A/N - It's been a while, but… WOW. It's been over a year since I started writing this story. My mind is sort of blown. I started writing this when I was 14 and now I'm 16. Time really does fly.

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Original Story

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The Cullens tried to convince themselves it was another vision, but Bella staring directly at them made the act difficult.

"B-Bella?"

The brunette turned her sharp, dagger-like gaze upon Rosalie. Of the two, only one was shocked, for she had never seen Bella so angry. Rose felt only a pinprick of what she'd once made her almost-sister feel all the times she had rejected her.

All of the Cullens who weren't Rosalie had easily been convinced that this was the real Bella. The same Bella who had disappeared after the man-eating demon episode-vision. Clearly, something had happened in the few hours she'd been gone.

"Where have you been? What happened?" asked Alice.

Barely acknowledging the pixie, Bella looked individually at each of the Cullens with her dark, haunted eyes. Her jaw clenched as she gritted her teeth, but then she reminded herself of the potential to ground them into dust. So, she settled for clenching her fists, a very visible sign of her anger.

"Be-"

The girl raised her head, meeting Carlisle's eyes with a fierce glare, the light that had once been in them snuffed out and replaced by a raging, destructive inferno. "Don't." Her voice echoed through the void, dangerous and commanding.

She again looked at them, signs of anger beginning to surface. First, her eyebrows buried themselves, her jaw ticked, her nostrils flared. The tendons in her neck stretched and the veins on her forehead became prominent. As the Cullens were used to a Bella flustered and embarrassed by her own anger and accustomed to the changing of her skin tone from unhealthily pale to an alarming red, they did not know how to react.

"Don't you dare speak to me," Bella continued slowly, spittle practically flying from her mouth as she seethed. "My mind is a mess. My memories are jumbled. There is only so much the human brain can take. You were wrong, Edward." For once, she could say his name without breaking down, but the aforementioned boy knew it was not a step in the right direction. "My mind is not a sieve. It is a fortress and the floodgates have been opened."

"I'm so sorry, Bella."

As suddenly as Calista appeared, Bella had a previously concealed knife to her throat. The Cullens froze in shock.

"I know I can't kill you," Bella said as she crept toward the blue girl. She leaned in to whisper in her ear, glad to know the Cullens couldn't listen in. Still, they tried to listen in, which was something she saw from the corner of her eye. "But I know your weakness."

The family watched as Calista's face morphed into an expression of raw terror, and her terror became their own as they watched the vision versions of Bella begin to play out right in front of them. They could not make out the reason as to how or why she would change so quickly.

Bella turned to the Cullens after lowering her knife, tucking it safely in her boot. "The memories of three different lives play on a loop in my mind," she announced, sounding only a smidgen calmer. She faced Calista. "You can thank Quentin for that."

The sky blue color of Calista's face paled. "Quentin?" she hissed incredulously.

"Hold on now," Jasper said as he stood and came between the two, unwary of the knife and power the two held, respectively. "Just who is Quentin?"

Both human and interdimensional being snapped their heads toward him. Bella and Calista glanced at each other and answered, in perfect unison, "A monster."

And here, my friends, is where Bella at last revealed where she had spent the last three hours.

"Before Calista plucked me from my truck, I had already been plucked by him…"

"Stop," she said breathlessly, using what little strength she had in her arms to hold herself up.

"I'll stop when you tell me the correct decision." The voice was light, airy, carrying an alluring tenor undertone that one might find hypnotizing in a different situation. But this was not a different situation and Bella saw the voice for what it was: dark, manipulative, evil.

"I've been here for almost a day. Someone's bound to notice I'm gone."

The man, a being purely made of silver and white glass, leaned into her ear. "It's been much longer than a day. Don't you remember what I said? Time doesn't move here."

"How long has it been?" she asked, daring to look up through her curtain of hair.

He knelt down in front of her. "Five years. You've lasted longer than most." He grabbed her chin, forcing her eyes to meet his. When their gazes locked, his eyes glowed a bright silver, and as if in echo, hers did a second after. "But I'll break you yet." He stood, brushing off his hands. "You may be special, but you're no different from the rest."

With that, he disappeared in a cloud of light grey mist.

Bella struggled off the ground and used the ledge of the wall for support as she hobbled to the window. She banged on it once. Then two more times. As usual, there was no response. The people on the other side didn't move a muscle in her direction and she felt what was left of her hope diminish.

They were so close, they had been for...well, if she tried to do the math, Bella guessed that they had been in that room for two days now. Once, all she wanted was to see them again, but now she just wanted to go home and forget they ever existed.

"Do you regret meeting us?"

"Hush," Bella said, her tone clipped, "I knew that there was only one way I could get back to my life. So, shortly after, I made my decision…"

With her head against the wall, Bella had her eyes closed, envisioning how she would live her life if she ever got to go back home.

She groaned when she heard the sound of his arrival that sounded like glass shattering.

"Have you made the correct decision?" he asked, as he always did.

She always gave the same response, gave nothing, but she had an answer this time. "No," she said confidently, ignoring the way his eyes lit up mischievously.

"Oh?" was his response, a single finger lifted from his needless cane. "And, pray tell, what would that be?"

"The answer to your question. My answer is no," Bella stated definitively. She heard his voice in her head repeating the question over and over: If you could, would you choose to become a vampire at this very moment?

He elicited a squeal better fitting an eight-year-old girl. "Do you feel this strongly?"

"Quite."

"Perfect!" he clapped his hands together a single time before spinning around the room, dancing to nonexistent music.

She watched him, and she thought he was a lunatic, which she knew he was. "What are you doing?"

"I'm doing a happy jig." When she didn't respond at all, his smile dropped into a frown. "I'm allowed to cheer for breaking Her eminence, am I not?"

"I'm sorry. Her what now?" Bella asked, catching but not understanding what he meant by 'eminence'.

The only answer she received was a throaty chuckle. "We'll get to that later. We've not much time. You must know a few things now that you've made the correct decision."

Bella nodded for him to continue.

"To start off, in approximately," he paused for a moment, "7.438 minutes, 'Lista will be starting the new vision and will bring you in." At her expression of panic, he held up a placating hand. "Relax. She'll end up giving you fake memories so you won't remember your life in the mortal world or any of this."

"If I won't remember then what was the whole point of enduring five years of your 'fun'?" she shouted.

"I spent five years growing your beautiful feeling of hard opposition to the option of becoming one of the undead."

Bella ran her hands through her hair but didn't bother trying to pace. Her leg was still heavily bruised and the other one was still healing from a hairline fracture. "Why does it matter so much to you?" she asked.

"Because we won't accept Her eminence if she is one of the undead."

"What the hell does 'Her eminence' mean?" she shouted, her patience gone.

He smirked. "Her Majesty."

Before she could blink, Bella was in her truck, head full of five years (but also one day?) of torture and the knowledge that she was about to see the Cullens again.

"What did Quentin do to you?"

Bella shifted to face Emmett. "Best not to get into the details, Brother Bear," she said, and for a moment, everyone forgot Bella's anger.

"So, you knew?"

"I did, but Calista quickly took care of that little issue, didn't she," Bella muttered bitterly.

Esme leaned forward. "Where did you go after the demon vision?"

"Well, hmm… I'm getting kind of tired with all the storytelling." She feigned a yawn and sat up, turning to a nervous Calista. "Care to continue?"

Calista sighed resignedly. "I noticed something was off…"

Calista materialized in her created house, Bella landing on the ground with a hard thud behind her. With a wave of her hand, her hair was pulled into a ponytail and she knelt down next to Bella's head, frowning.

"I can feel his power on you. I don't know what he did to you, but I have a strong idea."

"Very good," said a voice behind her. She froze for a brief moment before she stood, summoning her Knife of Glade - the one thing that can destroy a cosmic being - and spun to face him.

"What are you doing here? You know you and your people aren't allowed on our side." She held onto her knife firmly, not wanting to risk the chance of dropping it and losing her only defense.

He chuckled and shook his head, his silver hair clinking like wine glasses after a toast. He looked around the well-decorated room, nodding in approval. "It's so...bright. I don't know how you can stand it."

"It's as close as we can get to sunlight," she said defensively. "And I got the idea from Kaz."

"Kaz is a twat and that's why he's in records," he snapped before realizing how ridiculous he sounded. He shook his head and held up his hands. "Look, I'm not here to fight. I'm here to discuss her," he said, nodding to Bella's unconscious form.

"I've seen the mark you left on her."

"It had to be done," he brushed off her comment. "I just had to snuff out that want for the impossible."

"It's not impossible," Calista said smugly. "I have seven here right now."

"Yes," he said slowly, rounding the grey couch and sitting himself down. He set both hands on top of his cane as he looked at Calista, who remained standing. "Why are they here? You know we have supernatural interferences all the time. It's just a part of the process."

Calista walked slowly, stiffly, so she stood in front of him with crossed arms. "You know just as well as I that it wasn't them I was looking after. I had to make sure she wasn't endangered, and it seems I have failed."

He stood from the couch, dismissing his cane with a simple wave of his hand. He straightened his ancient coat. "It seems you have," Quentin agreed. "I haven't."

"You," she growled in realization, lunging forward but stopped herself at the last second. "You're the reason why she changed her mind. You let me toy with her memories, but you made the decision a feeling, knowing I can't alter those."

"Precisely," he grinned. "So far, the odds are leaning in my direction. Let's see what your side comes up with."

"I'm not going to play tug of war with an innocent girl as the rope!"

He snarled. "But you will," he stepped forward, one long step that had him standing just inches away from her face. "You must. Or else you'll lose your princess."

"And why are you so determined to have me try to take yours?"

"Because as much as I don't want to admit it, she's our princess. Both the guardians and fatesfolk. But my Queen wants her daughter to herself," he started.

Calista groaned. "And my King wants his daughter to himself," she finished. "The problem being they're the same person."

"Can either of you tell me what's going on?" Bella asked as she sat up, eyeing the man suspiciously. He looked exactly like Calista, but silver instead of blue. She hadn't seen him before but she felt like she had.

Calista cringed and waved her hand, sending Bella back to the viewing room.

"Idiot!" he shouted. "She's seen me! No doubt she'll tell the others and then they'll wonder what's going on."

She put her head in her hands and groaned, the sound coming out muffled and loud. When she looked up, it was directly into his ever-silver eyes. "We'll be a team, just this once. We have thirty minutes to figure out how the hell we're going to explain everything to them without creating a panic."

He scratched his head with a single finger. "Yeah, that's a challenge. Luckily, I always win."

"Well, you have a time limit on this one."

Just as the questions began to burst, the room again faded to white. Bella and Calista- they disappeared, as if they were apparitions. But that's exactly what they were.

"What?" Edward mumbled to himself as he looked around. The room was completely empty except for the members of his family.

"The hell just happened?" Emmett exploded, his voice filling the infinite space.

Suddenly, surprisingly, actually shockingly, Carlisle burst into a hysterical fit of laughter. "Oh!" he exclaimed. "Oh, my!" He held a hand to his heaving chest in an attempt to reign himself in, but it held a measly effect.

"Carlisle?" Esme said, her golden eyes wide and round with shock. "Carlisle, honey, what is it?"

He gathered himself enough to muster a single sentence before he succumbed once again to his hysterics, "It was a vision!"

The information clicked in their brains but also did not register.

They had talked with Bella and Calista. They had engaged in a conversation with them. How was it a vision?

As if she was a walking personification of Google, Calista poofed right in the center of the chaos, ready for any and all questions. Luckily, she already knew what they were and shot off her answers, "No, that was not the real Bella. Or the real me. I sent the real Bella off to her truck a long time ago. As for what that was, that was an interactive vision. I wanted to show that no matter how nonsensical and unlikely it seems, anything can happen. Sure, Bella being the princess of my interdimensional species is highly unlikely, but there is still a chance, however small it may be. And just like in the visions, anything can happen in your lives, too. Even if you don't plan it, any small action can set off a chain of reactions. Like the paper cut that ended up with you all running away." She paused, though it was more to give them time to process than out of a need to breathe. "I need you to know that there are no second…okay, third chances. If you screw up with Bella again, that's it. No do-overs. You have exactly one chance to make it right with her, and if you fail, then you'll lose her forever."

Even for Calista, who barely knew any of them, it was hard to say the words. But they needed to know what was at stake. And, by the looks of their faces, she knew she had done the right thing. Reality was finally settling in for the Cullen family.

15/16 - Written: 10/10/21-7/12/22

Posted - 8/20/22

:)