumstances: hurt and betrayal had made the blood both flood and abandon her cheeks in patterns too familiar to him.

Even now that he had been able to take her from that torture chamber—that death trap—she was still putting on a brave face for everyone. He'd always known she was brave, and now he knew it even more, but it was a knowledge acquired by means so bitter, it was all he could do to keep himself from destroying something every time he thought about it. No one that had been put through so much should have to be so brave.

They were farther into the woods now, the humid air thick with the smells of various warm-blooded animals. He should be thirsty, he knew. His baser instincts should be excited in some regard, but they weren't. The most substantial meal he'd had in the last few months was tainted still by the terror and bitterness of having had to drink it in Bella's presence.

In the distance, Emmett took down a moderately sized mule deer.

Edward stopped running, pausing to turn his head away from the smell. His innards nearly rejected what he had just consumed, and he ceased breathing, trying to recall a neutral and inoffensive odour.

Edward?

Carlisle meant well, he could see, but in this moment, he only wanted to be left alone.

"You still need to hunt."

Edward shook his head. He didn't have enough air to speak. Rubbing his hand over his face, he tried to smooth his wrinkled features. How could he explain the experience, even to Carlisle?

His father's hand was gentle on his shoulder. "Edward?"

Emmett's thoughts of his meal were alone enough to loosen Edward's tenuous control. His lungs didn't need air, but they insisted on snatching it into themselves, giant, shuddering breaths that made his torso shake as he held onto the fir tree in front of him. The smell of the deer's demise thrust him back into the throne room, only the scent in his memory was so much sweeter. His frame continued to shake. He didn't know how he'd managed to walk so calmly towards Bella to bandage her hand. One wrong word, one wrong movement—Aro had been so clear. So, so clear. And then, to have to bring himself to his basest level and feed—"I could have killed her." He sucked in another breath, his body straining as if this air would relieve his turmoil.

Carlisle spoke quietly, his reassuring hand still on Edward's shoulder. "But you didn't."

They stayed this way for a few minutes—maybe more—time warping the tornado of memories swirling in his brain. These recollections were projectiles, careening into his consciousness with increasing force as the cyclone tore through his mind.

Bella loathed his kind. He'd seen the way she'd looked at him in Volterra after he'd fed, after he'd been the brutal hand of Aro's justice, after he'd touched her in her room when he'd first told her they could leave. Any hope he'd had about her feelings for him had been extinguished the minute he touched her hours ago. Her revulsion was complete. Aro could not have produced more effective circumstances to degrade the bond between Bella and himself. It was cold comfort to know that the same circumstances had damned Demetri's "experiment" from the start.

"You need to hunt," Carlisle finally said, firmly this time. "Let's go."

Emmett had gone farther ahead to seek more prey, and it rattled Edward that he hadn't even noticed. The hurricane of feelings within him did not abate.

"Feeding well will only make things better." The gentle grip became a strong and directional squeeze, pulling Edward from the security of the tree.

Edward nodded woodenly, taking equally wooden steps to where Carlisle suggested. He yanked his mind from the flurry of the maelstrom inside, forcing himself to be an observer rather than a participant in its destruction. He was good at that, being detached. He imagined that Bella was now, too, all things considered. Numbly, he recalled the methodical manner in which she'd attempted to commit suicide in his presence.

The thought almost made him bolt back to her, but he stopped himself, the observer in him understanding her circumstances had changed. She was safe for now, and Rose and Esme would never let anything like that happen. They'd promised to watch her until he returned.

When Carlisle spied a coyote downwind of them, he lifted his chin in its direction, silently encouraging Edward to take it.

Like an automaton, Edward crouched, leaping towards the creature and neatly puncturing its throat. The violent memories threatened, but he only allowed the edges to brush by him, noting rather than feeling them.

Trauma, some part of him mused, drawing comparisons between himself and the humans he'd witnessed experience it. He knew his vampire mind had a far greater capacity to process and recover from traumatic events. Though his memories were permanent, they would not cripple his functioning as they would a human. No. He rather wished they would, though. At least there would be malleability in that. The rigid structures of his vampire being would perfectly preserve his recollections, and their sharp edges would forever prick at him no matter how rarely or frequently he summoned them.

After quickly burying the carcass, Edward stood and returned to Carlisle, struggling to summon the words needed to confess more of his many failings in these last months.

As the edges of his memories tightened their stormy circle, he looked up from the eye of this personal hurricane, mentally reaching out and plucking the next remembrance from the melee. Though he did not feel so, his voice sounded calmer, and his body no longer shook. "When I wouldn't carry out a sentence and kill someone, Aro sent Demetri away to trigger her withdrawal."

Carlisle's eyebrows furrowed, but he said nothing, only nodding that Edward should go on.

"Demetri knew what it would do. He'd seen it before, when—"

"When I was there, of course." There was a spasm of guilt in Carlisle's mind. His father had not thought much about that one case after the man had died.

Edward sucked in a breath through his nose. There were fractured feelings flying about him now, pieces lodging in his head, his gut, in his arms that ached to crush things—crush Demetri.

"Aro could hear everything."

"Yes. You had no secrets or thoughts that were your own."

Edward had known that Carlisle would understand, but to have him understand so precisely, even though Edward had heard it in his father's thoughts before, was the difference between imagining a thing and holding it. The strange calmness that had come over him was rapidly slipping away, his next words preceded by the stuttering convulsion of his chest. "I couldn't even—he would have killed her. Aro threatened to have Demetri change her. I knew it wouldn't work, I knew—I stopped. I chose to stop fighting them rather than try to stop him—"

Carlisle's hands cradled Edward's face. "You lost all your power the minute you walked into that place, Edward. You knew that then. You just never ever expected to have Bella be there, too, and every protective desire in you as her mate would have fought against believing you could do nothing. But there really was nothing you could have done."

"I tried to reason with him—"

"Aro does not reason with people, Edward, certainly not talented ones he wants to keep or whose mates he wants to keep." A silent list of vampire figures proceeded through Carlisle's mind, some of these familiar, some not.

He knew it was true, and Carlisle was right, but he wanted to fight against every part of it being accurate. He was meant to protect Bella. It was beyond duty for him—

"You could not even think about her without Aro's punishing you or her for it. Am I correct?"

Yes, Alice had told him.

"Not unless he wanted . . . information Demetri could use," Edward said.

Edward clenched his hands into fists at his sides, then released them as Carlisle wrapped his arms around him. His own arms mirrored Carlisle's embrace. "After I abandoned Bella in Forks, she thought I'd done it again in Volterra. She must hate me now." It was wretched pettiness to be so self-absorbed with his own feelings but in this moment he could not deny himself the comfort his father was offering him. Bella had been horrifically abused by Demetri and Aro, but God help him, he loved her.

Carlisle sighed, his embrace as fierce as Edward's. You think too poorly of yourself. And worse, you think the same of Bella.

Edward pulled back, staring at Carlisle. What?

I meant it, Carlisle thought. There was a sternness to his features.

Edward dropped his gaze to the ground.

Her feelings for you are as strong as yours for her.

"You can't know that." Edward shook his head. He'd hoped, in that brief interval in which Jasper and Bella had been in proximity, to at least know what she was feeling via his brother's thoughts. He'd regretted that as soon as Jasper was in sight, though. His brother had winced at the pained emotions rolling off of Bella. There had been nothing else. Her actions since had only confirmed her loathing for him.

Will you make Alice and Jasper's sacrifice for nothing? Carlisle's eyes widened slightly, his thoughts quiet and desperate. He wouldn't give up on her, would he?

Edward snapped his gaze back to his father's eyes. "Of course not." How well Carlisle knew him to appeal to his sense of honour, Edward realized, even as he bristled at the suggestion that he might devalue his siblings' sacrifice.

Carlisle let out a breath. "She loves you, Edward. I'm certain of it. She's been profoundly hurt, as have you, but believe me, she loves you."

Carlisle couldn't possibly know this. There was no way.

But he himself could find out.

"And she needs you."

How he wanted this to be true. And he would not, could not abandon her again, even if she screamed at him to leave. Not until he was sure it was what she wanted. Not until he knew she was safe.

Emmett's body barrelled through the underbrush, his joyous and triumphant post-hunting thoughts preceding his bodily presence. "Ready to head back?"

Carlisle arched an eyebrow at Edward. Are we?

God, no. He wasn't ready to face any of this at all. Still, if the woman he loved could show such a brave face to the world, so could he. "Of course. Let's go."

A/N for 2020-08-17: Many thanks to Chayasara for editing this chapter more than once, and many thanks to Eeyorefan12 for asking all the right questions (amongst many other things!).

DISCLAIMER: S. Meyer owns Twilight. No copyright infringement intended.