I've been on vacation! It's been lovely, I've read lots of books and despite my best efforts, my skin has tanned. Review if you enjoy, or if you don't, or don't review at all. It's hard to care when the sun is shining like this!

"The l-limit of f(x) as x a-approaches a is L, s-s-so f-for every n-number… backwards 3 that is g-greater than zero, there is a c-corresponding n-number… s-squiggly line that is g-greater th-than zero so that zero is l-less th-than the absolute v-value of x minus a which is l-less th-than… s-squiggly line, and the a-absolute v-value of f(x) m-minus L is less than… backwards 3."

"The backwards 3 is epsilon, and that squiggly line is delta," I said helpfully.

"That d-doesn't m-make it m-make any more s-s-sense," Edward huffed, snapping his textbook shut in frustration.

"It helps to think of it in terms of numbers, rather than in the abstract," Esme said, breezing into the library. Edward and I had set up shop at the ornate dark-wood desk that was typically covered in medical journals and charts, but had been cleared away for homework on the calculus topic of limits. But there was a note of desperation in his tone and in the angry scratching of pencil against paper, and apparently I wasn't helping.

I backed off as Esme took a pen from me and began detailing out an example, plugging in numbers for 𝛿 and ε so that understanding dawned on his face. I left them to it and wandered up the stairs to my own room.

It had sat untouched for some time. Hardly anyone came in here anymore but for me when I changed clothes and occasionally showered. I had spent so much time at Edward's side since I had met him that a thin layer of dust coating the CD player on my shelf. I brushed it off and popped in a disk so that the angsty croons of David Bowie spun out into the room. The house felt too quiet, even with Esme a floor below talking about math and the steady cadence of Edward's heart.

It was silly. They had been gone before. Hell, they had left us for years when they were newly mated and so consumed by each other that it was intolerable to live under the same roof with them. And they had always taken plenty of vacations and left me behind. Even Esme and Carlisle had done so throughout the years, leaving me to my solitary pursuits in an empty house.

But this felt different. Emmett and Rose were gone not for pleasure or amusement, they were gone to pick up a mess I had made. Emmett wasn't playing video games or doggedly begging Edward to ditch his homework to throw a football around with him in the yard, because he was attending to a thirsty newborn I had left behind. Because I was shirking my responsibilities, Rose wasn't tinkering with an engine in the garage or clicking away online to arrange the design of some fabulous outfits she would look stunning in.

I was idly reordering my CD collection when Edward came in. He had finished the assigned problem set, with Esme's help, and politely excused himself. Esme was very gracious about him not sticking around to do some extra practice, and I knew she was just bursting with joy about being able to help him that she wouldn't push. She was busying herself in the kitchen, making a dinner that smelled strongly of tomatoes and spices, but she didn't realize that the tension that had tightened between us was still there.

The ghosts lingered, and I wondered how long they would haunt us.

"Do y-you n-need help packing?" Edward asked. He was sitting at the edge of my bed, back stiff and posture markedly less comfortable than he had once been in here, with me.

"Packing?" I asked. I was still flipping through the CDs. I never kept them in any particular order, but I was arranging them alphabetically for the sake of something to do with my hands and to occupy one thread of thought in my jumbled mind. Beatles before Beethoven. Alanis Morissette, then Motorhead, then Muddy Waters. It was rote, and a small comfort.

"You're leaving s-s-soon."

"Not that soon," I said, trying to cling to the time that was slipping through our fingers even though it seemed like I had so much of it. Immortality. I wanted to snort and roll my eyes- truly act my age, my real, physical age of waffling between adolescence and adulthood. What a joke immortality was when I felt like time was always pressing me on all sides. Edward was quiet but his question lingered, and I sighed. "I'm not going to pack. I'm not taking anything with me."

"You're not?" he asked, taken aback in genuine surprise.

"No," I said, shaking my head. "I don't want to be gone long, and I don't want to present the appearance that I want to stay at all. It's not like I need soap or a tooth brush, or a change of clothes. I'll travel in something nice and presentable, and that will just have to do."

"Travelling t-to the other s-s-side of the w-world, with no luggage, is a l-little s-s-suspicious."

I frowned. Most people did travel with at least a carry-on, especially on a trip to Europe. "I guess you're right," I admitted. I ran into my closet and pulled a plain black duffel from the top shelf, hopping up to grab it. "I'll have Esme pick out some clothes that she doesn't want anymore, and I'll find a homeless person to donate it to in Florence."

Edward shrugged and opened his mouth as if to say something, but Esme called us downstairs for dinner. I left the bag by my bed, and I let Edward beat me to the door to hold it open for me.

Dinner was some kind of Indian dish that Edward seemed to thoroughly enjoy, and Esme tried to occupy us with a boardgame late into the night. I let Esme catch me taking money from the banker's pile, and she made Edward roar with laughter over stories of all of us trying to cheat over the years.

By the time we went up to bed, Edward was yawning and bleary-eyed and fumbling through his nighttime routine before collapsing into bed on top of the covers. Once he was deep enough asleep, I took care to roll him over and under the sheet so his face was pressed into the pillow.

I laid beside him, mirroring his image. Every night, I got to watch as he softened, the harsh lines of his tight jaw softening and the pull of his brows relaxing into dreams. He held on to everything so tightly, letting himself wind up until it burst forth in an attack of tears and panic, sleep was a brief respite from it all, and I was grateful it was something he could use as an escape.

My hand curled through the soft tangles of his bronze hair, fingers sliding through like silk so my palm was cupping his temple. I wished I could just pry his mind open and unspool his thoughts, and sighed and retreated my hand when I realized I couldn't.

He had been so tense when I spoke to Charlie.

Edward was staying at our house under the guise of spending the weekend with Emmett. Esme called Charlie and told him that her and Carlisle needed to take me on a trip over the weekend, and implied had something to do with my custody agreement. Charlie, of course, agreed readily. Once upon a time, we would have spent the night curled around each other, languidly kissing into the night so my lungs were filled with his breath and I could taste him on my tongue.

Instead, I laid above the covers, staring at the ceiling blankly. I timed my breaths with his so I could inhale his essence, letting the sweet honey-sunshine of his scent burn into my throat. My thirst was licking up into my mouth, flooding with venom that I constantly swallowed back. I wondered what he was dreaming about so deeply that his lashes fluttered about like butterfly wings and his hand twitched at his side. I wondered what everyone else was doing now. I could hear Esme rifling through her closet, carefully removing and folding clothes- she had heard my donation idea and was obviously getting a jumpstart. Carlisle had flown to New York for the weekend to see a cancer researcher and offer some of his own ideas, so I figured he would be in his hotel, pouring over a stack of data reports and clinical research through the night until he met with the researcher in the morning.

It was everyone else for whom my curiosity burned. I had only texted Tanya sporadically, but I could guess what they were doing.

Hunting. There were really no other pursuits for my brother and sister and our cousins to pursue with a fresh newborn. Tanya was vague in her words, but it seemed like they were expanding their range for Alice to be able to hunt more freely. They hadn't run into any humans, and Alice was rational enough to not want to go looking, not even to experiment or test her control, as Rose had once wanted to do.

I knew they would protect her. No matter what, they would protect her, even from herself. Alice was so kind, so empathetic and gentle. I couldn't imagine how heavily a slip would weigh on her conscience. Everyone but Carlisle and I had endured it, and they all understood the gravity of the situation and the importance of keeping Alice at a wide berth from humans.

By the time Edward awoke, the sun was shining brightly through the north-facing window of my room. I had almost closed the blinds, but couldn't bear to.

He looked beautiful. The light clung to motes of dust in the air, drifting dreamily around like a swirling of stars. Gold illuminated the lighter tones of his hair and clung to the curves of his face. I could see the veins in his eyelids so clearly, but his sleep remained undisturbed and I stayed curled next to him above the covers.

By the time his eyes drifted open, I knew that I was sparkling obnoxiously and ruining the softness of the moment, but he smiled when he saw me and his hand wrapped around the curve of my waist.

"G'morning," he murmured, voice still thick with sleep.

"It is, isn't it?" I whispered, so quietly I wasn't sure he could even hear.

His hand trailed up my side to trace along the corner of my jaw, then up to my temple. His fingertips brushed along the apple of my cheek, and I found my eyes closing and a bubbling rumble of satisfaction build in my chest. His touch was warm and soft like a summer morning.

I was falling back into it. Sometimes, the world narrowed until I could feel and hear nothing but Edward, the heat of his hand and the wet beat of his heart that carried the fragrance of his blood.

Now, though, it was the opposite. I was sharply aware of everything- the scurrying, fragile legs of ants as they marched in a line in the untouched attic, the musical twinge of a spider's web in the light breeze and the sway of leaves in the accompanying oak tree.

It seemed infinite, endless. Forever was meant to be the one thing I could promise him, but I wondered what that even looked like. I had given it to Alice, and it was clear that it wasn't a gift or a blessing.

No, that was certain.

I had never been in conflict with my existence before. Emmett and I were companions in that. Carlisle had wallowed in self-hatred and strove for goodness to maintain a hold on his humanity, his soul. Rose had been battling herself for nearly a century, and Esme shared in the perpetual and permanent losses they mourned in addition to the burden and ultimate cost her bloodlust carried.

But Emmett had never been bothered, and truly neither had I. I hadn't been a confident human. I was contracted into a marriage and my body wasn't my own, bought and sold at political costs. I was awkward, clumsy, and trapped by the confines of my gender and my humanity. A friend had sought out someone he thought could save me before I bled out and when all hope had been lost, but he gave me so much more. He gave me time with my children that would have otherwise been stolen from me along with my life, and I cherished every moment of watching them learn and grow and go off to create their own worlds, boys and girls alike. I was given my freedom, to make my own decisions and learn about every language and culture and book I had always wanted to. I grew confident and assured, and once I found Carlisle and we expanded our family, I found contentedness.

And how could I ever resent anything that brought me to Edward? Without being changed, I would have died on that birthing bed. We never would have met… the thought was physically painful, revolting enough to sit stolidly as nausea in my empty stomach.

But this had brought forth a conflict that I had never had to battle the way the rest of my family- save Emmett- had. Because of me, because of what I was, I had taken Edward's sister from him. I had stolen a human future from Alice, with all the warmth and growth and beauty that entailed. I had robbed him of his one lifeline while I abandoned him to traipse off to Italy.

His finger trailed down my nose to touch my bottom lip, pulling it out from the bite of my teeth. I hadn't even realized I had been doing it.

"What are y-you th-thinking about?" he asked. It was his now-normal question, the same thing he had asked me every other morning since I returned to him, begging for forgiveness that was willfully ignored.

I opened my eyes to see the soft green of his holding my own reflection, his brow wrinkled as he studied my face. His finger was still on my lip, blazing a trail of fire along the curve of the sensitive skin. I swallowed the venom in my mouth that had been drawn forth by the proximity of the fragile pulse at his fingertip.

"A book I read recently," I said, again with my standard answer.

"What w-was it about?" he asked when I didn't offer any more.

I waffled back and forth. I could opt to recapitulate a random work of fiction, or I could do what I had been both trying to do, and trying to avoid. I could be brave.

"Three rabbis in Palestine under Roman rule," I started, nuzzling into Edward's hand as he cupped my cheek. His thumb still lingered along the outside of my lip, even as I spoke.

How many nights did we occupy ourselves with stories? He asked me for them often, like he needed them as much as water or sleep, and I kept him from his dreams with tales of my own life, or a recapitulation of stories I had read or heard. I thought back to just before everything had truly fallen apart, there in the dark woods of the Palisades with the stars swirling above us and spilling their twinkling light into the tangles of Edward's hair, the sparkle of his eyes. That story, too, had held a parable, a metaphor for what was to come. Even I didn't know if it had fully come to fruition- one twin was now immortal, doomed to walk unchanged among mortals as time lost meaning and slipped through her fingers, but the other twin was still warm with blood and life. What would become of him? And would it be borne in tragedy, like Castor and Pollux? Like Alice?

"One praised the construction and colonization of the Romans, one was silent, and one pointed out that it was purely for the financial benefit and physical pleasure of their oppressors. The next day, the Roman government sent an edict exalting the first rabbi, exiling the second, and sentencing the third to death."

Edward was listening, enraptured as I worked my way through the story.

"The third rabbi and his son, who was also a rabbi and shared his father's beliefs, went on the run. They went from place to place, eventually hiding up in a cave. It was there that a miracle happened. A carob tree grew and a well opened, and they finally had enough to eat and drink. The two men devoted themselves to the study of the Torah, praying and studying every single day for twelve years.

"When the twelve years came to an end, the Prophet Elijah came to them and told them that the emperor had died and his death sentence had been annulled. The two emerged from the world to see that life had continued on. But, because they had spent so long in the cave , they were disgusted with worldly activities. A voice from the heavens admonished them, and told them to return to their cave.

"So the rabbi and his son returned to the cave, where they spent another twelve months. When the twelve months ended, the voice proclaimed they should leave their cave. When they did, they found themselves blessed and reconciled with the world.

"They came out and saw an old man carrying two bundles of myrtle in his hand, a sweet-smelling herb having the perfume of paradise. When they asked the old man what the myrtle was for, the man told him it was in honor of the Sabbath. The rabbi turned to his son and rejoiced in the devotion of the people of Israel to God's commandments. 'At that moment they both found tranquility of the soul'," I quoted to finish, unable to find other words to capture the beauty of the original statement.

"That's q-quite the s-s-story," Edward appraised, his expression guarded and unreadable. "I wonder…"

"What do you wonder?" I asked. The morning was late and dewy, and the sparkle of my skin was bright enough to cast itself back out through the rain-spackled window.

"I w-wonder who you identify with in th-that s-s-story? Are you the r-rabbi? The s-s-son?"

I was looking past Edward, through the window. But I could feel the gravity of his stare on me, weighing me down and holding me to the bed and in place even though my skin itched with the need to run, deep and guttural and instinctive. "Do I have to identify with anyone in the story to appreciate it?"

"I'm aware th-that y-you have ulterior m-motives," he observed. I bit down on my bottom lip nervously, but he didn't seem disquieted or deceived.

"Are you very upset?" I asked quietly. I was staring at the curved skin that stretched across the shell of his ear, soft and warming and quickly obscured by the tousle of his hair falling into place.

"I'd l-like to know what y-you th-think of the s-s-story?" His voice lilted up as if in question, and I paused, trying to find an answer.

"I think there are a lot of parallels that could be drawn to reality," I said finally. I laid on my back, the bedframe creaking under my weight. I mentally traced the curling patterns of the plaster ceiling. "But I think, right now, I'm contemplating the reconciliation they had with the world. They hadn't learned their lesson the first time, but after another exile, they came to find their 'tranquility of the soul'."

"It's an interesting th-thought," he said quickly, casually.

"I'm glad you think so," I said politely. I rolled back onto my side, ready to ask about his thoughts. I needed to pry his actual opinions from the enclaves of his mind, that which he never readily shared with me.

Before I could ask, however, he beat me to a question. "S-s-so it is the r-rabbi, or his s-s-son, that y-you identify with r-right n-now?"

"For the sake of this interpretation, I suppose one or the other," I said with a half-shrug against sheets.

"Twelve y-years in the c-cave, th-then another t-twelve m-months again," he stated. Edward wasn't looking at me anymore. Our positions had switched. He was staring up at the ceiling, and I studying the strong lines of his profile.

"Yes."

"C-correct m-me if I'm wrong…" he started, and I inhaled and caught my breath in my lungs, holding it so the burn of his scent lingered longer. "B-but the s-s-sentence of punishment in Jewish h-hell is t-twelve m-months, isn't it?"

"Gehinnom," I named it. "Twelve months of purification for the souls of the wicked, and then they can go on to Gan Eden. Paradise."

"They h-hadn't l-learned their l-lesson the first time, s-s-so they d-deserved t-to g-go back into exile," Edward clarified. "You r-relate t-to that? Do you th-think you deserve s-s-some k-kind of punishment, to f-finally achieve that… tranquility?"

I frowned when his train of thought became clear. This wasn't the interpretation I had wanted to broach. I wanted to allude to the way they repented, and their forgiveness both from God and for themselves as they reconciled themselves with being back in the world.

"I'm not wicked," I said shortly.

"I know that. D-do you?"

"Are you asking me if I think of myself as some kind of monster?" I spat. Venom seeped into my tone as well as trickling into my mouth. I swallowed it back forcefully.

"Of c-course not," he said calmly, unshaken by my anger. It only served to make me angrier, and my teeth snapped together as my jaw clenched.

"Do you think I deserve to be in Gehinnom?"

His face was neutral, expression unresponsive. "I d-don't know if I b-believe in Gehinnom."

"You know what I meant."

"What d-did y-you mean?" he asked evasively

"I mean, what do you think of me? Do you think I deserve punishment? Have I sinned against you so egregiously that it can only be forgiven with the sentence of hell?" The fear was bubbling forth, feeding into anger. I was right. Everyone else was wrong, and I was right- he despised me for ruining his life.

"There we g-go," he sighed. His hand slid back down to my waist and snaked up my back. I followed the pressure of his touched, letting him gather me in his arms and pulling me to lay astride his chest. He rested his chin in my hair, my face tucked into his neck so my body rose and fell with his breaths.

"What do you mean, 'there we go'?" I demanded. I balled my hands into fists and brought them up to my chest. I couldn't afford to touch him with rage coursing through my body, but I was trying to lean back off of him to keep my weight from crushing him. If I hurt him in any way beyond what I had already done…

"You've b-been h-holding on to that f-for a while, h-haven't you?" he murmured. His hand rubbed up and down my back, his warmth feeding into relaxing the tense muscles there.

The venom both in my mouth and in my voice dried up. "Yes," I whispered.

"I know I h-haven't b-been v-very open or helpful l-lately," he started, then shushed my objections. "B-but the f-fault lays with them, n-not with you. They w-were the s-s-sick ones. They w-were th-the ones who d-did this."

"Twelve months isn't long enough," I said forcefully, and I let the venom flow back into my mouth with the seize of my rage. I held on to the sharp-cut image, clear as crystal, of James's head in my hands, my fingers digging through his neck and the bites my teeth had torn through his skin until it screeched and he screamed, and I wrenched it off of him. "I hope he burns for an eternity."

"Afterlife aside," he said, tearing me from my memory. "I d-don't w-want you t-to b-blame yourself. It wasn't your f-fault. There's no s-sin, Bella. How c-could there be? J-just l-look at you." His hand cupped my cheek, then trailed down so his palm was flush against the top of my breast, his fingers splayed over where my heart lay dormant. "You're s-so good.

"I failed you, though," I cried, an unsheddable sob choking in my chest and mingling unpleasantly with the burn of my thirst. "I'm so sorry, Edward. Please. I'm so sorry." Words were spelling out of my mouth faster than I meant them to, and I didn't even know if he could catch every bit of it. "I promised you I would keep you safe. I took you and Alice away with the promise of keeping you safe, and I didn't. I let my guard down but Edward, it was so hard."

"I know, love," he hushed, one hand still over my heart while the other smoothed my hair gently.

"I've never done it before. My shield… I'm out of practice. If I had worked harder, if I had trained and kept myself sharp, maybe I could have helped!" I cried again, trying to shrug his hand off of me. I didn't deserve the warmth of his touch. "I thought I could keep you both safe. There was something off about both of them. For some reason, no one could track them down, and then my shield snapped and I gave our location away, and I got distracted, and it was all my fault!"

"They were s-s-sick, Bella," he said. "S-sick, and d-disgusting, and warped, and they always h-have b-been. I knew them. B-better than anyone, I knew th-them. They n-never w-would have s-s-stopped. No matter where w-we went or where y-you t-tried to h-hide us. You c-can't have expected yourself t-to h-hold your sh-shield up indefinitely."

"I should have fought hard. When she took you…" I closed my eyes, the panic finding me again so I was launched back in those dark woods of the Palisades, broken glass and blood fractured on the bedroom floor as I realized that they were both gone.

He took my hand in his, prying my fingers open from the balled fist I had held them in. He put my hand on his chest, under his shirt so I was touching the bare skin there. It was forbidden territory, where he had often asked me specifically not to touch him. I could feel a circular scar from a cigarette burn, and a smattering of soft, translucent hair as his flesh trembled with each beat of his heart.

"I'm right here," he mumbled.

"But Alice isn't. I let him take her, and then I took her from you. And I did it front of you! There was blood everywhere, on my hands, and you saw…" My voice was shaking as I tried to catch a breath I didn't need. I could feel his heart beating under my hand, but my palm still felt slick with fresh, warm blood. I could feel the weak pulse of Alice's veins in my mouth as I sliced through her skin and flooded her body with my venom.

The thought wasn't the wisest while I had gone so long without hunting. A little over two weeks was pushing the limits of the burn of my thirst, and I almost felt the urge to try to clear my throat of the venom that was permanently pooling there.

"She asked y-you t-to, and s-s-so did I," he reminded me gently. "And Bella, I d-don't think of anything y-you d-did as anything less than m-miraculous."

"But-"

"Let me explain," he pleaded, and I held my objection. I lifted myself off of him, balancing myself so I could keep one hand over his heart where he had placed it. I was hovering over him, and he absentmindedly brushed my hair back so it didn't hang in his face. He twirled a lock around his index finger and stared at it thoughtfully before tucking it behind my ear, his fingers lingering at my jawline.

"They, J-James and V-V-Victoria… they've hurt m-me f-for m-most of my l-life. We were p-placed with them when w-we w-were nine y-years old. The f-foster h-homes and group h-homes b-before… they were p-paradise in c-comparison. I yelled and p-pushed, and when th-that d-didn't help, I t-tried t-to hit him. But I w-was a l-little k-kid, and there w-was n-nothing I could do. He held m-me down, too. And when I s-s-screamed and…" Edward's hand drifted back down to mine, and he touched the burn beside my index finger. "Th-that's what this w-was f-from. The first one. He w-was angry that I w-was c-crying, and he wanted to m-make m-me s-s-stop."

I balanced all my weight on my knees and tightened my core to keep myself in place so I could hover over him while I brushed the tears tracking down his cheeks. "You don't have to tell me this."

"I w-want to, though," he said, catching my hand in his and smiling sadly. "I d-don't m-mind you knowing. You should know. If y-you hadn't b-been there, Bella, if y-you hadn't done what y-you d-did t-to p-protect us… I know exactly wh-what h-he would have d-done."

The pause was pregnant with the imagery. I could see it in his eyes, memories flashing through the verdant fields of his eyes. I could visualize it too, based on the stories he told- that night where everything broke down around us was at the front of my mind, and pulled a low-pitched growl from my chest through my clenched teeth. Edward either couldn't hear, or he didn't notice, and I waited, and I hoped for him to come back to me before my finite patience ran thin.

He blinked them away, ghosts flying and banished to the furthest recesses of his mind where they belonged. There were no tears and no panic, and the space between us had never been closer.

"N-neither of us w-would have l-lived t-to s-s-see the s-sun rise," Edward continued, his voice as rough as crushed velvet and so soft I doubt I would have been able to hear him if I was human. "Without you, he w-would have k-killed me, and he w-would have k-killed Alice, but he w-would h-have t-tortured us first. He w-was a s-s-sadist, and he was s-sick, and he w-would have d-done everything in his p-power t-to m-make us hurt the w-way he d-did f-for three years."

"I'm so sorry," I repeated, my words feeling empty with the weight of the conversation.

"It's n-not your f-fault," he said again, too. "It's n-no one's f-fault but theirs. You s-s-saved m-me, and you s-saved Alice, too. No one's ever d-done that before. I g-gave up on hoping s-someone would s-save us from him y-years ago, b-but w-with you, Bella? I knew y-you w-would b-be there. Even when V-Victoria appeared, even when I s-saw J-J-James w-with Alice, I knew y-you w-would s-s-save us."

"But I let him hurt her," I cried.

Edward shook his head. "He w-would have hurt her f-far, far worse if it w-weren't f-for y-you. You t-took care of him s-s-so he can't…"

"He'll never, ever hurt you again," I promised forcefully, and Edward nodded.

"I know that," he said, swallowing thickly and wiping away fresh tears. "I d-didn't even realize how r-relieving it would b-be, until it happened. T-to know th-that he's actually, t-truly g-gone. And to have b-been able t-to s-s-see it happen, s-so I know f-for m-myself."

"I thought I terrified you," I whispered. I knew what he had seen. The mask of my humanity had slipped in front of him before, but I had well and truly shed it then.

"No," he said quickly, and I knew he was lying, at least a little bit. "I'm g-glad I g-got t-to watch."

"I left Alice…"

"She w-was ch-changing already, wasn't she? Or else, she w-would have d-died f-from the blood l-loss, right?"

I shrugged, hesitant to face that as a reality, even if it was true. Instead of keeping it to myself, I gave voice to my internal monologue. "I never should have let it get to that point."

"What's the p-point in dw-dwelling on th-the p-past, and past choices?" he asked. "It's n-not s-s-something we c-can ch-change, only s-something we c-can d-deal with."

"It's difficult not to," I mumbled.

He snorted, and I was surprised to see a crooked smile curving his lips up. "Believe me, I know."

"I suppose you do," I admitted begrudgingly. It felt like I was the one sitting in a therapy session, but I couldn't help but wallow in the hypothetical, however unhealthy a psychiatrist might think that to be. The threads of my thoughts were a snarled, tangled mess of what could have been.

Edward touched my lip again, pulling it out from under my teeth with a marked furrow in his brow. "But, f-for the s-s-sake of the conversation…" he allowed with a sigh.

"I should never have even given him the chance to touch a single hair on her head," I said more sharply than I had intended.

"He d-distracted you," Edward said with a sad smile. He brushed his hand across my face to slide his fingers through my hair gently, and I leaned into his touch. I looked up at him hesitantly, hiding behind my lashes and waiting for harshness to color the verdant expanse of his eyes or his mouth to set in that familiar tight line that told me he was finished with a conversation. Instead, my gaze lingered on the fullness of his lips that pulled up further as something playful glimmered in his eyes. "And I know I d-don't have th-the s-s-same kind of m-memory you do, but I'm p-pretty sure I d-distracted y-you, too."

If I were human, I knew that even the roots of my hair would be scarlet with blush. The memory was poisoned by the chaos that followed, but I couldn't help but react to his words, and the smoldering darkness of his eyes that told me that we were again remembering the same thing.

If the tension of the past few weeks hadn't been there to keep companionship with the ugly presence of my self-conscious embarrassment, I would have had no qualms. I may have been battling conflicts on all ends- tension and unsureness mixed with an omnipresent thirst and the absolute terror of the reality of my leaving- but it didn't erase the pull I always felt to him, the ache in my dead heart that begged for me to fall into his arms.

"Come on," Edward said, rolling out of bed and pulling me with him. "Let's g-go t-to the meadow."

He wanted to chase down the dark heaviness of our morning with the bright and sunny day, a last gasp of summer before we would be enveloped in rain and cloud cover and coolness. It wasn't as if I put up much of a fight. I felt emotionally drained, but physically I was as fit as ever. It wouldn't do me any good to curl up in bed and wrap myself around him until the sun set again and I could imagine myself to be sharing his dreams.

My one insistence was that we bring food with us. Edward readied himself in the bathroom, and by the time he met us downstairs, Esme had packed a bag with enough food I judged to last a few people several days, or one teenage boy who was a touch too thin and definitely still growing.

The sun was baking, hanging lazily in the sky with no intention of going anywhere and refusing to be ignored in the meanwhile, reveling in the abnormally clear blue sky that was normally hidden behind a dense cloud cover and kept cool with rain. I crouched down, and Edward wrapped his arms around my neck and jumped so that his legs were hooked firmly around my waist. I steadied him with my hands around his knees to hold him in place, but he didn't really need it.

I wanted to be drawn back into the darkness of memories. My melancholia was difficult to resist after I had been sunken into it for weeks. After all, the last time I had been running in a forest, Edward slung across my back, we were heading towards Alice's death.

But it was impossible to feel even an ounce of that sadness. Not when the sun was shining, and Edward was smiling widely with his cheek against mine, his heart pounding into my back so hard that it echoed through my chest and felt like my own. He loved to run, and I couldn't resist looping around to make our journey last a bit longer.

"If you hold on tight, I'll make a jump!" I said, turning my head to catch his eye. I could feel his arms tighten around my neck, his legs squeezing at my waist as if he really needed to hold himself to me, as if I would ever let him fall.

I veered to the east, weaving around trees to find the rush of water I could hear through the thicket of evergreens. I slowed down to make a show of it. Edward's pulse picked up in anticipation just as I dug my heels into the soil, and I sprung up on the balls of my feet to rocket over the wide expanse of the river. Edward's laughter was a delighted peal ringing in my ears, and we were both grinning wildly by the time I stopped at the meadow's edge.

We sunk into the shady grass among the spread of fragile summer flowers in full bloom. Some of them were wilting in the unforgiving sun, oozing a sensuous, sickly scent, intensifying when it met the livelier earthy aroma of dense moss that clung to the trees. Butterflies and bees drifted over borders of rich, moist soil, thickly strewn with Astrantia, allium, and aquilegia, mildly invaded by vetch and willow-herb. I pulled the breakfast wrap Esme had cooked from the bag, and Edward spread out a blanket and set up a chess board he had grabbed on our way out.

Carlisle and I occasionally played, but it wasn't a popular activity in our family. It had been left on a shelf on the entertainment center, destined to be passed over in favor of movies and video games and occasionally Monopoly until Edward picked it up.

"Do you know how to play?" I asked, organizing the white pieces on my side.

"I have a r-rough idea," Edward said. I ordered his pieces properly, and demonstrated the movements each one made. He seemed to mostly know it all, and told me a funny story of learning it in a foster home- before he ran away- where they called the pieces by silly names like 'horsey' for the knight and 'Jesus for the king- because, of course, it sported a cross.

I laid on my side on the blanket, holding my head up in my hand and using the other to move my pieces across the board. Edward was sitting across from me, legs crossed with his food in one hand and his eyes squinted as he fingered the ridges of the top of the rook while he contemplated his move.

It was a very alluring gesture, even if he was going to move the wrong piece. I would checkmate him in two moves if he moved his rook, but I didn't want to point it out if it meant he would stop. His fingertips looked soft, his fingers long and elegant and, as I physically knew, incredibly talented. I could see his fragile pulse in the intricate webbing of blue veins in his hand, calling out to me in its fragrance and flooding my mouth with a venom I swallowed back, ignoring it along with the demanding burn that marked my thirst.

He finally moved it, and I didn't even need to glance at the board to move my bishop. It wasn't the piece I needed to move to win- no, I abandoned the Italian Gambit to leave my own rook open for his capture.

I waited for him to make his move, still unable to shift my stare from the lovely form of his hand.

"You're n-not s-s-supposed to let me w-win," he murmured, those fingers grasping around the tip of his knight to loop it around to protect his king. The ridges of his fingerprint conformed to the cool plastic of the chess piece.

"I've never let anyone win at anything a day in my life," I retorted, pointedly lifting my gaze for a fraction of a second to stare at him seriously as my bishop took his knight. It didn't matter that his king immediately took my bishop- a silly move since I hadn't checked him with the bishop- and with one more move, I had his king surrounded with no way out.

"Checkmate!" I exclaimed, grinning up at him proudly.

"You c-could have won b-before," he grumbled, resetting the board and flipping it to give himself black.

"It's not about the destination, it's about the journey."

"S-s-since when did you s-start s-spouting f-fortune cookie wisdom?" he laughed, taking a pawn from me quickly after just my second move of the new game.

"You can teach an old dog new tricks," I said cheekily. Edward blinked in surprise, staring at me with wide eyes before we both started laughing.

It felt normal, as abnormal as our normal was. I was sparkling incessantly in the blinding sunshine, but Edward never made note of it. I had carried him on my back and ran faster than the speed limit, but for us that was a mundane occurrence. There were all these baselines I had set in my mind, all of these things I had wanted to do and instincts I wanted simultaneously to repress and revel in. I had felt like I was racing to some kind of finish line with Volterra looming at the end.

Why couldn't I just be? Be exquisitely happy, and choose not to pay attention to anything right now that wouldn't make me feel such a way. I didn't need to focus on the guarded darkness that flashed in Edward's eyes, or the way his hand hesitated before he laced his fingers through mine. I didn't even have to think about leaving for Italy and all that would entail. I could just be, and I laid back on the blanket, grass brushing along my skin in a comforting carress as Edward and I pointed out cloud formations just like we always had.

We had played another game of chess after Edward ate a late lunch, and I very pointedly checked him after three moves, and won after another two. He rolled his eyes, but I knew losing didn't actually bother him. I had a passing thought about how that might change when Edward did, and if he would become competitive. We all were, even Esme and Carlisle loved to win- it was the only reason Carlisle ever cheated.

I pushed the thought aside, not wanting to get drawn into anything beyond the here and now. And when Edward's mouth found mine and his hand wrapped around my throat, I definitely wasn't thinking of anything else.

We didn't go beyond that. His tongue was like hot wet silk, slippery and delicious, and I wanted to devour him and I wanted him to claim me, I wanted to be close to him and hold him inside me and soothe the ache in my chest and the flame in my throat and the desire that was always pooling at the surface of my skin and coloring my every thought and instinct.

Instead, I tucked my face into the hollow of his throat and let him hold me while he caught his breath. I could still taste him, and feel the pulse of his jugular on my cheek. One of his arms was wrapped around me, the other brushing through my hair lightly. He twirled a strand around his finger and then tucked it back and repeated the process with another.

"You're s-so good," he whispered, more to himself than to me. I didn't respond, just hummed in assent and twisted myself closer to him. "You're too good," he said, softer still, so quiet even I could barely make out his words. I seeped his warmth into my skin, absorbing the heat of the sun so that I felt close to his temperature, finally. If I was good, he was an angel.

And I would be content to let him hold me and wrap his wings around me for the rest of eternity.