Twilight Continuation Part Five

                                                 5.. A Whisper
                                   
         It was Edward’s regret that I felt and when I realized this I was struck with emotions of my own. I was struck with hurt… He regretted this.
I almost breathed the words; it wasn’t quite a whisper, "Please... Please, Edward. Don't regret this…"
He was now surprised, his eye brow raised at my words. Than his expression became guilty and he wrapped his arms protectively over me. "No, Bella... I didn’t mean for you to know that. You've got it wrong though,“ He looked into my eyes. "It was just the regret of forcing this on you. Now that I look into your red pupils..." He shook his head. I had that fact click in my head. I now had blood red eyes.
He looked questioningly at me now, "You can feel what I was feeling? Or was it just too easy to read on my face?"
I thought about this. "I can feel… not really feel but I can understand you. I... could understand your fear for my sanity before when I woke up. I can understand you."
I looked down and then back up at him, "I also can understand your love for me; see your point of view." I smiled at him.
"I thought you knew how much I cared before… but I guess it won't hurt for you to know." He glanced down at my lips than back up to my eyes.
I leaned in and kissed him with all the ferocity and tenderness I could manage. He kissed me back now without his guard. He had no need, now, to be cautious.
He whispered very fast as he pulled away for a brief moment, "I do miss the way your heart would leap right about now..." he brushed my cheek. “And the blush that would come to you skin when I did this..." He leaned into me and pushed me down on the bed as he hovered over me, beginning to kiss my neck. He wavered longer than usual over the place where he had punctured my jugular with his infectious teeth.
I laughed. I stopped short as I listened to it echo around the silence. It sounded so different; like wind chimes.
Edward came back toward my lips and stopped to study my face. "You do certainly have different qualities to you now." I wasn’t sure if he was happy about this fact or not from his voice or the expression on his face, but I could feel that some of it pleased him but I understood he missed my old self.
He smiled at me than leaned back with a sigh. "I suppose I owe you an explanation for all this..." He gestured toward the apparently changed self I now had.  
I nodded, "I have thought of some of the minor details that I remember, pondered over what happened... I don't quite understand it all."
Edward nodded as he gazed away from me into the sun as it hit the distant water of the river down below his overlooking window. He sighed and took a deep intake of breath. I realized this was the hardest part for Edward, he had taken away what I had to lose without consulting me first and now he had to tell me that.
I walked over to him and placed my hand firmly and comfortingly on his shoulder, "Just start from the beginning, I've always found that the best place."
He looked up into my eyes and nodded, looking down again.
"It's just hard to know that I took away your chance to do what you needed for your friends and for your Mother before you turned into..." he looked me up and down, lost for words. "Turned into what I have made you now. Never had the chance before you had to leave them. I feel that you were suddenly torn from your world without making the decision to do so..."
I wasn’t completely cleared up on the facts of what happened yet, but I knew it must have been the only choice he had had.
"Edward," I whispered, "I made this choice a long time ago. You know this. Don't you dare feel guilty..." I paused. "Start from the beginning please, I may understand you but please oh please understand that I cannot read you thoughts. I don't know what led up to this point past dinner with Carlisle and Esme..." He was beginning to frustrate me with his frequent apologies over something I didn’t know the whole story of.
He was looking thoughtfully at the edge of the bed spread now. He began to speak with out looking up, his tone was agonized as his mind retraced the past days. "You were so sick, Bella... I didn’t know what I could do for you. I had never seen anyone in that state; like you weren’t even there. It was as if you had fallen into a coma with out the benefit of unconsciousness. You were in a thick haze from which I could not reach you, all I could do for you was try to comfort you as much as I could." He looked back around to where I stood listening to his story; he gave me a weak smile. His eyes still pained. "After 30 hours your eyes began to obtain film and I feared for your sight. I called Carlisle and begged him to take a look at you..." He leaned forward and took a deep breath, resting his forehead against my abdomen, running his hands so he had a firm hold of my waist. I lowered myself so that our faces were at the same level and I kissed him lightly, I waited silently for him to continue.
I remembered the time I had woken to Carlisle and Edwards agonized chortle he had made; how I had wanted nothing but to comfort him, but it had seamed I was unable to find myself in order to do it.
He continued almost mutely, knowing I would be able to hear him. "Alice came with him. They came when Charlie was out; he had had to go in a hurry... to go to an emergency of some kind. Something to do with is job. It was important, I was sure, because he wouldn’t have left your side if it hadn’t been. I hadn’t paid attention than because you had begun to stir when he told me where he was going. When Alice came in following Carlisle I could see what she had seen; her vision of what was going to happen. What was happening." He looked up at me and stood so that he held my shoulders and stared into my eyes, trying to get me to understand. "It was the only choice; lose two to death's embrace, or save one, even though I knew that the death of the other would cause her so much pain..." He continued to look into my eyes with so much intensity. He was still trying to let me understand what he was telling me.
The effort was a waste; I had understood him as soon as he had mentioned my father... I was aware that Charlie no longer walked this earth that now bound me eternally.
I fought back my agony and asked him in a flawlessly concealing voice the question that I needed to know the answer to, no mater what toll it cost me in only moments when the reality hit me. I shut my eyes and ushered my voice as loudly as possible, but it only came out a whisper, "By what consequences were you going to lose those two people by? The reason you lost the one already..." I opened my eyes to watch what his expression betrayed.
He looked as if he would cry for my grievances if only his tear ducts would issue a speck of moisture. "Oh, Bella..." he breathed as he bent down and kissed me cheeks under my eyes.
I let my eyes slide shut as I let myself be engulfed by his embrace, allowing myself to lose control while he held me and lowered me slowly as I sunk to my knees. His arms wrapped around my shoulders as he stroked my hair.
I sat blindly in his arms, trying hard to speak while fighting my conscious overwhelming grief with my weak hand; I was fighting an unwinable fight.
I reached my hands up and slid them to the side of his face, I opened my eyes and said in a more audible voice than I had been able to muster before, "I have to know...' My voice was beginning to become barely audible as I felt my throat close up. "Please tell me..." I looked at him with a pleading look. I needed my full story as well as my fathers.
He didn’t hesitate, but he looked even more pained as he spoke; each word was as if he had daggers slicing him.
"You were going to die from your illness. Carlisle could tell it was bad, extremely bad, but it was Alice that was the one who confirmed it. You had gotten a staff infection from the flu and it wasn’t detected soon enough. It had spread throughout your body, causing your symptoms to worsen. You had no way of escaping the grasp of death, except... for this one exception." He ran his hands along my arms as he kissed my forehead, trying to comfort me. I could feel the dead stare of shock in my expression, and I knew what he was seeing on my face.
"And Charlie?" I asked, not caring for the moment why I was what I was now, I knew that it was Charlie's fate that would sting.
Edward sighed and rested my head against his shoulder as I gave in and allowed him to cradle me and hold me as if I were a child.
"I could see the bullet pierce the air; smell the scent of gun powder in Alice’s mind when she walked in. I saw Charlie stagger as he tried to grasp the fact that he had been hit... The first thing he thought was of the pain it would cause you to find your father dead..." His voice faltered as he explained everything he knew, he would keep nothing from me. He knew that I needed to know, that I had more of a right than he did to the truth and he wasn’t going to be the one to limit me in anyway now. He couldn’t shelter me forever, and he realized that.
"Charlie had been called to go with the rest of the police force down to a bank robbery that was happening on 31st street. He was the first one to enter the building, the people inside had guns and... didin't know what they were doing. They were only kids...." He paused, lost in thought. "What pained me the most was knowing that this had already come to pass; I was powerless to help him. That he was losing consciousness at that very moment, taking his last breaths..." He looked down and pressed his lips to the top of my head, leaving them there for an uncounted number of moments.
I couldin't beleive this could happen so suddenly and I was still inshock, I didin't want  to beleive him. "Charlie got... shot?"
I had my eyes closed and could smell his sweet skin as we both grieved silently, in pain, and unable to have the release of tears.
I could feel his lips release his hold on me and felt him lean in finality to my ear, whispering almost non-coherently, “You are my everything, Bella. I cannot stand to see you in such grief without any way of release..." He held me tighter and I realized that my world had so suddenly been changed, for good and for bad all at the same time. The fact that pained me to the deepest regions of my being was that Charlie's death would be critical to Renee and she would have a hard time coping, that I would be unable to comfort her. I couldn’t risk to be close to her right now, and my absence from my fathers own funeral would be noticed to a larger than imaginable scale, to Renee most of all. I would worry her and she would need an explanation... I couldn’t bare to hurt her with the only option I now had; to have her believe my life had dissipated like Charlie’s. She would be left to mourn with no one by her side.
But no, I told myself, she wouldn’t be alone. She would have Phil. She would have Edward and Alice and they would do what they could to help her. She at least would be able to relate with Edward.
But where was I going to be through all this? Sitting and watching in motionless agony? After how far I had always gone to support my mother and comfort her, I would be expected to stand there and tolerate her pain unmoving. I didn’t know if I could ever do that...
I could feel the keen strength I had and the reflexes that would no doubt be able to snap at any moment... But maybe it was possible.
'No' I told myself angrily, a snarl issuing from behind my teeth, I couldn’t ever put her in danger like that.
Edward held me tighter at this reaction, asking me what was wrong. It didn’t seam that he expected an answer, so I didn’t respond. He began to rub the side of my arm and we sat in silence again, unspoken communication flowing through us.
The night enveloped the daylight and left us in complete darkness. I woke myself from the trance that I had been hiding away in for the last uncounted hours.
I stirred and raised myself to my feet. Edward moved gracefully with the contours of my movements as I stood so that when I was fully raised it was as if he was one with me.
It was with such beauty now how at one I was now with my surroundings, and I knew that he was also.
I knew that we were standing on a rock as the flow of life passed us by, that we were here for as long as we chose to be.
I knew that even though I had lost the ways of my life that I couldn’t have carried on the way I had been going. This was the way I felt whole, when I was with him and knowing nothing could ever change that.
I accepted my decision whole heartedly and I knew my perspective would never change.
I felt Edward behind me, he was so close; I could feel his breath on my collar bone. "If there is anything at all I can do for you Bella..."
I turned so that I was facing him and kissed his lips very gently, never losing eye contact. "Thank you."