I do not own Twilight or any of its' characters

BPOV

Chapter 7

Over stimulated

It was about ten o'clock when I was finally ready for bed. I had taken a shower, gotten dressed and said goodnight to Charlie, and I almost expected that when I got back to my bedroom, Edward would be waiting for me like he sometimes did. I opened the door giddy with excitement to finally be near him but my heart sank when I realized that he hadn't come. Maybe he really did mean it when he said no more sleepovers until school was over. What a letdown, oh well I thought to myself trying to shake it off, I've got the whole day to spend with him tomorrow. I climbed into bed with a book that I had been reading in between homework assignments and work and tried to refocus my attention away from my disappointment. It didn't help, I turned on my CD player in addition to the book I was trying to read in hopes that would work. Of course it didn't, this wasn't what I felt like doing tonight and I was now becoming frustrated.

I slammed the book shut and threw it on the floor and roughly pushed the button on my CD player to silence it. I snapped off my bedside lamp and went to sleep. I was slowly falling into a deep and pleasant sleep, halfway between consciousness and unconsciousness and I felt my body becoming heavy and I knew that I was about to fall completely asleep, when I heard a familiar swoosh type noise. I had the covers pulled up to my chest and was lying on my side with my bare arm draped over the top of the comforter. I didn't feel the bed move but I felt the cool, familiar back of his hand tracing a sensuous imaginary line from the top of my bare shoulder slowly down to my fingertips. I kept still and my eyes closed as a smile crept across my face. He leaned over and I felt his cool, sweet breath sweep over my shoulder and his lips kiss it gently.

"You're late." I whispered, still not moving.

"I'm very sorry," he hummed back in his soft velvety voice.

"I'm glad you're here now." I reached behind me and took his hand in mine.

He squeezed my hand gently in response. I slowly turned over to face him. He sat propped up against the headboard with his free hand resting carelessly in his lap. He turned his head to the side to look at me and smiled, serene and appreciative. Still holding one of my hands in his, he slowly moved it up to his face and held it against his cheek. He dropped his hand away and I stroked his strong square jaw with my tiny fingers. The moonlight reflected on his face and I could see him close his eyes and a look of absolute pleasure come over him. He let his head fall a little bit against my warm hand and I carefully moved my fingers slowly back up his jaw and then down his neck and nestled them just inside the collar of his t-shirt. His chest rose and sank as he breathed out a contented sigh.

I couldn't help but smile at him. It was a completely preposterous thought to me that here I sat with someone that was considerably the most fearsome predator anyone could come up against. He could snap me like a twig if he looked at me the wrong way, and yet, here he was; so peaceful and calm and just because I was near him.

"I do love you so, Edward Cullen." I declared dramatically.

He slowly opened his eyes and looked at me and smiled widely, "and I, you, Isabella Swan." He put his hand over mine, I hadn't noticed it was still tucked in his shirt, he didn't seem to mind. After a moment, he readjusted himself against the headboard and sat back. He pulled me closer to him so that my head was against his chest and put one of his arms around my shoulders. He sweetly kissed the top of my head and began to speak. "What did you do today?"

"Not much, I ran some errands and hung out with Angela. Not nearly as exciting as your day I'm sure."

"Oh, my day wasn't all that out of the ordinary actually."

"Really?" I asked, "You fight off bears as an everyday thing usually? Oh, wait, I forgot who I was talking to."

"Oh, Charlie mentioned that did he?" I couldn't see his facial expression, but I could swear he was smirking.

"He briefly touched upon that, yes." I teased.

"Everything turned out fine."

"Except that now Charlie thinks you're some kind of beast master that can communicate with animals."

"Anyone can communicate a threat; I just have more experience that's all. You could probably stare down a bear if you had enough practice." He stated matter of factly.

"I could?" I asked in disbelief.

He looked at me quizzically and then joked, "Well, no, maybe not you." We sat quietly for a few minutes as he lazily played with the strap of my tank top.

It sounded like it was starting to rain outside and it was steadily picking up, I could hear it tapping on the roof and a soothing feeling came over me. I had never cared for the rain much, not until shortly after I moved to Forks, now I almost enjoyed it.

I felt some kind of bizarre energy coming from Edward, like he wanted to talk about something but didn't know how to start, like it made him uncomfortable to bring it up. I don't know why I thought this, maybe it was because instead of just laying beside me he was sitting up and had me sitting with him, I had a feeling he was trying to keep me awake, which was fine. I tried to offer up a little help. "So, not that it matters, but why did you come by so late anyways?" I asked.

His hand suddenly stopped playing with my strap, "I was talking with Alice." He explained, "She had her vision again."

"Which one?" I asked, but I had a feeling I already knew the answer to that question.

"She saw me as a human again." He said, a little fearful.

I sat up and turned on the lamp on my bedside stand. "Is there any way it could have been a flashback, and not a vision? I mean, can her signals ever get…crossed?" I felt bad putting it that way, it sounded crass and condescending to me.

He smiled weakly, apparently I hadn't offended him. "I don't think so Bella. How could she have a flashback? She's never seen me human before. I was dead long before she came around. I can barely remember what I looked like before all this happened." He said gesturing at himself with his pale hands.

"What does this all mean?"

"I wish I knew. Her visions can change, nothing is set in stone," whenever anyone said that about Alice's visions it always sounded like a waiver on a consent form to me. "but, she seems pretty certain that it is going to happen, and also very concerned for me."

"How is it possible? How can you just," I searched for the words, "turn back? I thought immortality was a 'done deal'." I was so confused.

Edward laughed a little at my comment, "I thought so too, but apparently Alice sees otherwise. I spoke to Carlisle hypothetically about it a little bit. Alice and I haven't told anyone else in the family about what she's been seeing; we don't want to worry anybody until we find out more information about what's going on. I asked Carlisle about any legends in our history about a vampire being able to turn back into a human. He said there are ancient legends about very powerful vampires possessing a living person and 'borrowing' their body for awhile, but that was mainly for evil purposes and was only temporary."

My thoughts briefly went to an Anne Rice book called Tale of the Body Thief in which something like that had happened to a vampire named Lestat. I quickly refocused and listened as he continued. "Carlisle was pretty sure that there was nothing in our history that matched up with what I was asking him. I was about ready to drop the subject to avoid any suspicion, when he remembered something. There is an old Eskimo myth that Eleazar told him about which says that every few hundred years a healer is born. This healer is a person that has the ability to mend and repair any living thing that has a soul; it can be a human or an animal with practically any ailment. The healer has to look into the eyes of the wounded and see that their soul is still intact and pure and then he or she must lay their hands on the wound and it is done. The sick or dying individual is repaired and given another chance."

Edward pressed his hands together and rested his forehead against them and looked down at his lap. "What about the healer?" I asked, "What happens to them?"

He furrowed his forehead in concentration and narrowed his eyes as he tried to explain to me. "From what Eleazar says, each time the healer saves someone, they grow weaker. A healer's life is shortened considerably. Each time they give of themselves to save an individual, it wears on them. The healer has to choose very carefully who they are going to give their energy to, they have to be sure that the thing they are saving is going to live a good life and affect others in a positive way, otherwise, it's just a waste."

"That's a beautiful story, but why did Eleazar tell Carlisle about it?"

"The Eskimos truly believe this story, that it's not legend, but fact. They also know about us, similar to the Quileutes, but they keep their distance and we keep ours, Eleazar is friendly with some of the Eskimo chiefs, for whatever reason, and many years ago, they told Eleazar that the healer had healed a vampire."

My eyes widened in disbelief, "and it worked?" I whispered completely stunned.

"Supposedly yes, but nobody knows for sure. The healer disappeared shortly after the alleged incident and her lover with her."

"She, she healed a vampire because she loved him?"

"So the story goes. But nobody knows for sure, this was a hundred plus years ago. The Eskimos haven't seen another healer since she disappeared and they're about due for one. That leads me to believe she may still be alive."

"Why do you say that?"

"A new healer is born only when the world has been without one for awhile."

"So what you're saying is, two healers can't exist at the same time?"

"Correct." I tried to wrap my mind around all of what Edward had said, it was all so confusing, but the pieces seemed to fit in some strange magical way.

"Carlisle told you all of this without becoming suspicious?"

"Not exactly, Alice and I pieced it together by dissecting the story a little bit and came up with this theory. Carlisle didn't tell me all of what I just told you, it's just a hypothesis." He explained.

"That's a lot to digest." I said wearily.

"Tell me about it." He agreed.

"Well, okay, so you've explained to me in a very scientific way how this vision may be possible, but you haven't told me how you feel about all of it."

He became very quiet and dropped his eyes down to look at his lap again, he took my hand and flipped it so my palm faced up. I was sitting erect now, I don't know at what point I had sat up but I was no longer lying against his chest, I was sitting cross legged beside him. He fingered my hand nervously, making loose circles in my hand. Very rarely did I see him act so human, anxious, like he thought I was going to get upset with him.

He cleared his throat uneasily, "I feel like, if given the option, if there was ever a possibility to become," he cleared his throat again "human again, I would, want it more than anything, more than anything besides being with you of course. I guess you could say it would be second on my list of desires." He didn't look at me, he couldn't, it seemed, and he looked shyer and sadder than I had ever seen him.

"Why Edward?" I whispered. I didn't question him out of anger or in disbelief or even to talk him out of it, I asked out of pure curiosity. I wanted his life, I wanted to be strong and beautiful and young. I wanted to feel safe all of the time and not die if it meant I could be with my loved ones forever. Why would he want my life? A human's life was full of weakness, sickness and aging, a life of acne and hormones and fear.

My expression must have revealed my disbelief because he suddenly said to me, "Bella, I know you think that being what I am has a lot of advantages, the strength, the youth and everything else, but the limitations I have far outweigh the rewards, especially now."

"Tell me." I pleaded

"Where to begin?" he sighed. He hopped off the bed unnaturally, and started pacing around the room, trying to come up with the right words. "I have to hide who I am from everyone; I have to play a role that I know nothing about anymore. The only person I can come close to being myself around is you and even then," he shuddered, "you haven't seen everything there is to see about me." I didn't know what that meant and it made me uneasy.

"Every day of my 'life' I have to put forth so much mental energy to control myself. It gets easier as time goes by, but it's still a challenge to keep up. I can't, I can't go out in the sun, I can't sleep, I can't talk about my life with anyone. Everyone around me with the exception of a few is 'weirded' out by me."

"Edward, that's not true." I said softly, trying to console him.

"It only gets worse…" He stopped pacing and looked at me, his tawny eyes were intense, he walked over to the bed and sat down, his gaze locked on me, "I can't be with you the way that I want to." His eyes left my face for a second to look my whole body over. My heart started to race, my breaths quickened up a little. "I can't touch you or kiss you the way I want to, the way you want me to; it's agonizing." He placed his hand on my cheek and pressed his cool face against my other cheek and breathed deeply against my ear, I thought I would explode right then and there. "If I did what I wanted to do to you right now, I'd kill you." He breathed, only a sick and twisted person would be turned on by that comment I thought to myself, but I immeasurably was. "I can only imagine what it would be like to…" His voice dropped into a low, sultry tone.

"I don't care." I swooned back. His breathing quickened, I felt his chest rise and fall against mine.

"I can't give you children," he whispered, not moving away from me, "I want to…"

"I want you to too."

"I haven't heard my heart beat in ninety years…" I put my hand over his chest; all it did was move heavily with his breathing. "If I could get some of those things back, think how much better this could feel." He murmured in my ear. I didn't think this felt so awful, I thought to myself. The idea of it feeling even better made my cheeks flush.

"But if you became human again," I started, "Then you would eventually die." I said sadly.

He pulled back from me and stared into my eyes. The fire that glowed behind his pretty irises pulled back a little bit, he was coming down off his swoon, keeping himself very controlled like he always did. "That's true," he said softly, "but it's the quality of a person's life that matters most in the end, not the quantity of it."

I smiled weakly back at him, he was absolutely right. How much I would love to be the mother of his children some day and be with him utterly and completely in every way, it hurt my heart to think about it. How could I argue with him? I decided that I wasn't going to. I nodded silently at him, he smiled.

His smile quickly dampened into sadness. "I am very afraid of something though,"

"What are you afraid of?"

"I am afraid that if I, change, that you won't, feel the same way about me."

I was actually a little offended by that. "Edward!" I exclaimed, he looked away from me, ashamed; I took his hard face in both my hands. "Edward, look at me, I am in love with you. Nothing you do to me or to yourself will ever change the way that I feel about you, ever. I am in love with who you are, not what you are."

The fire in his eyes sparked up again, too quickly for me to even comprehend it, he grabbed the back of my head and pulled me toward him and planted his cold, full lips against mine. He pulled at my hair ever so gently and moved his mouth intensely over mine. This was torture I thought to myself, knowing that in a minute he'd get over stimulated and would have to stop. I went with it for as long as he would let me. I grabbed at his hair and moved my mouth with his. He let go of my face and grabbed my waist hard, he was taking it further than usual this time. He slipped his icy hands under my tank top and I flinched with surprise. He let his hands move slightly up the small of my back and let them rest there, and then he pulled his face away from mine. I felt the flush of my cheeks rise and ebb and let my breathing slow down again.

"Thank you." He whispered.

The steadily increasing rain had tapered off a little and made a gentle pattering sound on the window pane. I had been over stimulated more than once tonight and I was starting to get tired. Though he had removed his hands from the inside of my shirt long ago I could still feel them there as if they had left a burn where he had rested them. Edward found my CD player and turned it on, I had been listening to a Ray Lamontagne album earlier and it was still in there, he turned the volume down low and let it play. He turned off the lamp and wrapped me up in my comforter and lay down beside me facing me, playing with my hair until I fell asleep.