Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight, Stephanie Meyer does. I only own the parts of this story not taken from her works (published or unpublished).

Author's note: Again, if you haven't read the partial draft of Midnight Sun, I recommend reading chapter 5 of that at some point, but you won't need it to follow along. That's where the italicized sections for this chapter come from. Enjoy and please leave me some feedback when you finish!

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It was past midnight, and Bella's house was dark and quiet. Her truck was parked against the curb, her father's police cruiser in the driveway. There were no conscious thoughts anywhere in the neighborhood. I watched the house for a moment from the blackness of the forest that bordered it on the east. The front door would probably be locked - not a problem, except that I didn't want to leave a broken door as evidence behind me. I decided to try the upstairs window first. Not many people would bother installing a lock there.

I crossed the open yard and scaled the face of the house in half a second. Dangling from the eave above the window with one hand, I looked through the glass and my breath stopped.

It was her room. I could see her in the one small bed, her covers on the floor and her sheets twisted around her legs. As I watched, she twitched restlessly and threw one arm over her head. She did not sleep soundly, at least not this night. Did she sense the danger near?

I was repulsed by myself as I watched her toss again. How was I better than some sick peeping tom? I wasn't any better. I was much, much worse.

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Midnight Visit

Edward was trying to figure out what had brought him where he was at that exact moment: sitting on a chair in the corner of a bedroom staring intently at a very asleep Isabella Swan.

Never before in his near 100 years as an immortal had he done something like this. Then again, never before had he met someone like Bella. He loved and was fiercely protective of his family, but there had never been anyone outside of that circle that had caught his interest before her. He found himself drawn to her in ways he did not understand.

Bella had become an obsession for him. The strong scent of her blood made his throat burn with an almost unbearable pain when he breathed her in, but that was not her most intriguing quality. Edward had never before met someone whose mind he could not hear inside. Her father, Charlie, was a muffled voice, again a new development, but the girl had always been silent to him completely.

He had been telling himself that this was the source of his fascination with her. That very day, however, he stopped lying to himself. He was in love with her. Alice had predicted this, but he had been adamantly trying to deny it and keep it from happening since the morning of the accident. He saved her life twice that day, though she was only aware of one instance. In addition to keeping Tyler's van from crushing her to death, he also spent the afternoon convincing some members of his family, specifically Rose and Jasper, that killing her to keep her silent about what she saw was not an option.

That was when Alice announced that he would fall in love with her, and that she herself would have Bella as a best friend one day. Alice saw two very clear and distinct future for Bella, both involving him. In one, his thirst overpowered him and he took her life. In the other, his selfish desire to keep her around overpowered him and she became like him, a vampire.

From that time, he was determined to stay as far away from her as he could without abandoning his family. He thought that he could construct a third future, one where she lived out a normal happy, human life. This would only happen if he stayed away from her. He had been doing a marvelous job, even Alice was upset with him for confusing the future when she had before seen his course of action so easily. Keeping his distance was extremely difficult but it was working.

Until today...

Initially he wanted to blame Mike Newton for driving him to become the creepy peeping tom he now saw himself as. It was Mike's obsession with Bella that started things today. Mike decided to ask her to the dance that was coming up. It was a girl's choice dance, but he really wanted her to ask him and, after he received the offer from her friend Jessica that morning, he wanted to make sure that Bella wasn't waiting to ask him before he accepted it. Her rejection of him made his heart feel something it was not used to in recent weeks.

Joy, perhaps, or at least some form of happiness.

He had been wondering how strong her feelings for him were, since Edward, thanks to his special gifts, was more than well aware of what Mike felt for her. It was the happy feeling that led him to break his much practiced rule about not looking at her in class. He was trying to read more of her reaction when she turned and caught him. They gazed at each other before the Mr. Banner, the Biology teacher, asked him a question and broke their attention.

The look in her eyes made him feel horrible. She had been so trusting of him, had kept his secret when no one in his family expected her to, and he had returned the favor by completely ignoring her. He was ashamed of himself for being able to treat someone so wholly and thoroughly good so abominably. He knew in that instant that he could no longer keep on ignoring her. The impulse to be near her was too strong to deny anymore. Time had not made his task easier, it made it worse. Alice was right, as always. He couldn't ignore her anymore.

They would not be strangers anymore. At the end of the period, he turned to try and speak to her again, only to be met with coldness and sarcasm, both of which he knew he deserved. But he was determined to keep speaking to her, especially after she unjustly accused him of regretting saving her life that day. She thought him a heartless monster, but her characterization was far from the actual version of the monster. That monster he hoped she would never meet. He thought that, with apologies for his rude behavior, and small but continued attentions, maybe she would come around. He knew he shouldn't try, but he also knew he wasn't strong enough not to. Not anymore.

Once he came to terms with his decision, the rest of the afternoon had its fair share of amusements. Two more of Forks' undeserving peons had tried their hand at getting the lovely Ms. Swan to ask them to the dance, one with his particular assistance. Both were rejected. This pleased Edward immensely.

After school he had lately taken to running to Seattle or Portland to try and clear his mind and keep away from the meddlesome thoughts of his family. This day, he didn't run. He went hunting. He decided that if he was going to start talking to the girl again, he needed to be well fed. Unfortunately, it was a bad time of year and he had only slight success; two elk. It was satisfying, but not what he had hoped for.

Around midnight, he began his run back to Forks and before he had actually realized where he was going, he found himself looking at her house. He just wanted to see her face, to make sure she was okay. That was why he climbed to the window. It wasn't until she started speaking in her sleep that he was driven to open the window and go inside.

So, as much as he wanted to blame Newton and Alice and even Bella herself for maddening his curiosity with her unconscious sleep talking, he knew that his presence in that room was his fault and his alone. He had not been strong enough to stay away. The monster inside had won this battle, and Edward could only hope that it would be his last victory.

He was repulsed by his stalkeresque presence in her room that night, but there was also something comforting about just being there in her presence. He looked at her as the moonlight lit her face and was taken aback by how it enhanced her beauty. Her skin was usually pale, though not as pale as his, and that quality was amplified in the soft white light coming in through the window. As he stared at her she did something that would have made his heart stop.

"Edward..."

She said his name.

He quickly assured himself that she had not woken up and caught him, so that meant she must be dreaming. It was equally horrifying and thrilling to think that she was thinking about him as she dreamed. He had been trying to talk himself into leaving again when it happened.

"Stay, don't go. Please... don't go."

Hardly conscious of what he was doing, he began to move towards her sleeping form. He needed to touch her...

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She was dreaming of me and it wasn't even a nightmare. She wanted me to stay with her, there in her dream.

I struggled to find words to name the feelings that flooded through me, but I had no words strong enough to hold them. For a long moment, I drowned in them.

...

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Alice Cullen was having a good day. Whereas her depressing and self-loathing brother Edward had lately been messing up what used to be a clear vision of the future, today he had reversed his course. Bella's two possible futures were crisp and clear once again, meaning that Edward had decided to stop trying to ignore her. This excited Alice for two reasons. One was that she saw herself becoming good friends with Bella and she was anxious to get to know her better. The other was that she saw that Edward would fall in love with her, something Alice thought would be very good for him.

She also saw that he had decided to visit her house that night. This was a good sign, she thought, showing that he really was going to stop pretending that he was strong enough to stay away from her, even if it was a little creepy. While her husband was playing a game of chess with their brother Emmett in the dining room, Alice was sitting on the couch happily searching Bella's future for clues as to what might happen in the next few days. Rose was in the garage and Esme and Carlisle were in his office talking, as they always were lately, about Edward.

She was envisioning a shopping trip to Olympia when suddenly Bella's future disappeared. What Alice saw next made her gasp.

"Edward... NO!"

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Author's Note: As I said before, the italicized sections come from the Midnight Sun draft and are owned exclusively by Ms. Meyer and not by me. I just borrowed a few lines because I could never come close to paraphrasing what she described so vividly and wonderfully.