I do not own Twilight or any of its' characters

EPOV

Chapter 29

Hypothesis

We got home and were greeted cheerfully by Topaz, swirling and weaving around our feet mewing. I lifted him off the floor and scratched his chin roughly and replaced him back down.

"Edward, what is going on?" Bella asked sternly, very nearly tapping her foot on the tiled floor.

"Very well, sit down." I held a hand out to the kitchen table. Bella crossed her arms and sat down. I removed my jacket and heard my stomach growl. I still hadn't eaten anything since this morning. I hit the button on the coffeemaker and went to the fridge to grab myself something quick, returning with a couple of pieces of cheese.

"You didn't get to eat today did you?" She asked.

"Nope. Not at all."

"Okay, so start from the beginning." She pressed.

I explained how the professor had died over the weekend, and how the assistant chef, Chef Scott was going to be taking over. It all seemed like an average enough day with the exception of my unexplained foul mood and the professor's death. Then I began to tell her about the conversation Scott and I had had and I watched her expression change from indifference, to intrigue, to concern and then finally, to panic.

"What exactly did he say about your appearance?" She asked uneasily.

"He said that I looked, 'healthier', that last semester I was pale and skinny and that now I looked like I had a tan. He said whatever I was doing was working for me." I said bitterly.

"How would he be able to tell all that after only seeing you a few times?" she asked, confused.

"I don't know." I said shakily, getting up to shut off the gurgling coffee maker. I pulled a mug out of the cupboard and started making my coffee.

"Who knows? Maybe it was all a coincidence. Maybe he was just trying to get a rise out of you because he was sensing a little of your animosity for him." I walked over to the table and placed a cup of coffee in front of her and sat down across from her. "Thanks." She said taking a sip. "Couldn't you read his thoughts?" She continued.

I rolled my eyes, "he caught me so off guard that I wasn't paying attention at that moment. I'm not as sensitive to other people's minds as I was before. I probably should have thought of that at the time."

"I wouldn't think too much about it." She said, lowering her eyes to the table and wrapping her hands tightly around her mug. She was such a terrible liar, I felt like she was more concerned than she was coming off as but I didn't press the issue. How much I wished I could read her thoughts at times like this.

"So then what happened?" She asked calmly.

"Then, when I finally arrived to the second part of class, I was so distracted that first I burnt myself and then I sliced my hand open with a chef's knife. Hence…" I said wiggling my mangled limb at her with a smirk.

She smiled at me and took my damaged hand carefully into hers, bringing it up to her face and kissing it softly. "Looks like you've got a case of Swan syndrome," she teased.

I smiled crookedly at her, my first real smile of the day, and said, "I don't think I'll ever get to that point. You've set the bar very high already."

She laughed softly and turned my hand over gently to look at the back of it "Where did you burn yourself on the right or the left?"

"The left, same hand with the stitches," I answered, confused.

"It must not have been too bad of a burn because there's nothing here." She said reexamining my hand.

"Bella, it was practically a second degree burn, it started blistering almost immediately." I argued.

"And I'm telling you that there's nothing here, the skin isn't even pink." She said staring up at me. "Look."

I retracted my hand away from her and examined the burn site. She was right; there was nothing, not even the slightest indication of the accident. Now that I thought about it, my hand had stopped hurting hours ago. Then I remembered, the whole incident came back to me, I remembered my blood dripping down over the burn and feeling the pain disappear. I leapt out of my chair in horror, backing up against the wall and holding my hand in front of me, like it was some kind of entity I couldn't control. I startled Bella and she gasped and jumped out of her chair as well.

"What is it?" She asked, her voice rising, "What's the matter? Are you in pain?"

"No, no, nothing like that. It's just, Bella, I had a huge burn on the back of my hand and it's gone now. I think, I think something's happening to me."

She kneaded her forehead with her hand and shut her eyes, trying to concentrate. I felt like a child, like a frightened, melodramatic child and I could sense I was stressing her out.

"What, do you mean, you think something's happening to you?" She asked slowly, her voice was tense.

How could I tell her that my hypothesis was that my blood had healing properties? Recapping the entire story was confusing to me, and I was there. How would I be able to clearly explain that to her when it made no sense to me? The only thing I could do was test my theory to be certain.

"Grab me a knife." I said, my voice shaking.

"What?!"

"Bella, please, just do this for me. I need to be sure."

She sighed and backed up slowly to the counter, reaching into the butcher block and grabbing a paring knife, keeping her eyes locked on me, while I remained against the wall. She hesitantly handed it to me.

I rolled up my sleeve and extended my forearm, swallowing hard. Bella stood frozen bringing her hand up to her mouth silently as she watched me. I locked my eyes on hers and took a few deep breaths as I slid the blade of the knife against my exposed arm. A thin line of blood beaded up on the surface of my arm immediately. I rolled up the sleeve on my other arm and extended it and sliced into that as well, making another tiny gash.

This time, Bella actually gasped out loud and shouted at me to stop.

"Just wait!" I growled at her fiercely, that startled her as well, and I immediately regretted losing my temper with her. "Please," I said more controlled, "just wait."

I waited for the two gashes to bleed out a little more; I pinched the skin around them to milk out some more of the thick liquid, like taking venom from a snake. Once I was satisfied enough blood was flowing, I pressed my two arms together, laying one gash atop the other and waited. I waited for about two minutes, Bella scowling and worrying the whole time, I felt like I would pass out, but stayed still. Then, I slowly pulled my arms apart to see if my theory had worked. The blood had stopped and dried, and I went to the sink to wash up.

I dried my arms and looked down, both gashes were gone. Not the slightest scratch or scab remained, Bella still stood in her spot, probably truly believing that I had lost my mind.

"Bella," I called to her from the sink, my voice on the brink of panic. I held my arms out with my palms facing up so that she could see what had just happened. "What does this mean?" I whispered.

She came over to me and looked at my unscathed forearms, which were now shaking slightly. She ran her warm, soft hands along them and gazed up at my face. Her dark, liquid brown eyes pierced through me and I felt myself falling into her trance. I felt a sense of calm slowly coming over me.

"I don't know." She breathed. She ran her fingertips over me again and again, and looked up at me. "Are you telling me that your blood can heal things?" She asked almost too quietly for me to hear

"I think so."

"We need to be sure of what's going on."

"What are you suggesting?" I asked.

"Try me."

"That's absurd Bella." I argued. "There's no reason for that."

"Isn't there?" she rolled up her pant leg and revealed a fairly new scrape on her shin that was mending.

"When did you do that?" I asked, distracted suddenly.

"The other day at the gym, I got off a step machine and the pedal swung up too quickly and scraped me pretty bad."

"Since when do you go to the gym?" I retorted, completely confused.

"I started right after you left on break. I needed to do something with my time. Now I go on my long breaks between classes. The girls come with me sometimes too." She explained. "Anyways," she hoisted her leg up on the counter, wobbling for a moment. I quickly put my arm around her waist so she wouldn't lose her balance. "We can test your theory on me now."

"I don't think that's a good idea." I objected, as the irrational fear that her blood would send me into some kind of frenzy swept over me.

She watched me skeptically and finally said, "Edward, nothing is going to happen," as if she could suddenly read my thoughts.

Hesitantly, I let go of her waist and stepped away for a second to grab a paper towel and the paring knife. I handed her the towel, and she used it to help peel back the scab on her leg, wincing slightly. She removed the towel and blood started to flow freely from the wound. I stared at it pooling up and glistening under the light. I could smell the blood, but just barely. Had this been a few months ago, I surely would have had to leave the room to avoid endangering her, but now, I was unaffected.

I tightened my jaw and cut my arm again, I would have gone for a finger, but I figured they had suffered enough for one day. A jagged line of liquid oozed from the cut, again, I squeezed the surrounding tissues to promote more bleeding. Bella watched me curiously as she let her leg bleed all over the place and I positioned my arm close to her wound. A drop began to form, and then another and I squeezed my arm harder, anxious for this to be over. It felt like several hours had passed, when in reality, it was only a few seconds.

I watched Bella's eyes widen with anticipation, her standing leg shook a little, we probably should have found a more ergonomic way to test my theory, I thought to myself. "So," I started, trying to lighten the moment, "is this a turn on or what?" I smiled crookedly at her.

"Oh yeah baby," she replied sarcastically.

The drop fell from my arm, followed another and another, all landing on Bella's pale little leg. I let a few more drop directly into the wound and then retracted my arm. For a moment, nothing happened. Bella's leg continued to ooze, her blood now intermingling with mine and still, nothing happened. I walked away in confusion to find a bandage for my arm.

"Edward!" she cried suddenly. I hurried over to her, putting pressure on my arm and stared at her questioningly. "Look." She whispered, pointing at her leg.

I watched the wound on her leg heal up and disappear. It happened so quickly that if I had blinked, I would have missed it.

"Carlisle, I don't understand what's happening. I don't know how any of this is possible." I said frantically into the phone.

"Edward, settle down, you need to be calm." My father's voice placated me on the other end. "Do you have access to any medical supplies? Syringes, EDTA tubes, serum separators?"

"Not exactly, but I can find a way."

"Good, when you access them, take a blood sample and overnight it to me, I'll use the lab in the hospital and run some tests."

"Fine, I'll see what I can do." I said curtly.

"But Edward, the answer may never be found, it just might be one of those unexplained miracles of nature."

"Miracle?" I scoffed, "More like an abomination."

"I wouldn't go so far to say that." Carlisle gently laughed on the other end.

"Why can't I just be normal?" I asked miserably, pacing around the kitchen, Bella's chocolate brown eyes locked on me the whole time.

"Because, you are an exceptional being, Edward, It's not necessarily a bad thing."

"I don't want to be exceptional. I just want to be average." I said becoming frustrated. She stood beside me and placed a hand on my lower back to stop me from moving. I pulled her into my chest as I listened to Carlisle speak.

"You will never be average, son, you need to eventually come to terms with that." I had no way of responding to that statement, none that I could think of so I just sighed into the phone. "I'm getting paged, I have to go, but try and get that sample out here as soon as you can, I'm anxious to see what the tests will show."

"I'll do my best. Thank you Carlisle, give everyone my regards."

"Edward, I wouldn't worry about this too much if I were you, if this is part of who you are now, it would be foolish to lose sleep over it. Especially since you seem to enjoy sleeping so much," he added. I smiled weakly.

"Have you seen the person who sleeps beside me? You'd enjoy staying in bed too."

I heard him chuckling softly on the other end of the line and I started to feel better, "Give Bella my best. I'll talk to you soon." And with that, he hung up.

I held Bella closer to me and she embraced me tightly and kissed my chest through my shirt. "Tell me something," she said.

"What's that?" I asked looking down at her.

"Why is this upsetting you so much?"

"I'm not sure. Perhaps if it were a different day, I wouldn't feel the same, but it just feels like with everything that's happened today, there's some kind of alarm in the air, some kind of warning that I'm not picking up on. I'm sure I'm just overreacting."

"Possibly, we humans have a tendency to do that."

"Yes, I suppose we do," I rested my chin on top of her head, inhaling the lovely scent of her shampoo. We stood together for a minute or two silently and I knew the conversation of my miraculous, ailment healing blood was over, thankfully. "So, what are your plans for the evening?" I asked.

"I was thinking about going to the gym, I had a test to study for, so I couldn't go between classes today." She replied.

My heart sank. I was hoping she didn't have any plans so then we could spend the night together. I had a few assignments due toward the end of the week, but I had no desire to put any work into them tonight. For some reason today the need to be by her side was overwhelming. I probably could have asked her to stay home with me and she would have obliged, but I didn't want to make her unhappy or make her feel guilty. I tried to think of an alternative so I could satisfy my selfish needs without affecting her schedule too much.

"Would you like some company?" I asked. I couldn't believe the words had come out of my mouth. That was my alternative? Go to the gym with her? I must be desperate.

She started giggling, "You want to go to the gym?"

"It's no more absurd a notion than you going to the gym." I scoffed defensively. "You hate sports, and you despised gym class in high school. "

"Well, it's a little different when it's on my terms," she explained. "I can't do team sports, but I can get by on my own, besides its good for me. I've got to stay healthy if I'm going to live to be a hundred."

"Is that how long you're planning on living?" I teased.

"Yes, just like you. Well, I suppose you'll be two hundred by then technically."

"Alright, well, if you want me to last that long, I should probably be taking better care of myself as well." I said bargaining with her.

"Fine, you can come with me." She said rolling her eyes at me. I liked the idea that she wanted to be around me as much as I wanted to be around her, even if it meant going to the gym together. I cringed a little at the thought, but tried to keep an open mind. Truth be told, I had been planning on starting up some kind of exercise regime within the next few weeks anyways; my pants had become noticeably snugger since January.