Chapter Five

Authors Note: Am on a break! So hopefully more updates more often

Disclaimer: Don't own.

BPOV

Everything hurt. Everything was heavy. My face, hell, my whole side was stinging and sizzling and I wanted someone to get some water and throw it on me. I felt a cold hand running slow repetitive motions through my hair. It gave me something to focus on, but I didn't understand where I was, what was happening. I felt so drowsy that I must have been in a deep sleep for hours, days, but I still felt so fatigued. The ache all along my left side burned. Not like in the ballet studio, but an incessant, unyielding burn. And then I felt my neck.

My neck!

I started to hear tiny little sounds in my semi-conscious state. A small cat crying? I was struggling through the fog, I needed to stop my side, my face, my neck from hurting so. Suddenly another set of hands were touching me, more frantic and less soothing. Down my good side and up my arm. The bad side of my face, the one that burned was being soothed and numbed, I realized, by a hard, concrete lap. I realised that the soft mewling sounds were coming from my cracked lips when the frantic fingers found my stinging cheek, illiciting a soft, high cry from the back of my throat.

Stop! Please!

"Carlisle!" I heard a beautiful broken sob penetrate my awareness as I slowly gained more consciousness, could start to see through the fog. It hurt to hear such a sweet voice filled with such misery. I almost forgot my own pain, as its importance paled before someone of such importance being so hopeless, so hurt.

"Oh, Lord," A devostated sigh from another musical voice. This one carried more bass.

"Her face, her face!" The voice was sounding less and less human. The velvet timbre was morphing into a wounded animal's cry. I started trembling violently in pain as I felt myself being shifted from my bad side and onto my back to expose my wounds, and I wanted to scream at whoever was moving me to please, please stop now.

More sobs now. From the beautiful voice, and moans and sighs from around me. I didn't want to open my eyes. I wanted to go back to sleep! Please! It hurt too much to be this aware. I didn't remember getting this way and I didn't want to for now. I just wanted respite. This felt so close to the fire of my hand in Arizona, but I knew this wasn't the change. I was nearly ready to open my eyes when a cacophony of voices assaulted my ears, confusing me further.

"Jasper hold him back! If you can't control him restrain him-"
"He's trying Carlisle! The blood is jus-"

"Emmett, then, grab him!"

"Carlisle that needs to be looked at right now! We need to wash that – it's obviously inf-"

"Rosalie, if you dare say infection in front of him you will regret it once this is over!"

The whole time this was exchanged a high, keening cry was issued and not from my lips this time. I was gasping and crying quietly, but the angel's voice was upsetting me. Why was everybody yelling and fighting and not helping the sweet voice?

"She's going to open her eyes in six seconds. Edward if you want Emmett to let you go to her I suggest you get it together." I knew that voice. Alice! It was Alice! And the beautiful voice -

Edward!

I began crying even harder now. Edward was the angel in so much pain! I needed to help him, soothe him – my very chest hurt from no physical injury knowing he was hurting.

"Don't you dare let him go for a second in this state, Emmett, she can't predict his actions." A firm voice. Carlisle. I took a deep breath to give me strength to open my eyes and face this. This pain, this burning -

Edward's pain. Edward first.

My lungs filled with the scent of lillies and laundry powder Renee used to use on our yoga gear. Esme. Her familiar scent, her cool hand still brushing through my hair comforted me, and I slowly opened my eyes.

Pain.

I started crying harder.

"Get him out of here!" I heard from Rosalie somewhere out of my line of sight. Edward's whole face was distorted in pain and terror, his brow furrowed and wrinkled, his eyes dark and crystalline, his mouth drawn tight over his teeth as sat at his knees before me, two arms around his heaving chest restraining him as he shook violently and cried. I started crying when he raised his gaze to mine. It made my chest hurt. I couldn't get enough air.

This last comment, though made him almost wild in his desperation. He started trying to get to me, fighting and twisting and contorting in Emmett's holds before he slumped in his arms and let Emmett support his weight, as my Edward stared at me and trembled.

I was going to be sick. I couldn't have said anything even if my lips remembered how to move. Carlisle suddenly appeared – reappeared? - and had a washcloth in hand, and basin of strange looking water, bandages, compresses, and extra washcloths. He also had needle and thread.

My body lurched forth as my stomach contents made contact with another basin that was suddenly under my chin. I tried to thank Alice with my eyes.

Another wave of crying sounds.

"Get it together, dude." Emmett groaned in frustration and anxiety.

Suddenly one of the washcloths was on my face. The bad side. I started howling. It hurt so much! It was stinging and burning and -

Her. I remembered her. Out of my peripheral vision walked the intruding vampire. Every memory of the past evening hit me with staggering force. I had to tell them!

"Carlisle!" I tried to scream, but it was delivered as a hiss. "It's her! She did this - she tried to kill me! You have to stop her, she knows you, I told her I knew you – she knows you, too! She didn't even care! She nearly killed me anyway!" Nearly every face in the room adopted a cringe or grimace. My Edward looked as though he would be sick if he could, and slumped lower in Emmett's hold, his eyes now unfocused. I felt a pinch in my arm, followed by another. I saw Carlisle replace two syringes back into his briefcase. Needles. I held my breath until the nausea subsided.

The nomad vampire looked at me coolly, contemptuously, but sent dozens of fearful and heartbroken looks towards Edward. I was worried about him, too.

Carlisle continued to wash my face and down my neck with the horrible, funny smelling cloth as Esme maintained her soothing rhythm along my scalp. I felt so weak. So fragile. It was taking so much energy to stay awake, but one look at my true love's face and I knew I couldn't rest.

It was me. I was hurt, and he was in pain because that hurt him. He seemed nearly mad from the agony. His eyes were vacant, and though the volume of his cries has decreased, their frequency had not. I reached across, slowly, a shaky and weak arm towards him. He was but two feet from me, but it suddenly felt as though oceans divided us. I had extended my arm maybe one foot from my side before it hurt. My bad arm. But I held it out for him, needed him to take it, needed for him to touch me, I needed the connection. I watched my arm shake. It was dirty and filthy. I remembered falling to the soggy, muddy earth and sliding along the unforgiving roots and rocks with it. I then understood the pain in my face and side. Remembering and seeing my arm, which I think was at an odd angle, and covered in what I hoped was just blood from my neck, I shook all the more, but Edward was staring into space. Emmett saw my movement and knew what I wanted. He shook my Edward until his eyes settled on me.

He was devastated. I thought of him under the clock tower in Italy and knew I couldn't keep my arm up much longer. That moment Edward saw and let a small, contrived smile grace his perfect lips. He was trying to make me feel better. I missed the movement with my human vision, but I felt his cool, familiar hand entirely encase mine. I'm not sure if I have small hands for a girl, or if he just has large hands. But at some primal level it made me feel safe. Protected. Even with my would-be-killer watching me carefully through narrowed eyes.

"He's okay," a pained voice, Jaspers wheezed. My blood! If it was making me feel sick then he must be in agony! I was causing everyone pain tonight, it seemed. I turned my head slightly to see his face buried in Alice's shoulder, her arms around him. That threw me. Jasper always seemed so strong, so powerful and controlled in most ways. I felt terrible. Emmett slowly released my fiancée, and he rigidly and awkwardly moved closer to me. It made me so anxious seeing everyone this way. Carlisle yelling, Emmett angry, Jasper afraid and my own Edward didn't have an ounce of grace or rationality left in him. He knelt over me, and a small, genuine, though distorted smile adorned his face. With the hand not enveloping mine, he reached out and started slowly and gently stroking the good side of my face, like a little boy stroking a kitten for the first time. I had never seen him like this. Esme moved me with such grace that I didn't feel any discomfort, moving my upper body up so she could begin to remove herself from under me. Edward's eyes were still locked on mine as she waited expectantly for him to take her place. He didn't move.

"Edward!"

Suddenly, as though he'd been slapped, he looked at Esme and nodded frantically before replacing me in his lap. His movements were stiff, jarred and exacerbated my injuries. I didn't make a sound of complaint.

He can't even focus on their thoughts.

He smiled down at me with a funny look on his face that made me feel sick. He was totally out of it. He resumed Esme's petting of my hair, but it felt like just that. More of the fascinated little boy stroking a new pet. I wondered when or how he'd snap out of this. I cringed again as Carlisle stopped mopping me up, and began stitching me up. I kept my eyes on Edward's. His eyes were still intense. Filled with pain and love. He leaned down two inches before jerking to an abrupt stop. The corner of his mouth twitched minutely and he gazed at Alice.

"It's okay, Edward," She said softly. His mouth twitched into a crooked grin, but not the one I loved. He started to lean back down again, slower this time. I closed my eyes as I inhaled his sweet, chilly breath, and felt his cool, loving lips kiss my eyelid. Then the right of my temple. My chin. The side of my nose, my ear, my cheek, the corner of my mouth. All soft and lingering. All on my good side. I squeezed my eyes as I realised his hesitation must come from being so close to his singer's blood. My poor Edward. He needed control, needed stability and routine, and he needed his mate to be safe, healthy and unharmed. I couldn't even give him that. This was my fault.

"'m soorrr..." My mouth felt like it was full of marshmallows. Carlisle gave a sympathetic smile.

"That's me."

He explained at the same time Edward cried, "No!!" I felt even more guilty. His crying and sobs had just subsided and I had to upset him further.

"Shh, shh, shhh..." Edward shushed me, trying to calm me down when he was clearly more distraught than I was, though I didn't realise that I had still been shaking until his hushes calmed me down. He started whispering sweet nothings in my ear, literally, in tones below my hearing threshold, desperate yet still soothing. I saw Carlisle start to smile genuinely at whatever Edward was whispering in my ear, and Esme looked almost uncomfortable. The look anyone in the family gets when observing Alice and Jasper's private exchanges. As though whatever he was saying was far too intimate to be heard. It made me feel warm and lightheaded. Carlisle finished up tended to me as Edward's soft words became more breathy. He was trying to dazzle me. I, for once, was grateful. His whispers slowly became more rhythmic, more melodic, and easier for me to detect. I couldn't tell if he was whispering to me still or singing, but I felt his lips meet mine for the first time that night, finally, as I felt another pinch in my shoulder. I began to feel warm and safe, finally calm as I let unconsciousness reclaim me.

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