A/N for 2020-12-25: Happy Christmas, folks! I hope you enjoy this chapter, which seems most appropriately titled for today. As well, if you're so inclined, please leave some kind words for the betas for this story: Chayasara and Eeyorefan12, who were working on this until yesterday.

- Erin


The surface of the lake was very, very still as it was at the beginning and end of most days. Such demarcations in time were notable for Bella now, for there were no more bouts of sleep to mark one cycle of light and dark from another. Watching the surface shiver in the cooling air, she saw that the light had already faded subtly. Night was descending.

Very soft and distant sounds alerted her to Edward's imminent arrival. He'd stayed near her while she'd hunted, but she could tell he wanted to venture a little further away for something he'd scented earlier. With a little encouragement from her, he'd gone, a slightly guilty twitch to his lips as he had smiled at her.

Bella kept her eyes on the water. She liked testing her senses. They were so much sharper, she hadn't found the edges of their capacity yet. Her hearing or sense of smell was more likely to announce his arrival than her sight—or that other sense she had with Edward. It was like a tingling that rippled over her when he approached.

He was still some distance away, and though she kept her eyes on the water, she was thinking of its murky depths and how similar they were to the memories she carried of her human life.

Both Edward and Carlisle had encouraged her to fish out the most precious human memories first, walking her backwards through her near-two decades of life so that the dull recollections were etched into her permanent memory.

At the moment, she was thinking of cooking and of the steps required to prepare her grandmother's lasagna. She smiled. She'd enjoyed assembling the many layers and flavours. Then she thought of the tiramisu she'd once made with her grandmother, but there was something unpleasant about the memory—no, the association. Ah, yes, the chocolate. Something about the chocolate. She veered away from the recollection. Edward had also warned her to avoid thinking of any memory that she didn't want to permanently keep. It wasn't like she didn't have a general recollection of her life before. She hadn't woken up with some sort of vampiric amnesia. No, rather she'd woken understanding that a great weight on her mind was entirely gone, and she didn't want to accidentally bring it back by recalling the wrong thing.

She smiled again. A pleasant prickle of tingles shivered over her body.

"South-southwest, twenty yards or so," she announced to Edward, turning to face him. She was right.

"Very nice." He grinned at her.

Closing the distance in a second, Bella reached out and gently pulled Edward towards her by tugging at the front of his shirt. She smiled back at him for two reasons: one, he was here, and two, she hadn't ripped his shirt this time.

"How was lunch?" she asked, drumming a beat on his chest with her fingertips.

"Aggressive."

She laughed. "Emmett-would-be-envious aggressive?"

"Maybe. But he isn't usually a fan of big cats." He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek and then her jaw and then her neck. "He doesn't appreciate the scoldings he gets from Rose and Alice for destroying yet another shirt. So, what did you do while I was gone?"

She had to repeat his words in her head. What he was doing was very, very distracting. Very likely, his actions were deliberate. Her already fractured newborn attention needed only the slightest provocation to scatter. Edward had taught her to practice gathering it back together whenever she noticed it was gone. He was also her greatest tester on this front. "Remembering stuff."

"Oh?"

It was sinful, the way his lips felt. Good Lord—

"What were you remembering?"

"Cooking." The word escaped in two breathy syllables.

He ran his nose over her clavicle, breathing out so that her torso shivered. "Cooking what?"

She made herself take a breath. Damn it. She would not sound like a half-baked idiot if she could help it. "Making Grandma's lasagna and her tiramisu." Her full focus returned in all its sharpness. "Edward, is there a reason why I wouldn't like thinking about chocolate?"

He paused only for a moment but just enough for it to be more than noticeable for a vampire. "I think you enjoyed eating chocolate very much before." He continued his physical attention, spreading his fingers out from their seat at her waist and then retracting them in a most delicious motion.

"That's not what I asked." She was getting better at staying focused.

"Hmm." His hands slipped lower.

Ohhhh.

She yanked herself back, squinting at him slightly. After realizing the futility of the gesture, she relaxed her face. "Why are you avoiding the question?"

Now that she had eyes capable of appreciating the many microscopic expressions of his face, she saw that there was the slightest twitch in his cheek.

He brought his hand up and brushed her hair off her shoulder, smoothing it down from the crown of her head. "Do you really want the answer and the memory that will come with it? Or would you prefer that I answer when the memory is surely faded?" He was serious. The sudden smoothness in his features told her so.

As a newborn, trust didn't come easily to her, but if anyone had her trust now, it was Edward. "Sorry," she said softly.

He shook his head, cupping her cheek. "Don't be. I'm glad you're working hard to remember. I wish—I wish I'd done more of it myself when Carlisle encouraged me to. But the choice is yours. I just want to make sure I help you find the memories you want to keep most. I won't keep anything from you, but I want it to be a choice."

She understood, and she thought of Rosalie again. Edward had told Bella the most cursory rendition of his sister's story, assuring her that Rose had already told her.

"Right," Bella said, nodding. She wrapped her arms carefully around Edward, and he mirrored the gesture.

After a few moments, Edward spoke again, leaning back to look at her. "It's almost dinnertime."

"What's Carlisle making tonight?"

"A very large steak, baked potatoes, and Caesar salad." He rolled his eyes. "Apparently, Carlisle has taught himself to make croutons."

"Jake'll like that." She smiled. Jacob seemed to possess an almost infinite appetite, and Edward and then Carlisle had always made sure there was good food available for him. Her smile broadened as she recalled how wide-eyed Jacob had initially been at the stocking of the fridge in their Argentinian home. He'd never been hungry at home in Washington; she knew that, but she also knew that the no-expense-spared attitude taken by the Cullens with anything—groceries included—had been rather shocking for him, not to mention that the quality of Argentinian beef was known the world over, or so she'd been assured.

Bella appreciated the Cullen men's efforts to establish a regular dinner hour for Jacob, creating a routine time for gathering and conversation for all of them. She knew it was probably for her benefit as well, a way of helping her keep to human tradition and behavior as much as possible.

As she and Edward made the short trip back to the house, Bella mulled over the last few weeks and Jacob's increased sense of ease. She hadn't blamed him for his apprehension when he'd first encountered her vampire self just as she knew he didn't blame her for fiercely growling at him—though he'd not been as forgiving about Edward's laughter at the time. Jacob's concern had dissipated quickly, sped along by the fact that Bella felt so much herself in this new form. The last months of her life had been so weighed down with illness and grief, but things were good right now, she reminded herself. No need to go digging in the murky depths of what obviously hadn't been.

Jacob was already at the table, his mouth full of food. "Forry," he mumbled, circling his fork in the air over his plate. "Fis was just too good to wait on."

If memory served, the meal looked as she recalled it was meant to, a substantial piece of meat sitting adjacent to a well-stuffed potato, this neighbouring a second dinner plate piled high with salad, a dusting of shredded parmesan, a small hill of crumbled bacon, and a scattering of perfectly browned croutons.

"How was your . . . afternoon?" Jacob asked. Despite his attempt to appear congenial, Bella couldn't help but notice a wrinkle between his eyebrows. He didn't like thinking about her hunting; that much was apparent. She hadn't said anything but privately found it a little hypocritical since he would and probably had done the same thing in his wolf form.

"Good." She didn't want to dwell on a subject that made him uncomfortable. "How're the correspondence courses coming?"

This earned her a frown. "Fine."

"Fine, as in you haven't done anything else yet?" She arched her eyebrows at him. He'd agreed to continue his studies, and she'd promised to help him before and now. He'd been resistant to taking help from either Edward or Carlisle.

"I got some stuff done," he said defensively.

"Mmm." She didn't want to push too hard on this right now, given that he was enjoying his meal. Folding her hands together, she rested her chin on them and glanced at his plate, which he seemed very focused on.

Though the food did look perfectly prepared, the smell was truly revolting. She tried to recall the last time she'd eaten such a meal. The image of the food on the plate came first, set on a checkered tablecloth. Next, her inner sight travelled over the wine glass adjacent to it and then to the pale hands across the table from her. There was no moment to dart away from the memory before she grasped the significance of the creature that she had sat across from. Suddenly, there was another, much more powerful memory, and she was across the room from the table, crouched and hissing as Edward stepped towards her, keeping his hands out and open in a non-threatening gesture.

"Think about where you are right now, Bella. Think about how you know you're safe here." Edward kept his voice low and melodic in an attempt to soothe her. "Focus on my voice. Focus on what you see."

She obeyed his instructions, or she tried to. Other memories were stabbing at her consciousness. Chocolate wrapped in shiny red wrappers, sticky little hands grasping them—

"Oh!" Her hand went to her now flaming throat, her face feeling like it was also burning but with shame. "Oh," she said again. She recognized the contortions of her facial features and the tightening in her throat. Her body was trying to weep, but it couldn't. She bolted for the outside.

The sound of quickly falling feet and paws trailed both behind her and off to the side. Of course, they were following to make sure she was safe and that they were still hidden from the Volturi. Making herself stop, she crouched down, burying her head in her hands. She made herself think of the meadow she recalled from her early days with Edward, of fishing with Charlie, of walking on the beach with Jacob, of eating ice cream and drinking coffee in the sun, but the image of the man—of Demetri hovering over her returned like a strobe light between these other memories. And as she put her hands into the dirt and fisted handfuls of it, she let the memory come, growling and snarling in response.

"Bella?" Edward asked, approaching her slowly from the surrounding trees.

The memory was relentless, a fully formed assault on her senses, but it wasn't pain that came with it—it was a ferocious and vibrant rage. And when she spoke, it was with that rage flaming in her voice: "I'm going to fucking kill the bastard!"

- 0 -

When they returned to the house, Edward, Jacob, and Carlisle kept a respectful distance as Bella paced and snarled for a time. It was only when her initial fury had somewhat abated that she sensed there was someone else in the room with an added awareness of her emotional state. Although she knew Edward couldn't hear her thoughts, Bella still worked to temper them with the skills she'd been taught. There was no point in further distressing herself or him, and she knew her current state did distress him. What she wasn't sure of was whether it was Edward's perfect recall of the events in Volterra, her own torment, or his rabid desire to avenge her that tortured him the most. His anguish practically throbbed in her chest. Was this the mate bond, then?

"I'm sorry," she finally said, ending her pacing.

"Don't be." Edward appeared in front of her, still several paces out of reach.

"I'm not sorry for what I've recalled. I'm sorry for what you're feeling because of it."

Edward shook his head. The wrinkle between his eyebrows remained. Then he glanced over at his father. Although Carlisle's expression was stoic, Bella saw a telltale flicker in his eyes she'd come to recognize. He was silently communicating with his son.

Edward nodded and looked at Bella. "Let's . . . go back outside." He held out his hand for her, and when she didn't take it right away, he began to retract it, a flicker of remorse traversing his features.

She snatched at his hand, inadvertently yanking him towards her. Jesus! She really needed to watch her strength. "Outside would be good." It wasn't the outside that she needed. It was the pretense of privacy and the freedom to be the creature she now was.

Edward seemed to understand this perfectly.

After they had decimated a small herd of peccaries and then allowed themselves to fall into the frenzied lovemaking that the bloodlust and their heightened emotions had spurred, they turned back to the shreds of clothing remaining to them.

Bella actually giggled. This was a first for Edward, as far as she knew. Thus far, she'd been the only one who had torn any clothing—usually his.

"That was most . . . uncouth of me," he said, sounding regretful.

"Uncouth, you say?"

She swore he would be blushing if he could, but then his expression morphed into something much more serious.

"I had hoped you would never remember, Bella"—he plucked the greater part of his shirt from the forest floor, draping it over her—"at least not this soon or this clearly."

She considered his words for a moment, allowing herself to enjoy the tender touch of his fingers smoothing the fabric over her arms. "I may not have forgotten what he did, and I don't want to make it sound like there was any kind of silver lining to remembering, but if I didn't remember, then I wouldn't know how good you've been to me. Knowing what . . . he . . ." She still struggled with his name and shook her head slightly. "Or any one of our kind is capable of only makes me grateful that you were never like that."

Edward looked away, ostensibly to look for more salvageable clothing. Bella knew better that it was most likely out of remorse. "I have it on good authority that I was overprotective and controlling."

She wasn't the only one who needed to make peace with the past. Sugarcoating it wouldn't be helpful, but if she was being honest, the emotion that should have been attached to some of those dim memories just wasn't there anymore. She also hadn't forgotten Edward's propensity for self-reproach. "Maybe? Although I should point out that I don't remember those things very well anymore, so you probably shouldn't remind me." She smiled at him, happy to see he had lifted his gaze to meet hers. "But seriously, any overprotective tendencies aside, as I remember it, you've always been gentle and patient and loving to me, willing to deny yourself if it would put me in danger, and that is how I will think of what being together like this is. It's only what you have shown me. There's the physical act, and then there is what we do. There is making love."

Edward smiled wryly and waved a hand around himself to indicate the crushed foliage and the remains of their clothing, most of it shredded beyond recognition in their frantic haste to be together. "Even like this?"

She couldn't help her own coy smile as she took a step toward him, gratified to see his eyes darken as she shrugged his ruined shirt off of her shoulders and let it fall. "Especially like this."

- 0 -

They did not return to the house until early the next morning, sans clothing, sated, and certainly calmer than when they had left. When Jake and Carlisle were nowhere to be found, Edward listened for a time to his father's distant thoughts to confirm what he had already suspected. Jake had never been made fully aware of the events that had transpired in Volterra, and Carlisle had taken it upon himself to gently fill in just enough to explain Bella's reaction. Now that the facts had been laid out, Jake also needed time to privately work through those revelations and his own reactions to them. Edward was grateful to his father for this; all of his own focus was necessarily on Bella. She needed his support and guidance now more than ever. He would need to draw on every scrap of knowledge and experience he had gained from his eighty-plus years of existence as a vampire and a mind reader in addition to his personal awareness of how the aftermath of such an experience could affect a young woman so new to this life. As well, he would need to reassert control over the monster that had been reawakened in himself, who wanted nothing more than the total annihilation of anyone who dared bring harm to his mate. Edward had never been more grateful for the role model his sire had been for him since his rebirth, as it was Carlisle's strength and self-control Edward hoped to emulate now.

- 0 -

Despite having had weeks to acclimate to the reversed seasons of the southern hemisphere, Bella still startled at the signs of spring flowering around her in early November. Jacarandas left magic purple trails for her and Edward to follow into the secrecy of the woods. Swaths of red tulips enveloped the house's white concrete foundation while fuschias trailed elegantly from planters over the glass and steel railings. She was glad for her new eyes and their ability to etch it all so precisely into her memory.

There were other good experiences living there now, too, ones that eclipsed with their frequency and vividness the old and ugly recollections. She and Edward had gained some privacy with Carlisle's departure for home. When Jacob slept, they were essentially alone. Bella gave silent thanks for Jacob's deep and long periods of sleep. Guilt assailed her next as she recalled who she was sitting next to and what she was supposed to be doing at this moment instead of ruminating. She yanked her gaze back from the outside and to the textbook Jacob was staring at.

"You haven't finished the equation yet," she said softly.

"No," Jacob said, sighing. "You kinda spaced out on me."

"Sorry." The steps of the problem were so simple to her that it was difficult not to become distracted once she'd solved it, but Jacob was still struggling.

He'd managed the first two steps but was unsure which to do next, the half-erased pencil marks testament to his indecision. He just had to flip back a few pages to check, and—

Jacob snapped the book shut. "I need a break."

"We've just started, Jake."

He stared at her. "We've been at this for two hours, Bella."

She frowned and looked at the clock. God, he was right. They had. How long had she—?

"Wanna go for a run? Find some pretty trees to stare at for a few hours—or maybe just Edward?" Jacob rolled his eyes at what she considered fun these days.

Bella smiled. "Sure." She was certain Edward would like the chance to run.

As she moved to stand, the sound of Edward's phone ringing in another room caught her attention. She paused, listening. She didn't need to pause, but it was a human habit, stilling the other senses to heighten the one.

"Carlisle," Edward said softly as he answered, sounding cautious. "We are, thank you. I didn't expect your call."

When Bella couldn't make out Carlisle's voice on the other end of the line, she knew he was intentionally speaking quietly. Concerned, she headed in Edward's direction, Jacob trailing behind her.

"I see." Another pause from Edward. "Yes. I understand." His voice was tense. Something was wrong. As he came into sight, she saw him pull the phone away from his ear and press the button to end the call.

"What's the matter?" she asked, moving towards him at vampiric speed. When she caught sight of his expression, her alarm increased. Yes, something was very wrong.

Edward frowned deeply, his pinched eyebrows showing worry and fear as he raised his eyes to hers. The words left his lips slowly, each one a reluctant refugee of hope: "The Volturi know you've been changed, but now they're looking for you."


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