A/N: Thanks so much for all your wonderful thoughts.

I was so glad to see so many of you return to this story after the looooong hiatus. I truly appreciate your patience with me. It means a lot. Your trust in me is why I will do my best to finish this and all my WIPs. 3

Most characters belong to S. Meyer. The rest belong to me. All mistakes are mine.

Chapter 11 – A Charlie Brown Christmas

Bella

A few days before the events on the morning of Rosalie Hale's visit…

I took a hike out to the western portion of the property, all the way to the boundary line. This invisible line was far from the Victorian, where the natural mound on which the house stood began a downward slope, and a band of evergreens branched out, circling the property in a wreath-like ring. These evergreens were much smaller than the majestic trees much further in the distance, the ones that dotted the mountains like dominoes. Lush and rich underneath their snow blanket, the thick, ice-covered branches on these junior evergreens spread upward as if worshipping the blue, winter sky.

As I gazed at the frosty beauty before me, I tapped my chin with my forefinger. Dad taught me to gauge a tree's potential as a Christmas tree by tugging its needles. If the needles gave easily, the tree wouldn't last long in a living room; if they clung to their branches, that was the tree for you.

Therefore, I plodded through the half-foot or so of snow that morning, skimming my fingertips from tree to tree, branch to branch, smiling at the hearty needles' pinpricks, their defiant grip on their branches. After a few minutes, I stopped; every tree would breeze through the needle test – that was apparent. The problem was that even the smallest tree dwarfed me by a few feet. Moreover, while Dad had given me the basics of picking a Christmas tree, he'd always done the actual cutting.

After some deliberation, I shouldered out of the duffel bag holding the rest of my supplies and let the bag drop to the ground. Then I spread my feet shoulder length apart. I dug each boot deep into the cushiony snow and lifted the axe over my shoulder. Gripping the handle, I slowly stretched and curled my fingers around it like a pianist prepping for a concerto.

"Well, there's a first time for everything. I am woman, hear me roar. Let's shatter the glass ceiling. We can do it. And all those great quotes."

With that, I swung for the smallest tree's trunk.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Holy mother f-!"

I almost jumped out of my boots. This, in turn, obliterated my aim. Instead of the trunk, one of the tree's bottom branches met the axe's razor-sharp edge. The unfortunate branch plopped to the ground with a snow-muffled thud, then promptly disappeared into ivory fluff.

For a few seconds, only the wind's susurrations joined the staccato of my racing heart. Meanwhile, my shoulders rose and fell, rose and fell. Eventually, my death grip on the now downturned axe loosened. Once I finally swallowed my lungs back into place, I glared over my shoulder.

Despite the weather, a few feet behind me stood a man with neither sweater nor coat over his usual outfit of dark waistcoat, white shirtsleeves, and dark slacks. His hands were dug into his trouser pockets but more in a posture of insouciance than in an indication of cold. His features betrayed zero guilt at having scared the ever-loving heck out of me. Therefore, gesturing toward the defaced tree, I pointed out his offense.

"Look what you made me do! Do you realize I could've killed myself?"

Edward's only reaction was to raise both brows. "With how you just swung that axe? Trust me, killing yourself would've been a difficult accomplishment, even for you. So, again, I ask, what do you think you're doing?"

Now, I made a one-eighty and faced him. "What does it look like I'm doing? I'm chopping down a Christmas tree."

"A Christmas tree?" he echoed, his tone conveying excitement for neither the prospect of a tree nor Christmas.

"Did they not have Christmas trees back in your day? See, a Christmas tree is a tree you cut down and bring into the house to decorate during-"

"I know what a Christmas tree is, thank you. However, I made my opinion on cutting down trees on my property perfectly clear the day after you moved yourself in and first came out here mumbling your nefarious intentions."

"Oh," I nodded. "So, it wasn't my imagination when you oh-so-kindly blew ice-cold snow drifts into my eyeballs while hissing at my back like a gust of evil wind trying to scare the hell out of me?"

"I was trying to scare the fear of God into you, but you seem to fear nothing and no one, Miss Swan. Either way, in my defense," he said, crossing his arms and shrugging in a gesture of complete unrepentance, "I barely knew you at that point."

"Oh, I barely knew you," I parroted with a scoff. "Typical male excuse to act like an Ay-hole."

Edward frowned, and I lifted the axe. I'd only meant to lug it over my shoulder in preparation for my next swing. But Edward reeled back as if I'd aimed for his head.

I burst out laughing. "Guilty conscience?"

"Why would I have one of those?"

"Why, indeed? Then here's a better question: Why would a ghost fear having his ghostly head chopped off? Wouldn't my axe just slice through the air?"

Edward rolled his eyes. "It would, yes, but you seem to forget I was once a flesh and blood man," he stressed, "with flesh and blood reflexes. And many of those flesh and blood reflexes are hard to relinquish, especially in the face of an emotional woman swinging an axe."

Despite the chill in the air, something about his triple repetition of 'flesh and blood' made my skin break out in a sweat. I, therefore, chose to ignore the fact that he'd just called me an 'emotional woman,' in favor of skipping over all discussion of his flesh and blood and my emotions. Instead, I returned to the topic at hand.

"I'll replace the tree and plant a new one in the spring. It was my plan all along."

He pursed his lips. "If you're still here come spring-"

"If?"

"-I'll hold you to that. Now, would you mind setting down that axe? You're making me nervous."

Snickering, I rotated from side to side, the axe still swung over my shoulder. "Oh, you're nervous that I'll lop off one of your regenerating, spectral limbs, but my flesh and blood limbs," – I grinned wryly – "are of no concern here. Think fast!" I flicked my arms and faked a swing.

Edward didn't jerk. When I did it again, he remained just as still. After a handful more instances of this, his mouth twitched. Finally, he surrendered to a chuckle.

"You are a child sometimes."

I shook my head. "Dude. Seriously. Tell me the truth. These lines couldn't possibly have made you popular with the women of your day."

"Think as you'd like," he sing-songed, shrugging again.

"Anyway," I sighed. "Move out of my way unless you do want me to swing through you. I'm not finished with my tree."

Expelling a breath, Edward thrust a hand out between us, then wriggled his fingers in a 'give me' motion.

"If you insist on going through with this, hand over the axe before you finish off that unfortunate tree."

I took a step back. "I can do it."

"Really? You can do it?"

"Yes, I can. What, you think I can't?"

Edward held my gaze. Then, stepping further back and aside, he made an exaggerated sweeping motion with his hand.

"Then, by all means, be my guest."

Lifting my chin, I stomped around him, tossing a scathing look his way.

"I'm not your guest; that's the problem here," I muttered.

Once more, I hefted the axe and took another swing at the tree trunk. The sharp edge met yet another branch, severing it. I growled under my breath. Behind me, Edward remained silent. Again, I swung. Again, I missed and hacked off more of the tree.

"Damn it!" I shouted after multiple attempts and as many tree limbs littering the ivory ground. "I don't want to hear a word from you!"

"I've said nothing," he snorted.

A different sort of sweat crept over my skin now, caused by mounting exhaustion and frustration. My arms felt like strings of licorice. Finally, with my eyes lasered to the trees, I let the damn axe fall to the ground.

"Fine! Let's see how much better you can do," I snapped, "before this ends up looking like a Charlie Brown special."

Edward didn't take me up on my offer immediately. But before I could question him, he spoke.

"Step back a bit further. A bit more. There you go."

His tone surprised me. I expected smugness. Sarcasm – that perhaps grew more playful by the day, but still sarcasm. Certainly, I would be smug and sardonic, even if playfully, had the situation been reversed. Yet, Edward spoke quietly, almost gently. My brow furrowed further when, rather than using his ghostly powers to levitate the axe and have it do the work – 'Mind over matter,' as he often said – Edward physically picked up and raised the axe. He didn't raise it over his shoulder in what I now realized was a stupidly inexperienced manner. Edward hefted the axe with both hands straight above his head. As he held the position for a moment, his gaze focused on his aim, well-defined arms strained beneath his dress shirt. He swung in a downward, precise arc.

Bark chips flew. The tree, cleaved halfway off the trunk, leaned sharply to one side. Again, Edward lifted the axe and swung. The tree fell sideways. With a release of breath through narrowed lips, Edward dropped the axe. It sliced through the deep snow and landed knob up, straight, stiff, and as static as King Arthur's gleaming sword. Edward rested his hands on his knees, his breathing labored, yet its exhalation was unseen despite the cold that should have made it swirl like gray mist. When our eyes met, I observed how the self-satisfied smirk now made an appearance. We burst into laughter together.

Still laughing, I stepped closer, keeping distance between us - the bare minimum required.

"I mean, had you not just stood there, watching me and making me nervous, I could've easily done that."

"Ahh." Edward nodded, straightening. "So it's my fault you disfigured the tree. All right, Miss Swan. All right."

He held my gaze, and even though he was teasing me, his subdued smile remained – less amusement at my expense and more…enjoyment. What exactly he was enjoying, I wasn't sure. My failure? His success? The weather? My company? Anyone's company?

My musings were interrupted when under his breath and close to inaudibly, Edward cleared his throat. I assumed he'd noted my distraction and meant to disrupt my inner thoughts. But, with an almost imperceptible head shake, he turned his attention to the duffle bag beside him. He pulled out the ball of twine and began wrapping it around the tree. I stood back and watched him move around skillfully, with the grace of someone who knew what he was doing and was immersed in it.

"Hey, can I ask you something that might be personal?"

"Why stop now?"

"Why did you chop the tree down yourself just now? I mean, you looked like you worked your mus-" – it was my turn to clear my throat – "arms, when you could've just levitated the axe and had it swing away on its own. Right?"

"Right," he replied after a heartbeat.

"And tying the tree. You could just sit back and let the twine wrap itself around the tree. Can't you?"

"I can."

"Then why work so hard at both?" I prompted when he failed to expound.

Sighing, Edward looked up. "My cousin, Jasper…I used to always tell him…I tried to teach him the value and the benefits of doing something yourself when you want it done right. But he was a lazy one, God love him. Always looking for the easy way." He shook his head, and his eyes glazed over for few seconds. Then he returned his attention to the tree.

I realized he was done expounding. Still, somewhat bewildered, I opened my mouth. But then I quickly shut it. It was one of the first times I stopped to consider all the myriad everyday activities, jobs, hobbies, tasks, undertakings, etc., that we, as humans, consider mundane, chore-like, and even annoying. Yet, while roaming lovely yet lonely Victorian hallways for the past hundred years and only venturing out to frighten people away from his stash of cash, Edward Cullen, Bootlegger and Quasi-gangster, had missed out on all of these activities. And perhaps even drudgery becomes a diversion after going a century without.

I watched him quietly after that. Still, as deftly and fluidly as he moved, there was something stiff in the set of his shoulders. I noted the rigid set of his jawline, which, with its formidably angular shape, could already be considered intimidating. He muttered something then, and although it was primarily unintelligible, I was sure I heard the words "Charlie Brown" and "big shot lumberjack" mixed in there. My brow furrowed.

Lifting the tree by its makeshift twine handle, Edward stood and headed back toward the house. Yet another action he didn't have to physically perform. I stepped beside him, walking closely, but as had become our custom, not too closely.

"Seriously. Thank you."

Edward dropped the tree and stopped in his tracks. I stopped, too. And despite the word 'seriously' I'd just uttered, when he looked at me and made an exaggerated show of gasping and rounding his green eyes, I chuckled.

"Did Miss Isabella Marie Swan express gratitude for being rescued from a precarious situation?"

"Ed, I said thanks. I never said you rescued me, you wannabe dragon-slayer."

I resumed my stride, breaking our gaze because just as when he mentioned his flesh and blood three times in ten seconds, something about how Edward said my full name just then – languidly and deliberately pronouncing each syllable – sent a flood of warmth through me.

Behind me, I heard him chuckle. He caught up to me quickly.

"I bet women in this day and age no longer believe in heroes, do they?"

"They do," I replied with my eyes on my boots, focusing on how they sank into the snow, leaving behind deep, sole-patterned indentations. My gaze panned to Edward's feet. I tried not to stumble over the rest of my words when I noted how his footfalls left no footprints. "Nowadays, we're reminded that we can slay our own dragons." After a few breaths, I crooked a challenging brow his way. But Edward merely nodded.

"Speaking of dragon slayers, and not that it's here nor there, but who's Charlie Brown?"

"What?"

"Charlie Brown," he repeated. "Is he some lumberjack friend you allow to go around slaying the few dragons you can't slay yourself?"

I stared at him.

"You mentioned Mr. Brown before," he said as if to jog my memory, "before I-"

I laughed so hard I fell to my knees on the snow, indifferent to the moisture that instantly soaked through my denim. Then I gripped my stomach to quell the ache in my ribs. When I finally managed some semblance of self-control, I looked up.

Edward stood watching me impassively.

"Come on," I said, choking back another bout, "I'll tell you all about Mr. Brown, Dragon Slayer, on the way back to the house."

Edward failed to find the humor in my explanation of Charlie Brown and his sad Christmas tree; at least, he pretended not to see the humor. Increasingly, I was learning how to read his expressions. His lips tended to pucker and twitch in the…cutest way whenever he tried to hide a smile.

Once we'd chosen a spot, Edward situated the tree into its stand, again doing the work himself. Meanwhile, I cradled the strings of Christmas lights I'd bought, complaining about the sticky and time-consuming job of looping strings around beautiful yet prickly, sap-infused branches.

"By the time I'm done, I'm a human Post-it note," I joked.

Edward paused and met my gaze. "Post…it?"

I was also growing more adept at descriptive summaries whenever they were necessary.

"Oh. A Post-it is a small notepad, usually produced in a garishly yellow hue, where each note has a sticky backing."

"Sticky backing? For what?"

"So you can stick them to any surface. They're convenient,"I added when he appeared unimpressed.

"If you say so, and if that's as inventive as mankind got over the past hundred years-"

"It's not as inventive- look, the point is, decking the Christmas tree in lights leaves me a sticky mess, and-"

In the next moment, the strings of lights in my arms drifted upward. Hovering above me, they curled like the ringlets at the ends of Christmas bows. In those seconds, as I gazed in amazement at the lights glittering above me and casting a warm glow across the ceiling, I did feel as if I were in a magical fairy-tale. For a fraction of a moment, I imagined I was a princess in an enchanted storybook.

The lights then floated over the tree, hugging each layer of branches before nestling into place.

"Thank you," I said, offering Edward a wry smile. "But what happened to the benefits of doing something yourself when you want it done right?"

"Heaven forbid you go around leaving questionable residue all over the furniture."

I chuckled.

No, I was no princess. Neither was Edward a prince slaying dragons for me. Yet, it was the sort of deeds he did perform – layering a throw over me if I drifted off on the couch, perpetually keeping snow and ice off the porch steps so the human wouldn't slip, ridding me of the task of chopping a Christmas tree or even of the uncomplicated yet annoying task of layering lights on the tree; stupid, ridiculous tasks I could efficiently perform myself – that kept sending that flicker of warmth through me.

Afterward, we'd both simply stood by the tree and gazed at its incandescent beauty.

OOOOO

Late morning, after Rosalie Hale's visit and the events that followed…

By unspoken agreement, I kept to myself for the rest of the day, a peculiar endeavor when, without realizing it, I'd begun adapting to Edward's almost constant presence in my daily life. In truth, maybe I'd more than adapted. They say proximity engenders familiarity, and, somewhere along the way, Edward became more than a familiar ghost lurking around the corners.

Nevertheless, it was also fact that since I moved in, Edward and I clashed, sometimes head-on, and often in warfare frames of mind. But, at this point, initial and mutual wariness was irrelevant. The pertinent fact was that we were now like the weaved pattern on a straw hat: intertwined and intersecting the same space, even if sometimes we still crossed swords via sharp words and tongue lashings. So, if Edward and I accepted that neither of us was vacating the Victorian any time soon – and, at this point, I think we both accepted that – then we'd have to acknowledge that our existences would inevitably continue to mingle.

Still, acclimation to cohabitating with a supernatural entity notwithstanding, the morning's revelation – that somehow, in a moment of heated argument between Edward and me, I'd subconsciously and supernaturally rattled window frames and furniture – unsettled me. I felt intoxicated, but not in the fun, tipsy sort of drunk. This was similar to a hangover, where your head feels scrambled and muddled, and a hazy, surreal blur blights the outskirts of your vision.

In this state of fidgety disquiet, I aimlessly wandered the house. It probably wasn't the best state of mind in which to wander a house that one already knows is supernaturally possessed. Everything now took on a chilling, otherworldly bend – chills that were admittedly a delayed response and which most sane people would've felt weeks ago. I strolled through the living room, initially attempting a pretense of normalcy, absently humming a holiday tune while skimming my fingertips along the smooth planes of the room's furniture.

"You're going to look great once Rosalie Hale is done with you," I cooed to inanimate objects.

Knowing I was in no condition to write, I gave my desk and laptop a wide berth. Instead, I paused to admire the Christmas tree Edward and I set up days ago. Sighing, I inhaled its crisp, herbal, and soothing pine scent. I smiled to myself, and a realization struck me in a manner it hadn't hit me before:

This tree was yet another example of a truce between Edward and me. It was a joint decision regarding what took up space in the house, even if we hadn't verbalized it.

In the next moment, the tree lights flickered. Abruptly, they glowed…unnaturally bright. Like UFOs. The lights magnetized my eyeballs, keeping me from tearing away my gaze. My breath caught.

When I finally managed to blink once, then twice, I moved in closer and found…

Nothing. Nothing was otherworldly about the Christmas tree lights beyond their merry imitation of ivory stars amid frosted needles and pines.

The eerie moment lessened the sense of peace that gazing at the Christmas tree temporarily provided. So, when my stomach grumbled, I heeded its demands and headed for the kitchen to make myself a sandwich. Afterward, I carried the soiled dishes to the sink, opened the faucet, and again lost my breath when the water streamed out in two separate rivulets, one headed left and the other right – like Moses and the Red Sea, but in miniature.

The dishes slipped from my hand and crashed to the sink bottom, reverberating against the sink walls and emitting a cringeworthy rattle. The rattle finally lost momentum, but adversely, my breaths now erupted in rapid heaves. Cautiously, I dipped closer to the stream and examined the dual surge, peeking into the faucet head where I found…

A clog. A clog caused the current to split, though both torrents disappeared into the drain in one long, even rivulet. Just as it was meant to.

By the time I trudged up the stairs, my temples throbbed. I rubbed them with trembling hands, snorting at the ridiculousness of it all because these reactions should've manifested weeks ago! I couldn't think straight; my head felt too light, like a helium balloon tethered by leaden legs and by feet that suddenly seemed to skim the steps rather than climb them. Heart thundering, I shot rounded and wary eyes to my feet, only to find…

Each foot hitting each step just as it should.

"I need a nap," I muttered to the air.

Though, I knew Edward listened. Even if he made no comment and I couldn't see him, I felt his presence. I'd always felt his presence since I stepped foot in this house. It was a sensation that always buoyed rather than frightened me. Perhaps that should have been a clue that buying this house would mean something different for me than…well, for almost anyone else, I supposed.

Sprinting into my bedroom, I pivoted toward the door, clinging to it as I nudged it forward with my foot, all while eyeing the hallway. Something else I'd felt since my arrival was Edward's absence from my bedroom, once his bedroom. Yet, since it became mine, Edward had never crossed its threshold. And I appreciated the privacy. As close as I was beginning to feel to him, I needed a sanctuary where I could be alone – really alone. I needed a ghost-free zone.

My gaze panned to the staircase landing before the door met the wall frame. At the top step sat the familiar, gossamer, and almost translucent silhouette of a well-dressed man from the 1920s. His head was bowed, legs spread, and forearms resting on his thighs, his hands knit together in the space between them in a gesture that could've been supplication or prayer. Either way, he appeared like a man lost in his own home.

A/N: Thoughts?

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