AN: Thank you again for the kind reviews! They are wonderful to read.

*****

Alice Cullen stood just outside, wrinkling her nose in the pale sunlight.

Emily was ready to go before I was done gasping. "I'll talk to you later," she said, her eyes downcast and a line wrinkling her marred forehead.

"Emily—please." I turned to Alice, who looked hurt that she hadn't warranted an immediate hug. "Alice, would you wait for me in the kitchen while I walk Emily to her car?"

"Sure, Bella," Alice trilled at me, breaking in to a smile with her eyebrows raised high. In spite of my words, she quickly hugged me on the doorstep and slipped past Emily, her face once again wrinkling with disgust as she came close the scent of wolves. I smiled in spite of myself, and then turned to Emily, who was looking at me with interest.

"Well. I'll tell Sam that you didn't push one of us out of the way to get to a vamp." A wry smirk told me she was teasing. Almost. "Did you need to tell me something else about Victoria?" We began to walk towards her car, and I carefully lowered my voice, even though I knew there was a good chance Alice would still be able to hear me anyway. I scanned the street for more cars. None. Just Alice.

"No. I just wanted to make sure you knew I wouldn't dump you for the vampires. Even the ones I love." I grinned back at her, and we hugged goodbye laughing quietly. She didn't look totally appeased, but I could tell she knew things were different than before.

I walked back up the drive to the house. Alice was standing in the living room, and when she saw me again she threw her arms open. "Now can I have a real hug?"

I laughed, and then felt tears sliding down my cheeks as well. My humanity seemed so stark next to her glimmering, surreal beauty. "Of course you can."

"So you do still love me?" She said it quietly, her high, childlike voice wafting in to my ear through my tangled hair.

"Of course I do, Alice." I sighed, hiccupped and pulled away to sit down on the old couch. "How could I not?"

"Do you want a real answer or is that meant to be rhetorical?" She pirouetted over and landed lightly beside me. "Because I think there are significant reasons why someone—anyone—but especially you, Bella Swan, may not still love me." She looked at me intently, the supernatural glow coming from her eyes full of melting warmth, and sadness. Alice rarely looked sad. "Your capacity to love is astonishing, even for a human. Perhaps especially."

"It's what makes me so cruel, isn't it?" I looked at her, and tried to watch her emotions as they flickered from one to the next at warp speed. I was too slow to see them all. She settled on a wary blankness.

"You were never cruel to us, Bella."

"You're right, I think." I sighed. "I was only unintentionally, unbearably cruel to everyone else in my life." I looked down at my hands. There was something to be said for having a friend that had several lifetimes worth of knowledge at their disposal. I thought of Edward, and more tears came.

Alice understood. "Edward is hunting Victoria right now. It's why we came."

I looked up—why hadn't I realized that? Of course Alice would have seen Victoria attack me. "By himself? She's wounded, but still, Alice—"

"Bella, you know perfectly well that Edward is more than capable of taking care of himself. And any other one-legged vampires coming after you." She looked at me crossly, then her perfect mouth piqued up in to an elfin smile. "Did you know she had only one leg? You were marvelous, Bella. Even if it was typically careless of you to decide to sleep in the deep, dark woods." I rolled my eyes and grinned.

"Of course, she may have reattached it by now." Alice looked away across the room. "It's hard for me to see her, she's very clever…" Her lovely bob glistened as she shook the images swarming across her vision out of her eyes. "Watching her has always been unpleasant, but it's been a necessity to keep her from you. Watching you, on the other hand, has been fascinating." She looked at me with interest. "Your future changes almost every day."

I looked at her. "You watch me every day?"

She smiled. "Not every every day. But often." She leaned towards me. "I miss you too, Bella."

I leaned against her shoulder and inhaled the precious, sweet air that came off of her skin. "I hope at least some of those futures involve some kind of happiness." My eyes were closed, but I felt her head turn towards me. "I came back here to try and be capable of that—if I'm so great at loving things, why can't I be happy too?"

She laughed. "The eternal question, Edward might say." She watched me open my eyes again. "You're very happy, incidentally, in several of them. But when I look for you right now…" Her brow creased, "You keep changing your mind."

"Do you see Edward?" I knew I could ask her that.

"Always," she said, and sighed as my face turned towards her in shock. "But not in the way you're thinking, Bella."

I choked on my bitter laugh. "I thought he was the one that could read minds, Alice."

She rolled her eyes. "He is, silly. I just mean that…Edward and you are never really apart." She looked at me. "But you are different. You are never the same as you were—the more time passes, the further both of you come from the Bella and Edward that belonged together."

I knew what she was saying was true, but it broke my heart again to hear it. At the same time that the raw skin over the wound twitched, all of the new things I had learned about myself struggled to bandage over it again. If Edward could be strong, so could I. This is why I came here, I told myself. To be able to be strong.

"I understand why he did it now." I looked at her. "I still think it was horrible, and the worst thing to do."

"It was all he could do," she said. Her tone wasn't defensive, but plain and steady. "He had already gone too far in trying to keep you for himself. He had already altered your life beyond repair."

"He made it much, much worse." I looked at her, and some of my anger at him slipped in to my voice. "And he ignored my choices! He ignored what I wanted, and made me—" my hands swept over my body—"this." The tears coming to my eyes were angry, but mostly with myself. If Edward hadn't left me, I wouldn't have hurt Charlie. I wouldn't have hurt Jake. If Edward hadn't left me—

"He did what he thought was right. And the only reason he didn't kill himself was to care for you, as best as he could, from afar." She still wasn't defensive. Just that steady tone.

If Edward hadn't left me, I wouldn't have hurt myself.

That last was the lie. And Edward had known it, and couldn't ignore it. Edward could never have let me hate myself as a vampire. He could never have watched me wish I'd died instead, like Rosalie. Like himself.

"It's funny…" I wondered if I would see him while he was in Forks. "It's funny how well he knew me, and still…I'm not sure he was right."

Alice sighed. "He is more right all the time." She looked at me again with a small smile on her face. "You are ready for a human adult life now, Bella. Now that you've been outside of our world. You've been yourself long enough now to see what you would be missing."

"I'm missing most of it anyway," I shrugged.

"No you're not." If Alice could cry, she would have then. "No—you are going to have the most unusual life of any human, ever, but you are not going to miss being one." There was a brief pause before she whispered, "Don't you know that if you would have been truly, truly happy as one of us…I would have turned you?" She held me closer to herself for a second, then straightened up and pulled me to stand next to her. "I can hear Charlie's cruiser coming. Let's make a cup of coffee, wash your face, and give him a good welcome."

"Okay," I said. Maybe I could have more than two kind friends. Maybe I could be a kind friend, too. "Do you want to pick out my clothes, or anything?" I knew, even with the intense conversation, she had still been holding back.

"That pink top on the left side of your suitcase is much cuter, Bella," she said and laughed, a sound that made it seem like stars were exploding overhead.