Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

A/N: This story is rated M for "My most abject apologies in advance. I don't like to see Edward and Bella in pain; this is just how their story goes. Sorry." As usual, if you're not over 18, please don't read. Thanks!

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Chapter 12: Damn Your Lies

When Edward arrived home, the relief his parents felt was palpable. He hadn't realized how nervous Carlisle and Esme had been about his journey before he left for Volterra, but, now that he was back, safe and sound, he saw the strain his absence had put on them. Esme sat on the settee in Carlisle's study, leaning back into the comforting embrace of her mate, holding Edward's hand in her own as he had recounted what had happened in Italy.

Rosalie stood near the fire, politely interested on the outside but in truth wishing Edward would finish the tale quickly so she could get back to her room. Beyond that one slip, Edward noted that Rose was actively concealing her thoughts from him, focusing on the how many shades of bronze she could find in his hair. Russet…sepia… copper in the highlights from the fire but bistre in the shadows…

He hoped she merely wanted a little privacy and that it wasn't because she was indulging in another romantic fantasy that would culminate with him seeing the errors of his ways and groveling for her affection. He shuddered at the memory of the last time she had let that errant thought slip through her head in his presence. The remarkable detail it contained belied how much time she had spent thinking on it, particularly on his abject pleading stance.

"We're so happy to have you home, son," Carlisle said after Edward finished. "And I'm glad that you were able to allay Aro's fears." Carlisle shook his head in disbelief. "He's been surrounded by those schemers too long; he's starting to see conspiracies everywhere." He sighed, sorry for his old friend. "I'll have to write him, and thank him for granting you a private audience." Glancing down at his watch though, he grimaced.

"Unfortunately, it will have to wait until later. I've promised Dr. Cooper that I would swing by before rounds and have a look at one of his patients." He reached down to grasp Esme's hand, planting a kiss on her wrist before clapping Edward on the shoulder one last time. "Stop by the lab later on today?" Angela will want to know that you're alright. You know she thinks of you as a surrogate, older brother. When I told her that you were dealing with some issues with your birth family out east, she looked worried for you.

Edward nodded, acknowledging he would be by the lab after his lectures that afternoon. Rosalie left the study with Carlisle, leaving just Esme with Edward. She rose and took his hands in hers again.

"Will you look for her then?" Her ocher eyes searched his, looking for any sign that he might abandon this course which she still feared would bring Edward nothing but pain.

"Yes, but not today. I want to get back into my routine, make sure everything looks normal so I don't make any more waves for Carlisle at the university." Edward squeezed her hands slightly. "But I'm going to look tonight, Mom. You do understand that I have to find her, right?" His face scrunched up; he was sorry that he continued to worry her, but he still wasn't able to leave this new information about Isabella alone. His mother nodded with a sigh.

"I know you have to do everything you can to find her, it's just…" I hope she winds up being worth finding. Immediately she was flooded with embarrassment. "Oh Edward, I'm sorry," she gasped contritely. "If she was worthy of your love in the first place, I'm sure she's worthy of being found at the very least. Please forgive me. That was rude of me."

"It's fine, Esme," Edward said as he gave her a wry smile. "I hope she winds up being worth finding, too." With a final hug he went up to his room and changed his clothes for a day of lectures and then the lab. Reflexively he listened for Rosalie, wondering if she would give him some clue as to what had her so occupied in her room. She was obviously intent on keeping that to herself as she focused the genetic permutation problem Carlisle asked her to solve for him. Rosalie suspected their father was hoping she would be lucky enough to find a solution where he had failed, and, while she didn't like disappointing him, she wasn't sure she wanted to discover the answer if it would in any way confirm his luck-hypothesis.

The day in lectures was particularly difficult. It was late in October, and, from Edward's experience, the colder the weather got in Chicago, the more people thought about their favorite way to warm themselves up. If these med students were getting laid half as much as they were imagining it, orgies would be breaking out in the cafeteria. Disgusted, Edward walked the few blocks over to Carlisle's lab.

Entering the brightly lit room on the third floor of the building, Edward hung up his jacket and grabbed his lab coat from its hook. Angela, the other student Carlisle employed as a lab assistant, was already at her work station, busy doing the miniprep work Carlisle had left for them to do that day. She smiled at him as he entered but kept her focus on her work. He seems cheerful. Hopefully that family stuff went well. I'm just so glad he doesn't look like Lee did after he met his birth parents. Angela's mouth pinched unhappily as she remembered the boy from her high school who was the only other person she knew who had been adopted. Lee's experience hadn't been positive, and, when she had learned Edward was adopted, she immediately associated the two boys in her mind.

Edward took a tray of cultures from the freezer and carried them to his normal work spot, the station that faced Angela's. As he settled into the process of first lysing the bacteria, then adding the neutralization buffer before spinning the samples in the centrifuge to remove the precipitate, he struck up the conversation he needed to have with Angela to ease her concerns for him.

"So, did anything interesting happen here while I was gone?" Edward kept his eyes focused on his work, not because he needed to watch how much acetate he was adding to the sample he was working on but because he knew a human would.

Angela didn't glance up from her work as she spoke. "No, but then nothing interesting ever does. At least not to me," she added with a self-deprecating smile. Maybe if I was more adventurous, interesting things would happen to me… She shook the errant thought aside, noting that she never had the guts to do anything truly wild anyway.

Her thoughts stuttered over the last date she had gone on, over the summer. She had been immediately attracted to Ben, the guy she had met in the coffee shop near her apartment. She was a sucker for guys built like line-backers, and she still mentally sighed as she thought about Ben's broad shoulders. Unfortunately, Ben had been as thick in the head as he was in the bicep, and they hadn't gotten past that first date. I never seem to get past the first date, she thought wearily.

"What about you?" She asked, shaking thoughts of Ben from her mind. She looked up briefly to gauge his reaction as she changed the subject. "Dr. Cullen said you had to go east for some family stuff." Gosh, I hope I'm not bringing up a sore topic.

"Yeah," Edward answered with a shrug. "There was something I needed to tend to with an account from my mother's estate." The lie fell from his lips as easily as all the others had over the years. Lying was part of being a vampire who lived among humans, Carlisle had explained to him years ago. It certainly was kinder than the truth, even if Edward had no intention of killing Angela.

"Oh, nothing too stressful I hope." You really should mind your own business Angela Marie Weber, her father's voice resounded in her brain, but her curiosity got the better of her as always. Edward smiled, knowing that it was her curious mind that led Angela into science. She always just needed to know things, and he liked that about her.

"No, nothing like that," he said and smiled back. "It was a simple business matter but one that required me to attend to it in person." With that, Edward could tell that Angela's concerns had been allayed. He stayed in the lab, working, for the next few hours, finishing up playing the role he needed to play. As soon as Angela was ready to quit for the evening, he walked her to her car. Edward was as protective of Angela as she was of him, enjoying that she thought of him filially just as he considered her a sort of little sister. Once he was sure she was safely headed for home, he turned south to Canaryville, the section of the city in which Isabella had once lived and where he planned to begin his search for her.

Running through the sections of the city he hadn't visited in almost a century, Edward couldn't tell if he was actually catching hints of Isabella's scent or just imagining it. Was hope clouding his senses? He didn't think so, but the vision Aro had shown him triggered so many latent memories in Edward's mind, he felt as if Isabella had been right next to him since he left Volterra.

On a whim, he stopped by the park where she had found him again so many years ago. He wandered past the field with the tall oak trees where they had kissed for the first time. As he did, Edward caught the faintest whiff of something…not human. It was soft and lush like vanilla with a sweet undertone of ripe strawberries. But there was something else mixed in with it: an underlying odor of chocolate? Coffee? The aroma nagged at him. Like a sleepwalker, Edward followed it past the formal gardens, past the reflecting pond, and out onto the street and into the city again.

It led him to the heart of Isabella's old neighborhood, only a few blocks from where her house once stood. For a moment he forgot the scent he had been following and remembered how he had stood on the porch of that house the day they had made love, how nervous he had been and how very much in love. In the thirties, not long after he had left Chicago to follow Carlisle to the Pacific Northwest, he had purchased the grand, old Queen Anne and had it demolished. It was the only time he acknowledged the anger and betrayal he had felt and done something about it. Though cathartic, it had not done much to cleanse his heart of the ichor with which Isabella's leaving had filled him.

The wind shifted again, and the scent he had been following called him onward, past the seedy corner currency exchange with its neon sign alternately blinking "2:12" and "39˚F." Edward barely noted the time, something that would have sent warning tremors through him normally, especially combined with the perfume he identified as Isabella's. He inhaled deeply, turning his head up to where the aroma was strongest. He easily scaled the building and was streaking along the rooftops of the warehouses that dotted the main street when he heard her voice.

"Baby, please…come with me."

Isabella? Could it really be her? Was she calling to him? No longer relying on his sense of smell, Edward flew toward the loft at the end of the block. There was a light in a window, and the scent he had been following definitely led to this building. But he couldn't hear Isabella's thoughts. Was he going insane? He had heard the voice clearly, recognized it as hers immediately. Yet the only thing he could hear now was two people in the midst of being intimate; the man's thoughts were filled with the vision of a woman's perfect breasts as he grabbed her hips and ground up into her. Edward leapt to the ground before silently climbing up the brick façade that led to the illuminated glass.

"Yes, Bella…oh, God, yes!"

Bella? Edward halted. Could it be a coincidence? If he could sleep he would have been convinced he was in the midst of a bizarre dream. Unable to stop them, his hands pulled him closer to the well-lit window. Looking through the pane, he saw a couple in the throes of ecstasy, perfectly entwined and facing one another on the bed that dominated the room. He wanted to turn away, uncomfortable staring that the lovers like some lurid Peeping-Tom. But he couldn't. His eyes were riveted on the beautiful pair: the way their dark hair made their pale skin luminous, the way they moved sinuously and sensuously in unison.

When the woman came her face went blank, as if years of sadness and pain had been erased in that one act. It made Edward feel oddly happy for her. Then the exquisitely gorgeous woman pulled her lover closer and sighed in absolute contentment. Edward's whole world tilted as her eyes fluttered to the window and he saw the face that had haunted his heart for nearly a century.

Fair maiden, his soul reflexively called out, and his hand briefly touched the glass in front of him. Her eyes widened in recognition, and Edward's mind finally engaged. Betrayer!! All that came out of Edward's mouth was a feral hiss. His eyes stung and his skin crawled and he could barely comprehend the sight before him but he knew one thing: he had to leave this horror behind him or he would go insane.

But no matter what he did, she followed him. He flung himself down to the ground, and she reached down to help him up, exactly as she had when they first met.

Would my lady liege be beneficent or cruel?

Oh, definitely cruel…

He fell back, scrambling away from the ghostly vision, no longer caring whether or not he had lost his mind, only wanting to be away from this place. He sprang up and turned toward the street when he was accosted by another hazy image.

I told you we'd meet again. Although, I'm not sure meeting me constitutes a dream.

If you're not a dream, then you're the best kind of nightmare.

"Leave me alone!" he screamed as the wind blew the unwanted mirage away like smoke. He was running now, as if the fires of hell were licking at his heels, and he was as fast as any of their kind could be. But not fast enough to outrun the hateful voice in his head.

She's done it again. She's crushed you completely.

How could I have been such a fool? How many times will I let that woman destroy me?

Edward castigated himself as he fled through the night. The demon inside him used his fragile, little human memories against him like knives, cutting him and leaving him bleeding like a sacrificial lamb.

I imagine that you, my fair lady, are the sort of woman who leaves hordes of slain men in her wake. Slice.

I think we both let things get a little out of hand. Slice.

I'm not going anywhere. Slice.

It occurred to him as he ran that her new lover was immortal. Did she make him? Will she keep him? Edward couldn't help the jealousy that flowed through him over the thought that she had so easily chosen another. She had come back to Chicago; finding him would have been so simple had she wanted to, but instead Bella…

I don't even know your name.

… had found a new lover.

An obviously more experienced lover, the snide voice inside him added, rubbing a little salt in his already bleeding wounds. Perhaps that's why she never came back for you. Perhaps after your fumbling attempt at love al fresco she couldn't stomach tying herself to you for eternity.

Shut up, SHUT UP!!!! "Shut up!" Edward tried in vain to silence the voice inside him, the same voice that had told him again and again how worthless he was, how the Isabella he thought he knew never loved him, how she had simply used him and thrown him away.

It was his pursuer's thoughts that finally captured his attention, gagging his inner demon. Well before the vampire was close enough to grab Edward, his furious thoughts came fuming forward. When I get my hands on this jackass, I'm going to rip him to pieces.

Edward laughed internally. "You're going to have to catch me first, monkey man," he called back to the gorilla-sized vampire chasing him. He pushed himself faster, becoming nothing but a blurred wind in the night.

Quicker than he would have imagined possible, the man caught up with him; his meaty hand clasping Edward's shoulder and yanking him to a halt in the darkened alleyway he had just entered.

"Get your jollies spying on people, do you, pervert?" The giant's thoughts betrayed his intentions, and Edward was easily able to avoid the crushing blow aimed at his head. How on Earth did he know to duck?

Bella's lover continued to attack him, and Edward continued to parry. He was able to get in a few hits of his own, not that it did much to the nude Hulk he was fighting, who Edward was able to tell was a newborn, both because of his strength and his single-minded focus. Edward remembered the tunnel-vision he had experienced as a newborn, unable to sift through nuances when blood lust was incited. And this vampire clearly felt the overwhelming need to protect Isabella. No, she's not Isabella. His lover's name is Bella, remember?

That moment of reflection earned Edward a body check so powerful he slammed into the brick wall behind him with enough force to go through. Edward sprang up and charged the now dust covered vampire before him, letting his rage at what he had seen fuel him. He succeeded in knocking the mammoth down and pinning him under him when a shadow fell across them both.

"Edward…" Bella stared him with a mixture of shock and horror on her face, her hand reaching out for him ever so slightly. Edward couldn't help wondering if her expression matched the one he had worn just a few minutes ago when his world had come apart.

"Emmett, stop this. Now!" Bella turned to the hulking monster and he froze in the lunge he had been about to execute. Edward noted in relief that she had at least taken the fraction of a second necessary to throw some clothes on. She tossed a pair of khakis to the vampire obviously named Emmett whose face had gone from a mask of fury to a wrinkled mess of confusion at her words.

Edward? Wait does she mean the beautiful boy? Edward's head snapped back to Emmett when he heard his thoughts.

"Who the hell is the beautiful boy?"

"Edward … is it really? But it can't be…I thought…" Bella was walking towards him slowly, even for a human. Her hands extended, reaching out to him, but Edward couldn't discern whether the gesture was meant to be placating or was simply a desire to hold him. The last thing she wants is to hold you, you idiot! That's what she has Tarzan for, right?

Edward watched her intently, waiting for the thoughts obvious in her wild eyes to appear in her head but he could hear nothing. He tried harder, almost leaning towards her with the intensity of his concentration, but still, she was a blank. In his frustration, he growled; springing to his feet and skittering back, away from this fiend who wore the face of the woman he had loved but was in reality nothing more than a stranger. He was suddenly thankful he couldn't hear her thoughts. He didn't want to hear anything she had to say.

"No, Bella," he sneered her name like a curse, "I don't want your explanations. I'm done with your lies." From behind her, Emmett hissed, but her hand flashed back behind her to caution him to stay.

"Please, Edward," she whispered back, her eyes never leaving his, "Oh, dear God, please…" Her fingers twitched up toward his face, betraying her longing to touch him and he flinched involuntarily away from their caress, even though she was twenty feet or more away from him. Her eyes welled with sadness and confusion.

"Oh, please let it be true. You're alive."

A/N: So the time blinking on the currency exchange sign is 2:12; it's not a typo. I was tempted to make it 2:14, but then I realized it would be more evil for Edward to see Bella at 2:14 instead, so two minutes elapse from when he sees the sign to when he sees his one true love. Mwwwahahah!