Sorry for yet another delay. It wasn't going how I'd hoped so I had to stick at it, but on the plus side, I'm posting two chapters at once!

Thanks so much for all the reads and reviews. I can't figure out how to reply to the reviews I get in my email, but I do appreciate each and every one. I have figured out how to reply to the PMs through the fanfic website though!

I hope you enjoy.

Chapter Twelve

Bella's POV

I didn't want Edward to leave the room, but I couldn't make my voice work. Instead I burrowed further into Mom's chest. I could hear Carlisle talking in the background, but I couldn't focus on the words. All I could focus on was that he was gone, and that I had done it. My family thought they were monsters for what they were. They were designed by their very nature to be cold blooded killers, but they fought against that nature. Regardless of what they thought, they were good to the core. Dad had slipped up when he found his singer. Uncle Jas had been raised differently and Edward had had his rebellious years, but that was different. I was human. Humans didn't go round killing people. The ones who did were monsters. I was a monster. I couldn't tell them what I'd done. They wouldn't want me once they knew it was my fault. It was all my fault. If I hadn't wanted so badly to make friends, I wouldn't have fallen in with James. And if I hadn't fallen in with James, he wouldn't have tried to see me last night, and he wouldn't be dead now. I choked back a sob and gripped Mom's shirt tighter. I didn't deserve my family, they had lived for decades as vampires doing good, I'd only managed fourteen years as a human before screwing it up. But what would I do without Mom and Dad. Without Edward?

I must have stayed like that for quite some time. It's my fault. I killed him. I'm a monster. They'll leave you like your birth parents did. Murderer. Freak. The mantra repeated itself in my head. To her credit, my Mom never left my side, never made me release my death grip on her shirt. Edward had come back after his walk with Alice and sat stoically on the floor at the foot of the bed. If he and Mom spoke, I never heard it.

The others came and went in cycles. Carlisle would talk to me, try to get me to answer questions or at least talk back to him. Jasper would monitor my mood and tell me I had nothing to feel guilty for. I let him assess my moods to reassure the others, but I refused to take on any of the emotions he tried to push on me. Dad would spend all night with Mom and me. His giant arms wrapped around both of us, just holding us, loving us as only he could. Esme bought food, mainly liquids which they could attempt to force feed me. I wasn't hungry. I didn't want food. She tried anyway. Alice came in and sat talking to Mom and me like everything was normal. I was sure her and Mom were talking about me at a level I couldn't hear. I was too tired to care. She would paint my nails and brush my hair and help Mom take me to the bathroom and wash me.

Eventually Carlisle convened the whole family in my room.

"Isabella" he began "We can't help you unless you talk to us. You also need to eat. If you don't start eating, we're going to have put you on an intravenous drip. I'm worried about you my darling. We're all worried about you. If you can't talk to us, then you have to let Edward in. We want to help you. We love you."

They were worried about me and it killed me. No pun intended. I didn't deserve to have them worried about me. Didn't deserve their love. It was time to show them exactly what I had done and face the consequences of my actions. With that thought, I let my shield down and Edward in.

Edward's POV

I pushed the visions Alice had shown me to the back of my mind. Now was not the time to dwell on them, now was time to help Bella. Carlisle was getting worried, hell, we all were. It had been ten days and Bella was still almost unresponsive, aside from the occasional shudder and her grip in Rose's hair tightening. She wasn't eating, talking or even really moving. We'd tried everything to get through to her, but half the time I don't think she even heard us when we talked.

She seemed to register when the whole family crowded into her room though. In a move so subtle that a human wouldn't have picked up on it, Bella's hand loosened slightly in Rose's hair and her body turned ever so slightly towards me, but she remained silent, her face still buried in the crook of Rose's neck.

Carlisle began to talk, a corner of my mind registered what he was saying, but I was focused on Bella's reactions. She seemed to be hearing what he was saying, even as she began trembling and tried to get closer to Rose which was physically impossible.

I looked at Rose, taking in her appearance. Her eyes were black and frantic, the shadows under them dark purple. Her clothes were rumpled, she hadn't changed since we came back and found Bella, she hadn't let go of her either. If vampires could look tired, that was how Rose looked. Regardless of blood ties, of the fact that Rose was technically a different species to Bella, she was her Mother. She didn't know how to help her daughter and it was eating her up from the inside.

Carlisle had been talking about Bella's condition for days. Throwing around phrases like catatonia, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as well as the names of several medications. It was his way of coping, to analyse. Rosalie, who could hear the conversations from the room above, would growl under her breath when Carlisle mentioned medicating her daughter. I could tell from the thoughts of the others that they tended to agree with Carlisle. I wasn't sure what I thought. But before we could treat her we needed to know what had happened and what was going through her head.

I looked back to Bella. I could tell some of what Carlisle was saying was actually getting through. If I knew Bella though it was the impact this was having on the family that was getting through to her, not what she needed to do for herself. As Carlisle started talking about intravenous drips, her head turned and her haunted eyes met mine. She looked straight at me as her shield dropped and her thoughts hit me.

It's my fault. I killed him. I'm a monster. They'll leave you like your birth parents did. Murderer. Freak. It's my fault. I killed him. I'm a monster. They'll leave you like your birth parents did. Murderer. Freak. It's my fault. I killed him. I'm a monster. They'll leave you like your birth parents did. Murderer. Freak.

Before anyone in the room knew what was happening I had Bella clutched to my chest. Her legs wrapped around me as a knelt to the ground, cradling her head into the crook of my neck as one hand stroked her hair and the other her back. She started sobbing then, really sobbing, and I could hear Carlisle's relief at the fact she was emoting. The sobbing did little to calm the rest of the family though.

"You're not a monster Bella, we will never leave you, never. I love you, we love you." I murmured into her ear, rocking us both back and forth. I saw Rose's panicked looking face as she wondered how her baby could ever think she would leave, but Carlisle held out a hand to stop her coming to us.

Too low for Bella to hear, I repeated the words repeating themselves like a mantra in Bella's head and the images that came along with them.

"I can see his face up close to hers, there's a red haze pushing at her vision. She's scared, she knows what he plans to do to her. He says something to her about 'liking the feisty ones'. The red takes over and almost becomes solid as it pushes out and away from her body, I see him flying away from her, he hits the wall opposite with his head before he hits the floor. He's not moving." This was what had happened from Bella's view point.

"The red is her shield?" Caslisle asked. We were keeping our voices to low for her to hear.

"I've never seen her shield in her thoughts before. She doesn't usually see it, just feels it." I replied.

"This is a physical shield though. Not the normal mental one. I thought this may happen when she was turned, but I never expected it to manifest while she was still human. It fits with my theories on what had happened though." Carlisle responded.

"She's thinking about us leaving her." I continued. "She's remembering back to when she found out we were vampires."

She had been six when we gave her a name for what we were. She had never really been around many humans until she started school. We had never hidden from her what we were, and instinctively she knew not to tell other humans what we could do, but she had bluntly asked us after school one day what we were and why she wasn't like that too.

"She remembers me telling her last year about my rebellious phase, how I think I am a monster. She feels she is worse because she is human and still killed someone. She doesn't think she deserves our love anymore. She thinks she's let us down, both by pushing us away for James in the first place and for killing him when we fight what we are everyday and manage not to kill."

"Bella." Carlisle said gently but firmly. "What you did was in self defence. Alice saw what he was going to do to you. You protected yourself and there is nothing wrong with that. Nothing. None of us judge you for it. It does not make you a monster. Any person, human or vampire, would use anything they had at their disposal to protect themselves when threatened. That's all you did. You protected yourself."

"She's thinking she's a freak. She doesn't understand how she did it. She didn't want to kill him, she just wanted him to leave her alone. She's scared because she couldn't control it. She wants to be normal"

"Bella you aren't a freak. You're special. Not just because of your gifts, but because you are you. We know you didn't mean to kill him, he was in the wrong though Isabella. Not you. If he hadn't attacked you he would still be alive. We will teach you to control it, we will help you, we will not leave you. We love you, all of you."

"She doesn't believe you completely but she's starting to believe we won't leave her. It's giving her hope, just a little hope that this will all work out in the end."

"We need to know what you need to get past this my darling girl. You have to let us in, you have to let us help."

I felt Bella nod slightly against my shoulder, the others saw it too.

"I can't stay here." She whispered. " I- I can't stay in this house. I don't want to keep seeing him. I can't face people at school. I need to leave."

"Then leave we will." Stated Carlisle. "We have done it for almost all the others and we will do it for you."

We moved almost immediately. Emmett and Rose took Bella the next day. She still wasn't speaking much, wasn't eating much, was barely functioning, but we had to hope that maybe, maybe moving away would help in some small way.

The rest of us settled the affairs we had in New Hampshire, we followed the others to Alaska. For months nothing really changed. We didn't force Bella to go to school, instead she was home schooled by Esme with help from Jasper and I. Eventually she started going through the motions. She got up, she ate breakfast, she had classes with Esme in the mornings and time to relax in the afternoons. She was having daily sessions with Jasper, our most recent psychology grad. The rest of us would go for a quick run when they were talking, giving them their privacy. Each day we'd come home a little hopeful, thinking that maybe, just maybe there had been a breakthrough of some sort. That maybe we wouldn't have to see the sadness or guilt in her eyes, but everyday was the same, and it was still always there.

Jasper would attempt to reassure us, even though most of us had studied Psych at some point. It was in some ways good that she felt guilt, it would almost be bad if she felt no remorse for killing another human being. But Jas was trying to make her realize that it was in self defence. She still blamed herself for the attack happening in the first place too.

Emmett was probably taking it the worst, other than me. His thoughts were filled with anger and disappointment at not protecting his family when they needed it the most, and not protecting his baby girl. The grief was ever present in his thoughts each time he came home from an evening run to see the hollowness in her eyes. Even the meds didn't take that away. She hadn't shied away from physical contact with the males in her family, which Jasper took as a good sign, it meant she knew she could trust us. But she wasn't as free with anyone as she had once been. There was a slight wall. And Emmett was all about the physical contact, it was how he showed he cared, and while he still hugged her and Rose until Bella went to sleep every night, the fact she hadn't specifically sought him out for a Daddy hug or fallen asleep on his knee was upsetting him. He hated James for taking that away from them.

Alice was throwing her faith into her visions of a happy Bella a few years from now. I could read her immense guilt over what happened, over trusting her visions that this needed to happen. In some ways I could see that it had needed to happen, without it, we may never have discovered her physical shield, and as Alice articulated in her thoughts, Bella may never grow into the person she was in the visions, but it still killed us that she'd had to suffer at all.

Rose didn't need faith in any visions to tell her that Bella would be ok. Having been to the brink herself before her change, Rose simply had blind faith in the strength of her daughter and her ability to pull through this. She had her moments of despair, but she trusted in the fact that she had raised a strong young woman who would not let this ruin her, even if it took time. Rose would not let her daughter drown in this.

Carlisle and Esme had faith in Alice, and faith in Bella, and their combined optimism lead them to believe that as horrible as this was, it would work out, it had to work out.

As for me, I was more upset about it than even Emmett was as far as I could tell by thoughts. I was furious that I had let him get anywhere near her. Furious that I hadn't killed him on the spot the first time I heard his unsavoury thoughts about her. The protective feelings running through me when I thought of her were overwhelming. The fact that he had dared touch her made me want to kill him all over again. She was my Bella. The intensity of the thoughts had been overwhelming. I hadn't understood what I was feeling or why I was feeling it. I had no claim to her over Carlisle, Esme, Jasper or Alice, and especially not over Rose or Emmett, so why was I so much angrier than them?

Then Alice had shown me her vision of Bella and I, together as vampires, Bella was kissing me passionately, her hands fisted in my hair and a wedding band on her ring finger. We pulled apart and smiled giddily at each other, I leant forward and rested my forehead against hers as she smiled up at me. Bella had looked to be around eighteen in the vision, though who knew how long she had been a vampire at the time. We were standing in a small meadow, a stream running across the background. She was my mate. The feelings I had been having fell into place, this was how the others felt when they felt protective of their mate.

At the same time as the feelings fit into place, I was horrified by them. She was only fourteen after all. I told Alice as much and she reassured me. She was right, while my feelings toward Bella were more than platonic, I was not feeling anything untoward toward her. That made me feel slightly less like a pervert, but only marginally. Right now, it was just an insane need to protect her, to care for her, to look after her that I felt, but I wondered when that would change.

I also started to get upset about the fact that this meant she would most likely have to become a vampire. I had always held out some small hope, that perhaps she would choose to remain human and have a happy, normal life. It would potentially kill us all to watch her get old and die, but a part of my brain nagged at me that that was the normal progression in life, and that that way she could have a family. The knowledge that she was my mate and that she had some serious supernatural talents did not bode well for any kind normal human life though.

So I decided that as much as I could, I would give her the space to be normal while she could be, the opportunity to find love somewhere else if that was what she so desired, and some time to spend with the rest of the family, just being a teenager, because if Alice's vision was true, I would get her for eternity. A very tiny part of me was also afraid of what Emmett may do to me if he realized that Alice's visions being accurate, I was mated to his fourteen year old daughter and would likely be his son in law one day as well as his brother. Considering what had happened with the last guy, I felt it wouldn't go down too well.

One evening, about six months after we had moved, the rest of us came in from our evening run to find Bella and Jasper in the kitchen. When we entered, seemingly without thinking about it, Bella launched herself at Emmett like she had when she was a little girl and he had just came home from a hunt. Emmett's face almost split in two as he picked her up and swung her round.

She looked up at him bashfully. "I missed you Daddy." She said, and I had a feeling she wasn't talking about just for the past hour.

"I missed you too Bella Boo." He said rubbing his nose against hers.

"Hope" Jasper said under his breath, relief in his voice. "She feels hope."

It was a start.