Disclaimer: Smeyer owns "Twilight" and a producer credit on that movie that just came out. Elysabeth owns "Les Yeux de la Lune."

T/N: Ah, I knew you guys would like the dance scene in the last chapter. It was one of the things that had me itching to translate this.

Chapter 8: Confession

Everything around me – the tables, the chairs, the walls of the lab room - fell away. All I could see were the tiny drops of blood on her flesh. My muscles coiled; my whole body responded to the irresistible urge to attack. My jaw opened automatically and my teeth were covered with venom. Never was I as close to succumbing as at that moment.

False.

I wasn't close to succumbing. I was succumbing already.

I bent toward the cut, the victim unaware that her predator was dangerously close, too occupied in finding something to clean her wound to think about her approaching death.

This precious fountain was going to be wasted, wiped away, diluted by an antiseptic, smothered by a bandage, dried by some absorbent material. Its warm, fresh taste would soon be only a memory, an unslaked fantasy. Oh, no, she wouldn't clean it up. I wouldn't give her the chance. What an insult to seek to stop this stream, to keep it from escaping the skin that held it back.

But then that horrible ultrasound machine became Bella Swan's salvation.

I regained my reason when I leaned too close to Bella, who was right next to the infernal thing. The sound waves attacked my brain even more strongly. She and Angela had done their work well on the machine when it came to pushing people away. Me, it made flee the school in a flash. If the monster in me had not been so distracted by the torment of the strident noise, Bella would be dead.

It was fortunate that it was lunchtime. Everyone was in the cafeteria and didn't see me running much more quickly than a normal human. In my flight I had a glimpse of Emmett running through a hallway, Alice at his heels. She had seen what was happening. Not rapidly enough, alas. Emmett was coming to stop me, but the machine had done it for him.

I paid no attention to them. Only one thing mattered: getting out.

I had to go away before those terrible sound waves stopped and were no longer able to keep me from attacking. I ran deep into the forest, as far as I could. Running kept me from thinking. I knew that everything would catch up with me when I came to a halt, but like a coward I wanted to put off the moment when reality would capture me like a suffocating net.

I paused only to throw myself on an elk buck whose path brought him fatally close to me. I drained him, and he had a horrible death. Normally, my prey didn't suffer long. Not this time. His agony was long. I punished him the way I needed to be punished myself. But I was indestructible, and this poor animal was a substitute, a replacement, a scapegoat. He was my release. I gave him the treatment that I would have inflicted on myself if only I could destroy myself. My thirst raged. I longed for a nectar far more satisfying than this bland liquid. But I drank till the last drop of blood to torture myself for desiring that other nectar.

And when everything was over, I was so disgusted with myself that I started running again. I fled as if I could leave everything that I was behind me, as if I could run so fast that my actions couldn't follow me. Yet it all clung to me like two magnets, one positive, one negative. The negative one was unbreakably attached to all that was positive in me. I couldn't pull away one without the other following.

Still, I ran until there was no more ground under my feet. I had reached the cliffs, and the ocean waves echoed as they hit. The breeze cleared my mind, but not in a soothing way. Instead it blew away all my dreams and hopes, all that I secretly longed for, all the light that had been in me these last weeks. It swept away all illusions. It carried off all the serenity that had come from simply being near Bella Swan. All that was taken from me, leaving behind only the things so heavy that no wind could make them disappear: bitterness, defeat, remorse, guilt.

What had I done?

What had I been about to do?

I had been ready to kill her, my only love. And that is what I nearly did, what I had wanted to do.

How could I have claimed to be strong? How could I have even thought myself capable of handling this sort of situation? I had wanted to protect her from Charlotte and Peter, yet it was I who was her biggest danger. How could I have had the arrogance to believe that I could be her protector while I was a constant risk to her?

I had imagined all sorts of scenarios in which I inhaled Bella's captivating perfume, but none in which she had accidentally hurt herself.

I had to go back to the starting line, to that first day when the monster so nearly succeeded in his goal. To begin my training once more.

No. I couldn't.

I couldn't restart anything. I couldn't expose Bella to the permanent danger that I posed. I had been wrong. Wrong all along. I would never be strong enough, controlled enough, to handle the sight of her blood. I couldn't resist it. I couldn't prepare myself. I had trained myself to be around her aroma as long as her horribly tempting blood was safely contained. I wasn't ready for a Bella who was bleeding. And I never would be. Humans were so fragile, so prone to hurting themselves. Whether it was a little cut or a major accident, it was all the same to me: to see her blood run like a precious trickle of water in an oasis was a test that I could never pass.

All that I had done, all that I had created, all that I had shared with Bella Swan these last days ... it was all an enormous, deplorable and tragic lapse in judgment.

I couldn't be her friend. I couldn't love and protect her in secret. I was a paradox. The best way to protect Bella was to stay out of her life. To disappear.

I had to go away, Very far away. The other side of the ocean in front of me if necessary. I couldn't stay here. I couldn't win this combat against myself.

I berated myself for having been the indirect cause of Bella's injury, but at the same time I was grateful that it had happened. This incident had opened my eyes: I couldn't be near her. Unless she was in a suit of armor, Bella would hurt herself again in some way or another during the course of her life. And she wouldn't always have near her that damned ultrasound machine to distract the monster. Humans always hurt themselves; their skin was so easy to break, their flesh so easy to tear open … I had needed years of training to resist the view of human blood. Even then I was far from having the restraint of Carlisle. And for Bella, it would take me a millennium, with her blood so appetizing to me. It would take longer than a human life to strengthen myself. Bella would die of old age before I could approach her without risk.

I realized suddenly that loving Bella Swan for eternity was my punishment for what I was. For loving Bella Swan was like loving an illusion, an intangible dream. Loving Bella Swan was to understand how much of a despicable creature I was.

I watched the sea crash against the foot of the cliffs. If only it could swallow me up…

I don't know how long I stayed there lamenting my fate. I was vaguely aware of the day passing, the night coming. My family had probably looked for me, but surely Alice had seen that I would refuse to talk to them, that I would run from them. I had no need for their compassion, their support. I didn't want it. Alice had probably told them to leave me alone for now.

I stayed where I was, a cold statue overlooking the ocean, consumed with sorrow. Humans often said that crying brings relief. For me to find such relief, my tears would have to equal the water in the sea beneath my feet.

"Edward!"

I was hearing her call my name now. She was so deeply embedded in me that I was having auditory hallucinations.

"Edward!"

No, I was wrong. It was too real to be a hallucination.

"Edward!"

Her voice was getting closer.

Not possible.

I stiffened as a too-appetizing scent reached me. Reflexively, the result of my training these last weeks, I stopped breathing while I turned around to face the forest behind me.

Bella was there, making her way hesitantly through the trees.

How was it possible? She was the last person who should seek me out – and, paradoxically, the only one I wanted to see.

"Edward, answer me, please! Where are you?"

Surely she hadn't been searching for me all day? How had she been able to find me? I was miles from the school. I had left her without warning. I had vanished from the lab room in less than a second. She couldn't have followed me.

It was improbable, illogical. Yet Bella was there, stumbling through the woods. Her bandaged hand reminded me of what I had done and I groaned.

"Go away!" was all I could manage to say.

Go away before I kill you! Run for your life!

Like a startled wild animal, I jumped high into a tree and crouched among the branches.

My voice must have revealed my location, for she walked to the foot of the tree and called to me again.

"Edward, where are you?"

"Go away!" I repeated, gripping my temples with my hands as if that could stop me from hearing my name in her gentle voice.

A voice marked by concern, however. Bella was worried about me even though the only thing she should worry about was her own survival.

She lifted her face to the branches high above her, surely wondering how I could have climbed up so fast, but that was the least of her worries. Something else was preoccupying her.

"No, I won't go away."

I kept my eyes closed. I didn't want to see her. It was torture to look at her, to see all that I had lost –or rather, all that I never had and never would.

"How did you find me?" I demanded from my aerie.

"It doesn't matter. I'm here now."

"Go away, Bella. Don't stay here. It's a mistake. We … we shouldn't see each other again. Go away," I said despairingly.

I wasn't looking at her. I couldn't see the effects my words had on her, but I knew they wounded her. I wasn't so deluded as to believe that she loved me as much as I loved her, but I knew that our friendship was important to her. That I was rejecting her suddenly without warning would be like a punch to her stomach.

Could I hate myself even more than I did already? The word itself, hate, was too mild for me – I would have to create a vocabulary to find words strong enough to describe how I felt at this moment.

Bella spoke once more, her voice tired and lifeless.

"I hadn't thought that this would happen again, that I would experience another of your 180-degree turns. You … you promised to warn me, so that I could be prepared, remember?" she said, sounding disillusioned.

I remembered perfectly. But the day that I had made that promise, I was too naïve. I had made that promise only to reassure her, for I was certain that I would never again need to push her away, that I loved her too much.

"I don't keep my word, as you can observe," I replied, as disillusioned as she was. "I'm like that. You can't count on me."

She didn't know how true that was.

Bella seemed to draw herself up to her full height. "I'm not going to let you do that to me again! I'm not going to let you ruin everything! You can't turn your back on me. At least, not without explaining why."

Why… it was a legitimate question.

I opened my eyes, absorbing the pain caused by the view of this being whom I loved and whom I was going to leave. I wanted this pain. It was a fair price to pay for what I was about to do: make her afraid.

I jumped from my aerie and landed at her feet.

"It's so you'll live! That's why!"

Bella recoiled at my words, as taken aback by their meaning as by my silent leap that kept her from knowing where I was exactly. But my words raised more questions than they answered, apparently. And those questions kept her from retreating. She was prepared to confront me. Or so she believed.

"I said before that I would wait for you to be ready to tell me everything. I have been patient, but now I've had enough. I repeat: enough. Tell me what you are, Edward. You've known for some time that you can trust me. That's the key, isn't it – if you tell me the truth, I'll understand everything else, won't I?"

She spoke to me with composure, but I sensed her urgency to know, her need to know.

"You don't want to hear the truth," I gritted out.

"I can hear anything!" she yelled in exasperation. "For God's sake, I want to understand who you are. It's frustrating to be constantly in a fog with you. Why did you leave me like that? Why are you so remote from me now when just this morning we were so … close in the meadow?"

I flinched at her words. I wasn't the victim of an overactive imagination: Bella had been completely aware of my presence.

This reminder of what we had shared this morning led me back to my sad reality: we had made a mistake.

Bella made her voice reassuring. It was almost convincing. "Whatever you tell me, it won't affect anything between us, I promise. I trust you."

"You shouldn't."

"Why? You spend all your time warning me off, but I haven't seen anything, in the little bits of information you've told me, to make me scared of you!"

She said this with conviction despite the quaver in her voice. "You … you saved my life, more than once. How can you say that I can't depend on you? On the contrary: you're like a pillar, a unmovable boulder that I can cling to. You realize, I don't even need my cane with you! And that's just one thing among so many others."

I couldn't contradict her - this Bella shaking in her vehemence before me was overwhelming.

"You … you really seemed to appreciate me as a person. I don't feel blind with you. I don't feel constantly reminded of my handicap, of what makes me different from everyone else. With you, I feel at ease … I feel like myself."

As I felt at ease with her. With her, I didn't feel constantly reminded that I was a vampire. I forgot what I was when I talked with her and I lost myself in her quiet gaze. … But all that was just another mistake. I shouldn't discover more things we had in common, things that showed we weren't so unalike, because they were just more attachments that I had to cut. And the pain, hers and mine, would be all the more unendurable.

Sensing my effort to distance myself, that I didn't want to hear any more, Bella moved closer to me. I stepped back.

"You even read to me! I never felt that you were forcing yourself." Her voice became unsteady, and I made myself stay unaffected by her wet eyes. "You have no idea how much that meant to me … You aren't bad, Edward. Leave that hell that you have created for yourself, I beg you. I doesn't matter what you are hiding – I know that what's in there is good."

She pointed at my chest. At my heart. And her gesture chilled me.

"What's in there is dead," I said harshly.

Her eyebrows drew together and she shook her head in confusion. "I don't understand," she said.

Bella has accepted that I had a dangerous side, but when she learned that side of me was an aberration, a curse, she would reject me. She had to understand, once and for all. The sight of just one drop of blood would have meant her death if the ultrasound machine hadn't been on. I had to prove it to her so that she would have a normal human reaction and run away from me. If I made her hate me, fear me, she would flee. I had wanted to keep Bella Swan in the dark, but it was dishonest and unfair. She had to know, to know just how vile I was. She had to realize that she had flirted with death more than once in my presence.

I had always feared her rejection. It was the worst calamity I could envision aside from killing her by accident. But now I wanted to incite her to hate me because I deserved it. I would suffer, but that would be right. I had to make her hate me to punish myself. And knowing that she would push me away would no doubt help me go away more easily, to leave this town so Bella would no longer be in danger from me.

My warnings hadn't been enough. My words had been futile, but my actions, they would convince her.

"So you want to understand? You're going to …"

I broke the rules I had imposed on myself. I had the audacity to move closer to her than was prudent. I stepped next to her, leaned down, put my lips to her ear and purred.

"Listen to my voice. It's the most bewitching sound that you could ever hear. Everything about me is a lure. I'm sure you've been told more than once that I'm the most attractive boy in school. There's a reason for that. Everything about me invites people in: my voice, my face, even my smell."

I let a bitter smile spread across my face; I knew she would sense it. I straightened up so I could gauge the effect of my voice on Bella. She shivered when my breath caressed her temple and her heart beat wildly. But she didn't move an inch; her entire being was waiting for me to speak further.

"All those things serve simply to attract our prey. My physical attributes are a camouflage. I'm the world's most dangerous predator, Bella."

Her mouth opened. I didn't know if she was on the verge of contradicting me or voicing her astonishment, because I cut her off.

"I am a killer."

This time, my voice was incisive, fatalistic.

I didn't give her time to absorb this revelation. I grabbed her and held her in the cage of my arms. Bella gasped in surprise and I jumped to the top of the tree. The flight took her breath away. She saw nothing, but I knew that the speed of our movement would tell her that I had made a leap that no human could have done. I instinctively found footing on a branch. I kept her prisoner, the monster leashed but pacing inside me. I held her, her back against my chest, my arms serving as chains around her waist. I bent my head again to her ear.

"You feel that? Do you think that's normal?" I murmured, almost cajoling.

Then I let myself drop from the branch, carrying her with me. Bella made a strangled cry. We descended more than 50 feet and the sensation of free fall made her heart miss a beat. I landed on my feet, absorbing the shock for her, but she was still shaken by the impact.

Bella panted, her eyes wide and dazed, but she didn't try to escape my iron grip. She waited. I took her hand and planted it on the bark of the tree we had just fallen from.

"Keep your hand on that tree," I ordered her. "Feel what happens."

I seized the tree and pulled it out of the ground. Bella heard the roots being torn away from the earth. The bark under her fingers slid as I raised the tree, and then she felt the soil-clogged roots, her jaw dropping, before I threw the trunk into the air, sending it crashing into an enormous boulder. We could easily hear the wood splinter as it hit, echoing throughout the forest.

"I am stronger than 10 men put together."

I went on, not waiting for her reaction.

"I'm faster, too." I jumped onto the boulder, then ran to different points of the forest at each of my words. "And more agile." Another jump put me suddenly behind her trembling figure. "More than anything that you can imagine." Bella spun around, disoriented, unable to understand where I was after I leapt once more, landing 30 feet away.

We again were face to face and she startled when she heard my voice so close after believing that I was still far away.

"Do you think it's normal that I can do such things?"

I grabbed her again and flew her to the cliff. I dangled her over the edge. Her eyes widened even more when she heard the waves hit the rocks beneath her.

"A creature like me could let you fall at any moment without the least remorse."

I pulled her back to solid ground and curled my hand around her throat. I let loose a groan rough with greed at the feel of her pulse.

"I could break your neck with one hand, one finger, if I wanted to," I warned her through gritted teeth. "Can't you feel how cold I am, frozen from the inside, petrified and dead?"

The warmth of her skin against my icy fingers gave proof to my words.

"I am a monster, Bella, designed to kill humans, because it is humans who feed us, me and those like me. Your blood is our drink, our diet. I am a vampire, Bella."

I spat out those last words with disgust. They echoed through the forest, their sinister truth sinking into my bones. An unendurable, leaden silence followed.

I read on her face so much confusion mingled with so much disbelief that I couldn't tell which had the upper hand: did she believe me or did she think I was playing a very bad practical joke on her?

I perceived the doubt in her dead eyes, the mirrors of her silent mind. I realized that her "confidential list," her theories, hadn't even come close to reality. I saw the skepticism in her irises. For her, this was all myth and folklore. Still, she was starting to see the truth, to consider the thing as a possibility. I guessed that from her increasingly troubled expression, closer and closer to what I expected: fear. I took advantage of the fact that her mind was half-open to the idea to drive my words home and prove to her the truth: undeniable, fatal, destructive.

"I wanted to drain you. Your scent is the most appealing of all fragrances. Your blood is like a drug to me. I want it. I long for it. I've wanted to kill you from the first day."

Hammering heart. Shaking limbs. Wide eyes. Bloodless face.

Finally, finally … I was seeing what I was seeking and fearing so much: fear. Terror. I loosened my grip and Bella swayed. She collapsed onto the ground, and didn't try to stand back up. Her trembling legs could no longer support her. She didn't say a word; she didn't scream. She was paralyzed by fright. Horror covered her normally delicate, warm features.

I had thought that I was prepared for her reaction. I had wanted this reaction. But actually seeing it at this instant, I felt worse than I could have imagined. Overcome by remorse, I let myself fall into the abyss. The bitterness of my despair and her fear spread in me like a poison. I was being ripped apart.

The black hole pulled me under as I fell to my knees. My legs, too, were too weak to support me. The burden was too heavy to bear. I collapsed, my fists, eyes and teeth clenched, and I longed for the ground to open up beneath my knees so that Hell would swallow me up forever. I wanted to scream, but no sound came out - I was all knots, gaping holes and torn flesh. I was a ruin built of regret and disillusionment. I hated myself as I never had before.

I had never deserved her friendship, much less her love, and what I had just done proved it. I was loathsome. I was unworthy even to walk next to her, to speak to her. I deserved to be alone for the rest of my eternity, lonely and despondent. I deserved the punishment of Hell and a thousand damnations.

I had to get away, but I didn't have the strength to leave. I had to plan my immediate departure. I should think of my family, how I would hurt them by abandoning them. But I couldn't do any of that. I was unable to move, to think of anything than the horrible pain that was raking me.

After I don't know how long, I suddenly sensed someone creeping over to my carcass. I shook and curled into myself more, pushing away this presence who I knew was filled with disgust toward me now. I had thought she was far away by now, running as fast as possible to put the greatest distance possible between herself and the monster.

But she was still here. She was trying to get closer to me. Perhaps she would curse me for having misled her, for pretending to be friends so I could play with my prey…

A familiar feather caressed my arm.

I raised my eyes and met two bottomless irises. The terror I had seen there had been erased by something stronger and completely unexpected: serenity.

I regarded her more closely. I opened the least dangerous of my senses so I could scrutinize her. Bella seemed strangely calm. Her heart was beating frantically, but she was clearly trying to show that she was in control of herself.

I glanced around us. The sun had set. The night had crept into the forest.

I had remained a long time in the abyss, and as for Bella, she seemed to have done a lot of thinking. She appeared exhausted but at peace, as if she had been waging a long battle and had come out of it the victor. Purple circles were under her eyes, a physical sign of her strenuous mental combat. While I was agonizing, she had reflected, meditated. And she had made a decision. I didn't know what the nature of that decision was, but I knew the result of it: she had decided not to run from me.

I was too disoriented and overwhelmed to move or speak, even to utter a sound of stupefaction. I was more animal than human at that moment. More animal than vampire, even. More unapproachable and more savage. Bella must have sensed the fear and uncertainty that ruled me, because she moved away from me, just a little. She sat cross-legged in the grass, patient, silent.

There was only the movement of the waves and the shaking of the leaves during a silence of a minute, or an hour, I didn't know. In this indeterminate time, I tried to understand the behavior of Bella Swan, to find the logic of it. I had been so certain of her rejection, expecting nothing other than that, and the knowledge that she was next to me was impossible to grasp.

I understood nothing of anything, and not being able to read how she was going to react, to anticipate her reactions, to divine what she was going to say or do, made me even more wary. I remained curled on the ground, unease and apprehension joining the flood of emotions warring in me.

"All this is … unsettling," I heard suddenly.

She had apparently understood that I would say nothing, so Bella spoke as if she was talking to herself, not waiting for a response. Her voice was trembling, hesitant yet determined all at the same time.

"I considered myself someone pretty open to different races, cultures, the different facets of life in the world. But this facet, I confess that I had never suspected its existence. And yet, there you are: an example of the supernatural in the flesh."

There it was: she no longer saw Edward, but a freak show.

Was she still here because she had a morbid curiosity that was stronger than her instinct for self-preservation?

"I'm afraid," she said simply.

This frank confession took me by surprise. It should have wounded me, made me suffer even more. I knew she was afraid — I had felt it. But that Bella had described herself as frightened should have been an even bigger blow. After all, it was a confirmation of everything that I feared.

However, her words intrigued me more than they hurt me. Bella seemed to regret her fear. There was a note of guilt in her voice.

Incredible. She was sorry that she was afraid of me! She was apologizing for reacting normally to how I had just mistreated her! It was completely absurd.

Without realizing it, I had straightened up, no longer cowering like an animal, and was now staring at Bella Swan, my gaze questioning and confused.

She played nervously with a dead leaf that her fingers had found on the ground.

"Vampire…"

The word made her smile ironically. She considered that word, studied it. I knew that from her gaze, fixed as always on nothing, because I had learned to discern in her dead eyes when she was thinking intently. She was now trying to figure out how an element from myth and legend fit into reality.

She absently rubbed her bandaged hand. "I understand now why you ran from the lab room, now."

It was all starting to make sense to her. Bella had realized that I hadn't run from her, but rather from the temptation posed by her injury.

"Would you believe me if I told you that I feel exactly the same as I did the morning when I woke up completely in the dark?"

She continued without waiting for me to answer.

"The night before, I still saw shadows. Everything was blurry and hazy, but I had been told that the loss of my sight would be gradual. I didn't expect that from one day to the next everything would be lost. That morning, I was afraid. Very afraid. I was disoriented, lost, anguished. Just as I am now."

She added in a rush, unconsciously leaning toward me: "But it's not you I'm afraid of. Instead, it's the fear of the unknown. It's all so … unexpected. So new. So strange."

Her shoulders lifted as she breathed in, as if to give herself courage.

"But … I'll adapt. Just as I adapted to my blindness."

Adapt? Had she lost her mind? Her reasoning made no sense!

I could no longer keep silent. "The two situations are completely different. You can't adapt to the fact that I'm a monster. You can accept an illness, but not an aberration of nature," I said dully.

Bella shook her head.

"You are not an aberration. I know what you tried to do earlier, but those weren't the acts of a monster. You scared me, I won't deny that. I can't say that I didn't consider running. I'm afraid. But as I already told you that night as we were coming back from Port Angeles, it's too late. I can't run away from you. I'm not able to."

The selfish part of me wanted to rejoice that Bella Swan was as averse to the idea of leaving me as I was of leaving her, but I repressed that part. Instead, I had a surge of anger.

"Do you care so little about your life? I've killed people. I wanted to kill you," I reminded her.

She recoiled and gulped. I sensed that she was fighting against the current, the current of fear.

"But you didn't."

I crawled on my hands and knees closer to her, aware that my proximity would accentuate that fear of the unknown, as she said.

"I have to fight every second to keep you alive, Bella."

Moments passed as she battled to keep her composure. But eventually she crawled to me, closing the last few inches between us.

"I trust you. You won't hurt me."

Those weren't empty words. Bella was sincere. Despite the terrifying truth about me, she continued to trust me. Even though I desired her death, she had chosen to have faith in me.

A faith I didn't deserve.

One last time, I sought to test her acceptance, her capacity to control her fear. I moved closer, forcing Bella to retreat until her back was against a boulder. I put my palms on the rock, bracketing her shoulders with my arms. I leaned down so my eyes were on the same level as her, even if she couldn't return my intense gaze.

"Didn't you hear me? I've killed people," I said in a menacing voice.

She seemed nervous and my breath on her face made her shiver. But that was all. Her tone remained calm and controlled.

"And there is no question that you are sorry about it," she said, tilting her head to the side, considering. "I can sense how tortured you are. You punish yourself. I don't need to condemn your actions; you flagellate yourself quite enough."

Nonplussed, I dropped my hands, liberating her.

"How can you be so nonchalant about the fact that I'm a murderer?" I asked, dazed.

"Nonchalant?" Bella stepped away from the boulder and tried to close the distance I had again put between us. "Oh, Edward, just the opposite: I am in a whirlwind. You wanted to make an impression on me earlier, to show me the extent of your dangerousness, and it worked. But I know that you hate what you are. Why would you stay among humans if we are your meals? You aren't so evil as to spend time with humans and … drink them without remorse. You'd have to be totally vicious and cruel to live in society and kill without scruple the people you see every day. And you're not like that. I feel it. You're not twisted like that. You're different from the myth everybody knows. So I have to conclude that if you killed before, it's because those people deserved to die."

Considering everything, I no longer sought to frighten her, since I had manifestly failed to make her run away. So I resigned myself to explanations.

"I don't drink from humans. At least, not now. Which doesn't mean that I don't want your blood," I confessed.

I felt uneasy. Never before had a human heard the truth. No mortal had ever been in our confidence. I had heard of cases in which humans had found out that we existed, and their fear and mistrust had led to compromising talk, so that the Volturi, the self-proclaimed leaders of our species, had been obliged to eliminate the witnesses. But I had never heard of humans accepting – or even tolerating – the supernatural reality of the world. Bella seemed to be a pioneer.

It was a new, complicated experience for me, to expose myself like this, to speak without constraint. Right now, I felt more afraid than Bella did. Like her, I was frightened of the unknown. I was breaking new ground, and I didn't know what awaited me.

Bella chewed her lower lip, curiosity and confusion in her in her eyes.

"And before, those humans you … drank from, they were like those men in Port Angeles, yeah?"

Always so astute.

"I didn't want to be a monster, so I told myself that if I was ridding the world of a different kind of monster, then Fate would not reproach me as much for what I am."

The more details I offered, the more her curiosity grew.

"And now?"

"We hunt only animals. We're not like the others of our kind."

"Who is 'we'?"

"My family."

"All of you are … vampires?"

"Yes."

She blinked in shock.

"Huh. And here I always thought Forks was boring." A nervous giggle escaped her lips.

I got to my feet, exasperated. Bella rose, too, intrigued.

"You're angry?" she asked.

I paced in agitation. "Yes, I'm angry!" I yelled, stopping in front of her. "How can you react like that? Why aren't you screaming? Earlier when I had you -" I saw again in my head an image of me dangling her from the cliff and I couldn't finish my sentence. "You were frightened to death. And now, you -"

Once more I couldn't make her behavior make sense.

But Bella did it for me.

"I realized that if I screamed, if I took off, if I let fear control me, then I would be running away from something too precious for me to give up."

I froze.

Precious.

I had thought earlier that she had stayed because of morbid curiosity, but I had underestimated her. So that was the reason for her acceptance? That our attachment to each other was more important, more precious than the risk I posed…

I wavered between happiness and torment over this revelation. I was paralyzed by indecision.

Bella continued, apparently unaware of how her words had affected me. "What you did before … your demonstration of your … abilities …"

"It was unforgivable of me," I cut her off, still unable to move.

She shook her head.

"No. It was motivated by your desire to protect me."

"Stop making excuses for me."

"And you stop believing that you are worse than you are. You are convinced that you're bad for me and so you wanted to leave. It's because I realized this that I had no reason to run away. You used an extreme method, but it had only one goal: to save me. It's because of your concern for me that you tried to make me run off. An amoral person wouldn't have dreamed of protecting someone else from himself. You are good, Edward. Good enough to fight against what, I guess, is a big temptation for someone like you. Somebody bad wouldn't have cared less that he gave in."

I didn't know what to add to that. I had never considered the situation that way.

Whatever I said, whatever I did, Bella saw only the positive side. No matter the danger or my inexcusable actions, she saw everything through the lenses of charity and understanding so that all that was left was whatever was good, human, kind. She saw everything with mercy. I was almost convinced to show some mercy toward myself.

Still curious, she sought more answers. However, she weighed her words carefully, knowing how little I cared for personal questions. At least that was the case before, but now that she knew almost everything, such questions displeased me less. But they still made me uneasy, and I still worried that my answers would finally be too much for her.

"Is it difficult for you to be near me now?" she asked.

"Yes."

She took a step back, but I was certain it wasn't out of fear. She was trying to make things easier for me.

She was always that way, thinking about the well-being of others before herself. She constantly worried about being a burden, a nuisance. That step back showed me all the altruism and empathy she was capable of having toward others, even a vampire.

How could I love her even more than before? Love was a word too insignificant for me, too small for what I felt toward her.

"If it's so difficult, why do you torture yourself by being around humans?"

"It's difficult only with you, Bella. Your fragrance is unique."

She chuckled nervously. "I'll take that as a compliment."

I would have laughed too if it weren't for the fear that any one of my words could make her turn around and run.

Bella sobered, observing that her attempt at joking hadn't lightened the atmosphere.

"Why did you seek out my company despite this … constant temptation?"

Because I love you.

"I … needed to be with you, to get to know you. I refused to let my instincts get the better of me. I wanted to control myself and I could … at least, until you hurt yourself through my fault."

She reflexively hid her hand behind her back. As if not seeing her bandage could stop me from being completely aware of her dried blood and the puncture underneath!

"I guess your hearing is different from ours – that's why you had such a reaction to the ultrasounds."

"Be grateful for that machine, Bella. Without it, you wouldn't be alive."

She shook her head obstinately.

"I don't believe it. Ultrasounds or not, you wouldn't have hurt me."

"You overestimate my control."

"You underestimate it, I would say. I think that if you were going to give in to temptation you would have done it a long time ago."

She extended her hand – the uninjured one – toward me, in a gesture of invitation, of welcome. She wanted to touch me to emphasize her words, to persuade me that she had reason to trust me.

It took everything I had to resist the temptation to accept this invitation. The monster in me was present, however distant, buried by the Edward who so much wanted to draw his own confidence from that of his moon …

But even if the monster was far away, he was still there, still real.

"It's a mistake," I said, refusing to take her hand. "It was irresponsible of me to approach you. We're opposites, two beings destined to avoid each other. I am everything that you should be afraid of, everything that you should run away from. I am a nightmare, an aberration. I am the lion. You are the lamb."

Bella dropped her hand, and her movement could have been interpreted as a surrender, a failure, but she had apparently decided not to give up.

"Forget the lion. Put aside your state for an instant. Forget you're a vampire. What's left when you take that away? Someone good enough to have saved my life several times, generous enough to read to me, someone infinitely rich on the inside. A musician I can share my passion with. A person with whom I feel … right. An aura that surrounds me and makes me feel that nothing can hurt me. What's left is just Edward."

I was hanging on her every word, each of which insinuated itself into my conscience, each a bit wild hope.

"Now forget the lamb. Put aside my state for an instant. Forget the prey. Forget my blood. Forget the blind girl, the human girl. Take away everything that makes me different from you. What's left? Someone crazy enough to believe in this … connection between us. Someone who wants to find out where that can take us. Someone who believes that all is not lost. Someone who sees everything you offer me, who doesn't feel she has the right to judge what you are. Someone who doesn't notice time passing when she's with you. The musician who wants to continue to share her passion with you. The listener who loves so much when you read to her. What's left is just Bella."

Scorning the distance I forced myself to keep between us, Bella stepped toward me.

"We are first and foremost Bella and Edward, don't you think?"

She smiled at me. A tender smile completely at odds with the situation. Bella couldn't, shouldn't, smile at me. No longer. I didn't deserve it. But she smiled all the same and it felt as if an invisible weight that had oppressed me for a century had been lifted off me, a weight that I had never suspected existence until now, so accustomed I was to carrying it.

"Are you still afraid?" I wanted to know one last time before letting those bits of hope take root in my being.

"Terrified," she said honestly.

"That makes two of us."

This time I was the one to take her hand, to seek out that invitation, that welcome she had offered earlier.

I calculated my movement, taking a thousand precautions so I wouldn't break her fingers in mine. I watched her reaction as she felt my glacial skin against her warm flesh.

No discomfort, no disgust. Her smile only widened at my initiative.

Encouraged, I squeezed her hand just a little tighter.

That didn't seem to hurt her. I had calibrated the pressure properly.

I wasn't used to touching a human. I had done it before only as reflex. Never had I done it willingly, with forethought.

I congratulated myself for passing this test: not breaking her hand. If I could do this, I could allow myself more …

Before getting carried away by my longings, I returned to reality. I would enjoy in silence the pleasure this contact gave me without aspiring for more. I had to be grateful a hundredfold toward Bella, toward Fate, for allowing me to hold this hand. I should be all the more grateful that my moon was so exceptional, so understanding, so perceptive.

Perhaps loving Bella Swan wasn't a punishment for being what I was, after all. Perhaps loving Bella Swan was my compensation precisely for having fought what I was.

I smiled too, then. The first real smile since noon. It might as well have been a century for me, as difficult as it was for my jaw to let go, as if I had completely forgotten how to smile.

"We can take it step by step and conquer our fear," I murmured.

Bella tried to raise her hand, and for a second I feared that she wanted to pull away. But I quickly realized that she didn't want to break our contact. She wanted only to lift both our hands, and I let her do it, curious.

She unlaced her fingers from mine. I understood what she wanted to do. Our two hands were now flat against each other, palm against palm. As in the meadow this morning, she wanted to re-create the mirror effect in our pas de due. Only this time, there was no space between our hands.

We stayed that way, unmoving, palms together. We were no longer the lion to the lamb, predator to prey, human to non-human, soul to soulless, fire to ice. Instead we were mind to mind, musician to musician, dancer to dancer, partner to partner, reader to listener, philosopher to philosopher, reflection to reflection.

Edward to Bella.

Elysabeth thanks you for reading and reviewing!