Author's Note: Sorry, don't own Twilight or New Moon.

Freesia Juliet

Part One: My Ancient, My Only

Chapter Four: Greetings and Salutations

(Edward's Point of View, overlapping previous chapter)

It had been two agonizing weeks since Victoria's attack on prom night. Every day, I watched her pale face struggle in nightmares I could not soothe away. My poor Bella.

She had to get better. She had to. I gripped her hand a little tighter and smoothed down the sheet that covered her quivering body.

An infection, explained Carlisle in his mind to me as he changed the IV drip with a new bag of much stronger antibiotics.

"Bad?" I asked as I watched the vitals chart spew out of the machine in a continuous stream.

"It's high," sighed Carlisle as he tore off another page.

"How high?"

"104.2°"

"Oh," I said with a flinch. "That bad."

Bella whimpered in her night terrors and I pushed her brown curls away from her sallow face. Her closed eyes were sunk in deep into her skull, leaving fragile yellow-green bruises for shadows under each eye. Her breathing was light, but steady, leaving foggy trails on the various tubes hooked up to her nose and mouth.

I was familiar with them all by now- feeding tube, IV, breathing tube, et cetera. I cringed each time the brain monitor recorded a flickering of pain. Her neck was bound inside a mammoth gray plastic brace that hid the gentle contours of her chin and jaw and throat. I hated it.

"We have to go," reminded Alice from the doorway. Reluctantly I turned my head away and looked at my sister. Her face had the same fragile, elfin appearance that Bella did- but Alice always looked that way. Her features had always been too sharp and severe, beautiful but emaciated.

Alice was wearing a black turtleneck and black pants. We matched. Slowly, my mind made the connection that today was the service for Charlie Swan. Last week Forks had buried Charlie with all the honor the chief of police disserved, but his family had been unable to make it in time for the funeral.

Esme had suggested a memorial service for Charlie instead, so Bella's relatives had flown in for today's service. "I don't want to go," I said, protesting dully.

My mother joined my sister in the doorway. Esme's lilting voice was patronizing. "Of course you don't. But look at it this way, Edward: you'll get to meet Bella's family."

"Oh." I blinked, out of habit. "But I don't want to leave her. What if she wakes up?" I asked with anxiety. Panic was beginning to build in my chest at the very thought.

"Two thirty," announced Alice with a blank expression.

"What?" I said, completely taken aback.

"Bella will open her eyes at two thirty this afternoon."

"The service will be well over by then, Edward," added Esme.

"You're sure?" I said. More and more lately I doubt Alice's visions. I glanced at my beloved. She seemed so deep in her coma, and the infection was only getting worse. How could she possibly wake up today?

"Set in stone," said Alice with confidence. "Her fever will break around noon." Carlisle gave a sigh of relief and nodded gratefully to Alice. Well, if Carlisle believed her, who was I to doubt?

It was held in the basement of the Forks Lutheran Church, where Charlie had been a irregular member. There were a lot of people at the memorial service for Chief Swan, much more than I expected. I sniffed the air inconspicuously. It smelled awful, from one obvious source.

I felt Rosalie stiffen next to me. At the far opposite of the room stood Billy and Jacob, looking properly gloomy. I took a step through the crowd, a low rumble threatening to tear from my throat. Esme intercepted me.

"Remember, they were Charlie's friends, too. Therefore they are our guests," warned my mother in a tone inaudible to a human ear. I backed off, reluctantly.

"Why don't we meet some of Bella's family? You know, introduce yourself as Bella's fiancé, and get a feel for them," suggested Alice beside me.

"Fine," I agreed, taking a good look around.

There was a tall, slender woman staring intently at the enlarged photograph of Bella and Charlie hugging, which sat on a stand as the centerpiece of the service.

I approached her quietly, and stood at her left shoulder, scrutinizing every detail. When Bella said she looked more like Charlie than Renee, she must have meant that she looked like Charlie's family. This woman could have been her twin!

It was the same dark, soul filled eyes. It was the same wild bunches of brown curls spilling down her shoulders. It was the same delicate ivory skin. The only difference was this woman was older. Probably as old as thirty-five, though her face was smooth and free of age lines.

"They look good together, don't they?" asked the woman in a low, crooning voice. It was some sort of southern accent.

"Yes," I agreed wholeheartedly. Sure, Charlie hadn't liked me, but for two good reasons. First, no human ever trusted a vampire; it was part of their survival mechanism. No human except for my Bella. Second, I had left Bella crushed and broken for most of her senior year, something I had never intended on doing.

"Were you a friend of Bella's or of Charlie's?" asked the woman with probing dark eyes.

"Bella's," I answered, entranced by her face.

"Were you good friends?" asked the woman sadly. I explored her mind a little, and discovered that she was Bella's aunt, Charlie's younger sister, Abigail Swan.

I smiled in a small way. "Actually, I'm her fiancé."

Bella's aunt was surprised. "Then we better get to know each other, young man," she commanded, sticking out her hand. Surprised myself, I took it gingerly. Abigail had a warm, affectionate grasp. "Cold?" she asked when she felt my icy skin.

"Not really," I responded honestly. Quick to change the subject, I lied convincingly, "You are Bella's Aunt Abigail, correct? Bella's told me all about you. You live somewhere in the south, but I cannot remember where…"

"Georgia," supplied Abigail with a note of pleasure in her voice. "Specifically, in Atlanta."

"You grew up in Forks?"

"Yes, but when I was sixteen I ran away. Couldn't take the closeness of it all. The town's too small for someone like me. I got this romantic notion in my head , probably from reading Gone With the Wind so many times, that Atlanta, Georgia was just the right place for me. So I hitchhiked." She laughed, and it was a pleasant sound. "Turns out Atlanta was the right place for me. I've never left."

I looked for Alice, who was chatting respectfully with Renee and Phil. She was keeping time for me. Eleven thirty, she thought-spoke to me. I frowned. Abigail was saying something, and I nearly missed it.

"—how about you?"

I cleared my throat. "I'm so sorry for not introducing myself sooner. I'm Edward Cullen. My family came to Forks two years ago from Alaska, though we've traveled all over the place. That's my adopted mother over there, Esme Cullen," I said with the tiniest gesture politeness would allow.

"You're adopted?" asked Abigail with surprise as something dawned on her. "Oh, how silly of me, Edward. Brad, come over here!" she called quite loudly to get the attention of a lurking teenage boy by the refreshment table. "That's my foster son, Brad Ensworth," Abigail explained.

The boy looked to be about Bella's age, with longish blonde hair and piercing hazel eyes. "Brad, this is Edward Cullen, Isabella's fiancé."

"Hello," responded the suspicious boy with a strong Georgian accent.

A small murmur of jealousy rippled inside of me as I heard Abigail's thoughts before she spoke them. "Technically, Brad is no longer my ward, since he's nineteen now, but he still helps me around in my bakery." That's where Abigail's scent came from- she smelled like flour and fresh cookies. "Isn't it funny? I never adopted Brad legally because Charlie and I always figured Brad and Bella would end up married. She had the biggest crush on him when she was seven…"

I wandered away before her story got the better of me. But I couldn't help staring at her from the other side of the room where I moped with Jasper and Emmett, who had had their Gameboys taken away from them by Rosalie.

"She looks just like Bella would if she got older," observed Jasper.

"Will," I corrected, images forming in my mind, "Bella will look like her when she gets older."

Emmett looked surprised. "I thought you promised to change her after the wedding."

I continued to stare at Bella's look-alike aunt as I answered. "I want her to have a normal life."

"Or at least as normal a life as one can have when one is married to a vampire," pointed out Jasper. I resisted the urge to throw an aluminum folding chair at both of them.

It was two fifteen by Alice's watch, two seventeen by the clock on the wall. For a minute I contemplated which one would be more accurate in Alice's vision, and decided to go by her watch. "Edward," she said softly.

"What?" I growled as I smoothed the bed sheet for the umpteenth time. The fever had broken. At least one half of Alice's vision had come true now. Could I trust the other half to happen? Bella had never looked to fragile to me as right now, when I waited to see if she would really wake up at two thirty.

"Just ask me already," Alice commanded, saddened by my harsh tone. "You've been sitting on it for the past two weeks. I can feel it."

I blurted it out before I even questioned how she knew. "Why didn't you warn me that Victoria was going to attack? You had me right there with you, and all you did was wish me the best on my marriage!"

Alice sighed, her face contorting with sorrow as she relived that fateful night in her mind. Through her thoughts, I relived it, too. "I didn't know, Edward. I couldn't have known. The last time I had seen Victoria, she was running up north, being chased out of Denai by Tanya's coven. She must have doubled back south, but she never had any intention of coming back to Forks without at least two more vampires with her. But when I called you back to the house, she must have seen opportunity waiting."

"How did she know that you had called me?"

"It's her power," Alice explained. "She can intercept messages. Even thought-spoke ones. That's how she always eluded the werewolves- she could hear their messages to one another."

I swallowed hard and was about to continue when Emmett and Rosalie burst into Bella's room, their black mourning clothes torn and generally disheveled. Both had the biggest grins I had ever seen a vampire wear. "Got the bitch!" announced Emmett with glee.

I was stunned. After what Alice had just told me about Victoria, I was surprised anyone could ever catch her. "Look at his face," snickered Emmett to his wife. "He looks like he just swallowed a hornet's nest."

"How?"

Alice looked contented. "The third part of my vision came true. The one I was afraid to tell you, Edward. I saw Emmett and Rose take down Victoria for good."

Rosalie explained, "The Quileute dogs had her blocked out of La Push on one side. They couldn't get to her, because she was on our territory, but we could."

"Talk about a celebratory bonfire," smirked Jasper as he joined us. His face was black with ash and soot. "Her fire got a little out of control, so I stayed behind to put it out."

"Of course it did," I sighed, "it would be her parting shot at us to burn down the whole forest." My relief was too big for words. At last, Victoria could never hurt my Bella again.

As if on cue, Alice's watch beeped 2:30. We all turned expectantly towards the bed. I held my breath as Bella's eyes slowly slid open.

"Carlisle?" I said nervously.