10

We dressed quickly, choosing more designer labels than we wore around small American towns. We put in contacts, my eyes were just as red as his were now. He wore blue ones that made his eyes a sensational deep violet color with the red shining through underneath. I chose green making mine a strange brown.

We looked breathtaking together in our bathroom mirror. To me it seemed obvious that we weren't human but I remembered that the Cullens just looked like models to me when I met them. If you didn't know things like us existed, you had no reason to suspect we were anything but unnaturally attractive humans.

He said we should go to Montmartre first. It was a place that looked good on a vampire apparently. He was wearing a suit for the first time in months and he had talked me into a backless shirt and a clingy pencil skirt. I now wore heels with ease and they brought us level in height, our faces lined up perfectly for quick, spontaneous kisses. It didn't really matter what I was wearing, if I hiked up the skirt, I could climb a tree in this outfit as well as any other. He knew now that this was my criteria for clothing. It didn't matter how much he liked it, if I couldn't scale a fir tree while wearing it, we didn't buy it.

I had been thinking on our flight about how different Aro's treatment of that rogue vampire had been and how violent a death he had suffered at Aro's hands compared to how gentle he was with his human victims.

When I asked him he said, "I won't allow anyone to put our existence in peril and I don't treat lightly those who attempt it. Humans keep us alive. I don't believe we should treat with ingratitude the things which sustain us."

The entire city was pink with the setting sun. I wondered what it was that made it like that because it seemed like it was more than just the sunset. I understood the song now. Ma vie en rose. My life in pink. For me it represented an enveloping, sweet with Aro as my companion. His pale face reflected the warm glow beautifully. I reached out to touch his cheek several times, drawn in by the color.

"It's too bad we can't eat," I said wistfully, the smells from the tiny bistros and cafes coming at us as we passed them.

"We'll eat the patrons," he whispered in my ear. "The French are very buttery, and disgusting enough that you won't mind killing a lot of them."

I couldn't believe that I now laughed at such flippant discussion of murder. I felt happy. I had fallen completely into that pit, no longer teetering, somewhere over the Atlantic as Aro traced his fingers over the back of my hand absentmindedly, looking out at the dark sky with a gloomy expression that for some reason made me feel achey and warm.

I kissed him softly, brushing his hair back over his shoulder. He took my hand and I knew he was about to pull me into the dark and resume our kiss a little deeper but the sound of my name, coming from the square behind me, made me stop cold.

A figure with black hair and bronze skin was coming toward us, disbelief on his face. I looked at Aro who was watching me now with an expression that seemed somewhere between pain and longing. He thought I would leave him now. I squeezed his hand before dropping it and stepping forward. I didn't feel safe letting them too near each other.

"Bella?" even though Jacob was close enough now to recognize me for certain, it was still a question. He took in my extravagant clothing, my strange eye color and then the figure behind me. Aro in his impeccable suit, his own eyes bizarrely hued.

"What happened?" he demanded. "You told us not to come back."

"I know I did and I'm glad you didn't," I said awkwardly.

"What happened?" He repeated insistently, looking at Aro with open dislike. Jacob had only seen Aro once but the former Volturi leader was extremely memorable.

"There was a fight. Everyone died," I said flatly.

"Wha—everyone?"

I had totally forgotten how many wolves had died along side us. In a cause that wasn't theirs.

"I think so," I said, softer. "I saw Leah for a minute though after. So she's okay at least . . ."

"Where have you been?"

"In America," I said evasively. "We just got here this morning . . ."

"'We,'" Jacob said, his voice becoming angry as he looked at Aro again who was blank-faced behind me. He had the grace not to look haughty which I was grateful for.

"Yes, we," I said after a deep breath. "Only Aro and me survived."

"Well, that's just peachy," Jacob said bitterly. "Did you even try to look for us?"

I didn't answer.

"No," he said sharply. "You were busy, making out with that—"

I flinched.

"Yes, I saw you! That's happens when you stick your tongue in someone's mouth in the middle of the street, Bella!"

It was an exaggeration, the kiss was very chaste. But it was also obviously very familiar. It wasn't like he'd just seen us kiss for the first time. It was the rich, affectionate kiss of an established couple.

"I guess I'm not surprised, I mean, you've never shown excellent taste in the past have you?"

"Edward's dead in case you care!" I shouted. People turned to look at us. I turned to look at Aro who was now glaring at Jacob with a dangerous expression. "Where's my daughter?" I demanded, turning back to Jacob, angry myself now. I didn't like him insulting Edward's memory. And I found that him insulting Aro brought up a protective rage in me similar to the day I awoke as a vampire to find he'd imprinted on my baby daughter before I'd ever even held her.

"She's fine. Perfect. In our hotel room. I just went out to—get her ice cream," he waved a small brown bag. It seemed too normal and nice for this encounter.

"Well, at least you're feeding her well," I said, my own guilt at not being the one feeding her making me lash out.

"We ate dinner hours ago, Bella, it's almost seven. So are you going to come and see her or do you need to go be with your creepy new boyfriend for another year until you're ready to be responsible like the rest of us?"

"Shut up. You don't know what you're talking about! Everyone else was dead, Jacob! What was I supposed to do?"

He snorted. "Looks like he didn't like that. Nobody wants to be your second choice just because Edward isn't available, Bella. You'd think you would have learned that when he abandoned you the first time." I spun around. Aro was gone. My still heart tightened painfully.

"He didn't abandon me! He's dead!" I was shrieking. People stared and avoided us in a wide arc.

"Well, we're at the Virginia Hotel. 202. You can come tell her all about it when you're done looking for him which I know you'll do first," he said, coldly. He started to walk away and then turned and said, "Fuck you, Bella. Just hope we're still there by the time you decide she's important enough to you to stick around instead of running after some jerk who obviously doesn't give a shit about you."

The desire to see Renesmee was physically painful but I knew once I went, I wouldn't be able to leave her side. I had to see Aro first.

I ran to our hotel as much as I could, avoiding people. An imaginary, panicked heartbeat in my chest. Please let him be there please please please. Jacob's words, ' . . . some jerk who obviously doesn't give a shit about you,' ringing in my ears. It wasn't true. It wasn't true. I nearly fell through the door when I tried to open it.

He was there. Standing in front of the window, completely still. He didn't move when I came in. I stepped up, right in between him and the window, making him look at me. I was afraid to touch him. I realized I didn't know what to say.

Only his eyes moved, looking at my face in a slow, searching way, the way you look when you're memorizing something. I felt sick, I knew what he was doing.

"No," I said, so quietly only he could have heard me.

"It's time."

"It hasn't been a year!" I insisted ridiculously.

"I should have left a while ago," he said. "It was . . . inadvisable to have been gone from Volterra for so long. You heard what that vampire in New York said. If everyone thinks the Volturi are gone, things could become perilous for us. Our most important members were in the field. I have to go." He was looking over my head, back out the window.

"No!" I said, louder. "You don't! And that's not why you're leaving. You're a liar!" I pushed him but he didn't move. After what had happened today, he was just going to leave? He'd talked me into doing the most intimate thing I'd ever done and now he was leaving, with those images and sounds inside of him like a thief stealing a sacred part of me I couldn't ever reclaim. I was glad I didn't need to breathe because I was certain my lungs had collapsed.

He touched my cheek and I leaned unto it greedily. I suddenly wasn't above trying to make him stay with me out of guilt. Anything.

"You need to go and care for your daughter."

"I know, but why does that mean you have to leave?"

"You have a family again."

"Please, Aro, don't leave me. Not like this, I'm not ready. I'll never be ready," I threw myself at him, kissing him with an unrestrained wanting that I'd never allowed myself before. I all but placed my heart physically into his hands.

He kissed me back, sighing against my mouth, his arms around me in a crushing embrace. He lifted me off my feet for a moment, his hands splayed on my bare back, caressing my spine. I felt something metallic touch my skin, once and then twice. It was swinging. I knew what it was without looking. His Volturi crest, hanging from its ruined chain. He was going back. He'd already decided. But of course he was. He hadn't changed like I had. Aro was still the ruthless, childish leader of the Volturi. Taking what he wanted no matter what it cost anyone else. And now, I'd finally let him take something real from me and he was done. Bored. Going home.

Then he set me down and stepped away fast before I could reach for him again. I covered my face with my hands. I heard a few quiet noises and then the door shutting quietly. I sank to the floor, my legs came up to my chest and my breathing was erratic, heaving. I was making a small, terrible noise continually. Now I had to face it all. The battle, Edward's death, the death of my vampire family. And this new wound that ached so terribly on top of it all I was certain the pain would kill me.

I felt something trickle down my face unexpectedly. I put up my hand and my fingertips came away red. I was crying blood. I didn't even know it was possible. I got quickly off the pristine carpet and stumbled to the bathroom. In the mirror, lines of red, thicker and slower than real tears were running down my cheeks. I bent over the sink and they fell like crimson droplets of wax into the porcelain bowl. They congealed quickly, running together and freezing into unclear, blobby shapes. A Rorschach test that showed the extended story of my sorrow in its clotting, red formations.

There was something on the counter beside the sink.

It was a small white box. I reached for it and then brought my hand back quickly, afraid suddenly that it was dangerous. But it was just a box. It sat there waiting. I reached out again but I didn't pick it up, just lifted the top off carefully. There was a card inside. In the kind of elegant cursive no one uses anymore, in red ink, it said, "Thank you, Isabella, for showing me your world. It was beautiful."

Under the card was tissue paper, I could see a small, dark object there through the whiteness. My hand was shaking as I reached for it. But I didn't pull back the paper, I set the lid on the box and then turning, I dropped the box and the note into the trash and left the room, turning the light off after me.

I didn't want to know what he thought could fix my heart without him.

And he didn't have time to do this just now.

He had brought this with us from America.

He was always planning to leave.

Always.

END NOTES: I know. I'm sorry. Not the end though!