Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. No copyright infringement is intended.

As always, huge thanks go to my pre-reader/cheerleader team Gredelina1 and IamTheAlleyCat. Also to Snarkymuch for beta'ing this chapter and listening to all my bitching when the words wouldn't flow. I love you all.

Before I started posting this story I had a stack of pre-read and beta'd chapters to post. Now I have run out and so I can't keep to the weekly schedule I had going. I apologize, and will post each new chapter as soon as I can.

~ Chapter Twenty-Six — Emergence ~

Edward POV

Her thoughts disappeared a moment before she acted. It was as if the steel shutter that hid her memories was now protecting her mind completely. Without her thoughts to guide me, I didn't react in time.

She lurched forward at Jasper and knocked him backwards onto the sand. It was Carlisle all over again. She aimed for his neck, and this time I was sure she wouldn't be sated with just a bite. She was going for the kill.

Peter reacted before I could recover my thoughts and act myself. He caught her around the waist and dragged her back. Garrett leapt forward and took Bella's arm, helping Peter restrain her.

"It's okay, Little One," he said in a soothing voice. "Calm yourself down."

His words had absolutely no effect on her whatsoever. I knew they wouldn't. It was me she needed. I stepped forward into her line of sight, but she did not calm. Instead, she shoved me away with a menacing growl.

A hand clamped around my arm and dragged me out of Bella's line of fire. I was unable to move myself. I was so stunned that she had growled at me. My Bella, my mate, had shoved me away. It made no sense.

Garrett and Peter had Bella pinned between them. She wasn't struggling now, but she was panting heavily for unnecessary breath.

"Can you hear her?" Jasper asked rather rudely in my opinion; she was right there after all.

I shook my head.

"I can't feel her, either. It's like there is something blocking me."

"How about we not talk about her like she isn't here?" Garrett interjected. "You can hear them just fine. Can't you, beautiful?"

Bella nodded and hissed. "This is what they do. They talk about you and plot behind your back. They make you think they care."

"What are you talking about?" Jasper asked.

"What you did to us!" Bella's voice rose to a scream, and she tugged against the arms restraining her.

To us? Alice's thoughts were steeped in confusion. I felt the same way. Bella was talking about herself and another person, though whom she meant, I could not divine.

"What happened next, Bella?" Jasper asked.

I growled at him. After all that had happened, he was still stuck on his damned therapy idea. Like it hadn't already done enough damage.

She laughed; it was a cold, cruel sound. "You want to know what happened after Victoria took me?"

Jasper nodded. "If you can tell us."

"Fine, I'll tell you, but first you have to tell these thugs to let me go."

"Not a chance," I stated. I knew she didn't really want to hurt us; she loved us. If we allowed her to hurt someone, she'd never forgive herself.

Jasper studied her for a long moment. "If we let you go, do you promise not to attack?"

She locked eyes with him and spoke slowly as if talking to someone hard of hearing and mentally subordinate. "I promise not to attack."

He nodded to Peter and Garrett. They exchanged a look and then loosened their grip. She sprang backwards, knocking them down in the process, and massaged her arms as if they pained her.

"Don't run, Bella," Alice said softly.

"Why would I run when you want to hear a story?" she asked. "It would be rude to refuse you after you asked so nicely." She was speaking in a voice unlike her own. It was precise and polite, but devoid of all warmth.

"Tell us what happened," Jasper said.

"What do you want to know? How cold the water was? How we thought we would drown? How when the burning started we wished we had drowned?"

"Tell us what Victoria did to you."

"She took us into the trees. We screamed for Esme, but she didn't come." She spoke the last few words slowly, hammering them home to us. Esme hadn't come, and neither had I.

"What happened then?" Jasper asked. He was doing a remarkable job of concealing it, but Bella's words were hurting him as much as any of us.

"Victoria jumped off the cliff and took us into the water. She didn't care that we needed to breathe. We lost consciousness for a while. It was a nice rest. The last sleep we would ever have. Then the burning started. She had a plan, you see. We heard her tell the voices. We were going to die as a human, and then she would kill us as a vampire. We cried. We cried for our Edward to save us."

My heart felt like it was being torn from my chest. I gasped and held a hand over my unbeating heart as if that could soothe the pain.

Bella locked eyes with me and nodded with satisfaction. "Hurts, doesn't it? We know. We remember."

"Why do you say we?" Alice asked. "Who else was there?"

"Just us," Bella said cryptically. "It was only ever the two of us, and two is all we ever need."

"Tell us about the voices, Bella. Who were they?"

"It was the Volturi. They made a deal with Victoria, but she broke it. We were supposed to be dead, but we were changing. They decided to take us to their master. One of then stole our feelings. When we awoke, we were in that damned castle again. They were talking about us. Aro said he was going to 'test the limits of a changing mind'." She smiled grimly. "He succeeded."

"We've heard enough, Jasper," I said as he opened his mouth to ask a new question. "She doesn't need to think about it anymore."

"Stupid boy," Bella hissed. "We can't stop thinking about it. It is all we know. You don't want to hear more because it hurts you, but we don't care. We have a story to tell, and you will listen."

"Okay, Bella. You want to tell us more, that's good. We want to listen," Jasper said.

"I'm glad," she said in a sickly sweet tone. "Aro brought the voices then. Carlisle and you, Jasper, you came and whispered to us." When she spoke again, it was a perfect imitation of Carlisle's voice. "Because you killed them, Bella. You killed my family, and I cannot bear to look at you now. It is only my duty that I see you through your change that keeps me at your side." She grinned at me. "Yeah, I know about the voices, too. It's a handy talent."

"If you know about the voices, you know it wasn't us that were there," Jasper said.

She laughed that same cold laugh. "I know that; I'm not the stupid one. It's her that believes the lies. She'd rather believe that than the truth you see."

"And what is the truth?" Peter asked, breaking his silence.

"That the family she loved abandoned her to their cruelties. That it was all a pretend and that you never really loved her at all."

I could not muffle the sob that broke through my chest as she spoke. It was just too much to bear. I couldn't listen to my Bella speaking like this.

"We did love Bella," Alice said heatedly. "We do love you, Bella."

"I'm not Bella!" she shrieked.

"Then who are you?" I asked desperately. What phantom had taken over my love's body and made her say these wicked things.

"I don't have a name. She doesn't even know I exist. Ungrateful, if you ask me. I'm the one who takes care of us, after all."

"What happened after the voices were gone?" Jasper asked in that same serene tone.

"Her mind broke." There was a trace of sadness in her tone now. "She became lost to the pain. There was nothing I could do."

"And then?"

"And then the burning stopped. We awoke and saw the new world. They weren't satisfied and the cruel one made us burn again. She made us burn a lot."

"That was Jane, Bella," I said. "The one that burned you was called Jane."

"Thank you, Edward," she said in a sickly sweet tone. "We always wanted to know her name. It will help us when I kill her."

The image of my sweet Bella fighting the Volturi was more than I could bear. I reached out to touch her, but she leapt back, hissing at me.

"You don't touch!"

"I'm sorry." I was apologizing for so much.

She nodded primly. "Good. Now where was I? Oh, yes, the burning. When the burning stopped, we looked for our family. We couldn't believe Carlisle would have left us all alone. But he had. The dark-haired man told us we had to suffer to appease them. And suffer we did. They stole our feelings again, and when they gave them back, the room was filled with blood and screaming. There was a man bleeding at our feet…"

I gasped in horror. My Bella had taken a human life. She wouldn't have had a choice. The thirst of a newborn was so intense; she would have killed her own father if he had been there.

"She tried to save him," Bella said in a mournful tone.

"She tried to save him?" Jasper said in a questioning tone. "Not we?"

"No, we had broken completely by then. Bella and I were different. I wanted to feed, but Bella stopped me. She tried to save the man, but it was too late. He died. Another death at her hands. Or so she believed." She laughed. "She wished she was a vampire so she could have saved him."

"But you are a vampire," Alice said.

"We know that now. And I knew that then. But Bella couldn't believe it. Her mind was too broken to accept the truth. She wanted to be human, so she told herself she was."

"Why did you… she, why did she want to be human?" Alice asked.

"Because then it wasn't her fault. If she was human, she was the victim. If she was a vampire, she could have saved them. Poor Bella's mind was so broken. It wasn't her fault."

It was exactly what Jasper had thought. She was lying to herself to protect herself. The fact that she didn't feed made no sense, though. She was still a newborn, no matter what her mind believed. How had she resisted the blood?

"What happened next, Bella?"

"There was something happening in the castle. There were visitors. They took her away to another room, and Victoria was allowed her sport." She shoved up her sleeves and exposed the crescent shaped scars littering her arms. "She had a lot of fun. All because of the visitors. You know who they were, don't you, Edward?"

It was us. We were the visitors. I had been in the castle at the same time as her, and I never realized. I cursed myself. If I had just paid more attention to my surroundings, I would have known she was there.

"They killed Victoria, you know," she said in a conversational tone. "They wanted her to see what happened to rule breakers. When she was dead, they made her carry the ashes."

To touch the ashes of another vampire was repugnant to our kind. It was a sign of our fleeting immortality. We were invincible to everything but the licks of a flame. Even through the human delusion, Bella must have suffered terribly carrying Victoria's ashes.

"Then came the burning again. She was forced to burn until she could suffer it in silence."

Alice lost the fight against the sobs that had been building throughout Bella's recital. She curled into Jasper's chest and gave voice to her pain. I was tempted to do the same, but part of me knew I had to be strong for Bella. She had suffered so much, and I had to bear her story stoically.

"I don't know how much time passed. It was hard to tell through the burning and feeling-stealing that they did. But I remember when the voices came back. Now they had pictures, too. They showed her Carlisle's face and spoke for him." She spoke again in a perfect imitation of Carlisle's voice. "'Your payment for the lives of our loved ones is to live out your life, but you must live it alone. You must stay hidden from all others at all times. If you see someone, you hide. If someone sees you, you run.' She had her rules and was grateful for them. She wanted to suffer, you see."

"How did you come to be in the jungle?" Jasper asked. We knew the story from Zafrina, but he wanted to hear it from Bella.

I shook my head. She had told us enough, suffered enough, but he did not retract the question, and Bella seemed too happy to answer.

"The woman with the pictures took her to her sisters. They tried to take care of Bella, but she couldn't feed like they fed. She was breaking the rules by being with them. She had to hide. She tried to run away, but they found her every time. Eventually, they understood. They took her to the mountains and made a home for her there. They even gave her things for her human pretend."

Jasper sighed heavily. I think we have learned all we are going to. What are we going to do with her now?

I growled low in my throat. I didn't like the way he was thinking of her, like she was a problem that had to be disposed of. This was my Bella, my love; she would come back to me eventually—I was sure of it.

"No more questions, empath?" Bella asked in a mocking tone. "Don't you want to hear what came next? It's a good story. Bella suffered, and that always makes a good story for you. You were the first one to make her suffer, after all. How much do you regret the fact they pulled you away before you could sink your teeth into her? She sometimes wondered about that. She thought it would have been better to die then, before she killed her Edward."

"You didn't kill me, Bella," I said. "I know you don't believe it, but I am alive."

"I know that. It's Bella that is confused. I know what really happened."

"What happened?" Jasper asked. The question seemed drawn from him against his will.

"See, I knew there was still some curiosity in there somewhere. You vampires are all about the curiosity." She imitated my voice. "Let's see how long I can be around the human without killing her. It will be a good test of my strength. Let's make her fall in love with me. That will be fun."

"No, Bella." I gasped. "It was never like that. I love you."

She laughed a cold laugh. "Of course you love me. Pets are always loved by their owners. Why else would they keep them?"

"You're wrong." Jasper spoke coldly. "Edward loves you. He always has. And deep down inside, you know that. Bella knows that."

"Bella is a fool. She believed the lies that you were dead. She couldn't bear the truth that you had just grown tired of her."

I shook my head despairingly. There didn't seem to be anything we could say to appease her.

"Was it fun for you?" she asked. "Did you plan with Aro in advance, or was it a spur of the moment decision?"

"We had nothing to do with what Aro did to you," Alice said in a kind of moan. "If we'd known, we would have come for you sooner."

"But you didn't come. You aren't trying to tell me you didn't see, Alice. You of all people had to know. Bella was making decisions all the time. She decided to make herself eat human food. She decided to drink water and try to sleep. So many decisions every day. You can't tell me you didn't see me once."

"But I didn't," Alice spoke through her sobs. "I saw nothing of you from the moment I left you and Esme with Seth. I never thought to look."

"Of course you didn't. Why would you look for Bella? She was a toy you had tossed away."

"No, Bella, I didn't look because I thought you were dead."

She fell silent as she considered Alice's words. I had hope that we were breaking through to her, but my hope was dashed with her next words.

"We're glad you didn't see. We didn't want you."

"That's a lie," Jasper said immediately. "You may not have wanted us, but Bella did. I felt how happy she was to see Alice and Edward. She loves them now as much as she ever did. And while we're talking about abandonment, why didn't you help Bella? You obviously knew she was a vampire all along; why did you let her live as a human?"

When she spoke, it wasn't in the cruel tone she had used thus far. It was in a meeker voice as if she was admitting something that shamed her.

"I am not the strong one, Bella is. She keeps me locked away inside most of the time. The only time I am allowed out is when her thirst is too much to bear. She can't hunt for herself, so I have to do it. I had to watch for weeks as she fought the thirst in the jungle. She suffered for so long that it killed me."

It was killing me to hear her talk like this. I wanted to take her in my arms and soothe all this pain away. I was forbidden from touching her, though.

"Why did you come out now?" Jasper asked. "Does Bella need to hunt?"

"She does, but that's not why I am here. When you started probing her feelings, making her remember things better left forgotten, she needed me. She couldn't talk about these things, so I did it for her." She smiled cruelly. "Now I am out, and I have no intentions of going away again. I hope you enjoyed your time with Bella because you aren't getting any more."

With that, she darted away and threw herself into the rolling waves.