Her number has always been up.

It was the fall of her junior year in college, she had decided to study abroad and get a taste of the world before she entered that hazy period of adulthood. Charlie had asked why she had chosen Volterra, a city he had never heard of, when Rome or Florence would have made much more sense for an art history major. She had said that Volterra had a rich history of art patronage, not quite as daunting as the Medici family, but impressive none the less. She would visit Rome and Florence as well as other cities while she was there, but everyone studied Michael Angelo, so why not do something different?

She supposed that speech made her sound independent, somewhat adventurous even, and perhaps even a little pretentious. That was alright, it was a complete lie anyway.

Something in the name, the way it tripped off her lips, called to her. A half remembered word in a conversation too banal to remember. A detail that should have been flagged but only now appeared highlighted in her mind. It breathed shadows, its heart a thing of darkness, and Bella could only stare at it as it whispered back at her. Volterra.

She had to go.

By that point in time she did not own any pictures of Edward. He had discarded them all and when she managed to regain her presence of mind she did not think to replace them. It will be as if I never existed, he had said.

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it what sound does it make, Edward?

For a year she had held the echoes of that felled tree in her heart, holding onto it in desperation that without fallible memory it would cease to exist. That it would seep into a sort of questioning madness, a secret secret, that the world was filled with vampires only not because they were no longer there to reassure her of their presence.

At first she had thought it was love sickness, a death of all her hopes and dreams for the future, but as time wore on she realized it was something else entirely. She later told Jacob that it wasn't so much that Edward had left as it was that she had been left. She'd been left in the wolves' den, so to speak, because he had gotten bored of humoring her. The dangers of the world wouldn't stop just because he went away, and he had known that, so by leaving her he was condemning her to die. He had left her to die in her own questioning madness and hadn't bothered to look back.

It was him, after all, who had agreed and said her number was up. Somewhere, in the distance, Death was sharpening his scythe.

She thought about him occasionally now, wondering where he might have found himself, if some new high school girl was finding herself dazzled by glamours and illusions. But because she had no photos to pack she did not take him with her to that city in Italy, it ended up being for the best anyway.

She didn't really believe things in her life had purpose. There was no grand meaning behind the sequence of events that had brought her to Volterra. Even the ones that, at the time, had seemed so monumental as to shake the foundations of her reality held no true bearing on the course of her life.

She loved the city as she hoped she would. She loved the language, sounding like a stuttering idiot but trying all the same, and knew that she had managed to find something worthy of holding in her memories. It didn't need to connect with her past or with her future, Volterra could be a moment in itself, she could simply be a student here and that was all that mattered.

For a while this seemed true.

She went to class, explored the city, and did all the things she expected of herself.

There were no repetitive themes until Anthony came along.

All potential love interests in some way reminded her of Edward.

She supposed it was one of his few final blessings in that woods, that she would forever superimpose his image onto other men and see where the differences stood out best. She'd look at their eyes first, naturally not the same color, but instead would watch for the devotion in them that spark of divine light that spoke of epiphanies and unbridled joy. Edward had always been a bit expressive.

Edward had looked at her the way a religious man might look at God.

It was unfair to everyone. She couldn't help but find their eyes a little dull, a little lacking, in comparison but she didn't want to be worshipped, shouldn't expect it even, yet somehow she did.

Even Jacob, who she knew had liked her more than anyone in the world, had seemed so pale in comparison to Edward's brilliance; to his inhuman desperation where he clung so tightly to life and humanity which he had hoped he found in her. She had hated disappointing him, hated having to say no, not knowing whether it was because she wanted to or because of memories of things that weren't even real.

She was damaged goods now, in more ways than one.

After Edward she had never tried to look for a boyfriend but looking back that wasn't so different from before Edward either, the only difference now was that she had once had an interval where she had dated, if briefly, and knew there was something worth having. She was just too tired for it though even if they didn't secretly desire to kill her she was too tired to deal with any of it.

Anthony was persistent though.

Without a prior friendship holding him back as in Jacob's case he pushed forward regardless of any protests Bella might have. Bella wasn't above flattery in the end and besides it was casual.

They went out for coffee, watched Italian films, walked through the square together. He was fun, he was normal, he was human, and there were no expectations.

Maybe, Bella thought, I'll see him again once we get home. We'll keep in touch via Skype, share stories about college, and maybe one day he'd hear an edited version of stories from high school. Edited was the most she could give these days but so few heard any of the stories at all.

A few months into their relationship and her stay in Italy she asked him if he believed in demons. Anthony was a Catholic, had grown up going to church, crossing himself, and knowing exactly when to kneel and stand in a church.

Watching him carefully even as she leaned against him on the worn couch of his leased apartment she listened as he laughed and said, "No, not really, why you?"

She knew in that moment that she had lost him and that she had been hoping she wouldn't. It wasn't the torrent of despair that had hit in a forest in the middle of Forks but there was a distinct pain where her heart would have been had it not been eaten out of her years ago. This is what comes of clinging, she said to herself.

She smiled slightly, a strained gesture, and shook her head saying only sometimes. It wasn't enough of a lie that he could tell the difference.

In spite of everything Bella Swan was a hopeless romantic, perhaps even more so than Edward himself, because every time it happened she truly believed as if these stages in her life belonged only to themselves.

Events lead up to Edward, events lead up to Anthony, these were the pillars of her existence.

She was wrong, death was her constant, and nothing else would ever be.

It was a celebration for some saint whose name Bella couldn't remember, they had gone to the square by the fountain and the clock tower, mingling among the crowds and stalls of food with cheerful smiles. Anthony dragged her along helping her to inspect this and that, asking her opinion, on the buildings and for the history of each. She'd smile and indulge him, spitting out small facts he might find interesting.

(It's said that Saint Marcus drove out the vampires, you know…)

The clock struck high noon and they turned and saw an angel of massacre, a walking marble statue, with hair the color of autumn leading a parade of hapless worshippers behind her with a smile.

Why meet Edward all those years ago? Why face James and a camera in a darkened dance hall?

She froze almost unconsciously her face become an empty pale mask, Oh, she thought to herself, Oh….

She grabbed Anthony's hand making to turn him away toward anything other than the woman who was anything but a woman, perhaps to a vendor, so that she could take him and get out and keep her head down for as long as it was necessary.

Fate had never exactly been her friend though.

A conversation.

"A tour sounds like fun, I hear it's really hard to get into the building without one."

"I'm just not feeling all that up to it, Anthony, I think I'm getting heat exhaustion or something. We should head back."

"Come on, Bella, when will we ever get this chance again?"

"I really don't think we should go, she has so many people in the tour already, we'll just crowd things up."

"It's a tour, not a tutoring session, it's not going to be that much larger with us. Come on."

"Anthony, you don't understand, we can't go."

"Why not?"

"We can't."

"… Look if you feel that way I'll just meet you sometime later, okay."

"… Come with me, please."

"Not when you're being like this, Jesus, and I remember you said you didn't like scenes."

Her final response was somewhat hard to remember as it was unimportant and ineffective.

Perhaps she told him that if he left they were finished, throwing him to the curb with little to no explanation in the eyes of a now too curious vampire.

Perhaps she begged him not to go, almost silently, tears leaking at the corners of her eyes.

Or perhaps she just stood there, a resigned and watched as he left her with a somewhat wounded expression on his face so certain that he would see her tomorrow and understand then.

Whatever her response it didn't work because within a moment she was standing alone in a crowded square with certain knowledge that she would never see Anthony again.

She burned photographs in memory of Edward; it was as if Anthony never existed in the first place.

In their place she drew a portrait of death sharpening his scythe.

There were several odd details about her time with the Cullens that escaped only to return at inopportune moments. She still didn't enjoy thinking of them, a stabbing sensation in her chest often accompanied even the mention of their names, but like a broken record some images seemed caught.

She couldn't for the life of her remember Edward's favorite color but she knew that to him death smelled like jasmine. It was only in a dull class one day in a lecture hall looking at slides of ancient artwork that she remembered Carlisle had once been a priest.

It wasn't until Anthony had been lured away by the Pied Piper of Volterra, dancing a jaunty tune in the costume of a red-light worker, that she remembered a conversation about Volterra and the beings who lived there.

In the Library flipping through books of collected art she finally found it, not the portrait hanging in the Cullen's living room, but a similar one. Only three men were featured in this one and despite the softness of oil on their features and the dulled fervor in their eyes she knew them for what they were without bothering to guess.

The Volturi coven, unnamed rulers of the city of vampires, creating a human sanctuary within their walls but only if the human didn't dare venture further into the labyrinth.

As was typical of her Bella Swan had walked into the eye of the hurricane without even being aware that she had passed through the storm.

A quality of hers that had gone unsung by Edward in his moments of inspired worship was her formidable stubbornness.

She did not expect to see the vampires again in spite of living in the city with them. After remembering the conversation with Edward, one of her last as it turned out, she reviewed what she knew. True, it was the Volturi who removed those humans who knew too much, but she was hardly shouting their secret from the rooftops.

Bella Swan was a quiet ordinary human with her head stuck gratefully in the sand. If she did not follow them in through the gates then they wouldn't run after her either. She did not belong in their world; even Edward had known that in the end.

So she continued her studies, ignored the waves of grief and self-resentment that threatened to overwhelm when the whisper of Anthony rattled the wind chimes. She wandered through alleyways and textbooks, took photographs of buildings, and stood beneath the ringing clock tower.

Her mind was made up and it would take a world and a half to change it.

Author's Note: Part one of a multi-part fic. I apparently forgot to save this with line breaks, that must have been confusing to read. Thanks for reading and reviews are appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight.