I bounded up to my room later that evening - desiring a bit of calmness after all the noise and excitement that had surrounded my return home - and nothing had changed since I'd left, apart from the layer of dust that settled over everything. Same blue walls, same purple duvet and upholstery, same book leaning exactly where I had left it. My note of departure was also exactly where I had placed in on my pillow, my tiara surrounding it - a stabbing pain went through my chest at the sight and I pressed my lips together.

I did regret the way I left - no goodbyes to anyone, just after a fight with my father, and a tiny short note with an extremely basic explanation. I didn't need to read the note to know what I had written; even if I wasn't a vampire, I'm sure it would have been burned into my brain.

I have to figure out who I am, I have to find myself.

Isabella Maria Volturi

It had seemed to only way at the time, the only way to get out. He had forbidden me from leaving and would have told the guards to stop me from going. I had tried talking to him that's what the fight stemmed from.

I wondered who had been the one to find the note - sweet Jane, who's room connected to mine after hours of begging to my father? A random member of the guard of was sent to fetch me for some reason or another? One of my uncles, having heard the fight? Alec? For some reason, the idea turned my stomach. Or even my father? I squeezed my eyes shut at that idea, it was truly painful. But what if it was? What if, he had come to my room to try and talk to me again, to try and fix our fight, to get me to over apologise or to apologise himself and had discovered me missing with just that note? An unbidden picture rose in my view of my father perching on the side of the bed, running his fingers over the note or tiara, the childness innocence his face usually held gone before carefully placing it back exactly in the same place so it looked undisturbed.

Part of me was glad my room remained intact but part of my wasn't. If it wasn't then I wouldn't be going through this pain fest right now. Did the fact that it was undisturbed mean that my father had always known I would return sooner or later or was it left as a kind of shrine to me, as a reminder, a place to go when he missed me (for surely he had to have missed me - our fight wasn't that bad)? For my room was all my own, minus the colours, I had all my jewelry, my clothes, paintings of the family through the years, toys from when I was little, books piled and arranged in every nook and cranny in my own crazy organisation system that no one else understood but Jane and I.

I wished someone had removed the note though and put my tiara back in its home.

No longer being able to bare looking at it, I strode over to my bed and scrunched the note up into the smallest ball imaginable, then pressuring it till it turned to nothing more than dust. I let it sprinkle down onto the floor.

I threw myself back onto my bed and shut my eyes again - trying to regain my composure. I ended up opening them only a few minutes later when I sense Jane hovering in the side doorway.

"So," she whispered meeting my eyes, "are really back for good?"

"Yes, it'll take some getting used to though," I admitted softly as I sat up. "It's weird being back here, I just keep getting bombarded with memories that I've kept prisoner for so long."

She entered the room warily which was odd for Jane, she was never quiet or unsure or self-conscious. I waited till she perched on the bed next to me.

"It's not that I'm not glad to be back," I continued and she smiled slightly. "I mean, I love you, and my uncles and my father but … I've spent so long running from him after our fight, so long trying to figure out who I am beside Principessa Isabella Volturi that it's weird coming back to it. Can I be the true me but also be a successful, respected princess? A princess that my father would proud off?"

"Yes," Jane said after a long pause. "Yes, I believe you can. I don't know who this new you is that you set out to discover but I'm pretty sure you can be her and still be loved as Principessa Volturi, still be respected and admired and have Master Aro's approval. But honestly, Isabella, you don't seem all that different to me."

I smiled at her. If there's was one thing I missed most about being here, it was the completely honest conversations I could have with Jane, feeling completely comfortable in voicing any feelings that I couldn't voice to anyone else except the uncle that raised me, the uncle that I'd recently learnt didn't even recognise me as a grown woman. It was slightly heartbreaking.

"Jane, can I ask you something?" I asked softly, picking up my tiara.

"Of course, Principessa," she replied, her tone shocked at my asking.

"Please don't call me that," I whispered, shutting my eyes at the sound of it. Jane opened her mouth to say something but I didn't let her. "I know, it's what the guard have always called me, pretty sure under my father's instructions, but I wish not to be identified by my title anymore - I had never wished to be."

"Of course," Jane agreed readily, "and I shall subtly pass it along."

I smiled at her, "thank you. What I actually wanted to ask you is, um, who discovered I was, I had... gone?"

Jane looked at me for a few minutes as though contemplating her answer, I think she saw my fragility on this matter.

"Well...Alec, I suppose," she said matter-of-factly and at my look quickly expanded her answer.. "Your father was concerned that he hadn't seen you in a while after you fought so he asked a few us if we had seen you. Upon receiving a negative, he asked us to search the castle for you and to send you to see him. Al was the first to check in here and found your note…. why did leave, Isabella?"

"I don't want to get into it," I replied shortly, inside feeling glad that none of my images on my father being the one to discover my note were what truly happened though they were still hard to banish my mind. It did raise the question though why Alec left everything untouched - surely he would have taken the note to my father?

"What did Alec do then?" I asked her quickly, I wasn't going to be in the dark over what happened over my departure, I needed to know so I couldn't allow myself to dwell.

"He fetched your father immediately," Jane answered quickly, "but I don't know what happened after that. Alec left him outside the door."

"Right," I nodded, feeling my stomach sink - parts of those images could still be true - so I quickly changed the subject to the most related thing. "So your brother smiled at me! What was that about?"

Talking about Alec wasn't my favourite thing in the world though - the boy, man, detested me I was sure. Talking about him brought up the unwanted images of us fighting or his calculating looks or of his cold demeanor and the pull I felt towards him despite all of those things. Better him though than continuing this line of conversation and besides right now all my brain was conjuring up was him smiling at me. It made him seem like a different person, a nicer one. She could admit that she'd always thought that year older boy was handsome but when he smiled it was so much more obvious.

"... Isabella, are you listening to a word I'm saying?" Jane's voice punctuated the first pleasant image of Alec I had ever conjured and there's was a slightly part of me that was irritated for that.

Ha ha! So whatcha think? I'm really enjoying creating some new background for this! I've slipped so easily back into the story! x