DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN ANY OF THE CHARACTERS FROM TWILIGHT. THEY ALL BELONG TO STEPHENIE MEYER.

Too long. Too fucking long, I know.

But . . . . . . . on the upside, Eternally Damned won 'Ending Worth Waiting For' over at the Silent Tear Awards, so I'd like to thank all of you who voted for my story.

Edward

Today had been a good day.

Definitely a good day.

Everything on my immediate list of things to do – don't judge me, there were only two things on it – had been done.

One: Destroy Volturi.

Done.

Two: Isabella.

Done, done and done.

The sun had long since set and we were strolling through Venice, something Isabella had wanted to do for a long time, apparently. I was discovering that I enjoyed finding out these little titbits about her and what she wanted to do. I still found it unnerving.

It seemed that the entire country was in an uproar about the 'catastrophe' that had happened in Volterra. We had had an old couple – well, they looked old, it didn't matter that both Isabella and I were older than the both of them – rush up to us and tell us what had happened, panicked looks on their faces before they ran on to tell others.

We had both laughed.

According to the humans, the pipe that ran underneath the castle had burst unexpectedly, sparking and starting the fire. I couldn't help but roll my eyes at the dim-witted fables humans came up with nowadays.

Isabella just found it amusing that it just so happened to be St Marcus Day. Holiday in Volterra.

I've said it before and I don't think I'll ever stop saying it: Stupid humans.

"Question." Isabella sidestepped a little next to me, causing me to look down at her as she raised an eyebrow at me. I smirked at her, silently telling her to proceed and she giggled. Normally, that was a sound I absolutely abhorred, but I couldn't seem to hate anything she did. "The Saint Marcus that they were celebrating or whatever it was they were doing in Volterra."

"That's not a question, but yes . . ." I raised an eyebrow and she pouted at me, her expression letting me know she was not amused.

"I was getting to my question." She shot back, grinning at me. "Is that the – or really was that the Marcus of the Volturi?"

"It was indeed." I nodded.

"How did that happen?" She looked and sounded confused.

"Well, the story goes that he banished all the vampires from Volterra on this day thousands of years ago." I put on an eerie voice and she giggled again. "Just goes to show that no matter where you go in the world, if there's one person that can convince you he's better than everyone else, they'll believe it, whether he's human or not."

She hummed in response and fell silent, her brow furrowing slightly, causing a line to appear on her forehead.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing." She sighed, resting her head on my shoulder as we wandered aimlessly around the city.

"You miss your family." It wasn't a question.

"How did you know?" She looked up at me and I stopped, turning to face her and pulling her into me.

"Bella." I sighed gently, wrapping my arms around her. "I feel what you feel, remember?" She looked away from me, slightly sheepish and I knew that had she the ability, she would be blushing. Though she had started to gain the ability to surprise me – which I hated – there were certain things that she was predictable on. Being embarrassed was one of them.

I pressed my lips to hers gently and she sighed, parting her lips and allowing my tongue into her mouth. Apparently, my venom was not poisonous to those created directly from it. Well, not having tested the theory before, it hadn't ever crossed my mind. But apparently, she did retain the ability to mark me, as I now had a crescent shaped reminder of our first time together completely at the base of my neck. Not that I minded, it coming from Isabella.

A rogue thought from one that wasn't human strayed into my mind and I broke the kiss, my head snapping towards where it was coming from. It wasn't as though I was oblivious to the fact that there were vampires in Venice. What with the city being so close to Volterra, it was only natural that vampires would congregate here to feed before taking the last leg of the journey to the castle.

But this thought . . . this thought was reckless.

It was gleeful that the Volturi were no longer around to stop it from doing as it pleases. The vampire – male, just under five years old and completely ignorant of my presence in the city – had hated the Volturi and their 'oppressive ways'. He wanted to be free to do as he pleased and now, in his mind, he was.

"Wait here." I whispered quietly to Isabella, making my way away from her.

"Why?" She asked, her voice just as quiet. I turned to look at her and she gave me a look as if to say 'I just helped you destroy the Volturi. You really think I'm waiting here for you?' I sighed gently and shook my head, turning back towards the vampire. I knew she was following me. She wouldn't get involved, or let herself be known but she was there.

The vampire was about half a mile away and we quickly made up the ground. The streets were fairly empty now and what with our built in radars, we were able to manoeuvre our way quickly through the streets without being spotted.

Wait. Isabella's voice resounded in my head. She was getting better at controlling her gift, able to access the power bank I had at my disposal and using the one she needed. I have an idea.

And what would that be?

Instead of you going in there and destroying him there and then-

I'm not talking to him.

I'm not saying you should . . .

I turned to look at her as I realised what her plan was. That was another thing that was getting frustrating with Isabella's development. She was getting better at hiding her thoughts from me. You're not talking to him either.

Come on. She practically pleaded with me and I scowled at her. If he won't listen to me, then you can rip him apart. I don't want to be seen as a weakness of yours, Edward. I don't ever want to be a burden to you in that way.

I walked over to her, still listening to the vampire's mind as I did so. "You're never a burden to me."

"But other's will see me as your weak spot." She sighed gently, leaning into my touch as I cupped her face in my hands. "I don't even want to give others the chance to think that about me. Please."

I closed my eyes for a moment, taking a deep, unnecessary breath, before looking down at her again. "I must be going soft."

"Yay." She grinned at me before wrapping her arms around my neck and pressing her lips to mine in a chaste kiss.

She released her hold on me, glancing back once with an evil glint in her eye. The same glint I was used to seeing in the minds of my victims just after they realised that their time had come, and that they weren't going to be meeting their end warm and safe in their beds as they wished they would.

Even though I had been cautious of letting her bargain with this vampire on her own, I couldn't help but wonder if there really was something out there that had made this girl specifically for me. Maybe they had decided that I had been through enough time on my own and made a female counterpart for me. Not that I minded one tiny bit.

Following Isabella through the darkness, I couldn't help but smirk to myself.

Things certainly had been more interesting since she entered my existence.

Bella

I knew that in Edward allowing me to go on before him, he was trusting me. He was trusting me not to screw this up, but then again, I also knew that he was trusting me to leave him the vampire so he could destroy it. Because . . . well, he was Edward and he liked destroying things.

But I think we all already knew that, don't you?

As I rounded the corner, I found the vampire Edward and I had locked on to. I had heard it only moments after he had and knew why he was interested in him.

He was feeding on a girl and from what I could gather, she was his fourth of the evening. He hadn't even disposed of the bodies properly, leaving them in the street for anyone to find. Thankfully, none of them were changing. He had drained them all.

He noticed my approach and grinned at me as I walked over to him.

"Hello, beautiful." He had a thick accent. Not Italian. It sounded Baltic, maybe Eastern European. "Come to join my feast?"

"No." I shook my head, stopping in front of him, hooking my thumbs through my front belt loops. "And if I were you, I'd stop right now."

"Why?" He laughed, dropping the now dead girl. You could tell that she was pretty. Long, dark hair splaying across her face and fanning out underneath her. Slender figure accentuated by her tight jeans, high boots and flowing top. Her features were soft, cheekbones high, leading down into a sleek and slender jaw and throat. Not that you could tell about her throat anymore. All that was left of it was haggard muscle and sinew. I could see a trace of white, indicating that he had bitten all the way through to her spine, most likely enjoying her screams of terror and pain. "Haven't you heard? The Volturi is gone. We have no reason to hide anymore. Now that they are gone, we can finally take our place at the top of the food chain, above these wretched humans."

"Just because the Volturi is gone, it doesn't mean we can automatically do what we want." I told him, my voice light and airy as though this wasn't a conversation that might lead to his death.

"There's no one to stop us." He retorted, looking mighty pleased with himself. He stepped over the girl and started walking towards me slowly as though I was one of the human girls he seemed to delight in feeding off of. "There's no one to stop me."

"Wanna bet?" I cocked my head to the side and he stopped, his brow furrowing in confusion. "You must not be aware of the fact that the one who made the Volturi is the one that made the law. And that he is still very much alive, as it were."

"Who? Edward?" He scoffed, chuckling slightly. He walked up to me, stopping directly in front of me. I could smell the reek of human blood on his breath and his clothes. It emanated from him. I know Edward fed off of human blood, but he didn't gorge himself as this vampire had done tonight. He only took as much as was necessary and he never came back to me smelling of it. This was just gross. "Now, you need to realise that he is just a bad story made up to scare newborn vampires. And it looks like you fell for it."

I tilted my head to the side and smiled sweetly up at him, opening my eyes wide, loving the fact that his were zoning in on the pale amber of my irises. "Listen, dickwad. I'm over a hundred years old." I looked around and lowered my voice to a stage whisper even though I knew exactly where Edward was. This guy didn't and that was the whole point. "And between us. Edward is real. Believe me, he is real." I managed to add a seductive tone to my voice and the vampire's eyes shot up, almost disappearing into his hairline as he saw my smirk, portraying exactly what I wanted it to. "And, um . . . you, unfortunately are going to be finding that out . . . the hard way."

I turned around so I was no longer facing the vampire, but sideways to him as we both heard the slow footsteps – louder than necessary, but hey, what can I say? my man loves the dramatics – approaching us. I couldn't hold in the smile as he stepped out of the alleyway a mere twenty feet away from us.

Though the vampire still didn't believe that Edward was real, thinking that he was only something the Volturi had cooked up to keep the race in line, he knew that Edward was something to fear. He knew he was powerful.

Edward's smirk was dangerous and dark as he approached, slipping an arm around my waist as he stopped, tilting his head as he examined the now quaking vampire in front of us.

"Did you hear what he said?" I asked Edward, keeping up my innocent act – which he loved, by the way – interlinking my fingers as my arms wrapped around his waist as I looked up him. "He thinks you're not real."

"Well . . . we'll have to rectify that . . . won't we?" The growl that rumbled through his chest was deep, guttural and feral. And I loved it. He looked down at me and I grinned up at him. "I know there's something you've been wondering for a while now, love." He looked back up at the vampire, grabbing him around the throat and pulling him towards us again, his deep ruby eyes radiating age and power. "Can vampires go insane?" He whispered evilly, more to the doomed vampire than to me. He was right. I had been wondering that, because it seemed that Aro had been close to going insane.

Seems that Edward was going to provide the answer now.

"Let's see, shall we?" He smirked down at me and I grinned up at him, turning to look back at the vampire.

I felt Edward doing something with his mind, so I let down the shields around my own, gently expanding my own consciousness and intertwining it with his. Edward said I had been learning fast, and I knew that it was surprising him. He was proud of me, though. As I felt my mind connecting with Edward's, I was hit with a cacophony of images that nearly knocked me flat.

As I stood there, I was getting glimpses of Edward through other people's eyes. Through the eyes of other vampires, through the eyes of humans and I dare say it, I was getting glimpses of the world through Edward's eyes. What was he doing?

After a minute or so, he dropped the vampire, who crumbled to the ground. Now I had never seen that happen before. Even with James and Victoria, they had at least gone down fighting. This guy was sat on the floor, his head twitching all over the place, his eyes completely void of anything whatsoever.

"What did you do?" I asked Edward and he smirked.

"Just bombarded him with the consciousness of every creature I've ever touched." He smirked and I couldn't help but smile and shake my head. Trust him. "Seems he's reacted in the same way as a human with information overload. He's gone into shock. Guess the vampire mind isn't as infinite as we've been led to believe."

"Except for yours, that is." I corrected him and he nodded slowly, still smirking at the dazed vampire.

"Except for me."

"I think we've found the answer." I looked up at him and his smirk grew. "It seems vampires can reach a certain level of insanity. Too bad we won't be able to study him, huh?"

"Meh." Well that was a noise I had never heard him make before. Maybe this whole feeding off personalities thing wasn't just one way. Maybe he was absorbing parts of mine as I was from him. I wonder. "Well, he's shown that he has no respect for authority or the law. Now with the Volturi gone, I can't afford to be lax in my rule."

"So he has to go bye-bye." I nodded, stepping away from Edward while he did his thing. I made my way over to the girl, kneeling down beside her. I noticed that she had an engagement ring on her finger, the diamond glinting in the faint light of the back alley we were currently located in and I couldn't help but feel for the poor man she was leaving behind.

I picked up her purse, opening it as I heard the metallic shredding of vampire flesh coming from behind me, knowing Edward was in his element yet again. But I couldn't find it in myself to care about the vampire Edward was making an example of as I pulled out a small booklet and opening it. I knew that if I still had the ability I would have burst into tears at what I was holding in my hand.

It was a scan picture of a baby.

"What's the matter, love?" Edward came up behind me, kneeling down beside me and the dead girl, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. He smelled of the sweet smoke that was the telltale sign of a burning vampire and I knew that there would be humans around soon, investigating what caused the fire.

"She was pregnant." I whispered, showing him the photograph. "Not that it really matters to you, but-"

"Hey." He pressed a finger to my lips. "I might be a monster, but I don't believe in killing those with child."

"Really?" I couldn't help but be a little shocked at this admission. He shrugged, shaking his head and looked back at the girl, placing a hand on her belly, which I could see now that the top had been tautened by Edward's hand.

"I don't what it was, but . . ." The way he looked at the woman made me think that there was something more beneath the surface here. Something deep in his past. Maybe even way back when he was human. "If you're in the right mind, it's easy to tell when a woman is pregnant. She smells different. Other than my crazed newborn year, when I just didn't know what the hell was going on, I have never fed on a pregnant woman."

"Do you think it could be that we're unable to have children?" I asked him, leaning into his side. "Maybe there's something inside your head allowing the human race to carry on, not letting you hinder it in any way."

"Maybe." He sighed, still looking at the woman. "I don't know."

"I hate to leave her here." I sighed, looking at the scan picture again. "Is there any way we can give her back to her family? I mean, so they're not worried about her?"

He looked down at me, a small smile on his face as he looked back at the woman, taking his hand off of her stomach and brushing the hair on her neck aside. I hadn't noticed that the vampire hadn't only mauled her neck, but her shoulder and the top of her arm as well.

"Monster." I breathed, as Edward sighed.

"We're everywhere." He looked around, listening, just as I was. Humans were starting to noticed the smoke coming from back here and I knew that if we didn't move now, we would be seen.

"Please, Edward." I whispered again, placing the picture back in her purse. "I don't want to leave her here."

"Alright." He pressed his lips to my hair, standing up, lifting up the woman at the same time. "You really are turning me soft."

We left the back street quickly and silently, leaving the woman in a darkened area of a main street where we knew she would be found sooner rather than later.

"What do you think will happen to her?" I asked as we walked away, slowly.

"She'll be found." He wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me to him, closely. "It doesn't look like she was attacked by anything other than an animal, so it'll most likely be put down to a rapid dog or something like that."

"Okay." I mumbled to myself. "Edward?" He hummed in response, looking down at me. "Thank you."

"That's alright, love."

"No." I shook my head, stopping the both of us before I wrapped my arms around his neck. "You didn't have to do something like that. I know it was probably silly to you to do that, but you did it anyway and well . . ."

"Love, if it's important to you, then it's important to me." He said softly, pressing his lips into my hair.

It was in that moment that I truly understood that he would do anything for me, just as I would do anything for him.

Edward

Isabella hadn't been far off when she said that it must have seemed silly to put that woman in a more noticeable place, but there was something different about it.

I had been telling the truth when I had said that I had never fed off of a woman with child. Yes, I was a monster, but I valued the life I no longer had. If a woman was with child, that meant that it wasn't just her she was nurturing and that had always sparked something in me.

I knew that Isabella had caught on, but she didn't know the reason behind my preservation of pregnant women. I would tell her at some point. But seeing her reaction towards the dead woman, I wasn't sure it was a good idea.

"What's up?" Isabella's gentle voice broke me out of my musings as we crossed the Atlantic back to America. I had some business to take care of and she missed her family, so we would get both things done at the same time. Considering the man I needed to see – or rather threaten – was in Seattle. It wouldn't take long, but it would give Isabella the much needed time she desired.

It had been three months since we'd left Forks and though they had probably had a blow by blow account from Alice, she wanted to tell them about where we had been, what we had been doing. Yes, I had indulged the seventeen year old in Isabella and taken her to all the tourist spots she wanted to go to.

"What do you mean?" I looked over at her and she gave me a 'don't try it' look. She had gotten extremely adept at reading me while we had been away and though I knew how to read her better than anyone else on the planet, it unnerved me.

"You've been acting odd for a while now." She made her way over to me, planting herself in her lap, which was pretty much her permanent residence right now. "And I keep getting flashes of the woman in Italy." She looked down at me with her deep golden eyes. Neither of us had changed our diets and I knew that we would be together for an eternity and neither of us would relent. "That hit you pretty hard, didn't it?"

"It just brought back some memories that I didn't want to relive, that's all."

"Back you were human." It wasn't a question and I nodded. "Tell me."

"Bella, I don't think that-"

"That I can handle it?" She finished, raising her eyebrows at me. "I've seen you maim and destroy vampires, set buildings on fire and I know what you've done in previous centuries. Let me in. I don't know about when you were human. You knew me when I was human. Trade a little." I couldn't help but chuckle at her logic. "What was it that got to you, huh? What was it that got to the invincible Edward?"

"First off, stop it." She sat up slightly, pouting at me and I chuckled lightly. "It's a mix of things that happened back then."

"Alright." I sighed gently, "but you can't interrupt me." She nodded quickly, her arms settling around my neck again as she rested her head on my shoulder. "You're right, it was when I was human. You say that I 'knew you' when you were human and you want to know me, but you have to remember, things were very different when in my time. There wasn't anything fancy. Hell, we didn't even have time or language. All we had was a basic point and grunt thing going on, the most eloquent of sounds being those used for names. Other than that, you wanted something, you pointed at it and that was about it. Hunting with weapons was as luxurious as it got back then. None of this readymade food stuff humans have now. You wanted a meal you had to work for it."

"Sounds hard." She whispered against my chest gently.

"It was at times. I remember winter being the hardest. But then again, it is, even now. I remember, it was the year I turned seventeen, though like I said we didn't measure time at all. It was in seasons, generally going through winters. My mother had fallen pregnant again with her second child. After having me she hadn't been able to and everyone was ecstatic at the conception. Except one member of the tribe."

"You mean you actually had tribes?" Isabella asked, her head coming off of my shoulder slightly, her golden eyes wide. I raised my eyebrows at her and she smiled sheepishly. "I'll shut up now. What happened with your mother?"

"Well, a lot of other women in the tribe were pregnant at the same time. There was never one on her own, which was good for them, I guess. But one member wasn't happy about my mother's pregnancy. Because he wasn't the father. I remember his obsession with my mother, so when she became pregnant with another man's child, as with this day and age, jealousy and rage ensued."

"How did he know it wasn't his?" She asked, looking confused at my words. "I mean, don't take this the wrong way, but from what I've heard, people in the Stone Age were kind of . . ."

I could see her struggling to come up with a word that she thought wouldn't upset me and although it was amusing, I decided to help her out a little. "Promiscuous?" She nodded, biting her lip. "It's true, we were, but . . . I don't know, somehow we always knew whose baby was whose. It's weird but we always knew. Besides, my mother always shot this particular guy down." She nodded in understanding. "Just think of the situation between you and this Mike Newton guy that always bugged you in Forks."

"How do you know about him?" She asked, leaning away from me and narrowing her eyes at me slightly. I raised an eyebrow and understanding dawned on her face. "Fair enough. Carry on."

"Like I was saying, this guy wasn't happy. Little weedy thing he was. Neyaar, his name was. He was always trying to be one of the big boys yet he could never do it. Could never quite get there, you know what I mean?" I looked at her, and flashes of the wimpy boys at Forks and previous schools she'd been to flashed through her mind. "Exactly. He knew that he'd never be able to get back at the one who got my mother pregnant . . . so he took his jealousy and rage out on her instead."

"He hurt her?"

"He killed her." I sighed, hearing her gasp in shock. "He didn't care that she was dead. She shouldn't have been pregnant with another male's child, in his eyes. Completely forgetting that she already had me. But then again, I was big enough to fight back, so he didn't want to bother with me."

"What if he'd been bigger?" She asked, looking worried.

"Then he probably would have come after me, not my mother, knowing that it would kill her to lose me. We might have been classed as savages by you people, but there was nothing more important to us than family." She giggled lightly when I said 'you people' knowing that I meant modern people viewed the Stone Age as savages, without really knowing the dynamics of the time. "But he wasn't. He was unimpressive and small. He knew that I would best him in a fight and I would have done if I'd been allowed to. But he disappeared that night."

"I guess that kind of thing happened all the time, huh?" She sounded said and looked confused when I shook my head.

"No, it didn't. Surprising I know, but it didn't. Taking the life of a member of the tribe was punishable by death, naturally, but the taking of a life of a pregnant woman. You lost your soul."

"It must have been really hard for you." She ran her fingers through my hair gently, comforting a hurt I never had a chance to feel. "Being without your mother."

"No." I shook my head and I knew that I had her confused. "It was the night she died that I went out and got turned into this." I gestured to myself. "I was just . . . so full of emotions I didn't understand. They warned me not to leave the safety of the camp, but I didn't listen. I went off on my own and didn't come back human."

"How did they warn you?"

"How do you think?" I looked up at her and she giggled lightly with the oddly accurate images running through her mind.

"What happened to the guy who killed your mother?" Her tone was wistful as though she would have loved to meet my mother someday and was only now realising that she never would. Apart from the fact that my mother would have been dead for millennia even if she had had the baby.

"I ate him." I shrugged and she chuckled lightly. "I ate everyone."

"I know that." She sighed, looking into my eyes, making me feel the way only she could. "What I mean was did they find him before you did?"

"I know you meant that." I grinned at her and she slapped my arm. "Yes, they did. They found him when I was still burning and he was to be put on some form of trial in front of what would be known nowadays as the high priestess."

"You didn't have a name for her?" She raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, we did." Her other eyebrow raised as she waited to hear it. Not wanting to disappoint I pointed aimlessly and told her. "Unnhh." Now that got a laugh out of her. "Seriously."

"I believe you." She giggled, sighing wistfully at me. "Let me guess: no trial?"

"No." I shook my head. "One trial in front of the entire tribe plus one crazed newborn vampire, who had no clue what was going on and you're not going to have a happy ending."

"Massacre?"

"Think natural disaster meets terrorist attack." Her nose crinkled at the imagery and I couldn't help but place a kiss on the end of it, watching as it smoothed out with her smile. "I know you don't like to think about it, but that's the best way I can think of to explain it, without showing you and I really don't want to do that."

"Why?"

"Because it's not really a place I like going back to. Do you like thinking back to when you were a newborn?" She shook her head quickly, grimacing at some of the things she must have done or seen. I knew that she had killed a fair few humans whilst in her first year, but it was nothing compared to the devastation I caused and she knew this. "It wasn't until I had ended the life of the last person of the tribe, that I realised that chaos I had caused. When I looked down at the woman in my arms I knew that I was a monster."

"She was pregnant."

I nodded, taking a deep breath, wondering how Bella was going to take the next part to the story. "Yeah, she was."

"That's why you don't feed off of pregnant women?" I shook my head, not meeting her gaze, feeling slightly ashamed of what I was about to admit. Shame was never something I had ever had to deal with before. It just wasn't me. "What then?"

"The baby was mine." I whispered and she stiffened slightly.

"Oh, Edward." She pressed her lips to my throat, lovingly, wanting to take away pain I had never let myself feel. I wasn't going to start now.

We spent the remainder of the flight over the US in silence, holding each other. I closed my eyes, clearing my head of everything I had told her and I wondered what was going on through her head. I wouldn't pry, because I knew that she needed her privacy.

Would she be able to stick by me now that she knew I had murdered my own child?

Only time will tell, I guess.

Lots of info this chapter. It was difficult for me to write this chapter, because I know what's happening in the next few, but I had no idea how to get there.

For those of you asking, this story is not yet finished nor will it be going on hiatus any time soon. Just a bit of writers' block, that's all.

Here it is. Hope you enjoy.

Leave me a review.