Good Morning, Vietnam! Today's chapter is brought to you by Philadelphia experimental rock band Circa Survive, and their track "The Glorious Nosebleed" from the 2005 record Juturna. Worth listen to, if that's your thing.

Enjoy!

Chapter VI - The Glorious Nosebleed

The month of February dragged by tortuously, something like how Bella imagined a vampire would perceive time. By the last week, she felt as though she'd already spent the last twenty years within the soul-crushing walls of Forks High School. Jessica and 'the gang' were still of a mind that Bella was damaged beyond repair, though she couldn't fully fault them for it. She'd been in something of a fugue state for the better part of half a year, hardly more than a comatose vegetable walking the halls.

Her only source of relief while class was in session was Angela, who had noticed Bella come back to herself, and had embraced the prodigal return with open arms. Seemingly abandoning the comfortable sort of popularity that came along with being friends with Jessica Stanley, Angela had spent the month catching Bella up with the inner social workings of the school. Bella did her best to seem interested, but the sad truth was that once her eyes had been opened to the supernatural layer of the world that lay just under the surface of the mundane, the knowledge of who was screwing whom felt wholly irrelevant.

At home, Charlie was a man reborn. Nearly losing his daughter to her grief had caused some sort of paradigm shift in his soul, and he was attentive and loving and a million other things Bella had never expected of him. It was all welcoming, all very much appreciated by Bella, as odd as it was. Having dinner with Charlie had become something to look forward to rather than something to endure.

The biggest change, Bella found, was Leah. After their rocky (read: horrific) first meeting, they surprisingly got on like a house on fire. Leah was witty, sharp and caustic, a quality Bella thought she hated in other people, but it worked for her. And she seemed truly repentant about taking her anger out on Bella, and determined to make amends for it. The two spoke almost constantly, texting while Bella was in school, and talking on the phone when she wasn't. Charlie had given Leah free reign to come over as she liked, and Bella wasn't going to discourage her from doing so.

She still had outbursts, of course. Small, minute things that Bella saw as immaterial could set Leah off unexpectedly. The little plastic tag on the collar of a t-shirt rubbing her neck the wrong way, tripping during a walk, the sudden onset of rain on a clear forecasted day, it could be anything or nothing. Bella wasn't entirely convinced that the triggers were unrelated, or that there were triggers at all. But she wasn't an expert on mental health, and from what Leah told her, the Clearwaters couldn't afford to send Leah to anger management courses. So, for the moment anyway, Bella acted as a cooldown for her. A sharp word to calm down, a firm hand on her arm, and Leah's anger would bleed out shortly after.

Bella learned a lot about Leah during that month. She graduated near the top of her class at the school on the reservation, had decided to take a gap year before starting college in Seattle. She wanted to major in life science, focusing on ecology and preservation. She hated horror movies but would relent and watch them if Bella asked her to. She had intense arachnophobia, would collapse into tears and hysterics if she saw even the smallest spider. And she could sing, very well. Bella had caught her singing along to some tune on the radio while the spoke on the phone and had begged for days for Leah to sing for her. She always refused.

She and Leah had finally formulated the vague outlines of a plan to burn their unwanted reminders that last week, on Saturday, and Bella had been antsy and impatient the entire time. Monday was a typical Monday – that is to say, awful in every way. Tuesday and Wednesday were dreadfully boring, despite the three-way fight that broke out in the parking lot. Thursday seemed to Bella like it lasted for several weeks, and then, blessedly, Friday arrived.

By Friday, Bella was flat-out done with school, and very much anticipating the Burning of the Cursed Possessions, as Leah had called it in her texts. But she had a shift at Newton's to get through first, and it was proving to be a hurdle and a half.

"For the last time, Mike," Bella sighed, shifting the box of flashlights in her arms. "No."

"But –"

"I know you aren't dating Jessica anymore. I know I'm not dating anyone. It's still no. I just don't see you that way, Mike. No amount of begging is going to change that. Now can we please just get back to work?"

And then she had to endure three hours of Mike Newton pouting like a kicked puppy. She'd never been happier to clock out in her life. Before the poor kid could get another proposition out, she was in her truck and halfway home. The peace and safety of the blue wallpaper and Charlie's well-intentioned attempts at chicken alfredo pushed all thoughts of Mike from her mind, and she enjoyed a late night with her dad, watching a stupid movie about giant robots and monsters.

Saturday morning found her waking bright and early, refreshed and ready for her quest. The pile of burnables had been compiled and set aside the night before. By eight, she was dressed for a hike and eating breakfast. When the doorbell rang, she shouted out to Leah to let herself in and went back to her eggs and toast. She smiled at the Quileute girl when she entered the kitchen and nodded toward the microwave.

"Plate for you in the dingbox," she said through a mouthful of bacon.

Leah made a beeline for the food and vacuumed half of it down before she even got to her seat. Watching Leah eat was an experience in itself, not only by the swiftness of her eating, but by just how much the girl could put away. By any meaningful metric, Leah should have weighed somewhere in the mid-300s, pound for pound. But her figure remained static horizontally. If anything, it seemed the girl was able to turn the calories directly into muscle by sheer force of will.

Leah bit into the makeshift sandwich she'd made from toast and eggs and bacon and moaned obscenely. Bella coughed through her food, deliberately ignoring what that sound did to her blood flow and tried to finish her meal before Leah had a happy accident in the middle of the kitchen. Ten minutes later, they were in the truck and on the road, Charlie having been informed of their whereabouts well in advance. His warning to watch out for animals – that a bear had been hunting people around the area – had fallen on deaf ears. She followed the highway out of town while Leah heckled her about the state of her dashboard.

"You just – what, ripped it out with your bare hands?" Leah asked her.

"Don't you see the bandages, Clearwater?" Bella answered.

"You need a protective bubble around you at all times," the older girl said fondly, rolling her eyes. "Where are we going, anyway?"

"A meadow I found out here," Bella replied noncommittally. "It's – uh, one of the places he and I used to go to together. It felt right to say goodbye for good there."

"That's disgustingly poetic. You're majoring in English, right?"

"If I go, yeah, that was the plan."

"Why wouldn't you?" Leah lifted an eyebrow. "You've got the brains for it."

"I dunno. I thought about doing a gap year, like you. Just turn my brain off for a bit and relax."

"Do you know how to?"

"God, I hate you," Bella laughed as they pulled off to the exact spot Edward had parked nearly a year before. "Alright, it's about five miles north from here. You good for a walk, Oppenheimer?"

"That one doesn't even make sense," Leah sniffed as she got out of the truck and checked her compass. Their cursed items had been packed into a duffel that Leah carried over her shoulder. She and Bella remained silent as they hiked through the brush, the slick morning dew coating their boots and the hems of their pants as they trudged on.

Bella was certain they were going in the right direction, that feeling in her brain and gut leading her forward, step by step. As she walked, she thought back and reminisced on her relationship with Edward and his family.

He'd been lovely, chivalrous and thoughtful, that much was true. But he'd also been controlling, more than a touch myopic and misogynistic, and held too much self-loathing when looked at without the rose-colored glasses she'd always peered at him through. Seeing Edward as flawed, as a typical specimen of a teenage boy, though he wasn't, humanized him in a way that she had hitherto been unable to do. And that same thinking pattern held well for his entire family. The Cullens had been unduly welcoming, friendly (with the patent exception of Rosalie), but they were all unerringly inhuman. It was ingrained in them, no matter how hard they tried to fit in where they lived. It radiated from their skin, seeped into the collective conscious of those around them.

Emmett was fun, but immature to a fault. Jasper was well-mannered, but damaged and lacking in self-control. Rosalie was beautiful and fierce, but cold and harsh enough to seem hateful. Carlisle was compassionate but detached, the perfect doctor. And Esme was the consummate mother in every way. Alice was still the most difficult to think about. Alice's departure still hurt the worst, and Bella was – at this point – self-aware enough to realize that she'd been at least halfway in love with Alice Cullen by the time the family disappeared. She wondered if Alice was aware of that, if it had colored her final actions in Forks in any discernable way. But Alice was also totally dependent on her visions, hated surprises for herself, and refused to see any option that she hadn't seen as valid. She was a soothsayer, a modern oracle of Delphi, not to be dissuaded or disagreed with.

The Cullens – despite being immortal, blood-drinking beings – all had their human faults still intact. It was a more comforting thought than she'd expected it to be.

Leah had been atypically quiet through her introspection, and when Bella turned her head to find her, she found Leah's eyes already on her. She blinked, blushed brightly, and cleared her throat.

"What's up?" she asked in a tone she hoped sounded nonchalant.

"Nothing," Leah murmured, sniffing the air. "Just surprised, I guess."

"Wanna talk about it?"

"I've never really been that close to anyone," Leah told her. "Emily, I guess, when we were kids. Seth, too, but that's because he's my brother. Sam, when we dated. But it always felt sort of detached. Like I was in the passenger seat to my own relationships. Just riding it all out."

"Okay," Bella said, trying and failing so very hard to understand what Leah meant.

"I don't feel that way with you," Leah said eventually. "This is something I have to work on to build, to make it better. Starting off on such a wrong foot forced me to think about myself in a way I'd never had to do before."

"Somehow it doesn't surprise me that you never practiced regular self-reflection," Bella said, a laugh in her tone.

"I'm trying to be serious right now," Leah said, smiling at her. "So, if you could, perhaps, shut the fuck up for a minute."

"Oh, right," Bella said, zipping her mouth shut and throwing the key away.

"I like it," Leah finished. "I like the person I can be when I'm around you. I still fuck up, but when you're around, I really have to think about whether or not getting angry is worth the trouble. And even when you're not around, I still catch myself before I get snippy. Dad and Mom are talking to me more, Seth's happy to be around me. It's a big change. I feel like I'm slowly going back to who I used to be before all this."

"You put the work in, Leah," Bella said as she saw the pinprick of light ahead of them, the first sign of the incoming meadow. "It's only been a month, don't rush yourself or try to force anything. But you're a good person, and I like being around you. Thank god I started hanging out with you. If it'd been Jake, he'd be spending every other minute trying to get in my pants."

"Can't fault him for that," Leah said absentmindedly as the meadow grew closer.

"You're all talk," Bella mumbled back, halfway hoping Leah might prove her wrong. But she didn't, and before anything else could be said, and she Leah stepped out of the dense trees and into the open meadow.

A/N: INTROSPECTION! I received a bit of a talking to from someone that this Bella moves on too quickly, and to that I say: You're absolutely right. Four months is a short time to grieve for a broken relationship, but bouncing back, coming into one's skin again after trauma is relative. Canon Bella is inconsolable after her loss, mine isn't. Also, I really want to get to the Bella/Leah stuff. So...let me know what you think!