I'll say it straight out; this chapter is probably going to annoy the bejeesus out of some of you. However, I did feel that this needed to come first, and in all fairness, there is no way that I can possibly drag this out much further, right?

Thanks to all who read and review. Special thanks as always to anaismark and addicttwilight2, my wonderful prereaders, and to icrodriguez and amuse1 for their constant encouragement. Standard disclaimers continue to apply.

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So farewell thou, whom I have known too late

To let thee come so near.

Be counted happy while men call thee great,

And one belovèd woman feels thee dear...

Here's no more courage in my soul to say

'Look in my face and see.'

"A Denial", Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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He was arguing with his brother – ostentatiously giving Jasper his full attention, while, in reality, only half-listening.

Of course, all immortals were gifted with heightened senses that allowed them to adeptly perform a variety of mental functions at once, but Edward himself had once been gifted even beyond this – more than able to carry on a full conversation with one person while listening intently to the thoughts of another across the street.

Now, however, with the seeming disintegration of his gift, voices flickered in and out of his head rapidly, and he was finding it very difficult to listen to Jasper's frustratingly legitimate worries while at the same time being affronted by the interruptions of five other people every second.

Alice was as she had been for the past six months – worried, angry, afraid that her faith in her sister-in-law had been unfounded. Carlisle, too, was reserving judgement on Bella, his entire being praying solely for Edward's redemption. Esme – he frowned, concentrating intently – Esme seemed to be worrying about Bella, wondering how she was coping, wondering if she was following their way of life... and Rosalie – Rosalie...

His head whipped around.

Rosalie, too, was focusing on his wife, taking in her posture, her appearance, her seeming terror.

Edward's protective instincts flared, a growl rumbling in his chest as he remembered his sister's cynical attitude towards his wife's actions, remembered how she'd taunted him, how she'd so cruelly told him to get over it, already, as though Bella's disappearance had been a foregone conclusion, one he should have been readying himself for all along...

But no, he noted with surprise, his spine softening, Rosalie wasn't being scornful, or hostile, or dismissive in her thoughts of Bella. But nor could he understand exactly what she was doing.

Her thoughts were misty, disbelieving as they catalogued Bella's rigid posture, as they wondered and hypothesised and dismissed themselves, yet continued to circle, round and round...

Suddenly Rosalie's musings seemed to bunch together and reassign themselves as she compared Bella's present attitude with what she remembered of another woman, dark-haired, whose face was hazy but whose voice was gentle as she cooed to a small child, its blonde curls spilling out from under a lacy white bonnet.

And Edward could only stand, as though turned to stone, as his sister reached the conclusion – the impossible conclusion – that Bella was... his wife was...

He dismissed the thought almost as soon as it entered his head. It couldn't be. It was insane. Rosalie was insane. He couldn't father a child, so Bella couldn't possibly have been...

But his mind was racing now, doing laps inside his skull, pounding him relentlessly with images from after their honeymoon – from that place, that time that he never wanted to revisit.

Bella asking him, politely, her eyes focused at some point over his shoulder, to let her sleep alone in their bedroom. The snick of the lock in the door as he left – the thud of the window latch slamming shut. Not just one night, but two, and then three, and finally so many that he didn't even bother trying anymore.

And when he'd asked, she'd told him she was cold, constantly cold, that their bed was too small, that he woke her up when he moved during the night – even though for weeks now all he'd done was lie there and watch over her, afraid even to sling an arm around her in case she rejected him even as she slept.

And when he'd refused to swallow these excuses, when he'd pushed for the real reason, she'd yelled at him – told him that she put up with his constant clucking during the day, and to do it at night as well was more than she could handle... and finally he'd withdrawn, quietly, another piece of him dying.

When she had finally left him, he'd been unable to move past the all-consuming pain of that single action. His mind, protecting itself, had focused entirely on the fact of his wife's departure, while ignoring the memories of the months preceding it. Likewise, when she'd returned, all that had happened between them was kept at bay – he'd simply been too busy to think about it.

Now, as he reeled in his living room, watching Rosalie interact with his wife, the memories of their ill-starred marriage gushed forth in his brain, and he was pounded with wave after wave of sickening heartbreak.

Bella turning away from him. Not just sexually – not even just flinching at the everyday expressions of love he'd chosen to communicate through touch – but turning her back from his very presence. He couldn't count the number of times he'd enter a room just to watch her leave it. Couldn't count how often she'd flinched, physically flinched when he'd moved just a step too close, as if her human instincts, so long dormant, were now resurfacing with a vengeance and warning her away from a dangerous predator.

Bella rebuffing her mother, her father – being so physically not present that both had eventually withdrawn, silent and confused. It had been months since they had rung, though Edward had occasionally received a worried email from one or the other. More than anything, this – them worrying about their daughter so much that they would contact her husband, whom neither of them fully approved of – had proved to him that Bella's behaviour was not imagined, or exaggerated, on his part.

Bella rebuffing Alice, shrugging away from her quick, soothing gestures, and on one memorable occasion, yelling at his sister, telling her that she wasn't a living doll for Alice to manipulate.

Alice, still inexplicably blind without her gift, baffled and hurt, had caved to her wishes and for the most part had left Bella alone. And from that day forward, Bella had given up on almost every feminine ritual. She'd gone for days without showering, letting oily residue build up in her hair and on her skin, living in sweatpants and turtlenecks – however hot the weather.

His mind snapped to the present as he witnessed Rosalie hunch down, the position making her long, graceful body almost awkward, and whisper to his wife questioningly. Bella shook her head, her hands flying up to cover her ears.

He struggled to remain focused, but that gesture called to mind other memories, too many to ignore.

Another sharp wave swept over him as he remembered his wife, glassy-eyed, exhausted, her face chalky and her eyes empty as she sat in front of their television eating cereal straight from the box.

She'd spent days, and then weeks like this – slumped on the couch, eating stodgy convenience food, and of course he'd noticed the difference it had made to her once alarmingly frail figure – of course he'd noticed his wife's hips widening slightly, her silhouette becoming more womanly.

Ironically her weight gain only served to make her even more desirable to him – it had seemed to cement her more firmly in her body, and had he still been allowed to touch her, he knew he would have worried less about the possibility of her snapping in half. He'd watched, admiring, as her breasts and hips gained a lushness that they had never had before – he'd marvelled at the healthier curve of her arm, the way the bones in her face had lost their sharpness.

As the weeks went on, however, he'd realised that while his wife's body had become more robust, the signs of her suffering still could not be denied. Without Alice around to insist on such things as conditioner and curling irons, her hair lost the healthy shine that had once dazzled him, her skin had become pasty as she'd turned her face from the light, and her once-rich eyes had flattened and became dull as she struggled with whatever private hell she was going through.

She'd cried. Every day. Sometimes multiple times a day. And then she'd denied it, lying blatantly when he'd known, any fool would have known but especially Edward, who'd been able to smell the salt tracks on her cheeks, able to sense the blood collecting under her puffy eyes.

And, as a prickling terror crawled over his skin, the final nail in Edward's coffin slammed home, and he remembered how his wife's posture – never particularly straight to begin with – had seem to curve inwards, her shoulders rounding, her hands constantly hovering about her middle. She'd taken to sleeping in a tight ball, curled into herself like a prawn. When she'd sat she'd wrapped her arms around her thighs, hugging her knees to her chest.

At the time, he'd noted that particular change, deduced sadly that she was probably trying to protect herself from him. Never had he thought that maybe she was trying to protect someone else, as well.

And that tender double-stroke of expectant mothers – back and forth twice, over their abdomens, that unconscious gesture he'd seen so often... yes, he could see his wife's fingers, swollen by heat and lassitude, passing over her softened stomach, back and forth, so lovingly that he could almost imagine them stroking the head of a small child instead.

Bella's voice broke through his thoughts, and he looked up – shocked that his wife and his sister had not moved. Shocked that only a few seconds had passed – that the only change had been within himself.

His wife was shaking her head, pleading with Rosalie to leave her alone, holding her palms over her ears like a frightened child, and again a snarl built in his chest. He started towards them, and then staggered to a halt as Rosalie's voice murmured again, and his wife answered: "Yes."

Nothing, absolutely nothing. For seconds, turning into minutes. Complete silence – in his head, in everyone else's head.

Then fear rose like a great flapping thing in his chest, and he gasped for breath as his throat squeezed, his hands clenching and unclenching as his body panicked. He felt as though his skin was humming, vibrating minutely with every tremor that passed through his mind, and he gritted his teeth to keep from moving – because he was absolutely sure that if he moved, he would run, and if he ran he might never stop.

He couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't look at her.

And then the old voice crept back into his head, spitting poison, and the thought was there and he couldn't stop it. Was it mine? It couldn't have been mine. I can't father a child – I am unnatural, a dead thing. But if not mine, then whose? Was it Jacob, after all, after everything? Is that why she ran? Because she was afraid of my reaction when she gave birth to puppies?

He struggled silently, his body bowing in the middle, threatening to jack-knife under the pressure.

He felt his resolve not to break crack a little around the edges, and then a blanket of calm swept over him, engulfing him from head to feet. He drew a deep breath and focused, and somehow the room became sharper around him as his senses realigned with Jasper's help.

Dimly he realised that Carlisle was by his side, one of his arms around Edward's neck, his fingers gripping his opposite shoulder tightly. That small demonstration of his father's unconditional love and support somehow gave Edward the strength he needed to straighten, and stand, and listen.

Bella's eyes were screwed shut, her face contorted into an expression of such utter anguish that Edward flinched momentarily. Her body, too, had bowed at its centre, and she slumped forward, her elbows on her knees, her hands clasped over her ears as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing.

Rosalie kneeled before her in a position that was oddly maternal. One of her hands rested at the back of Bella's head, her fingers combing back and forward through the messy brown locks at the base of her skull. Her other hand rubbed Bella's kneecap through her jeans.

Edward was shocked. Though he had lived for over ninety years with his sister, and though he had had full access to her mind during that time, he had never glimpsed this alter ego of hers – had never imagined that behind Rosalie's frosty exterior lay a person who was both willing and capable of giving this level of comfort to a woman who was, in effect, a stranger.

Rosalie's voice was tender, and it cooed at his wife, promising Bella that it was all going to be okay – telling her the reassuring little lies that she'd always blankly refused to gift Edward with.

"Bella?" she asked, with another squeeze to her former sister-in-law's knee. "Bella, can you look at me?"

Bella's head lifted. Edward couldn't see her face from his vantage point, and by the time he had moved she had once more closed her eyes.

"Tell me what happened," Rosalie entreated quietly.

Bella shook her head once, her lips set in a hard line.

"I don't remember," she said obstinately, and like one in a dream Edward saw how her body coiled into itself even more, and knew that she was lying – to him, and maybe to herself.

And that proved to break it, the whole sorry mess his body had locked him into. He couldn't handle any more webs of deceit, any more false hope, any more whispered promises in the night that splintered come morning.

He just wanted to know, one way or another. He didn't think that was too much to ask.

He moved to stand in front of Bella, somehow managing to elbow an indignant Rosalie out of the way.

He looked down at his wife. Her eyes were still closed, and this angered him, and made him even more convinced that she was purposefully hiding information that he had a right to know.

He'd meant to speak softly, to cajole her into admitting it, but somehow his words came out in a snarl. "You do remember, Bella. You do remember. And you're going to tell me, right now, or so help me god I will walk out of here and never come back."

Moments ago he'd been murderous with rage that she refused to open her eyes. However, when he got his wish, when her eyelids cracked and she looked up at him, he was utterly, spine-chillingly horrified. Though the brown had been replaced by red, though her preternatural skin showed no trace of the worried lines that had strained her face when he'd last seen his human wife, nonetheless her eyes held a frighteningly familiar emptiness in their depths.

He swallowed hard, reliving the sense of his wife being here but not here, Bella but not Bella. A tiny part of him wondered whether this act was actually real – whether she was actually able to disassociate that thoroughly, and if so, where his wife went when this stranger took her place.

As horrible as it sounded, he preferred to believe that her soul was screaming inside her skull, battling to get out – that it took a tremendous amount of effort to erect this cold facade of hers.

"I don't remember," she said, her voice monotonous, but... not quite. Edward didn't know whether she had just fallen out of practice or whether she had finally reached the end of her rope, but either way, he could hear fault lines in her voice that he knew she hadn't intended to put there, and he knew that if he pushed just a little harder her mask would crack and all of her secrets would come spilling out.

"I know you remember. You just don't want to tell me. Why don't you want to tell me?" He was doing his best to be patient, but despite his efforts his voice still sounded somehow bestial – betraying that in this moment he truly felt more animal than man.

More fault lines etching across her face, more signs that she was struggling, with all her might, to hold back, and slipping a little more with each passing second.

"I don't know what happened," she repeated obstinately, and then his hands were on his wife's shoulders, and he was clenching his fingers and shaking her – just a little, for him, but enough that if she'd been human her head would have whipped back and forth like a doll's.

"Edward, son." Carlisle's voice, full of rebuke, broke through his consciousness – his hand grasped Edward's shoulder. In one of those blinding about-faces that he'd so recently become acquainted to, he dropped his hold on his wife as though her skin had flashed white-hot, horrified with himself. He had a temper, and he knew it, and at this point he was certain that he'd taken just about all a man could take and remain sane, but still, he'd promised himself that he'd never willingly hurt his wife, never raise a hand to her in anger...

Still, as he looked down at her, the monster snarling in his chest would not let him apologise. He looked at his father, and Carlisle, seeming to understand, dropped his hand and moved away.

He straightened and turned his back to her, crouched in the corner as she still was. The faces of his family blurred together – he ignored them. He didn't know whether to run or to stay, to seek comfort or to reject companionship, and the constant back-and-forth was so wearing that he could feel his body shifting, stirring, moving infinitesimally in one direction, and then the other.

A dry gasp broke from behind him. He whirled around, staring down at Bella once more. Something was stirring behind his wife's eyes, some sadness etching lines across her face as she stared at him.

"You're going to leave me," she said sadly, and he couldn't help himself – he laughed out loud.

"Me, leave you? You're afraid of me leaving you?"

His voice was scornful, and he could see her flinch. He felt almost drunk with power, to see her react in this way to his words – more than she'd done in months.

Her head dropped, and she was once again staring at her lap.

"You won't believe me," she said, and her voice was thick. "All of this, all through everything, I knew you wouldn't believe me, everything and everyone screamed you wouldn't believe me, and all of it, Edward, all of it was for you... I didn't want to get you killed... didn't want your blood on my hands after everything..."

She was talking in circles, and he hated it. Get to the goddamn point!

"Tell me, Bella," he said harshly, the words hurting his throat. "Tell me everything, right this instant, or I'm gone."

Again that sound – a cross between a dry gasp and a broken sob, and then his wife's body jack-knifed in the chair, one of her arms straining under her breasts as if seeking to physically hold herself together, the other burying itself in her hair and tugging. She rocked back and forth, gasping, hiccupping, dry-retching, crying without tears, and he was terrified, ice-cold fingers of fear dragging slowly down his spine.

He could resist no longer – could not be cold or unfeeling or uninvolved while she wept like this.

"Bella." One of his hands reached out and cautiously unwound her hair from her fist, smoothing it into place. She sobbed harder.

"Bella, please..." And then, like Rosalie before him, he was folding his long body down to crouch at her eye level. His hand slid to the base of her neck. She raised sad eyes and brokenly looked at him, and then somehow her face was buried in his shoulder and he had her on his lap, one hand stroking circles between her shoulder blades, the other holding her tightly to him, clutching at her like he'd never let her go.

She cried, and cried, and cried, her body convulsing, his arms squeezing her rhythmically. He brushed kisses against her hair and murmured soothingly into her ear, and inwardly, despite the situation, he couldn't help but rejoice. For Bella had cried like this before, cried with her whole body – and she'd refused to let him comfort her. Refused to let him in.

He could hear his family, frozen like statutes in the background – their thoughts and musings and opinions and grievances swirling through his brain like oil through water. Exhausted, he let them settle, not at the top of his mind but at the bottom – murky silt that he knew would ultimately be stirred up. Right now, he needed to concentrate on Bella – on the woman who was not quite his wife, but not quite not, either – and try to undo some of the mistakes he'd made, the damage he'd done.

Eventually, her sobs quietened, her body going slack as if exhausted. He wondered if it was hitting her, then, that there was no such thing as rest for her anymore – no brief respite from the world.

"Edward." He felt her lips buzz against his skin.

He stroked her hair. "Yes, love?"

She drew back slightly, and her terrified eyes met his.

"I don't want to remember," she admitted, and he heard the distinction and ached.

His fingers cupped her cheek, his thumb stroking back and forth underneath her eye.

He didn't say what he felt, what his insides screamed – how she had to remember, had to tell him, had to, right this instant, right now, or he'd shatter into a million little pieces – but he knew she could read it in his face nonetheless. Knew, because she sighed, crumpled into herself a little more, and then, abruptly, straightened her body and moved so that she faced him directly, still on his lap, their legs interlocked like scissors.

Her hands grasped his own.

"You really need to know this?" she said quietly. He searched her face and saw the resignation there – saw that she didn't need an answer to this question, but was forced to ask it anyway.

He held her gaze. Feeling somehow ashamed, he nodded.

Her mouth opened slightly and her breath sighed out. She squeezed his hands and whispered: "Okay."

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For a few minutes, absolutely nothing happened.

Eyes closed, she clenched her jaw and concentrated, imagining now-silent veins popping out on her forehead, now-dormant pores springing sweat onto her skin.

She could feel the eyes of every person in the room bear down on her head like the force of seven anvils – could feel the weight of expectation placed squarely on her shoulders. And, glancing up at the frozen faces of Rosalie and Emmett, Jasper and Alice, Carlisle and Esme, she knew that this was it – her last chance at redemption. If she failed them now, nothing she did afterwards would rectify it.

She felt the pressure increase so she almost felt dizzy – felt herself falter a little on the tightrope she was walking.

The slightest squeeze of fingers on hers, and her eyes flew up to meet those of her husband. He was frowning a little. The look in his eyes was half-fascinated, half-afraid.

"I'm trying," she said simply, and he relaxed slightly, nodded once.

She closed her eyes and tried again.

There was a solid mass in her brain, one she'd been tiptoeing around for days, one she'd been guarding, jealously, so as not to disturb it one iota. She'd both known and not known that going anywhere near that invisible barrier would lead her irrevocably away from one road and down another. Though she wasn't altogether comfortable with the road she was on, the pure, blinding terror of not knowing what the other contained had been enough to keep her from trying.

She could do it, though. For Edward.

Because despite her best efforts, she could not completely ignore what she'd done to him. Despite her studied ignorance, still she saw how he flinched every time she moved too suddenly or spoke too sharply, almost as if he expected her to strike him.

Of course, she reminded herself, there were other, more powerful methods of rejection – and she could see that she'd used them all, in the way that he would push her just so far and then retreat, terrified, expecting her each time to leave and never come back.

She couldn't imagine the amount of bravery it must take to just sit opposite her. She couldn't remember all that had passed between them and right now she considered that a blessing – because had she recalled the tiny sordid details of their marriage up to now, she would probably have sought to protect him from herself. She would probably never have come back.

As it stood, she didn't know who she was or where she had come from or why she had ended up here, of all places. She couldn't remember the novels she'd read or the films she'd seen, or the countries she'd travelled to other than Italy. She didn't know what her favourite colour was and she couldn't recall what her mother's face looked like.

But she knew that she would fight for the man sitting so close to her, fight till she dropped. Fight for him, and with him, and against him – anything to make him stay.

The knowledge drew her spine straight, steadied her hands and made her try again.

She pushed against that indescribable thing that she could feel curling malevolently against her skullcap. Pushed until the breath she didn't need huffed from her lungs in pants – until her limbs shook with effort.

She bowed her head slightly, wanting to scream and wail and throw things. Wanting, maybe, more than anything, to say I can't do this. Please don't make me do this. Please, it's too hard, I'll do anything else you want, anything at all, just please, not this...

One glance upwards solidified her resolve. Edward's face was frozen in a politely indifferent mask, but she could see a small muscle jumping in his jaw, could see the itching patience lurking behind his careful eyes.

She couldn't make him wait any longer.

Exhausted, she spoke to the wall in her mind – convinced of her own madness, but willing to try anything at this point. She coaxed it, enticed it, tickled at it.

And then she felt it – a tiny quiver. A fault line opening up.

She ignored it for a few short seconds, then redoubled her efforts, and felt the previously solid mass begin to ooze. A few minutes more and it seemed to bubble, then dissolve into a mist, and now she could make out vague shapes and colours through the haze.

Cloudy as they were, the images flickering through her brain already terrified her, and she tightened her grip on Edward's hands.

She heard his confused voice. "Bella, what..."

And then his head whipped around and he was squeezing her hand. She opened her eyes and somehow registered his taut face as it surveyed the couples behind them.

He turned back to her. "I can't hear them," he whispered, shocked. "I can' t hear their thoughts at all. Bella, what are you – what have you – what..."

And then everything crested. The mist dissipated and the knowledge that she'd denied for so long crashed over her head, knocking her backwards, knocking her breathless.

Her mouth opened in a silent cry, and somehow her eyes seized Edward's, and he looked as she felt, and she knew – she knew now that he'd seen, more clearly than she could ever tell her, that he knew, and understood, or would eventually understand, and that now there was no going back.

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*ducks and runs*

I know, I know... Questions will be answered in next chapter. And next. And next.

Please review. x