The Heart Can Thirst

by Thirst Contest

A childhood obsession closes the chasm of loneliness, but nothing is ever easy. The heart can thirst for things we can't imagine and for things we shouldn't want. But it's just as Burkowski said: "Find what you love and let it kill you."

Title: The Heart Can Thirst

Summary: A childhood obsession closes the chasm of loneliness, but nothing is ever easy. The heart can thirst for things we can't imagine and for things we shouldn't want. But it's just as Burkowski said: "Find what you love and let it kill you."

Disclaimer: The author does not own any publicly recognizable characters herein. No copyright infringement is intended

It's raining, a terrible stormy downpour full of roiling clouds and coiling lightning and bone-shaking thunder that roars in her ears. The sky has been the same bruised blanket of clouds for the last two days and the world is dark, darkening by the minute as she stands and waits and waits and waits. The awning she hides under does little to protect her from the ricochet of droplets bouncing back from the puddles. Her shoes, already thin and worn and half a size too small, are soaked clean through. She wiggles her toes. Huddles closer to the brick wall, which snags at her tangled hair.

She hates late summer in Phoenix. Nothing is right about it.

Across the street, a street light flickers on, washing the water-rushing streets in yellow light. It's getting late. Too late for her to stay out in the open, too late for it to be safe. The last of the teachers left when the downpour first started, each of them making sure someone was going to pick her up soon. She had lied and smiled and said her mom was on the way.

It's a lie because her mom has forgotten about her. Again. Nobody is coming to pick Bella up from school. She should have known better. New boyfriends always mean she is forgotten.

Thunder crashes again and she cringes, squeezing her eyes shut while her heart jack-rabbits inside her chest. There is a burning in her eyes, fear and desperation pricking tears to the surface. She waits until the echoing rumble of the thunder fades before she dares to open her eyes, dashing tears from her cheeks. Breathes in deep, chokes down the fear that keeps her frozen.

Thunderstorms are terrifying, but she can't stay here. She needs to get home.

Bella wrangles her backpack over her head, holding it aloft as a makeshift umbrella as she dashes out into the rain. She's not a good runner and the deep puddles make it more difficult, her jeans and sodden shoes weighing her down. One foot in front of the other. Hunger from a skipped lunch - skipped because there was no money in her lunch account yet again - gnaws at her. Makes her feel faint, makes her slower, makes her clumsier.

Home isn't that far away. She's close enough to school that she's not allowed to ride the bus, but also just far enough that walking in bad weather is hard. Her mom is supposed to pick her up on days like this - they've agreed - but Bella knows that she is rarely at the forefront of her mom's concerns. Other things come first, and then more things after that, and then Bella.

She should have known better than to wait around, but that hope that someone - anyone - would be there when she needs them is something she still clings too, a foolish sort of hope. Nobody is ever there for her. Nobody even cares. Each squelch of her shoes as she splish-splashes through the pouring rain is another reminder of this fact.

She is twelve. It's time to grow up.

The streetlights are all on by the time Bella makes it to her block, shivering and damp down to her marrow. There has been more thunder making her stutter and trip over her dumb feet, but she has made it this far and the end is in sight.

She's careless, in a hurry, and eager to get out of the rain as she crosses the next street. She doesn't look before she starts across, so the honking of a horn is startling, the glare of headlights blinding her. It's instinct that has her lunging to the other side of the street, the car passing too close at her back but missing her entirely. Her body, though, is tired and weak, and she loses her footing as she steps onto the curb -

Bella falls, hard. Her chin bashes against the rain-soaked sidewalk, forcing her teeth through her bottom lip with a gush of warmth that jars her into immobility. Stunned, she lays face-down on the sidewalk, backpack flung several feet away. It takes her several moments to gather the wherewithal to get herself up, to sit back on her knees, and swipe at her face.

There's a lot of blood. It hurts so much. Bella can't help but cry as she swallows the tang of iron coating her tongue. She feels so very small and hopeless, shoulders curving inward, back bowing away from the world.

She wants to go home. She wants warmth and a hug. She wants her dad, but she can't have him, because he's dead and gone and her mom may as well be gone, too, for all she seems to care about Bella anymore.

Thunder cracks through the sky again and Bella cries out, flinching away from the sound, ducking her head, eyes shut tight. A shameful whimper snakes through her throat and she swallows still more blood. She hates this. She hates it and hates it and hates it -

"Well. That looks bad."

Bella's eyes snap open and she looks around wildly, searching for the person who spoke - but there's nobody there. The street is empty, the sidewalk is clear, there isn't a soul around. Just Bella and the thunderstorm.

"Wh-who's there?" she squeaks, scrambling to her feet, the sleeve of her hoodie pressed to her chin. She spins around in a circle, searching the vacant air. "I heard someone. I heard someone, I know I did."

"Not possible," comes a faint voice, the tone shocked.

Bella turns back around, eyes darting about. The downpour is so heavy that it makes it difficult to see and the blackening of the streets doesn't make it any easier. Everything is either shadows or cast in the pallid yellow light of the streetlamps. She squints and licks her lips, searching again, and that's when she sees it.

Something. A shadow. A person. Him.

Bella knows what an apparition is because she reads endlessly and that's what she thinks she's seeing. There's no other way to describe it. It's a shadow of a person, a wisp, a shade only just more visible than the air. The shade is a boy, she thinks, several years older than she is. Maybe a young man, like those college guys that live down the street. She can't really make out his features, everything kind of blurred together, but there are some hues, maybe. Paper-white and copper and an unnatural, shifting golden-green, like a cat's eye.

"What are you?" she asks, eyes going round and wide. If she blinks, he'll go away, she just knows it.

There is some movement, she thinks, like a shaking head. "You can't possibly see me," the shade insists in denial.

"I can. I can see you. Who are you? What are you?"

A hiss, sharp and threatening like a cornered snake. "Idiot girl, if you know what's good for you, you'll turn around and forget about all of this. Run home to mommy and daddy, now, and stop bleeding all over everything."

"Daddy is dead," she tells the shade, trembling under the terrible threat she can hear in the voice. "And mom doesn't care."

There is a pause, a contemplative moment of silence, and then a shift in tone she can feel all the way down to her toes. She stares forward, unblinking as the shade leans closer, barely more visible than the thick sheets of rain still falling from the heavy clouds. All the same, her skin breaks out into gooseflesh when the shade speaks.

"Do you want to die?" the voice asks, now silky and smooth. "I can make that happen. You keep spilling that sweet-smelling blood...is it an invitation?"

Bella steps back hastily, heart in her throat. Oh. Oh, this is not good. Oh, she is in danger, isn't she? She is an idiot girl. She is a fool.

Lightning strikes again and Bella is spurred into action, running away as fast as her legs can carry her - running and running and running like there is death nipping at her heels. And maybe there is. The shade just said as much.

The driveway is empty when she slams into the front door and it's only as she's fumbling with the door to open it as quickly as possible does she realize that she's left her backpack behind. There is only one key and her mom isn't home. She can't go back and get it, not with that whatever waiting for her.

Bella resigns herself to a cold night locked outside her home and turns around, prepared to huddle on the porch - and then her eyes catch on a lump of a shape on the steps -

A startled scream rises in her throat and then breaks off as her mind registers that it's only her backpack, the busted-up blue nylon dripping at her feet. Wild-eyed, she looks around, searching for the apparition again, but there is nothing there.

There's nobody there.

Bella never moves so fast in her life, wrenching open the zipper of her backpack to fish out the key, slotting it into the lock, and scurrying into her home, slamming the door behind her and bolting it shut. Somehow, she feels that lock will keep the shade away from her, as if the simple barrier of her front door will deter him - it - from entering her home.

Thunder crashes once again, but at least she's safe now. Safe enough. Safer than before.

She cries more, collapsing down onto the gritty tiles, and sobs out all the sadness and fear in her heart, all of the loneliness and the desperation -

And little does she know that outside, a shade is listening and frowning, deep in thought.

She shouldn't have been able to see me, he thinks. None of them can unless we want them to, and I definitely did not want her to see me. Or talk to me.

But the fact that remains is some foolish little rain-soaked girl had seen him, and that means Edward has a serious problem. He grimaces at the sound of her childish wailing, the faint notes of honeyed blood washing away with the rain. Resentment cloaks him as he turns away from the house. He doesn't know what possessed him to bring that backpack to this troublesome child who sees too much, but listening to her crying is not nearly enough payment for his good deed.

She sounds like anguish. It makes him viscerally uncomfortable.

He hasn't felt this way for well over a few hundred years, maybe more. It's so hard to keep track of time. The longer he is undead, the more this is true. Already he has lost track of when he died - but not of how he died, never that.

In the house, the girl-child quiets, sniffling back her tears and inhaling sharply as she begins to move around the house. All of his senses are heightened compared to the living; it takes absolutely zero effort to hear the heavy drop of wet clothes or the pained hiss she makes after clattering around the bathroom for several minutes.

It's at this time that he realizes he has been standing in the middle of a grass-fed yard, monitoring the child for some forsaken reason. Perhaps he's subconsciously trying to figure out why she was able to see him. Yes, that sounds reasonable. But he can admit his time is better suited elsewhere, specifically back in his own realm as far as possible from this anomaly of a human.

Edward closes his eyes and wills himself back through the planes, slipping through one of the cracks spiderwebbing through the worlds until his feet lands him back in the wispy-mist lands of his home. His home, unlike hers, is untouched by the ugly sprawl of humanity. He is technically standing in the same place, but on his plane, the deserts have not been plowed through and settled in. Here, the land is still untouched - a revenant of the world that once was, just as the revenants who wander this plane are those who were once alive. Here, the undead mingles with the untouched and the unsettled. Here, the grey-wash of after is the same as the white-wash of before and the darkness is an endless, unbound sky of burning stars.

Edward regains the bearing of his physical body and wanders back to the far-flung forest where his dwelling has been built inside eons-old redwoods. He glides along the stretching shadows like the ghost that he is, and when he arrives, he is not surprised to find that Chancellor Aro is already waiting for him.

Nothing can be hidden in death, nor in the afterlife, and not for the living dead. The Council knows and sees all.

Edward bows low and the Chancellor presses through the mist, circling him with a glimmering eye. "You've been seen," Aro says, gleeful as he cuts straight to the point.

"Yes. A child."

"A girl," Aro elaborates. "A girl whose pain is nearly as great as the scent of her blood, hm?"

Edward lowers his head, brows furrowed. He doesn't question the way Aro has plucked out the thoughts lurking in the back in his mind. The older revenants have gifts, unexplainable insights, and Edward himself has felt the tell-tale development of his own - a whisper between the ears in the human realm. Hunting has never been so easy.

"How did she see me?" he asks.

"The same way you saw her," Aro tells him.

Edward's frown deepens. Aro speaks in riddles as a matter of course. It's impossible to understand what he means because it doesn't make sense until, one day, it does.

Humans cannot see Moroi unless the Moroi wills it and Edward certainly did not will it. He wasn't there to hunt a child, so there was no reason for her to be able to see him. There are no exceptions. This is the law of the natural and unnatural order.

Edward tells Chancellor Aro as much and Chancellor Aro smiles, all sharpened, pointy teeth. The black sclera of the Chancellor's eyes flash. "Ah, but there is an exception, is there not?" he asks rhetorically.

"I don't understand."

"You're young, yet. You will figure it out. There are things even you do not know or understand. You're no more than a fledgling." Chancellor Aro shifts, his legs blurring into the shadowy mist as he prepares to depart. "In any case, regardless of what you do and do not yet understand, you must watch that girl," he orders offhandedly. "By order of the Council, it's your duty to protect the secrecy of our world that you so callously allowed to be violated on this night."

Edward beats back the urge to defend himself, pressing his lips together. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time - and the child, the girl who cries like her heart is on fire, had been the one to violate the laws, however accidentally. None of it is Edward's fault. But the Council does not care for such things, and so it's Edward's duty to obey their decree.

Undead he might be, but he still wishes to live.

He bows again, lower than before in respectful deference and silent acknowledgement of his assignment, his jaw clenched as Chancellor Aro's high-pitched laughter fades with the winds.

His eyes close when he is alone.

An entire dimension away and Edward can still hear the girl crying. He does not know if the sound is in his head, or if he is truly hearing her a world away. He resents both options as much as he resents the fact that he has been tasked to watch over the girl to ensure she does not mention their encounter to anyone

But dutiful as he is - out of self preservation - Edward does as the Council wishes. He watches over the girl.

He does not like what he sees.

Edward doesn't remember his human life. There are vague snippets - the scent of baking bread and pipe tobacco, laughter that might have belonged to his mother - but most of his memories have faded with time. The only concrete memory he has is of his death, and he prefers not to think about that if he can help it, or any of the awful things that happened when he woke up as the monster he now is.

Edward doesn't remember his human life - but he can see how this girl's life is not the same as her peers. There is neglect, a pervasive, deep-rooted neglect that leaves her hungry and in the dark; there is loneliness, an impenetrable force between her and the rest of the world that seems to grip her, shackle her, at the oddest times; and there is sadness. This child does not smile unless she is lying, and she only ever lies to protect the one parent she still has. The dysfunction of her life is lamentable.

The first days of shadowing the girl, Edward waits for her to turn around, waits for her to see him like she saw him before. But her gaze passes through him like air and he knows that whatever circumstances led her to seeing him that rainy day have not yet again manifested. She does not see him, but he can see her, and as the days turn into weeks, he likes what he sees less and less. He finds himself glaring at her mother, seething at the other children, muttering darkly as he shadows after her, increasingly irked by both her circumstances and her very existence.

He can't follow her everywhere. Humanity has certain protections against his kind, which means he cannot cross holy land, he cannot enter a dwelling uninvited, he cannot stand under the beating sunlight, not even in his incorporeal form, not for longer than a few minutes at a time. But even being so limited, he sees enough to understand without a shadow of a doubt that this is a child who will not breathe a word about their encounter. He's wasting his time trailing after this girl like the specter that he is. She has not said anything; she will not say anything.

In fact, she seems to have forgotten about it by the time the weeks pass into months. She no longer squints into every shadow, no longer jumps at every unprompted noise. The edge of paranoia drifts away, and if she sometimes whimpers in her sleep, then Edward, who keeps a vigil outside, bored out of his ever-loving mind, chalks it up to the sad state of her very lonely and quite pathetic life.

And then, one day in October, she comes out of a library with a stack of books that sends a chill down his lifeless spine.

The girl is researching vampires.

~ Find what you love and let it kill you. ~

She knows what she saw. She knows she saw something, she just doesn't know what it - he - was. But she's going to figure it out, because she isn't crazy. She isn't. She knows she isn't, no matter what any of the others at school say.

Of course, they call her crazy for many reasons. She's the girl with the dead father, after all, and that's the only cannon fodder her peers require to make her life miserable. People are cruel; children are crueler. And they become more cruel when they notice the collection of books she winds up bringing to school. They call her Ghost Girl and Vampire Freak. One boy squirts ketchup over her library book and tells her that now the book is bloody enough for a freak like her to enjoy.

The librarian is not pleased. Bella ends up buying the book after spending weeks searching the ground for every penny, nickel, and dime she can find. The one silver lining is the fact that this ruined book actually turns out to be the most helpful. It's a comprehensive guide to all the vampire mythology around the world and Bella learns so much.

Vampires started as ghost myths in Greece, where bodies were possessed by undead spirits, and eventually those myths morphed into the revenants rising as spirits from their own graves to drink the blood of the living, and from there, as time goes on, humanity collectively decides on the mythos that vampires are associated with today. Bella absorbs all of the myths with ferocious hunger for knowledge, but the one myth she keeps coming back to is the Moroi, the ancient Romanian-type vampires. It's the one that makes the most sense, based on what she knows.

And she thinks she knows a lot. She thinks she has all the right clues. Maybe someone else would have thought an apparition like what she'd seen would be a ghost or a poltergeist, but Bella settles on the idea of vampirism pretty early on because of the comment made about her blood.

Ghosts don't care about blood, but vampires do. And according to the myths, the Moroi are the only vampires that fit - one part blood-drinking, one part ghostly, possession-capable revenant, the Moroi myth is the only thing that explains what she saw.

Whether or not any of the other vampire myths are true is utterly irrelevant.

(A shadow she does not know about despairs at her fixation of what happens to be the truth. Damn the girl.)

Living with the certainty that vampires are real doesn't change her life too much. By thirteen, she has tracked down all the information she can find on the internet, compiling all of her research into a folder that she hides under her mattress, just in case her mom decides to snoop through her room for money again. By fourteen, she starts wondering why she was able to see this vampire at all, and why she only saw him once and never again after that. By fifteen, she thinks she figures it out. With no friends and no adult supervision, with nobody really paying attention and nobody caring enough about her to intervene with her obsession, Bella falls head-first into the sketchier kind of information she has available. It's the kind of stuff that seemed anecdotal, even for mythology, but it's all she has left.

It has to do with bloodletting.

Bella remembers the day she first saw him in vivid detail and she has spent months trying to recreate those circumstances to no avail. He does not appear during thunderstorms; he does not appear during the dusk hours; he does not appear when she is sad or crying.

(He does appear during these times, because he is always watching, but she does not know this.)

The only variable she hasn't tried is letting her blood spill. It makes sense that a vampire would be summoned by blood, as indicated by the Moroi myths. She was bleeding when he appeared before, and she thinks the spilling of blood referenced in her books must pertain directly to the spilling of blood from an injury, since her vampire hasn't shown up at any time during her natural bloodletting.

(Little does she know that he tries to make himself scarce during these times, if only for the sake of his own restraint. Even overly-ripened, her natural blood smells as honey-sweet as the rest of the blood pumping through her veins - and he was tasked to watch over her, not kill her.)

One weekend afternoon well into October, fifteen and dumb, Bella pricks the end of her finger with a sewing needle. She waits, looking around her room. Empty, still.

"Was it not enough blood?" she wonders with a frown.

(A shadow hisses outside, air pushed between fangs by a parched, burning throat. "Any blood is too much, you ridiculous child," Edward rages, pacing outside of her window.)

Bella bites her lip. There is a scar there from where she had busted it open so long before, a scar that serves as a stark reminder of that day where everything changed irrecoverably. She had thought, maybe, the pinprick wouldn't be enough, so she had mentally prepared herself for a less conservative approach. She puts the needle down and instead picks up the shears from the sewing kit, flipping the blade open against the meat of her thumb.

She presses in, wincing, and watches blood well around the blade. When there is still no sign of movement, when there is still no air shifting, a tremoring desperation grasps onto her and she presses the blade just a little deeper. "This has to work. It has to work. It has to be real," she chants.

But still, she remains alone.

Frustrated, she hurls the shears across the room, a noisy skittering of metal across wood and a deep thunk into drywall. Angry tears are pooling in her eyes. All this time she has wasted, and for what? A cut on her thumb and a pile of useless "research".

Bella, unthinkingly, pops her thumb into her mouth to stem the blood flow, lashing her tongue across the cut as her mind moves at a furious speed -

"-this imbecile girl really did it," a deep voice says resentfully.

Her eyes pop open, wide with surprise, as she swivels her head to her window where she can see, only barely distinguishable in the twilight, a paper-white and copper-headed shade pacing outside.

It's him. It's her vampire.

"You're really here," she says, her thumb falling out of her mouth.

He stops and his head snaps up and the eerie shade of his eyes is arresting, even from this far away, even in his anger and shock. "You can see me."

She nods, breathless. "I can see you."

Her thoughts are racing, trying to piece it together. She's just done something right because here he is again, right where she can see and hear him. What was it? What was that magical combination?

As if in reminder, the metallic taste of her own blood sings across her taste buds. Realization hits her like a brick to the face.

"I have to consume the blood," she says to herself. None of her pages and pages of research had mentioned that little tid-bit, but it's the only conclusion that can be reasonably drawn. If all the other variables are different between today and that day when she first saw him, then the one constant variable must be the key.

If she drinks her own blood, she can see him. Why? It both does and does not make any sense. She can't quite wrap her head around it. Her research is incomplete and she doesn't understand this, but for now - for now, she's successful.

For now, her vampire is back, standing outside of her window with a chilling air of perturbation. She stands and slides the window the rest of the way open. "Why are you out there?"

"Because I cannot come inside," he grits out, jaw ticking something fierce at this presumptuous, blindly brave, utterly foolish human.

She looks surprised, her brows arching with interest. "That myth is true?" She doesn't spare a second thought when she adds, "Come inside, then. I formally invite you into my home."

Edward flashes his fangs at her. "Do you want to die?"

"No," she says honestly. "I just want to know the truth."

Even with the blatant invitation, Edward hesitates. The Council told him to watch over this girl so that she would not spill the secret of his existence, but instead this girl has spilled her blood and has summoned the proof before her very eyes. At what point does his task of watching over her end? Should he flee now, seek advice from the Council, or should he take her up on this invitation and end the annoyance of this obligation once and for all?

Edward closes his eyes. When he opens them, they are clear and dark, the pupils still widely expanded, but his restraint still very much intact. He has questions, too - questions that the Council doesn't seem eager to answer. This is the second time this girl has managed to see him when he did not wish to be seen and he would like to know why.

What makes her special? What makes her the exception?

Edward goes inside, floating into the home with a form only slightly more substantial than smoke. Inside, the scent of freshly spilled blood is almost overwhelming. His eyes zero in on the shears still dotted with her blood and he almost cannot resist the urge to lunge for them to lick up that honey-sweet ambrosia.

When he gathers himself, he finds that the girl has moved to sit cross-legged in the middle of her floor. "I'm Bella," she says, as if he didn't already know. "Who are you?"

"You shouldn't have invited me in," he tells her darkly.

She ignores his warning. "I can't really see your face. It's all blurred for me. What's your name? What should I call you?"

Persistent thing, isn't she? Edward exhales deeply. He's already in too deep, now. "Edward," he answers dully.

She repeats his name to herself, as if committing it to memory. He wonders why she bothers at all and why she was so dead-set on this mission of hers to find out the truth and why, once again, she has done what no other human has done before.

Edward does not find the answers he seeks that late afternoon, or any of the days that follow. Instead, on the days where she summons him, perhaps a few times most weeks, he finds himself inexplicably drawn into conversations of all sorts. Isolation has made this girl curious and greedy for knowledge, she probes him for information he can rarely tell her - mostly because he does not know the answers himself. He cannot tell her why vampires require blood to survive, or what happens to their flesh bodies after their deaths.

"We must rot in the ground," he supposes, lounging back on her bed a year later.

The scene is familiar to him, by now. He has become a regular fixture in this room, in this house, in this life of hers. Bella does not treat him as the monster he is; instead, she takes the novel approach of treating him as something like a friend. She once remarked that she might as well be his imaginary friend, but she didn't sound disgruntled at the idea and that had disquieted him.

How sad her life must be if her only friend is him, who is dead and insubstantial and cannot be talked to unless she lances into her own flesh to swallow her own blood? How sad must it be that her only friend actively craves the taste of her blood and chases after the honey-sweet scent lingering in the air?

Sixteen years old and with a bright mind, Bella is sprawled across the floor, flipping through her folders of research. She's always researching something, her mind naturally inquisitive. If she has a decided interest in less academic subjects, he finds he cannot object. He doesn't even remember his human life enough to know if he was academically-minded, and it isn't as if he spends his days learning for the sake of it. A scholar he is not. Most of the time, he isn't sure what he is other than being beholden by duty to watch over one insignificant human girl.

Still, she had asked a question and he did not mind answering. "In the human realm, we can only take corporeal form when we hunt, but in our own realm, we can shift between shadows and flesh with a thought." He stops and holds up his hand, watching the weak lamplight filter through his hand. "But no matter how I am, I know this flesh is not my flesh. Not my human flesh. I have no true body."

"But you can be solid," she reminds him, leaning up on her knees. There is a bright spark of intelligence in her golden-brown eyes. "So your body is a body, but it's not a human body."

Edward shrugs.

"But your body looks like your body, before you died?"

Edward hesitates. He can't see his own reflection, so he can't be sure about it, but he thinks his hands look the same as when he was human, and he supposes that must also mean this not-true-and-not-flesh body must at least be modeled after what he looked like when he was living.

Edward nods.

"Do you know where you're buried?" she asks morbidly.

He shakes his head.

"Do you want to know where you're buried?"

"No," he says, and that's the end of that discussion. She easily moves on to new curiosities, asking him which of the myths from her research are true, and which are entirely made up by human imagination fueled by fear. Garlic is not repellant; silver does not hurt; no wooden stake would ever be able to harm him.

Those are the conversations on most days. On others, she seems to summon him only for the sake of companionship. Sometimes he is tasked with helping her study by quizzing her to prepare for tests, and sometimes she wants only to read in the quiet of her room and know she is not entirely alone. These days he likes best. Edward, who has not felt at peace a single day since his death all those years ago, basks in the calmness of these afternoons.

She never summons him on days when she knows her mother or any of the endless strings of sleazy boyfriends will be home. But just because he is not summoned does not mean he cannot see.

Just because he is not summoned does not mean he does not wish he were summoned sooner, or more frequently.

~ Let it drain you of your all.~

It happens when she is seventeen and blossoming into what he believes will be, objectively, a true beauty. She is all doe-brown eyes and long hair, always so carefully tucked away into loose, long layers no matter how hot it is outside. But for all her dressing down, there is no hiding the delicate elegance of her features.

He is not the only one to notice. Fortunately, the ones who do notice are usually dissuaded by the chilling breeze as he looms over them, or the inexplicable, spine-quaking fear that suddenly overcomes them. Most stay away, whether they are dimwitted teenage boys or the scum-of-the-earth men her mother brings home. He does not know if Bella realizes how much of his time is spent ensuring her safety and he does not need her to know if that's better for her peace of mind.

He doesn't like it when human men look at her or try to use the breadth of their bodies, their implied power, to intimidate her. He safeguards her to make sure this does not happen.

But Edward cannot be with her every second of the day, no matter how much he wishes that were the case. He still needs to hunt - he still needs to feed on someone, because he patently refuses to feed on her - and although his time away from her is short, many things can happen in a short time.

And that is what happens. Edward is miles and miles away, in a different city with his fangs buried deep in the neck of the guiltiest criminal he could find, when he hears her plea - her voice right in his head, tugging at the very center of him with an urgency that, if he needed air to breathe, would take his breath away.

"Edward!" she calls out. "Edward, please! Where are you? I need you!"

Between one moment and the next, Edward rips himself away from his victim and flies along the shadows to a familiar downtrodden house in a familiar Phoenix neighborhood. He phases through the walls, his invitation long-written into the very bedrock of the home, and materializes out of the shadows right in front of his charge - right in front of his very scared Bella.

Bella, who has bitten into her thumb with such force that her blood spills down her chin; Bella, who is staring up at him, stricken with wet hair hanging around her face and her skin still dripping, frame hidden behind an oversized robe; Bella who stares up at him with naked hope, even as the door she is braced against thumps with an inebriated request for entrance.

"You came," she breathes, slumping in relief.

Edward is scowling. He recognizes the voice of Phil, a would-be baseball player that has been hanging around Renee more frequently. Phil has a nasty drug habit and a wandering eye. Bella doesn't like to be alone with him, uncomfortable in the presence of his smarmy grin and the way he talks down to her mother. Usually, though, Phil leaves Bella alone. Today, that does not seem to be the case.

"-just come on out, honey! You don't know you like it until you try it! Just one hit, huh? Just one-"

Bella's expression twists and Edward tries to piece the events together without asking too many questions. It seems like her shower was interrupted by this dirtbag offering her something, probably drugs by the sound of it; Bella had obviously escaped to her room in the hopes of hiding out and being forgotten, but Phil had evidently persisted.

Edward takes a moment to stare at Bella, letting it really sink in that she had turned to him - him, a vampire, a monster without a soul - for help in her most dire of moments. Resolve settles firmly in him. "I'll take care of this," he tells her, and goes to do just that.

But, likely due to the state of Phil's intoxication, Edward isn't having much luck using the undead chill of his presence to scare Phil away from Bella's door. Edward is, for the first time, ineffectual. He briefly considers feeding on Phil, which would give him the flesh and power he needs to rip Phil away, but he doesn't relish the idea of consuming drug-rancid blood, not even for Bella.

He has one other option, but it's generally assumed only older vampires, those who are more in control, are capable of doing it.

Edward wants to try anyway. Bella needs his protection, right now, so nothing is off the table.

He phases back into her room and Bella is waiting, still huddled on the floor in a sodden heap, licking her bloodied lips anxiously. His ghostly body kneels before her. "Stay where you are," he orders. "I'll be right back. I'll get rid of him."

"Edward-"

"Bella."

She takes a deep breath and pushes her back more firmly against the door. "Be quick, please."

Edward is quick. He has never been more swift in the entirety of his undead life. He's also never been less picky. The first human he comes across is a neighbor sleeping in his bed in the next house over. Edward seizes upon this human, a man edging into late adulthood, and hovers over him, trying to figure out how to possess this body. The older vampires make it sound as easy as slipping into human skin, but there is a certain amount of resistance that Edward encounters - yet with the thought of Bella in the back of his mind and the urgency of her situation, Edward forces the shade of his body inside, laying down and twisting out, grasping control of the limbs with a surge of determination.

The possessed human lurches out of his bed and stumbles, stiff-legged, out of his house. It's taxing for Edward, pushing at limits he didn't know he had. By the time he forces the human to burst into Bella's home, he isn't sure how much longer he can hold onto the possession.

Releasing the possession, however, is not an option.

Edward has not had a body so sensitive to the weight of gravity for years and years, and the body he possesses is not one that is fit or, he thinks, even particularly healthy. These are inconsequential matters, because the fuel of Edward's rage is enough to propel the body forward, toppling directly into Phil. Clumsily, Edward swings the possessed arms at Phil's face until Phil, bruised and bloodied, falls unconscious. He isn't dead, but he might wish he was when he wakes up.

Edward makes the body stand, the center of him aching and aching at the pain caused by this premature possession. Even still, he manages to force the vocal cords to work, even though his words do come out coughed and garbled. "It's safe, Bella. You're safe."

Bella opens her bedroom door, peering out anxiously. Her expression morphs into one of abject shock to see the middle-aged man standing over her absent mother's boyfriend, who looks badly battered. "M-Mr. Jenkins?"

"No," Edward answers in Mr. Jenkins' voice. "It's me. But I - I can't stay in this body. I need to return it back to where - I need to go. I'll be back. Lock your door."

Bella's voice is incredulous. "Edward? What -"

"Lock your door," he grits out, making Mr. Jenkins' body stumble back out of the house.

Dimly, he hears Bella's bedroom door close, followed by the locking of her door. There is a great tearing sensation ripping through Edward's very core and he only gets as far as the middle of Mr. Jenkins' living room before his strength leaves him completely. Edward's ghostly body tears out of Mr. Jenkins and then Mr. Jenkins' body collapses face-down on his carpeted floors. Mr. Jenkins groans in pain, and so does Edward.

Edward has never felt pain in his undead life. He didn't even know it was possible - and yet here he is, feeling wrung out and as if he has been torn asunder from the inside, and he's sure that if he could bleed, he would be bleeding from every pore in his body. But as it is, the pain is only secondary to the burning thirst in his throat, and it's this thirst that has him slinking along the shadows again, passing through brick and wood and drywall until he is once again in Bella's room.

She is pacing, hugging her arms to her chest, and she spins around when she feels him enter her space. And then she stumbles backward, arrested by the expanse of Edward's pupils, which have overtaken the entirety of his eyes until his gaze is a pitch-black heat on her skin. His eyes have always been the one part of him that she could clearly see and now that part is utterly unfamiliar.

"Edward?" she asks in a whisper. "Is that you? Are you back? What just happened?"

"Bella," he croons back, a dark edge of seduction in his voice. "You're safe now. Aren't you happy?"

"I-I'm very happy, Edward," she answers hesitantly. "Thank you for...whatever it was you just did."

A husky laugh passes through the air and Edward's incorporeal body shifts, circles closer. It seems she has traded one type of predator for another - but better the devil she knows and trusts than the one she does not. Although he is different and distinctly more frightening than usual, Bella does not feel fear. Not exactly.

"What that was," Edward begins with mirth. "Was possession. I possessed a human for you, Bella. I did it to save you."

"Thank you."

"You can thank me in another way."

Bella frowns. "What do you mean?"

In a flash, Edward is before her, the cold chill of his body pressing her back until her spine is against the wall. She shivers and stares up into the fathomless black of his eyes, the rest of his face indistinct, and still she does not feel true fear. Apprehension, maybe.

"I mean that I am thirsty," he says darkly, the words hissing between his teeth. "I need to feed, and you're already here, smelling so very delicious. What do you say, Bella? Will you let me have a taste?"

Her breath stutters in her lungs, caught in her throat as her heart flutters, kicking up a beat. Oh. It's not fear she's feeling at all. It's excitement, a twisted sort of excitement that has her leaning into Edward's deadly chill and arching her neck to the side, offering herself up without much thought.

"Yes," she consents, and then there are ice-cold pinpricks piercing into her neck, a hot slash of heat drawing up from the base of her spine as she gasps and winces and clutches onto shoulders that are suddenly just as solid as her own flesh.

Edward groans into her neck, his mouth working against her throat as he guzzles her blood. She hears each swallow, each contented sigh, and more than that, she can feel the pull of her blood, the thundering of her heart, the lightness as her head starts to float. Edward holds her close, the grip around her waist proprietary, the hand in her hair surprisingly gentle. The duality of the act, one part tender, one part ravenous, makes her dizzy.

And it makes heat simmer through her body, a blazing trail from her core that leaks molten-hot around her most tender parts. Embarrassingly, her body moves quite without her express direction, her hips rutting up against the firmness between her legs. It feels good. It feels even better when Edward's grip on her waist tightens, then slides down to hold onto her hips, his cold hands touching the skin beneath her robe, which has now split open to bear her body to his gaze, should he choose to look. He adjusts her angle until each of her stuttering, undulating movements grinds up against a different hardness, and he meets her movement with his own, smothering his noises against her throat.

Blood is high in her cheeks, her head thrown back as he mouths at her throat, fangs still deeply imbedded into her flesh. She feels washed away by the sensations rippling through her body, the pleasure so bright it feels like pain. Bella makes broken-off notes of ecstasy, her heart racing as her body moves more frantically - and when Edward's grip shifts again, hoisting her higher until every movement rubs against her oversensitive center, she keens and shudders, an orgasm tearing through her like an earthquake.

She trembles in his arms, clenching and twitching, slick between her thighs. His thrusting continues, drawing out plantitive mewls from her lips as her hypersensitive body prolongs her pleasure. A final long, hard grind against her has his mouth clamping down on her neck, twice as hard as before as he makes a punched-out noise.

It occurs to her that Edward could very well kill her. He could keep drinking and drinking until she is dry, and she wouldn't even mind it because nobody has ever been so close to her, so careful with her, so thoughtful for her. Nobody has ever been this protective. Nobody has ever gone to such lengths - not for her. If Edward does end up killing her, she doesn't think it would so bad

In the arms of a friend, in the arms of someone she loves, she can find peace with a death like that.

But Edward does not kill her. He stops drinking after several minutes, panting against her throat, lapping at the trails of blood that slip down to her partially exposed collarbone. He breathes in deeply and seems to unconsciously hold her closer, and she basks in the safety she feels in the cage of his arms.

She hasn't felt safe in a long time. The last time she had felt even half this safe was when her dad was still alive, and he's been gone for more than half her life already. That's a long time to feel so utterly insecure. But here, right now, with a vampire closing the wounds he has left on her neck, she feels settled.

Edward won't let anything bad happen to her.

He pulls back eventually, and he is still solid beneath her hands. She has the first glimpse of his face, achingly beautiful and not at all monstrous. His eyes are normal now, the same green-gold she has come to associate with the absence of loneliness. He doesn't look at her with any guilt, but there is caution there, even as his cold breath washes over her face.

"Did I hurt you?" he asks.

Bella shakes her head. Her heart feels too full of emotions she can't quite name and she finds that words are lost to her for the moment.

Edward's handsome face tilts into a slight expression of relief. "Good," he says, and then presses his lips to her forehead.

She closes her eyes and holds on to him until his body becomes as intangible as air.

~ Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. ~

They don't talk about what happened, not directly and not in explicit terms, but they do skirt around it - and if that means that Bella summons him more frequently, then that's also something they do not talk about.

But it's still a fact. By the time Bella turns eighteen and is finally moving out, escaping her tumultuous home life, her skin bears permanent scars where she has let just enough blood run to summon her friend - her vampire - to her most nights of the week. She knows he's there whether she can see him or not, but the fact is that she likes to be able to see his ghostly, indistinct form with her own eyes, to hear his voice, to prod at his thoughts.

If her heart flutters at the very thought of him, then that is something only she needs to know. If she wants him to bite her again, to feel that pleasure again, then that's something she keeps to herself, too.

Edward is in a similar state during this year, largely because Chancellor Aro has taken to accosting him with cryptic conversations any time Edward is back in his own realm for any length of time. After his possession of Mr. Jenkins, Aro laughs and laughs at Edward, patting him on the head as if he is a silly child.

"You still have not yet figured it out. Ah, but it is a rare occurrence," Chancellor Aro concedes.

"Possession? It isn't difficult," Edward fibs.

"Not that, fledgling, although congratulations on learning that skill so soon. Many of your brethren are hopeless," Chancellor Aro laments, shaking his head as if in pity at the very thought.

Edward struggles not to bare his fangs in agitation. "Then what have I not figured out?" he demands.

Chancellor Aro smiles, too wide, too knowing. "If I answer that question, I'll ruin all the fun."

Frustration flares through Edward, his fists clenching at his sides. He could be with Bella, right now, watching over her and keeping her safe. Not that he would say as much to Chancellor Aro, of course. He frames his impatience another way. "I should be getting back to the human realm to fulfill my duty," he says in clipped tones.

But all Chancellor Aro does is laugh and laugh some more. "The Council has not watched you for that reason for a while, Edward," he tells him, waving his hand dismissively. "We know you are reliable. We know you have guarded our secret. But we also know when your motivation - and your loyalty - shifted. We would have it no other way, of course."

All frustration leaves Edward in the space of a second. He swallows. "I don't understand," he lies.

Edward very much understands. He has known for a while - longer than he would like to admit - that his loyalty belongs to Bella and Bella alone. He would burn down the world for her if he had to. Both of their worlds.

"Don't you?" Chancellor Aro prompts rhetorically. "Even the undead have hearts that can thirst, and yours has been sated a long time ago."

Yes, Edward thinks. It has.

But he would never breathe a word of it. If he wishes he could hold Bella again, that he could bestow a kiss upon her again, then that is something only he needs to know.

No matter what Chancellor Aro seems to be hinting at, Bella is alive and Edward is not. She continues to grow and age, and Edward is stuck. She will leave him eventually, and he will nurture memories of her forever.

That's the way it must be. That's the only way it can be.

~Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.~

"How does it work?"

"How does what work?" Edward mutters distractedly, stretching his neck back even further. It's always an arresting site to watch him lay on tangible objects - in this case, an abandoned study table in the back library. When summoned, he can exert some control over physical objects, but for the most part, they pass through him otherwise. She keeps expecting him to knock the books on the table over each time he moves, but he doesn't, and he doesn't even make a peep when she reaches through the strange, slightly more dense air of his translucent body to gather the books and put them on the collection cart.

Does he even notice? She isn't sure. The rules that apply to him - well, they don't make sense. It's like the very fabric of the world warps around him, around his kind. Bella guesses that makes sense. He's not really of this world, so the rules don't apply in the same way.

"Vampirism," she answers, a beat too late.

"I would think the answer would be obvious by now," he says dryly, giving her a distinctly unimpressed side-eye.

She huffs at him, placing the next little stack of books on the cart none-too-gently. "No, I mean, how do you become a vampire? How did you?"

It's something they have not talked about, not ever. She is nineteen now, a year into college and working the night shift in the library at Arizona State, and she still has questions that Edward will not answer. Important questions. Things she needs to know. It's sort of the only time she can ask, given that her dorm mate is an absolute nightmare and the only time Bella can even really see him is when she's working.

Edward doesn't look too keen to answer, but since he's never made a habit of lying to her, he deigns to answer the question. "Violently," he says, reluctant.

Bella furrows her brow. "What do you mean, violently? I mean, is that how you died or is that what it takes to become a vampire?"

He averts his gaze, dropping his head back again until it hangs off the side of the table. He is quite tall; even his feet hang off the other end. "Both," he says after a moment. "To become what I am, to become a vampire, you must die a violent death. And the change itself is violent, like walking through the very flames of Hell itself. It is utter destruction. The you that comes out on the other side is not the same."

"Oh."

She didn't think it would be a pleasant experience, of course, but to hear this…

"How violent is violent?"

Edward sighs, deeply. "You are an extremely morbid girl, aren't you?"

"My only friend is one of the undead. Obviously, I'm morbid."

"Touche."

"So," she prods, wheeling the cart around to collect more books. "How violent?"

"In my case," Edward begins conversationally. "I died of influenza, choking on my own blood in a room of three dozen others beyond saving. When we got to that stage, when we were too far gone to save, they did not have the time to comfort us with things like food or water. They won't write about that in your little books, of course, but that's the truth of it. Hospice is a luxury in a crisis. My death was long and painful."

"But...A lot of people die from sickness. Does that mean everyone who dies becomes what you are?"

"Smart girl," he praises slyly. "Caught that, didn't you? Well, the truth is that a violent death is only part of it. Another requirement is resentment, the need to take your revenge. For me, I was angered at the hospital staff, at the sickness itself, at the circumstances that led to my death. I certainly had enough time to cultivate anger from it. When you're dying and your resentment is strong enough, you end up attracting certain forces. Certain attention."

"Vampires," she concludes.

"Vampires," he agrees. "The old ones have grown beyond the need to feed on blood. To them, blood is like your fast food, a rather cruel means to end the hunger."

Bella abandons the books entirely. Listening to this is much more interesting. Edward hardly ever gives her so much detail. She thinks, in the past, he might have been protecting her youth. But she's grown up now; she can handle the truth, however ugly.

"What do they feed on, then? The old ones?"

Edward catches her eye, lifting his brow. "Resentment, of course. Anger and rage. Strong, lethal, dangerous emotions. The more your anger consumes you, the more appealing you become. The vampire who changed me was drawn to my rage and fed off my resentment. Sometimes, that's enough. But other times, the resentment is so great that not even the old ones can gorge themselves. When that happens, there is an exchange, and the feeder becomes the maker."

"Exchange?" she echoes curiously. "Are you talking about blood?"

"In a sense," he qualifies.

"The myths are right," she breathes, excited. "They're all jumbled together and some are missing the right details, but when you put them together...The myths are right."

At her tone, Edward sits up on the table, and although she can't see his face clearly, she has the sense that he's narrowing his eyes at her. "Don't go getting ideas. You don't want to be what I am."

It's true, naturally, that she does not envy Edward's existence. He is neither alive nor dead, caught always between fading from the world and a clawing sort of hunger. His is a lonely existence.

But so is hers. And she can't help but wonder if they would be less lonely together. She knows for sure that she is less lonely when she summons him, that some part of her is filled and comforted by his presence. It's not only that he is her friend and confidant. It's that her heart races before she bites into her thumb and drinks her own blood; it's that she counts down the hours until she knows she can see him, face to face; it's that she wonders, pathetically, if he is watching over her and thinking about her as often as she thinks about him.

It's not about him being a vampire and satisfying her curiosity. It's about him being Edward, and all the things that does to the strange organ tucked between her ribs.

These are the thoughts that sit at the back of her mind for weeks.

She doesn't intend to do anything about them - really, she doesn't. But those tiny thoughts turn into a mountain, and that mountain grows trees, grows entire thickets that cloud her judgement with jealousy and longing. It seems her mind has fixated on the kind of closeness she can most easily obtain; if not death, yet, then the next best thing is to feel him in the only way she can.

"Will you feed on me?" she asks, months later. They're in a different part of the library, near where the study rooms are, and she's spent the last ten minutes working up the courage to ask. The taste of her own blood is still thick and coppery in her mouth, but it gives her a dash of courage.

"Absolutely not," he says flatly.

"I'm asking you to," she says, turning around, abandoning her task of re-shelving the books from the book cart.

"And I'm refusing," he tells her. "I will not be feeding on you. You aren't...some meal to be had."

It would be sweet if it didn't feel like rejection. She doesn't understand it; she wants him to and she has something he needs. It's an even exchange. It's the only thing she wants.

"Edward-"

"I said, no, Bella -"

It's desperation that has her speaking out the dark, hidden truth, the one that's been building for ages and ages. It isn't fair to be jealous of what he needs to do to survive, but that envy is there all the same.

"I don't want you feeding from anyone else!" she bursts out, too loud. It's a good thing that Bella is the only living person in the library, right now. Still, she drops her voice to a hushed whisper. "What I mean is that, I want it to be me. Only me. Please."

"Bella…"

The reject hits her swiftly, a wrecking ball to the chest. He won't do it. He doesn't want to feed from her, not unless he can help it. That time back in high school, that single time that still haunts her, still keeps her up at night with depraved pining, was an exception. He was too weakened by the possession to say no.

But she still thought…

"You have to know how I feel," she says shakily, staring at the blurred outline of his form. She doesn't know whether he's blurred from the tears in her eyes, or if his form is as insubstantial as usual. "You have to have guessed already."

"We can't. It's not possible, for this, for...us" he says, voice breaking. "And I won't do it. I won't."

Between one blink and the next, the apparition she had grown to love and rely on since childhood is gone.

It's the last she hears of Edward. He doesn't come back, no matter how many times she summons him, and Bella sinks into a depression that is only matched by an undead soul cowardly grounding himself in a realm she cannot ever be allowed to reach.

~For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly…~

Bella doesn't live in a good part of town. She can't afford to. The off-campus housing she managed to get into during her sophomore year of schooling is in what one might call a sketchy neighborhood. Usually it isn't so bad. College towns are never horrible, after all, and it isn't as if she lives in a slum. But her shoebox apartment is in a building that's seen better years and the police usually trawl around the neighborhood once or twice a week, searching for this or that suspect.

She's safe if she locks her doors and windows. She's supposed to be safe if she locks her doors and windows. That's how locks are supposed to work, and they do. She never fears for her safety inside her own home.

But the rest of the world doesn't have the same kind of locks and doors that can keep her safe, and one muggy summer when she is twenty, Bella learns this lesson in visceral detail.

She had been out of milk. It's such a stupid reason to go out at night, but she figured the corner store would be such a safe trip that she could be there and back without breaking her studying stride. She studies better with cereal; eating cereal requires milk. It was supposed to be a simple, quick trip. Get milk, go back, be done.

It wasn't a simple trip. And it wasn't quick.

Bella is grasping at a small half-gallon carton when the convenience store doors burst open with a shatter of glass and frenzied shouting. There is a bright popping sound, like firecrackers, and it's only when she feels a spread of warmth around her middle that she realizes that sound was, in fact, a gun.

Armed robbery, her mind fills in. The milk drops to her feet, the carton bursting open and spreading milk across the floor. Her blood spreads across the floor, too. The pink is actually kind of pretty.

The pain, when it registers, is secondary to the realization that she can't breathe - she can't breathe - and that she's already on the floor. When did that happen? And why is all the noise so muffled? The lights are flickering overhead, a buzzing white fluorescent. She can't breathe.

It's only when the darkness is gathering at the edges of her vision that she realizes she's probably about to die - and with that realization comes a surge of blood-boiling rage. She's dying and Edward isn't even here.

He was supposed to be here, she thinks. I'm not supposed to die alone.

Her hand is shaking as it raises from her stomach, but she still manages to bring her palm up to her mouth, licking at her blood as resentment curls through her. "Edward," she grits out, muttering and muffled "I'm so mad at you. I'm so mad. I hate that I love you. Do you hear me? I know you can hear me…"

Bitterness sweeps through her. She coughs and blood spews from her mouth.

"We're dying the same way," she slurs. "Choking on our own blood. Is this violent enough, do you think? Edward? Can you hear me?"

Blackness is spreading across her eyes and she's cold, so very cold. Each breath rattles through her lungs. Her body seems to float, weightless. There is a high-pitched wailing in the distance, an ambulance that will be too late.

Where is Edward? He's ignoring her. She hates that - hates that he can do that to her, that her last thoughts are going to be of him when he isn't even here - he isn't here when she needs him the most, and it isn't fair, and she hates it. She hates it, she hates it, she hates it -

"Bella- No!"

There is a familiar not-touch, a sensation of heavy air moving over her. The slits of her eyes narrow and she glares up at her vampire, the ghosts that ever haunts her.

Twin emotions rip through her - anger and despair. "Where were you?" she cries. "Why weren't you here? Why did you leave me alone? You were - you were supposed to be the one who didn't leave -"

"I'm here now," his voice comes, fantic.

"You're too late!" she hisses. "I'm dying, and I hate that you-"

"I'm not too late!" Edward's voice rises above hers. "I'm not too late, Bella."

There is pressure against her mouth, a new one that shoves past her lips. It's syrupy and dark and clogs her throat until she can't help but swallow against it - but that's a mistake, because pain unlike any she's ever felt before rips her down to the very marrow of her bones. It feels like the very core of her is being scooped out and replaced with firebrand agony.

It feels like -

Like -

Bella's very soul is screaming, rending itself into a million bits, dissolving under a pain so great it surpasses the perception of sensation - and Bella is, all at once, nothing and everything.

"I was wrong," comes a voice, sure and firm. "I've been wrong about you so many times, but especially about this. How could your fate be anything else? You were honest when I couldn't be, and I was wrong. We can, Bella. We can be possible."

There is a terribly loud roaring in her ears, so much like the thunderstorms that scared her as a child, and it feels like her entire being is shaking with the force of it.

"I'm here, Bella," the voice says. "Let go. I've got you."

Bella lets go, but to what she isn't sure.

Darkness descends.

When thought comes back, it's to the strange realization that her body feels as light as the air around her. She opens her eyes to a dizzying spectrum of color that paints even the darkest shadows in deep rainbows, like the entire world is covered by an oil spill. There is no pain. She thinks there is supposed to be.

"You're back."

Bella's body - is this her body? - reacts before the thought connects, twisting around to stare at Edward. Edward who is fully visible, every achingly beautiful plane of his face; Edward who is seated beside her on a pristine, moss-covered stump and who is holding her hand, expression both relieved and serious. The world around them is untouched, filled with starlight and shadows, and he is still the most beautiful thing she has seen.

"Where am I?" she asks. She looks down at her body, at the way her limbs seem to want to blend into mist. That's not right. She should have feet. In the next moment, the shape of her toes becomes more defined. Odd. "What am I?"

"You're like me," Edward says, squeezing at her fingers. "You were dying and I could feel you. You were so angry. You had a right to be."

"You changed me."

"I did."

Bella drops her eyes. "I thought…"

"Did you know," Edward begins softly, ducking down to catch her eyes. "That the heart can thirst? Someone said that to me, a while ago, that the thirst in my heart had been sated by you. Not just the loneliness, but the longing, too. I didn't realize - I didn't want to admit - that you would feel something similar for a monster like myself -"

"The only monstrous thing you've ever done is leave me alone," Bella interrupts him. "If your heart thirsted for me, then mine thirsted for you. And you left me parched when you were gone."

"I shouldn't have. I'm sorry, love."

"Love?"

A wry smile crosses his face. "I figured it out."

This catches her attention, and he's glad for it. He loathes the wounded expression on her face, the way she looks at him so guardedly. Now, she looks at him with a familiar sort of curiosity.

"What did you figure out?" she asks.

"Why you could see me," he answers. He leans forward, cupping her cheek, stroking his thumb tenderly across the apple of her cheek. His touch feels more than when she was still human, still alive. It's delightful. "That first time, when you were just a girl, you shouldn't have been able to see me, but you did. I spent years puzzling over it, but I've figured it out."

"What's the reason? Why was I different?"

"It's something the old ones know about, but it's rare," he explains carefully. "Sometimes, there are humans that are compatible with our energy. Whatever it is that makes us this way resonates with something in you."

"Kismet."

"In a way," he agrees. "The Council, the old ones, they call it a mating connection. It means that you were meant for this, just like you were meant to see me. We were always meant for each other."

The relief that floods her is so sharp she feels dizzy with it. She thinks, if this body were capable, that she would be crying. Instead, she launches herself into him, clinging to his chest as she sobs dryly.

And then she thumps him on the back, weakly. Although they are both made of flesh that has little true substance, he has never felt more solid under her touch. "I'm still so angry at you."

"That's okay," he answers soothingly, pulling back, tilting her chin up to catch her eyes. There is a dark, possessive sort of light in the cat's-eye green of his gaze. "You have an eternity to be angry at me, and I have an eternity to make up for it."

~ But it's much better to be killed by a lover. - Bukowski ~