A Matter of Life and Death By Derdriu oFaolain & WhatsMyNomDePlume

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7084822/1/

Chapter One

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve
immortality through not dying. —Woody Allen

Edward Cullen was feeling especially creepy. Under ordinary circumstances, he
would have prided himself on such an attribute. After all, he had always made
great efforts to dress in ominous black and brandish unusual weapons, and he
had spent several centuries perfecting his sinister eyebrow raise. In a sense,
creepiness was a key aspect of Edward's job description, and he was utterly
devoted to his work.

Nevertheless, on this particular night, Edward managed to feel even creepier than
usual. This might have had something to do with the fact that he was sitting on
an unsuspecting woman's windowsill, watching her sleep.

He wasn't precisely sure why he was doing this, apart from the fact that his
superiors had told him to watch this woman. Because he disliked certain aspects
of human beings immensely—such as their jobs, social lives, concerns, attitudes
and voices—Edward had decided that the least painful method of watching this
woman was to do so while she slept.

Edward had never before watched a woman sleep, and he had assumed that it
would be similar to watching paint dry. He didn't know much about sleep—only
that it seemed like a colossal design flaw of living things. After all, no one would
purposely build a refrigerator that stopped working for eight hours a day.

But as he observed Bella Swan in the mysterious act of slumber, he found himself
creepily fascinated. She seemed to go through several abrupt stages over the
course of the night: the first part involved a period when she appeared to do
nothing but lie there and breathe. This part would have been tremendously
boring, were it not for the fact that Edward found something strangely pleasing
about the relaxed, undisturbed expression on her face. His line of work never

granted him this sort of look from humans—they were always either surprised or
incredibly distraught by his presence. Neither expression looked terribly appealing
on humans, even the pretty ones.

Bella Swan, it turned out, was one of the pretty ones. And much to Edward's
surprise, she even managed to look pretty when she entered the second stage of
sleep, which he could only guess was the part where humans engaged in mild
aerobic and vocal exercise. Bella tossed and turned in vigorous intervals and
murmured fearfully. She seemed terribly upset about something, to the point that
she took up fistfuls of her bed sheets. At one point, she even seemed to say the
word "death" as she rolled back and forth. This certainly got Edward's attention,
for absolutely the wrong reasons.

When Bella entered the final stage of sleep, which was the part at which Edward
assumed humans practiced their melancholy facial expressions, he began to
wonder why, exactly, he was violating this woman's privacy. He had spent hours
observing her, but hadn't learned anything particularly useful.

Just as he pondered this situation, his Blackberry buzzed in his pocket. Edward
liked to think of himself as a freelancer, as his own boss. But even for men as
important as him, there were higher powers that he, unfortunately, had to
answer to. His screen flashed a message which curtly informed him that he was
to report to the officers of "higher management" immediately.

Edward purposely maintained a loose definition of "immediately," especially
because it made his superiors incredibly angry when he ignored the concept of
time. Thus, before he headed back to work, he took a stroll around Bella's
bedroom, trying to find something significant. Given his impending meeting, this
felt like cramming for an exam he had to take in five minutes.

He wandered around the stark space and discovered little more than plain walls
and plain furniture. Feeling particularly adventurous, Edward even took a step
inside her bathroom. Not surprisingly, it looked just like any other bland, human
bathroom. Recalling the various work-related incidents that had brought Edward
to bathrooms in the past, he grimaced dramatically.

At last, he gave up and decided to head off to his dismal meeting. But before he
left Bella Swan's bathroom, he took a look at his reflection in the mirror. He was
pale and unkempt, just how he had always appeared. And, as usual, he looked
like death. More accurately, he looked like Death, which was apropos, as that's
precisely who he was.

—()—

The usual problem with bosses is that every one of them thinks he's a legend.
The problem with Edward's bosses was that they refused to accept the fact that
he was far more legendary than they were.

In fact, since Edward's superiors were Past, Present, and Future (mildly
personified, of course), he frequently liked to remind them that they could easily
be summed up with nothing more than a calendar. Death, on the other hand, was
swift and mysterious, all-powerful, the ultimate victor, and wildly handsome.

Nevertheless, these three men liked to exert whatever pompous displays of
power were available to them. These powers were generally limited to making
time tick in a clockwise direction and ordering Edward around.

"We are anxious to hear your report, Master Cullen," said Aro as Edward
meandered his way into their office. "I trust you've gathered sufficient
information on Isabella Swan."

Despite being enigmatic and mighty, forces of nature often prefer to give
themselves human names, if not for the amusement of choosing a moniker, then
for the benefit of not sharing a title with a common noun. Aro, having likely found
his name inside a strange fantasy novel, was otherwise known as Present.

"Well," said Edward, spinning his Blackberry in his hands. "I did spend hours
watching her, as per your instructions."

"Good, good," drawled Aro. "I've always enjoyed your enthusiasm for your work."

"When your contract has the word 'eternity' in it, you might as well have a good
attitude."

Aro provided the sort of smile that seemed to say, 'I don't care.' He tapped his
toe impatiently and said, "What did you discover about Miss Swan?"

"Um…" Edward paused and thought about his time watching her sleep. "She's
human."

Marcus, the Future, shook his head sternly. "And what else?"

"Wellll… She's attractive." Edward shrugged.

"That's it?" Caius snapped. "You observe her and that's all you come up with?"

"I would have been able to observe with more intent if you had bothered to
inform me why I was watching her in the first place," Edward retorted.

"Or maybe, we expected that in observing her, you would figure out the reason,"
Marcus pointed out.

Edward rolled his eyes. "Well, we could debate this ad infinitum. But while you
have all the time in the world, I do not. Let's cut to the chase, gentlemen. Natural
selection won't select itself. Some of us have more to do than watch sand pass
through an hour glass."

Caius grunted angrily under his breath but as always, Aro took Edward's attitude
with an effortless nonchalance. "There is a situation in Seattle that requires your
attention. The reason we asked you to observe Ms. Swan is because she has been
of growing concern to us. Exceptionally bright as she is, she has come up with an
elixir for eternal life. She is in the final stages of perfecting it and we need you to
stop it."

"Wait a minute," Edward objected. "Final stages? What has Marcus been doing?
Isn't it his job to foresee things like this?"

Aro shot his colleague a side-eyed glare. "Well, yes. Unfortunately, we're only
human—"

"No you're not."

"It's an expression, Master Cullen. Anyway, it slipped past Marcus, que sera sera.
We'd like you to divide your assignments and give them to your subordinates and
focus your full efforts on stopping this girl's endeavor," Aro instructed.

"Why do I have to do it?"

"In case you haven't noticed, we don't exactly have a customer service
department. She's threatening your livelihood, therefore you deal with it," came
Caius' irritated reply. Edward often wondered why Caius was always so bitter; but
on second thought it made sense. Living in the past—which any human
psychologist worth their salt would advise against—must have made him feel
rather impotent, when compared to the other members of his trio.

"So you want me to… what exactly?" Edward asked.

"It is your duty, Master Cullen, to make sure that serum is never distributed.
Until now Ms. Swan has been the soul of discretion. Contain the situation and
defuse it. You don't need to be told how important this is," Marcus said.

One would assume that in occupying the position he did, Edward would have
infinite control over his power. Anyone who attempted to get in his way, got out
of hand or even simply irritated him could drop dead at his behest. Unfortunately,
life wasn't fair—not even for Death—and he was at the mercy of the greater
forces at work (namely Fate, Karma and the three men standing in front of him).

All those who had to die were predetermined—everyone had a time and place
that fed into the larger, infinitely intricate schemes of the universe. Despite the
heavy, Atlas-worthy burden he bore, Edward had no real power. He was very
much the Powers That Be's whipping boy, chosen at the advent of eternity to
fulfill this most depressing, yet integral of duties.

As much as he simply wanted to snark out that they request Fate to make a little
exception with this one, he knew what their answers would be. So instead, he
took the address of Isabella Swan's laboratory, cracked a poor 'time is of the
essence' joke that he knew would irritate them and set off on his merry way.

—()—

Bella Swan usually worked alone. This wasn't due to the usual reasons for solitary
work, since she was neither sullen nor callous. Rather, she found herself alone so
frequently because she liked to tinker around with her experiments after hours.

Even though the rest of the lab was dark, she kept her desk lamp on and flipped
through graphs on her computer. She sipped her coffee, which wasn't strictly
legal inside a laboratory, and pressed the 'down' arrow on her clunky keyboard
until she had reached the end of the data.

"Look at that, guys," she said to the rats in the cage beside her. "Five years and
counting, with a clean bill of health."

The rat she called Jake wrapped his paws around the cage bars and stood on his
hind legs, energetically sniffing the air. He had lived two years longer than the
normal lifespan for laboratory rats, and he was still perfectly healthy. If Bella's
experiment was a success, then Jake would live forever.

"Keep your fingers crossed, boy," she said, giving his little rat hand a tap. When
Jake had retreated into his cardboard box of a house, Bella set to work cleaning
up her desk. It was already past nine o'clock, and she would have to be back
soon enough. After a hurried sweeping together of papers, she went to fetch her
coat. It was only after she had turned away from the computer that she realized
she was not alone after all.

"Oh my god!" she shrieked.

The intruder, dressed all in black, sauntered lazily toward her, hands buried in his
pockets. "I'm not God," he said with an amused air. "But you're close. Care to
guess again?"

She backed up until she had reached the barrier of her desk. The man, however,
continued ambling toward her. "Is this a joke? Did Mike send you here to scare
me?"

He stopped at a bench covered by glass beakers and smirked at her. "Have I
stumped you already, Isabella Swan? Disappointing. My sources told me you
were intelligent."

"I am intelligent," she said automatically, forgetting that a rather frightening, and
rather tall stranger had entered her lab without clearance.

"Are you now?" His eyes darted to her challengingly, but he nonchalantly turned
to the stack of glassware. "So, who am I?" He began stacking the beakers into a
pyramid like a child playing with blocks.

"I don't care who you are—a burglar, a PETA member—I don't give a damn.
Leave, or I'll call security."

The man spun around with a strange quickness, causing the table to shake. His
beaker pyramid toppled dramatically and shattered all over the floor. "Oops," he
said. His lips curved into a crooked smile, and he resumed his journey toward
her. "You look frustrated. Do you need some hints?"

Some people scream when startled; others get angry. Bella, being an atypical
sort of woman, became slightly homicidal. "Don't come any closer!" she
exclaimed, picking up a stoppered bottle from her desk and brandishing it. "This
is twelve molar hydrochloric acid. I will not hesitate to dump it on your face!"

The man had finally entered the range of her desk lamp, exposing a head of
untamed hair, a luminous alloy of reds and browns. "Now, now. Don't threaten
me with death." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

She pulled the stopper out of the bottle and held it in the air between them. "I
mean it! Stop right there, or I'll splash this stuff in your eyes!"

"Not my pretty eyes!" he exclaimed, dramatically clasping his hands together and
holding them near his heart. He gave his dark eyelashes a little flutter. "Some
women love them to death."

Bella's fear suddenly transformed into frustration. "What is it with you and this
death thing? Are you here to kill me or something?"

He stopped batting his eyelashes and clapped his hand to his forehead. "Jeez.
Now I'm just beating a dead horse. Let's try something else, shall we? How about
a game of hangman?" He darted to the whiteboard behind Bella's desk, uncapped
a marker, and hastily drew a gallows. "So I'm not God." With a squeak, he drew a
circle for the stick-figure's head. "And I'm not Mike's friend." He drew the body.
"Nor am I a burglar or a PETA member." He drew two legs. "Wow, Ms. Swan.
You're not doing so well."

"Who the hell are you, and what are you doing in my lab?" she yelled, practically
stomping her foot.

"This may be the worst entrance I've ever made," he muttered, exasperatedly
tapping the marker in his hand. After releasing a sigh, he drew a scythe in the
hand of the stick figure and motioned to it like Vanna White.

With her face frowning like that, eyes serious and back straight, she looked
anything but friendly. In fact, despite her small frame and kind, pretty looks, she
was rather formidable.

"I'm Death."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm Death."

"What does that mean? Your name is Death? Your parents had a rather sick
sense of humor, I must say," she said.

Edward shook his head. "No. My name is Edward Cullen. And I am Death."

"Is that... is that a classification of some sort?"

"What?"

"Like is that your, er, nationality or social group or sexual preference or
something? Like being Goth or—"

"No! I am Death—you know, the opposite of life. That thing that everyone is
afraid of. That thing you are trying to cure? I hath sucked the honey of her lips
but had no power on Juliet's beauty? That Death."

"Oh that Death," she drawled. Edward did not appreciate the sarcasm, even if his
own sense of humor tended to be rather deadpan.

"Look Ms. Swan, I know you don't believe me—"

"Why wouldn't I believe you? It's just… you're nothing like what I expected," she
said. "I mean, I always thought Death wore a hooded cape—"

"Myth, I just prefer black," he muttered.

"And carries a scythe—"

"Too unwieldy, I only bring it when there's a stabbing or a beheading."

"So you're the Grim Reaper?"

"Grim Reaper, Thanatos, Yamraj, Shinigami, Ankou—many names, many
legends, many myths, one man—that's me. Hello." He raised his hand and
wiggled his fingers.

"You're right. I don't believe you," she said.

Edward was at once both annoyed and impressed; the former because now he'd
have to prove who he was and the latter because at least she wasn't stupid
enough to believe any idiot that came along, dressed in black, proclaiming he was
Death.

Not that he was an idiot.

"Fine," he huffed. "I'll prove it—"

"Look, Mr. Colin, was it? I don't—"

"Just humor me for a moment. Think of a place, any place in the world that is
accessible."

"Okay." She did. A few moments of vacant, waiting looks passed over both their
faces. "Well?" Bella demanded.

"Well what? I asked you to think of a place."

"I did!"

"Well, tell me what it is then! I'm not a mind reader!" he declared.

"How am I supposed to know that? Maybe Death—" At his name, she used air
quotes, which irked him to no end "—can read minds, too."

"No, he can't," Edward snapped, wondering how he'd been reduced to referring to
himself in third person. "I can't. Just say the place out loud, please."

"Oh, well since you said 'please', Sir Death," she retorted, in not a wholly
unfriendly, but thoroughly taunting way. She arched her left eyebrow in challenge
as she told him, "The Serengeti."

The next few moments and the action they contained were a blur to Bella—
Edward marching over and grabbing her hand, a sudden split second of the
strange sensation of simultaneously floating and moving at an incomprehensibly
high speed, followed by the rather unwelcome sensation of her shoe in something
soft and smelly.

"Oh gross," she said, lifting her leg and examining the sole. It wasn't enough that
this happened to her at the park back home, she would have to step in shit when
she was teleported to the Serengeti as well.

She looked up and was faced with a sight almost as irritating as the stool on her
shoe—an unbearably smug Edward. "I may not be able to read your thoughts,"
he said. "But I can travel at the speed of my own. Welcome to the Serengeti,
Isabella Swan."

And that was when she stopped contemplating what was on her shoe and began
seeing what was underneath her feet. The ground was dry and cracked and yet
tufts of long, yellowing grass sprouted in abundance. In the distance, an acacia
tree provided shade, food and a jungle gym to the red-butted baboons that
swung from its branches. The air was dry and impossibly pure, filling her lungs
with a vitality she never wanted to let go of—rather ironic when one considered
her current company. And the horizon, on the far ends of these plains that were
stark and impressive and stunning all at once, was so far in the distance that her
eyes, so used to seeing cities limited and littered by skyscrapers, could scarcely
take it all in.

It hit her. She was standing in the Serengeti. With someone, who if not Death as
he proclaimed to be, had the power of teleportation.

"Oh God," she breathed. Her eyes grew wide as she spun in a slow circle, soaking
in three hundred and sixty degrees of Serengeti. "Oh God."

And though he had rather limited experience with humans, and certainly no
preceding incidents in which he revealed either his presence, his identity or his
powers, Edward had the purely instinctual feeling that this was the precise
moment he would see Isabella Swan lose her rather impressive composure. And

then, just as a cheetah was doing with a doomed gazelle about fifty feet to their
left, he would pounce on her, put fear into her so deeply that he could make sure
that her formula was never put into use.

"Oh god," she repeated, her big brown eyes, so much like a young girl's in that
moment, fixed at a point over his shoulder. She tugged on their clasped hands—
neither had noticed the death grip they still held—and said, "We may want to use
that whole teleportation thing right about now."

She pointed just as the ground beneath their feet began to rumble and Edward
turned to see a herd of elephants thundering towards them. Not a moment too
soon, he closed his eyes and thought of Bella's office, with its drab white walls
and walnut wood desk, completely impersonal, almost cold, except for a picture
of a child and her parents smiling in the corner. When he opened his eyes again,
he was looking at that very photograph.

Bella let go of his hand, immediately stripping off her smelly shoe and tossing it
in the garbage, before approaching what looked like a panel in the wall but
opened into a vast closet. She withdrew another pair of shoes, slipped them on,
and turned to him.

He was still awaiting her inevitable freak out, so it was safe to say that he was
rather surprised when she said, "That was just like The Lion King. Except so much
better."

"Er… I suppose."

"You've never seen The Lion King?" She affected a regal baritone for her next
words. "'Simba, when we die, our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eat
the grass...'" She trailed off upon seeing Edward's blank expression. "Huh. Maybe
that's too much 'Circle of Life' for Death." She walked over and seated herself
behind the desk. "Alright, Mr. Colin—"

"—Cullen," he corrected. He wasn't quite sure why he added, "But call me
Edward."

"Alright, Edward. You are… something. Maybe Death. Let's talk."

Chapter Two

-()-

"Alright, Edward. You are… something. Maybe Death. Let's talk."

-()-

"Let's not.," Edward replied, crossing his arms and feeling the first modicum of
satisfaction he had, thus far in their interaction. "Unless it's a conversation that
consists of me telling you to immediately cease this experiment and you agreeing
vigorously. Given your tendency for tenacity, I'm suspecting that's—"

"Stop my experiment?" Bella asked. If she had hackles in place of her slim,
sloping shoulders, they would be raised. "Because some nut job who dresses like
Johnny Cash and has the ability to bend time and space asks me to? Fat chance."

"—unlikely," Edward concluded. "Clearly, you are hard to impress. You make it
sound like you run into someone who has the ability to bend time and space
everyday. Nevertheless, either you halt your experiment or I'll be forced to burn
your lab down to the ground. In short, Ms. Swan, I will make this as simple as
possible for your tiny human brain."

He watched her fists ball at her sides, to which he replied with a short,
condescending laugh.

"Let me rephrase." As he spoke, his hand swung pompously in the air. "Either
you quit your research this instant, or I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your lab
down. With fire."

She snorted. "My hairless chinny-chin-chin doesn't give a damn. I don't tolerate
threats. How about I give you a choice—either talk to me like an adult or teleport
your ass out of here, you… you… whatever you are."

"'You whatever you are'. Your words are so cutting, Ms. Swan," he taunted.

"I apologize. How about 'you monochromatic freak of nature?'''

For the briefest of moments, her words wounded him. He was Death—dark and
dangerous, famously feared. And this woman was treating him with no respect
whatsoever. In fact, she had already turned away from him to resume her work.

He wouldn't endure this insulting treatment. Desperate for some kind of reaction,
he dissolved and reappeared an inch from her face. She jumped, and he smirked.

"I mean it," he said, keeping his voice low and slick. "I'll turn this place to ash."

"You'll do no such thing, Mr. Colin," she said coolly, focusing her attention on
evening a stack of papers.

"Cullen," he grumbled through his teeth. "It's Cullen!"

She started humming disinterestedly. Over her shoulder, he saw her flip open her
cell phone and scroll down to a number labeled "Security."

"Oh no you don't." He stole the phone from her hand with one lightning fast
swipe.

"Give that back!"

"I think not." He stuffed it in his pocket and gave her an impressive eyebrow lift.
Then, imagining the glory of his victory in advance, he snapped his fingers. The
stack of papers next to her computer immediately erupted in flame. He almost
skipped with glee. That will show her, he thought.

Bella, however, was not nearly as pleased by this development. He figured this
out fairly quickly, since she was suddenly hefting the thickest textbook he had
ever seen. It was also the only textbook that had ever become intimately
acquainted with the side of his head.

"Ow!" he gasped as he staggered backward. His hand flew to the sore spot on his
temple. "That hurt!"

Before the sparkly prickling had left his vision, she slammed the book into the
side of his ribcage. "Make it stop!" she yelled. "Put that fire out right now!" She
held the book ferociously above her head, like Moses with his commandments.

"Fine! Fine!" he exclaimed, trying not to sound panicked. Death didn't panic.

He snapped his fingers again, and the fire disappeared with a wheezing puff of
smoke.

"Thank you," she said, poking her burnt stack of papers. She tried to lift the top
sheet, but a large piece of the stack broke off and crumbled to the floor like
flaking plaster. "Delightful."

Edward pressed his fingertips to his head, testing the damage she had done to
his lovely pale skin. He didn't think it was possible for him to bruise, but by the
throbbing sensation, he began to wonder if that was a fallacy. "Little beastie," he
muttered.

Before he had finished pawing at his wounds, she walked straight toward him and
stuck her hand right into his pants pocket.

"Ack!" he shrieked, his eyes springing open. "What are you doing? Don't violate
me!"

Her expression was cold as she stepped away from him, her retrieved cell phone
in hand. "So…" she drawled, irritation suffusing her voice. "Do you want to talk
now?"

Edward's pride had never before been wounded. It was a peculiar feeling, and he
imagined that if someone were to wax his left eyebrow right off his face, it would
feel about the same. Instead of sullenly stalking off, however, he absorbed the
tantalizing challenge she had presented.

His natural mien was much like a petulant child who insisted on winning every
game, even if it required cheating. In fact, he did win every game, and he always
had the last laugh, because in the end everybody dies.

And that's precisely when he realized that Bella Swan was not only winning this
particular game, but that she had it in her mind to win all of his future games as
well. With her clever little anti-death serum, she was scheming to make him
irrelevant.

When his mind had snapped together all of these puzzle pieces, he smiled
wickedly. This woman planned to put him out of work. He could easily snap his
fingers again and set the entire laboratory on fire instead of a few papers, but he
suddenly craved this competition. He was confident to the point of cockiness, and
he wondered how difficult it would be to make her change her mind.

He watched her petite, attractive body seethe with anger, and felt the challenge
roll over him. "Yes, let's talk."

"Why don't we start with why you feel the need to burn my lab down?" There was
an edge to her voice so sharp that she might as well have waved a knife around
instead of speaking. Edward was certain that the medical research field did not
often produce such fierce specimens. Something else had made her this way, he
was sure, and his mind drifted off into that particular puzzle.

"Is your boyfriend an ass?" he said, absently voicing his current thought.

"Excuse me?"

Edward blinked a few times, realizing that he had, in fact, said that aloud. "Uh… I
mean—"

"If I had a boyfriend," she snapped, "he wouldn't be half the ass that you are."

A smile twisted its way into Edward's expression. "I have quite the ass, if I do say
so myself."

"What does this have to do with my lab?"

"Everything." He crossed his arms and leaned back against her desk. "I am an
important guy, you see. Probably the most important guy in the universe. And
you've made a serum to eliminate me."

"Well, you're certainly the most arrogant prick in the universe."

"Do you really think it's a good idea to taunt Death?"

"As you might suspect by my research, sir, I don't think your importance is
deserved at all. You serve no purpose except to cause suffering."

This comment made him uncharacteristically clumsy in finding a reply. No one
had ever insulted him so deeply, which was incredible, since the human race liked
to curse him quite a bit. "How would you like it if I made an anti-Bella serum?"

"You're just scared that you won't be the top dog for all of eternity."

Edward realized that her statement was shockingly true, but he was absolutely
unwilling to admit it. "Scared? Ha! I'm merely playing nice because you're hot."

Her eyes widened. Edward laughed devilishly, realizing that he had found
something that made her react. He was surprised that such a statement should
surprise her. He mused that her attractiveness was brilliant enough to be the
subject of many conversations.

"And besides," he said, trying to ignore her pretty frown. "Don't go around calling
me arrogant when you're ready to promise the world everlasting life. You've had
some predecessors in that department, you know."

"Calling me a hypocrite doesn't prove your point, Mr. Cullen," she said. "I'm not
trying to create the Church of Bella Swan. I'm trying to help people."

"Putting me out of work isn't going to help people." He felt a spark of anger move
him toward her and stooped to look into her eyes, as if resorting to height to
prove his superiority.

She accepted his challenge by stepping toward him in return. Her heels left the
ground to meet his gaze directly. "Prove it."

Their current position might have looked like the pause before a kiss to an
observer. Had this observer known what would have befallen poor Bella Swan
were she to kiss Edward Cullen, the scene would have appeared far more
dramatic.

For a split second, Edward considered dragging her face forward to fill the inch of
space between them and kissing her angrily, and just a little indulgently. It would
have been the easy way out of this mess, all things considered, but he was loath
to let the game end that quickly.

Instead, he rocked back on his heels and released her from the death sentence
he had planned. Ignoring the daze that had come over her face, he withdrew the
Blackberry from his coat pocket and scrolled through the list of names that

popped up, briefly selecting a few and following chains of information until he
found the situation he had wanted.

This was the way the executive board, as it were, contacted him. It was a never-
ending stream of humans about to kick the bucket, with just enough information
to get him where he needed to be. Technically, he wasn't supposed to resume his
normal duties until he had dealt with Isabella Swan, but he thought giving her a
night in his shoes might win him a little respect.

Without seeking any permission from Bella, he swung his arm around her waist in
a vaguely bawdy manner and then sent them hurtling straight to the seats of his
car, which he kept parked in Le Mans, because there was no better place to park
a car.

Bella, of course, had no idea that she had just been zapped to France. It
appeared that she didn't much care where she was, since her focus seemed to be
on shrieking at him.

"This is kidnapping!"

"No, my dear," he sighed. "It's Take Your Belligerent Business Rival to Work
Day."

Her eyes darted to the window, taking note of the morning light of their time
zone shift. "Where are we?"

"In my car."

"You can teleport. Why do you have a car? Plus, according to the Apocalypse,
you're supposed to be riding around on a pale horse with Hell following close
behind."

"I switched from the horse to the sports car when automobiles were invented.
Driving something that poops is so passé, Bella. Get with the times."

"But the carbon emissions! You don't have to drive anything. All you're doing is
polluting the environment."

"So what? You humans don't need a shitty atmosphere to kill you. You take care
of that all on your own."

"You're busy proving my point, not yours," she declared archly.

"Let's go for a drive." Frowning, he twirled a set of keys on his finger and then
ignited the obviously hefty engine. He shoved the car into gear and sped off down
the road. Bella wondered if he took souls by driving like a maniac until his
passengers died in epic crashes.

After a minute or two, he opened his window and draped his arm out over the
side. "Come on, old boy!" he said, while patting the metal. He blinked, and they
were on the road in Tennessee, nighttime back in the sky. Unfortunately,
Edward's teleportation powers, which he treated as his car's special sixth gear,
had landed them almost on top of a tour bus. He swerved dramatically, laughing
at the same time.

Bella had covered her eyes, but she had stopped screaming. It seemed to Edward
that she was having too much difficulty breathing to devote much energy to
expressing her terror. It was probably for the best, he thought, since he had
never had much regard for the lines on the road.

Edward was rather fond of driving. He wasn't really allowed the time to have
hobbies, since people never stopped dying, so driving had become his excuse for
recreation. Back in the olden days, he had been quite the equestrian, but as soon
as he had discovered the joys of the gas pedal, he used every opportunity to
press it to the floor.

Whenever he could afford the time to drive, he did. He liked to arrive at
deathbeds in style, after all. On days when he was feeling particularly buoyant,
he made a point to emerge from his Aston Martin wearing dark sunglasses and a
matching smirk. In fact, he was fairly certain the mysterious bright light that
everyone claimed to see before death was only his high beams.

Since driving was Edward's only pastime, he made every moment count,
particularly by weaving through other vehicles at the fastest possible rate. It was
all a grand obstacle course to him, even if poor Bella Swan failed to appreciate
the exhilaration of the game.

"I'm going to die!" she screamed at him, finally working up the courage to protest
his wild maneuvering.

"Nah. I would know." He spun the wheel wildly and the car skidded around a
sharp corner. After pulling a little on the handbrake, they lurched to a stop beside
the guardrail. "And here we are!"

Bella's face had dropped to her hands. Through the gaps between her fingers, she
muttered, "Where did you learn how to drive?"

"I'm self taught," he announced proudly.

"Clearly."

Edward glanced at his watch and then at his Blackberry. "Now, Bella, pay close
attention."

It turned out that Bella's attention didn't have to be too close, since the moment
that Edward had been waiting for arrived with a quite a bang. Along with the
bang came the sharp screeching of tires, the jingling spray of shattered glass,
and the low rumble of buckling metal.

Just in front of Edward's car, a tiny sedan swerved toward the guardrail and then
straight into a semi truck. It was only after a fair amount of flipping and rolling
that the car, mangled beyond recognition, skidded to a halt.

Bella watched this scene unfold with an admirable degree of composure. She did,
of course, look like the sort of feckless wide-eyed animal that might cause such a
crash, but the fact that she wasn't gasping in horror inspired a tinge of respect in
Edward.

"You've taken me to watch someone die…" she breathed, stating rather than
asking.

"Well, he's mostly dead already, so you won't have to endure a dramatic death
speech. Those are never fun."

"How can you possibly be so insensitive? Some poor guy is dying in a terrible car
wreck and you're here cracking jokes!"

"Comes with the territory, Ms. Swan." He stretched his arms out over his head
and yawned loudly. "Some things are just bad enough to deserve my humor."

Bella heard the smallest hint of despondency in his voice, which nearly shocked
her more than the crash had. She turned to him with serious eyes and tried to
examine his face.

Before she could decide whether or not she had actually heard genuine emotion
in his words, he slid his hand across her thigh. She yelped and he slowly
retracted his hand to unbuckle her seatbelt. "Ah, there's the buckle," he said,
taking no care to mask his naughtiness.

He narrowly dodged a slap to the face by disappearing from the driver's seat and
materializing outside the passenger door.

"You and your stupid Death party tricks," she hissed as he opened the door.

He sniffed dramatically. "My powers are much cooler than party tricks. Reaping
souls requires immense talent." Unwilling to listen to any more snide remarks
about his profession, he took her hand and sent them both to the middle of the
street. Police cars had begun to appear, turning the highway into a light show of
blue and red, sirens piercing the night.

"Won't someone stop us?" said Bella apprehensively, tugging back against
Edward's hand as he tried to lead her toward the wreckage. He sensed that she
was balking for a different reason, but he humored her with the answer she had
asked for.

"Only the dead, or the nearly so, can see me or my…" He looked her over and
smiled crookedly. "…companions."

"But I can see you, and I'm not dead! Unless… I'm not a ghost, am I? Like Bruce
Willis in The Sixth Sense? Because that would just be awful, and you should really
tell me if I'm already dead and you're just screwing with me."

"You're not dead. A living human can see me if I decide to reveal myself. But
generally, it requires a very dull sort of person to un-see me after I've given
myself away."

"Oh God. Does that mean I'm going to see you for the rest of my life?"

He shrugged. "Probably. Lucky girl."

Bella might have provided a sharp retort, but she suddenly realized that she was
looking down on a corpse. Her eyes followed the line of the lifeless arm dangling
out the broken window of the upside down car. She began backing away when
she noticed that the pavement was much redder than it should be.

It was suddenly real to her. Edward Cullen really was Death, and she was actually
looking at his handiwork. She wasn't dreaming or hallucinating or losing her
mind. She was staring at a dead body, and she had just been back-talking Death
himself.

"Why did you bring me here?" she said, her insolence markedly absent. "Take me
back to my lab. Now."

A woman's voice had begun sobbing from within the car. Police officers and
paramedics were swarming.

"Take me back!" she yelled, attracting no one's notice but Edward's. She struck
his chest hard and made to sprint back to his car.

Edward was surprised by his own reaction to her distress. "Wait just a minute,"
he said quietly, grabbing her arm before she could get away. "The story isn't over
yet." He gently took each of her shoulders and held her before him, facing her
away from the crash. "There is a point to this. I promise."

She closed her eyes tightly and took a breath.

"The fact that you can handle death a little too well for your own good is what
made me bring you here. If you were just a little weaker than you are, you
would've backed down when I tried to set your lab on fire. You can handle this.
Now stay put for just a moment."

She nodded once, her eyes still closed.

"And if you're nice to me," he said, letting the smirk show in his voice. "I'll allow
you to buy me a drink later."

That statement made her eyes open, and she momentarily forgot to be disturbed
by this scenario. She swiveled and gave him a scowl, just in time for him to
reward her with a wink. Having turned to face the crash, however, she found
herself unable to look away. Strangely fixated, she watched as Edward walked
through the throngs of bystanders. Somehow, he didn't need to push or shove at
all—everyone just moved out of his way as if they saw him without even knowing
it.

Without pause, he bent down, snatched up the limp arm, and gave it a kiss. Bella
gaped. Edward had indeed planted a kiss on the corpse, like Cinderella's prince.
"What in the hell?" she muttered to herself.

When Edward returned to her, he was no longer alone. Behind him followed a
translucent figure which looked sort of like a reflection in a fogged-up mirror. This
ghost-like being, who Bella assumed was the original owner of the limp arm,
staggered along behind Edward with tenuous stability.

"Do souls always stumble like that?"

Edward shook his head. "Nope, this guy thinks he's still drunk." He waited for the
dead man to catch up and then set a jovial hand on his shoulder. "Jimmy, old pal,
I hate to tell you this, but your coordination shouldn't still be impaired, since you
don't really have a body left to coordinate."

"Huh?" said the soul, scratching his insubstantial hair by force of habit alone.

"You're dead, Jim."

"Dead?"

"As a doornail."

"Then who are you? Are you God?"

Edward smiled proudly. "I get that a lot." He saw Bella roll her eyes, and cleared
his throat. "But no, I'm Death. With a capital D."

The dead man seemed to consider this without much consternation. "Okay. Then
who's she?"

Edward brought his other arm around Bella's shoulders. "This is my friend Bella.
Bella, this is James. He had a drinking problem, it seems."

"She's pretty," said James, still looking a little drunk.

"I know, right?"

Bella sighed loudly. "You promised me this had a point, Edward."

"Oh, it does. But we mustn't rush art, Bella." He wiggled his fingers in the air with
flourish, as if preparing to play a piano. "Now, James, let's chat, shall we?"

James' wispy eyelids blinked a few times.

Edward nodded in the direction of the wailing woman, who was presently being
extracted from the vehicle by paramedics. "Who's your lady friend?"

"That's Victoria—my girlfriend," he said, suddenly appearing both sober and
upset. "Is she going to be okay?"

Edward spun his Blackberry around between his fingers. "Yep. She hasn't made
my list this time, kid. You, on the other hand, really shouldn't have mixed beer
and car keys."

James seemed to experience a moment of clarity. His face, particularly in its
vague, filmy state, didn't appear to be one very well suited to emotional
expression. Still, Bella could see reality catch up to his translucent eyes. "Holy
shit…" he gasped. "I'm really dead."

The emotion behind his words hit Bella with a cold stab. She wanted to comfort
James, despite his air of dimwittedness, but all Edward did was give him a firm
slap on the back. Bella wasn't sure how Edward could make audible contact with
someone who appeared so ghostlike, but it didn't seem out of place. She figured
she had only seen the tip of the iceberg when it came to his abilities. She
somehow knew that he had endless things hidden up his dark sleeve. If he wasn't
such an asshole, he'd sort of be impressive. Of course, Bella would never give
him the satisfaction of hearing her say so out loud.

Nevertheless, Bella was unsatisfied by the way he brushed off James' death with
a frat-brother slap on the back. She wasn't sure what Edward was trying to
demonstrate, but he was failing miserably.

"You really are dead," he confirmed jovially. "But, look, here's the bright side—"

"There's a bright side?"

Edward nodded back toward Victoria, who had been placed on a stretcher. "Look
at Vicky over there." His eyes darted to Bella's as he spoke. "She likes to party,
doesn't she, James?"

A small smile appeared in the cloudy image of his face. "Yeah. She's a fun girl.
Never frowns. The best part of every party."

Bella wanted to cry, but Edward seemed to think he was winning. She watched
the victory invade his posture. "Victoria's not going to take your death too well,
I'd gather. She'll regret a lot of things about tonight. She'll regret it enough to
change her habits, probably. She'll never booze and cruise again." He tapped the
screen of his Blackberry. "You've kept her off my appointment list for a good long
while, eh James?"

He nodded somberly, watching the paramedics cart Victoria away into an
ambulance. Bella thought she saw James' wispy body flicker and grow fainter,

dissolving like a mist at daybreak. Edward stood by with his eyes on hers, waiting
for his lesson to sink in.

Bella wasn't stupid. She saw what Edward was trying to teach her—that one
man's death might change someone else's life for the better. Perspective,
mathematics, blah blah blah. Bella didn't care. She had thought enough on this
subject without being subjected to this. She had endured enough tragedy in her
life already.

She shot Edward a burning glare and moved over to James. Lifting her hand a
little, she tried to set it on his shoulder, but it fell right through him as though
she had tried to touch a shadow. This made the tears well in her eyes, even
though James didn't seem nearly so upset.

"I'm sorry," she said, her voice showing more irritation than anything else.
"Death is a little… insensitive. And sort of an asshole."

James laughed, and his diaphanous body seemed to grow a little brighter. "Well,
no one really likes death, so I guess it fits."

"You know, I'm standing right here," grumbled Edward, tapping his toe.

Bella turned to him and made an ugly face. She had plenty of things to say to
him, none of them pleasant, and most of which would be best accompanied by
nasty gestures. For now, though, all she wanted to do was ease James' passing.

But when she turned back to James, he was walking away from her. She tried to
call after him, but he didn't even look back. Instead, he walked on as if in a
trance, slowly and steadily, the mists of his body dispersing.

Bella held herself still, unsure of what was happening. Before long, she felt
Edward's presence by her side. "Where's he going?" she whispered.

She felt Edward's arm move against hers as he shrugged. "I don't know. I'm just
the messenger. The cosmic mail carrier. Supernatural slave to the man."

"Wow. That almost sounded like humility."

"That's me," he muttered. "Humble old Death. Kissing hands and holding doors.
Speaking of which…" He suddenly disappeared from Bella's side and popped back
into sight ahead of James. As the dead man walked on zombie-like, Edward
reached into empty space and seemed to turn an invisible doorknob. With
practiced ease, he opened a strange, ethereal gateway in the middle of the
street.

Bella remained frozen in awe as the edges of the spectral frame began to glow.
Edward winked at her before bowing down and presenting James with an
embellished gesture to pass through the door. At that moment, a stream of light
cut through the darkness in front of James, twisting and spiraling outward as
though alive. Soon it was joined by another curl of light, and then another. Before
long, the surreal illumination wrapped around James, as if embracing him with
arms of light, until all Bella could see was a blinding whiteness, a miniature star
on the side of the highway.

And then the door slammed itself shut. It swallowed up every hint of its own
existence, save Edward, who stood alone on the street like an empty shadow,
smug in his own intangibility. But Bella didn't pay attention to him. Instead, she
stared at the spot where the door had been, rattled by how quickly everything
had turned dark and ordinary. Cars rushed by and Victoria's ambulance flew off

into the darkness, siren blaring. Bella folded her arms around herself, suddenly
cold.

Chapter Three

She stared at the spot where the door had been, rattled by how quickly
everything had turned dark and ordinary. Cars rushed by and Victoria's
ambulance flew off into the darkness, siren blaring. Bella folded her arms around
herself, suddenly cold.

-()-

"So that's what it's normally like for you, then?" she said bitterly when Edward
had returned to her side. "You show up, drag some soul away from his loved
ones, and shove him on his way? You think that's going to teach me about the
importance of death? There really should be a serum meant to keep you away."

She expected some sort of wry retort, but instead, she only saw his shoulders
sink infinitesimally. "This is not what it's usually like," he said softly, looking
away. "Usually, I work alone."

Bella was caught off guard by these words, to the point that she found it difficult
to form any of her own.

"And I see you still disagree with everything I stand for," he said, already walking
back to his car. "You and the whole damned planet."

Edward found himself remarkably disappointed by her response to his first lesson.
He did not often experience such a feeling of letdown, and it knocked him off his
mental center for a few moments. But by the time he was behind the wheel of his
car, and Bella was beside him, grumpy though she was, he was determined to
show her the second act of his play.

"Are you going to take me back to my lab now?" asked Bella, using an indignant
monotone.

"The night is young! Of course not."

She sighed. "Then where are you taking me? I thought you showed me your
point."

"I showed you part of my point."

"I think you just have a problem accepting failure. You do realize you failed,
right?"

Bella watched as Edward flung the car into gear and stomped on the gas pedal.
The acceleration pressed her into the seat as if they were taking off in an
airplane. "Best two out of three," he said with a wink.

It was not until the car skidded to a halt once more that Bella dared open her
eyes. When she did, she realized that Edward had parked in front of a hospital.

"Welcome to my office," he announced, excitedly grabbing her hand and sending
them straight to the front lobby. "This is where I go when I want to be lazy."

Bella was getting used to Edward's unannounced teleportation, but she hadn't
stopped reacting. In lieu of staggering around and feeling generally nauseous,
she settled for shrieking, then flailing away from his hands, then shouting, "You
really need to stop doing that!"

Unexpectedly, her voice echoed through the chemical-smelling lobby as if she had
yelled into a microphone. When the sound waves bounced off of every available
surface and landed back in her eardrums, she finally fell silent. Slightly
embarrassed, she clamped a hand over her mouth. But the receptionists only
looked around with slight confusion, seemingly unsure if they had actually heard
a noise.

"Thank God I've made you invisible," said Edward with an eye roll. "You really are
embarrassingly unruly."

Bella had been saving up a particular gesture, and since she was invisible to
everyone except for the man she intended as the recipient, she boldly displayed it
for him. But when she showed off the elegant straightness of her middle finger,
Edward only smiled, hooked his pinky around it with a girlish giggle, and zapped
them straight to the third floor.

"I hate you," she declared.

"Everyone hates me." He paused to scratch his chin thoughtfully. "Except maybe
the emos. But they only pretend to like me, so they don't count."

Bella looked around the corridor, which was lined with rooms for patients. "You're
not going to show me sick children, are you? Because that would be really
upsetting, and it wouldn't work at all."

"Do you really think I'm that insensitive?"

She gave him a pointed glare.

"Fine. Think what you will, but I'm actually not going to show you any dead
people."

"Oh really?"

"Yes, really. Now come with me." He swept her hand away from her side, but
surprisingly moved down the hallway the natural way—by walking. Why he
needed to hold her hand while he did this, she couldn't be sure.

At last, they reached a hospital room, which Edward barged right into without any
sort of warning or permission. Bella didn't have much choice but to follow suit,
since his fingers had threaded through hers.

A middle-aged man was lying in the bed, his heart monitor beeping along slowly.
"Death?" he rasped, almost as soon as they had entered.

"He knows you?" whispered Bella, so sharply that it hardly sounded like a whisper
at all.

"People who are expecting me tend to recognize me when I show up. Of course,
they never remember me after the fact." He scrolled through a page on his
Blackberry. "And you, my friend," he said to the man in the bed, "are not on my
list."

"I'm not? But my doctor said they couldn't find a good match…"

"Ah, Fortune," proclaimed Edward with an erudite lilt. "How she does spin her
wheel."

Bella turned her head at the sound of shoes squeaking down the hall. Her instinct
was to hide—she was, after all, an intruder. She intuitively tried to dive behind
the curtain next to the man's bed, but Edward, still holding her hand, pulled her
back to him. She lost her balance and fell against his body, which, in a moment
of slight mental fogginess, she realized was rather lean and muscular.

"You're invisible, remember?" he whispered into her ear, smiling when her skin
prickled into goose bumps.

"Oh, right." She set a hand against his chest, meaning to push herself off of him,
and him away from her. Instead, she found herself a little stuck this way—her
hand over the place his heart would be if he weren't a heartless bastard, and his
arm looped tightly around her back.

Fortunately, before Edward could make any wisecracks about their position, a
doctor and two nurses entered the room.

"Mr. Crowley," said the doctor. "I'm pleased to say that we finally have a heart
for you." The nurses began busying about the room. "We'll need to prep you for
surgery. Your family's already been called."

Bella saw tears shine in the man's eyes, and worried that a similar reaction was
happening with her own eyes. She didn't fully understand the situation, but such
tremendous relief emanated from this man, that she couldn't help but share his
emotion.

"That's… that's great news," he said, obviously trying to stifle his smile. Were it
not for the hours of major surgery that awaited him, Bella was sure he would be
beaming.

"What's happening?" she asked, whispering even though she knew they wouldn't
hear her.

"This is the lucky guy who gets James' heart. Even the dead have a lot to give,
Bella. See? Look how happy this guy is."

"He's so happy because he doesn't have to deal with you."

Edward frowned. "Shall we go see the family?"

This wasn't really a question, since Edward utilized the fact that his arm was still
around her. Before she could blink, they were sitting on a chair in the waiting
room. Yes, they were both sitting on one chair, which Edward had undoubtedly
planned. Once Bella realized that she was sitting in his lap, she leapt away from
him and vigorously smoothed her shirt, as if trying to brush his terrible manners
off her clothing.

Edward only snickered in his juvenile manner. As Bella took a seat—not the one
beside his, but the next one over—she picked up a heavily abused fashion
magazine and pretended to read it. In reality, she was contemplating ways to
catch him off guard, or at least make him mad. She was getting too tired to think
of anything clever, so she wondered if pulling his hair or throwing things at him
would suffice.

She had begun rolling the magazine into a makeshift weapon, but she was
stopped by the entrance of a woman and two children—one small girl and a boy
who was a little older, maybe ten or twelve.

"Daddy's going to get all better," said the woman, stooping to pick up the girl
before sitting down.

"He'll come home soon, right?" said the boy.

"Pretty soon, yes," said his mother. Bella saw the way she anxiously braided her
fingers together—her face a mix of joy and nervousness. Here was a woman in
love, waiting with her children for the return of their father.

A chill came over her. She knew the pain of losing a loved one to death. She
would have given anything to be in the place of this family—to be given the
profound gift of life.

Edward clearly had never lost someone. It seemed like he had never had anyone
to lose. It was all business for him—numbers and names on his infernal
Blackberry. He thought he was teaching her philosophical lessons. In reality, all
he was doing was dredging up memories that were much safer buried in the back
of her mind.

"So!" said Edward, standing up and folding his arms. "Have I convinced you?"

"No."

"No?"

"I'm not going to destroy my serum."

"But—"

"Now take me back to my lab." She rolled the magazine even more tightly,
imagining how it might be used on the side of Edward's attractive face.

"Why, though?" He looked almost pouty. "This is a happy scene. Look! I'm
showing you life! You like life!"

"That's true. What you've shown me here is uplifting. But you had to kill James to
make it happen. If my anti-death serum works properly, then neither man has to
die. Everyone gets a happy ending."

"Everyone but me," muttered Edward. "And I didn't kill James. I only collected his
soul."

"By kissing his hand?" She recalled this aspect at the same time she said it.
"What was that about? Are you into guys?"

Edward's face went from pouty to defensive. "I'm not into guys. It's just the
mechanism that extracts the soul. You know, the kiss of death. I've got to kiss
everyone sooner or later. Men, women, grandparents, babies. Someday I'll even
get to kiss you."

Bella found herself imagining that scenario as soon as he had said it. For some
reason, her mental image of this was a lot different than the kiss Edward had
planted on James' hand. In fact, her mind seemed to think that Edward's hand
would be on her ass when this happened, which wouldn't have seemed so
strange, were it not for the fact that her own hands were in his hair.

"Strange…" she said, not realizing that she had temporarily zoned out. "I mean,
it's pretty gross that you have to go around kissing everyone, though. Ew."

Edward actually looked wounded by this. For a while, he was silent and bitter. "I
haven't lost yet, you know," he said at last, locking his fingers and stretching his
arms out. "I'm just warming up."

"Sure."

He took her hand again almost angrily. Bella closed her eyes in preparation for
the requisite thought-speed transport. When she opened them, she was standing
in her living room.

"Oh my God!" she cried, throwing her hands over her mouth. "You know where I
live!"

He rolled his eyes with such emphasis that he felt the need to roll his head
around at the same time. "I'm Death. I know where everyone lives."

"Oh God, oh God. You don't stalk me, do you? Like… like watch me sleep or
something freaky like that?"

Edward sighed—this time a true sigh. He suddenly seemed weary. If Bella didn't
know better, she would have guessed that he was ready to admit defeat. But
somehow, she knew he wouldn't give up his power so easily.

Nevertheless, when he slumped his shoulders a little and closed his eyes, she
knew he was about to disappear.

"Don't go," she said, without thinking at all. Even after her brain had caught up,
she couldn't quite figure out why she had said it. He irritated her so; she had no
idea why she wanted him to stay. But she did.

He remained as still as a statue. "What?"

"Um…" She fiddled with a piece of her hair. "I mean, you could always stay and
talk to me for a while… about stuff."

"You want me to stay and talk about stuff?"

"Yeah. Stuff."

A devious smile cut across his face. He dissolved and reappeared on her sofa,
stretched out comfortably. "I do like your stuff." He glanced at her—not quite at
her face—and patted the couch beside him.

For a few moments, they sat in awkward silence. Bella could hear the faint whine
of her apartment's heating system as they both stared at the wall. She wondered
if she should complete the picture by making cricket chirping noises.

Luckily, Edward made use of his impeccable social skills before they waded too
deeply into awkwardness. "What sort of stuff would you like to talk about?" He
smiled sarcastically. "Our likes and dislikes, maybe? I like long walks on the
beach, especially after there's been a shipwreck."

Bella turned to him and folded her legs under her on the couch cushions. "You
know, I don't believe you're nearly as insensitive as you act. I think you're just
covering up your unhappiness."

He frowned and quickly removed his eyes from hers. "I didn't get to tell you my
dislikes, did I? I dislike being analyzed by stubborn women."

"And I dislike being harassed by arrogant assholes."

Edward copied her pose by moving to sit cross-legged as well. "What is it that
you do like, Bella?"

She was caught off-guard by this question, and it took her brain a while to even
process what he had asked. The prompt seemed too straightforward for his style,
so she spent a moment in circumspection, searching for ways he meant to mock
her. When she found none, she folded her arms and said, "My work."

"Other than your work."

"Hold up, now, Edward," she said, "Don't be hypocritical. I doubt there's much
you enjoy beyond your 'work'."

"I'd accuse you of dodging my question, but it's obvious that you're just eager to
talk about me." He gave her a flash of white teeth. "Who wouldn't be? I'm pretty
cool. Shall we discuss the natural beauty of my hair?"

"Fine," she muttered. "I'm a workaholic. There you go. I said it. Happy?"

Something eerily similar to concern flickered in his eyes as he watched her. "I
wasn't looking for a self-diagnosis. I just want to know what you do for fun."

"Why?"

"I don't know!" he exclaimed. "You wanted to talk about stuff! That's stuff, right?
Or is your definition of stuff different? It's not a euphemism for politics, is it? I
hate talking about politics."

"No, I don't want to talk about politics. But I don't want to talk about myself
either."

Edward stood up and started circling her living room, looking at the art on her
walls and poking her cheap furniture. "Oh, come on. I may have just met you,
but no boring workaholic develops a personality as fiery as yours. I bet you
secretly tame lions on the weekends."

Bella pretended to look out the window. She wasn't sure if he meant to make her
self-conscious about the structure of her life, but he was doing a pretty good job
in any case. "No," she replied softly. "I'm pretty uninteresting beyond my
research."

Edward paused his scrutiny of the room in order to examine her instead. For a
moment, he narrowed his eyes at her, as if searching her face for a hidden puzzle
piece. Seemingly drawing a blank, he turned back to look at the coffee table. He
hummed absently as his fingers traveled first over a pretty inlaid box, and then to
a worn picture frame.

He picked up this photograph and held it beneath the light. A man and woman
were posing with smiles on their faces, and between them stood a pretty girl of
about thirteen or fourteen. He instantly recognized her as a younger version of
Bella. He remembered a similar picture on her lab desk. "This is something,
then," he said, tapping the glass over the photograph. "You've got family outside
of your job."

As Edward amusedly searched for a resemblance between Bella and her parents,
Bella sat on the couch behind him, stiff and silent. When he noticed that she had
said nothing in reply, he swung his gaze to her and immediately saw the distress
he had somehow caused in her expression. He saw her fighting back against
emotion, but he wasn't nearly experienced enough to know which emotion it was.
She bit her lip and tipped her head back to restrain any sign of upset.

He looked back at the picture and was struck by a revelation. He realized that he
had a memory of these people—Bella's parents. There was only one circumstance
in which he could have met them.

"They're dead," he said, his voice unintentionally blunt. He had not meant to
sound so callous, but this information revealed so many things to him that he
couldn't help his own sense of wonder. "You hate me because they're dead."

The light glistened in her eyes a little more than normal. "No, I hate you because
you're an asshole. I do my work because they're dead."

"I see."

"Contrary to what you believe, I am not some silly little girl," Bella said icily.

Edward's smile was wry. "Trust me, you being a silly little girl is definitely
contrary to what I believe."

Bella continued as if she hadn't heard him. "I don't think this serum will magically
erase life's problems. In fact, I know it won't since it's going to elongate life. But I
think in the right hands, with the proper infrastructure and resource distribution...
this could save the world some sadness."

At this, Edward scoffed. "'Save the world some sadness'? That's why you're doing
this? For a few measly tears?"

When she spoke, it was with a quiet strength of steel. "There's living, Edward,
and then there's how you live. I've realized the latter may be more important
than the former."

Edward suddenly found himself depressed. He knew how humans were. There
was no way he would manage to get Bella to change her mind about her serum if
her parents' death was her motivation. He had half a mind to give up right then
and there—zap himself out of this emotional war zone and straight to his bosses'
office. He would make them deal with this mess.

But for some reason, he couldn't bring himself to move. He watched Bella sit
rigidly on her couch, which was markedly too big for just one person, and felt
something strange come over him. He didn't quite know what it was, but it
compelled him to sit down beside her.

Edward told himself that he was motivated by competitiveness. He never lost
games, so he certainly was not about to let obstinate little Bella Swan enjoy
victory that easily. He decided that if he spent a little more time with her that
evening, he might learn something useful about her personality that would allow
him to win.

"I'm sure your parents would be proud that you're making a science of giving
Death a hard time. You'll put me out of work and destroy my ego at the same
time."

She laughed quietly, which felt oddly like victory to Edward. He wasn't sure what
he had won, since it certainly wasn't his competition with Bella.

"Well, death has sort of screwed me over," she said, sighing ruefully. "I was only
sixteen when I lost them. I didn't have any brothers or sisters. Only one reclusive
uncle who could barely deal with a teen girl."

It's how you live, she had said. And it was becoming increasingly apparent to him
that how she had lived was down-to-the-marrow lonely. A feeling flooded
Edward, akin to empathy, though he wasn't equipped to recognize it quite yet. He
forced a smile, if only because he thought it would cancel the heaviness suddenly
present in his mind. "It's amazing you didn't become a mopey corner-dweller."

She watched him silently before speaking again, seemingly struggling with a
response. "I couldn't let them down that way."

Edward looked at the carpet and exhaled. It made sense that this conversation
was difficult for Bella, but he couldn't work out why it was difficult for him too.
"Does it feel good to fight me face-to-face, after all these years?"

The corners of her mouth hinted at lightness. "Yeah. Actually, it does."

"Good. Because I'm not going to stop bothering you about your serum until you
destroy it."

"Then you'll just have to fight me until you give up."

"I'm not going to give up."

"Neither am I."

Strength and determination were etched in her face, but Edward saw the sorrow
edging its way into her eyes. He had let something out of her mind that she
would have preferred to keep to herself. She was very good at irritating him, but
he felt strangely unsettled by the information he had uncovered. He had no clue
what he should do about this feeling, so he made up his mind to continue
sparring with her until his unfamiliar agitation subsided. But when Edward left
Bella's apartment that night, he only felt more unnerved than he had before.

Chapter Four

Bella stared into the rat cage beside her desk. It was hardly a productive thing to
do, but she suddenly felt too exhausted to pore over assays and flip through
data. Her mind wanted to flop lazily inside her skull, like a coat shrugged off at
the end of a long day.

Jake was sleeping in the center of the cage, next to one of his brothers.
Impatient, Bella dragged a fingernail along the bars as a sort of alarm to wake
him. His beady eyes popped open at the sound, but he didn't move to check her
finger for a treat. Instead, he watched her for a moment or two and then fell back
asleep, his delicate furry sides sinking in and out with each breath.

Bella fell back against her desk chair and sighed. Her rats were all healthy, as
youthful as ever, not a gray hair in sight, but they hardly ever scurried about
anymore. Jake didn't climb up on the bars, or hunt for escape routes, or take

energized laps around the cedar chips. She wondered why he had lost interest in
all the things he had done before.

She let her clammy palm fall over her eyes and focused on breathing. Nothing
seemed to be going well since she had met Edward. Her brain instantly grabbed
hold of this thought and sneakily insisted that she blame him for her minor
emotional crisis. "Goddamn you, Death," she muttered, balling her hand into a
fist on the bridge of her nose.

"Well, God can't really damn me," said a deep voice, practically startling her into
a heap on the floor. "Since he isn't really my boss, and I've got eternal tenure
anyway."

Edward had materialized at the top of the supply cabinet and had raised a
flippant eyebrow at her.

"You're going to give me a heart attack!" she exclaimed, her fingers
unconsciously trying to smooth her hair into some sort of order.

He snickered. "I don't give people heart attacks. I just come to sweep them into
my dustpan after the fact."

"You're terrible."

"I'm a lot of things. Tragic poets find me beautiful."

Bella mused that it wasn't just tragic poets who found him beautiful. She found
her thoughts slipping to the sheen of his hair, the slim shadow of his stature. She
hadn't quite intended to let herself slip this close to infatuation, and she was
suddenly both annoyed and embarrassed, as if he could somehow read her mind.

Bella followed the whim of her irritation and swiveled her chair away from him.
She noisily flapped open a binder and began turning pages, feigning absolute
concentration. From the other side of the room, she heard Edward kick his legs
back and forth against the supply cabinet doors, the heels of his black shoes
thudding loudly on the wood.

"Cut it out, will you?" she snapped. "I'm trying to work."

The noise instantly stopped, and Bella sighed, hoping he had gone. But then a
hand appeared on her shoulder. She jumped in her seat, cursing herself for her
ridiculous excitability.

"Are you alright?" he asked, his voice uncharacteristically soft.

"I'm fine." Her curt tone did not manage to banish his hand. Instead, his other
hand fell to her empty shoulder, as if he sought to balance her this way.

"I'm an expert when it comes to people who aren't fine," he announced proudly.
"I'm not buying it." His hands had begun massaging her shoulders, thumbs
moving in firm circles on her back. She shuddered, despite herself.

"Why are you here?" she demanded, craning her neck to have a look at him.
Despite the movement of his hands, his eyes were on the opposite wall.

"I couldn't tell you," he said, almost dreamily. "Guess I just wandered in."

"Death doesn't wander."

His hands left her as he shrugged, and she instantly regretted the loss of them.
From the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of his index finger skimming
the side of her uninteresting rat cage. "Let me take you somewhere," he said,
forcefully spinning her chair so that she was facing him.

She suppressed a groan. "Another lesson? I thought you'd already lectured me in
all of your circle-of-life drivel." She hazarded a look at his too-appealing eyes,
and noticed that he appeared a little tired. It wasn't as though he could fall prey
to dark circles or red eyes, but he looked tired nonetheless. She wondered how it
was possible that Death could experience fatigue.

"Nope!" His hands were back on her shoulders. "Just a little fun." Before he had
finished his sentence, Bella's stomach dropped with vertigo, and they were in the
middle of a clothing store.

She batted his hands off her shoulders and spun, trying to figure out where they
were. Was it Kansas? France? Outer space?

Edward was smiling gleefully as she teetered around, trying to get her bearings.
Eventually, she snatched a shirt from a sales rack and tried to read the label.
"Are we in Russia?" she said, hooking the clothes hanger back into place.

He shoved his hands into his pockets. "Kazakhstan, actually." After pivoting with
superhuman grace, he began perusing a rack of women's jackets. When a minute
or two had gone by, he held an extravagant fur-lined coat up to her and
considered the match. Almost instantly, he shook his head and then threw it onto
the floor in disgust.

"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice pooling with apprehension.

"You're going to need a jacket," he said absently, while tossing aside a multitude
of other options.

The floor was already heaped with his discarded attempts. Bella looked at the
cash register, over which a stern-faced man was glaring at them. The store was
uncomfortably small, and Edward was making an incredible mess of everything
he touched. She tried to give the store owner an apologetic look. If she spoke
Kazakh, she would have informed the man that her friend was mentally
disturbed, and then try to drag Edward away. Instead, she settled for stooping
and trying to pick up the chaos.

"Aha!" declared Edward, grabbing her shoulder before she could even pick up a
single jacket. "I've found it." He waved an elegant, belted black coat in front of
her.

"Do you expect me to pay for this?" she asked, realizing that his job didn't earn
him any money.

"Psh. Of course not." With no shame at all, he took the coat off the hanger,
yanked the tag off, and held it open for her.

"Oh Jesus," she said. "What the hell are you doing."

The shop owner had seen them and had started shouting in his native language.
He was already charging toward them from around the cash register.

"Come on, come on!" He was still all smiles. "Put it on."

In desperation, she slid her arms through the coat, and Edward took her hand.
Within a half second they were somewhere outdoors on a pile of craggy rocks.

"You just robbed that man!"

Edward laughed. "Don't worry, Bella. He's going to die in two days anyway."

She crossed her arms, narrowed her eyes, and all but raised her fists to prove
just how she felt about his attitude. She would have worked hard to maintain her
snit for at least another five minutes, but she was abruptly made aware of her
surroundings. The pile of rocks wasn't an average pile of rocks—it was a pile of
rocks on the center of a tiny island… in the middle of the ocean.

The frigid breeze picked up and pulled her hair across her face, nipping the tip of
her nose until it was pink. She ignored her discomfort, however, since she was
enraptured by the expanse of ocean on all sides, the smell of salt and seaweed.
"Wow…"

Edward folded his arms triumphantly. "I said you'd need a jacket."

"Oh my… This is…"

"The ocean, yes. Specifically that big Pacific one. We're just off the coast of
British Columbia." His gaze shifted, and he was suddenly smiling widely. He
pointed to a spot over her shoulder. "I see one! Look just there."

She spun in time to see the tail fins of a humpback whale flap against the water.
This was most unusual indeed. Death had taken her whale watching. Bella took
her whale-centered astonishment and applied it to Edward. "Have you brought
me here to see whales?"

It took Edward a moment to speak, during which he seemed a little stunned by
her appearance. Her hair was flying frantically around her face, her cheeks red
from the cold. She wondered if the wind had given her a Medusa-like
countenance and unwillingly let a little self-consciousness flutter in her chest.

"Well, yes, I have. I thought you'd like whales. You like animals." He scratched
his chin, almost looking bashful. "And I figured you'd like old things too.
Obsession with immortality and all. Whales live a pretty long time, you know, like
80 years."

"Wait… do you take whale souls too?"

He laughed, pointing at pod of orcas that had appeared in the distance. "Nah.
Just boring old humans. The idea of animals having souls seems silly to me
anyway."

She frowned and gave him a feisty glare. "It's not silly. Animals definitely have
souls."

"You think?" He seemed to ponder the likelihood of it. "Maybe there's a special
whale reaper. Like a big lumbering blue whale with a scythe in its mouth."

"You're just mocking me now."

He pinched her side. "Never."

Suddenly, she was on a sandy beach, right next to a palm tree. "I swear to god
I'm going to puke if you keep pulling this beam-me-up-Scotty trick."

"Sorry," he said, kicking the sand a little. "You felt cold."

When her vertigo had faded, she pulled off the stolen jacket and let herself drop
to the sand. She had to admit the view was spectacular, and there wasn't another
human around. For all she knew, everyone that had formerly populated the beach
had died under tragic circumstances, and Edward was utilizing the vacancy. She
looked up at him. "Why are you taking me on trips around the world?"

He sighed and plopped right down next to her, the pale sand sticking to his all-
black attire. "Because I want to."

"That's a total cop out of an answer."

"I'm Death." His voice loaded itself with haughtiness. "I can cop out of whatever
I'd like."

"You're lonely, aren't you?"

"Jeez, how many times do I have to tell you, woman? I'm Death."

Bella rolled her eyes. "You are lonely!"

He scowled. "I am not."

All she did was laugh at him, fully enjoying the childish face he put on. "All right.
Fine. I'm lonely. My existence is tragic and sulky and dark. It comes with the
occupation, you see."

"But you meet tons of people. You meet everyone!"

"That's the thing about dead people. They make horrible conversationalists. It's
always 'why me?' 'why now?' 'take my wife instead.' It gets old."

"Well, if dead people aren't your cup of tea, why don't you just quit your job?
Then you wouldn't have to be lonely." Her hand found its way to his all on its
own. "Consider my serum an early retirement package."

A smile appeared on his face, but it managed to convey more sadness than a
frown. "We're always going back to that damned serum, aren't we?"

"Well, that's why you're always hanging around, right?"

His thumb began tracing slow patterns on the back of her hand. "Not exactly."

Bella's gaze darted to his, but Edward's eyes snuck away from her scrutiny. He
turned his head away, feigning fascination with a nearby palm tree. "I can't quit
anyway. I was created for this lovely job, and if you make my clientele disappear,
higher management will probably just repurpose me. Knowing my bosses, they'll
turn me into a celestial file clerk."

"Oh." She wondered if filing paperwork for all of eternity would be better than
collecting souls. Perhaps Edward could do with a little corporate relocation. "I
didn't realize you were born into this line of work."

"Ah yes. Born is a bit of a loose term, but I've been around for as long as people
have been dying. You should've seen those cavemen. Smelly, grunt-y folk.
Unpleasant to say the least."

"You're really that old?"

His lips quirked back into that sad smile of his. "This is my point, Bella. If you
don't let people die, they're all going to turn out like me."

"Oh dear," she said, laughing a little. "I wouldn't want that. One of you is
enough."

"So you admit that you still want one of me, then?"

She stared at him blankly for a moment, trying to decide how she should answer
that question. Unfortunately, she began speaking before she had quite worked
that out. "I, well… I guess I don't not want you… I mean, I do want you around,
as a person, except you're not really a person, are you? But I don't want death
around, you know, like lower case 'd' death."

"Mmhmm," he drawled, edging toward her in the sand. "You have eloquently and
thoroughly explained yourself. In other words, you want me, but you don't want
me." As an afterthought, he muttered, "Women."

"I guess I'm lonely, too," she blurted. "And you're the only person I've had a
decent conversation with in a long time. Lord, you're the only man to have set
foot in my apartment since I moved to the city."

His face betrayed a look of triumphant satisfaction at that last confession. "So
you'll destroy your serum?"

"No."

He had clearly expected this answer, but that didn't stop him from looking a little
crestfallen. "Please?"

"Nope."

Suddenly, he disappeared from her side and materialized barely an inch away
from her face. She toppled backward in surprise, looking up to see him hovering
over her, grinning deviously. "Will you pretty please destroy your serum?" He
reached out and tickled her side, and she burst out into wild giggles.

"No," she gasped between laughs. "I will not."

After a while, Edward decided that as much as he loved tickling her, she needed
to breathe. He sat back up and examined the sand all over his clothing, realizing
that he had been acting rather ridiculous all day. Even stranger, he had no plans
to stop his ridiculous behavior.

"You're never going to change my mind," she announced once she had found her
breath again. "No matter how many ways you try to cheat."

"You just wait. I'll win eventually. No cheating required."

"Oh really? And how do you figure that?"

Edward took each of her hands and faced her, both of them sitting cross-legged
in the sand. He leaned toward her and raised an eyebrow. "I wonder how many
hours of me you can take before you'll give in."

Bella's mouth dropped open, in part because her imagination interpreted his
words in a variety of creative ways. But before she could form a single word, she
was sitting on the floor of her lab.

"Until next time," said Edward, giving her a sly salute. And just like that, he
vanished.

Edward and Bella had reached a shaky impasse, which, for all the arguments it
caused, still didn't deter their budding friendship. The truth of the matter was
that they were both rather lonely individuals. Death, not in its personification as
Edward but in its capacity as an as-yet inextricable part of existence, was at the
root of their entire interaction, and as tragedy tended to do, bonded them in a
strange way that didn't let them fully realize nor completely deny their kindred
connection.

And so they settled into a strange sort of routine, consisting mostly of Edward
bothering Bella, her protesting everything about him (most of all his proclivity to
teleporting her unannounced), and both of them, despite trying very hard to
pretend otherwise, rather enjoying every moment of it.

Such it was today—Bella was busy in her lab, still tinkering and toying with her
serums and Jake and his buddies, despite Edward's protests. Once it was
apparent that his complaints—which ranged all the way from "but there's no point
in working on it since I'm going to stop you anyway" to "but you're too hot to
care about science"—were falling on deaf ears, he took to irritating her in other
ways.

He had noticed that despite her bravado, she still jumped a little every time he
teleported, whether she was joining the ride or not. So instead, as Bella
continued to work, both on her experiment and at ignoring him, he began
teleporting into various places in the room; to the top of the file cabinet,
underneath her chair, right behind her, then in front of her when she'd turn
around to check. To this repertoire, he added his other rather disconcerting
ability, his pyro-production, happily setting afire various objects in the lab—her
ficus, a lab coat or three, the water in a half-filled beaker. It was on the last feat
that he caught her attention, and she looked on curiously as the two opposites
existed alongside each other, the top of the beaker filled with flames, the bottom
with still water.

"How do you do that?" she muttered, her scientific curiosity outweighing her need
to feign annoyance with him.

"I'll show mine if you show me yours," he said, with an all too lascivious grin that
was disconcerting to Bella for how attractive she found it.

"It's not exactly a fair trade of knowledge."

"Come again?"

"I am creating the elixir of life, ending suffering and tragedy. You share the skill
of a Neanderthal and a couple of rocks. In fact," she said, reaching over to a
Bunsen burner and igniting it, "oh, look at that." She adopted a dimwitted,
grunting tone and said, "Fire good. Man make. Edward not special."

If Edward could have held himself in check, he wouldn't have laughed. But she
smiled when he did and coupled with the freedom of laughter, it was too good to
resist. There was something about her, and in particular her fantastic
stubbornness, that endeared her to him, perhaps more than he could ever know.
He enjoyed every moment of breaking down Bella Swan bit by bit, even if it
meant he got knocked down a couple of pegs, too.

"That's the problem with you, Edward," she said flippantly, returning to her work
but continuing to speak distractedly. "You have this insane ego that oversells
your actual abilities. You're not doing anything that special."

"On the contrary," he said, suddenly serious, "it is rather special. Hold out your
palm."

In a demonstration of how far they'd come, Bella extended her hand readily, even
if it was accompanied by a suspicious glance. But Edward was in one of his rare
somber moods and simply walked to her. When he was right in front of her, he
pressed his hand underneath hers, and snapped with his free one. A flame
erupted, right in Bella's palm, and she gasped as it didn't burn her, though it
seemingly emanated from her flesh.

"Don't worry," Edward said softly. "It won't hurt you." But he needn't have said
that—Bella already knew it wouldn't. Despite his ultimate intentions to ruin her
life's work and his rather haphazard tendency to put her in life-threatening
situations, he had not once harmed even one hair on her head.

Edward took the opportunity to study her face at this close proximity, seeing the
wonder along with the reflected flame in her eyes. He joked about it, but she
really was captivating. Everything from the fading freckles on the tip of her nose
to the way her lip changed color when she bit it, from a berry pink to a
passionate red, was so animated, so alive. For those few moments, they were like
that beaker, opposites and opposers, water and fire, Death and this lovely, lively
girl standing with each other, coexisting.

He almost didn't want to speak, in fear of interrupting whatever the silence might
have been saying, but for once, he had a point and he wanted to make it.
Reaching for the nearest empty beaker, he closed it over the flame in her palm,
like a cage for the fire. He pressed it slightly into her skin, making it airtight as he
spoke. "Life is like fire, Bella. It has to consume to exist, has to rely on something
else to feed it. That's why it can only exist for a finite amount of time." The flame
began to shrink, desperately sucking at the limited air it was afforded. "If you let
it go forever, it'll devour whatever it relies on."

Both their eyes watched as the flame, once so grand in its red rays and orange
anger, withered away into nothingness, leaving not a trace that it ever existed.

Edward spoke from the heart, his words as much of a realization to himself as an
entreaty to her. "The opposite of life is not death, Bella. Life, everything in your
world, is defined by death. When you make death cease to exist, then life also
ceases to exist."

She took the beaker and placed it on the counter, speaking in a quiet non-
sequitur. "Were you the one who took my parents?"

Edward had anticipated this question since she had told him her story. In fact, he
was almost surprised it took so long. "I was." Even now, through the blessing and
curse of infallible memory, he could remember Charles and Renee Swan.

"What—were you—do you—did you—?" she spluttered softly, unable to even
comprehend how to ask the question.

"They thought only of you, Bella," he said quietly, watching her with heavy eyes.
"Only how much they loved you, how they were sad to leave you, but your dad—I
remember it so well. He knew with absolutely certainty. He knew you'd be okay.
That you'd grow up into a fine young woman."

Out of courtesy, he made no mention of the soft sniffles emanating from her
lowered head. But when he saw the tears form little stalactites on the end of her
chin, he couldn't help but use his thumb to brush them away. His touch caused
her to move; more specifically, to launch herself into his arms. He was shocked

into stillness for a few moments, before he wrapped his arms around her, tucking
her small frame under his chin, as if he could blanket and absorb all the hurt.

Perhaps it was strange that she was hugging him, that she was seeking solace in
the very embodiment of what had caused her such grief. But at that moment, he
was closer to her parents, and therefore her long buried heart, than anyone had
been. They were not Death and the girl he'd stolen the most precious things
from. They were simply existing, trapped by their own circumstances, lifting the
shroud of their seclusion. They were just Edward and Bella.

"Of course," Edward murmured, "if only they could see what a little hellion you'd
become…" Her soft giggle buoyed him. A few moments of silence crept between
them before she spoke.

"Don't you ever get sick of…" Bella trailed off as she searched for her words.

"Being all powerful? Rocking this black suit? Looking so unfairly handsome all the
time?" Edward supplied, wanting to lighten the deathly serious mood.

"No," she replied. "Don't you ever get sick of being yourself?" It was meant to be
a deep, serious question, but Edward was no longer in the mood for that.

"Well, no one has ever called me 'the life of the party'."

He could practically feel her rolling her eyes. "And that. Don't you ever get sick of
the puns?"

"Well, I do crack quite a few," Edward conceded. Bella was about to be surprised
by his agreement when he continued. "You might even say I've done it to death.
Ow!" he exclaimed when she pinched him. It didn't hurt, not really, but the
sensation of her hand digging into his side caused quite a jolt, not entirely
unpleasant.

More moments of silence passed and when Bella spoke, her hushed tone barely
stirred the stillness in the room. "I understand what you're saying, Edward. But
I'm still not going to stop."

Just as quietly, he replied, "I understand, too. But I'm not going to stop stopping
you, either."

They continued to hug for a while longer, knowing perhaps, that in their state of
stalemate, there was nothing better to do.

Chapter Five

The next day arrived with the weight of some unspoken agreement, a promise to
shed the melancholy of the previous night. When Edward appeared at the lab that
morning, he simply ribbed Bella as he'd been doing, and Bella rolled her eyes and
pretended to be frustrated. It was par for the course for these two by now.

"See, Edward, you think you're all worldly just because you're Death and have
been around for eternity," Bella said haughtily, somehow not expressing her utter
disbelief at the words she had just said. She'd come to a strange agreement with
her mind that she would comprehend who Edward was, as well as her burgeoning
fondness for him, with an arms' length acceptance. This allowed her to treat him
like any other fellow she spent significant amounts of time with—not that there

were any other ones. But for what it was worth, he was just another man, a
handsome, slightly annoying, and surprisingly endearing man. A friend.

At least, that's what her brain had agreed to call him, even if her heart was
calling the bluff.

"What do you mean 'I think'? I am Death, I am worldly. I am intimidatingly good-
looking," Edward declared.

"I didn't say that last part."

"You didn't refute it, either."

"Anyway, as I was saying—"

"Changing the subject because I'm right?"

"Changing the subject because the subject is stupid," she corrected. "As I was
saying, you think you're worldly—but the only thing you've ever been exposed to
is death. I bet you've never even done the simplest things in life."

"Like what?"

"Like…" She searched her mind. "Had really, really good ice cream."

"I don't eat."

"But you can taste, right?" she retorted. Walking over to him, she grasped his
hand, ignoring how the pleasant warm feeling that had been present these past
few days bloomed the minute they touched. "Here, think of the corner of
Ridgedale and Vernon Street."

He did and they moved swiftly. She hugged him as they travelled, and while one
part of his mind reasoned that it was simply because the teleporting was still
something she didn't enjoy, another part of him couldn't help but argue that
she'd done it plenty of times before just holding his hand.

After they'd arrived, Bella led them down a street for a few minutes to a small,
hole-in-the-wall ice cream parlor. After picking up an impossibly delicious-
sounding flavor involving cookies, chocolate, pralines and magically enough,
doughnuts, Bella held the heaping cone between them.

"Well? Go ahead."

He took the cone from her but simply stared at it. "What do I do?"

"Lick it."

"Lick it?"

Bella let out a laugh. "And you call yourself worldly. You don't even know how to
eat ice cream! Even children know how to eat ice cream."

"Well, pardon me, but the number of deaths that involve ice cream are rather
low," he replied hotly. Outwardly, he attempted to pretend that he didn't like that
he didn't know how to eat ice cream, didn't like that Bella really was correct. But
secretly, he was rather delighted that she'd taken him on this little field trip. He
had wanted to be imposing, impressive and feared—and then he'd realized that
was nothing of what she liked. He didn't know when it stopped being important

that she feared him, only that it was now as foreign an idea as consuming the
dripping dessert in his hand.

"Like this," she said, demonstrating as she put her hand over his and pulled the
cone to her mouth. He watched raptly, wondering why it was a kids' desert when
the eating of it was rather erotic, whatever she was doing with her tongue and
lips. "Now, you go."

He tentatively brought the cone to his face and stuck his tongue out, bringing the
desert to touch the very tip of it, before jerking back immediately. "It's cold!"

"Ice cream. Cream at the temperature of ice," she explained, exaggerating the
slow speed at which she spoke. "Eat a little more."

He did and the taste was… delightful. Bursts of flavor that he somehow
recognized as sweet crackled across his tongue and the smooth, milky texture of
the ice cream slid through his mouth and down his throat easily. Within a few
minutes, he'd finished the entire thing.

"Well, I hate to say you're right…" Edward began.

"But…"

"But nothing. I hate to say you're right. So I'm not going to," he insisted. "But
that was delicious."

Bella's eyes lit up. "Oh my. This is like Pandora's Box. There must be so much
you've never done! Let's do it all!"

Edward couldn't help but laugh at her enthusiasm. "I'm not sure, even with my
advantage over distance, that is possible. But I would be happy to take a couple
more stops on the Bella Swan guide to life. Tell me, O Captain, My captain!"

"Are you quoting The Dead Poets' Society?" Bella asked.

"No, though I thoroughly approve of that movie title. I am quoting a dead poet
though. Whitman said that when I ushered President Lincoln to the great
beyond," Edward replied.

"Whoa," Bella said, clearly impressed. "So you take every person who dies?"

"Not every person. But certainly the important ones."

"What's been happening while you've been bugging me this whole time?"

Edward narrowed his eyes. "I have subordinates. They've been taking care of
what needs to be done while I've been here—"

"Being annoying?"

"Gracing you with my presence."

"If that's what you want to call it."

"It is, thanks. Now what's this about showing me more of this living you speak
of?" he said, smoothly and swiftly returning to the subject.

"Oh yes! What should we do next? Give me a moment to think," Bella said,
excitedly. "Oh! I know! Sports! Being at a sporting game with its crazy crowds

and electric atmosphere—of course, I haven't really been to a game in years, but
still. Let's go to… Wrigley Stadium."

As Edward clasped his hand in Bella's, the last words he left behind on Ridgedale
Street were a request for more ice-cream. Slowly, through the afternoon, Bella
showed Edward a small portion of that ever-afflicting condition known as living.
Whereas Edward could take her to any great monument, any location he wanted
to, she could take him somewhere further—to observation, to the strange and
delightful patterns of people. And for the first time, he felt rejuvenated by the
world's population, rather than weary for them.

Their day ended well into the evening when the infamous city rain set in a steady
drizzle, dampening their enthusiasm and encumbering their adventures. Bella and
Edward flopped down onto the couch in her apartment—they were both dead
tired after their lovely but exhausting day. The conversation hadn't ceased
however, and Bella was currently back on a roll of questions about Edward's
experiences, or lack thereof.

"Have you ever celebrated Christmas?"

"No, but I've ruined some."

Bella snorted. "Have you ever stayed up all night?"

"Does it count if I have never gone to sleep?"

Her eyes widened, but still she kept to her habit of not editorializing on his lack of
experiences. "Have you ever had your heart broken?"

"Would have to have a heart for that, wouldn't I?" His answer was a little quiet.
To Bella, she was bridging a gap between them, understanding the nature of his
existence, feeding her empirically inclined mind by stuffing it with as much
knowledge of him as she could. But while she was trying to build a path around
the crater of distance between them, all Edward could see was how far from one
another they truly were.

Now, very softly, her voice wavering slightly, she asked, "Have you ever been in
love?"

He looked at her carefully, answering, "See my previous answer."

She was silent for a few moments. "Have you ever kissed anyone?"

"You know the answer to that. Eventually, anyone who has ever lived will get a
kiss from me," he said, winking and puckering his lips.

"Not if I have anything to do about it. But I meant really kissed someone. With
some intention other than to sweep them off into another realm," she clarified.

"Isn't that the point of most kisses?" Edward joked, before he shook his head.
"It's not an on or off switch. These lips touch you and that's it."

Time seemed to stop and space seemed to still as Bella silently regarded his lips
in a way that made it seem as though she were interested in testing whether that
was actually true or not. The mere thought of it made Edward feel both shaky
and delighted.

Suddenly, as if realizing just what her gaze was resting on, just what her
thoughts were contemplating, she jerked her eyes away. Shrugging casually, she
said, "Well, sucks to be you."

"Yes, that does seem to be the theme here," Edward agreed. "I've never had ice
cream, I've never been loved, I have no life, I'm universally hated, et cetera, et
cetera, et cetera."

She smiled. "You're not universally hated."

His eyes crept over to her. "I'm not?"

"You're not," she answered, but didn't clarify any further. She seemed to ponder
something for a minute and said, "I think you're my first friend in a long time."

"I am?"

"Since I had a family."

"You still have a family. They're just not here anymore," he said, surprising both
of them with the gentle earnestness of his delivery.

"So I guess you don't really have any family, do you?" Bella asked, returning to
her earlier line of questions.

Edward turned to her and grinned roguishly. "Perhaps you've met my French
cousin?"

"Who?"

"Little thing but I do hear the fellow packs a punch."

"Huh?"

Edward knew his next words would earn him one of her delightful blushes or a
hard smack to the face, or perhaps both. He braced himself for the equally strong
effect either would have on him. "You know... la petite mort."

Bella's face did color in the few moments after she comprehended his meaning,
painting her like a delicate doll. But he was surprised when instead of shying
away, she met his gaze head on. "I have. I must say, he makes for rather better
company. I enjoyed him very much. On multiple occasions."

With that, she stood, and with a smirk Edward couldn't see, exited the room.
Outside, the drizzle finally gave into the downpour it was always going to
become.

-()-

Other than the clocks that continued to tick and the inescapable cycle of sunrise
and sunset, Bella and Edward hardly noticed time or that they seemed to be
spending all of it with each other nowadays. Their company became expected,
their conversation perpetual and their care evident. This day, as per usual, Bella
worked, or pretended to, and Edward annoyed her, or pretended to.

She was humming something slow and rather ominous sounding as she prodded
at Jake in his cage, to no avail, when Edward asked what it was she was singing.

"'To Wish Impossible Things'," she said, moving to sit next to him on the small
sofa in her lab. He quirked his eyebrow and she clarified. "My dad used to listen
to it, it was by his favorite band, The Cure."

"How ironic."

She laughed and sang quietly. "'It was the sweetness of your skin. It was the
hope of all we might have been, that fills me with the hope to wish impossible
things'."

"Well, you're quite the little songbird, aren't you?" he asked, pleasant surprise
showing in his tone.

She shook her head. "I'm not, I just sing in the shower and in the lab, whenever
I'm by myself."

He stood and tugged on her hand that had found its way into his, as it often
seemed to these days. "C'mon."

"Where are we going?" she asked, stubbornly refusing to get up.

"You'll see."

"Well, then just teleport me there," she demanded.

"I think I've spoiled you with this teleportation thing."

"I think you have." She waved her free hand in the air with a flourish. "Go ahead.
Work your magic."

Edward laughed. "Believe me, I'm trying to. I can't teleport you, you have to
come with me."

"Where are we going that you can't teleport us?" Bella asked, incredulously.

Edward rolled his eyes. "You're making this ridiculously difficult." He flopped back
onto the couch and pointed to a spot three feet away. "We were going there."

"What's there?"

"There is where you were supposed to dance with me," Edward clarified.

Bella frowned. "There is no music."

"There is also where you were supposed to sing as you danced with me."

"Ohhhhh."

"Yes."

"That's kind of sweet."

"It was."

"I kind of ruined it."

"You did," he agreed. "I'm a little sad about that. And surprised."

"Why are you surprised?"

"Well, you were so gung-ho about me getting life experiences yesterday. Ice
cream, baseball stadiums, rush hour, libraries. You were very excited to have me
do all that. And yet you deny me a dance with a pretty girl," he said, nudging her
shoulder.

She blushed a little and smiled. "Maybe there was nothing in it for me."

"Oh come on. Haven't you ever heard of a dance with death?" He slipped his arm
around the back of the couch, barely brushing Bella's shoulders, aiming for
casualness but achieving conspicuity.

Bella looked at him, her eyes flicking all over and touching on various parts of
him, as if she were trying to consider his whole existence in one glance. Then she
scooted into the side of his body and reached up, pulling his arm until it was
undeniably around her shoulders.

"Well, then allow me to make up for it by letting you experience one of the
greatest things on Earth. A good snuggle," she said. It sounded all soft and fuzzy
to him, this snuggling idea, but he had long since abandoned any hope that he
could resist being anything but soft and fuzzy around this girl. Instead, he
embraced it, and her, settling in for a good cuddle.

They sat quietly for a few minutes, sinking into an oasis of silence, the feel of one
another enough to let them get lost a little. A heavy, dense air settled into the
room, as it often does when things are changing and the people changing with
those things are trying to wrap their heads around it.

"Tell me what you're thinking right now," Edward requested quietly, watching
how Bella's eyes focused on something so far away it could only be the past, or
perhaps, the future. He, on the other hand, could barely form a thought in his
own mind, each one on the verge of forming before Bella's thumb would swipe
gently across his hand where their fingers were intertwined, and sweep away the
thought with her touch.

She gave a little sighing laugh, and how one could sound so weary and so wistful
at the same time, Edward did not know. But he was beginning to understand how
nothing could be right and the world could be tospy-turvy, and yet a quiet
moment with a pretty girl in his arms could spin his head so much that
everything appeared right side up. "I'm thinking of things I shouldn't be thinking
of, of things that could never happen."

"Like what?" The laugh she out let out now was more sad than anything else and
he couldn't stand for it. "Tell me," he urged. "You may not know this, but I'm
quite a big deal. What do you want? A visit to the Eiffel Tower? A vacation in
Barbados? That annoying person in front of you in line at Starbucks who takes
forever to decide what they want to drop dead?"

She looked at him, and somehow, he knew whatever she was going to say would
break his heart a little, and he steeled himself for it. "I want to kiss you."

And break it did, even if he didn't let the smirk he wore slip off his face. "Ahh
jeez. Women. Give 'em the moon and they want the sun."

But her face was serious as she turned to him. "To wish impossible things," he
nearly whispered and she nodded.

"I just want to know what it would be like," she said, quietly, her eyes darting
between his lips and his gaze. He found himself frozen as she placed her hand on
the side of his face and slowly ran her thumb down the straight bone of his nose,
her eyes following her finger till it came to stop at the Cupid's bow of his upper
lip.

He wanted to warn her, wanted to dissuade her from whatever she was doing but
he couldn't bring himself to. Not only was there no part of him that wanted her to
remove her soft touch, but he was, for the first time, terrified of his own power,

of death, and feared that should he speak, a sudden movement of his lips would
cause them to graze upon the flesh of the pad of her thumb and doom her.

Instead, he could only let out an unnecessary exhale through his parted lips,
breathing her name, "Bella".

"Shhh," she whispered. "Hold very still." And slowly, she brought her face closer,
moving her thumb to rest at the left corner of his lips. Closer and closer she
came, until she was so near he couldn't focus on her face, only parts of it, like the
way her lashes stood dark against her light skin when she blinked, and the
smooth angle of her cheekbones, and the incurvate space underneath her lips
and above her slightly jutting chin. He closed his eyes and felt her instead, her
breath washing over his face, the ends of the bangs on her forehead tickling his
eyebrows, the warmth of her body, so much closer to him than anyone had ever
been before.

"Don't move," she warned him again, and he was so immersed, so intoxicated by
the very proximity of her that he would have done anything she said that would
keep her this close. He felt the gentle, tantalizing sensation of her touch once
more, this time at the bridge of his nose. But it wasn't the rough yet soft skin of
her thumb that was on him. He didn't dare open his eyes as the touch trailed
down his nose in excruciating, exquisite leisure. Finally, it stilled and he opened
his eyes gingerly, glancing at the tip of his nose to see Bella's smaller one
touching it.

She was watching him carefully but all he could see was that he was close
enough for him to count the gold flecks in her brown eyes. That the way she
looked at him caused his heart, something he wasn't sure until now he
possessed, to drop into his stomach in the most wonderful of ways.

Bella tilted her head to rest her forehead on his, sliding her face to the left
slightly, so that the entire length of their noses and width of their brows were
touching. When she closed her eyes, her lashes tickled him and every
unnecessary breath he took in was from the previous one she'd let out. They
stayed like that for a while, and for the first time without pun or sarcasm, Edward
thought that perhaps this was what it meant to die of happiness; to live so fully,
to feel so wholly, that any moment but this one felt like death.

"Bella," he said, surprised to hear the hoarseness in his own voice. He cleared his
throat. "What have you done to me, woman?"

She laughed softly, and he could feel the tremors on his face and it made him
laugh, too. "What?"

"I think you've rendered me incapable of sarcasm," he joked. She pulled away
and he missed her skin immediately.

"Really?" she asked, her tone surprised and somehow, still smug. That may have
been something she picked up from Edward. She shifted her body to move closer
to him, pulling his arm around her once more and resting her head on his
shoulder. "Mmm," she said, burrowing a little. "You're comfy." Edward had never
been much of a cuddler, but he was enjoying this feeling of absolute contentment
so much, he was afraid he might be ruined forever and he told Bella so.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm Death! I'm supposed to be all dark and sneering and intimidating—"

"You're not."

"Well, how can I be when I'm serving the function of a human teddy bear?" Even
so, he tightened his arm around her, curving his body to bring her closer.

She laughed. "I meant, you never seemed dark or sneering to me."

"Even when I threatened to burn down your lab?"

"No, then you were just irritating."

"What about when I teleported you to the Serengeti?"

"Nope, kind of fascinating, actually."

Edward let out an exaggerated sigh of lament. "So, let's see. You found me
irritating, fascinating," he said, using his left hand to count off on the fingers of
his right one, which was really just an excuse to embrace Bella more fully.

"Don't forget comfy."

"Oh God. Comfy," he said, his tone dripping with disdain.

"And handsome," she said, running her nose along the underside of his jaw. If
Edward had shame, he would have been embarrassed by the purr of pleasure he
let out.

"Handsome, I can deal with," he said, nodding. He put on a false, airy British
accent and said, "Intimidating in his sneering handsomeness, Death darkened the
man's door—quite literally, as he was wearing black and politely knocked the door
jamb."

Bella laughed. "What was that?"

"That was me narrating the National Geographic special they would do about
me," he said, as if it were obvious.

Bella laughed, but it was clear that it was at him, rather than his joke. "You're
silly."

Edward pretended to shudder. "Comfy, silly... you're just trying to ruin my
reputation completely, aren't you?"

"Oh!" Bella's eyes lit up. "You know what we should do? We should have a
marathon where we watch all the movies and TV shows ever made about death!"

"As you may have gathered, they're all pretty wrong."

She nodded. "Exactly! We can watch and mock."

"Well, I do like to mock," Edward conceded. "Have you seen any?"

Bella nodded. "A few here and there. I remember one where you were played by
this actor who is well-renowned for his good looks. He was all mopey and whiny
and full of feelings and then fell in love with a girl while he was on a mission to
take her father."

"Sounds familiar," Edward muttered. He changed the thread of their conversation
but couldn't do so completely, simply blurting out the thing that was still on his
mind. "I can't believe you wanted to kiss me."

"Want to," Bella correctly quietly. "I still haven't."

A divine thrill ran through Edward at his words, but he felt that was far too close
to turning into that mopey, full-of-feelings character they had just been talking
about. So instead, he cracked a bad joke.

"You give new meaning to the phrase 'having a death wish', you know that?" he
said. She rolled her eyes, though she couldn't help but laugh, a noise in which he
found his victory.

Chapter Six

When things don't quite go as planned, it's a habit of managers—even cosmic
ones—to point fingers. Since Edward was far away causing more problems than
he solved, Past, Present, and Future had no targets for their finger pointing but
one another.

"I knew something like this would happen," announced Marcus smugly.

"Excellent work, Future," grumbled Caius. "Maybe if you had mentioned this when
it was relevant, we could have developed a more graceful solution. "

"Well," replied Marcus, "I didn't expect him to act like this. But now, thanks to my
powers of divination, I have a perfect view of the situation."

"Pfft. I'm glad you've finally seen the future now that it's already happened."

"It's your job to see patterns of past behavior, Caius."

"Oh, please. Edward's past behavior doesn't exactly point in this direction."

"Boys, boys," Aro interjected. "All this grumbling about 'would have' 'could have'
'will have.' Maybe we should just focus on the present. Our very livelihoods are at
stake, and I'd rather not contemplate our other employment opportunities."

"I've heard Satan's hiring," offered Marcus.

"Ugh. No. That guy is insufferable," said Caius. "All he ever talks about are his
damned barbecues."

"What about Fortune? I've heard she's sexy—"

"Enough," growled Aro. "I'd like to keep my job."

"Well, fine," said Marcus. "As long as you don't mind several centuries of Death's
belligerence."

Aro steepled his fingers in a vaguely sinister manner. "It'll happen either way
eventually," he replied. "We'd better start the paperwork."

—()—

The euphoria of the previous night blended into next day and Edward didn't quite
know what to do with himself. Bella had snuck off to the lab, the tenacious little
thing, so it wasn't as if he could torture her with his unnaturally good mood. Her
place, so much less warm without her, suddenly seemed much less like the
mecca he was seeking. He snapped his fingers a couple of times, bounced on the

balls of his feet, contemplated what he'd look like in baby blue and even tried to
whistle a song before he quite simply faced the truth: he was bored to death (pun
somewhat intended.)

He longed for some excitement, something to tether this feeling of bliss to him.
Though he knew there was much to be contemplated—like the fact that he was
Death and had somehow managed to fall for the very woman who was trying to
rid the world of him, and he had neither been able to stop her in her endeavors
nor figure out what the implications of their feelings for one another meant for
the future—he couldn't force his brain to be so contemplative, so repetitive as to
consider all these things he already knew. He wanted something new, like all
these new emotions that were surging through him.

As if able to sense the demand in his thoughts, his Blackberry beeped, odd in
itself since he had not as of yet returned to the duties his subordinates were
performing in his absence. But upon reading the message, he wished he could
have retracted his wish for action, for something fresh to present itself.

For there, next to a date and time that was approximately twenty eight hours
from now, was the last name he ever expected to see: Isabella Swan.

That solution, the one he had avoided coming up with, was right there in his
hand: if Bella was to die soon, she wouldn't be able to complete the serum,
therefore rendering any action that would attempt to stop her efforts
unnecessary. And if Bella was to die soon, then the woman who had so effectively
captivated him, buoyed him with this hope he never should have had, would
cease to exist.

Problems solved.

He hadn't realized till now, the moment he knew she would die, that he wanted
her to live forever. Even if it was without him, even if it meant the natural order
would fall spectacularly apart at its hinges, even if it rendered his own existence
moot, Bella was simply too good not to grace the world with her presence.

He glanced at his phone once again, as if willing it to change, but her name
remained there in the black pixels. Edward realized that Aro, Marcus and Caius
were not only sending a message but an instruction. Bella was to die tomorrow,
and it would be Edward, not anyone else, who would do it.

Perhaps it was indicative of just how far removed from his normal world and
duties he was that Edward didn't struggle for more than a few moments with
what to do, at least in regards to telling Bella or not. Mortals were never
supposed to know the exact time of their death—it had been proven to
completely destroy the remainder of their lives, but in this case, Edward couldn't
care less. His only goal, whether it twisted the world upside down in its defiance
of the rules that had been set so long ago, was that he find a way out of this.

For a quarter of a split second, he contemplated not telling her, trying to fix this
on his own but he knew it would never work. Bella would notice his absence, he
knew, and moreover, he didn't think he could keep something like this from her.
She needed to know that he was fighting for her, and he needed her strength to
supplement his own.

So with the speed of thought, he sped to her laboratory, popping in a few feet
behind her. She noticed him and threw him a warm, welcoming smile, but that
only twisted the knife of his new knowledge deeper.

"Bella, you're going to die," he said heavily and suddenly. He received no reaction
as she continued to tinker away. He moved closer until he was standing right
behind her. "Did you hear me?"

She glanced over her shoulder and afforded him a bright smile before returning
to her work. "I heard you. And I know, according to you, everyone is going to die
someday. If this is your way of rubbing it in that my experiment doesn't seem to
be—"

"Not some day. Tomorrow. You're going to die tomorrow," he said, effectively
halting all of her movements.

She turned to him and if she had thought it was a jest until then, she knew it was
true when she saw the frown that marred his handsome features, the sadness
that deepened his green eyes. "What?"

He swallowed audibly and held up his wretched Blackberry. "I just found out."

"Oh." She stumbled backwards a bit until she practically fell into one of the
stools. He followed her quickly, clasping both of her hands in his. "I'm assuming
you're probably not supposed to tell me."

He shook his head. "No, but… how could I not? We'll find a way to change this,
Bella."

"How?"

It was the question he was dreading. "I don't know. But we will. How could we
not?"

"How can we? This is… you said it yourself once. You don't decide who gets
taken, when they get taken. You don't even know where I—they—get taken to.
You're just the messenger."

"There has to be a way. I can't—I'll speak to everyone I know and I'll beg,
borrow, steal, whatever I have to do—"

"Edward—"

"I've done this for them forever. I'm sure they could grant me some—"

"Edward—"

"Courtesy. It'll be like an employee benefit, a one-time offer—"

"Edward!"

"What?"

She shook her head sadly and placed her hand on the side of his face, tracing the
heavy line that led to his frown. "I don't think you can do anything."

"Of course I can."

"No… I think this was always the way it was supposed to be. This serum, eternal
life—it's not meant to exist. Look at the rats, Edward. They're alive but are they
really? They're listless and aimless. Depressed and dejected. And they're just
rats! I've been struggling with this and I've been so stubborn in admitting it but I
think that I need to accept it. My experiment has failed."

"I don't understand. That's your experiment, I'm talking about your life!" Edward
exclaimed, placing his hand over hers. "That's all I care about, Bella. Your life."

She sighed. "They're one in the same, don't you see? I spent my life trying to
change the natural order, trying to make something that should never be exist.
And I failed because the world is the way it is for a reason. Death—you—exist for
a reason and I think it took meeting you, being near you, to see why. If you try
to change the way things are supposed to be—you'll fail too, Edward. That's what
I've learned."

"Bella, I can't just… let you go." He pulled her into his arms, brushing her lips
with his thumb in the closest approximation of a kiss he could afford.

"I'm afraid you have to," she said. She sighed and rested her head against his
chest. "Guess you can cross getting your heart broken off that list."

After a few moments of silence, he softly admitted, "I can cross falling in love off
it too."

She said nothing, just tightened her arms around him in acquiescence and kissed
the space over his broken heart.

"I suppose there is an upside to it. I finally get to kiss you," she said quietly.

"Hell of a price to pay," he muttered.

Perhaps sensing that they were both likely to drown in this dark sea of despair
that had washed over them, Bella spoke. "Edward, I know you're not really
allowed to tell me any specifics about what you do and what you know, but can
you tell me one thing? Just one question, a yes or no answer. I promise I'll take it
to the grave." She even managed a giggle at her deadly serious pun.

Edward looked down at her, and felt a modicum of courage at seeing her tear-
free eyes. She really was fantastically enduring and the look on her face, of the
bravest type of challenge that could only come when faced with the greatest type
of fear, reminded him of when they first met. She hadn't cowered before Death
then, and she wasn't cowering before death now.

He felt it was only just then, in reward to the vast amounts of grit she was
demonstrating, that he would answer whatever question she would ask, whether
it be about big bangs, the afterlife or anything that happened to fall between.
With a voice more croaky than he expected, he said, "Go ahead."

Smiling ever so slightly, she asked, "Is Elvis alive?"

It was a startled yet thoroughly amused guffaw that escaped Edward upon
hearing her query, one that continued for awhile. For a few moments, it toed the
line of hysterics until Bella started giggling with him and then, it was simply a
joke. Rather than verbally provide her answer, he motioned with his head and
managed, even within these bleak circumstances, to find some joy in her
blooming smile.

Chapter Seven

And so the morning approached, the red rays of sunrise appearing more savage
than before. Bella watched it, her last one, her eyes turning almost gold in the

beams of the sun and still somehow retained that hope, that optimism that she
had used to battle the world since she was young. She supposed that, under the
circumstances, she couldn't ask for more. She had spent her last night in
Edward's arms and not only did she know she would die truly happy, in love for
the first and last time, but she'd be escorted out of this realm by someone she
loved. It was perhaps too romantic a notion, but when faced with the inevitability
of her own mortality, she felt rather blessed that her final moments would fulfill
her foremost wish: to kiss Edward.

She could just imagine what her happy, facetious Edward would say about that:
what a way to go!

With his arms wrapped around her, Edward watched the same sunrise, thinking
that with this brilliance of light, with the dawn of a new day, it was almost
impossible not to feel buoyed, not have his spirits rise as the sun did. Almost
impossible, were he not facing the impending loss of the very thing he held most
sacred in the world. He wrapped his arms around her a little tighter, as if he could
keep her there with him, but soon, he could no longer stay silent. Doing so only
further exacerbated his feelings of passive acceptance of the circumstances that
had befallen them.

"How?" he burst out.

Bella turned in his arms to look at him. "How..."

He had so many ways to finish that sentence so he said them all. "How can you
just accept your death? How can you be so willing to let this be the way when
you spent every minute when we first met fighting death, fighting me? How can
you not let me march up to every force in the universe I know and try to change
this?"

She sighed and faced forward again. Only the motion of her placing her hand
over where Edward's rested on her waist indicated that she would answer him,
which she did, but a little while later.

"I've spent my whole life alone and fighting things that are meant to be, Edward.
Now..." She paused to turn back to him and put her arms around him, speaking
the rest of her words into the crook of his neck. "I'm finally not alone. And I'm
finally going to embrace whatever it is I'm meant for."

Edward had a million different retorts, a thousand rebuttals, but they all seem to
pale in comparison to the tightening of her embrace, to the reasoning of her lips
against his neck.

They were silent for quite a long while before Bella spoke again.

"Edward…"

"Yes?"

"When… it happens today… When you take me…"

"Yes, Bella?"

"Kiss me so I'll remember it wherever I go next."

As the sun found its place in the sky and declared morning to the world below it,
dawning the day of Bella's death, Edward felt incrementally less helpless in
knowing he could do at least that.

He could appreciate that Bella was attempting to live her last moments as she
had the ones before it—with smiles and grace and that spitfire he rather enjoyed.
It was the least he could do to respond in kind.

"You know," she said, musing, as she held up two shirts. "Wait—which one will I
look better in? A lot of people are going to notice me today."

Edward arched an eyebrow, still rather amused that she was oblivious to how
many people noticed her normally. "The blue one," he advised.

"Why? Does it bring out the color of my porcelain skin?" she fished, batting her
eyelashes outrageously.

Edward snorted indelicately. "No, it's lower cut. You have nice breasts."

Perhaps she would have been more successful in appearing affronted had she not
chosen that top to wear.

But the second that silence crept in between them, Edward's smoggy thoughts
did as well, and so Bella attempted to keep a rollicking rapport going.

"I'm rather looking forward to kissing you," she said.

He forced a little smile. "You seem to have a lot of faith in my kissing skills."

"Well, you have had a lot of practice."

Edward mused that he could never practice for a thing like this, and he somehow
knew that the billions of people he'd kissed in one way or another would have
very little to do with the way it would feel to kiss her.

"Just one request. Don't use too much tongue. It really puts a dampener on
things when you feel like your mouth is attached to a collie."

"Are you comparing me to Lassie?" Edward asked, outraged enough to be
distracted.

"Of course not," Bella replied soothingly, brushing a lock away from his forehead.
"You have much prettier hair."

But even Bella's attempts meandered off as the morning advanced. As the clock
tauntingly ticked onwards to the number that was on the screen in his pocket,
Edward's mind battled with itself. He was more than aware of the eventuality of
the events unfolding—he could try and trick it all he wanted but it would never
work. Whether they chose this elevator or that one, whether she ate cereal or a
banana, whether he held her hand and walked her to her lab or hid her in the
large closet in the bedroom, fate would twist and turn, like the serpent it was,
and strike when it needed. No plan he could make could match the one of the
universe, and yet, he felt himself constantly battling every movement, every
decision.

It struck him, as the sharps pangs of irony tend to do, with an almost crippling
knowledge. This was what it felt like to be human. To live.

It felt rather like dying to him and he finally understood a phrase he had once
heard in the back alleys of his endeavors: Life is nothing but a slow death.

So they took the left elevator as she ate the banana she had grabbed for
breakfast as he held her hand and walked her to her lab. He counted every
minute, every second, every nanosecond, every moment in whatever increment

he could assign it, wishing he had a heartbeat that could have helped him keep
time, knowing it would have been beating far too fast, just as the minutes were
passing. He tried to concentrate on the feeling of her hand, on her presence
beside him, on the nearness of her he would never have again, but he was
concentrating too hard, swimming in his thoughts rather than focusing on the
subject of them.

When he rattled the phone in his hand, it fell. It was a split-second: he bent down
to pick it up, and Bella stepped off the curb, her hand slipping out of his grasp
inadvertently. Down the street, a young man lost control of the large green van
he was driving, and it swerved maniacally, first slamming into a lamp post,
knocking over a trash can, and then tragically, hitting the pretty young brunette
who was crossing the street.

Knowing his time in the corporeal world had ended when Bella's had, Edward
stood up, now undetected and invisible, feeling the most exquisite ache
somewhere deep enough inside him that it physically hurt, yet not far enough
back that it had any hope of an exit wound.

He found his way to Bella's side, and knew that even as the rest of the world
went blurry, she could see him. Even though she could feel only colder and colder
and colder, she still felt the warmth of his hand in hers.

"Edward," she wheezed, the life literally leaving her in her numbered breaths.

"Yes?"

"Remember…" she coughed. "Remember…"

He leaned in closer, turning his head so that his ear was at her lips. The moment
it took her to speak felt like eternity, and he could only imagine what she, the
woman who had captured Death himself, heart and soul, would say as her dying
words. Would she ask him to remember their great, but short love, to hold it in
his heart forever? He would do that already. She took a breath, signaling she was
about to speak.

"Not too much tongue," she requested.

When he pressed his lips to hers, his shoulder and mouth were shaking with his
laughter, and he could feel her lips upturn under his. Their kiss was soft and
gentle, feather-light yet felt with all the force of the world and its circumstance.
And even if it was tinged with tragedy, it only made the kiss lovelier, as if none of
the bitterness could compare to the sweet. But perhaps, best of it all, was that
instead of the tears he expected to have flowing down their cheeks, it was a
shared giggle that passed back and forth between her mouth and his, never
meeting the outside world, for them and them only.

She had made him laugh when he could scarcely breath, and he reveled in
knowing that this made her as happy as she could be in these last few moments.
When he kissed her smiling mouth, he knew that she left the world laughing, and
he couldn't think of what one could want more.

In his existence, Edward had escorted many a soul from the porch of death to the
stoop of whatever lay beyond. The trip always lasted the same amount of time—
after all, they were dealing in infinitum, which meant there was no such thing as
time at all. But it often felt longer or shorter, depending on who it was he was
taking.

He had long had a list of favorites, and of course, a list of his least favorite souls
that he had escorted—at the top of the latter was that rascal Rasputin, who
refused to believe he was actually dead, insisting he had cheated death several
times. Being Death himself, Edward had disagreed rather vehemently.

Sometimes, it was strange what realizations one would come to, even after only a
few minutes removed from the mortal world. Nathan Hale, the famous war hero
who had declared that he only regretted that he had but one life to lose for his
country actually didn't regret it at all. Turns out hanging was a rather painful
experience and now that he had experienced it, he didn't think that his country
would particularly benefit from him being subjected to that more than once.

Despite the illusion of machismo Edward sought to maintain, escorting Gandhi
had been a rather otherworldly experience, even for someone as otherworldly as
Edward, when the elder gentleman told him that he believed even in death, as he
preached in life, that love was the prerogative of the brave.

That may have been so, but Edward felt nothing aside from cowardly as he
silently held Bella's hand. They made their way to the next realm nonchalantly, as
if they were simply walking to the next neighborhood. The journey that had
sometimes felt like it took hours zoomed by in mere seconds, and he was leaving
her, this time for the last time.

He struggled to find something to say—Bella seemed to be searching herself—but
in the end, realized that perhaps nothing he could say could convey the depth
and width of the world of words he wanted to spend eternity telling her. Still he
searched within himself and more than words came the feeling of an epiphany,
which he quietly whispered to her.

"You didn't fail, Bella. Not one bit. You wanted to create immortality, something
that would live on forever," he said. He took the hand he held and placed it
against his chest. "You did." With that, he kissed her ear, then her cheek and
then her mouth. He placed one last, lingering kiss on the hand he still held as he
backed away from her, gave her one last smile, waiting only to see the one she
gave back to him before he turned and returned to his perennial duty, leaving her
for eternity.

Chapter Eight

"I'm dead?" whimpered the scrawny man, his eyes widening above his beak-like
nose.

Edward rolled his eyes and leaned back against the wall. "Boo hoo."

"I'm really dead? Like really, actually dead?"

"Yes, really and actually dead. Like a doornail. Or any other metaphor that comes
to mind," Edward said, trying to maintain a blithe tone.

"But—"

"It's for the best. Trust me. God has a plan, Eric… for some people. But don't
worry, at least Darwin has a plan for you."

"But how can I be dead?" Eric seemed unable to comprehend his current status.
Suddenly, his dull eyes brightened with horrified, regretful understanding. "The
peanut I ate…"

Edward nodded. "Yup. You know, when doing something—say, eating even a
crumb of a peanut—results in such a scary sounding term—for example,
anaphylactic shock—you should really listen to your doctors and not eat any
peanuts."

Eric whined—no, he whinnied, like a horse. Edward was rather tempted to slap
him. "But… I just wanted to see what it would be like…"

Edward softened, his mind wandering back to when a girl had said those same
words to him, albeit for a much more enticing action. Inwardly, he shrugged—one
man's kiss of death was another man's peanut, he supposed. He was just about
to attempt to offer some condolences to Eric, when he was interrupted by the
shrill ringtone of his Blackberry, blaring out "Don't Fear the Reaper." He frowned
and suspected that might have been the work of one Bella Swan.

"Joy to the world," he muttered as he saw the caller ID. Aro. Just what this day
needed—another idiot.

He answered reluctantly, holding the phone to his ear as if it were slimy. "What
now?"

"Your presence is required," said Aro's pompous voice.

"Wonderful. I'll grace you with it in about an hour."

"Pardon me, Mr. Cullen, but I mean to tell you that your presence is required
now."

"I'm busy."

"Then call one of your underlings. I expect you in two minutes, or you'll be filing
paperwork for the next fifty years."

Edward irritably ended the call and gave Eric a half-hearted sneer. With a snap of
his fingers, his prissy blond minion was at his side. "Deal with this, Carlisle," he
said, waving his hand disinterestedly at Eric, who was staring at a jar of peanuts
with profound despair.

Carlisle, endlessly overworked, did little but nod somberly. Had Edward been a
little less proud, he might have commiserated with his employees. After all, the
death biz was all about tedium for everyone involved, especially now that Death's
heart had been broken. Having an asshole for a boss was bad enough. A
miserable asshole was almost intolerable.

But Edward didn't have much energy for things anymore, so he simply thought of
Aro's office and teleported himself straight to the gaudy thrones of Past, Present,
and Future.

"What do you want?" said Edward with more weariness than belligerence. He
wanted to keep working. He didn't have to think much when he was on the job.

Marcus, the eyes of the Future, smiled with an "I knew this would happen all
along" sort of look. Edward thought he might actually giggle. Caius, as usual,
looked like a student who wasn't quite following the lesson—he had always been
a little behind. Aro folded his hands in a theatrically villainous manner.

"We've had a bit of a staffing change, you see," announced Aro. "It has come to
our attention that your job performance has declined over the past few weeks. As
you know, we take great pride in our work here—"

"Get on with it."

Aro seemed unperturbed by his interruption. "So we've decided that given recent
circumstances and a decline in your customer relationships, we are forced to hire
a co-manager. Until further notice, you will work cooperatively with this
individual, who will report to us regularly. If your ratings are not sufficiently high,
your position will be reevaluated."

"Reevaluated? You can't reevaluate me! I'm Death."

"And now you're Death plus one," intoned Marcus. "If you don't like it, you should
have done your job better."

"Your new co-manager will arrive later today," said Aro. "I suggest you behave."

Edward had always felt unlucky, but this was excessive. Were he a little less
tired, he would have put up quite a fight, but he settled for brandishing his
middle finger at Aro.

And so Edward went about his day, feeling quite strange, since he was, for the
first time while on the job, anxious. At each task, he found himself looking over
his shoulder, wondering if his new co-worker would suddenly pop in, and
subsequently contemplating what this person would be like. Would they be bitter
and unpersonable, just like he was, over this eternal duty? He'd much prefer that
to someone who was overly cheery and chipper—he didn't think he could handle
that. Even if he had recently spent a great amount of time with someone, that
someone was Bella, the exception to all his rules, Bella, whom he still loved and
would never stop missing, Bella, whose sweet smiles and challenging words he
still played in his head, like a favorite movie.

So when, as he was hauling away a bawler—he hated when they threw tantrums
of "why me?"—by the collar, he heard a soft, but authoritative voice call, "You
know I'm going to have to report you for that," he scarcely paid attention.

Until he realized that he recognized the voice, and promptly proceeded to drop
the man in his hands. The gentleman—Alan? Alex?—groaned, but Edward could
only spin around and watch incredulously as Bella leaned on the wall behind him,
making a face.

She pushed off the wall and approached them, helping the gentleman up and
dusting off his sleeves, saying "I'm sorry for that Alec,"—Edward had been
close—"we're going to work on him, I promise."

Edward merely stood there, mouth agape. When he could finally speak, he
merely said, "We?"

Bella stepped away from Alec and faced Edward, unable to control her smile. "I
was informed by Aro, Cauis and Marcus that you'd be notified of my new post."

"Your… you… you're…" Edward babbled, his eyes wide.

And even if there was no other indication—such as the meld of shock and relief
and awe that now dominated Edward's disposition or the love disguised in the
impish smile Bella wore—surely the fact that this girl had effectively rendered
Death himself speechless was an indication that she was best for the job.

Walking towards Edward, Bella held her hand out. He took it almost mechanically
and squeezed it once, twice, thrice, before comprehension set it and he pulled her
roughly into his arms.

Even with the tangible softness of her hair on his nose and solidity of her body
that sparked a thousand different emotions in him, he could only croak out one
word: "How?"

Forgetting that they had a rapt audience, Bella explained the turn of events after
Edward had left her.

"These singers—they really have it down," Bella says, sounding a little bewildered
herself. "Because what I had to do was knock-knock-knock on Heaven's door,
quite literally. And then the door opened and led me to a stairway to heaven."

For Edward, who had no real exposure to human pop culture, the significance was
lost. But Alec, who, until that moment, had been distraught at the thought of his
own death, perked up with the idea that he would be privy to this knowledge.

"Hey," he asked, watching as the two in front of him snapped out of their trance
to remember he was still present. "Were there tears in heaven?"

Bella smiled and giggled, excited to have someone recognize the significance of
her words; it made her look like the girl Edward had fallen in love with and served
to solidify his belief that yes, she could somehow be here.

"I'm sure there would be, had I ventured to find out," Bella said. She continued
to explain that upon realizing that she was to go into the light at the top of the
stairway, she was suddenly seized by the same sense of defiance she had first
felt when she had started to create the serum. So she had walked right back to
where Edward had left her, and sat on the stoop of Heaven, effectively throwing a
tantrum. Eventually, one of Cauis and company's minions had told her that the
Monsieurs Past, Present and Future wanted to meet this girl who kept thwarting
them. Once there, she had explained her story from start to the grand finish.

"They started to talk about exceptions and sending me back if I promised not to
work on the serum—they were very impressed that I hadn't stooped to using it to
prevent my own death. But I told them the only thing I wanted was to be with
you," Bella said, eyebrow arched, looking every bit like a woman who could take
on time and come out the victor. Edward, on the other hand, couldn't help but
sink a little deeper into the hope she provided him with.

"And so they decided you would work with me?" he clarified.

She nodded. "Yes. I brought up that being someone who had experienced death
acutely, both of those close to me and my own, and had spent time getting to
know Death quite personally,—" at this she smirked, "— I could perhaps serve as
a customer service specialist. You still do your job but I make sure that no one
feels like crying because big, bad Death picked on them."

There were a million retorts on the tip of Edward's tongue to her words; but the
time for them was later, he decided.

"You know you're stuck with me forever now, right?" Edward asked, pulling her
into his side.

She pretended to contemplate that for a few moments. "Ugh, really? I hadn't
thought of that." She raised her head to her approximation of where Heaven
would be located and said, "Deal's off. Show me the light, I'll go happily."

She shrieked when he playfully bit the space where her neck met her shoulder as
he said, "Forever and forever and forever. You're in it now."

She turned her head to face him and gently brushed her nose along his. "I can
kiss you whenever I want now," she said quietly.

His smile grew. "Whenever you want," he said, tilting his head so he could do just
that.

Just as their lips were to touch, they were interrupted by a whiny, "Excuse me?
Hello? What do I do now? Why did you take me? Is this Hell? Why me?"

Alec's patience had run out.

They pulled away from each other and Edward made a face. "You understand now
why I am the way I am?" he asked.

Bella laughed as she walked toward Alec and called over her shoulder, "I don't
think I will ever understand why you are the way you are."

Edward scoffed. "Perhaps because genius isn't meant to be understood." Bella
rolled her eyes and together, they delivered Alec to the doorstep of wherever it
was he was going to go. Edward summoned Carlisle and after a brief, reluctant
introduction, asked him to take over his duties for an hour or two.

"Please," added Bella, well aware of the face Edward made from behind her.

Carlisle smiled, hoping that perhaps, now that his boss was getting some, he'd be
a little less miserable, and went about his duty.

"So what shall we call you?" Edward mused aloud to Bella, ignoring Alec and
Carlisle, who had not yet left. "I don't think you'd settle for assistant. And Co-
Death is just silly."

Bella laughed. "How about 'Lady Death'?" She frowned. "No, that sounds terrible.
'Angel of Death?'"

"Really?" Edward asked, skeptically.

"What?" she said, pretending to be offended. "I'm not your angel?"

He snorted. "In that shirt? You're no angel at all."

"Excuse me, you told me to wear this shirt. I didn't think at the time, it'd be what
I wore for eternity."

"You're the one who had such a risqué shirt in the first place!"

"Don't think that—"

"Seriously, is this how it's going to be?" Carlisle asked. "You two on the job
together? Like this?"

Edward smiled. "Yes, yes, I think it shall."

Bella smiled back at him and he was surprised when, within a few seconds, they
were located back on the beach he had once taken her to. It seemed that she
now shared his gift.

"Impressive," he complimented.

"So…" she said innocuously, swinging their clasped hands between them. "We
have an hour or two. What shall we do?" Her smile turned devilish.

He tugged on her hand and pulled her into his arms, kissing her once, twice,
thrice before pulling away just a hair's width to say, "That's where you're wrong,
love. We have the rest of eternity."

But for the next hour or two at least, they didn't bother with words.

The End.