AN: I loved hearing everyone's favorite songs. . .The Perfect Drug seems to be a favorite of many of you as well :)

Thanks to my awesomesauce beta, JosieSwan. Playlist updated with one, perfect, amazing song for this chapter: "Breakable" by Ingrid Michaelson. I highly recommend you check it out.

Edward

As I followed Niall—I couldn't think of him as my uncle, the idea was just too foreign, too completely divorced from anything I understood—my insides shook like the trees on the Boston streets right before the first snow of fall, the leaves bouncing and fluttering to the ground. I decided that it wasn't a blot on my masculinity to be scared right now; wasn't part of truly being a man the ability to acknowledge fear when it was warranted?

There was no question. It was totally fucking warranted right now. Niall didn't glance back as we turned down another dark corridor. I would be lying if I didn't admit that I missed the sun and the sky and the fresh air against my skin. The house seemed to have either been selected for its lack of windows or else it had been purposely remodeled so that when you were inside, you were completely inside—without the ability to even glimpseoutside.

Finally, we entered a den-like room, dominated by a big wooden desk, covered in papers and magazines and newspapers. Niall took the chair behind the desk—it was nearly as big as the desk, and I would have to be a lot more scared not to recognize it for the metaphorical throne that it was. He waved me to a folding chair in front of the desk and I sat.

He said nothing at first, only looked at me with those fucking familiar green eyes, taking me apart one cell at a time, until I was sure he could see all my flaws as clear as day. I shifted uncomfortably on the chair, and wished, stupidly, to be back on that uncomfortable cot. If only because then, I wouldn't be alone, facing down my uncle.

"You really didna know about me," he said slowly, leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingers.

"No. Esme. . .she doesn't like talking about her time in Ireland."

"She loved Eoghan. That much I know."

I had always wondered about this. Why else would she have stayed in Ireland, abandoned her family and her friends and turned her back on her entire life in Boston, if she hadn't? But whenever I'd asked, she'd been so reluctant to talk about it, and when she did, her voice was always disparaging of the experiences she'd had there, even of the people she'd met.

But she'd loved my father. . .or at least she had according to the man in front of me.

"How much do ye know? About us? About your legacy?"

"Not much," I stuttered. "Esme. . .she never wanted to discuss it. But, I finally got her to tell me the truth when I was 16. Who my father was, what he was part of. She didn't want to tell me the name of your group, but I forced her. I had more power over her then," I said ruefully. "Not so much anymore."

"Eoghan, he was charmin'. Could charm any woman he wanted. And he wanted your ma. I never understood why, she was a cold fish. Hard. Spoiled. And so young."

I shrugged. "There's no explaining the vagaries of the human heart. Which is why I ignore it."

Niall grinned at this. "You're like me, my boy."

I was more than a little surprised to hear this. "What? You know about me? About what my life is like?"

"You think we don't know about you? We been watchin' you since you were a lad. I told ye, you're here to take your rightful place." There was a steeliness, a cold deadliness in those familiar eyes that chilled me to the bone.

"But why now? The Troubles are over."

I watched as a thunderstorm broke over Niall's face. "They aren't," he roared, his face growing red and florid with temper. He pounded on the desk with one big meaty fist. "They'll never be over. Not while I'm alive."

Later, I would look back on this first conversation with my uncle, with my father's brother, and realize that it was this moment that convinced me once and for all that he had lost his grip on reality. Maybe it had never been very good to begin with, but with the destruction and dismantlement of the entire culture and infrastructure that had always supported him, had driven him since he was a mere boy in school, he had become progressively lost.

But now, I just gaped at him. I didn't understand; couldn't possibly comprehend. I sang of Ireland, of independence, of soldiers giving their lives, of blood and sacrifice, but I knew then that I could never truly be one of them. I didn't have the fire in the blood, the die-hard obsession. Niall had it in spades, and I wondered if my father, if Eoghan, had had it too.

But I knew better than to wonder—my father had died for what he believed in. There could be no greater evidence of your passion than to become a martyr for it.

"I see. So why am I here then?"

"I told ye before. You're here to take your rightful place."

"I don't understand. I'm a musician. I don't know anything about. . .all this." I didn't know exactly what all this was, but I did know it was totally foreign. While I liked to pretend that I'd grown up rough and wild, on the streets of Boston, fighting against the injustice of the system, I'd had every privilege and opportunity handed to me on a fucking silver platter. I'd never once been forced to go without. The only battles I'd fought had been against conformity and all of Esme's expectations.

"We know."

"We?"

"You met Jane. She's my right hand. At least after Eoghan . . ."

"After he died." I forced the words out of my tight throat.

"Your da sacrificed everything for what he believed in. You're his son."

There was a poetic irony in Niall's words. I'd spent most of my adolescent and teenage years and beyond doing every damn thing I could to get my father's family's attention. Their acceptance, their fucking interest, had always been the holy grail that I strived for. Maybe not necessarily positive attention, but attention at all. To an extent, I'd become famous so that when they looked at a magazine, they'd see him in me. My life was a fucked up combination of a huge middle finger to the family who'd rejected me and unhealthy practices of negative reinforcement.

And now they apparently wanted me, just like I'd always wanted them to, and I couldn't wait to fucking leave them in the dust. That was family for you—you thought you wanted them until you met them, and you found out that they were soulless, weirdo motherfuckers.

"What do you want me to do?"

Niall opened his mouth, probably to blab some shit about 'taking my da's place,' as if that explained everything. No, I was Esme Platt's son and that meant I needed shit fucking nailed down. Like what exactly I would be doing in my father's place. Were they going to train me to be an assassin a la Wanted? And if that was the case, where was my Angelina Jolie? It sure as fuck wasn't that Jane character. I wouldn't touch her scary, skinny ass with a ten foot pole.

"No," I interrupted him, more forcefully this time. He'd been playing the high king for long enough; if he was king then I was a fucking prince, and I deserved a hell of a lot better than I was getting. I didn't want to do shit for these people, but if I could use some of my position to leverage Bella and I better conditions and Emmett a way out, then I would do it. "Tell me what you mean."

"You leave your life behind. You use your money and your power and your influence to get attention for our cause."

"What cause? Because from my vantage point, it kind of looks like you're reduced to small time shit, because the Troubles –and the power of the IRA—is officially over, no matter how you'd like to tell yourself otherwise," I said, telling myself that I needed balls of steel to go toe to toe with Niall. He still scared the shit out of me, but the more I visibly let him, the less effective I'd be.

"Enough," Niall suddenly bellowed, shooting to his feet, the fists hitting the desk with a resounding crash. I couldn't help it, I flinched at his roar and the demonstration of his far greater strength. And if that wasn't enough, the door opened behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder to see Jane shoot in through the doorway, more emotion on her face than I'd seen in our first two encounters.

"Niall," she crooned, eyes only for the man in front of me. "Does this boy," she spat, "dare to upset you?"

As she wrapped those long, stringy, overly muscled arms around Niall, I barely repressed a shudder. I'd been right, I thought, as I stared helplessly at the pair of them, they were sleeping together.

It was a trainwreck, and I couldn't look away. Despite her far smaller stature, Jane pulled him down to the chair, hands sure and practiced. This wasn't the first time she'd calmed him down, I realized; she did this on a regular basis. Which just filled me with confidence that I'd manage to get out of here without provoking any murderous rage.

What had I been thinking, to basically tell someone who was clearly unhinged, that the obsession that drove every single action of his entire life was over? I'd obviously been suicidal, I realized, as I watched Jane settle Niall down by wrapping her arms even tighter around him. God, I hoped that they stopped at just that, because I wasn't sure I could keep my peanut butter and jelly down if I was exposed to any more of their sick peep show.

And of course, I had just thought this when Niall grabbed Jane's long blond braid and hauled her even closer, until she had no choice except to literally mount him while he sat on the chair.

Bile rose in my throat as she devoured him like a fucking Venus fly trap. Her leather clad body rose and fell on him and I prayed that they both stayed clothed, because there were limits of what I wanted to see, and my newly-discovered uncle's hairy ass was not on the list.

Finally, they broke apart, so reluctantly that for a split second, I wondered if it was possible they were in love—but then I remembered what Niall had boasted of earlier. He'd said he was like me. . .so then the adoration must be only one-sided, and it was clearly adoration. Or obsession. Sick fucks.

Jane finally dismounted, but didn't leave Niall's side, as my uncle's eyes rose to meet mine. They were still dead, still empty, still exactly like mine. The only change was the gloating triumph lurking in their depths. He'd wanted me to see him lose control, wanted me to see Jane calm him down, and wanted to put me back in my place.

I'd said it before, but I'd say it again and again and again: sick fucking fucks.

"Jane. Take Edward back to his room. He needs some more. . .time. . .to consider the consequences of his words," Niall ordered, never blinking, never glancing away—like a python stalking his prey.

Fuck being the Prince; I just wanted to get out of here with my balls intact.

"Anything you command," Jane purred, before turning to me, her entire expression freezing over as her eyes found me. "Come," she barked at me. "You have disturbed Aro long enough."

"Besides," she said, with a sly undertone, as we exited the office, "I'm sure your friend has missed you."

"What did you do to her?" I demanded, another wave nausea rolling through me like a freight train.

Jane merely shrugged, a smile playing across her thin lips. "I never touched her. Though that may not always be the case."

I wanted to argue, to insist that Bella was never to be touched, but the muscles in Jane's ropey arms flexed and I remembered that despite her size, not only was she capable of kicking my ass, she was definitely capable of a lot more.

So I said nothing, just kept my eyes down, on the ground, trying to be the most obedient prisoner that I could. And I was undoubtedly a prisoner. I didn't know the game that Niall and this sick bitch were playing with me, but I knew it wasn't as easy as me conceding to their demands for my time and my money and my influence. They were after something else, maybe something that I wasn't even capable of giving—perhaps they were just toying with me because they could.

Jane unlocked the door, and just as swiftly, closed it behind me. I heard the lock fall into place as I looked up to see Bella crouched on the bed, staring resolutely at an object on the floor in front of her.

"Are you okay?" I asked, her hunched posture so different than how she'd been when I'd left her. I walked closer and discovered the object Bella staring at was actually a sandwich. Peanut butter and fucking jelly.

"Is this your food?" I asked. "Why is it on the floor?" Bella looked up at me then, and the fury and the hatred in her eyes was flaming and spectacular. This girl, I realized with a jolt of electricity, wasn't icy. She was a fucking inferno.

"She put it there." Bella finally spoke, and it was a cross between a snarl and a hiss. I'd thought that all her witty snappy insults had been hateful, but I was discovering that with Bella, less was more. When she was really mad, she clearly said almost nothing at all, just stared at the object of her abject loathing like she could force it to spontaneously combust.

"Jane? Well. For god's sake, take it off the floor. It's probably way past the ten second rule." I started to reach down to pick it up, because we were in deep enough shit without Bella contracting some kind of horrific disease from eating food that had been on the floor, but her arm reached out and grabbed mine.

"Don't touch it," she growled. "I won't fucking eat anything she throws on the floor for me—like I'm her fucking dog."

"You're nobody's fucking dog," I reasoned with her. "Just because she's clearly a psychotic bitch doesn't define you in the least."

"Don't touch it," Bella said again, her fingers still clenched around my arm like talons.

"Look," I said, trying for a conversational tone, even though the encounter I'd just had with my uncle and Jane had nearly made me pee my pants, "I get that your sandwich is on the floor, which sucks, it really does. But leaving it there doesn't mean that you win and she loses. It just means that you lose, because then you can't eat it. And you've got to eat, so you can keep your strength up because we're going to get out of this, and I need you in top shape for that."

The fingers relaxed slightly, but I still couldn't budge, so I kept going. "If this is your way of telling me that you're okay, you're doing a damn weird job of it." I tried segueing into a jovial tone of voice, but I'd apparently lost my ability to be casual because it came out of my mouth totally wrong—like I was seriously concerned about her. Which I wasn't. At all.

"She didn't touch me," Bella said, her voice ragged and furious. "But I wanted her to." She looked up at me, those dark eyes burning like Rome. "Is it wrong that I wanted her to fucking kick my ass instead of throwing me my food like a dog?"

"You're not a dog," I reassured again. "Not a dog."

"But that's the way she treated me." Bella was nearly incandescent with the injustice of it.

"Again, she's a crazy psychotic bitch, who I just watched sexually maul my uncle."

Bella's gaze snapped from the unfortunate sandwich to me. "She what?" Her voice was growing kind of hysterical and I realized I'd decided way too quickly that she wasn't the hysterical sort. There was still definitely time for her fall apart and I guessed that the enormity of our situation was finally hitting her.

"Ah, well. . .there was an unfortunate bump and grind act that I was privy to, but it doesn't matter. The sandwich, clearly, is the crime here."

"It is," Bella was suddenly on her feet, some kind of unholy rage lighting up her face. I thought it definitely might be masochistic that I thought she was hotter like this than even Bella-as-a-groupie. She stalked up and down the room, her sneakers slapping the floor. "How dare she fucking treat me this way? I never asked for this—I don't deserve to be treated like shit."

I almost opened my mouth to tell her that she had asked for all of this. And she hadn't just asked. According to Emmett, she'd pretty much blackmailed into taking her with me. I saw the abrupt change dawn over her expression the second she realized what she said was the exact opposite of the truth.

"But I did," she said softly, her face suddenly pale and drawn as she gazed down at the sandwich lying at her feet. "I did ask for this." And then she burst into hard, wrenching sobs.

I was a big fan of brutal honesty, but looking at the devastation that Jane had wrought on Bella's emotional health, I thought it probably not the best plan to agree with her. I wished I could say something else and have her not instantly recognize it as a fucking platitude, but she was unerringly correct that she was the only one to blame in this particular situation.

"I know," I said awkwardly, extending a hand to where she sat on the corner of the bed, her head in her hands, as her fear poured out of her like a water faucet. I felt some weirdly desperate desire to comfort her, to wipe away the dampness from her pale cheeks, and tell her that as terrified as she was, I was just as fucking scared. But that would constitute not only emotional sharing—which Edward Cullen had never done in his entire fucking life—but also sympathy. And I didn't sympathize as a general rule, especially not with anyone who deserved every ounce of the shit storm they'd brought on their heads.

So I just sat there, next to her, my arm on her leg in the most nonsexual way possible, and let her cry. Finally, after what must have been an eternity of me debating with myself on what Edward Cullen would do in this situation, her hiccupping sobs lessened slightly, and she lifted her head from her hands.

She had never looked less beautiful. Bella wasn't like Rosalie, who cried prettily, and who's eyes or face or nose never got red, as becoming crystal tears dropped down her curved cheekbones one at a time. Bella's face was a wreck—it was wet and red and blotchy, with what could only be snot under her nose. No, she'd never been less appealing, and weirdly, strangely, with a realization that was about as un-Edward Cullen like as I could possibly get, I had never liked her more.

I reached over before I could even stop myself, to analyze every single action against the accepted norm of what being me was like, and brushed a strand of her hair away from that pitiful face. "Are you alright?" I asked, as if I cared, which, I found, even more oddly, that I did.

I told myself that it was mere scientific interest; the ice queen had finally begun to melt and I was merely witnessing the scene. Originally, I had wanted to break through that cold shell with seduction and red hot lust, but in the end, what had ended Bella's deep freeze was merely a sandwich on the floor.

Bella began to nod, but halfway through the action, changed it to a firm shake instead. "No," she whispered, her voice raw, "I'm not okay. I can't be okay."

Unspoken between us was the reason why she wasn't okay—because no matter how much she'd like to blame someone else for her current predicament, there was nobody else but her. It was completely her fault. If she hadn't stuck her damned cute nose into Emmett's business, she wouldn't be here right now. She would be back in her apartment in Boston, typing out her boring, inconsequential music blogs and she and I would never have met. She never would have told me about her scathing review of my album, and I never would have tried to seduce her. My first words to her wouldn't have been a demand she remove her clothes. My fingers wouldn't have brushed her skin with desire and purpose. They would have found some other skin to feel, but it wouldn't, I realized, have felt quite like Bella's.

And then the truth hit me like a fucking brick to the face.

If Bella had been smart, if she had thought with her head, had used that mile-wide streak of logic she had, she wouldn't be here, and I would have been alone.

Alone with Jane. Alone with Niall.

"You don't have to be okay," I told her. I wasn't a fan of the comforting lie. I wasn't going to disrespect Bella by forcing anything like that down her throat. She was upset and she had every right to be.

She turned to me then, finally wiping her eyes and nose on the corner of her tank top. "Are you alright?" she whispered. "I forgot about Niall—I mean not exactly forgot —but Jane unhinged me so fucking hard."

"No, it's okay. I understand." More truths; though to the man inside who had made a lifetime out of perfecting the Edward Cullen Doesn't Give a Flying Fuck About You Act, it sounded like something completely different. "And no," I told her, hating that I was practically handing her my balls on a silver platter, "I'm not alright."

"I didn't think so. You looked . . ." Bella trailed off. "When he told you," she finally clarified at my confused expression.

Before I could even stop myself, my mouth opened and I confessed to her what I'd thought during that awful instant in time. "I thought, for a split second, before he told me otherwise, that he was my father."

Bella shuddered—precisely my reaction when I'd had the thought. "I'm glad he wasn't, though it's bad enough this way," she whispered.

I nodded in agreement. "He wants me to join him. Join them."

"You didn't," she stated, but didn't question. She appeared to already know that I'd turned them down, which made no sense—and not that I had necessarily turned them down. I'd just tried to understand why it was still even necessary to fight for Irish freedom when the Troubles had been officially over for years. I hadn't given Niall an answer one way or the other, though I knew which one I wanted to give him.

"No," I confirmed. "Not yet. Or not at all. I don't know."

"You wouldn't still be here, with me, in this room, if you'd said yes," she said sadly. "Maybe you should have."

Brutal honesty time. "I thought about it," I told her. "I definitely considered it." What I neglected to mention was that I had almost done it, not necessarily just for myself, but for her and Emmett too. That, I decided, was information that she didn't need to know. She already had my balls, she didn't need that tiny part of me that still had a conscience.

"They'll be back," Bella said, lifting her eyes towards the door. "You know they will be."

"I know." And I would have to find something to tell them, something to placate them, but not something that would tie me to them for the rest of my fucking life. I'd known I couldn't, the moment I'd walked back into this room and seen that damn sandwich on the floor in front of Bella. I couldn't ever support people who were that sadistically fucked up.

"You should eat the sandwich," I said to her. "Really. You need to keep your strength up." Our eyes met, and I glanced down at the offending item on the floor. I could do this, I thought to myself, I could do this and make it all just the tiniest bit easier on her.

I reached down and picked it up, not missing the way that she froze next to me. I brushed it off on the corner of my shirt, probably removing none of the germs and adding a few of my own. "All better," I said, extending it towards her. "Now eat."

She hesitated, staring at it, and I knew it was so much bigger than just two pieces of cheap white bread with peanut butter and jelly smeared between them—it was pride and honor and respect. But she wasn't, I decided, going to fucking pick it up herself. She could eat it if someone else had picked it up, and we both knew, I had a whole lot less pride to sacrifice.

"Okay," she said in a small voice, extending her hand and taking it from me. She stared at it for a long time, not eating, just. . .staring.

"Trust me, it's not going to magically change into something more appealing," I tried joking, to lighten the oppressive silence.

"I know. I just. . .it's just a sandwich," she said with a note of wonder in her voice. "I thought while I was crying that it was so much more than a sandwich—that it was everything. But it's not."

"No," I said, all too fucking aware of the gratitude in her eyes, "it's just a sandwich."

AN: I won't lie; I cried writing this last part of the scene. I love discovering the real person beneath Edward's fuckedupness, to use a favorite word of Bella's.

So I ask all of you. . .was it just a sandwich? Or was it more?