I am not . I do not own Twilight. I don't make money from my use of her characters. That is my disclaimer.

Rated M because I have a feeling this One-shot will turn into a Two-shot/storyline.

You get to decide.

-Erika

Heels echo off the shiny hardwood planks in the old Victorian home as Rosalie walks through the house. Bella's eyes don't move but she can see her sister's reflection in the window pane. No emotions shine through those dull red orbs. They never do.

"I don't understand." Edward yanked on his dark red hair. "She wanted this. She begged for it." His words were barely a whisper but everyone heard him.

Everyone.

17 years ago to the day, Bella awoke with new, thick skin. Her hair, once dull and lifeless, is voluminous and shiny. Her eyes, once a simple brown, were bright red and shocking. The first few hours after waking as a vampire were a whirlwind of chatter, instincts, and hunting and since then, she's been comatose. Not one person in that family could rouse Bella from her depression. She solidified like a statue from refusing to hunt. Her hair stayed voluminous but her eyes dulled to a clotted maroon. She kept her shield wrapped around her so tight that the scent of animal blood couldn't tempt her -or human, because yes, they tried. It didn't take any effort at all to keep her shield up. In fact, it took more work to remove it and she definitely didn't have the wherewithal to do that.

Is there even a point to living this long? Why did she beg for something like this? She understood straight away why Rosalie had tried to talk her out of it, why she had basically threatened Bella to stay human but the stupid girl wouldn't listen. She needed to fit in. She felt as if she were meant to be a vampire.

Oh, what a stupid girl, indeed.

Just because she was solidified, shielded, and depressed, didn't mean she was deaf or blind. Every place they moved, they treated her like a valuable statue and brought her along.

If she had the energy, she would beg to be left behind.

Esme would insist on putting Bella in the living room, facing whichever window would give Bella the best view. She would trail her hands over her daughter's hair and kiss her temple lovingly before leaving her in peace. Whenever a look of disdain, annoyance, pity, or sadness was thrown her way, Bella caught it in the reflection of the window. It didn't make her heart lurch, it didn't make her feel guilty. She felt nothing but depression. Depression for adamantly choosing this pitiful excuse of an existence over her family. Choosing Edward over Jacob. Choosing immortality over mortality.

She wasn't even in love with Jacob but at least as a human she could have tried and failed, and failed, and failed. Now, she would be stuck with her decision for the rest of her...existence.

Edward spent almost a decade near catatonic when Bella let herself waste away. He had been positive that Bella was his mate before he turned her but now, with the allure of her blood gone and this depressed state that not even he could knock her out of, he knew that wasn't the case. He loved her so much but these were not the actions or feelings of a mate. He no longer found her appealing as a partner, but more of a familial bond had formed within him, causing him to love her like a sister. He had beaten himself up -with Jasper and Emmett's help- several times over for turning a human at all. His one and only shot at a mate was gone, he felt, and it tore him apart. He had failed. On the 10th anniversary of their wedding, Edward had their marriage annulled and took an extended leave from the family. Their thoughts were too much and they all blamed him for Bella's behavior, even partially. Hell, he blamed himself wholeheartedly so he couldn't blame them for how they thought. He would find his way back to his family eventually. He always did. This wasn't the first time one of them took a break from coven life and it wouldn't be the last but they were a family and hopefully once Bella broke out of her depression, he could return home but until then, he couldn't handle it.

"Are you sure this is what you've got to do?" Esme asked him as she followed him down the stairs from his room to the front door of their Montana house.

Edward nodded, tossing a half hearted glance in Bella's direction. "It is," he murmured. "I need to do this and she can't be around me. I fear I'm only making it worse. Perhaps if I'm gone, she will come out of it."

Esme had been hopeful at the time but as the years continued passing and Bella stayed still, they realized it wasn't just Edward that was the cause of her depression.

Bella's state didn't really stop the rest of the household from going about their business -though there was a constant level of sadness in the home. They didn't dwell on the fact that Bella was there, so long as she actually was. She became something of an artifact of the homes they lived in, much like a dining room table or a photo on the wall. Esme was the only one who would lovingly caress her daughter's hair as she passed, cleaning her of dust particles and kissing her temple every other day.

Alice flitted from side to side occasionally, trying to force a vision into existence about her best friend and new sister. She would pace her room in front of the bed she used with Jasper or in front of Bella as she locked eyes with her. Bella's eyes never followed Alice but Alice knew she saw her.

A vision never came but Alice never stopped trying. The love she felt for the Cullen nee Swan girl was abundantly clear in everything she did for her.

For her own right, Bella was killing herself inside. Obviously not really, since that was now impossible, but she was constantly berating herself for begging to be changed. She had been so positively sure this was what she wanted and once she awoke and the instincts inside of her were stuffed behind her shield, she shut down. She realized what a terrible, awful, horrible mistake she had made by forcing Edward to change her. He isn't even her mate, for crying out loud!

In her defense, she thought they were. Edward had insisted they were mates. She'd fallen in love with him, his scent, his allure. And now she was stuck, unchanging, unhappy.

Every moment for the last 17 years, she prayed for something to change. The echoes of her old life haunted her and she didn't even have the peace of sleep to escape them. Daydreams, nightmares, daymares; whatever you want to call them, ran on a loop in her mind. Her life would be so different right now if she were a mortal human being again. At this moment, she would be 35 years old, possibly with a couple of 10 year olds and a working husband she could massage when he had a hard day. Plain Jane she may have always been, and always hated about herself...she craved that now.

The beautiful creature in the window reflection taunted her.

Jacob had been forced to sever his ties with her, as did the rest of the wolf pack, after her wedding to Edward. Sam had refused to continue to indulge a child's idiotic dream of becoming a bloodsucker and ordered Jacob to stand down. No one had heard from him since.

Charlie hadn't tried to get ahold of her in years. She could hear every past conversation echoing in her mind, remembering how her veins had burned with agony, hearing her father's voice begging for her to return. Once she had been turned, Billy had dropped the secret on him like a ton of bricks and he had tried to hunt down the Cullens but she wouldn't budge. She couldn't. Not even for her father. She's a monster now. No one should have to see her. It would have been better if she had died, like Jacob had once thrown at her in anger.

She wholeheartedly agreed with him.

Esme had held the cell phone next to Bella several times for several hours as Charlie's voice tried to reason with her. He begged her and cried and she was torn to shreds inside, though her statue never moved. She hated what she'd become. She hated what she was doing to her father but she hated who she was more than that, even.

Perhaps one day she would regret this, looking back on it as a tantrum of sorts, but now, she felt nothing. She pushed it all away, wishing she could just die a real death or turn back time and never meet Edward at all.

17 years to the day and Rosalie had enough. She knew more than anyone, the pain of regret but this was ridiculous. Everyone in the house had been irrevocably changed when Edward bit Bella on their honeymoon. She had begged and begged him to leave her behind, pleaded with her brother to let Bella go for good so she could be human, grow old, and have a family. But he was selfish and Bella was selfish. And now, Bella was full of regret and Rosalie was pissed off.

Pissed was an emotion she was used to but not toward Bella. It had taken many years to become anything but annoyed with the nuisance who threw her whole life away. Now, she actually felt remorse and that pissed her off to the point that she was going to do something about it. She was going to bring their family back together.

She's going to wake Bella up.

With the rest of the house out hunting, she decided to risk something that no one else had the balls to do yet. She'd thought about this long and hard, hoping it was the right thing to do. She'd backed out on it several times, prayed to her God, and thought about it some more. The time, however, had come. Rosalie was going to bring her stubborn sister a human. Oh, Carlisle had brought blood bags home from the hospital and held them enticingly under the new vampire's nose but she hadn't so much as twitched in reaction. No one knew what to do. Even her Emmett was subdued and Rosalie was tired of it. She recalled something Jasper had said to her in passing during a hunt they'd been on alone and something about it struck a chord inside of her ever since.

It had to work.

When she gave the wonderful idea merit, she laughed at the absurdity. Her family would be so upset with her whether this worked or not and normally she balked at making her family anything but happy, though the last couple of decades there's been hardly any laughing going on with the Cullens. Bella brought her gloom to everyone and it settled over them like a thick fog, the mist clinging to them, unable to even be scrubbed off.

Rosalie wasn't sure if Alice knew what she was up to or not because nothing had been said so that meant either Alice wanted this to happen and it would work or she simply hadn't gotten a vision of it because of Bella's shield and it wouldn't work. She was sure, however, that she only had another day before the rest of the family would return from their hunting trip so she had to get on with it.

"Are you still up for helping a girl out?" She asked Kate over the phone as she drove Bella upstate. She'd hefted her into Emmett's jeep, the easiest thing to topple a statue into, and strapped her in so that said statue wouldn't fall all over the place during her reckless driving.

Kate's answer was joined by the sound of rushing wind, letting Rosalie know she was running to their destination instead of driving. "Of course! I haven't felt this much anticipation in years."

A sound of protest from male lips let Rosalie know Garrett had joined his mate for this excursion and knew they'd at least be able to pull off the beginning of her plan, if nothing else. Kate laughed and was reassuring her mate that he made her feel anticipation even as she hung up from the call. It didn't take long for the four of them to meet up at the hospital and Rosalie parked near the treeline, tossing a blanket over Bella so no one would wonder what the hell was going on if they were to peek into her windows.

As 3 of the 4 vampires walked across the parking lot, into the revolving doors of the hospital, Bella's mind kept her apprised of the situation but she couldn't find it in herself to give a damn what was going on. Her eyes stayed open, lifeless and blank under the blanket, staring at the fibers but not using the brain power to comprehend more than that.

While Rosalie and Kate distracted the two hospital staff near the ward they needed, Garrett used vampire speed to quickly make off with what they came for and once they could hear that he'd made it to the trees, the women made their excuse and walked out of the building full of confidence, the vestiges of arousal lingering in the air from the males they left behind.

Kate wrinkled her nose. "I always did hate the smell of hospitals. Too much death." She whispered to her companion.

Nodding, Rosalie agreed. "It's damn near the same smell of Bella now. This has to work." She whispered back, though more to herself than to her cousin.

The sounds of heavy, laboured breathing came from the treeline and Rosalie and Kate hopped into the jeep for appearance sake as she drove out of the parking lot as if she were heading home. With Big Brother everywhere, sometimes it was good to have a trail. Parking a few miles down the road in a turn off, the girls climbed out and Rosalie lugged Bella into the woods. The biking trail was deserted at this time of year as the snow crunched underfoot in the upper part of New York State. With their hearing, they'd be able to tell if someone was coming quickly enough to skedaddle out of there before they were seen. Garrett met up with them shortly and the breathing was quickly becoming more painful for the human he had with him. The male vampire held his hostage as carefully as he could.

Setting Bella down in the middle of the woods, just off the highest point of the bike trail, where they all would be hidden in case someone did happen along, Rosalie appeared in front of the frail human man in Garrett's arms. Kate dashed back to the jeep, waiting for the two, hopefully three, to be finished. There was no way she would be able to handle herself and she knew how important this was to Rosalie.

With his ending breaths, the rattle in his lungs starting slightly, his sleepy eyes widened minutely. "An angel." His raspy voice whispered and his fingers twitched, thick and knotty from arthritis, as if to reach out to her.

Giving the man her best smile, Rosalie nodded. "That's right, Larry. I am your angel." She ran her hand over his fine white hair softly, lovingly, the way Esme did with Bella as he lay curled in Garrett's arms bridal style.

Larry smiled lazily as he watched the angel's eyes dilate from gold to black, finding himself mesmerized. He always knew he'd be delivered to his Norma by an angel. Her lips were moving but he heard no sound, felt no pain as her fingers grazed the thin, wrinkled skin of his cheek. The cancer had brought him to his weakest point but this angel was taking away all of his pain. He didn't even notice Garrett still holding him or walking him toward the statue of a woman.

"You'll feel no pain, Larry." The angel whispered compellingly. "You've done so well in your life. Be proud of who you became."

Rosalie continued to whisper her compelled words into his ear even as she prayed to her own God for what she was about to do. She felt for this man. She had done her research and made sure he had no family ties. It had only been him and his wife, Norma, who had passed away some years before. Anything to keep her from feeling too terrible about the way this man was about to die. It would look terrible to anyone watching on, if they'd been but she knew that he would feel nothing. That his death from cancer had already been slower, more painful. She could take it away with a few whispered words and a dilation of her eyes, and hopefully...hopefully, bring back her sister once and for all.

"This is for my family." She murmured to herself just before she slit the man's carotid artery with her fingernail and let the hot spray of blood cover Bella from head to foot, the splatter echoing through the trees.

Let me know what you think! Unless you hated it, then just shhh! :)