A/N: Hello, kids. It's almost the weekend. That's good.

To tell the truth, there wasn't much I remembered about the day James died.

I remembered seeing him sprawled on the floor. God, who could forget a thing like that? His body was just so unnaturally placed. His neck was oddly stiff. And blue. His lips were blue. His face was blue. His skin... It was just different.

Except for that image, there wasn't much I remembered with any kind of clarity. My head space was one big roar of senseless noise, like the sound of a plane's engine taking off. The world around me became surreal. It was like being in the scenes in the movies after the character does drugs and starts tripping except it wasn't funny; it was bewildering. And frustrating because I couldn't make my brain reason, I acted without conscious thought.

I saw James and I froze.

Alice came in. She screamed and screamed. I don't know what she screamed, but I remember the sound. It was such a horrible sound. She dropped to her knees, and I pulled her back before she could touch him. I didn't know why. I never did figure out why.

Action. Reaction.

Alice went white. Sickly white. I took her outside. Maybe I thought she needed air. But I didn't stop. I got in my car on autopilot. Alice followed.

Good little robots.

When she got in the car, Alice folded up like a flower at night. She put her hands over her ears and rocked, like maybe she could hear the roar too. It was so loud.

Maybe that was how we ended up at the library. There was a basic logic to it. I couldn't think over the noise; the library was quiet.

The silence was eerie, but I was stuck again. Without any rationality, I was frozen in the action/reaction cycle until something happened.

Alice and I sat across from each other not talking, not seeing... just... off.

Until my phone started vibrating.

"James. Oh, god, Edward. James is dead." Victoria, a mutual friend of ours, said. I still remember the way her voice trembled.

The whole world came rushing back, the sound sharpened, and I could think again.

And I could feel again.

That was James.

The sun had risen by the time Bella and Jasper called Emmett to reason with me. Well, no. Not reason. Emmett did what Emmett did best. He manhandled me. He got me up out of that damn plastic seat, put an arm around my shoulders, and hustled me forward ignoring my babbling about how I needed to see Alice. I couldn't leave before I saw her.

"Her sister is with her," Emmett said.

Yeah. I didn't trust Alice's family, but Cynthia was the best of them. "She's a twenty-one-year-old girl. She can't handle this. Alice needs me."

"Edward." Bella's hand was warm against my back. "Cynthia said-"

"I know what Cynthia said," I snapped.

Alice didn't want to see me.

No one said anything, but Emmett kept me moving forward. Before I knew it, I was in the car with Bella beside me. She held my hand, and I tried to think about how soft her skin was instead of anything else.

Back home, she led me to my room. By that time, I was running at about a ten second delay. I knew I needed to do something, but I just stood there. By the time I figured out I should start untying and unbuttoning, Bella pushed me to sit on the edge of my bed. She glanced at me as she started to unbutton my shirt.

This was not how I imagined this happening.

But even though it occurred to me I should tell her she didn't need to do any of this, I couldn't make myself say the words. In fact, I was drained. I was empty inside except for an ache so freezing cold it burned.

When Bella knelt to untie my shoes, I rested my hand on her hair. Appropriate? Who even knew anymore.

"Lay down," she said, pushing gently on my shoulder.

Instead, I reached out to touch her arm. I watched, fixated on the way my fingers looked against her skin. "You're cold," I said.

"Don't worry."

I continued to stare. There was a lump in my throat. It hurt to swallow. It hurt to speak. "Will you..." Was I really about to ask this? "Stay. Please. I don't. .. I don't want to be alone."

She didn't answer, but she sat beside me. "Lie down," she said again.

I stayed still for another few seconds before I moved my hand to her back and unzipped her dress.

"Edward."

"It can't be comfortable." She'd been in that dress for too many hours.

She hesitated, but then she stood and let her dress fall.

Bella in a slip. She was beautiful of course, but I didn't care. Not right then. Not like that. I offered her my hand, and she let me pull her into bed. She put her arms around me and kissed my forehead. "Go to sleep," she said.

This time, I obeyed.

~0~

I woke up with a pounding headache and sore eyes. My head was cloudy. It took me a few minutes to sort out what was real. I grabbed at the phone, already anxious about something before I really remembered what it was.

No calls.

All the bad stuff was real; I remembered that.

Well. I remembered falling asleep in Bella's arms. That was a bittersweet memory right there. All the more bitter because I was alone in bed now. It disturbed me not because I wanted her back beside me, though I did, but because Bella needed sleep just as much as I did.

Of course, there was every possibility she'd just gone to sleep in her own bed. The thought made my heart pang a little, but really, what was one tiny cut when there was a gouge in the center of my chest?

My head felt like it weighed at least twenty-five pounds. My neck ached with the effort of holding it up. I just wanted to make sure she was asleep. Just another weird thing to add to this surreal hell of a day. It had to be close to noon, and there were exactly three thoughts in my head: How is Alice? Is Bella sleeping? I want to go back to sleep.

When I stepped out into the hallway, I got my answer. I heard Bella's voice coming from not-her-bedroom. I trudged toward the sound, though I wasn't sure why. I didn't think I had the energy to admonish her about not being in bed.

I stopped short when I heard what they were talking about. Bella seemed to be at the end of the story I'd told her about James.

Shit. She was telling my brother.

Before last night, no one but Alice had known what really happened. I slumped against the wall, resting my pounding head.

"That's bullshit," Emmett said.

Ah, denial.

"It's shocking, but-" Bella began, but he interrupted her.

"No, I mean it's literal bullshit. God dammit. I should have known. I know he's been a little off since it happened. I mean, that'll fuck anyone up- their best friend committing suicide. But that he actually thinks he could have saved him. Fuck."

What?

"What are you talking about?" Bella asked.

Emmett sighed. "When it happened… I knew he was going to blame himself. Not like this, but I know my brother. He's good at needless guilt. He always has been. None of us saw it coming, but Edward is the kind of guy who would have taken it personally.

"So I asked my dad to do me a favor. It wasn't ethical, and you have to understand, our dad is a good doctor. He's all about ethics, but this was for his son."

"I get it, Emmett. You're not going to get any judgment from me. What was the favor?"

"Well. I asked him to get his hands on the autopsy report. Bella… James had been dead for about twelve hours when he was found by that chick. That means he did it at night. Which fits, you know. He and Alice had gotten into a fight. She stormed out the door, and that was it for him."

I jumped when I heard a pound, as though Emmett had brought his fist down on the table. "Dammit. I showed him the report. I showed him."

"I don't understand," Bella said. "I can't imagine what it's been like for him, thinking James might have been saved if he hadn't panicked."

"Who knows," Emmett said. "Kid doesn't always make sense to me."

"Maybe it was because believing he let his friend down is actually less painful than the truth," another voice, Jasper's voice cut in. "Edward was pre-med, and he's smart. He's smart enough to know when someone is well and truly dead." His voice was soft, sad. "I didn't know Edward back then, but I know him now. I think he'd rather believe anything, including that he ran from that apartment to save his own skin, than accept the fact he was helpless."

I slunk back to my room then, my heart pounding right along with my head. When I got there, I sat on the bed, trying to think and failing.

Emmett pushing the autopsy report at me was a vague memory in my head. I took it from him to make him shut up, and then I didn't look at it. I couldn't look at it. I couldn't actually read the words that would have condemned me. If there was even the slightest chance he could have been revived…

But with Emmett's revelation, I couldn't stop the memories from barraging me again.

The blue of James's lips. The tense set of his body. Tense because rigor mortis had already set in.

It took rigor mortis about two hours to begin to set in.

I dove under the blankets and wrapped a pillow around my head. Surreal. Nothing about today seemed real at all, and it was too much. I didn't want to think anymore. I didn't want to think about James's body and Alice limp in my arms. I didn't want to remember how blindsided I'd been with James and how blindsided I wasn't with Alice.

Most of all, I didn't want to think about what Jasper had said because helpless was exactly what I felt. Helpless to save James. And though I'd tried, holy God I'd tried so hard, I hadn't been able to help Alice.

I jumped when I felt a hand against my back. "Edward?"

Bella.

I let out a long, slow breath and gripped the pillow tighter when she tried to take it from over my head. I was crying again, and I didn't want her to see.

The bed dipped and she laid down again beside me. She rubbed my back and didn't try to coax me out from my hidey-hole. Her fingers worked their way up, and she scratched my head. It calmed me, and eventually, I found sleep again.

A/N: So. There's that. I hope that cleared a few things up.

Many thanks to Barburella and Songster.

Anyway. I've got a rough night ahead of me. Not as rough as Edward's, but I have a final and then The Fault In Our Stars. Guh! See you soon, kids.