Chapter 11

A Dustland Fairytale

**Important note at end of chapter**

A/N: Thank you for all the awesome reviews on chapter 10! You continue to consistently rock my world. Please keep them coming!

I'm proud to share that Fix You has new been added to the "Bella and Jacob Chronicles" series. Thank you so much to Diamondheart for letting me be a part of it and for assembling such a fantastic line up of stories!

Thank you to Hopeful Wager, who is patient and wise beyond compare and the best beta I could ever have wished upon a falling star for. Thanks to my wonderful preview girls, who I love beyond reason.

This chapter took longer than anticipated, but hopefully it'll be worth the wait ;) There will be an author note at the end explaining any terms and phrases used.

Chapter 9 Recap: Sashmara told Edward that she was almost 500 years old.

Soundtrack:

Satellite Heart – Anya Marina

A Dustland Fairytale – The Killers

Runaway – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer created Edward, and sent him away to South America. Hopeful Wager created the "Hybrid Theory" as it shall henceforth be known. I created Sashmara, and all things Sash are all mine :)

EPOV

I choked out what resembled a cough, my head starting to swirl with the implication of her words. The girl sitting before me with the cherubic face, cerulean eyes and curious pale brown skin was not only a vampire/human hybrid, but she was also almost half a millennium old. If I had thought that I had a lot of questions for her before, I had been gravely mistaken. My mind was exploding with them to such an extent that I was fighting with myself to keep them mental, like I had promised her. It was almost excruciating.

I wanted to know how she had survived for so long, confronting vampires without getting killed. I wanted to know exactly how indestructible and strong she really was. I wanted to know where she had come from and how she had spent the preceding centuries.

Everything. I wanted to know everything.

She squeezed her eyes closed and pinched the bridge of her nose, taking a deep breath. "Edward," she hissed through clenched teeth, "you need to quiet that down. You're hurting my brain."

"Did you seriously think you could tell me something like that and not cause an avalanche of questions in my head?" I asked as the steady din of mental voices grew more rampant in my head.

She didn't respond. Her eyes were still closed and I realized that we were both losing the careful control we had constructed over the echoes of our minds. I reached out and grabbed her hand instinctively, desperate for the noise to quiet down into her singular voice. Unfortunately, the moment our skin made contact, I realized I wouldn't be achieving the desired effect. The echoes disappeared, but her thoughts were racing, screaming at a pace that made them equally painful to hear, and random mental images flashed through her thoughts and into mine.

"Sash," I begged, taking her other hand and squeezing, attempting to pull her back to the present, "please look at me."

She took a deep breath and opened her eyes slowly, raising her head so her piercing gaze met mine. Her thoughts slowed to what I had come to accept as her normal pace and the mental images disappeared.

"Whoa," I breathed, "that was intense."

Her eyes narrowed inquisitively. "Why did you call me Sash?" she asked.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. It's probably an American thing, we often shorten the names of our friends and family."

The words, friends and family reverberated distinctively in our minds. She looked away from me abruptly and examined our hands, which were still clasped together. She tried to pull back, but I gripped them tighter and shifted my position from the chair I was sitting on to the coffee table in front of her.

"Has no one ever…?" I trailed off when her head snapped back up to me. "Sorry, no questions, I know."

"My… mother, she did that too. She shortened my name, I mean." She spoke hesitantly, more to herself than to me.

I remained quiet, not wanting to interrupt her when she was clearly recalling something significant from her past.

"She preferred Nastia, though…" Her eyes wandered over the art-covered wall behind me and fixed on a portrait. The image of a woman in an elaborate headdress appeared in my mind. "I've never told anyone," she mused, still engrossed in the painting.

"I'll be quiet, if you want to tell me." I gave her hands an affirming squeeze, urging her to continue.

She started to speak and I was immediately transported by her memories.

"My mother was a hybrid, too. Well, she wasn't my biological mother, but she found me and raised me. She caught wind of young girls, who were thought to be virgins, falling pregnant and dying a few months later during childbirth."

She noticed my mental questioning and explained further. "When a vampire impregnates a human, the growth is so rapid that the pregnancy only lasts about three months, and the birth is so violent because the newborns are so strong that a human would never survive it."

I nodded my acknowledgement, trying to fit this information in with everything else she had told me thus far. This little nugget was no less astonishing and overwhelming than the rest.

"I think I'm getting ahead of myself here. I need to start from the very beginning." She took a deep breath before she spoke. "This woman, my "mother", was born somewhere around 500BC, though she could never pinpoint it exactly. She never expanded much on her early years to me, although I suspect she was involved in some serious warfare in her time. She only went into detail about the history that brought her to me.

"In the early sixteenth century, she set her sights on the Ottoman Empire. She started using another name and got herself sold into slavery in the Ukraine as a way of getting into Suleyman the Magnificent's Harem in Istanbul. It didn't take very long until, just as she had planned, she had charmed the Sultan and his entire Harem. They called her Khourrem- "laughing one" because of her high spirits and ability to tell stories, most of which weren't stories so much as recollections of her past. Soon, Suleyman was so enamored with her that he decided to take her as his legal wife. This was all but unheard of in those days. Although they were allowed to, Sultans never wed their concubines. But the people loved her and the Sultan revered both her beauty and her wit. Soon, she became his political advisor and unofficial driving force behind and master tactician of the Ottoman Army."

"Wait, you're not talking about…?" I could barely choke out the words as the realization dawned on me.

She nodded, a wry smile spreading across her face. "Hürrem Sultana. In those days she was also called Ruslana, but you probably know her as Roxelana."

I sat staring at her for a moment, trying to figure out whether she was trying to play me for a fool, but flashes of her memory were coming through so clear and true, I had no option but to believe them as legitimate.

"But… how did she find you?" I asked, all regard for our self-imposed rules forgotten.

"She had already garnered an unprecedented amount of authority within the military by the early 1520's, and the amount of communication and intelligence that was available to her within the Empire and beyond was practically boundless. That's when information reached her of these "djinli kizlari" that had been banished to an Oasis in the Syrian Desert. She immediately recognized the symptoms and decided to go and see if she could save the poor, innocent girls who had been impregnated against their will."

She shivered slightly as she recalled her earliest memory. "I was only a few hours old, but I remember it perfectly. When she arrived there, it was the most gruesome scene she had ever encountered, even including the casualties of warfare she had witnessed in her life. All but one of the women had died giving birth. The children had fought to get out any way they could, leaving the women broken beyond repair." Sash's eyes glazed over as the scene returned to her in chilling detail.

"What is your name?" Roxelana asked in Arabic, kneeling down beside the dying woman, touching her cheek lightly.

"Shamara," she croaked out, reaching out desperately. "Please, please take my child. She is not to blame for this. It was that… that monster."

She was fading quickly, her failing heart stuttering audibly in her chest. Roxelana clasped her hand and held it to her chest, over her heart. "Your child is safe with me."

"She took me and the only other surviving child back to the Harem with her, where it would be easy to conceal us, as children were kept there until they were of age. No one asked any questions when she claimed to have bore "twins" on her trip abroad. Because of his sudden birth, Roxelana and Suleyman named my brother Bayezid after the great Sultan Bayezid the Thunderbolt. Roxelana insisted on naming me Sashmara, which was derived from my mother's name and means "ready for battle". She sometimes also called me Anastasia or Aleksandra, both names she had used in her past and hoped would serve me well in my future. In the next three years, Roxelana made active efforts to search for more like us, and consequently she "bore" the Sultan three more children. We found out later that Selim had the same father as Bayezid and me, while Sarila and Jihangir shared a father as well. We all grew up together in the Harem where Roxelana raised us to live on human food and suppress our bloodlust. From a young age, she taught us what she deemed necessary to fulfill her dreams for us."

Five children sat behind small wooden desks in a small but still lavishly decorated room in the Harem of the Sultan. Their visible ages varied greatly, but their true ages were no more than a few years apart. Roxelana paced before them, demanding both their respect and adoration.

"My dearest ones, you are all old enough now to understand the plans I have for your future. You know I love you all more than anything else on this earth?"

The children nodded vigorously and chimed simultaneously, "We love you also, anacigim."

A warm grin spread across her face. "Each one of you is a miracle. But you have been brought into this world by the purest evil you will ever encounter."

"Vampire," the five tiny voices echoed once more.

"Exactly," Roxelana affirmed, "which is why I am going to teach you how to use your gifts to eradicate this evil."

"Roxelana snuck us out of the Harem and took us to a military encampment on the outskirts of the Empire. Sarila and I were disguised as boys, and kept close together to avoid discovery. At that stage, I had just turned seven and was nearing full maturity. So, even though I was at the height of my abilities, my growth was starting to slow. Roxelana knew that it was the perfect time for us all to be groomed, since our muscles were still pliable. Her theory was that if our muscles were thoroughly exercised and trained before our growth became stagnant, we would become stronger than average hybrids- maybe equal in strength to fully fledged vampires. So, we got thrown into daily training under the Pashas of the world's finest army. We became masters of hand-to-hand combat. We grew strong and agile and deadly."

"So, that's how you were able to kick my ass so thoroughly?" I asked jokingly.

She merely snorted and rolled her eyes before continuing."Eventually, when Roxelana decided that we were ready, she took us all on a trial run to track down a vampire she knew to be in the area. She explained to us that, while the males of our kind remained venomous like vampires, the females had the opposite effect. Their blood possessed the unique and dangerous ability of being lethal to vampires. She wanted to observe us using our newfound skills combined with our natural talents to determine whether we would be able to work together to destroy vampires, the way she had envisioned since the day she had discovered the first of us."

Sash slumped back in the couch and I moved from the coffee table to sit next to her, keeping her hands in my grasp to preserve the vivid connection that we seemed to be sharing because of it. She closed her eyes and let out a long, slow breath, steeling herself for what she was about to relive.

Barely a star shone overhead as the small convoy of deceptively young but highly skilled hunters crept through the eerily silent night.

The vampire's scent cut a clear path through the narrow streets of Jerusalem. Roxelana swiftly and determinedly led the small group into the pitch dark night. Not one star was visible in the night sky, barely a candle shone from a window in the distance. The city was still.

They had been warned to keep as quiet as possible in order to avoid discovery by both the sleeping humans and the keenly-sensed vampire.

The scent was growing stronger, filling their nostrils with excitement and adrenaline. They sped up their pace, closing in on their target when suddenly, the trail disappeared. Roxelana wasn't deterred for more than a moment. She sniffed the air around her and gestured for the children to follow her. She backed up a few paces and took a running leap, swinging from a canopy and launching herself effortlessly atop the roof of the stone building. The children started to follow her example, launching themselves to land beside her. Even Sarila, the youngest girl, managed the feat despite her small stature.

They finally spotted the female vampire in the distance, leaping across the narrow streets from one rooftop to the next. Roxelana gave the signal and all but Jihangir split into pairs, each taking a different direction in an attempt to intercept her. The vampire paused for a moment to turn and, when she spotted the group that was silently chasing her, she immediately veered east and propelled herself into the darkness, disappearing from the last building in the direction of Mount Olivet.

They regrouped and sped off into the night, pushing themselves to the fullest extent of their abilities in order to gain on their prey. In response to another order from Roxelana, they split up again. The faster two of the three boys ran ahead, attempting to surround the vampire from all sides.

Hundreds of tombstones started to appear before them, glowing curiously in the night to their enhanced vision. The scent they were following started to grow more intense yet again and all six of them started closing in on the same spot- a dilapidated mausoleum in the very centre of the old Jewish cemetery.

They stood outside the tomb, twinkling eyes looking towards their mother in excitement, awaiting her cue.

She simply nodded her permission and they sprang to work together, pulling the heavy stone door away from the entrance. The air inside was ancient and stale, except for the sweet vampire odor emanating from the granite coffin which stood in the centre of the cramped space.

Sash readied herself at the foot of the coffin as her siblings positioned themselves at the sides, preparing to remove the heavy lid at Sash's indication.

Sash took a deep breath and crouched down into a predatory stance and, with a slight wave of her hand, the boys swiftly removed the lid. In a flash the vicious, raven-haired, crimson-eyed female vampire attempted to spring from her stone enclosure, but Sash was too fast. She had the thrashing female pressed back down into the box instantly. Selim and Bayezid each held on to one flailing arm as Sarila and Jihangir each grabbed a kicking leg.

Sash raised a finger to her mouth, piercing her solid skin effortlessly with her razor-sharp teeth. She forced the vampire's mouth open and a singular drop of blood fell from her finger and into the unwilling mouth of the beast.

Her victim's marble skin started to crack apart and she turned to dust right before their very eyes.

Roxelana stood at the entrance of the tomb, smiling quietly with pride.

Sash's eyes were wide with the memory still dancing through her thoughts.

"That feeling of power, of justice at seeing her disintegrate beneath my grasp… It was like nothing I could've ever imagined. I had always known that it was Roxelana's intention for me to eradicate all of vampirekind, but actually experiencing it and having it feel right was something else altogether. I threw myself into the training with every ounce of the excitement and enthusiasm I felt for my renewed goal. My mother knew it would defeat the purpose for us to try and rein in what we could do, so she made sure that we were only overseen by the best and most loyal Pashas, as she wanted to be assured of their silence regarding our abilities. And that's how I came to know Kahraman."

The sandy-haired, cerulean-eyed man that I had seen in her mind during our first encounter became animated in her thoughts.

"He was the youngest Pasha in the history of the Ottoman Army. At twenty-three, he was a tactical and strategic prodigy. I was in love with him from the first moment I set my eyes on him. He was strict, but fair and kind. I worked twice as hard as any of my siblings, in hopes that I could please him and maybe even capture his attention.

"We had been in training for several months when I inevitably slipped up. It was late at night and I was alone in the baths, so I didn't wrap up my hair, thinking no one would see me. I was on my way back to the tent I shared with Sarila, when I walked right into Kahraman, who was also on his way to bed. I had expected a huge scene, but he simply took me told me to follow him…"

Kahraman stood in his spacious sleeping tent, facing away from Sashmara, his eyes fixed on the empty expanse before him.

He was tall and lean, but still muscular, and dressed in his elaborate Pasha's uniform. His unshaven jaw was strong and his hair curled just above his collar. Although his stature and demeanor spoke of authority, his twinkling blue eyes and dimpled cheeks told another story entirely.

"You and your mother have been very clever," he commented, still not turning around to face her. "The disguises, making sure to limit your speech, calling yourself Sasha… I actually believed you were a boy for a very long time. Of course, it was impossible to tell judging by your physical abilities. You and your siblings are unlike anything I've ever seen, but I didn't dare question it. I would never betray the trust that Hürrem Sultana has placed in me."

Sashmara saw her own reflection in a tall mirror which was standing in the corner of the tent. She too wore a military uniform, though much simpler and obviously of a much lower rank. Her damp, wheat-colored curls cascaded over her shoulders and down her back. In her hands she held a piece of cloth: the remnants of the turban she should have used to disguise her gender.

Kahraman turned slowly, his eyes meeting hers with startling intensity. He started to close the distance between them with hesitant strides. "What is your real name?"

"Sashmara, sir," she replied in a tiny voice.

He came to a standstill mere inches from her. "Sashmara, you are one of the most promising soldiers I've ever seen. Your commitment and passion is something to wonder at." He raised his hand to her cheek and gently tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "And so is your beauty."

She shivered slightly beneath my grasp and shook her hear vigorously, dragging us back to the present moment.

As she tried to clear her head, her blinking eyes glistened curiously. "Sorry, that was a bit… personal."

All I could do was nod. I was way beyond words at this stage.

Sashmara continued to speak through her intermittent sobs. "We began a secret relationship and it was… it was… just… perfect. He was strong and noble, and he never made me feel inferior because I was a woman, as was common practice in those days. By day he was my teacher, my instructor, my commander By night, he was my lover, my confidante, my everything. Our rendezvous continued for months and we never once let anything slip in public. Our arrangement was working perfectly until…"

She took a deep, shuddering breath before she continued. She was starting to tremble beneath my grasp.

"It seemed like any other night. He snuck into my tent just after midnight and we… made love, like we did most nights, and…" Her voice was quivering with emotion as tears started to roll down her cheeks. "I seemed to start losing control somehow. I felt this overwhelming urge to move him, but only in my mind- my physical control around him was so carefully practiced. And then… I'd never seen anything like it, like his flesh was being ripped apart at the seams."

The image of the formerly handsome young man's face, contorted and pulling apart in the most gruesome way crashed into my mind with such intensity, I tore my hands from Sashmara's at once. The grisly memory, however, still played itself out, even without our continued contact. He violently disintegrated into untraceable pieces, leaving nothing of himself behind.

Sashmara was crying uncontrollably, her knees pulled up to her face, her hands buried in her hair. Never, never, never, she kept chanting in her mind.

I reached out and pulled her to me, instinctively needing to comfort her. Her tiny body shook violently in my arms. "I… I… I…" Her hysterical sobs made it impossible for her to catch enough breath to form a coherent sentence.

I killed him, she eventually thought.

"You had no control over it," I whispered consolingly.

"NO!" she shrieked, pulling away from me abruptly. "I had control over it! I had it in my control to stay away from him, but I was selfish! I wanted him and because of me and what I was, he had to DIE!"

"Sash, please! Don't you remember what you told me? You didn't know. How could you possibly have known of that possibility? It wasn't your intention. You can't blame yourself for this."

Her sobs had quieted down but the tears still spilled freely from her eyes. "I can," she whispered determinedly, "and I always will."

"Sash, you-" I began but she cut me off before I could continue.

"I decided my only recourse was to leave, to run from those I cared about, so they wouldn't come to any harm." Tears still glistened on her cheeks as she stared at nothing in particular, recounting the story methodically. "I decided to go see my mother first, so she wouldn't send any search parties looking for me. When I told her I was leaving, she decided to share information with me that I never even dreamed she was in possession of. First, she told me that hybrids sometimes had extra abilities, and that I had discovered mine- what we thought then to be the ability to destroy things with my mind- in the most tragic way possible."

"But that isn't your ability?" I interrupted her.

"You haven't figured it out by now? I thought you were more observant than that, Edward."

I thought for a while of the way she could hear my thoughts, and tried to fit it in with what she had just told me. It slowly started to dawn on me. "Your ability… isn't just like my ability… it's like anyone's ability."

She nodded, the small smile playing on her lips reminiscent of a pleased kindergarten teacher. "I can harness anyone's ability if I get close enough to them. I just didn't know that until later…"

"But whose ability were you using that night?"

Sash simply shook her head, indicating that it wasn't something she was going to share with me today, and continued where she had left off.

"After I told her about what had happened, Roxelana told me that she had found my biological vampire father. Apparently he was a Scandinavian vampire with a penchant for Arabic girls. He had been periodically impregnating girls in the Middle East for years and Roxelana finally had him tracked to Denmark.

"When she told me, I instantly knew that I needed to find him and use my newfound ability to destroy him so I could end the suffering he had inflicted upon so many lives. Roxelana begged me not to go alone, to take Sarila and Jihangir with me for back up, since I didn't know exactly what my new capabilities entailed yet. I knew that she wouldn't let me go otherwise, so I told her I'd take them with me, knowing full well that I planned to ditch them along the way. It was something that I had to do for myself.

"The first night we settled in to sleep, I crept away and traveled to Denmark on my own. I found Erik, my father," she spat out the word, "near Copenhagen, exactly where Roxelana said he would be. He lurked the back alleys, killing prostitutes he knew no one would notice disappear. Even for a vampire, he was evil scum. I found him about to attack one of the poor girls one night…"

Erik abruptly released the squirming girl from his grasp when he saw Sashmara. The girl ran screaming into the night, clearly grateful to still be alive.

"You made me lose my dinner," he complained in Danish, though his accent was distinctly Swedish.

Sashmara growled threateningly in reply.

"Such an angry kitty… I bet I know exactly what would cheer you up." He looked her up and down lecherously, his lip curling upwards in the most repulsive way.

With a vicious snarl, Sash flew at him, utilizing his utter shock to catch him off guard and pin him to the ground. He didn't stay down for long, though, before pushing her off him and into a pile of discarded bricks which crumbled beneath the impact.

Sashmara sprang back up and charged at Erik with all her might, but stopped mid-stride when the pile of bricks she had landed on came flying past her, pummeling him violently, but redundantly turning to dust against his granite skin.

Erik's eyes grew wide, first in surprise, then in momentary fear. The mysterious flying bricks and sudden impact only deterred him for an instant. An evil sneer stretched across his harsh, pale face. Sashmara stifled an involuntary shudder. Erik raised his arms suddenly and she didn't even have a moment to think before he swung them down and a sharp spike from one of the city's peaked roofs came rocketing towards her.

It was too late to run, so she instinctively held her hands in front of her face, bracing herself for the impact.

But it never came.

She hesitantly peeked through her fingers and was stunned to see the thick metal spike suspended in thin air before her very eyes.

It took a moment, but eventually she realized that she and Erik were somehow controlling the flying objects between them.

Experimentally, she concentrated very hard on attempting to push the spike back toward Erik, whose face was starting to contort into the strangest expression of exertion. The more Sash pushed with her mind, the more infuriated Erik became.

After a full minute in which the spike didn't move more than the occasional quiver, Erik threw his hands in the air and cried out in rage. The spike hurtled toward him and screeched to a halt against his unyielding chest. His momentary lapse in concentration afforded Sash the opportunity she needed to gain the upper hand.

It all happened in no more than a second: She summoned all her mental strength and focused her hatred for Erik on the large fountain in the middle of the deserted courtyard, just beyond the alley they were currently facing off in. She heard a rumbling and felt the cobbles vibrate quietly beneath her feet. With a giant mental heave, the top tier stone fountain flew through the air and came crashing down on an unsuspecting Erik.

She ran forward without hesitation and pulled a few large pieces of rock aside before Erik's traumatized face became visible between the rubble.

"What are you?" His voice was barely a frightened whisper.

"I'm your half-breed spawn," Sashmara spat back mockingly. "Aren't you proud of me, Daddy?"

The horrifying realization dawned on Erik and he attempted to struggle but Sash was too fast for him. She grabbed his jaw roughly and pierced her finger before he knew what she was doing. Her crimson blood dripped mercilessly into his forcibly-opened mouth.

The memory started to fade as the now-familiar cracks started to appear on his face.

"After that, I just broke down and cried. I thought revenge would be satisfying. It wasn't. It couldn't bring Kahraman back to me."

Every time she thought of him, his sparkling blue eyes would flash into her mind involuntarily. It was a painful sight to behold, finally knowing the meaning behind it.

"I returned home from Denmark at once. Quite frankly, I needed my mother. When I got back to Istanbul, the entire palace was in turmoil. Sarila and Jihangir were dead. The cover story was that they had died of scarlet fever. I knew better than that, of course, and set out to find my mother immediately. She was sobbing hysterically in her chambers, completely devastated. My brother and sister had encountered a pair of vampires after I had left them and foolishly tried to take them on themselves. One of them tried to drink Sarila's blood and died on the spot. The other one got scared and… and ripped both their heads off and set them on fire.

"It was unbelievably horrifying and Roxelana was completely grief-stricken. I thought she was going to blame me for leaving them, but for some reason she couldn't find it in herself to be angry at me. She had always had the closest bond with me out of all of the children. Probably because I was her "first born" and female. This infuriated Bayezid. He wanted Roxelana to blame me, punish me, banish me… anything except turn to me for comfort. His jealousy started to get aggressive and he'd fight with Roxelana and me constantly. It all finally culminated when Bayezid snuck into her sleeping chambers one night and did the unthinkable. He suffocated her in her sleep."

"He killed her?" I gasped in shock. The thought that a child could murder their parent, even if it was only an adoptive parent, was appalling.

"Worse than that," Sash replied. "When he cut off her oxygen supply, the venom that was present in her system from her vampire half started to take over as a defense mechanism. She transitioned into a fully fledged, newborn vampire."

"W-what?" I stammered. "That's…" I couldn't find the words to fully describe my shock and horror at this revelation.

"It was the absolute cruelest thing he could do to her… and to me."

"Nastia, my beautiful daughter. You must promise ana something."

"Anything, ana, of course."

"If anything… bad ever happens to me. If my eyes become red, like the vampires that I've told you of, you must prick your finger with your sharp little teeth and feed ana a drop of your blood. It will make me all better. Do you understand, my darling?"

"Yes, ana. I don't want you to be sick like the vampires."

"No!" I hissed as the pieces all started to come together in my mind.

Sashmara merely nodded, a single teardrop sliding down her cheek.

"You… you…?"

"I had to," she whispered.

I pulled her to me wordlessly, wrapping my arms around her, attempting to offer what little consolation I could to this girl who had lost everyone she had loved within the first ten years of her life.

After a few minutes, her trembling body and mind settled, and she pulled away. With a sigh, she turned towards me.

"You have to understand, Edward, this is very difficult for me."

"I know," I said automatically. "Having to … Your own mother…"

Her head cocked in confusion. "No, Edward. I mean, yes, that was terrible. But this," she vaguely motioned to the space between us, "this is hard."

"Opening up?" I searched her mind, but only found her frustration that I wasn't getting the point.

"Good grief, Edward! You're just not getting it. I had the courage to kill my own my mother because she was a vampire. I loved her immensely, but I did my duty. And you…"

Then I got it. I was a vampire. I was one of the monsters she had spent her life hunting and destroying.

She nodded. "I have never shown mercy, Edward. Never… until you."

"What does that mean?"

Empty eyes threatened tears. "I don't know, Edward. I just don't know. You're unlike anything I've ever encountered."

"That makes two of us."

A/N: And so, the plot thickens.

Roxelana was really Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent's wife. I'm not sure whether she was a hybrid, though… Read the Wikipedia entry for more of her fascinating history.

The term "djinli kizlari" roughly translated means "the girls with djin". In Islam, the djin is a supernatural creature who could either be good or evil. In this case, people believed the girls had been impregnated by an evil djin.

"Anacigim" is a Turkish term for "mommy".

"Ana" is a Turkish term for "mother".

Hopeful Wager is to thank for her rich insights and translating skills.

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

**Important Note**

It is with great sadness that I have to share with you that I'll be putting Fix You on hiatus for a couple of months. It is still my intention to finish this story, as it is very close to my heart and I've been carrying it around in my head for a year now. I just don't have a sufficient amount of time to research and write the story in the way it deserves right now.

I have a big qualifying exam coming up, and that coupled with my job which has become increasingly demanding, has forced me to refocus my priorities. I hope to still be able to write here and there, but I won't be able to commit fully to anything for a while.

I hope you won't abandon me in the meantime, but probably wouldn't blame you if you did ;) Thank you very much for standing by this story and sharing your thoughts with me. Your reviews constantly made me squee!

Love and Snuggles

Dahlia