Seems that I have been held, in some dreaming state
A tourist in the waking world, never quite awake
Felt it in my fist, in my feet, in the hollows of my eyelids
Shaking through my skull, through my spine and down through my ribs
And I could hear the thunder and see the lightning crack
All around the world was waking, I never could go back
Cause all the walls of dreaming, they were torn wide open
And finally it seemed that the spell was broken

No more dreaming of the dead as if death itself was undone
No more dreaming like a girl so in love, so in love
No more dreaming like a girl so in love with the wrong world

Florence & The Machine - Blinding

Chapter 35 – To Wake and to See

Lexi

"When she wakes, what do we tell her?"

"The truth. Tell her what happened – she needs to know."

"But she barely knew we existed before all of this happened to her. What will she think?"

"I didn't know either – I woke up not even knowing what I was."

"I know Alice, but you also woke up in a roadside ditch. We have the opportunity to educate her and introduce her to this slowly. We can guide her and help her along… what is it?"

"I just saw… it won't be long now. She's going to wake just after dawn. Not long at all."

I listened to the voices around me. They had drawn me out of the sea of pain I'd been trapped in for what felt like years. Everything was black and perfectly balanced on pins and needles in my mind. The pain was still agonizing, but it had dulled compared to what it had first been… what was that, days ago? Weeks? I couldn't be sure. All I knew was that I was anchored in the white-hot oblivion that had seemed to swallow me whole. I was still aware of the pain, but I'd almost become used to it. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I laughed. Used to pain? That didn't even sound like me. I was the girl that passed out when she got a flu shot. I wasn't exactly what you'd call 'tough'.

There were people near me, I realized. I felt like all I'd known was the scorching fire my entire life, up to this point, and everything happening around me was something fresh and entirely new. The pain was all I recognized, and the only thing I could remember.

But the woman… or was it a girl? She'd said it wouldn't be long. Her voice was small and childlike, but sounded somehow… all-knowing.

Someone touched my hand. My hand! I could feel it – it was painless. How had I missed that? My mind reeled at this new realization that a part of my body was somehow suddenly free of the excruciating flames.

When had that happened? How long had I been like this?

More touches – my feet! I could feel them as well! The hands were feather light as something rough was pulled up my legs. I winced as the pressure seemed to push the flames further into my bones. I remained as still as possible as the touches continued as I drifted in and out. It was difficult to pay attention as I suddenly became aware of my heartbeat.

The sound echoed in my ears, threatening to drown out the noises around me. It was so loud. Had it always been this loud? Panic began to creep through my fiery veins.

"She's becoming aware," a voice said. It was male, I realized. The people speaking before were the girl and the woman.

"Is the pain fading?" the woman asked. Another light touch to my hand.

"Yes. But she's focused on her heart. She's panicking," he answered.

How did he know? I thought.

"You can hear her though? She's going to be alright?"

"Yes, Rose. She'll be fine. She's just… distracted. Talk to her."

Rose? Who was Rose? And how could he hear me? I felt my brain ache as I was bombarded with a million thoughts all at once. The questions and the pain and the confusion all swirled together in the huge, black space as I fought to focus on only one. I failed miserably. I wanted to cry, but I felt like I couldn't even remember how to do that. When would this end? My heartbeat quickened even more, if that was possible. I felt like I was collapsing into myself, forever doomed into an oblivion of pain and torture and -

"Lexi," the woman spoke. Her voice was smooth and pretty, just like a movie star from the black and white movies I used to watch late at night. I hung onto it.

Lexi.

Lexi, I thought. That's my name. My name. That simple concept seemed so… impossible after how long I'd been burning. It felt like I was hearing it for the first time as she spoke it.

"Keep talking to her," the man spoke again.

"Lexi," she repeated, "you're going to be alright. You're safe. My family brought you to our house after your accident. I know… I know you're in pain right now, but… but it's going to all be over soon."

Am I going to die? I thought miserably. Please, I begged, Kill me now. I want to die. I don't want to be stuck in this fiery hell forever…

I heard murmurs… so low I couldn't catch them. I felt a rush of air leave my mouth as I fought to stay cognizant and not be pulled back under by the flames licking at my insides and the blackness of oblivion. I wanted to know more.

I had to hang on.

"You're not going to die. You're going to wake up soon, and everything will be okay. You're safe here, and my family is going to help you through this. Things will be… different. But you aren't going to die, Lexi. I promise you. It will all be over soon."

I felt hope.

"You're going to be alright," she promised again. "You're going to make it, just like I did and you're going to be alright."

More pain left my limbs as her flowery voice filled my ears, but I couldn't focus on that. No, the only thing I could seem to grasp was the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears. Harder and faster it went, the thrumming taking up every square inch of my working conscience. I could hear her trying to talk to me, to calm me, but my heartbeat seemed determined to drown it all out.

THUMP... THUMP... THUMP.

"Lexi, listen to me. Stay calm, it will all be over soon…"

But I couldn't listen. I couldn't move, I couldn't think, I couldn't do anything but fixate on the frantic thrumming of my heart. It was hot - much, much too hot – would it explode? Would it shatter within my chest, singed against the molten hot bones of my upper ribcage? I felt like I could open my mouth and breathe out the flames that had tortured me for what felt like an endless amount of time.

One word floated to the front of my mind, allowing my singed brain to hold onto it: hell.

This was my hell.

This was hell and I was burning on a molten pyre. The epic finale would be the explosion of my heart. I pictured the fragile tissues of it as they ripped apart, melting into the flames.

"Lexi…"

Another touch on my leg. It was free of agony too. I wanted to celebrate, to cry, laugh…

"You're going to wake soon. Stay calm, Lexi, please... please don't be afraid."

Don't be afraid? I wondered. Afraid of what? How much worse could this hell be? What worse could the demons from my nightmares do?

I felt a touch on my shoulder, closer to my heart. Every touch of the mystery hands drew my attention to a completely different part of my body, and I realized the areas I was becoming aware of again were either spiking with heat and agony or miraculously free of any pain. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The fire spiked at the top of my skull as I pictured the flames making one last horrifying round of my body before ultimately letting me melt away into nothing. It crept downward, leaving my brain and ears and my face finally alone. I felt myself sigh with relief. Down it sunk, the fires cresting and then retreating like the waves on a shore. I tried to picture the cool blue waters, but all my traitorous mind would conjure were images of scorching waves of blazes and lava. I felt like everything I'd known before – and I knew I'd known something, but I couldn't remember what. I hadn't always been lost to this sea of agony, had I?

THUMP... THUMP... THUMP.

"It's receding," the man murmured. "It's finishing up."

"Soon," the girlish voice promised. I heard her inhale sharply.

A rumbling sound – my mind stumbled for the word as I fought to focus on something, anything but the sound of my heart.

Car, I realized. It was the sound of a car.

"They need to leave," the woman muttered. Her lilting voice was tinged with something sharp. "It won't be safe for them here."

"It's just Seth," the man argued. "They'll know how to stay clear of her. He won't put Brady in danger."

The words he was speaking were familiar somehow, I knew – but how? I forgot to worry about it further as the fires continued to lick at my insides, swirling in torturous circles in my chest. My heart began to panic, stuttering and thrumming.

THUMP... THUMP... THUMP.

This was it. I was going to die, right there on the table I could feel beneath me. My heart was going to explode, and I was finally going to die.

The pain would be over.

More movement in the room – it felt like a big, airy space. I could feel the breeze as two more people entered, their footsteps lightly touching the floor as they walked gracefully. I shouldn't have been able to hear that or even focus on it with my chest contracting and throbbing the way it was, but I could.

"Jasper went with Bella and Renesmee to meet with the rest of the pack. They're helping do a sweep of the perimeter, making sure no one is around…" a new male voice spoke.

"Will she wake soon?" said another female.

"Any minute," the girlish voice answered.

"Lexi," the original female voice spoke, "don't be afraid. It will all be over soon, and we're here to help you."

THUMP... THUMP... THUMP.

Harder and harder my heart struggled, flailing wildly within my chest. I realized my teeth were clenched - I felt them grinding against one another as I sucked a violent breath into my lungs. A pitiful wail of raspy air left my throat as my heart stumbled. I squeezed my eyes closed and waited for it to stop, and it finally did.

THUMP.

THUMP…

Silence.

I whimpered. It was over.

I was finally dead.

I exhaled in relief as every fiber of my body relaxed all at once. My limbs went slack, my teeth unclenched, and I stopped gripping whatever it was I was lying on.

The pain was… gone.

I opened my eyes, staring upwards at the light above my head. It was bright, but my eyes weren't bothered by it. I stared at it for a moment, frowning as I realized that wherever I was – and I knew I had to be dead – that there was an overhead lamp. Was this hell? Purgatory? Heaven?

I hated to think one had to burn like that to get into heaven.

"You're not dead, Lexi," a man's voice said softly beside me.

I sat up in an instant, the movement unnaturally fast but somehow it felt normal. I blinked as I realized I was surrounded by people. Strangers. I was in a white room full of strangers! It all felt terribly peculiar, and I began to panic. My fingers gripped the table I was on, the cool metal crunching like Styrofoam beneath my hand. I glanced down at it, then up at the man who was speaking to me. What on earth?

I was in a room. No, a library… slash... two-story office? Rows and rows of books lined the upper floor – old books, by the smell of the dust on the pages – and the bottom floor where I was held, a long, ornate looking table, several computers, another long shelf of books, and in the corner was a cluster of what looked like hospital equipment. This was all very strange…

My eyes flashed back to the man in front of me. I wasn't alone – not by a long shot.

"I'm Edward Cullen. This is my family. You've met us before… at Leah's wedding. You remember that, don't you?" he asked.

I glanced at their faces. Their strange, beautiful, porcelain like faces. I blinked again, my eyes focusing on the blonde woman in front of me. My eyes focused in on hers, easily picking up the differentiating flecks of yellow and amber in her strange, gold eyes. I'd seen her before – the man, Edward, wasn't lying.

So I knew them, but what did that mean? I quickly forgot about the fact that I was in a room full of strangers before realizing I felt so strange. Panic began to bubble up in my chest, a breath of air rushing into my mouth as I took a deep breath – It felt so weird to breathe! Instead of relief from the air, I could taste things in the air as I smelled them. Things I never knew there was a taste for – flowers, dust, wood, leaves, moss… and something else pleasant. This isn't right, I realized. I inhaled again, testing the air as the strange people stared at me. I didn't like this. I was starting to really panic now. My hand flew to my chest as I readied myself for my heart to start pounding inside my chest.

Only it didn't.

I cupped the spot below my collar bone where my heart should be, expecting it to start racing at any moment. But it didn't. Nothing.

Suddenly it all came racing back to me. The pain. The burning. My heart pounding inside my chest, surrounded by fire and threatening to explode. What had happened to me? I was afraid. I should be trembling, I realized. But I wasn't – I could be completely still – like a statue. This wasn't right – something wasn't right!

I went to stand, but the motion felt all wrong. The room became a carefully constructed blur as I moved to put my feet on the ground and instead, found myself all the way on the other side of the room. There was a crashing sound as I pressed my back up against a bookshelf in the corner, my eyes still glued to the people standing around the table. A few books came flying off the shelves in what felt like slow motion behind me, landing on the floor with a large crash.

How had I done that? Again, the feeling that something was indeed not right began to take over and cause me to panic. And then it happened – the fire returned. I gasped for air, trying to not panic but I couldn't stop it! The burning seeped back into me, a fiery blaze swelling up in the back of my throat. It was the most uncomfortable, fiery itch I'd ever experienced. My hand flew to cup my throat as it roared hotter.

My skin.

My neck not forgotten, I clutched it with one hand while I held up the other. The skin before me was pale and smooth, the snow-like complexion so unlike my own.

I froze. This wasn't my body. Oh my god, this wasn't my body. One of the people across the room shifted, holding up his hands. I realized it had only been a second or two since I'd stood up from the table and he was walking towards me.

"Lexi," he called softly, his voice calm. He was tall and blond and so statuesque it was laughable. Was he going to hurt me?

"What happened to me?" I finally spoke. The voice was not even my own – it was smooth and light and not anything like how I usually sounded. What was happening to me?

"Lexi… you're safe here. No one is going to hurt you," the blond man spoke. "My name is Carlisle. This is part of my family. You've seen some of them before. We're friends of…" he trailed off, glancing at the bronze haired man behind him. He shook his head as if to tell him not to speak further, his own golden eyes shifting to me.

"I'm Edward, Lexi. My wife, Bella, is Regan's cousin. We're the Cullens."

I knew that name. I'd heard it before and I felt myself relax slightly. I couldn't sense any danger nearby, but that still didn't explain why I felt like I wasn't even in my own body any more. Not that I would have remembered what my own body felt like – I tried to remember things from before the burning. Before the lava-like hell had ripped through my veins, charring me inside and out. But it hadn't, I realized. I held up my hand in front of my face, flipping it over several times. The movement looked too fast and jerky, but it felt normal. But wait, what was normal? What was my normal before whatever that hellish fire? Had the blazing inferno burned away all that I was, all that I had been before?

My mind felt like it could think of and solve anything almost instantly – my eyes were darting around the room - was it a library? A strange doctor's office?; surveying the people in front of me - three men, one woman, and a teenager, counting doors (2), tallying the number of clicks of a second hand (21,606), and the number of breath's I'd taken since I'd woken up (19). But I couldn't make it remember anything about myself or what was normal.

The copper haired man, Edward, stopped forward. "You're Lexi. You're eighteen years old. You live in Forks, Washington. You're at our home, and you're safe."

I nodded in understanding. I felt like I should be shaking like a leaf, but I was still. Too still. My eyes fell on the table in the middle of the room I'd jumped up from only minute ago. The metal sides were crushed in an awkward, condensed angle. My eyes zoomed forward without my permission – like a highly focused camera would - and focused on the shape of the warped metal. My fingers had done that, I realized, holding up my hand. They'd crushed the metal, and it was definitely metal and not Styrofoam like I'd thought it was.

Oh my god, I thought. What had the Cullens done to me? Had they killed me and brought me back to life as some weird, freaky superhero? Or a messed up science experiment?

"What did you do to me?" I asked. My voice was betraying me – it should be still and strong like I felt, but instead it was shaking.

"Nothing," the blonde woman said. "I'm Rose. Rosalie. I met you at L… at a wedding, several months ago. I'm Edward's sister," she explained. "We didn't do anything to you. You were in the woods, down by First Beach and you were attacked. We found you and brought you here until you were better."

The woods, I realized. The woods I was in when I was attacked. I could remember the green, the smell of the salt of the ocean, the way the ferns felt against my legs as I'd walked. I could remember being in the woods and then suddenly being afraid.

A jolt of fear ran through me as I remembered his eyes – his blood red, terrifying eyes.

"He attacked you, Lexi. He was a vampire. He bit you and threw you from the treetops," the copper haired man spoke again. "We were called to help you, because we're vampires too."

My mind struggled to comprehend what he was telling me – it fought to remember why I was in the woods and why I'd been bitten by a vampire in first place – that was something out of a fairy tale.

"We can talk about that later," the copper haired man promised. "We need to get you fed."

I froze. They were vampires. I'd been bitten by a vampire. I didn't feel like myself. I didn't feel even human.

Hours seemed to tick by as I stayed, backed against a bookshelf, and the Cullens stared at me as I pieced everything together. And then suddenly wished I hadn't.

"I was bitten. So I… I'm a vampire," I stammered out. It made sense – I didn't feel like myself and like I wasn't human anymore because I wasn't – I wasn't myself anymore.

"You… you're right," Rosalie spoke. "You're a vampire. And so are we. And Lexi... we're here to help you. No one should have to go through this alone and… we've all been in your shoes before. We can help you do this."

Panic leapt into my heart again, and I expected it to start pounding – but it didn't. No, my dead heart stayed cemented in place, never moving. The panic was all in my mind. My rapidly working, imaginative mind. I thought of all the horror movies I'd seen in the past – just the pictures that the word 'vampire' brought to my mind. Memories were hard to conjure up – my memories were selective and few as I stood there trying to piece everything together. The other Cullens were quiet as Rosalie crept forward. Her hands were up in a nonthreatening manner, and I didn't feel like she was a threat – but my instinct was to be afraid and defensive.

A growl sounded in the room.

Their eyes widened. Edward gently pulled Rosalie back, and that's when the monster of a vampire with dark, curly hair stepped forward and put his hand on her shoulder.

They all watched me with cautious, accusatory stares and unblinking eyes. Hell, none of them even moved an inch before I realized that the growl was from me.

I pulled my lip between my teeth – the action didn't hurt, but it did make me realize that my teeth were now in fact razor sharp. My tongue worried the front edges of them as my speedy brain catalogued just how sharp they really were. Holy shit.

"I'm… so I'm a monster now?"

Carlisle shifted his weight in a fidgety way, licking his lip. "No, Lexi, we're not. We're vampires… not monsters. I think you'll find the two are very different."

"How?" I demanded, my guard still up. I was in a room full of vampires – just because I was one myself didn't make me feel any better about my situation.

"We don't harm people," he explained, "we only hunt animals."

I swallowed. "Hunt?"

He nodded. "Tell me… did you eat meat as a human?"

I nodded, second guessing myself. "I… I think I did, yes. I can remember meat."

He offered me a tiny smile. "Then this is no different. We also eat animals. Only… one part of them. We aren't the vampires in books and movies and nightmares. We're a family who live a slightly unconventional life and only hunt animals to survive. We do not harm humans or upset them in any way."

"We keep it a secret," Rosalie chimed in, stepping away from the burly man's grasp. They exchanged a fleeting look before she inched her way closer to me. "We don't hurt anyone, and we don't' tell anyone what we are. We're not monsters, Lexi. And neither are you."

yay! She's finally awake! I was soooo excited to share this chapter with you, so I hope I wrote it to your expectations. It's sad and it was emotional for me to write, but I hope you enjoyed it all the same. These next few chapters are with my Beta, and let me tell you they have been nothing short of an adventure to put to paper.

Thank you to NinkyBaby for her beta work and continued help with this fic!

I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! Thanks for reading!