A/N: *sheepish grin* So, uh, here's the next chapter? ;D Sorry it's so late – really. To summarise very briefly; I got sick (as in, hospital sick) with very bad food poisoning when I was supposed to have teaching prac, and so had to do my teaching prac around the time I was planning to post this chapter. That then ran into the release of the Twilight movie, and as I was almost singlehandedly (not for lack of offers, my Twilighters are awesome, but my deal with the distributor was complicated :P) organizing the first screening in our delayed country of Aus, I didn't have time to eat or sleep, let alone write :-( So I'm really sorry this is so late, and I shall endeavour to be more timely in future. Please forgive me? :D

Massive thanks to those who've reviewed, all those who've PMed, and everyone who's sent their support in other ways :-) A special thanks to the people who reviewed anonymously; I reply to all my reviews, and I feel bad not being able to thank you personally! :-)

Really hope you like the chapter, anyhow :-) And thanks for reading :D

Chapter 15: One-Hundred-and-Four Years

The rest of that night was…surreal. Rosalie was tugging Emmett up the stairs—"we've got to pack, Emmett"—almost before Carlisle had finished speaking. Esme's hands were clasped too tightly in her lap, and the way she stared at her knees made it easy for me to look away. It felt wrong to be grateful, but I couldn't have met her eyes if she'd looked up. Esme looked…so young. Young like I'd met her eighty-four years ago, young and afraid and unsure. I knew she would tell me it was worth it, and I knew she was wrong. I didn't want to hear it. I didn't want reasons to stay.

She and I were the only ones sitting by the time Carlisle crossed the room. Ten seconds could be an eternity for a vampire. His hand on my shoulder was cautious, and I didn't like it.

Edward.

I took one more moment, felt his touch firm and reassuring and unchanging as it had always been, and raised my eyes. "I'm not leaving until Friday afternoon. You and Esme should pack. I'm fine."

Carlisle glanced sideways at Esme—incoherent thoughts of guilt, of wanting to be at my side and at hers and a conscious reaffirmation that he should speak to me before he looked after Esme—and back to me. I wished he'd change his mind on speaking to me first. I'd have to speak to him at some point, naturally, but right now I felt more ready to sit here for most of the rest of forever than to keep acting for Carlisle.

"Can we speak upstairs, Edward?"

I nodded, stood, and reminded myself that I would keep acting for Carlisle because I had no other choice.

I tried to focus only on Carlisle's thoughts as we crossed the lounge, passed Esme without a word, and started up the stairs. Speaking in Carlisle's study was a formality, or perhaps a habit, a lingering human preconception. Carlisle would speak to me in thought to maximize privacy, and I would reply quietly, but everyone would hear what I said as clearly as they would were we downstairs. Walls and doors and distance made no difference to us. Esme's thoughts were still loud from the second floor, and Emmett was still screaming murder at me in his mind—the only place he could protest without suffering Rosalie's wrath.

I tried to delve deeper into Carlisle's head for focus. There was more than enough confusion there to occupy Carlisle, but I knew his mind too well for it to occupy me long. The guilt was peaked—Rosalie had been ruthless—but not unfamiliar. The uncertainty put me on edge, but wasn't new. Carlisle had felt uncertainty about Bella from the moment I'd driven double the speed limit into Forks Community Hospital nine months ago and told him I was fleeing to Alaska. Fear for me was something I had always monitored in Carlisle's thoughts, because it preoccupied him too much, frustratingly often. That could be ignored. Concern for Bella was something I had already processed from Alice, well before I'd broken the plan to the family tonight. It was the sadness that was hardest to deal with, and the sadness that seemed to dominate as he ushered me ahead of him into the dim light of his study—he wanted to argue with me, but he knew I was right. That was winning. I was winning.

I let that give me strength as I sat down in the chair on the close side of the desk, the chair that was more mine than anyone else's. He rounded to his side slowly, trying to give himself time to think, vaguely aware in the lower levels of consciousness that I would know he was giving himself time to think.

The silence stretched once he was seated, but I let it go—there was always the chance he might think something that would help me. We had been sitting on our respective sides of the heavy, wear-softened desk almost a minute before he finally looked up, knowing almost instinctively, with eighty-seven years of practice, that I'd catch the thought and meet his eye. I waited.

You haven't spoken to me of this, Edward.

This I had prepared for. "It was a decision that I had to make alone."

I am your family, Edward. We all are. You never have to be alone.

I nodded calmly, and was as glad as ever that my gift was mine and not Carlisle's. I didn't deserve him. "I know that. And I am confident that I will be able to return to normal life with my family once we have left Washington."

A moment's pause, and I caught the private thought, the concern, before Carlisle made it deliberate. An extra moment of preparation to respond.

Surely you aren't worried about that, Edward? You can be with Bella and spend time with your family, my son. You've had a difficult nine months. I don't want—

"It's not that." I knew I shouldn't cut him off, but I didn't want options, or compromises, or chances. I didn't want chances to change my mind. "I am leaving because it is best for Bella if I do so. It's the right thing to do. There's no other reason, Carlisle. I've thought this through."

Without meaning to…Edward, I…I'm not sure how else to put this to you, but you should remember that…decisions you have made on your own, without speaking to me, or to anyone else…considerations that you have deliberately hidden from me…have not always been your best choices.

Anger, shame, the sharp sting of humiliation, a childishness that hated him being right…I shuffled them all carefully to the back of my mind. I was good at this. "I understand that, Carlisle. I made the decision to draw Bella into our world—to draw her into danger—without consulting properly with you, and this is my reversal of that mistake. I won't be so rash again."

He knew I was playing him—the thought was clear as everything else that passed through his mind—but that didn't entirely stop it from working.

Carlisle shifted uncomfortably—something no one else ever saw him do. Maybe Jasper, once or twice. Bella's situation is not the same as Rosalie's. She has tried to choose our life before it's been offered her, and she has stood by that for some months. You have every freedom to wait years and make sure she stands by it still before you do anything that contradicts your understanding of what is right, Edward.

"My understanding of what is right is that suspending Bella between two worlds, forcing her to lie to family and friends, putting her in constant mortal danger, and trapping her in a relationship with no future cannot be considered right, by any twist of conscience."

Trapping her?

A slip. A bad slip. He shouldn't have heard that. But…"Figuratively. As long as I allow her to choose me, she can choose no one else. If she is closed to all human relationships, then she is closed to all reasonable possibilities for her future."

He only half bought it, but it was enough. You want her to choose someone else?

No. "It's what is right."

Can you live with that choice?

It was extraordinarily difficult to hold his gaze, but he wouldn't speak thoughts to me if I looked away, and I didn't want the rest of the house hearing more sides of this discussion than they had to. "I don't plan on being present to live with it or not. I will leave here for good, I will return to my normal life with you and Esme, and with the rest of our family, and I will not contact Bella again."

More thought, more fleeting threads of ifs and buts, but they were almost all considerations of practicality now, hows and whens of making this work. I had won. It felt like death, and I didn't let myself think on it too long.

You'll have Jasper watch her?

Again, I had predicted this. I measured my words with all my usual care. I really was a monster. "I was hoping that you might. Alice feels strongly about this, and I'm concerned that Jasper may be influenced. It would be…a very, very much appreciated favour to me…if you could simply monitor her status, keep note of her location, ensure that she doesn't—" I flashed a half smile that neither of us bought, but it made me sound more convincing—"move down the street from us, or some similar disaster. She has extraordinary bad luck."

I know that, Edward.

I mentally slapped myself. I couldn't afford to mess this up by trying to be clever with Carlisle. He knew me too well. It was time to return to the script. "This is the right thing to do, Carlisle. We all know that. I haven't done a whole lot of right in the last eighty-seven years…" I held back a laugh, vaguely aware that it would probably sound cracked "…or the last hundred and four…but I'm going to this time. Please have faith in me?"

The last question—plea—was a lie, but it was a scripted lie, scripted when I was calm and immersed in preparation, and it was a lie that cut through all of Carlisle's intelligence to the foolish good that lived at the heart of him. He had unswerving faith in me. He had kept faith in me when I had given him all the cause in the world to do otherwise. He loved me like I didn't deserve, and believed in me as absolutely as I did in him, and he wasn't really concerned that I might screw this up, but I had shifted the game to that ground, and I had the advantage here.

I do, Edward. I know you can do this.

I bowed my head at last, and hoped it wouldn't give me away, because I knew the empty triumph that I couldn't squash from my face would if I kept his gaze. "Thankyou, Car—"

My concern is whether you should, not whether you—

"There is an intrinsic value in doing what is right. No matter how that hurts us."

He knew they were his words before I'd spoken half a sentence, but that didn't make it to formulated expression. Edward…

"Be with me, Carlisle?" I was really doing this. I was really manipulating him to my plan.

I am always with you, Edward.

I nodded, and that was scripted too. "Be with me on this? Help me?"

He didn't want to say yes. He desperately wanted to say no, almost as desperately as I did, and he was furious at me, in large part, and hurt, both because of what I was doing in leaving and because he knew, really, that I was using all I knew of him to manipulate him too coldly and callously for words. But I had won, I had won because he had changed me, changed me when he had no idea what it would do, and his first responsibility, his first care, his first duty in his rule-bound, guilt-ridden, impossibly selfless mind was to me. And if I had thought there was nothing in the world that would make me sink so low as to use that, it was before I'd fallen in love with Bella, and learned that there was something in the world that would make me do anything, and everything, for every day I had left to live.

He didn't look at me when he stood, and he still knew I was playing him. But he stepped around the desk, and walked toward the door. "I'll be looking after Esme for the rest of tonight, but if you need me…"

I stood slowly, unnaturally slowly for us. It felt too easy, and not as wrong as it should have, as I knew it was. "I know. Thank you, Carlisle. Thank you."

He opened the door. "You are my son."

And he didn't understand that this was best for Bella, not for me, but Bella was not his daughter, not like I had been his son for most of my life. I didn't need to convince him I was right. I only needed to know that I was in my heart. "I am."

His touch on my back caught me off guard this time—I was too distracted, stupidly so—and a corner of his mind smiled as he registered the moment of tension in my body. I didn't get caught off guard often. "You can always change your mind."

I stood still, and let him accept it. "But I won't."

He nodded, and the smile was gone. "Alright, then."

I nodded. "I'm going to call Alice."

We stood one more moment, his hand heavy below the base of my neck in ways it couldn't be physically, our eyes still down. We understood each other completely—we had for a long time. And we cared about each other enough to pretend that we didn't, and to pretend that we didn't see how much we were both pretending, and to do this even though we both hated it, because he would do it for me, and I would do it because he had taught me that no amount of pain cannot be overcome for what is right, and for humanity, and for love.

There was only the brush of thoughts before he stepped away and disappeared down the stairs. We had lived in eternities of contact for all the time I could remember. Words were only there to be scripted. All our truth we knew already.

I only made it half way up the second flight of stairs alone. Emmett did an abrupt, silent about turn as he passed me going down—don't say anything!—and grabbed my wrist. I briefly considered telling him loudly that I had nothing to discuss with him, and letting Rosalie handle the rest, but I didn't want him running back to Forks in a moment of misplaced conscience and telling Bella everything.

He didn't say a thing until we were inside my room, door closed, and I didn't understand why until a belated sweep for Rosalie found her in the garage, on the far opposite side of the house. I almost smiled; any day but today, Emmett was ten times more cunning than me—he had to be to live with Rosalie.

When he did open his mouth, Emmet was whispering. "Edward." Whispering was not usual for Emmett. Even without his thoughts—or how blatantly obvious it was what he was trying to do—the whisper was enough to give him away.

"Rosalie will be furious. Don't try."

Emmett responded by lowering his voice. There was very little point—if Rosalie was listening for him, she'd hear either way, and if she wasn't he'd already been quiet enough to go unnoticed. His face said he wasn't taking chances, and his thoughts agreed. He hated disagreeing with Rosalie, but since he knew he did on this, he was focusing on not getting caught. "Edward, I…if Rose really thought about it…if she knew how…how much you're going to regret this—"

I cut him off before he could remind me. "I'm not interested, Emmett."

"You love her!" His voice was still a whisper, but his face was screaming. "And she loves you! This will kill you both! Is that what you want?"

And for a moment Alice's vision of Bella, crying, curled up on her floor, made it hard to breathe, to see, to think. But that was the short term. I was one-hundred-and-four years old. Seeing the long term was my job, because she couldn't. Because there was no way that Bella could be expected to do so. She would cry because she could only see the now. But before long…

I blanked my face, found calm, and turned away from Emmett toward the wardrobe. "She'll be better off, Emmett. I haven't made this decision rashly. That's all that matters."

"You're wrong, Edward."

"So Alice tells me."

I had nothing to do when I reached the wardrobe, but I filed pointlessly through my shirts—because I couldn't afford the fear that I could be wrong, and if I couldn't get rid of it, I couldn't afford to let anyone see it. And one traitorous corner of my mind spoke up with a too-loud voice the wish that shouldn't be there, that I was wrong. But I didn't wish that, not seriously. Not really. I couldn't. I wasn't that weak.

"You could listen to us."

I took a deep breath and pushed the weakness away. I was better than this. "I'm never wrong, Emmett. I would have thought you'd have learned that by now."

He shook his head. "There are things you don't understand, Ed."

"I've read human thoughts for eighty-seven years. I understand enough."

"But you can't read hers."

And I never would. She had been born with that blessing, to be free of my intrusion. Surely that was a message, clear as day. Soon, she would be free of my intrusion altogether, and all would be as it should. I stepped out of the cupboard, raised my eyes, and faced Emmett. "This isn't open for discussion."

Emmett was deadly serious. "You've lost it."

"I don't think that's medically possible. The brain of a vampire doesn't undergo change."

"Don't be a prick."

"Rosalie's thinking about heading up."

"Bullshit."

"Your choice."

It was true, in fact, but I probably would still have said it if it wasn't. Emmett stared me down for another two and a half seconds before turning on the spot, silently opening the door, turning again and stepping out backward with a steely glare set deliberately in every inch of his body. I got the point. He didn't really expect me to care.

And so, at last, I was alone. With one task left before me.

The number of things I'd wanted to do less than I wanted to call Alice numbered on one hand, and most of them involved Bella, and all of them involved blood. I took the phone from my pocket anyway. Two floors down, Carlisle was speaking quietly to Esme—I didn't intrude any more than my hearing did instinctively. Rosalie had just re-entered the house, and Emmett was safely back in their room, folding shirts. I wasn't sure where Alice and Jasper would be, but I was almost certain they'd be together by now. Alice had the overwhelming advantage, and I doubted Jasper would seriously try to avoid her. They might not be in Denali tonight, but they would be together, somewhere in the north. Together. It was a cold thought, an achingly lonely one, and I reminded myself that I was calling Alice, not the two of them, because Jasper, while I had nothing to hold against him, had definitely lost his place in this discussion. It was easier when I thought about just calling Alice, not the pair, when I thought about her as my sister, and not Jasper's mate, as stupid as that was. It was inescapable that everyone in my family but me was mated, but I didn't have to talk to them in pairs. Of course, Alice on her own, unsubdued, was terrifying, especially armed against me as she was. At least by phone she couldn't invade my mind. At least by phone she could never force whatever more she had seen of Bella into my head to weaken me.

I pressed the speed dial without looking, before I could back out, because I knew she'd pick up before I could change my mind and end the call.

"If you hang up I'll kill you!"

There was no one here to see me, no one watching, for this moment, so I shut my eyes, and let my head hang just a moment, and clenched my fists, and let the break deep in the marble of my chest almost come. And then I pushed it away, and put the phone to my ear. "I wasn't really going to."

"You hadn't ruled it out."

"Maybe." There was no point arguing with Alice, especially when she was right.

She'd never bothered with niceties. "What is everyone doing in Alaska tomorrow afternoon?"

There was equally little point trying to put Alice off when she already knew what she was asking. So I told the truth. "Moving."

"Moving house?"

She already knew the answer to that too, I didn't need her thoughts for that much, but I replied anyway. "Yes, Alice. Though they will no doubt be moving in the more regular sense as well, given that none of us are particularly prone to sitting perfectly still for extended periods of time."

"Being snippy won't stop me beating the crap out of you."

"Your being in Alaska might." That was probably stupid.

"I'd agree, Edward, except that I seem to see you heading north Friday afternoon, which seems odd."

"Really?" So maybe that was a little weak.

"Yes."

And I wasn't this weak with anyone else. "Why?"

"Edward…"

Damn Alice. I restrained the urge to swallow, in case it sounded nervous, and tried to sound as sure as I had for Carlisle. "I already told you Alice, we're moving."

"And you don't see a problem with that."

"We have moved several times before."

It was only in the brief silence following that particularly stupid line that I realized how quickly my sometime sister was breathing. Then she started speaking, and the things I should have noticed thirty seconds back—the things that were very wrong with her voice, and her breath, and her tone, the things that were so unlike Alice—were suddenly very obvious.

"Why do I see Bella sobbing and screaming into her pillow? Why do I see her staring at her ceiling like a mad person? Why do I see crowds of worried people harassing Charlie in her living room?"

There was a moment when I almost kept up the smartness—it would have been really satisfying to say 'because you're psychic, Alice'—but her voice was low, and quiet, and furious, and now that I'd taken notice, the panic in her breathing was impossible to ignore. This was the hard part. This was the really, really damn hard part. But I'd known this was coming. And I wasn't this weak with anyone. Not even Alice. I loosened my grip on the phone before I could break it. "I imagine Bella will be very upset when I tell her that I'm leaving Forks."

"Because she's not coming with us."

I couldn't stop the sharpness of my breath in, and there was no point caring once Alice had heard it. "No. She's not."

"What is wrong with you?"

This was where Alice's thoughts would have been intensely useful. I hated phone calls.

"You are not leaving Bella, Edward. I won't allow it."

And that just pissed me off. "You don't get to disallow it, Alice. I conduct my relationship however I choose."

"And it won't be a relationship if you leave, so I get a say."

"That doesn't even make sense."

"Do I sound like I care?"

No. "Be reasonable, Alice."

"Be reasonable? I—"

"Bella needs her own life. I can't crush her beneath my feelings any longer. I'm never going to change her, we have no future, and she needs to move on and find somewhere she does."

"Someone, you mean."

That still hurt more than almost anything else, even the fourth time through this evening. "Yes Alice, someone else."

"And if she doesn't want to 'find a future' with someone else? If she only wants you?"

"I am eighty-six years older than she is. It's my responsibility to—"

"You're not seriously trying to pull rank."

Alice was making my head hurt, and that wasn't meant to be possible. "What?"

"You're trying to pull age. You get to choose what happens because you're older than her? Grow up, Edward!"

I compromised and let myself clench the fist that wasn't holding the phone. "I have been giving into my desires like a child for nine months, and today I am being an adult and fixing this. Do not try to get in the way, Alice."

"I'll get in the way of whatever I like, Edward!"

"Bella is not yours, Alice, she's mine, and I decide."

"Bella's not yours if you decide you don't want her."

"That doesn't mean she's yours either. My choice. You will not interfere."

I could hear Alice's smug little grin. "If you don't want her, I get second dibs. And I can assure you I'm not as stupid as you are."

"You try to get in my way, Alice, and I swear I will make your life exceedingly difficult."

"Bella's my best friend."

Exactly. Exactly my problem. "And she'd be better off with human best friends, her own age, her own species."

Alice scoffed theatrically. "You're kidding me. Her own species? Why does that matter, Edward? You're not a monster! We're as much human as we are immortal."

I was not having this argument for the four-thousandth time, not today. "She deserves friends who share her life experience and her future."

"I've seen her, Edward!"

And she really expected that to make it better. "No."

"Yes."

I gritted my teeth, and ignored how childish we sounded. "No."

Alice laughed quietly. "Who'd believe we're a hundred and four years old?"

I breathed out. This, perhaps, I thought, might be what hurt so much, just this moment, almost as much as the dull throbbing that was the day after tomorrow, the dull throbbing that was no future that could possibly mean a thing. Alice and I generally shared most things. We thought in much the same way on a surprising number of topics. We'd never thought the same way on Bella really, of course, but I'd always tried to avoid the disagreement…because avoiding it meant that Alice wasn't thinking about it, and the less Alice thought about it, the less danger that it might somehow happen despite me. We did both love her, I honestly believed that. So it…annoyed me? that we couldn't agree on this. It shook my certainty in ways it shouldn't. It…it hurt. Which was stupid. But it did. I wanted Alice to agree with me. For once in her life, I wanted her to just be sensible and realistic and understand that things didn't always come together. That there wasn't always a light at the end of the tunnel. And it was particularly stupid because I knew she couldn't see that. Because she saw the light in everything, the slim chance that could come about. Because the light had come for her, or she saw it that way. Because she'd been stuck in the dark, and then woken up and seen her solution and fallen in love and found us and lived happily ever after. And so she was quite happy to throw caution and reason to the wind and behave like a naïve little girl, and Bella's wellbeing be damned. But I wasn't. Because while she might act like a child, and Bella might just as well be one, I wasn't, and I hadn't been in a long time. Because I'd learned—I'd proven—long ago, I'd proven the day I walked out Carlisle's door that happy endings weren't that simple.

"Edward?"

I shut my eyes again, and pulled my thoughts back into my body, and was glad once more that no one could see through walls, even if they could all hear this conversation word for word. "I have made my decision, Alice. That is my right."

"It's the wrong decision."

I wasn't arguing.

There was another long pause, and I could almost see Alice reaching through the visions in her eyes, sifting through her unconscious thoughts, following tracks and trails of maybe futures. I was usually glad to share in Alice and Jasper's gifts; they could be useful, at times. It took a little effort to follow the thoughts around them, so I didn't have to suffer them constantly the way Jasper did with his, but it was convenient to be able to watch Alice watch the future rather than relying on her description, to feel through Jasper emotions more subtle than I could comprehend through their owners' thoughts. Today, though…today I was glad that Alice and Jasper were in Alaska. I could see enough of my family's emotions in their thoughts to know that I didn't want to feel with them. And Alice had made what she saw quite clear.

"You're going to come up and meet us, right?"

The straightforward answer was half-way out of my mouth before I stopped. The question was refreshingly simple, but there was something in her voice…and not having Alice's thoughts was infuriating. "That was the plan."

Pause. "Make sure you come, okay?"

I hated phone calls. "Alice, I can't hear what you're not saying from here."

"I know that. I don't want to put ideas in your head."

What? I attempted to back-track. It still didn't make sense. "I thought you didn't want me to come."

Alice sighed loudly, deliberately. Probably trying to put me off—I couldn't hear her thoughts, but I'd been listening to them for a long time. "I'd prefer you didn't leave Bella, yes, Edward, since doing so is clearly idiotic and completely without cause."

Which didn't clear anything up at all. "But since I'm going to, you want me to make sure I get to Alaska?"

Another pause. "Yes."

Something was wrong. "Alice, if there's a reason I might not make it to Alaska, you need to tell me."

This pause was longer. I waited. Her voice was quiet, and I didn't buy the dismissiveness. "It's nothing like that."

I tried to sound stern. I mostly just sounded tired. "Alice…"

It was odd, knowing I'd lived with Alice long enough to hear her thoughts moving, even when I couldn't hear them in my mind. I heard the intake of breath before she said something she thought she shouldn't, and I could hear the mix of anger and fear that she'd only ever used on me in relation to Bella. "You're an idiot, Edward, but you're still my brother. I won't lose you."

Oh. That made me smile a little. I couldn't help but wonder whether she'd seen me doing something…rash…or just knew me too well. But it was this in which she didn't really understand me. She didn't understand why I was leaving Bella, and she didn't understand why I would protect Bella from changing with anything and everything I had, and she didn't understand that I would never leave this world as long as Bella might need my protection. Or perhaps she'd just seen the future farther off, in eighty years time or thereabouts, and mistaken the time frame. That was…a sobering thought. But again. Not a new one. I tried to be a little gentler anyway. It was sort of nice to know she still wanted me around. Even if being around wasn't something that interested me all that much. "I'm doing the right thing, Alice."

I could hear her glaring on the other end of the phone, but her voice was as tired as mine now; she wasn't going to start arguing again. "I know you are, in your own way, by your own ridiculous logic. Your logic's just stupid."

There wasn't much I could say to that.

I tried to be patient while she didn't say anything either. I wasn't sure what was more frustrating—being unable to hear Bella, who I could never hear, or being unable to hear Alice, whose thoughts I'd come to rely on far too heavily to understand her, to predict her.

Without her thoughts, I had only the rise and fall and change of breath to follow.

"I'll see you some time Saturday, then?"

Saturday? That would give me a whole day, enough time to run, but Saturday…Saturday was dangerous, in my mind. Saturday would be…hard. And I couldn't afford to have Alice convince me back the way I'd come. "I don't know if I'll go straight there."

There was a long, long pause, and it was completely infuriating.

"Stay safe, please Edward?"

I laughed.

"I mean it. I know everything about you, Edward. I know your strings of stupid plans. And I won't let you just off and die. Remember that."

And once again. What could I say? I had a feeling that telling her those were for another time, a set time in the not so distant future, wouldn't help.

"Yeah. Sure."

She didn't believe me. But there wasn't much she could say either. She sighed. "See you soon, Edward. I don't agree with this."

I nodded once. "I know. Goodnight, Alice."

And the phone was silent.

ooo

A/N: So, I hope you enjoyed the chapter! It was originally going to skim for a bit and then just show the conversation with Alice, but so many people asked to hear Edward's talk with Carlisle that I figured I'd better write it as well (anyone who spoke to me about it knows I jumped at the chance :P I love Edward and Carlisle) ;D Please let me know what you thought…and that you're still reading! I hope I haven't lost everyone after so long :S

Now, updates are not going to be weekly anymore, though you probably all guessed that :P I'm going overseas very soon, and while I'll try my best to keep updating while in the US, I have a loooot to get done before I go. I'm also back writing properly for a couple of other fandoms now, and some new ones, so it's going to take me a little longer to get this out. But I will try to keep it roughly fortnightly :-) Feel free to harass me if I haven't updated in a while, 'cause I'm just as likely to have locked myself in sewing and forgotten about the fic or something :P

Looking forward to hearing from everyone, and thanks heaps for reading! :-)