Once Marcus was aware of Bella's ability, life became marginally more interesting. He theorized that their abilities were related, similar to the way Edward and Aro's abilities were related. He could see specific ways in which two souls interacted with one another, whereas she could see the souls themselves. It explained why Marcus' ability could sense Bella's relationships – because they were based on her emotions, her soul, rather than her impregnable mind.

It was unnerving, after years of utter indifference, to see Marcus sitting in her living room, looking Iinterested/I in what she had to say, however slightly. She also learned very quickly that he was impossible to offend. When she told him his soul was fractured in addition to being disturbingly dark and violent, he waved it off. It was to be expected, after all, and he honestly didn't seem to care that she didn't really like him. He just wanted her thoughts on their abilities. So they sat, sometimes for hours at a time, and discussed the theories in grave detail. Sometimes Edward would join them, standing near the mantle and watching Bella's face.

Caius, sans bodyguards, had been informed of Bella's ability as well. He joined Aro and Marcus in watching Bella, noticing whose eyes she would meet and whose she would not, though he never spoke to her about it. On the rare occasions when they were trying to decide whether to initiate someone into the guard, she and Edward would both be consulted.

They were on their way back from such a meeting late one morning when Heidi unexpectedly joined them in waiting for the elevator. "Bella, do you mind if I come up for a minute?" she asked. Bella looked at her oddly. Although she had always been pleasant to Heidi, they had never sought one another out for company before. And as Marcus enjoyed reminding her, she had been a huge disappointment to all of the Volturi who didn't know about her abilities. She didn't expect any of the guard to show an interest in her.

"Of course not," she replied, confused. She glanced at Edward, who looked vaguely amused, and decided that as long as he wasn't concerned she wouldn't be either. Heidi, however, looked at Edward with undisguised annoyance. Everyone knew that he could read their thoughts. Having him around was ridiculously inconvenient. But he smiled at her slightly, and she relaxed. At least he wasn't angry. It HAD been he who mentioned the pictures in the first place.

Edward dropped Bella's hand as they approached her door, and she smiled up at him for an instant. He registered the sadness in her smile as he always did. Over two years, and it had never faded. He forced himself to smile back. "I've got a letter to send to Emmett, so I'm going to run it down to Gianna. Do you have anything you want me to take?" He always offered, but she never gave him letters to deliver. He wasn't sure if it was because she didn't trust him not to read them, or because she'd prefer he not know who she was writing to. He never asked her which.

Bella shook her head. "Nothing today, thanks." He nodded and turned away, disappearing into his room. Bella looked after him briefly, then smiled at Heidi.

"He's very thoughtfully trying not to overhear our conversation," she explained. Heidi smiled as well.

"He's pretty good about that, isn't he? We've all been really rude to him about it, but I guess he can't help it."

"He really can't. He tries not to take advantage."

Heidi shook her head. That was better than a lot of the rest would do, if they had the same gift. Aro, at least, generally asked permission before he read everything in your head. Not that anyone dared refuse. But she was fairly certain that if Felix could read everyone's minds, Volterra would be an absolutely intolerable place to live. And really, as uncomfortable as it was to know that Edward could read her thoughts, she'd never noticed him using his knowledge against her.

Heidi followed Bella into her sitting room and looked around. She spied the objects of her visit immediately, but didn't want to just rush over to look. That seemed rude. "I heard from Gianna that you had pictures of your family," she said hesitantly. "I don't remember mine at all, and I was wondering if you might...share."

Bella turned to blink at Heidi in surprise. She wanted to see pictures of the boys? And then she thought back to the Cullens' excitement over her birthday party, graduation, and the cancelled wedding – the joy they'd felt at sharing in parts of her human life. Seeing the hopeful expression on Heidi's stunning face made it clear to her that this was the same sort of desire. Heidi didn't remember her own humanity, so she wanted to share in Bella's memories. Bella smiled at her, and led her over to the mantle.

"This is Charlie. He's just finished second grade, I think, so I should be getting a new picture soon. It's nearly September, isn't it?" she asked, realizing for the first time how little attention she'd been paying to the passage of time. "And this is Will. He'll be starting second grade. Embry thought they should start school early in case –"

Bella broke off, biting her lip, and looked over at Heidi. "Well, I don't know if you'd heard. Jacob – their father – was a werewolf. With Edward's family living so close to La Push, it's possible the boys will be, too. Embry – Jacob's half-brother – thought that if they started school early, they'd have a better chance of finishing before their first transformation. It was a good thought, and they're such smart boys. I told him to go ahead."

Heidi, apparently, had heard. She looked neither surprised nor scandalized as Bella had expected. Bella smiled at her again. Heidi really was a very nice girl, when she wasn't swept away in the bloodlust. Bella didn't even mind looking her in the eyes now and then, as long as it wasn't shortly after she'd fed. Her soul shone through them, of course, but it wasn't frightening in the way that Aro's or Marcus' was. Maybe it was only because she was so much younger?

"They're very handsome," Heidi replied, looking longingly at the images.

"I have more, if you'd like to see them," Bella offered, since she seemed eager. Heidi nodded, and Bella dug a few stacks of pictures out of the bottom drawer of her little desk. They sat close together on the couch and Bella explained the pictures, naming each person. The longer they looked, the younger the children got. Finally, there was a picture she and Jacob had had taken of the four of them, shortly after Will's birth. She ignored her own wan appearance. "And that's Jake," she said quietly, finding it impossible to look up to see Heidi's reaction.

Heidi didn't comment. She could hear the sadness in Bella's voice. She waited until Bella seemed to shake it off – only a few seconds – and then the picture was whisked from sight like all those before it, and they were looking at a scrapbook that had been at the bottom of the pile. Bella opened it and Edward was staring up at her.

Heidi smiled as Bella spent just as long on this picture as she had on Jacob. "He always looks at you like that," she commented after a moment. Bella spared her a glance.

"Not always. Sometimes he looks at me like this." She flipped a few more pages until the creased picture of Edward and Bella came into view. She unfolded it, and put it into the little corner holders properly. When she glanced up again, the corners of Heidi's perfect mouth were turned down.

"Did you fight?" she asked after a moment.

"No. It was complicated. There was an incident..." Bella closed her eyes for a moment, remembering. Her journal writing had helped substantially in preserving her memories. She could still see the wild thirst in Jasper's eyes. She told her the story quietly, making sure Heidi understood that Bella had never blamed Jasper, or anyone else, really. It had been her own clumsiness that had caused it.

"It wasn't long before Edward decided that it was too dangerous for me to be around his family, or him. This was taken shortly before he left me," she said sadly, looking back toward the picture. Nothing had ever been the same between them after that.

Heidi was in awe. "How can you remember it so clearly? I only remember my own name because they called me by it after the change."

"That's Edward's doing. He told me once that after I wasn't human anymore, I would lose those memories. On the way here, we got these." She stood, and pulled a journal off the bookshelf Edward had purchased for her soon after their arrival. She handed it to Heidi, who flipped through it at remarkable speed, and handed it back.

"Wow. Then what happened?" she asked, and her expression was so eager that Bella laughed. Heidi was much easier to talk to than she ever would have imagined.

"I'll let you read them sometime," she dodged. "Edward hasn't read them all yet, and he should be the first."

"You haven't let him read them?" Heidi queried, her tone a little off. Bella replaced the journal and looked over at her.

"Not all of them. I wanted –" she stopped and looked back at the shelf. "The ones about what happened while he was gone will probably really hurt him. I suppose I was trying to wait until things were Iright/I between us, as if that might somehow make it easier for him."

"And you don't think things are right?"

Bella reflected that Heidi had a lot in common with her old friend Angela. They both saw a lot more than was comfortable. And they were both kind. Heidi, however, tended to talk more. And ask more uncomfortable questions.

"No. And I'm not sure exactly why."

Heidi looked at her oddly for a moment. "You're ready to move on, then?" she clarified, glancing back at the huge stack of pictures. Bella grimaced.

"That depends what you mean by 'moving on.' I'm not ready to forget about my family. I'm not going to take down the pictures of my boys and stop writing to my friends. But I'm not spending all of my time dwelling on the past anymore, either. It isn't like I keep that picture of Jacob up where anyone can see it. I didn't even show you all the pictures from the trip to Vegas and the bonfire – most of my pictures of Jake I keep locked away in a trunk under the bed. I hardly ever look at them anymore, and I'd forgotten that one was even in the drawer," she added. Abruptly, she dug it out of the stack and disappeared into the other room to hide it away.

Heidi followed her, watching. "But you ARE still wearing your wedding rings," she observed shrewdly, trying to keep her tone light. She'd noticed them as they handed pictures back and forth. Bella, surprised, slammed her fingers in the trunk she'd slid out from under her bed, denting the lid. She sighed, looking at the damage, then closed it again more gently.

"I'd forgotten," she whispered. She was still kneeling at the side of her unused bed, shoving the trunk back underneath. She put her hands on the bed and looked at her rings. Heidi sat down at the foot and looked with her, a sympathetic expression on her face. Finally Bella looked up. "I'm not sure I'm ready to part with them, after all. But –"

She looked at her hands again, and her eyes fell on her bracelet. She smiled, and slowly took off her rings. She put the emerald engagement ring on her right hand. Then she took off her bracelet and very carefully bent one of the links, near the little wolf that had dangled there since her high school graduation party. She attached the wedding ring to it, and bent the link back into place, securing it there. Then she swallowed hard. They would still be with her. She looked at her bare fingers for a few seconds more, then smiled up at Heidi, and put the bracelet on her right wrist, leaving her left hand entirely without adornment.

Heidi was grinning, too. "Good advice," Bella said, standing.

"Any time."

Heidi stood as well, and followed Bella back out into the sitting room. Then she passed her, and made her way to the door. "Heidi, it really means a lot that you wanted to look through the pictures with me, and hear about my life," Bella said suddenly, as the woman's hand grasped the door handle.

Heidi turned around. "It means a lot that you were willing to share," she replied warmly. And then she was gone. Bella looked around the room, more than a little bemused by the turn of events. Although she'd seen Heidi's soul, and knew she was a decent person in spite of the diet she kept, she had never expected to be able to talk to her so easily. She still shuddered at the thought of what happened in the circular room, two floors down, and Heidi wasn't just a participant. She actively sought out their victims. And yet ... Bella couldn't help feeling that maybe they could be friends. It was disturbing in some ways.

Had she now been a vampire so long that she could forgive the murder of innocents in her friends? Was she coming to view such things as commonplace? Acceptable? She shook her head, and had a sudden urge to do something she'd been avoiding ever since her transformation was complete. She wanted to take a good long look at her own soul. Unfortunately, she'd removed all the mirrors from her quarters in the very beginning.