Note: I've been lurking in this pairing for some time. It's strange, how the story of Bella and Edward is one that I'm not particularly fond of, but I like to toy with the notion of our heroine with a three thousand-year-old, malevolent vampire in his place. This is my first attempt at Twilight as well as Bella/Aro, but I hope you'll come along for the ride with me.

Please note that the timeline is ten years after the events of New Moon. Alice failed to recognize that Bella lived, and Edward succeeded with his attempt. Although Aro would have gleaned from Edward about a mortal slip of a human girl, their mutual assumption that she was dead will have prevented the Volturi from looking for her. Bella is twenty-eight here and her journey is far from simple.

Prologue

The sun is low, drawing golds and reds out of the gently sloped Midwestern surroundings, when Alice Cullen calls upon Bella Swan again. The spritely, youthful vampire, with her spiky dark hair and pale complexion is out of place here, in the dull suburbs of a fourth-rate city, and the grace so central to her being clashes so strongly against the solid, rounding lines of her aging friend that the reunion can only promise to be marred with regret.

Bella cannot say she is surprised by the unscheduled visit; however, she manages to express a vague amount of curiosity at the vampire's timing. Alice's gifts are impressive, but it was unlikely that she had kept them trained on Bella for the entirety of the last ten years.

Instead, she focuses on the faint metallic sounds of her keys as her fingers fold around them in her purse and tries to ignore the piteous amber gaze that greets her at her front porch,

"Hello, Alice."

Fleetingly, she wonders if her immortal friend can smell it. If decay has seeped into the floral scent that used to drive Edward to near madness when he had been alive to agonize over it, if that is what has led the prophetic Cullen literally to her front door. Or were other, more insidious plots at work against the fragile, failing mortal frame of her body. Although it had left her alone now for the greater portion of a decade, trouble always used to seem to find her

"Bella," voices as beatific as that shouldn't be possible in a setting like this, but vampires had always been beyond the lofty laws of mortals.

She had almost forgotten.

"Did you just now manage to find me, or have you known all along and just now decided to pop in?" Bella cannot prevent the tight thread of accusation from winding through her tone. Once, a long time ago, she had thought they might be sisters, but time and the neglect it brings had proven otherwise. She doesn't know what to do with this piece of her past standing so out of place within her present.

Something sheepish in the fluttering of Alice's brow gives her away before she confesses, "We've known."

"Well," Bella gestures absently to her small, insignificant home and the small, insignificant life it represents, and allows her young but maturing face to tighten in a terse smile, "Welcome to my normal life..."

It's what he always wanted, she leaves it unspoken, but the spite still bubbles under the surface. Edward Cullen had left her to this plot, had allowed her as a young woman to curl into herself and self destruct, and then, when he thought she had flung herself permanently into the abyss, he had thrown himself into the mercy of the Volturi. But the ancient coven had not been as generous with his life as the waves had been with hers. When the Cullens had sorrowfully informed her of this, the Olympic Clan had still upheld his wishes that she remain human, even though he was no longer there to enforce them.

They'd refused her any agency in the matter, and so she had left them and the foggy world of Forks behind her. Her journey since then had been simple and it had been dull. Four years of university, five of graduate school; her life should just now be starting, but sometimes that just isn't the case.

Bella turns from Alice, already wary of the memories her friend's presence has brought with her, and drags a ring of keys from her bag to unlock the faded blue front door. The day has been as long as it has been illuminating, and now all she wishes to do was lie down and deny that any of it has happened at all.

Alice is before her in a lazy blink of the eye; Bella's wry smile suggests that she had long ago moved beyond being so easily surprised by these tricks.

The vampire sniffs the air discretely and closes her eyes in a silent recognition of the nature of things, "You are dying."

"I have been," Bella argues softly, "Only, we mortals simply call it aging."

A flash of something, perhaps anger, briefly contorts Alice's patently kind features, "You are young still, Bella, but you are dying."

This time, Bella sighs but understands. Yes, yes she is.

Once, in the early days after Edward's death sentence had been sealed, Bella had dreamed of this. Of her own, withering decay well before advanced age. Had dreamed of the Cullens' pity and the culmination of all of her mistakes and losses in the single act of betrayal. By her own body no less.

Now, she's found herself on the cusp of mourning a future she will never have, the one she had put time and care and hard work into shaping for herself but would reap none of the benefits of, and there is no peace in that.

Bella holds open the door but does not look at her guest, "I guess you should come in."