A/N: Thank you, my beautiful ducks, for your never ending patience. I can't believe it's taken me over two years, and I'm still not done with these fics. This is our year. I can feel it.

~Bella~

He had left her.

She had begged and cursed and screamed at the space where she'd last seen him until her voice went hoarse. The coughing fit that ensued left her in agony. For minutes she lay as still as possible, breathing in the scent of blood, dirt, and the unwashed body lying next to her.

Her life, these last few years, had been the same three steps over and over and over. Analyze—be vigilant and aware; know every possibility and every move she could make. Choose a course. Act.

She'd seen the large man charging, big as a bull and just as angry, toward her. She'd seen the smaller man coming for Edward and Aaron. She had one bullet and two choices. She chose them.

When she found herself still alive at the bottom of the cliff, the process kicked in—automatic after all this time. Analyze. The inventory of her broken, battered body crossed most choices off the list. She couldn't stand, couldn't walk. She could barely breathe. She knew where they were on the map. She knew Edward didn't have the tools to help her and none of them had the time.

An eerie sense of relief had come over her then. Only one choice really. The same option she'd chosen for Aaron when no other solution presented itself. A quick death.

And Edward, who had proven over and over again he couldn't be trusted to grasp the reality of any situation, had robbed her of that possibility. She had a broken body—collapsed lung, possible broken ribs which could puncture her lung at any moment, a compound fracture in her leg and who knew how many internal injuries—but she was still strong. Her strength was leaking out of her, but she could linger, helpless and in agony.

She had another choice to make.

Her tired mind revolted. No. She'd been thinking, analyzing, choosing for years. She'd been promised peace. She didn't want to have to think about what came next. Instead, she closed her eyes and let exhaustion claim her.

With any luck, she wouldn't wake up for whatever happened next.

~Edward~

Time existed in lurches and lulls. The pitch black had almost taken him. For a time, there had been nothing but a loud, persistent buzz in the back of his mind. He'd struggled. The dark was heavy—a thick fog in his head and a weighted blanket covering his body.

The buzz became words; images; feelings. A sense of urgency pressed on him. Demetri and Felix. A gunshot. Bella's screams. The sight of her broken body.

"I know!"

Light permeated his vision. Sound. Water?

"Hey, calm down," a voice said.

"I know where she is. I know. I know." He couldn't get his body to cooperate or his thoughts to coalesce into something intelligible. He knew there was something urgent he needed to communicate, but he couldn't find the words. They were all racing through his head, zinging off his skull and ricocheting at random.

He knew where Bella was. She needed a doctor. She needed his father. He had the coordinates. He had the map.

But his thoughts kept going blank. The blackness kept dragging him under.

"Just hold on. Hold on. You gotta let us help you, bud," a voice said.

No. No. No. He wasn't the one who needed help.

He tried to tell them.

~Bella~

For a time, she actively fought waking up. The pain didn't let her stay under for long. She was always brought to the surface when it sliced through her, making her writhe and groan. The voice in the back of her mind was frantic; it tried to whisper data to her.

You need to think, or you're going to die.

"I'm going to die," she rasped, arguing with herself. And maybe that was something to think about. Like she'd told Edward, she could slit her own wrists. The idea filled her with dread, but it would be a quicker death.

You don't have to die. He's coming for you.

"He's not coming. He's not…" Bella sighed. She forced herself to open her eyes and groaned.

Too bright. Of course. She was lying here prone and, for once, it wasn't cloudy. The sun beat down. Summers in the Pacific Northwest were mild and rainy, but the sun could still kill her.

She needed to make a choice: commit to death or give Edward a chance to save her life. Trust him to get back to her before a bear or this dead asshole's friends came looking for him.

Trust someone other than herself to save her.

With consciousness came awareness. She was injured in twelve different ways. The pain was incredible. It was a thousand pins pushed into every nerve ending she had. It was throbbing aches that went down to the marrow of her bones. Her stomach churned, and she broke out in a cold sweat. She stretched her hand out, feeling the reassuring weight of her most wicked knife still sheathed at her waist.

Decide to die or decide to prolong her suffering.

Bella panted, just trying to catch her breath.

Then, she rolled carefully onto her side and began dragging herself toward the shelter of the nearby trees.

~Edward~

The weighted blanket of unconsciousness was too heavy; he couldn't push it away for long. His body, his eyelids included, wouldn't work. He was stuck in a murky darkness, his thoughts too mired in muck to rise to the surface.

There were voices.

"It's been too long. Hasn't it been too long?"

"He used every last reserve of energy his body had, Es. And he was dehydrated. He just had no resources left. Time is what he needs."

"But he'll be okay?" The voice broke. "His heart? You said—"

"I said doing what he did, running for as long as he did, could have injured his heart. But it didn't."

"How can you know that? Without all the machines, how can you know?"

"The old fashioned way still works for that."

There was a sensation then. A weight much different than the shroud that kept him sheathed in darkness. A hand to his chest. "You can feel his heartbeat, see? Steady. Strong."

Someone exhaled on a shaky breath. "Remember when I was pregnant with him? With all of them? Every checkup. There was always that scary moment when the doctor brought the doppler out and everything that might have gone wrong goes through your head."

"But then, there it was. And here he is. Right here in front of us. He's going to be okay, sweetheart."

Something in his lethargic mind clicked. The voices. They were his parents. He was back with his parents.

He tried desperately to open his eyes, but his father was right. He'd used up every last store of energy he had, and even the effort of trying to find consciousness was too much. He slipped under again.

~Bella~

The crawl to the treeline left her wrecked and exhausted, but by the time she got there, she was determined to survive. She had no idea how; the odds weren't in her favor, but hell if she was going to let that crawl be the last thing she did.

She'd lost the battle against unconsciousness—not the best move if she wanted to survive.

She'd known the men who'd attacked them were likely not alone. Their friends catching up with her as she lay helpless was high on her possibilities list.

So it shouldn't have been a surprise when she woke to hands on her.

"Get away from me." She yanked her arm out of someone's grasp and swallowed a shriek, reeling from the pain that shot through her. "Don't touch me." Her voice was thin, breathless.

"Relax, honey."

"No. No. No!"

~Edward~

Sensation found him first. Specifically, the horrendous throb, throb, throb in his head. His brain was threatening to pound right out of his skull. He groaned, and tried to put a hand to his head, but found it weighted down.

"Edward? Oh, honey. Are you awake? Open your eyes, baby, please."

His mother's voice was tremulous. Edward fought to drag his eyelids open.

"There you are." His mother cupped his cheek. Her eyes shone in the early morning light.

He tried to move, tried to speak, tried to do everything at once. Pain seared his vision hot white, and he groaned.

"Easy. Take it easy." Her fingers stroked through his hair. "You're okay, Edward. Just very, very, very sore. Your father said just about every muscle you have is overworked. It's probably going to be rough when you try to walk, but you'll be okay. Here. Let me…"

Edward watched with a mixture of horror and joy as his mother picked up a syringe and held it up to the light. He was ecstatic to see her. He felt a sense of intense relief. There had been every chance he would never see his parents again.

But what the hell was she doing with that syringe?

She must have caught the look on his face, because she grinned. "Don't worry. Your father taught me what to do. It's going to help with the pain."

And his mother was right. Every muscle he had was on fire. What was a puncture wound at this point?

Edward concentrated on trying to get his tongue to work again. "Bella." The word came out as a rasp.

"Is that her name?"

Relief hit him so strongly, he gasped. Then he had been able to communicate what he needed. Everything after he met Eleazar was a surreal blur.

His mother sat back down, tracing his face with her fingers. Her eyes went tight at the corners. "She's hanging on. Your father is doing what he can. She has so many injuries. But she's a fighter, isn't she? When they found her, she was weak as a kitten but she fought them with all she had."

Edward groaned but smiled. Of course she'd fought her rescuers. She must have been delirious by then. He licked his lips and swallowed hard. "Aaron?"

"The little boy? Emmett has him. He and Henry are taking good care of him. After we got him clean and fed, he fell asleep. He's been asleep almost as long as you have, which I expect is normal. Both of you are going to be okay. And Bella has every chance. You did an amazing thing."

Edward blinked rapidly, tears hitting unexpectedly.

He'd gotten them all home; alive, for better or worse.

His mother took a shaky breath, stroking her fingers through his hair. "When your team came back without you, Edward…" Her voice broke and she put her free hand to her mouth. "I thought I was going to go crazy. To have two of my children missing? To not know what happened to either of you? I thought I was going to lose my mind."

"I'm right here, Mom. I'm okay."

She took a deep breath. "Yes. You can't imagine everything that's gone through my head these months." She ran a finger over the old burn scar on his arm. "You've been through a lot to get back to us, haven't you?"

"It was a geyser. In Yellowstone. I wasn't being careful. Never careful enough." His eyelids were getting heavy again. Whatever his mother had injected him with was working. It had taken the edge off the ache, but it was making him sleepy all over again.

"And the knife wound on your thigh?"

Edward couldn't help himself. He grinned at the memory even as he closed his eyes. "She stabbed me."

"Who stabbed you?"

Edward yawned. "Bella."

"Wait. What? Bella, this Bella? Edward?"

But he was already asleep.

~Bella~

She was warm. Not comfortable—not at all—but she was warm. She had an itch. Really, she had several itches, but when she tried to raise her hand to scratch, she found she was bound.

Panic went through her. She tugged hard at her binds, her mind sparking to life as she remembered hands on her and pain.

"Hey. Hey. Hold on. Bella? You're alright. Take a breath and listen to me. You're all right."

The voice was gentle. There wasn't a trace of malice in the words or the tone. It was enough to catch her attention. She balled her hands in fists, still straining but not as frantic.

"Good. I'm sorry about the restraints. You were thrashing, fighting us, and it's important for you to be still." There was a soft hand over her fist; not restraining, but comforting. "I'm going to get you out of those, but you have to take it easy. Edward told us a little of what you've been through, so I can imagine what this feels like to you."

"Edward," she whispered. Her heart still pounded hard, fear hard to let go of as the stranger worked to release her. She didn't want to be touched right now. She forced her eyes to focus, to see him, to read him.

His handsome face was familiar to her somehow, and his expression gentle as his tone. His smile was reassuring.

"Edward is my son," he said, taking a step away from her as soon as she was free. It was as if he sensed her apprehension. "He's here, recovering. He ran himself to exhaustion getting here, but he'll be okay. And the little boy? Aaron. He's okay too. He's being well taken care of. Edward said we have you to thank for him getting back home to us." His lips twitched. "He said he didn't make it easy."

She huffed and groaned at the pain the small movement sent through her.

"Sorry about that."

"'S'okay." Bella squeezed her eyes tightly shut and opened them wide, trying to shake the fog of lethargy away.

"You can sleep," Edward's father said. "In fact, you should sleep. Your body needs rest to heal."

"Yeah," she said by rote. She didn't want to sleep. She couldn't be aware if she was asleep, and there were too many variables about her surroundings she didn't know.

"I'm sure Edward will be here when you wake up. He wants to be here."

Bella's heart gave a twist of longing. Edward. She would feel better if he were there. There was comfort knowing he was close. It was foolish, but it was true. She pressed her lips together, turning her head slightly away from Edward's father. She tried to remind herself of all the stories Edward had told, reminding herself this man was a healer.

Again, it was as though the doctor sensed the direction of her thoughts. There was a tenderness about his tone when he spoke—the timbre of a man trying to soothe a cat about to bolt. "I know you must be scared, but no one is going to hurt you here. Rest. Heal. You're safe now."

Safe.

She turned the word over in her head.

Safe.

She didn't know if she believed it, but she closed her eyes and went to sleep anyway. Maybe Edward would be there when she woke.

A/N: Update soon! Reunion soon!