Trigger warning as I will be discussing Rosalie's past.

And that has mentions of sexual assault.

I just wanted to warn you if you are sensitive to that.


Edward was a shadow in the house. He hovered in doorways and stared at her from across the room, always with that guilty expression. She wasn't the mind reader but she knew what he was thinking. He thought all of what happened to her was his fault and had he never come into her life, it would've never happened. Perhaps he was right.

She could've lived that alternate life with dating Ben Chenney and lived her short, ordinary human life and be none the wiser that vampires and werewolves existed. She would've gone to college and eventually became a nurse. She would've gotten to see her little brothers grow up. She would've been able to get married and have kids and grow old.

She could spend decades thinking about all she had lost if Edward Cullen had never bothered to talk to her. Except that world was no longer hers as it died the moment her heart stopped beating. She had been truthful with Carlisle that she didn't want to live her new life as if every day was a purgatory she was stuck in. She didn't want to live her life hating what she was. It was going to be a very long life and that was a very long time to be miserable.

She found herself spending time around the piano, letting her fingers play the notes she could still remember. She played Chopin, Bach, and Beethoven. She was rusty and made several mistakes but that didn't stop her. It was one thing she was able to keep and playing gave her a piece of her human life back even how small.

She could pretend she was playing on Old Bess. Her mother was cooking lunch in the kitchen. Her brothers were playing with their toys in their room. Her father was doing the crossword on that day's newspaper. And if she closed her eyes and pretended hard enough, she would be home.

She stopped playing as she heard Edward stop at the doorway, the abrupt note ringing throughout the quiet room. He stayed at the doorway, leaning on it, not moving closer. She stared at him and sighed. She was having enough of his behavior.

"If you wanna come in, just come in," She told him. "Or leave. But don't stare at me. It's creepy."

He winced. "I'm sorry."

She expected him to turn around and leave like he'd done so in the past but he surprised her by stepping into the room and took a seat on the armchair a few feet away. He wasn't near her but he was facing her. The space between them was a chasm neither of them knew how to cross. She looked down at the keys and tried to remember the notes for Moonlight Sonata.

"Um, it's…" He cleared his throat. "I can show you how to play it."

She stared at him warily but nodded. He got up and moved closer to her at human speed. She knew he could've moved much faster but moved slow on purpose not to startle her. She let him take the seat beside her on the bench. He watched his fingers, his deep voice softly explaining the notes to her.

Her fingers slowly remembered the flow of the melody and he smiled as she began to play it. It wasn't smooth or as beautiful as he would've played it. But there was a melancholy to her rendition. She always thought the song was somber and she could now understand it on a deeper level than she ever had before. It sounded like loss, like grief.

She stopped playing as her eyes were tearing up again. "Why did you leave me?"

"I needed to," He confessed, ashamed. "Alice kept seeing you as a vampire and I thought if we left, that wouldn't happen."

"So, your solution was to just leave without even a goodbye?" She stared at him disbelief. "Not even a note explaining yourself. You just left me and I had to wonder what I did wrong to make you do that."

He was quick to try and reassure her. "You did nothing wrong. You are amazing-"

"Amazing? But not enough for you to send me a text or an email," Her voice was rising in anger and she exhaled to calm herself down. "Did I not deserve at least a proper goodbye?"

"I…" He swallowed. "I knew that if I did, I wouldn't have been able to leave. I would've stayed and doomed you."

"Well, guess what?" She moved her arm up so the sunlight would hit her skin the right away and her skin glistened like it was made of a thousand tiny diamonds. "I still became a vampire. So, everything you did to 'protect' me was for nothing."

He looked pained. "I'm sorry. I am more so than I can ever bear for what happened to you and all I put you through but I knew you never wanted to be a vampire."

She looked away, unable to look at him and his stupid, guilty face.

"You never wanted this life for yourself. You loved being a human and you loved your human friends and family. I was a death sentence," He continued. "So, I left in the most cowardly way possible because you deserved to live your human life without me fucking it all up."

She kept quiet, not trusting herself to speak.

"I thought if I was gone, you would be okay. I didn't expect Maria," He shook his head. "Alice couldn't see you anymore. We thought you were going to get killed so we came back to save you. And turns out it was just the werewolf that was stopping her visions."

She let the truth wash over her. There was a world where she ended up with Jacob. There was a world she kept her human life and everyone she loved. It would've been a world she could've grown old and had a family. And instead, she had this life.

"What changed the future?"

"I don't know," Edward admitted. "It was something Alice couldn't see. It could've been one of the werewolves. She can't see visions of them."

Was it Jacob? Did Jacob save her in time from Maria? Was it just being a minute too late that changed everything? That took everything from her?

Edward bowed his head. "It could've been. None of us can ever know."

She stared at him and remembered seeing the Tree of Life with Mike and talking about Ragnarok and self-fulfilling prophecies. By trying their best to stop what was the future, they inadvertently caused it to happen more. Maria must've decided that she was important enough to be a pawn on her chessboard and decided to change her. It took only one decision to change her entire world.

"I truly am sorry for everything," He whispered. "I have wronged you and I fully understand if you hate me."

"I don't hate you," She murmured. She was too tired to hate anybody and it was never in her nature to be able to ever experience true hate. "I am angry with you and will be for a long time but I could never hate you."

He snorted and stared at her with the faint remnants of hope. There had been a time his smile had made her heart flutter with possibilities. She wasn't that girl anymore, she was gone and she was somebody new. She didn't know how she felt about him.

"You never have to be anything than what you want," He said. "I will love you for whatever you ever deem to be."

He never said he loved her before. She couldn't process it. Her mind was conflicted and she wanted peace. She didn't know if she had it in her to ever love him back.

"That's okay too," He replied. "It would serve me right."

She gave him a look for not just staying out of her head. Not that it should surprise her. She doubted that even a hundred years from now, he could ever help himself. And she wondered after a hundred years, maybe she could love him back. When her wounds were healed and everyone she loved was echoes in her memories.

"I can wait," He promised. He reached for her hand and she let him. "Take all the time you need."


Edward thought it best to go to her parents' house while no one was home. It gave them two hours to get in and out without being seen. Emmett and Jasper came along just in case and lingered in her bedroom, eyeing the little knick knacks in her room. She wanted to take as much as she could but Edward warned her it would be noticed so she had to take little things, the loss of which could be explained away.

She took the photo album Eric gave her for her birthday, including the newest photo of all of them at the party. She took the half-empty bottle of her mother's perfume. She took one of her father's prized fountain pens. She took a dinosaur toy from the twins' room. She took the blue wooden box Jessica made her. And last, she took the little card Jacob gave for free motor cycle rides she had framed.

They all fit into the backpack they brought. Small little things to remind her of a life she would never return to. She took her time going through the house, eyeing each room as it would be the last time she would ever see it. This was the house she grew up in, the house she'd been made in. All her sorrows and victories had been witnessed by these walls.

She wondered about who Angela Weber was and her short, human life and she let her breathe within her like a ghost. All the 'what ifs' and 'what could have beens' swirling in her head until she felt herself practically shake with the force of it. She would never let herself feel this way again as it would be the only way she could bear immortality. And she let her go.

"We should go," Edward told her, gently. "Your parents will be home soon."

"I know."

She nearly startled as Mr. Mozart eyed her from the doorway of her room. Excitement blossomed within her and she moved to pet him but he hissed at her. Her heart sunk into her chest as he turned and ran away. She felt bereft at the rejection and she felt it replaced by a sudden calmness.

Jasper winced. "I'm sorry. We need to go, Angela."

She nodded and they left her parents' house. She was grateful she stopped locking her bedroom window so Jacob could let himself in. It made leaving easier. Even as she felt a million lifetimes wither away into nothing.


It was morbid curiosity. They had a long drive to Alaska ahead of them and she would never get the chance again. Seeing your own grave was an experience not many people get to have. Emmett indulged her. He even joked she should walk over her own grave to see if she felt any goose bumps. She felt nothing as she stared at the gravestone.

Angela Mary Weber

October 20, 1987 - October 22, 2005

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

Matthew 5:8

She kneeled down and traced the words engraved on her grave and felt a strange numbness. Her friends and family would visit this grave and mourn her. They would visit as they grieved and stop visiting less as they lived their lives. She wouldn't begrudge them. They deserved happiness even if she would never see it.

"Angie," Emmett grabbed her arm. "We gotta go."

She smelled human blood and almost lurched away from him. He grabbed her with both arms and even as she struggled, she was no match for his strength. He moved them as fast as he could away, never giving her a chance to escape. They were behind the crop of trees nearby and she could see Lauren standing at her grave with a bouquet of lilies.

"What the hell?" The blonde said. "I'm losing my goddamn mind."

She looked down at Angela's grave and laughed wearily. "You hear that, Weber? I'm seeing your ghost and I'm losing it. I'm finally losing it."

Emmett was sniffing his nose in the air like a bloodhound. He whispered. "I just realized, your friend smells different than the other humans."

Angela, finally regaining some of her self-control, whispered back, "What do you mean?"

"Not quite human but not a werewolf either," He closed his eyes, frowning. "It's this weird in-between smell."

Angela closed his eyes and tried to focus on Lauren's scent. She hadn't smelled that many humans but she remembered how Jacob and the werewolves smelled and it was similar enough to them. Werewolf but not quite, something else. She wondered if Lauren had been keeping something from her all this time.

"I don't think any of us noticed because the humans around her usually drowned it out," He shook his head. "That's really weird."

Angela stared at her friend as she placed the bouquet on her grave and felt that familiar pang. How she wanted to step out from behind the trees and talk to Lauren. She wanted to tell her friend what happened to her and how much she missed everybody. She wanted Lauren to know that everything was going to be okay even if she didn't fully believe it herself.

"Angie," Emmett whispered. "We need to go."

She nodded and with a last look at her friend, she wished Lauren Mallory a long and happy life.


Angela had never really spoken with Rosalie Hale. The blonde had avoided talking to her and she hadn't minded as she always felt intimidated by her. She was disarmingly beautiful and seemed to want to keep everyone at a distance. In some ways, she reminded Angela of Lauren who had high walls and did not let many people in.

Except there wasn't something broken with Rosalie under the surface. A kind of pain that would only be covered by frost and anger that Angela could sense in her though as far as they all knew Angela had no special ability as a vampire. She didn't have Edward's mind reading or Jasper's empathy she was just very perceptive. A 'pseudo-ability' as Carlisle called it one time with a smile.

She hadn't wanted a special ability and she was glad for it. Being a vampire was hard enough with the super senses and she still had trouble managing her strength and speed. She didn't want to have to learn how to manage something else along with it. 'Pseudo-ability' or not, she found herself and Rosalie talking to each other the night before they were to leave for Alaska.

Rosalie told her about her human life and how she adored it. She was this beautiful woman with a dream of having a handsome husband and having adorable children to fill her life. She had been so close to the dream before the man she was going to marry and his friends assaulted her and left her for dead. Carlisle had found her and turned her to save her.

The tale was horrific and chilling. Angela had never tolerated that kind of violence towards women, refusing to see the any media of entertainment with it. She hated how normalized it had been in human society and she was angry and furious for Rosalie. She never thought herself capable of violence but she wanted to find the men that hurt her and…and…

"I was meant for Edward," Rosalie confessed, bitterly. "As a gift."

Angela recoiled, remembering Maria's original intention for her. A gift for a man, as if women were nothing but possessions to be used and thrown away. As if women could be merely objects and not living, breathing human beings. It made her sick.

"I was meant to be a gift too," She confessed, closing her eyes. "And Maria didn't care what I wanted."

"There is a special kind of hell for women who don't help other women," Rosalie replied. "Maria will be meeting hers soon if Jasper has his way."

"For what it's worth, I am so sorry for what happened to you," Angela was not going to cry even as her heart broke for the other woman. "You did not deserve it."

"Nobody does," Rosalie agreed. "But thank you. It's nice to have somebody in the house who doesn't see vampirism as improving their lives. Someone who actually misses their humanity."

"I don't know. I don't think we're the only ones," She remembered Carlisle and Edward and how miserable they had been. "I think it's just we missed our human lives and the people we left behind."

"True," The blonde looked up into the starry sky and sighed. "In the time I grew up, women had a specific purpose, to be mothers and wives. When I became a vampire, I could be a wife but no longer a mother. I felt bereft as if my existence no longer mattered."

"Women are more than their ability to have children," Angela countered. "Our wombs do not define are worth."

"I learned that over the years but the feeling lingers no matter how much I try. And I don't think it ever will," Rosalie admitted. "But I do have Emmett and if it wasn't for him, I would've killed myself years ago."

"I love you too, Rose!" Emmett exclaimed as he joined them in the balcony. He took a seat between the two women. "I would've died from boredom years ago if it wasn't for you, babe."

Rosalie rolled her eyes but pulled him in for a kiss. Something Angela had learned in her time in the house was how much Emmett loved Rosalie. At first glance, they didn't make sense as he was so friendly and loving and Rosalie appeared to be so aloof and abrasive. Knowing Rosalie's story painted it differently. A woman who had been violated and rejected in the worst imaginable ways, finding love and safety in a man with a heart bigger than himself and she was happy for them.

She was glad they found each other. She was glad that Rosalie didn't have to be miserable in her immortality when she had Emmett.

Emmett pulled away from Rosalie and turned to her. "I ever tell you how I became a vampire?"

"No," Angela had a feeling it was a good story. "Do tell."

"Picture this. It's 1935 in Gatlinburg, Tennessee," His voice took a more Southern drawl. "Young Emmett McCarty gets mauled by a black bear in the mountains."

She stared at him in shock and he nodded.

"Ever seen a bear in real life, Angie?" He asked. "They are huge. So I'm lying there on the forest floor and thinking to myself 'well, this is it, Emmett old pal' when I open my eyes and this blonde angel is crying over me. And I thought 'well, Heaven take me now if I get to stare at that pretty face for eternity'."

He laughed as Rosalie leaned her head on his shoulder, smiling. He kissed the top of her head before continuing his story. "If you hadn't guessed, that 'angel' was Rose here. She takes me to Carlisle and he turns me into a vampire. And while she wasn't an angel, far from it, I loved her anyway."

Rosalie snorted. "You're not so bad yourself."

"The moral of our story is…" He patted the side of his nose with a finger. "Being a vampire isn't all doom and gloom. Granted, there are some really shitty parts but…as long as you're spending it with the right people it's not such a hellish existence."

He turned around to where Edward was now standing by the balcony doors. "Right, Ed? It's only a lesson I've been trying to teach you for the past seventy years."

Edward rolled his eyes. "Keep trying, Emmett."

Emmett turned back to Angela. "Are you sure you wanna be dating him for your eternity? We can turn a nice boy for you, zero moodiness, with better hair."

Angela covered her mouth in shock as Edward moved forward and threw Emmett across the balcony ledge. He jumped off the ledge and she watched dumbstruck as the two men wrestled each other on the ground. Edward was faster than Emmett but the latter made up for it by sheer will as he got Edward into a headlock. Rosalie sighed beside her and shook her head.

"See this?" Rosalie pointed to her husband and brother. "This is eternity for us. Get used to it."

For what felt like the first time in days, Angela laughed. She laughed as Rosalie joined her. She continued to laugh as Edward stared up at her in pleased surprise. She laughed until she felt like things would actually be okay and meant it.


The drive to Alaska was long and took two days despite how fast the Cullens liked the drive their cars. She spent the ride with Edward in his stupid, shiny Volvo and they spent the time listening to music and telling stories. Edward never really ran out of stories as one memory just brought up five more in its place. She wasn't quite ready to tell him about the time he left her and what she experienced. She wanted to keep that close to her for a little while longer.

When they finally arrived, the sun was rising and the view of it in the snow was breathtaking. She could never feel cold anymore which was one vampire perk she enjoyed and she stood watching the sun rise from the between the mountains in awe. Edward stood beside her and his skin glistened like diamonds. She would never get used to that vampire trait. They looked like disco balls.

Edward laughed that hyena laugh of his and that got the attention of the others. He explained what she was thinking and they all had a laugh at her expense. Until Emmett picked up a snow ball and threw it at Edward. It started a snow ball fight that lasted longer than any of them would ever admit. Carlisle and Esme watched their antics like the patient parents that they were.

Later, they would go inside the large cabin and Angela would meet the Denali sisters. They would talk for hours about themselves and Tanya would tell every embarrassing story she could about Edward. Kate and her would bond over pop music and Irina would win every poker game they would all play with her. As the night would set in, Edward would be playing the piano and it would be the piece he wrote for her.

That simple melody that was quiet and steady. She knew that she would miss her human life and a part of her always would. She kept comparing that morning's snowball fight to ones she had before with her friends. But she'll take all the time she needed and someday it wouldn't hurt as much anymore. She had hope and that was all she needed for now.

"Hi," Edward had left his piano to stand beside her by the window. "You okay?"

"Yeah," She smiled. "I'm taking my time."

And that is the Edward ending. Is it perfect? No. Life is never perfect. This is the original ending I intended when I first came up with this story and I want to end it here. There's more to this story, of course, but I'll let you imagine it from here. There is still the Jacob ending coming if you want to read that. But if you are on Team Edward, you can stop reading here.


1. Why didn't Angela get together with Edward? She needs time to forgive him and to fully accept herself. A romantic relationship is not what she needs right now. She is open to it in the future but right now she needs a family and the Cullens are more than happy to prove that to her.

3. "There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women" is a quote from Madeleine Albright.

4. What was up with Lauren? You'll see this more in the Jacob ending but for people don't want to read that, I'll explain it here. As I was writing Lauren in the story, she kept grabbing my attention (and not because she's a Leo) and I thought there was just something off about her. She was too suspicious of the Cullens more than anyone and as I was thinking about the Schrodinger's cat moment, I realized she was the Schindler's cat. She was the catalyst for the two different endings. And Alice couldn't see her because she wasn't human. In the books, there are werewolves called 'Children of the Moon' and they're more like the traditional werewolves in movies/books. Caius was terrified of them and tried to annihilate them in Asia and Europe. There numbers are pretty limited at this point. And I realized Lauren being one would explain her aggressiveness and supernatural intuition. She could tell the Cullens were dangerous and tried to warn off Angela. She doesn't know that she's a werewolf. I decided to go The Vampire Diaries' route and her werewolf gene has to be 'triggered' by taking a human life. There's more you'll see of this in a bonus chapter for the Edward ending and the Jacob ending.

5. And just a weird coincidence but the Edward ending stops at Chapter 18, the same age Angela became a vampire.

6. Chapter title comes from a Taylor Swift song.