Chapter Text
She had heard before, quite a few times, that life is what happens while we make plans. It didn’t feel that way in that stonewalled chamber, surrounded by hostile supernatural creatures. In the oppressive atmosphere of the cold room, watched by the vigilant eyes of cold ones, it felt like life was happening while she made a decision. Because in a few seconds, the entire path ahead of her could take such different turns depending on her answer that she had two completely different lives sprawled before her.
Unlike making plans and letting life unfold itself instead of acting, making decisions of that importance was quick and dramatic. She couldn’t take too long, none of the vampires looking at her would give her time.
Time . Ungrateful little thing, always escaping.
“Uhm, I...”
She glanced at her Edward, still clinging to him in her damp clothes, and he frowned at her hesitation. Was it there? The reassurance she wanted, the certainty that she would be immortal one day? But his eyes were charcoal and let nothing through. She searched for Alice’s eyes and there it was, the firm gaze that promised her the future she deserved.
Does it matter, though? If she left before even when she didn’t want to, just because he said so...
“ Yes.”
“ Bella!”
She looked down but soon searched his face again. His frown was much more pronounced, creases cutting as deep as her desire to belong. She couldn’t bear the sight of his shock and disappointment, and yet she felt angry. Wet anger, the type that makes you yell and cry at the same time.
“She doesn’t mean that. She...”
What was she taking on? She didn’t really know, but she hoped . She hoped that she was grabbing the only real chance of becoming immortal that would ever be presented to her, she hoped that she would be able to leave that place one day, and more than anything else, she hoped he would forgive her and take her back.
Her eyes were pleading with his, but he just shook his head. He shook his head a lot and murmured again and again that she didn’t mean that, she was tired, she didn’t know what she was accepting. His grip on her was verging on painful and yet she clung to him, she would do so for as long as she could. She would cling to him forever if she could.
“Edward, my dear,” Aro sighed and Bella finally noticed the condescension that marred his sweet words, “we are all entitled to our free will, even the young ones. Bella should be able to make her own decisions.”
“Is that really your decision?”
She choked on her words, took a breath, and tried again. He was getting angry too and her own anger gave way to the empty sadness she felt when he left. She was finally being given a real choice and the truth was that she wanted to take that opportunity. She could deal with whatever else that entailed in due time. For now, she had to take her chance at immortality.
My thoughts are safe. I can become immortal and serve them for however long I have to and then I’ll be free, and they don’t have to know I don’t want to stay. I can pay my debt and go back to you, Edward. Please, please understand. Please forgive me.
Sadly, her thoughts were safe from him as well and she could only hope he could read them on her face. With sudden determination, the answer jumped from her lips.
“It is.”
He gawked, stunned. Alice must have seen something because his head whipped in her direction. It was back to Bella in a split second, his voice betraying an edge of desperation.
“Bella, please... ”
“You cannot be serious, Aro.”
The whole room shifted its focus to the white-haired king and Bella tensed. She did not consider that Aro’s offer was not final, or that her acceptance of it did not constitute a warranty. Caius motioned to her with annoyance but Aro dismissed his protests with a tight-lipped smile.
“Ah, brother, surely you see the potential. Imagine the possibilities when she is one of us!”
Edward’s chest shook with a low growl and Alice grabbed his hand. No one uttered a word as Caius looked pointedly at the seer. A light gush of wind brushed against the hem of the cloaks donned by the guards standing around them like Greek statues. Bella tried to concentrate on her own heartbeats, counting them to keep track of time. She thought she could taste ancient dust on her tongue from the air she painfully inhaled.
Caius spoke.
“I know nothing of such a future.”
The air thickened with his words - as if it was even possible. The guards turned their heads to Alice almost imperceptibly.
She stood perfectly still, another marble statue finely dressed. Her face let nothing on, a perfectly blank mask. The order was implicit but hardly nebulous. The underlying meaning of his declaration was not lost on anyone, not even Bella, and so Alice took two steps forward, letting go of her brother with deceiving nonchalance – such was her way. She ungloved a hand and extended it to Aro, who took it eagerly.
Another silent altercation threatened to choke Bella. She still clung to Edward as best as she could, but he seemed to drift farther and farther away with every passing second. She realised he was not truly holding her anymore, she was keeping close to him all on her own.
“How incredibly interesting,” Aro smiled his placating smile. He then looked at his sanguine brother and nodded graciously. Caius relaxed on his throne, letting himself fall onto the back of his chair. Aro addressed Edward.
“Heidi will be here with our meal very soon. You and Alice should stay beneath until dark. You may take this time to exchange goodbyes.”
He didn’t move, didn’t do anything to acknowledge Aro. His lightless eyes were fixed on Bella.
“Edward, let’s go.” Alice grabbed one of his arms and pulled him towards the doors. He took Bella by the hand, pulling her along.
“Welcome, Isabella!”
Aro’s last words were nearly cut off by the heavy doors closing as Demetri led them out of the room. He looked over his shoulder and stared at Bella for a few moments too long, polite curiosity morphing into rude staring. He took notice of Edward’s expression and smiled sheepishly.
“Forgive me.”
He averted his eyes with no explanation and did not spare her another glance until they reached the reception area. Bella had no idea of what prompted the staring but considered that he too might have a gift that didn’t work on her. She looked at Edward for an answer but he kept his eyes straight ahead, his jaw tensed and his cold hand grasping hers as if it burnt him.
She wished she could see what Alice showed Aro, what Edward must have seen too. She wished she could at least ask her and have a real, transparent conversation about what she did and its consequences. Transfixed by the movement of Demetri’s shoulders underneath his layers of clothing, she wished she could ask Edward what the red-eyed vampire thought of her and why he stared at her like that. Demetri’s burgundy eyes met her brown ones again once they reached Gianna and she was reminded that she couldn’t ask them anything. Not with so many powerful ears around them ready to drink in their every word.
The vampires seemed to hear something in the distance, something too quiet for human ears and that remained a mystery to Bella. Demetri bowed respectfully before disappearing through the same corridor they used to reach the reception.
“Please do not leave before nightfall,” he told Edward and Alice. Then he turned to Bella, “I will be back for you after the feast.”
Feast?
She didn’t voice her confusion, merely nodding in understanding. He vanished, the few hairs that danced around Bella’s face were the only indication that he was ever there at all. Gianna kept working at her desk, her head slightly tilted as her manicured fingers tapped her keyboard. The blue light from her computer screen gave her a ghostly aura even under the warm lights that illuminated the room. The carpets, the flowers, the pictures on the walls - everything was composed to confer the place a cosy atmosphere, and yet something felt cold and dissonant. Like there was a sombre organ note that lingered in the air, a shiver waiting behind the doors to run down a spine.
“Bella...”
Edward forcefully relaxed his muscles and softened his expression. For an insane moment, Bella thought he looked like a devout paying penance. She was never a church-goer – was never forced nor encouraged by either of her parents – but his face made her think of religious paintings and sculptures from museums she visited as a child, in school excursions. She half expected him to fall to his knees.
Alice interrupted him, her voice much more urgent but just as pained. “I’ll do it, Bella. If he doesn’t want to turn you, I’ll do it, you know that. And if not me, Carlisle would sure...”
Why would they? Why would any of them turn her if not to exempt themselves from more guilt, the same guilt that led Edward to Volterra in the first place?
“You left.”
She murmured, knowing they could hear her anyway. Alice blinked once, twice. Edward didn’t move.
“I don’t know what to expect from the future. I can’t...”
I can’t go through all of that again, all that you put me through. I can’t make it out of there one more time.
“This is different,” Alice promised. “This is completely different, Bella, we would never risk your life. Everything changed now.”
“But we did.” Edward shook his head some more, like he could shake off his terrible guilt or the awfulness of their situation. “We left her unprotected while Victoria is still out there.”
“We didn’t know... we didn’t mean to...”
“It doesn’t matter. Everything that we have done, even without meaning to, has hurt her. She has every right to reject us.”
Alice swallowed and frowned, her tiny hands grasping each other. She had one glove on and the other one was peeking out from the pocket of her jacket. Bella wanted to tell him he was wrong, that she would never reject them. She parted her lips and the words formed a lump in her throat, but she stopped in time. She couldn’t say that.
“I love you,” she said instead, watching his eyebrows go up and his shoulders fall. “I love all of you, and I always will. I just don’t know you as I thought I did.”
His hands balled into fists and the surprise that took over his features left in a flash, a sourness taking its place.
“I thought I knew you better than this, too,” he countered. If he meant to accuse her, the slight wavering of his voice hid it well. “Is this who you really are? Someone that would chase beauty and immortality at any cost?”
He was not accusing her, she noticed. He was chastising her. He was telling her that he was not mad, just disappointed, and it made her angry again because how dared he?
This is not how I wanted to see him again.
No, she didn’t want anger or any other bad feeling poisoning their reunion, a moment she had dreamed about for months . She didn’t want anything tainting her memory of him, not even the notion that he was not there for her, not when she didn’t know when she would see him again.
“I want to belong somewhere. I want to fit .”
Edward sighed. He couldn’t scold her for wanting something so fundamental.
“You won’t fit in here, Bella. This place is not for us.”
Us . He chose the word on purpose but Bella could only link it with his departure, the way he had to specify that he said ‘us’ meaning him and his family but not her. Her hollow chest throbbed with the echo of that pain and she shuddered. She vaguely noticed she was still somewhat wet from running across the fountain in the piazza earlier that day.
“I’ll be fine. My time was up when we met anyway.”
The joke didn’t light up the mood.
“I’m here, Bella, and so are you. We still have each other. I know I made a mistake but you shouldn’t have to pay for it. I will not leave you again unless you order me away, please... ”
His words were everything she wanted to hear, but were they genuine? Did they come from the heart or just from the desperation that threw him into the arms of the Volturi, begging to be ended? She wanted to believe him, every fibre of her pulsated with the need to take his words as hard truth, but her stomach still dropped every time she remembered the emptiness of his sudden absence. It could never be as if he never existed, not when she was forever changed by his passage through her life. The only thing he ever accomplished in his attempt was the death of a part of her soul.
That was what it was, that hole in her chest. The piece of her soul he owned that he took away with him when he left her. A little star that sparked new life into her, a star that died when he decided to disappear. She was once again changed beyond repair by his leaving.
But he was there, and so was she. For a little longer, that was all that mattered.
“I’ll be fine,” she repeated, her assurance now a faint echo of what it was the first time around. “I fall on my feet, you know that. Like a cat. Nine lives and everything.”
“How many do you have left?” Alice wondered.
Bella didn’t answer.
“Think of Charlie. Think of Renée. Hell, if it works, think of Jacob. You left to never come back again, think of what you’re doing!”
She did, she thought about everyone that would never see her again and it hurt , but thinking of remaining the uncoordinated outcast among them hurt even more. She knew the wolves would blame the Cullens and probably end the treaty, she knew Charlie would never recover from her disappearance. Still, she felt in her bones that this was her last chance. Her only chance.
She needed to take it.
If it made her selfish, so be it. She should be allowed to be selfish in such a case. Everyone should be.
“Were you thinking of anyone else but yourself when you left?”
He froze, hands mid-air in their afflicted gesticulation. His lips let a sharp intake of air pass through before being pressed into a fine line again. Alice made a strangled sound that could be crying, or maybe choking.
“Bella, I... This is not the answer to your problems that you think it is.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, partially in a vain attempt to feel warmer but mostly in tense reflex to his pleading. Her eyes met the ground.
“I think I have the right to find that out on my own. And I hope you won’t judge me too harshly for it.”
I’ll go back to you, Edward. A hundred times, a thousand times if you’ll have me. I know it’s selfish to expect that but please, please wait for me.
He didn’t look like he would wait for her. He looked crushed and heartbroken.
“There is not a single vegetarian vampire living in this building, have you considered that?”
She blinked a few times. No, she hadn’t considered that.
“They feed on humans, all of them. They are feeding on humans right now.”
She felt it, at last, the shiver that was waiting to run down her spine. Edward finished his sentence looking at Gianna and the secretary did her best to pretend she didn’t hear him, or couldn’t understand his words.
But she shivered too.
“I’ll deal with it. I’ll be fine.”
If I repeat it times enough, does it become true? Is that how it works?
Alice flashed before her eyes and before she knew it, she was hugged with astounding force.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I thought... I told him that...”
“Alice.”
She stepped back to glare at her brother.
“I told you it was a stupid thing to do. I knew... ”
He barked a sarcastic laugh.
“Yes, you always know, don’t you? What do you know now? Do you want to tell her?”
Bella frowned, but Alice didn’t tell her a thing. She sighed and let go of Bella without a word.
“What do you know?”
The vampire shrugged. “Nothing. It’s very fuzzy, don’t worry about it.”
How could she not?
She tried. When Edward told her to let it go and rest, she tried to enjoy their last moments together instead of fretting over the future. Whatever Alice knew, she didn’t deem it concrete or important enough to warn her about it. It could be too far into the future to be relevant, it could be so uncertain that it would never become reality... Feeling the weight on her eyelids intensify, she sat with them on the armless chairs of the reception area and rested her head on Edward’s shoulder, rejoicing in the fact that he allowed it. Gianna watched them as they sat down, quickly returning to her task once they were settled. Through hushed whispers that only they could completely understand, they started discussing going home and how they would do it, and what they would tell everyone about Bella staying behind. They talked about other things too, but Bella could only catch so much with her human ears in her exhausted state.
Without clocks or windows anywhere, they couldn’t tell if the night was falling. Bella tried not to sleep despite her tiredness, for it would be a waste of her last moments with the ones she still considered family in a way, but she did try to rest. She closed her eyes and listened to their quick whispers as the sun surely disappeared from the sky outside.
Eventually, Edward and Alice turned to the doors Demetri had closed hours ago and Bella did too, albeit much more slowly. To her surprise, it was Alec and not Demetri who appeared through them, his eyes a bright ruby.
Because he fed. On people.
Bella tried not to shiver again.
“You’re free to leave now,” Alec informed Alice and Edward. “We ask that you don’t linger in the city.”
Neither of them spoke. Edward pressed Bella against his chest painfully.
He tried one more time.
One last time.
“Bella, please, come with us.”
He said he still loves me, he said he would turn me. Alice did too. Am I really going to stay here all by myself?
A new fear grasped her heart, a fear that should have made its way to her much sooner. If she was anyone else, she probably would have felt it still in front of the kings when she was offered to stay. What would be of her there, human and alone in that castle? Would they change her right away or keep her human for a while, mortal and vulnerable in the middle of all those vampires? Even as an immortal, what would be expected of her? She would still be so very young, and perhaps she really wouldn’t fit there. They could reject her too.
She had to remind herself that she heard their promises before, that they promised her a future with them, told her she was part of the family... and left. In a heartbeat. Like the words that meant the entire world to her meant nothing to them. Feeling breathless and shaking, she shook her head.
“I can’t.”
By the time she answered him, Jane had joined her brother in the reception, so quietly that Bella only noticed her and her eerie smile when she looked at Alec again. It didn’t take much longer for Felix and Demetri to join them.
“This is quite unnecessary,” Alec complained to no one specific.
Like before, it was evident that Felix and Jane were still hopeful that the Cullens would cause trouble and that they would get to handle it.
No, not the Cullens. They think Edward is going to be a problem.
With that realisation, Bella jumped to her feet. The last thing she wanted was to rush them through the doors with no idea of when she would see them again, but she wasn’t sure that Alec was right. Knowing Edward, Felix and Jane had a good chance of winning that one.
“I can’t just leave you here.”
For a moment, she thought he would offer to stay with her. For no more than a couple of seconds, he looked like he was ready to stay there with her.
“I’ll be fine,” she said for the thousandth time. She bit her lip. “Write me if you feel like it.”
She felt both brave and reckless by asking that, and her eyes travelled to the ancient vampires on their own. Demetri smiled graciously.
“Yes, do write her. That is perfectly acceptable.”
Alice spared her a last pitiful glance before she took Edward’s arm again. He didn’t budge, his eyes fixed on Bella. Felix flexed his arms and took off his grey cloak, walking to the vegetarian with smug purpose.
“Put this on, you’re a little conspicuous,” he instructed with a hint of mockery. Edward yanked the cloak from his hands and put it on. He finally broke eye contact with Bella.
“Of course. Yes, I’ll write you. And I’ll be back for you.” His voice was so hoarse that Bella barely understood him. Maybe he said something else.
He took Bella in his arms one last time, burying his face in her hair and shaking with dry sobs so violently that at that moment, she believed everything. She believed that he loved her and that he did mean it when he vowed to make her immortal. It was too late, though. She couldn’t speak as she felt him kissing her forehead and stepping back, couldn’t find her voice as she watched Felix leading him and Alice away. She was paralysed, watching the scene unfold as if through someone else’s eyes. In her head, she could hear someone screaming, telling her to say something, to go back on her decision and follow them out of that cursed place, but she couldn’t move. She watched them leave in silence, horrified by the delayed understanding of what she had done.
She was brought back from her panicked thoughts by Alec’s apathetic remark.
“Heart-warming.”
Jane giggled and looked at Bella from head to toe, a mischievous smile on her full lips.
“Now, what do we do with you?”