Disclaimer: This story is based on the characters created by Stephanie Meyer in the Twilight Saga. I do not own any of these characters.

Bella

It was well into the morning when we got back to the Cullen's house. Carlisle and Esme had already left for the police station. I listened to hear who was inside and was pleased to find that Edward and Rosalie were back. I was ready to speak to him.

I stopped at the edge of the river and closed my eyes, focusing on letting Alice in. I showed her that I expected to be speaking with Edward here and leapt to sit on one of the large rocks along the river. It didn't take long for Alice to meet Jasper outside. She winked at me and the two of them took off again in to the forest. A few moments later Emmett and Rosalie bound out of the house. Rose stopped and wrapped me in a hug, after a moment she pulled back and pressed something into my hand.

"If you need anything," she said firmly, a cell phone. Emmett wiggled his eyebrows and the two of them headed off as well. I smiled after them before turning back to the house. Edward was standing at the corner of the house watching me. I beckoned him over and he approached at a human pace.

I watched him leap over to a rock a couple yards from me and sit down.

"I have a lot I want to say, so if you don't have anything other than that you're sorry I'd like to get into it." I told him.

He opened his mouth and after a moment, closed it again. I nodded.

"I already know you realize leaving the way you did was wrong. I know you're sorry, I know you would change it if you could. I know you've been hard on yourself and you have a lot of regrets. It's not hard to tell all these things. I see it in your family, I've heard some of it from your family." I sighed. "I don't want to talk about how much you hurt me, Alice told me Jasper showed you." I looked at Edward and could see the pain in his eyes.

"I don't want to talk about your remorse or guilt for how things turned out. All I want to talk about is you, what I see not what you see. And I want you to listen and think about it before you argue or detest any of what I say. Can you do that?"

Edward nodded. I paused and raised my eyes brows.

"I need more than a nod Edward, can you listen to an opinion outside of your own - especially when it comes to you?" My voice was firm, I knew it was bordering speaking to him like he was a child, but he'd been sulking in his own view for so long I needed to be sure he would try to see things from the outside.

"Yes, I will listen." He said softly.

My first comment would be a test. "You're not a monster." I said, I paused and watched him, his expression changed but he said nothing. "You're kind of an asshole though." I continued, still watching him closely. The faintest hint of a smile twitched on the edge of his lip and I grinned. "Good, that at least got you hooked."

"You're not a monster, none of your family is. James," I shrugged, "James was a monster. But you and your family are good people. You make mistakes, both in the choices you make and in the moments you fail to maintain control of the more primal desires of your species. But those mistakes don't make any of you monsters." Edward's eyes seemed haunted, maybe a little guarded, but he remained silent.

"As much as I want to berate you for your feelings about vampires, I don't think that will get me anywhere. I think above all else you need to see yourself at all before you can see good in you, and in order to do that you need to look past your curse." I paused, "Who are you Edward?" He watched me, waiting for full permission to speak.

"Before vampirism? I-"

"Not vampirism," I interrupted, "Before reading minds. Who are you?"

"That's the same thing." Edward insisted, I rolled my eyes.

"It's not. You can't read my mind. Who are you?" Edward stared at me. I knew he'd been reading minds for nearly a century, but I also knew that he had been able to see beyond that when he was with me. He'd been able to find himself again.

"I love you." He said, and I was momentarily stunned, but managed to shake it off quickly.

"That's not a personality trait."

"That's the only trait I have outside of what I am." We stared at each other for a while and when he wouldn't budge, I shook my head.

"You don't love me." I told him, he opened his mouth to argue and I shot him a look. "You are in love with the idea I instilled in you, the idea that you are more than a mind reading monster." I couldn't help my exasperation.

"And that's a good thing! You should be in love with that idea, because it's true. You are far more than you think you are. But you have so little faith in yourself and so little faith that you could be anything more than a monster that you refuse to see it. You put all that attention on me, thinking I was the thing you loved, when in reality you were in love with hope."

Edward looked at me for a long time, and I could see in his face that he was processing my words. "If I never loved you, why was it so hard for me to leave. My life has been miserable since I left." I stared at him, blinking often. Not understanding how he didn't see my point.

"You associate me with hope, Edward. You left, and your hope stayed here. You still think you're a heartless monster and you let yourself soak in guilt to hide from the idea that there is a different truth out there." I looked at him pointedly and realized something as I did. "You aren't the only one blinded by their gift. You're just the only one who actively uses that blindness as self destruction."

We continued to watch each other for a while, "So my gift is the curse?"

I sighed, "You use your gift to push people away, I think you unconsciously - and sometimes consciously - set yourself apart from everyone else because of your gift." I bit my lip trying to figure out my train of thought. "Do you think Carlisle is a monster?"

Edward answered without hesitation, "No."

"And why not?"

"He's never harmed anyone, his compassion for humans is unmatched." I nodded.

"What about Emmett? He's fed on humans before, is he a monster?"

Edward paused this time, "No."

I nodded again, "Rosalie and her revenge?"

"No."

"Jasper?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Jasper is a good man at heart."

"So beyond all his killing, willing or unwillingly, you don't see him as a monster?"

Edward watched me, seemingly surprised at the hint of my knowledge on Jasper's history. "No, I don't believe Jasper is a monster either."

"So if none of them are monsters, why are you? What have you done that is more villainous than any of them?" I knew there was no answer he could give. My memories were foggy but I remembered the type of humans he went after in the time he did feed from them. I gave him a few moments for an attempt, and he opened his mouth at one point to counter but came up with nothing. "So my statement stands, you're not a monster, you're just an asshole."

We sat in silence for a while, but I wasn't done talking through this - making sense of this.

"You gave yourself an excuse to leave because you were afraid of changing who you perceived yourself as. You'd put yourself at arms reach from everyone around you - possibly apart form Alice - for nearly a century, and suddenly you met someone who let you see past your ability, and you were intrigued and terrified by it."

I sighed, "And me, I threw myself into the idea of this life you could show me." I looked at him, "I truly believed that I loved you, and I basked in the idea of being with you for all of eternity, I didn't consider that I may have just liked the idea of being a vampire. But now I don't know, maybe we were both latching on to hope.

"Regardless, I'm not going to dwell on my anger for you. I think you do enough of that for everyone around you. But I hope that you consider the idea of working that out. It's okay to feel guilty about the mistakes you've made. But eventually you have to buckle down and get past it." I sighed, scanning the forest for the right words.

"You told me a long time ago that vampire's don't change. Once they're vampires they stay the way they were reborn forever. But I've been a vampire for a week now, and I firmly believe that statement is a load of shit. I've changed more since I've turned than I even thought possible in the entirety of my human lifetime. So don't let that idea of stillness stop you from being a better version of yourself." I looked at him for a moment and he seemed at an utter loss for words.

As I let him sit with this information, I thought of just how true a lot of this was for both Alice and Jasper. I would need to have a similar conversation with them at some point.

I leaned back on my hands and stared up at the cloudy sky, thinking more on what I'd told Edward. Some of what I'd said had been slowly realized over the last week, but the self reflection was new. Feeling - or I suppose knowing that it wasn't necessarily Edward I'd been so attached to, but his world, was something I didn't fully understand until this moment.

But it made sense that now that I was part of it, I had that perspective.

"I was left alone with the knowledge of a world that no one would believe existed if it told them" I whispered.

I hadn't wanted to turn the conversation on my at all, but I couldn't help the comment. I was finally truly understanding my pain. Something I'd only breached the surface of earlier this week and then I'd been blinded by anger.

This didn't feel painful though, I accepted that this was the truth. I could sense Edward's eyes on me and flickered my own to him.

He sat looking both sad and concerned and I offered a bitter smile.

"Brutal revelations." I told him, his jaw flexed but I didn't receive any other reaction.

He wasn't happy with the topic of conversation, that much was obvious. But he appeared to be holding to his word. He listened to what I had to say and seemed to be mulling it over.

I hoped he would see what I saw, even if it took time. He was smart enough to be able to make sense of what I said. But I was sure he had a long way before he accepted it as the truth.

I turned my attention skyward again, and we continued in still silence for quite some time.