RAUM

An Italian Winter

Disclaimer: Twilight belongs to Stephenie Meyer. No copyright infringement intended at any point.

Chapter 25 – Crest

Monday, April 30, 2007

Florence, Italy

When I whirled around toward the exit, I found myself gazing into a pair of deep-brown eyes, filled with shock. I froze. There was no one else in the room.

"Edward," Bella murmured.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Bella's heartbeat was frantic. Listening to it was like hearing the echo of the fear I'd made her feel the last time we'd been together. I took a step back and raised my hands, signaling that I meant no harm.

"Isabella," I called to her softly. "I'm leaving."

She stared at me, but didn't speak.

"I didn't want to bother you," I apologized. "I wasn't expecting you to come." I moved toward the exit behind her.

"Please stop!" she blurted.

I glanced at her over my shoulder. She was still tense, but her gaze softened. "Can we talk?" she asked, her voice unsure.

A last group of visitors breezed along the corridor. In silence, Bella and I looked at each other until they exited.

"Do you want to go? My car is just out there," I offered, but regretted my words. What if she was with someone else? Before I could tell her I'd changed my mind, she nodded.

In the warm spring night, our slow steps resonated on the gravel as we walked at arm's length through the garden surrounding the Planetarium. Bella kept her head slightly bowed, and the mass of her loosened hair, like a curtain around her face and on her shoulders, prevented me from reading her expression. Her heartbeat told me that she wasn't at peace, though. I recalled how she had felt in my arms and the soft texture of her fine skin. Now, instead, it was like we were separated by a glass wall.

I hoped that some small talk could ease the awkwardness that was trapping us. "How did you get here?"

"By taxi," she answered tersely. "I was spending the day in Florence, and coming here was a last minute decision." She turned toward me, and finally her eyes met mine. "You remembered the day."

"I did." Too many things I would have liked to tell her passed through my mind. "But I would have never imagined...hoped...that you'd come."

She attempted a laugh, but it came out weak. "Nor would I."

"Do you want me to take you home?"

She accepted, and we walked to the car. The envelope I'd prepared for her stood out on the passenger's seat. I opened the car door for her and gave her the package.

"I've something for you," I told her.

She tensed and went on the defensive. "How is it possible? You said you weren't expecting that I would come."

"I wasn't, in fact. I was going to send it to you."

Bella frowned. "Couldn't you have just knocked on my door?"

"I won't be your neighbor anymore. I've returned my house keys this afternoon."

Her face fell. "We wouldn't have met again."

It wasn't a question, but nevertheless I felt I had to answer. "No," I sighed.

Bella gaped, as if she were going to say something, but didn't break the silence. Her fingers fidgeted with the envelope.

"Perhaps it's better if you open it at home."

She took a breath. "Let's go, then."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

When I parked the car under the windows of her apartment, I imagined what a shipwrecked person would have felt going back home after thinking he wouldn't see it again.

"Won't you come in?" she invited me.

I glanced over at her. Her gentle gaze tugged at my heart; I wasn't anything but a wreck, but she'd never made feel that way. "Okay."

It was very late, though, and I could see that the long evening was weighing on her. As we entered her home, Bella seemed uneasy. She hesitated in the foyer before deciding where to go, and then she headed toward the kitchen.

"I need a cup of coffee." Her voice was low, and she avoided meeting my gaze. "I guess that offering you something to drink or eat wouldn't be the best choice."

"I'll keep you company, if you want," I offered, as softly as I could.

She kept staring at the floor. "I feel stupid," she blurted. "I'm recalling how many times you told me that you were on a special diet. I'd noticed how fast you moved, or the strength with which you broke the knife that fell on me. The hints were all in front of me, but I had no idea."

"I thought that...technically..." The words remained locked in my mouth.

"Technically?"

"I was trying to give you as much truth as possible." Considering how things had turned out, it sounded like an insult. I looked at her, expecting that she would yell at my inane words. She didn't. "I didn't want to lie to you," I assured her.

"It seems you walked on a fine line between truth and lies. What was it for you? A challenge, a game?" Sadness veiled her voice.

It could be a good distraction. That was the way everything with Bella had started, for me. I grimaced, considering how I would wound her once again with such a revelation, and I wondered if I could avoid it right then. "How much truth can you take?"

"How much are you willing to share?"

About this, I hadn't any doubts. "Everything." I needed her to understand that I meant it. "I'll tell you anything you want to know."

"It's a good start." I noticed the slight softening in her tone. She switched her coffee machine on, stifling a yawn.

"You seem tired. Shouldn't you go to sleep?"

Lamely, she shook her head. "I just need some caffeine to stay awake longer."

Bella sipped her drink quickly, standing against the kitchen counter. Then she motioned toward the living room and the couch. "What about you? Are you tired?"

I let out an embarrassed chuckle. "I don't get tired."

She looked at me in disbelief. "Ever?"

"Ever," I confirmed. One step at a time. "I don't sleep."

Her eyes widened, but she didn't comment. She opened the envelope I'd given her and took out the locket it contained.

The leather cuff bracelet was old-looking, but the fine metal crest on it was still shining, even after so many years. In the elaborate pattern of the coat of arms, three leaves of shamrock, a lion, and a hand stood out.

"This is the Cullen Crest," I began to explain. "I used to wear it on my right wrist, but I haven't worn it since I decided to turn my back on my adoptive father and his family. I'm afraid it represents all the ways I betrayed them."

"You said they don't hurt humans," she recalled.

"They don't." Tracing the figures on the crest, I pointed to the leaves. "See the shamrock? It represents perpetuity. Vampires don't die naturally and don't age. But I don't believe it's a reference only to their immortality. Perpetuity doesn't depend on how long our lives last, but on the meaning we give them. For decades, living with the Cullens and sharing their values, I believed that there was a way for me, for us, to not be damned."

The tempo of her heartbeat increased. "What made you change your mind?"

The word had never felt more harsh on my tongue. "Revenge." I grimaced, recalling the way my hands had snapped necks, and my teeth had sliced flesh. My voice was strained, but I went on. "I knew that, choosing to become a killer, I would hurt Carlisle. When he became a vampire and understood what he had to do to survive, he tried to starve himself. Eventually, he discovered he could live off animal blood and went on. He would never harm a human, not even to save himself." It was no wonder that he'd been a hero to me. That was, until he had betrayed me.

"I had put him on a pedestal, but when he made the wrong decision, I was the one who got hurt. He developed a strong control over his..." I hesitated. I was going to say bloodlust, but I didn't want to talk so openly about my nature with Bella, fearing that I would scare her further. "...instincts. But I guess he believed that I could never achieve the same control. He didn't trust me and made a decision in my place. He took away my choices."

Bella leaned toward me. "A decision that couldn't be undone?" she mused.

"Exactly. What I told you about my past and the way I was abandoned as a child wasn't a lie."

She cringed. "I shouldn't have ever implied..."

I shushed her softly. "I gave you enough reasons to doubt me," I admitted. "I lost my human life in a hospital bed, due to a disease. Before that, I'd been an orphan and a tramp. I moved from one orphanage to another and ended up on the streets, cursing the life I was living a thousand times. I brought an open question with me from my human past into this existence: Who were the people who had damned me to be nothing but a piece of junk? Carlisle found out the answer. He found out who my parents were, but he kept the truth from me, waiting until they were both dead."

"What were you going to do to them?" she asked.

I snapped up my head at her words. It was the very same question Carlisle had asked me the day I had left him and his family.

"Half a century ago, I would have said that I wanted only to confront them. At this point, Bella, I can only say I don't know. I didn't know the monster inside me until I saw him in action. There was a lion in me, and when he found the way to come out, he did so."

A lion was on the Cullen Crest, too. I drew her attention to it. "The lion stands for courage, but I can't consider myself courageous. My victims couldn't defend themselves. He's also a symbol of ferocity, and indeed I'd been ferocious."

Bella winced but didn't tell me to stop. She couldn't know how many victims weighed on my conscience, nor for how long I'd been a relentless killer. If I'd told her that I'd chosen to pass over the innocent and pursue only the evil, would it have mattered? No. Not even I believed anymore that anything could justify what I'd done.

There was a last symbol on the crest. "The hand represents faith and sincerity," I explained. "I lost any faith in myself and had no hope left. I thought that if I killed someone Carlisle cared for, an innocent, only because he was connected to him..." I couldn't go on. "That was the reason for my stay in Italy," I concluded. "My target was here." A pang of pain surged through me. "That's it. I've been a liar for such a long time, but with you I had at least the desire to be sincere."

Bella's hands trembled in her lap. "I don't know what to say, Edward." Her voice wavered and became more acute. "I tried to find a rational explanation for what you told me. I thought you were crazy or I was. I've put every effort into forgetting you – but I can't." She took a quick breath, as if to steady her voice. "It's like my heart is gone – like I'm hollow. Like I've left everything that was inside me with you."

I knew the feeling too well, but I wouldn't ever want her to experience the same torture because of me.

"I haven't spent a single day without thinking about coming to your door, and try to...I don't know what we could ever try!" she went on. "I told myself that you were the same Edward – my friend, the man I..." Her cheeks became crimson. "The man I fell in love with."

For a moment, her words made everything go still around us. "But then, the thought that you weren't going to stop, that maybe, while I was thinking about you, you were taking another human life–"

"I didn't!" I broke out.

In a rush, I closed the distance between us and took her in my arms. She shuddered, but I didn't let her go. Not even the first of her tears reached her cheek before I wiped it away. "I didn't!" I repeated with force.

Bella searched for my face, and I locked my dry eyes with hers, which were brimming with hot tears. I leaned my forehead against hers, her mind separated from me only by a thin layer of flesh, yet still impenetrable.

"You saved me," I confessed. "I got so close to my prey, to the one I thought would give a meaning to my revenge, but then...I couldn't." Once again, I recalled the moment I had run away from Robert Sawyer. "Even if I never saw you again, I knew that if I pursued my revenge, if I killed again, I wouldn't be worthy of even recalling our time together. The thought was unbearable."

She took my face in her hands and brushed my cheekbones, as if she were wiping the tears I couldn't shed. I saw the relief flood her face. Her arms circled my waist, and she drew me toward her. She'd held me before, but that was when she hadn't been aware of my true nature.

"I swear, Isabella," I went on. "I won't take a human life again."

But the image of her, shocked as I revealed to her what I was, and the memory of her pain flashed in my mind. Only my destruction could be enough to prevent me from hurting anyone.

"I know what to do to ensure it."

Thanks for reading! Reviewers get a little gift.

Notes

Stubbornward that much? So it seems...

The next chapter is due to be posted in two weeks. "A Good Liar" is due to be updated next Friday (www. fanfiction s/7817651/1/A_Good_Liar).

Many thanks (and the Cullen Crest) to Camilla10, Marlena516, Jmolly, and Katmom.

"You who hear the sound, […]/ of those sighs on which I fed my heart, […] I hope to find pity, and forgiveness,/ for all the modes in which I talk and weep,/ between vain hope and vain sadness,/ in those who understand love through its trials." Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch), Voi Ch'ascoltate in Rime Sparse..., from the Canzoniere.

On : / / myreadinglounge. blogspot . com you can find An Italian Winter's extras.

I'm on Twitter (RaumTweet).