declaration

The news on CNN had been the constant companion of the household for the last three days... or at least the the majority of the household. Rosalie and Emmett still weren't back and it made me emotionally sick, because I'd caused it – caused the strife that had led to Rosalie running off... though I honestly wasn't certain I'd ever be able to become friends with Rosalie, or that we'd even ever someday be able to stand each other's presence.

Carlisle and Jasper had been discussing the possible purposes behind the creation of the newborns, and the end opinion was they had to be made for the purpose of some sort of army. The problem was, we weren't sure what the army was for. I knew, or at least strongly suspected, Jasper had some sort of idea, but when he'd opened his mouth to state his opinion Edward had cut him off. I was a hundred percent certain he did it because I was there and I wasn't all that happy about it, but I let it go.

"I need to go hunt," I said softly, looking over at Edward.

"Do you want me to come with you?"

I smiled at him. "If you'd like to."

I fully expected him to say yes but he frowned instead. "I'm not really all that thirsty, but I'll be waiting for you when you get back."

I reached forward, stroking under his left eye. "Are you sure?" My eyes had more color in them than his at the moment.

"Yes, you go ahead though."

I leaned forward and kissed him, pulling back after a moment.

"Please tell me what's going on when I get back," I murmured softly in his ear. I knew the others would be able to hear my words, there was just no way to be quiet enough to say something truly private in a house full of vampires, but saying it in his ear made it feel private.

"Go. Hunt."

I kissed him again and then pulled back, heading out through the sliding glass door.

…

After hunting two deer I was ready to go home, at least in theory. As I started to head home though, my mind began to wander and I pulled to a stop. Over the last three days Edward and I had spent the vast majority of the time avoiding the hard subjects, though I had told him about the kiss between Jake and I. I'd explained what had happened, the fear of losing the only thing I'd had left causing me to kiss Jake back, and I also told him about the fact that I almost killed Jake when I did so. Even though I'd been ashamed to admit kissing Jake, I'd needed Edward to know. I didn't want there to be any secrets between us – even if it ended up costing me more than I could possibly imagine.

I'd expected him to be angry or saddened by my admittance, or worse, blame himself for my actions, but he'd done none of that. Instead, he'd simply not reacted. He hadn't screamed or slapped me out of grief. He hadn't claimed to get it. He'd just done nothing. And I didn't know what to do with nothing.

The fact that he did nothing made me feel like I was losing him, and I'd only just gotten him back in my life. I had no idea how to make it up to him though.

I closed my eyes and leaned against the nearest tree. It had been almost ten months since my birthday had occurred and since they'd all left. I couldn't help but wonder how much more meaningful those gifts would have been had I actually opened them on my birthday and they'd never left. Would I still have burned the hideous pink polo if they'd never left? I knew I wouldn't have thrown the bottle cap necklace into the forest had none of it happened.

By the time I opened the presents up, more than four months after they left, the necklace had almost felt like a final cast off of the love which I'd thought we both shared. I'd had no other explanation for why it had been among the numerous gifts from the Cullens. I wished I'd known then what I knew now.

Still, I knew where I'd thrown it. It was the one good part of having an eidetic memory, because I could remember exactly how hard I'd thrown the necklace and where it had fallen.

I snapped my eyes open, knowing what I needed to do and exactly where to go.

I darted through the forest, heading towards the area it should have landed, figuring out the trajectory of where it should have hit was just one of those things I could now do – one of many abilities my mind was capable of without me even really understanding how.

Before I'd become a vampire I'd been a relatively smart student, back in Phoenix I'd even been an honor student taking AP courses to further my education so I could eventually become a teacher, but I'd never been able to do things like quadratic equations in my head – math had never been my strong suit. Now, it was all too easy.

It was because of my ability to remember everything, as well as my ability to do all kinds of math and more in my head, that I knew for a fact I threw the necklace at seventy miles per hour at a sixty degree angle. I knew where it crested and the trajectory with which it dropped. And based on all of that, I knew precisely where it should have fallen to the ground.

Unfortunately, when I reached the spot where it should have hit the ground it wasn't there. It had been about five months since I'd thrown it into the forest so it was possible the dirt could have turned over some. It could potentially be buried a few inches under the ground. It's trajectory could have been messed up by a breeze, though I certainly hadn't felt one on that day. Or it could have been caught in one of the branches of the nearby trees.

I jumped up onto the branches of one of the nearby trees to look around. Even accounting for a light breeze – and it couldn't have been anything stronger than that as I hadn't felt any wind on that day at all – I knew there were only a handful of trees it could have landed in. Being in a tree would give me the best vantage point to determine if it was there.

I looked around, spinning in a circle on the branch I was standing on as I did so. The first thing I realized was just how quickly I could determine every single minute detail about each and every tree – I recognized it well before I fully acknowledged the fact that the necklace wasn't anywhere. But I could tell a person each and every oblong, square, rectangular, or otherwise shaped piece of bark. I knew instantly where a nest was – too big for a normal bird, so most likely an owl – I knew the dimension of each branch, the veins running through the thousands of leaves, I recognized each shade of brown and green, and the different holes in the trees.

I quickly jumped to the tree with the nest, peeking inside it to see if the necklace was there, as some species of owl were known to collect baubles, before dropping to the ground after determining it wasn't in the nest. There was a chance, a slim one, that a small animal took it into one of the holes in the trees, but if it was in one of them, it was lost forever. Oh sure, I could destroy the tree to get to it if I knew for a fact it was in one of the trees, but I'd most likely not even be able to see it and I wasn't about to destroy a dozen trees to try and find it.

Buried under the dirt was my next best bet, anyways. I quickly looked around the ground to try and find any earth that looked like it could have been turned in the last few months, but once again, there wasn't anything. All the land was packed heavily, the kind of packing which occurred from years on years of minimal change to the land. There was absolutely no place it could be.

I looked around again hoping my perfect vision missed something, but there was nothing. It was nowhere.

It. Was. Nowhere.

I leaned against a tree and sunk to the ground, letting my legs give out from under me in – an act far more human than I was anymore – as my face fell in my hands. It wasn't the first time I wished I could cry, but this time it was more than that.

That necklace had meant everything. I'd hoped to find it to prove how I felt. After all, Edward had given it to me because he loved me... a reminder of the love that we had started to form from the very beginning.

Suddenly it was as if all the spinning confusion stopped. I'd been a vampire for over a year now and my entire time I'd been metaphorically drowning, I'd awoken from the change – not that I'd actually been asleep during the three days of burning hell – resolutely aware Edward hadn't actually wanted me. After all, he'd offered to end me which I'd always equated to a lack of love, because how could anyone do that?

But sacrifice was one of the ultimate forms of love. He'd been willing to sacrifice his own happiness, and everything that mattered to him, if it had been what I'd wanted – what I'd needed. He had sacrificed it all for months, because he'd thought it was what I'd truly needed. It hadn't been, but that wasn't the point. The point was he'd loved me enough to walk away.

It was such a sappy, old-timey statement that had never before made sense to me. It was one of those things I'd grown up hearing in old music and movies, grown up reading about it, but it had always seemed to be a completely oxymoronic sentiment in my mind. I remembered a faded conversation from the cafeteria, where he'd made a comment about how his love for me was the reason he needed to leave – even at the time, I hadn't truly understood what he meant by it.

I'd known, even back then, that I would willingly die to protect him, willingly kill to protect him, and willingly run away with him. I hadn't, however, understood his equivalent to it.

Now I did.

He loved me. I smiled to myself. He loved me.

I got up.

…

I reached home in record time, quickly heading inside and going upstairs to Edward's room, because there was music playing in his room, so I knew he was there. Hopefully it would be our room soon, at least if he wanted it.

"How'd the hunting go?" he asked from where he was laying on his little day bed,

"I didn't have any troubles." I grinned ruefully – I was actually getting pretty good at semi-neat hunting.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and opened my mouth to explain my realization, but he started to speak first.

"I know you want to know about the newborns in Seattle and Jasper's concerns. I just don't want to worry you unnecessarily. He could be wrong."

"It doesn't matter," I said softy.

"What?"

"It doesn't matter, Edward. I trust you. If you don't want to tell me for now than it's alright."

He sat up slowly. "What's with the change of attitude?"

"I just finally managed to fully figure something out when I was hunting."

His brow furrowed slightly as he looked at me.

"I..." I trailed off for a moment, uncertain for a moment of where to begin. "Back when Jacob and I opened the presents our family left for me, I was hurting and angry, and I destroyed several things I probably shouldn't have, but there was only one item I threw away." I looked down and away from Edward. "I never should have tossed that necklace you gave me away, Edward. At the time that I opened it, I didn't understand the meaning behind it, and I wish I had. I tried to find it today, after all I know where I tossed it – perfect recall does have it's blessings – but it wasn't there. Some animal must have carried it off or something."

I smiled slightly, half wry and half sad. It was gone, but at least it had helped me.

"Beau, about the necklace –"

I pressed my finger to his lips. "It doesn't matter." I shook my head immediately, needing to correct that statement instantly. "No, it does matter, and I definitely regret throwing it away, but not being able to find it helped me to understand just how much you really love me. I never got it before, and I'm sorry about that, more so than you'll ever know, but I do now." I looked directly into his eyes. "I'm a person of my time, a normal human boy – even though I'm not human anymore. Back when you told me that your love for me was the very reason you should leave me, when I was human, the words – and the meaning behind them – were completely incomprehensible. It's such an antiquated idea... to love someone is to leave them. Something along those lines anyways. I'd never got how one can equate to the other, but something clicked and now I do.

"So I'm sorry, and I know I've said that way too much of late, but I mean it in a way I didn't before, because I simply couldn't since things weren't straight in my head like they are now. I love you, I trust you, and if I haven't completely destroyed your love and trust in me with the way I blatantly disrespected it and disrespected you in these last months – since I was turned really – than I am yours for however long our eternity is." I caressed his cheek as I spoke.

He took my hand in his and didn't say anything for a moment, worrying me more than I wanted to admit, before he leaned forward and kissed me briefly. Finally he spoke after pulling away. "Than the necklace served it's purpose after all. It doesn't matter that you tossed it. Truly, it doesn't. I gave it to you to remind you of my love at a time when I wasn't sure how to make you understand that. Now you do, and that's all that matters."

He kissed me again, molding his lips to mine in a way only Edward was able to. It wasn't like the kisses we'd been sharing over the last three days, wasn't hot and heavy – complete with tongue action – but it was almost more intimate than those had been. Gentle and sweet in a way that reminded me of absolutely everything we'd so far shared.

Eventually he pulled back. "And, Beau, you didn't disrespect me. You may say you are very much a normal human boy of your time – for the record, you are anything but normal – but you are more than that. You are a vampire and a young one at that. When we found out what Alice saw of your potential future, the bitterness and anger in her visions... We were willing to do anything to protect you from that, but somewhere along the line we forgot, and more specifically I forgot, to think of how leaving that way would damage you.

"For all that is holy, I'm the one who told you originally how rare change in a vampire is, and then we went and did something that could have changed you in an irreversible way. It actually did leave one major scar." He shook his head. "I should have said this yesterday when you told me about the kiss you and Jacob shared and I didn't, so I apologize for that. I don't blame you, Beau, for kissing him back. I've gotten the joy –" there was heavy sarcasm on the word joy "– of seeing just how messed up our leaving made you through Jacob's mind. I've also seen how you and him were together over these last few months, so I know that though he wishes you loved him that way, you actually don't. He's never really hid any of it from me. And since I know while you love him, you aren't in love with him, I have no real right to be jealous. And yet I am. Just a little bit. But I don't blame you."

I leaned my head against his, closing my eyes calmly.

"Also, Beau, I will always love you. Nothing will ever change that. Not even if you run off to Nepal tomorrow. Though," he added, "I will follow you this time."

Some small part in the back of my mind noticed he didn't say he trusted me, but I was alright with that, I'd earn it back.

"I'm not running anymore," I murmured.