A/N: This is mid-Eclipse through the end of Breaking Dawn from Edward's perspective. Thanks for reading!

These characters are not mine and all belong to Stephenie Meyer.

Thank you to Amanda Pall, MorganKFreeman, Guiltypleasure82, nynevenevermore, 90sVibes, myspunkette, and my guest reviewer for your kind reviews! It's exciting to see so many new people are still finding and following this story. Thanks for all the love, guys! It keeps me going.

A/N: Edward really shines in this chapter and there's a lot more than blood (though there's plenty of that, too) so I hope my more squeamish readers will stick with me.

Births and Beginnings (Breaking Dawn)

Blood saturating white.

The hideous sound. Membrane tearing from membrane.

Her gasp.

Eyes rolling back in her head.

Gravity pulling her down.

Rose holding her up.

My hands on her face. "Bella?"

EJ.

His thoughts cut through like a knife.

Panicking. Suffering. Like someone buried alive. Like someone drowning.

Obstetrics Pathology. Page 532. Placental Abruption.

Her blood-curdling scream.

Cut off with a gurgle. A fountain of blood and stomach acid pouring from her mouth as more blood, her blood soaked through her sweat pants.

No less ghastly was the twitching, the jerking. Like an animated corpse.

The snapping and the cracking. Bone after bone after bone.

Focus, clarity. Like someone had slapped us. Rose and I unfroze as Jasper, having done the only thing he could for us, fled the overwhelming scent of human blood through the third floor window.

Rosalie pulled Bella up into her arms and we shot up the stairs.

We have to get him out of there.

"Morphine!" I reminded Rose. Morphine first.

No time. No time. No time. "Alice - get Carlisle on the phone!" Rose screeched. She laid Bella on the operating table under the brilliant white lights while I retrieved the morphine.

EJ thrashed. Orange and pink swirled in his vision. Bright. It was so bright. That was the way. But how to get through? He couldn't break through. Though he threw himself again and again.

Rosalie had to pin Bella to the table to keep the baby's force from throwing her off of it. She tore Bella's clothes out of the way as I stabbed the syringe into her arm.

Bella's face was blank except for her eyes, roaming without purpose. Most of the vomited blood had clung to her now discarded clothes on the floor, but some had passed through the fabric, sponge painting her bruised and greyed skin red. A thick, dark trickle of blood continued to drip between her legs.

"What's happening, Edward?" Rose cried.

"The placenta must have detached!"

Bella let out a paralyzing shriek. "Get him OUT!" She screamed, the blood vessels bursting in her eyes. "He can't BREATHE! Do it NOW!"

EJ flailed in his small, inhospitable bubble. Terror and desperation in every thought.

She's right. We have to do it now. We have to do it now, Edward.

"The morphine - " I growled at Rosalie.

"NO! NOW - !" Bella's hoarse voice cut off as EJ, terrified, pushed off from the wall of the amniotic sac. It slammed into her stomach and intestines. A fresh gush of fluid pushed up through her esophagus and out of her mouth.

I wrapped an arm around her shoulders, raising her head so she wouldn't aspirate the blood. As I watched, her skin - the patches of it that were not already purple or black - took on a bluish hue. Red raced down her chin and neck coating her chest and the massive balloon of her abdomen. She gasped in air as the vomiting let up. There was a spluttering in her throat and she coughed a fresh spray from her lungs, the specks raining as far as her shins and feet. She couldn't take another breath before the vomiting picked up again.

Alice, not breathing, not looking at the blood she could hear splashing onto the floor, flitted to Rosalie's side and hooked the Bluetooth headset around her ear. She had to go. She wasn't strong enough and she hated herself for it. She backed out of the room, burning with thirst and grief.

Rosalie hissed into the phone, throwing a disjointed, chaotic account at Carlisle while EJ grew weaker. His strong shoves were reduced to helpless kicks and nudges, still lethal in Bella's fragile body. Long gone were the tender voices, the soothing vibrations. He trembled at the memory of Bella's pained cries and over her silence now as the ingested blood continued to erupt from her purple lips.

I wanted to hate him again. EJ. But I couldn't. He didn't ask for this.

Burgundy flowed under the surface of Bella's skin transforming the bulge into a grotesque, shuddering snow globe.

"Rosalie, Edward," Carlisle ordered through the phone, "you must get the baby out immediately so he can breathe, so he doesn't do more damage, so you can start the venom."

Rosalie seized the scalpel from the tray beside her and raised it over Bella.

"Let the morphine spread!" I shouted.

"There's no time," she hissed. "He's dying!"

Carlisle heard me. "No, Edward. You don't have time. You need to get him out. You need to start the venom."

Torture. It was torture to slice her open like this knowing she could feel everything. Rosalie dragged the blade in a vertical line a few inches along the underside of Bella's abdomen.

Bella jerked, her legs curled inward, her toes all but flattened to the underside of her feet, but she had no air to scream.

Blood spouted from the incision.

It was thick and warm. Fresh and undiluted by stomach acid. And there was so much of it. So much blood. So much venom pooling in Rosalie's mouth...

"No, Rose!" I roared.

I panicked watching Rose's lips pull back from her teeth. To lay Bella down would mean a flood passing into her lungs. A near drowning when she'd hardly breathed in the past two minutes. Before I could make a decision, Jacob was there.

Of course he was there. If there was one person I could count on, it was Jacob.

He launched himself at Rosalie, diving across the table. They collided, stumbling towards the door with his palm smashed against her face to block her airflow. On impact, the scalpel in her frozen hand sunk deep into his arm. He swung her by the face and landed a solid kick at her stomach. Rosalie flew through the air and into the door frame. It buckled under the force and so did the Bluetooth headset.

Bella was no longer vomiting. That was hardly good news. Despite having a weak pulse, she wasn't breathing. I sealed my mouth over hers and pinched her nose as I forced air into her mouth.

Alice had flown up the stairs at the sound of our distress. She dragged Rosalie out of the room by her neck.

I forced another breath into Bella's lungs.

The baby, Edward, Rose moaned, though she still longed for the blood. Save the baby. It's what Bella wants. It's what Bella needs. Save the baby...

"Alice, get her out of here!" I shouted. "Take her to Jasper and keep her there! Jacob, I need you!"

He sprinted back to the table, his eyes wide as he analyzed the unhealthy color Bella was turning.

"CPR?"

"Yes!"

But instead he was studying me, wary I would lose control as Rosalie had.

"Get her breathing!" I ordered, breaking him from his dithering. "I've got to get him out before - "

EJ rallied fiercely at the sound of my voice. He was trying to get to me, pushing off from the inner wall of his cage. Only this time the force did not pummel her soft tissues. There was a shattering crack and Bella's lower body went limp. Her legs sprawled unnaturally.

"Her spine," I choked in horror.

"Get it out of her!" Jacob snarled, flinging the scalpel towards me. "She won't feel anything now!"

He started rescue breathing.

Keep it going, Jacob silently commanded Bella. You promised. Keep your heart beating.

EJ continued to shimmy and rattle in his shell. He could see changes in the light and feel the motions as I worked over her.

More blood dripped onto my shoes as I made incisions through the few remaining layers of tissue Rosalie hadn't carelessly hacked through.

I pulled the blade along her uterus, the final cut, and there it was.

The amniotic sac was translucent and pale gray. Patches of the hard shell were darker - almost black - and opaque. Small dime-sized areas were nearly transparent, windows inside where I could make out thick red fluid - surely more ingested blood - and, in one small window, hair. I shuddered at the sight wondering if this child, even with his pure mind, might be more the grim imaginings of Kaure than Rosalie's Rockwellesque visions.

But there was no time to be squeamish. I pressed my teeth experimentally to the bulge opposite the end with the hair and anxious thoughts.

The sound was like metal tearing from metal. A thousand nails on a chalkboard. I stopped as soon as the resistance did and then twisted my neck tearing off a small chunk.

Blood splashed out of the hole as EJ thumped wildly at the horrendous sound. I could hear his heart. His racing, thrumming heart.

Bella coughed. She was breathing on her own again. Still fighting. Fighting for her EJ.

"You stay with me now, Bella!" Jacob yelled at her. "Do you hear me? Stay! You're not leaving me. Keep your heart beating!"

I had to be very careful not to hurt EJ now. I latched my teeth onto the new open edge and pulled again. A larger section this time. I let it fall to the floor.

A small foot with five tiny toes kicked out towards my face.

I blinked, then ripped one last time at the ugly shell. The shard clattered to the floor and I dipped my right hand carefully into the cloudy, red amniotic fluid up to my wrist.

My fingertips found his shoulder - hard like my skin, but as warm as Jacob's or Seth's - and moved cautiously beneath it finding the back of his head and neck.

My cold touch stunned him, settled him.

His stillness made it easy then. With my left hand under his bottom I pulled him out.

I gently dabbed the blood from his face with my shirt revealing pink, flushed cheeks. I wiped at the grit tangled into his his eyelashes. They fluttered.

My mouth fell open as I looked into the deep, chocolate-brown eyes of my... daughter.

"Renesmee," I whispered.

The name, once strange and awkward to me, fell from my lips like music now. Bella's Renesmee.

My Renesmee.

Little Renesmee watched me with her familiar eyes, breathing in quick startled pants. She was not frightened by the gore on my face, in my hair, down my shirt. I was safe. I had saved her. But what was this place? She missed the snug warmth of her cocoon before it had suddenly turned on her. There was so much here. Two thumping hearts, one vital, one weak. The blinding white light. Delicious smells - one so much more delicious than all the others.

"Let me..." The words were faint as a breath. Bella moved her hands weakly. "Give her to me."

And I wanted to. I wanted Bella to see what she'd made. What we'd made.

I lowered Renesmee, struggling towards the comforting sound of her mother's voice, and held her against Bella's wet chest, just above the cradle of her arms.

My own eyes stung watching joyful tears leak from the corners of Bella's. Her lips turned up as if something amused her and then her face was serious. Intense.

I longed to hear the moment in Bella's head. To see the play of emotions across Renesmee's face from Bella's eyes - I could only see the blood-matted curls that covered the back of her head.

"Renes... mee. So... beautiful."

Renesmee was certain now. The voice that had been there all along belonged to the woman cradling her. She - Bella, love itself - was here in this space. So this space, strange as it was, must be safe. Just as safe as her cocoon. The realization made her smile.

She was also certain that her mother's skin, soft and almost warm, was the most pleasant thing she'd felt yet. She leaned her head down, burrowing against Bella's chest.

And that's when she came to her final realization; that impossibly delicious scent - like a spotlight among all the other many scents - was pulsing fresh beneath that wonderful skin. She could almost taste it on her tongue.

She bit impulsively and Bella gasped.

I pulled Renesmee away at once.

I should have at least suspected that Renesmee would have a full set of teeth given Kaure's legends, but when she never attempted to chew herself out of the womb, when she'd looked up at me perfect and beautiful, the other image had fallen away entirely.

"No, Renesmee," I murmured.

Jacob. Jacob was still here. He examined the blood welling out of the small double crescent and then his eyes jumped back to Bella's in time to see them roll back in her head. Her heart made a horrible, faltering galumph.

Silence.

I froze, my heart stilled.

He started chest compressions. One, two, three, four... A sob rocked through him as he beat down on her unwilling heart.

Her chest rose with air forced into her lungs. Her heart squelched out a pathetic glug-glug under his angry hands. Her blank eyes stared.

Bella Swan. The girl. The human girl was dead.

One, two, three, four...

"What are you waiting for?" Jacob choked out breathlessly.

One soul. Her soul. That was the cost to end this pain. To find her again.

Could I pay that price? Would I be that selfish?

I love you more than everything else in the world combined, Bella said. Isn't that enough?

One, two, three, four...

Yes. It was enough. Enough for forever.

"Take the baby," I said urgently.

"Throw it out the window," Jacob growled.

I couldn't just set her down. She might get hurt... But there was no time.

One, two, three, four...

God, if he'd just look into the child's eyes, he'd understand - they were the same eyes he saw every time he closed his...

"Give her to me."

Rosalie.

Jacob and I snarled.

"I've got it under control. Give me the baby, Edward. I'll take care of her until Bella..." She looked over the sad scene once and didn't bother pretending to have any hope for the dead human girl butchered on the table.

I had no choice. I kissed the infant's head and I gave her away.

I pulled the last fragments of the amniotic sac out of Bella's womb and ripped open the drawer beside her revealing the steel syringe.

"Move your hands, Jacob."

He looked away from her unseeing eyes. "What's that?"

I knocked his hand out of the way and shoved the needle straight into her heart.

"My venom." I forced the poison through the needle and into my failed heart, forever condemning her, my Persephone, to the underworld.

I was all in. And so was she.

It's not the end, Bella whispered. It's the beginning.

Her heart jolted as if shocked by defibrillation pads.

"Keep it moving," I ordered fiercely.

You're ready now?

Um. Yes?

My lips touched the skin of her throat.

Right now?

Yes.

My teeth were razors against her neck, her wrists, the creases of her elbows. With each tear of skin, small particles of blood sprayed into my mouth. I swept my tongue over each wound, sealing in the poisoned blood.

There's nothing here, Jacob thought, forcing more air into her body. Lifeless. All the king's horses and all the kings men... Working over a corpse. Because that's all that's left of the girl we both loved. This broken, bled-out, mangled corpse. We can't put Bella together again.

The venom trickled weakly from my salivary glands - nothing like the pools that once flooded my mouth. My system wanted me to stop as if stopping would save her.

It's too late. I know she's dead. The pull's gone... no reason to be here. Jacob gasped pained breaths as he pumped her chest. She's not here anymore. This body has no more draw. I don't need to be here anymore.

I lined either side of her incision with bites.

I can feel it pulling me away now. Down the stairs. Out the door.

I pushed away his thoughts as I cut at her ankles, her knees. The pull. Superstitious nonsense. I wouldn't let his imagined sense of it - of it leaving her - terrify me.

I want to get away from here and never, ever comeback.

"Go, then," I snapped. I heard Jacob's bones crack as I swatted away his hands.

There was more resistance as I pumped her chest. The blood was thicker, slower with the venom.

It was harder to hope now that I had to look into her face as he had. Her head lolled to one side, her vacant eyes directed towards the rows of paintings she'd once studied with fascination. But I refused to close her eyelids. She would have to do that herself.

Edward, she's dead. The blind spots in Alice's vision resolved as Jacob Black decided to leave.

"She's not dead," I growled. "She's going to be fine."

It's over. I'll leave him with his dead... Jacob Black trudged out of the room like the fucking coward he was. He wasn't a man or a boy, a brother or a comrade. He was just a quitter. Pathetic. Someone who gave up and ran away with his tail tucked between his legs when things got hard.

One, two, three, four...

And to think, I had been so willing to step aside for him. Willing to give up everything because of my faith in his devotion.

That feckless, self-centered, temperamental, unreliable dog could go straight to hell.

Edward.

It was Alice again. Somewhere outside.

Edward, it's too late. I can see now and it's too late...

"The future isn't set in stone," I snarled. "Things change."

Bella was just being stubborn. Stubborn as always.

Let her go.

"You're. Wrong."

She showed me. How I would disappear, my trail leading them straight to the Quileute border, because apparently Jacob Black could keep none of his promises. How she would find my will -

No, she thought, seeing my note, I don't understand your meaning...

- how Bella's body would be cremated because Charlie would demand an autopsy. An autopsy that would reveal too much if allowed to go forward. How my family would vanish from Forks, fleeing the country because Charlie would hunt them like dogs. The FBI. The media. An international scandal. The beautiful young bride murdered by the mysterious wealthy family... no, that wouldn't work, it couldn't get that far, Alice decided. People would recognize them. The Volturi...

They'd have to kill Charlie, too. Make it look like suicide...

No, no, no... there were better ways. Pay off the medical examiner...

She clawed at her hair. Pushed Jasper away as she sprinted toward the river.

"Alice? Is she...?"

"She's dead," Alice cried. "Jasper, she's dead!"

I blocked her out, not knowing if she kept running or if he held her there.

I was utterly and completely alone. All of my allies had dropped away.

No. No, Bella was still here. And I knew she would still be fighting. Fighting for us as she always had.

My phone buzzed.

The future isn't set in stone, I chanted. Things change.

But nothing was changing. The blood was just growing thicker and thicker. Harder to move through the fragile, damaged organ that the venom only sluggishly repaired.

"Well, then change something!" I snarled at no one.

Change something. A different course. One I hadn't considered yet.

I needed to get more venom into to her heart. How? How? The steel syringe rested on the closest tray. But I couldn't fill it. It had taken me an hour to fill it the first time. An hour of concentrating on my thirst, imagining the warm flow of blood down my throat. Spitting only fractions of an ounce every minute into a dish.

It would have been easy once. Just imagining a wet thumping heart, blushing cheeks, a sweet scent. But believing I'd lost her had changed my physiological responses. Human blood burned me, but it did not call up the venom with the same force.

What kind of vampire was I? I felt... impotent.

There had to be a way to manipulate my body. A way to force the venom to pool.

I could drink it. Her blood. Let the sticky warmth coat my tongue.

My phone buzzed.

I abandoned the compressions and bit beside the wound my daughter had left over Bella's breast, sucking until the blood reached the back of my tongue. Involuntarily, as if it were poison, I spat it out. But I was a vampire and the loss of such precious nectar was a shock to my system. Venom rushed angrily into my mouth. I grabbed the stainless steel kidney dish and let it run from my lips.

Twice more I bit her. Sucking. Ejecting. The volume of venom increased each time as my true nature competed with my heart.

I angled the dish so the the transparent venom, dyed pink with stray droplets of blood, gathered to one side. I dipped the needle into it, depressed the plunger, and drew in the fluid.

"You're not leaving me, Bella. I won't let you," I growled. I pushed the needle into her chest, emptying it into her heart once again. I threw the syringe and put my lips right to her ear, my hands compressing her chest. "You're mine, Bella. Do you hear me? Mine."

I wasn't sure if it was in retort or surrender, but as I blew air into her lungs, her heart rioted. From complete stillness, it broke into a mad, booming sprint.

"Oh," I panted. "Oh."

The air whooshed into her lungs in quick even breaths. Strong and deep, even with their frantic pace.

"Oh, Bella," I sobbed in relief.

I looked up at her eyes. Empty still.

My phone buzzed.

I shuddered realizing everything was not right. Where was the thrashing? The screaming?

"Bella?" I patted her cheek. "Bella? Can you hear me? Can you hear me, sweetheart?"

Nothing.

I squeezed her shoulder. Waved my hand in front of her eyes.

Nothing.

I stared at her for one long moment and then I was biting her again. Every unmarked patch of skin. Again and again and again. The venom was flowing freely now. My throat had never burned so badly, like a raw wound doused in acid. I half expected to find a gaping hole in my neck where my skin must have blistered away by now.

As I continued to bite her, Bella didn't twitch, wince, or whimper. She didn't blink.

Her emaciated body was decorated with a thousand crescents when I finally stopped. There was absolutely nothing more I could do.

My phone buzzed. I reached my bloodied hand into my pocket.

"Carlisle," I breathed.

"Edward." I could hear his agony. "My son. I've been trying to get through... I thought - " His voice broke. "It doesn't matter. Stay there. Don't leave us yet. Please stay. Please wait for us."

I'd never heard Carlisle beg. I hated it.

Alice must have called him. Shared her false visions.

"I'm not going anywhere." My voice was rough, but strong.

He didn't answer immediately and I guessed Alice had shared my obstinance with him as well. I imagined him weighing whether it was right to lean into my supposed denial to keep me here longer.

"Carlisle," I said. "Her heart is beating. She's breathing. On her own."

"Alice couldn't see that," he murmured in disbelief.

"She was wrong," I said fiercely.

He let out a great sigh of relief.

"But Carlisle she's - she's not moving. Not making a sound." I stroked her cheek. "And her eyes, they're just - if it wasn't for her heartbeat, the breathing - Carlisle, she'd look as if she were dead..."

"Her heart is beating, Edward. She's going to pull through this."

"Have you ever seen this before?" I pressed. Not with my family, I knew, but maybe he'd witnessed something, heard of something.

"No, but I've also never seen morphine administered prior, either. Perhaps that accounts for the difference."

"I hope so," I whispered.

"She's alive, Edward. And you're alive." He sighed again.

High on his reassurances I took one last look at the unseeing brown eyes and, finally, I slid Bella's eyelids closed.

"And the child?"

I let out something between a laugh and a sob remembering there had been one good thing in this hell.

"A beautiful, healthy daughter," I whispered.

I searched for her then as Carlisle let out a tired laugh. "A daughter," he told someone on the other end of the line.

Renesmee was sleeping, dreaming.

Rosalie was watching her.

And so was Jacob Black.

A/N: Some people love it, some people hate it, but there you have it. The bloody, bloody birth scene. Back in 2008 I was appalled, but thirteen years later, I'm a fan.

Up next, imprinting, father-daughter bonding, and more...

For those of you following Volume 1, I haven't abandoned it. I actually have chapter drafts up through the goodbye in the woods, but it's so easy to slip up the details on that one, I'm going to have to write more than three chapters out before I publish anything. Better to get it right the first time.