A/N: Sorry this one took so long. I've been crazy busy. For all those in the US, I hope you had an amazing Thanksgiving-slash-Turkey Day, whichever you prefer, lol. Mine was completely chaotic, which is normal.

Anyway. I want to dedicate this chapter to all the victims of September 11th. I realize this chapter isn't the normal story-like thing and it doesn't really fit into the plot very well. But it was inspired after a visit with my aunt where we were discussing Robert Pattinson's new movie Remember Me, set to come out on March 12th. It's about 9-11, although that isn't widely known. We were just talking about the entire day and how everything went down. That night, I wrote this chapter after watching hours of the videos of the Twin Towers falling. It is, in my opinion, one of the most horrible days in US history. This is for anyone who was effected by the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001. I hope that day is never forgotten.

The schedule posted in this chapter was at the site of the Twin Towers at some point. I don't know that it is still there, although I can't think of a reason why it would be taken down. The schedule is the exact times when the attacks took place, the rescue teams were sent out, etc.

Chapter Twenty-Three: Choice

JPOV

She had her eyes on me from across the store, never leaving my face.

She smiled and I smiled back.

It felt like our first meeting while I knew her so well. I knew I was hurting her. The lies, the deceit, the unknowing of how she felt had to stop somewhere.

The distance between us, both emotionally and also physically, was not something I had ever wanted.

I had lost so much already. I would lose her someday and that would end the point of my existence.

I was a shattered piece of glass. She put me together like a puzzle.

She was beautiful. She was human. She was an angle. She was everything absolute. She was all I had left. She was the girl who had pulled me back. She held me back from the edge of the cliff. She made me whole.

The past was unimportant. What I had been through didn't matter anymore. She made me feel almost human. Without a thought of my own temptation that did linger and with no thought of how to make sense of what I was doing, I loved her.

And there was passion again.

The world was no longer black and white. The colors had come alive.

It was as if I had never lived before and now I was dead and I felt more alive than ever bfore. She brought me back to life with each laugh, each smile. She was one thing that convinced me the world was good. She could not make my heart pount, but she made me open my eyes. Death was no longer the only option.

It wasn't an option at all.

Alice, my Alice... She brought meaning to a book. She brought action to the movie. She brought the sun to the sky, the smell to the air, the moon to the midnight sky. She brought all the best things to life.

She had the most beautiful face.

This kind of happiness was the kind that made people cry and I would have if I could.

She was the very definition of happiness if it was mine.

She was my best friend and the only girl I could ever fall in love with and I did. I had. I would. I continued to fall everyday, never to stop, never to land firmly on the ground.

Alice leaned forward to read what I had written so far, which wasn't much. I smiled at her again, captured once again.

She blushed suddenly, but most would have concluded it was the cold wind as the door was opened. Yes, she was waiting for me, waiting for when I decided the time was right. There was so much to think about and what to do with this frail woman I loved so much. She could not enter my life without changing it, but I refused to change hers so dramatically as to put her life in the danger of knowing what we were. She needed to cling to those friends. That was the way she was.

As much as I wanted to give her, I would not take one part of her life. She needed it to be normal. A life without love was not a life at all; I knew this. But my Alice would never suffer if I could change things or keep her from pain.

It was my silent promise to her.

We left the cafe within two more hours. Alice, Shelton, and I were the firsts to finish with our homework. We stayed to chat with the others. Alice was teasing Jesse about wanting to stay to distract him because he got the least done of everyone. She enjoyed days like these.

Two blocks down from the cafe, Alice was shivering and hugging Amber for warmth. She had on a coat... Well, it was probably a side effect of being from California. Amber was raised in Wisconsin and more used to the icy wind.

Another block down, I removed my coat to give to Alice. My light sweater kept me warm because my body temperature was as cold as the wind. Alice tried to argue and I wouldn't listen.

With the newly added layer of fabric, she hugged me instead. The temperature of her body through the fabric felt almost feverish to me. I loved it. She was so passionate about life, love...

She wore my coat the entire day and if we ventured apart, we watched each other. She looked shy at times and I could guess the reasons.

I felt the ame way, but knowing it wasn't so easy. I was afraid to lose her when that was destined to happen.

She moved to my side soon. There was less demanding that people try things on this shopping trip. She was preoccupied in a way, but not enough so that she forgot I was without a coat. She made me try on several winter coats and she kept my original coat with her no matter what.

She had paid for the suit, but I never gave her a chance to buy my new coat. Her glare went without reply.

"Warm enough?" I inquired soon later, ready to break under her look.

She nodded. "Yes."

I smiled. She was practically drowning in the fabric of my coat. Her hands had disappeared into the sleeves somewhere and she never bothered to pull them out or fold the sleeves up. She looked even smaller that way, and she was as content as ever before. No thoughts to how she looked in my pea coat and her cast.

"It smells like you," Alice said quietly, then she blushed again and hurried away to hide it.

I watched her go, laughed, then followed. The coat smelled like her to me. I never wanted the scent to wash out. No one else was allowed to touch it, and Esme still hadn't persuaded me to wash the mud from our hunting trips off. She never would.

I followed Alice more slowly. She waltzed about the store to tell each person what to get. She glanced over her shoulder at me every few seconds and I was always there.

We went inside two smaller stores before we went back for the truck. Alice and I walked down the street together, hand in hand. The others stayed back.

We decided to walk about New York some. It was New York after all! Alice suggested the upper east side for the "Museum Mile" or Madison and Fifth for shopping. She had been to New York before and explored enough to know where to go. She knew the city better than I'd imagined.

We walked for miles and we stopped by the World Trade Center as a priority. Alice leaned into me as soon as she got out of the truck. The day was one of terror for Americans everywhere. I remembered it as well as the next person.

Forgetting 9-11 wouldn't ever be possible.

I rubbed Alice's arm lovingly as she stared. The pictures, the list of names, the complete horror. There was a schedule of the exact time of how the towers were hit. It read:

Thinking Back

Tuesday, September 11, 2001

7:59AM: American Airlines Flight 11 takes off from Boston, MA.

8:14AM: United Airlines Flight 175 takes off from Boston, MA.

8:20AM: American Airlines Flight 77 takes off from Washington, DC.

8:42AM: United Airlines Flight 93 takes off from Newark, NJ.

8:46AM: Hijackers crash American Airlines Flight 11 into floors 94-98 of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

9:03AM: Hijackers crash United Airlines Flight 175 into floors 78-84 of the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

9:37AM: Hijackers crash American Airlines Flight 77 into the west wall of the Pentagon.

9:59AM: 56 minutes after it was hit by Flight 175, the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses in 9 seconds.

10:03AM: Hijackers crash United Airlines Flight 93 into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers, aware of the previous attacks, launched a counter-attack to seize control of the aircraft, averting the attack on a fourth landmark presumed to have been the United States Capitol.

10:28AM: 102 minutes after it was hit by Flight 11, the North Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed in 11 seconds. All 16 acres of the World Trade Center are in ruins. A rescue and recover effort begins immediately at the site.

5:20AM: 47-story World Trade Center 7 collapses.

Another sign by the construction site read:

"Restore. To recover the 10 million square-feet of commercial space lost in the attacks, five commercial towers of different heights are planned to encircle the memorial setting in a descending spiral.

The Freedom Tower, designed by David Childs, and the tallest tower to be built will rise to the northwest corner of the World Trade Center Site."

The entire group was silent in the memory, and I saw that Alice was crying. I hugged her tightly. The site of where the World Trade Towers had formerly stood was heart breaking. No one could deny that. The sense of death was overwhelming, even for someone like me. I had killed for so long, but nothing like this.

I wiped Alice's tears away before they could freeze on her cheeks. She turned away soon. The rest followed us more slowly.

"Damn," Brittany whispered as we got into the truck again. "I can remember it all on TV."

Alice nodded distantly. "I remember it. It was so scary! I thought the world would end and the videos are..." She sighed, unable to find the right words to describe it. "There was one I saw on TV where you can clearly see someone jump out the window and you can hear the screams for miles. It was the scariest day of my life."

"I was in school and my principal walked in, pulling a TV," Amber began softly, still staring at it from the back seat of the car. "She didn't even say anything at all. She just turned on the news and we spent the whole day watching it."

The stories continued. Videos they had seen, what the day had been like for them, etc. I was silent, too shocked. The feeling of death was still so clear, more clear than any memorial site I'd seen. This wasn't a war. This was so different. I held Alice's hand as the conversation slowly died down. I drove towards the restaurant we agreed on for lunch, but I doubted any of them would be able to think about the menu.

While the trip had been designed for fun, at the time, the silence was appropriate.

It wasn't a war then. It was simply an attack against this country. Whether it was my country or another, it was horrifying. The number of people dead, wounded, lost, etc. These were things every American remembered and could not easily forget.

The day had been terrifying for everyone.

I parallel parked, but we all waited in the warm truck for several minutes. Then I helped Alice out. The smiles returned one by one and we moved to find something else saddening to talk about.

Naturally, Alice was the one to bring it up.

We moved onto the topic of Christmas plans. I became determined to go to Los Angeles and then Texas with my Alice. It would be easier if MaRai was there though... She had a gift and she could block the effects of the sun on our skin so that no human would remember then, though they were still there. Wherever MaRai went, Edward also went, and I didn't know if he would forgive me or not.

I would have to handle that later tonight.

There was a chance Carlisle would be angry too. I doubted he'd ever had to break up a physical fight before, especially since all his "children" were almost as old as he was. I was prepared to apologize to him also. They all deserved it, but especially Carlisle, Edward, and Emmett too.

Alice finished her food quickly and invited me to go on a walk with her. I could never decline. So we walked. Alice was at my side. "So will they hate me?" she asked, and I looked down at her. She saw the confusion. "Your family, I mean."

I frowned. "No. They'll love you." But she looked at me in disbelief and I let out a heavy sigh. "Okay, maybe Rosalie will have a few problems, but it's only because she's jealous of you." Alice looked even more amazed, still unbelieving. "She can't have children; you can. None of us can have children," I explained, and she nodded in understanding, even if she couldn't fully comprehend what it was that bothered Rosalie. "You can win her over though. She's not that shallow."

Alice looked doubtful about winning Rose over, but she didn't announce the reasons. She sighed. "We doing anything special?" she asked.

"No ideas yet," I answered.

Alice smiled. She was quiet for the rest of the walk, her waist surrounded by my arm. We walked for the rest of the daylight, then we met up with the others. It was dark by the time we got to the cars and I took on the responsibility of driving home.

I knew this would be one of the last nights for me to choose, and the choice was ahead of me.

The anxiety settled in the pit of my stomach.

So MaRai's gift will be explained more clearly in future chapers. I kept it short in this one for some reason, but I do go into more detail later.

Also, I apologize if there's TONS more typos than usual. My good computer was overloaded and we can't sign onto use it now for some reason, so I'm on a really junky computer and the keyboard is sticking pretty badly. I corrected any I saw though. Sorry!

Hope you enjoyed. Please review!