-| Glitch continues |-

Talk, he says.

Edward wants to talk.

As though our situation can be categorized by mere words. As if he can explain the inexplicable. As if there's anything he can say, anything at all, that will prevent me from telling him to cross the river to Hades.

But.

What if there is?

If there is, I want to hear those words. I'll listen to the combination of consonants and vowels combined into syllables, words, phrases, sentences that attempt to explain the ten-car pile-up he's made of my life. He'll say them and I'll listen and then I'll tell him that those words he just said? They do not matter. They are nothing but drops of beaded rain on a glossy car, doomed to be erased forever by wind.

I'll listen, but I won't hear.

Then I will say words of my own.

Because oh, I have them.

So I follow his come-hither head gesture down a hall and down an elevator. As we walk, I absorb Edward. His voice, his face, his smell. I soak him in desperately with all five senses. Because he and I, we don't have a lot of time. We've lived together in this little bubble.

And bubbles do nothing if not burst.

Even as we move, Edward is impossibly still. Sure, his body functions as it needs to, like when it swooshes out the hospital exit and slams car doors closed and grind-grinds the downshift. But despite the fact that they should, his movements don't betray nerves. He doesn't sigh or tap his fingers against the steering wheel or run his hand through his hair. He hardly blinks or breathes.

He just…sits.

And drives.

The words we need to create—they're not the type that bloom in a sterile hallway. They're the type that come to life away from civilization, preferably in some deserted forest somewhere. Surrounded by immutable trees, the only witnesses.

As Edward knows.

For that's exactly where he takes us.

He whips his little silver car out of the hospital parking lot, follows a highway north. I look out my window and watch the wind erase water from glass. Then the car cuts neatly off the road into a remote turnabout that Edward should have missed, it came out of nowhere.

I don't even wait for him to kill the engine before I'm up and out, trudging and tripping through undergrowth clawing at the confines of asphalt.

Oh look, we're in a remote forest. Alone. There's even wind. Though this time, the "wind" is following me. And there are other differences, too—significant ones.

In Forks, the forest was life. It was green and fragrant and pregnant with possibility. A world where potential myths and magic oozed from a tangle of mystery, where every mote of light was fairy dust.

Here, the forest is death. Withered leaves shed from balding trees and lie in broken heaps, playthings for worms. As I walk, a final leaf detaches from a spidery branch and falls, defeated, to join its kin. I watch its passing, see it settle in its grave.

X marks the spot.

Stop right here, right where the leaf fell. Crunch, it goes under my boot.

It's perfect. This is a graveyard; words birthed here will be stillborn.

Edward blends with the trees, motionless, watching me. Not fidgeting, not pacing, just frozen. Unnatural. Like a deer that has sensed danger and stands poised, ready to flee. His impeccable face is still as smooth as ice, no hint of smile or frown. Just…nothing.

"Stop staring at me," I snap, brushing twigs from the fallen birch that will become my bench. In the time I swivel and sit, Edward has complied. He glares down at the carpet of decaying leaves instead, as if he could burst it into flame.

He opens his mouth. I see a flash of uneven teeth, the first imperfection I've seen. I see a pink tongue…

"Wait," I blurt. He looks up, expectant, mouth still open.

He's going to talk, but the words he needs to say are so…momentous that they would be like diving into Antarctica's ocean without—I don't know—acclimating first. Perhaps we should ease our toes into the freezing water.

"I have some…questions."

"Okay." He seems relieved.

Too bad I don't have my little red notebook. I have pages of questions.

Start with the easy ones.

"Why is Dr. Cullen in New Hampshire?"

"Because I am here."

"Why are you in New Hampshire?"

"You know why."

Danger edges my voice. "Spell it out for me."

He lets go, sighs. "Because you are here."

"Why haven't I felt you?"

"I haven't been as…close. I've given you space. I shouldn't be here at all yet…I can't stay away."

"You're related to Carlisle?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes."

"In what manner of speaking?"

"He…adopted me."

Yet they all share those eerily golden eyes.

"And you've been watching me ever since I was little?"

"Yes."

"Deliberately hiding yourself from me?"

"Yes."

"That was you in Port Angeles?"

"Yes."

"The tree house?"

"Yes."

I'm silent as the implications of his answers sink in. Edward is real. Edward saved my life. Edward has seen my face in the spectrum from laugh to cry. Edward has heard many—if not all—of my conversations.

Edward knows everything about me. Yet I know absolutely nothing about him. I'm sitting here, exposed to the bone. He's seen me at my best. He's seen me at my worst.

I've never seen him.

I've never seen the wind.

I need to say something. But I don't even know where to begin. Words are tofu to emotion's meat. Words are a poor substitute to express how I've felt, to paint a picture of loneliness, to illustrate the despair in Charlie's eyes when I lied to his face.

So I don't start with a word.

I start with a number.

"Seventeen," I say.

The number seeps into the silence.

"You lurked in the shadows of my life for seventeen years. For seventeen years, I've felt you. In the corner of my periphery, igniting my sense of danger, of being watched, causing constant stress on my psyche. Causing me to constantly doubt whether or not I'm crazy."

"Actually," he says, eyes shifting to my feet instead of his own, "I found you when you were four."

I remember that my first memory of Edward is when I was four.

But I say, "Not helping."

He subsides.

"For seventeen years," I say, obstinately stressing the number because math is wholly unimportant at this point, "I've thought about what I'd say to you if you were ever standing in front of me. If you ever cared enough about me to show your face, to interact with me, to know me in a way that mattered.

"For seventeen years, I've thought of a million questions that I could ask you. Who are you? What do you want? Where did you come from?"

I pause, and he does not say a word. He knows better than to try and answer any of those inane questions. Those are not the questions that matter.

"But I think, now that I've heard what you have to say, I have only one question. And my question is simple."

A beat.

"Why now?"

Why is he showing himself to me now? Why not before? Why not when I needed him? Why not when I jumped off a cliff? Why not in a forest?

With that one question, I am giving him one chance. One chance to say the one thing I need to hear to make this all go away. To start the healing process of somehow moving past this. To get to know each other.

He says, "I couldn't let you die."

His answer confuses me. "Since when? I almost drowned."

Edward looks pained, perhaps at the thought of the things I did to try and get his attention. "I've saved you every time I could." His head is averted; he's kicking at leaves with the toe of his shoe. "But I can't keep saving you from yourself. I had to let you see me, just once. To let you know that I'm alive. To let you know that you're not crazy. So that you can move on. Live your life."

Just one problem with that.

He is my life.

"But I…I need you." My voice is small.

"What I am…it's not good for you. You shouldn't need me."

This is it. We've come to the biggest question of all.

"What are you?"

I'm proud; my voice doesn't waver. I want to know the answer, so badly. I only hope that it's an answer worth knowing.

Edward goes very still again, squares his shoulders, and looks up at me for the first time.

"Seventeen," he says, voice rasping like my car's old engine.

As if that explains everything.

Why is he stealing my number? What does seventeen have to do with what he is?

He continues, "Seventeen is how old I was when I hunted for deer near a stream where a man hunted for fish. Seventeen when I watched a child, a little girl in a white dress, struggle to be just like her daddy. She didn't catch any fish that day. But she caught something else."

There's guilt in his voice. Shame. Disgust. What did that little girl catch? His attention? His desire? Is he trying to tell me that he's some kind of pedophile?

I think I'm going to be sick.

Could it be that Edward is no angel? No supernatural being of good and light, watching benevolently from the heavens? Was he watching for…other reasons?

Could it be that he's nothing but a man?

He doesn't look a day over seventeen. Yet here he is, telling me he's an almost-thirty stalker. My stomach revolts, and I grip myself even more tightly, trying to hold myself in.

I see it now—clearly. Edward is a lot older than he looks. He just has one of those boyish faces, you know? He works out. A lot. His family is rich, so he has money for some serious spy-games equipment, like high-powered binoculars and miniature cameras sprinkling my house like cockroaches.

Oh god, his family. They must be in on this. The Cullens with their perfect faces and perfect lives are the perfect little family of psychos. They pretend their son doesn't exist, set him free to do as he wishes.

He's my own private paparazzi.

And now we're alone in the woods.

I'm standing on my own grave.

Definitely going to be sick.

I'm thinking about buried bones and blood and self-defense and why, oh why, don't I carry pepper spray around my neck?

But before I can bolt, before I can scream, he continues, "Seventeen is also how old I was when I was dying from the Spanish Influenza."

His words are millennia from where my mind has taken me. His words, his voice, his face, they shock me back to here and now and Edward.

This is Edward.

I've never been afraid of him.

"Seventeen when I became so feeble I could no longer play the Steinway that had been in my family for generations. Seventeen when I watched my parents cut the cord that bound them to this earth and me—first my father, then my mother."

I don't…I can't…

"Seventeen is what my mother was thinking when she made a final, desperate plea to a man she thought was an angel."

Never a good idea to mistake people for angels.

"Seventeen is when that angel turned me into his own personal demon. Seventeen is when I died."

Um.

"But you see, Bella," he says, his eyes burning into mine for the first time. "Seventeen is also when I came alive. Seventeen is when found you."

This is…

This is…

Not what I was expecting. Edward goes and tells me that he died back when the Spanish Influenza could actually kill you?

And they think I'm crazy.

I'd had so many theories about Edward. My little red notebook contains a three-page list of potential mythological beings. Somehow, this was never one of them. I had only written down the good ones. I had shied away from the monsters.

I know what he thinks he is. It isn't hard to guess.

The cold skin, the eerie eyes, the blood. The immortality.

Seventeen forever.

I start smiling. There's nothing else I can do.

"You think you're a vampire?"

Now chuckling.

"You think you're a vampire who goes around saving little girls for kicks?"

Now full-out laughing.

"Is that why you licked my blood?"

Now I might be hysterical.

"How did you pull off the whole 'not reflected in mirrors' thing? No wait, I know. More mirrors. That's how they do it in movies, right?"

"No," Edward scowls, "it's because I don't reflect in mirrors."

"Riiiiight. And isn't that sun I see there up in the sky? How is it that you're prancing about in it?"

And I'm clutching my belly and laughing and laughing and laughing.

Right up until the point where Edward stalks over and palms the nearest sapling. I perk up to watch whatever nonsense he's about to pull.

Turns out, he's about to pull the tree.

Because he, um, uproots it.

My turn to be very, very still.

I'm all eyes.

He holds the birch like a broom, its roots perfect for sweeping away leaves. And then he winds up and chucks the tree like a javelin over our heads, where it disappears into faraway foliage with much snapping and crashing and scurrying of small animals.

This is me: …

This is Edward: …

I stare at Edward.

Edward stares at me.

I'm all, "But…but…but…"

Edward's all stoic.

"But…the sun…"

He finds a patch of it peeking through the clouds and shoves his fist into its rays. His skin lights up like a disco ball at the roller rink that Alice used to drag me to. He waggles his fingers long enough to show me that they are not going to become barbequed brisket.

They do, however, make a bit of a snap, crackle, pop.

Then he pulls out and plunks his hands back in his pockets.

And he waits.

And that's about the point where things get kinda hazy. After all, in the space of a few hours, I've threatened to kill myself, have broken my hand, been carried on air, become nauseated at the idea of my own Peeping Tom, and have watched a person I've never seen before do things I've never seen before.

Vampire.

He's a vampire.

That's better than pedophiliac stalker.

I think.

"Okay," I say. "This doesn't change anything."

And it really doesn't.

"So you're a vampire. So you're super strong and super fast and super sparkly. That doesn't impress me. Am I supposed to roll over and forgive you because you could decapitate me by flicking my forehead?"

"No." Edward seems horrified. "I don't want you to forgive me. And I would never, ever do anything to hurt you."

Not physically, at least.

"You don't want me to forgive you?"

"No. What I've done to you…it's beyond reprehensible. I'm beyond forgiveness."

"Then why did you do it? Why didn't you just…talk to me?"

He's quiet, contemplative, as though he's asked himself that very question. "Because we're both seventeen. But only one of us is supposed to be. For you, seventeen is how many years ago you were born. Seventeen is what you'll be once and then never again. Seventeen is how many years I've let you live, protecting you from your fellow man and yourself. Seventeen is how many years I've protected you—from me."

"But why? Why didn't you just leave? Live your own life?"

I don't know much about vampires, but I do know that they're not famous for their compassion, their morals, their interest in mortals.

His answer is three words, the merest whisper of wind.

The three words.

The three words I had hoped Edward would say. The three words that I thought could make this all go away, could calm the anger threatening to explode my heart like a grenade. The three words that I had wanted to hear more than anything in the world.

You know which three.

But now that I've heard them, I can't believe them.

Vampires, they don't love.

"No," I say. "You don't."

"What?" Edward frowns, eyelashes a'flutter.

"You don't love me. You can't possibly. When you love someone, you show it. You don't stand passively by while life happens to them. You talk to the person, you laugh with the person, you cry with the person. You put that person above yourself."

This is my speech, the one I've researched the heck out of and read all about in tomes of psychology textbooks. Of course, the textbooks say nothing of vampires, but I presume the basic tenets are still true.

"Love is a verb. It's not a noun. It's not a feeling you get when you look at me. It's not your heart pounding or your skin glowing or your testosterone pumping. It's what you do. And nothing you've done has been in the language of love."

Edward says, "You say that what I've done has not been out of love. But I say that greater love has no one than this. That I've laid down my life for you, as your friend. Your imaginary friend. Nothing more."

Nothing more.

He doesn't want me.

He brought me here to say goodbye.

I take a deep breath.

"You've watched me while I've slept. You've spied on my private conversations. You've seen me stumble and bumble through life. Heck, you've probably seen me naked. You are the most sick, most twisted creature I have ever known. I'd like to say that you're the most sick, most twisted person I've ever met. But I've never met you. And you're not a person."

In my dreams, in my fantasies since that fateful day in another forest when I stood laying it all down for him, screaming at the top of my lungs, I had thought about telling him these things a thousand times. Every day for years.

Now I'm getting to say them. And I'm not feeling quite like I thought I would. In my dreams, I wasn't having to look him in the face. That gloriously sad, vampire-pretty face.

Yet I press on. "You're not a person. You're a monster."

The monster's eyes flicker; the merest puff will extinguish their life.

"Monster," I whisper. "This is the last time you will ever see me."

And the monster's golden eyes burn out. A part of me burns with them. But I press on.

"Do you understand?" I demand.

The monster nods, eyes dropping away to his feet.

As I leave that graveyard, stumbling and bumbling my way toward home, I can't help but look back for a statue, slowly crumbling to dust.

But Edward is gone.

Edward Cullen's review of this chapter: Life. Love. Meaning. Over.