A/N Whew! This was a difficult chapter to write! And I'll just say that's why I took forty freaking years to update. I really hope I didn't mess it up too much, but you might just have to bear with me here. I wanted you dedicated readers to at least have this much, even if it is a train wreck (which I really hope it's not).
So: A little foreword about what's going on in this chapter. Bella and Edward just got back from Bella's very first hunt out on Cullen property. She recognized Eleazar when they returned, and Eleazar recognized Bella as Elena. So this chapter is all about Eleazar and Bella explaining what exactly happened in Italy that made Bella move to Chicago, before Bella ever met Edward the very first time.
Disclaimer: I hope Ms. Meyer isn't too offended by my use of her lovely characters. I just love them. And I love the whole series, but it still would have been cool if this happened instead ;)
Chapter 19 - EPOV
The room may have been silent, but my mind was filled with the screaming sounds of the minds of all the vampires surrounding me, all except for one at least. Bella seemed to have a look of near physical pain from all the foreign thoughts and emotions she was experiencing, but she was bravely ignoring them as her eyes remained locked in Eleazar's.
I tried to pick out specific thoughts from each of my family members and I wondered which Bella was hearing most prominently.
Eleazar's thoughts were confused and imprecise, a mixture of random images and incomplete sentences flashed through his head rapidly.
Wait, Bella knows Eleazar? Bella, you know Eleazar? Emmett's voice boomed in my head above the other noises.
I watched as Bella's eyes flickered slightly toward Emmett in what seemed to be an acknowledgement, or some sort of positive response. Then her eyes returned to Eleazar's and the silent conversation continued. I continued scanning the thoughts of my family members and the Denali's as the louder ones intruded in my consciousness.
How? Demanded Emmett again, but my concentration was pulled by another voice.
Elena? Bella, what's going on? Rosalie.
Well I guess that explains my vision, thought Alice as a quick glimpse of Bella and Eleazar hugging shone in her consciousness. If Bella saw that vision she didn't react, she simply continued staring at Eleazar, and her expression was one that I easily classified as a mixture of recognition and confusion.
Bella, try to relax. Don't focus on the muddled emotions. Jasper, of course attempting to calm the disorientation which seems to have been at least partially responsible for keeping Bella frozen in place.
Bella seems to have quite a history with our family, I wonder how this came to pass. Esme.
Why are her eyes red? Wondered Kate who took a step closer to Carmen and Eleazar, acting on the unnamed desire to protect her family.
As my focus passed over Kate's consciousness to her companion Garret's I noted that he was only slightly more cohesive than Eleazar, so I didn't bother to strain upon his thoughts.
Irinia seemed to feel a slight discomfort at the new development and the intensive staring which Eleazar and Bella were engaged in. Her thoughts were similar to Kate's and I watched her move forward infinitesimally to join her sister in a protective stance.
She seems to be too controlled to be a newborn, perhaps she is just passing through. I'm sure there is nothing going on between this random newcomer and Edward. Thought Tanya possessively. She too had immediately spotted Bella's crimson eyes and I recognized her wishful thinking at its finest.
¿Quién es ésta niña hermosa? Edward, who is this beautiful girl? Carmen switched to English in her head, acknowledging the fact that I could read her thoughts as her eyes came to rest on mine. And why is she staring at my husband like that? She wondered lightly. I immediately appreciated the joviality in her mind's voice, the tension from everybody else was becoming a little too much. I wondered how Bella was handling it.
Really though, I've seen him stare at gifted vampires that way before, reading and understanding their gift, but I've never seen someone give him that look right back, Carmen nearly laughed in her head. It was only then that I noticed the staring had changed, I couldn't place the new emotion behind Bella's eyes, but I realized right away that just as Carmen thought, Eleazar was attempting to get a read on Bella's gift, and if it were my guess, Bella was attempting the same thing.
Carlisle's thoughts were racing a mile a minute as they so often did, theories crossing his conscious and subconscious mind before he could rule them out or analyze them.
The mere 63 seconds of silence which had passed since Bella and Eleazar first recognized each other seemed to drag out for an eternity. Finally Eleazar broke the heavy silence in the room by addressing Bella. "Lei ricorda, Elena?" In fluid Italian he asked Bella simply if she remembered. All thoughts left the conscious minds of our companions as we waited for Bella's answer. Bella seemed to release an unnecessary breath, most likely from the renewed silence in her mind. If I hadn't been so tense and straining to hear the answer, I might have done the same.
Bella remained silent and brooding for another three quarters of a second before she answered. I watched as her eyes became somewhat unfocused during that short time frame. It didn't seem like she was having an Alice induced vision of the future, but perhaps a memory of a previous life.
"Sì, faccio, Eleazar," She said softly. I heard Rosalie translate the simple affirmative statement to Emmett, but he shrugged her off, refusing any further Italian translations.
"Rosie, I started learning Italian almost a week ago, I think I can follow a simple conversation by now," he whispered indignantly, and Rose stifled a chuckle in response.
Eleazar ran a hand through his dark hair in contemplation and turned to Carmen. Emmett and Rosalie's conversation had just reminded him he was not alone in a room with Bella, or as he knew her, Elena.
Carlisle spoke this time, "Eleazar, am I to assume you have already been acquainted with the newest member of our family, Bella?"
Tanya's thoughts were incredulous and she gaped at me. "Bella?" she asked, ineffectively hiding her frustration. "As in the human that completely messed you up all those years ago?"
"The very same," I smiled lovingly at Bella who's eyes had finally found their way back to mine.
"But," she tried to rearrange the disappointment in both her features and thoughts. I appreciated that. "Well, how? How did this happen? I thought she—," Tanya paused for a moment, searching for a way to put this delicately, "I thought she had died?"
I didn't really have an answer, or at least I didn't have a quick answer. I really didn't feel the desire to explain the miracle that was my Bella right now, when there were still mysteries which needed to be revealed, one in particular named Eleazar.
As if he heard the thoughts in my head, Eleazar turned to me abruptly. "This is Bella?" He motioned toward her. "I don't understand how this is possible, this is Elena, and Elena died a long time ago," he sighed sadly. "I saw her, and I heard that she had no pulse with my own ears. I was at her funeral, must have been less than fifty miles from this very spot. It was here in Chicago," he trailed off.
"You were?" Bella asked, with a hint of sadness, but also a little excitement, "Do you know what happened to my Babbo then?"
Eleazar thought about his answer for a moment, unaware that Bella could hear his thoughts. I had to cut him off though. Eleazar was able to read gifts, he should know by now what Bella's gift was and I had been hoping to understand it better once he had arrived to read her. But if he had read her gift, he would know that she could hear what he was thinking since I was in the room. And both Carmen and I had seen him at least attempting to read her, so why didn't he know yet? "Eleazar," I interupted, "Can't you read Bella's gift?"
He flinched for a moment, then met my eye. The room remained silent and I was able to tone out the voices of everybody else's minds as I focused on Eleazar. "No, not really," he said simply. Neither he, nor Bella seemed the least bit surprised.
"What do you mean?" Asked Alice now. "Can't you read gifts?" She paused for a moment, trying to calm the anxiety which was quite obvious in her tone, "I mean, isn't that your gift?" she tried to sound slightly less rude. I smiled at her efforts and she met my gaze with an embarrassed grin of her own. She had been as impatient to fully understand Bella's gift as I had been, and we had both mistakenly placed our hopes in Eleazar's ability to read gifts.
He made a soft, amused snort that was surprisingly delicate. "Edward, can you read her thoughts?" he asked, as if I should have picked up on the fact that these two inabilities were related.
"Well, no," I answered simply, with a touch of embarrassment at my lack of understanding.
I didn't think so, "She has some sort of mental shield," he concluded. "It's powerful, she's powerful, I can feel it. I'm just not entirely certain what that power is."
I stared at him for the moment, unable to process thought. Bella's hand had somehow ended up in mind, though only a small part of my mind remembered reaching for it.
Undeterred from her initial line of questioning, Bella seized the silence to ask Eleazar about her Babbo once again, "Eleazar, what happened to my Babbo?"
"Elena, your plan worked," he answered morosely, "He thought you went back to Italy. He was heartbroken but he never looked for you, just as you asked." Eleazar looked so sad as he spoke, and I felt my entire body freeze.
"What plan?" I choked out, drawing Bella's attention back to me. "What are you talking about?"
"It's a long story, Edward," she breathed, "I can remember it now though," and she paused for another moment, "Suffice to say you weren't the first vampire I ever met, I was tied up in the world of vampires long ago."
Carlisle was the first to speak this time, "Who?" he asked, unrelenting curiosity burning in his thoughts, "Who were the vampires you were involved with?"
"Well," she said softly, beginning her long story. All the vampires in the room relaxed into a mind for listening. "Maybe we should go sit down?" Bella asked uncertainly. We of course had no need to sit, but the fourteen of us had yet to move from the front entryway.
"Oh, of course, right this way everybody," Esme instructed with hospitality drenching her voice as she lead the way to the living room.
During the course of her home stay, Bella had gotten the chance to hear all of our stories, from what little we could remember of our human life, to our first meeting in Forks, up until now. I was not the only one relieved to finally have the opportunity to know Bella's full story as I settled myself in one of the luxurious love seats next to Bella.
"Before I was forced to move to Chicago," Bella began again, "I lived in a peaceful town in Italy. It was known for its complete and utter lack of crime."
"Volterra," said Carlisle quietly.
Bella smiled sadly and continued her story. "I lived there until I was twelve years old, that is until my mother disappeared."
"Disappeared?" asked Kate. Her involvement in this story was negligible in my opinion, but I knew the mention of Volterra, home of the powerful coven of law enforcing vampires would encourage her attention. The sisters had lost their "mother" to the Volturi a very long time ago, and now Kate was wondering if Bella's mother had suffered a similar fate.
Bella nodded her head. "And people didn't just disappear in Volterra," she answered.
"I should say not," mused Irinia, "The Volturi make damn sure of that, they don't allow any crime, or any hunting within the walls of their city."
Bella cringed slightly at her statement, and I wrapped my arm around her waist to comfort her.
That still doesn't make them in any way the embodiment of justice, thought Eleazar bitterly.
My head snapped up at that thought. Eleazar had been a member of the Volturi guard for more than a century, maybe even while Bella lived in Italy. I would have thought he supported the justice which the Volturi swore to protect. "Were you still on the guard at the time?" I asked him pointedly.
Eleazar looked up from his seat in between Carmen and Irinia to meet my eyes with a nod. That's how I met Elena—Bella, he corrected internally. "Belinda had very sweet smelling blood," he stated, though once again found myself without an understanding of who or what he was talking about.
"Belinda was my mother's name," Bella sighed, probably hearing the confusion in mine and everybody else's minds.
"Are you familiar with the phrase 'la tua cantante'?" asked Eleazar.
"Your singer?" asked Emmett, perhaps a little too eager to demonstrate his understanding of Italian.
"Exactly," said Eleazar seriously, "That is exactly what Belinda was to Caius," he explained, "His singer. Her blood appealed to him more than any other blood in the world. And from what I've heard, that is exactly what Bella was to you Edward. It is truly amazing that you resisted," he sighed.
Carlisle smiled, "He has such strong willpower," he praised and I scoffed at both the both of them. My animalistic need to drink Bella's blood before she was changed was no reason to congratulate me, whether I resisted or not.
"So Caius broke their cardinal rule and killed her, an inhabitant of the city?" I nearly growled, "How did he even come in contact with her, I was under the impression that they hardly ever leave their castle." I remembered vividly the one time I had ever come in contact with the Volturi. It had been a mere number of weeks after I was first changed, Carlisle and I were still living in the outskirts of Chicago at the time as I tried to master my bloodlust. Aro and his brothers had come with a few members of the guard to visit Carlisle.
I remembered how strange looking the Volturi had been. Their features were as symmetrical as any other vampire's but their skin somehow looked aged. I hadn't dared ask about it out of fear of being rude, but Aro had answered my internal question after reading my mind. Like me, Aro had the ability to read minds, but his ability was very different from mine. While I could hear the immediate thoughts of anyone around me, Aro could hear every single thought and memory a person had ever had simply by touching them. After reading me, much to my embarrassment, Aro had informed me that the strange texture of his skin was a result of sitting still for so long, never leaving the castle. In fact, he admitted that it had been more than four decades since any of the brothers had left Volterra.
"It is indeed rare," Eleazar answered, "I'm not entirely certain about the details, but I know he did not attack her right away, simply because he did not want to break the rules which he himself helped to enforce. He was none too happy about it, but he returned to the castle and got permission from his brothers. Aro hated to waste such a gift as "la tua cantante" so he agreed wholeheartedly. Marcus probably couldn't have cared less, and within one night, Caius had claimed his prize. He didn't drink from a human again for months after that."
Bella had tensed with the story, but I could tell this was not news to her. I casually wondered when these memories had come back to her, perhaps with the confusion of the change she hadn't even processed these memories. I decided to save that question for later.
While Eleazar paused, locked in thoughts of his own, Bella took the opportunity to speak. "I searched for her, my poor Mamma; I had no idea where she went. Babbo was so sad and scared, but he tried to hide it for my sake. We sent out search parties looking for her, but she was nowhere to be found," Bella said somberly.
"Eventually I was the only one left looking. Even my Babbo had given up and attempted to move on with his life. Then one day, it was the festival for 'Saint Marcus'," she spat, "I saw these men in cloaks."
"The Volturi Guard?" I whispered and she nodded.
"Everybody wore cloaks and fangs that day, to celebrate the fact that 'Saint Marcus' expelled all of the make believe vampires from our city. It was really just a celebration of the fact that we had no crime within our city walls. I couldn't celebrate, because I knew of one crime. I was convinced that somebody had taken my mother," she remained silent for a moment and continued in a quieter voice as if begging me to understand, "There was no reason for her to have left."
I nodded. It was against Bella's nature to simply let something like that go, even if she was so young. Bella smiled at my thoughts and picked up the story once again.
"I watched the men in cloaks jump down a sewage drain. Needless to say, even to my barely twelve year old eyes, they looked suspicious," she paused, "There was something so strange about the way they walked, it was so graceful. And their faces were far more beautiful than any face I had ever seen, but their eyes," she shuddered, "Their eyes were red."
"Red like mine," she sighed with frustration.
"Not for long, my love," I tried to soother her. "Everybody's eyes start out that color," I hedged.
Every member of the Denali's turned to look at me with interest now. "She's a newborn?" asked Tanya, But she's so controlled.
Well that explains the red eyes, thought Kate as both she and Irinia dispelled their subconscious desire to protect their family.
"She is very controlled," smiled Carlisle proudly.
"Indeed," agreed Eleazar, "And I am duly amazed by the fact that she can remember her human life from so many decades ago," Eleazar pronounced, echoing my thoughts from earlier. "But I'm getting ahead of myself, because I don't even know how Elena is alive in the first place. Like I said before, I saw her, she was dead, and now you say that this is the same Bella who you all met half a century ago in Forks, who also died. Is this Elena reincarnated?" He finally finished his reasoning and looked up to meet Carlisle's eyes with questions written all over his own.
Carlisle smiled appreciatively. Eleazar was another curious soul, "I expect we should hear all about that, in good time," Carlisle assured him, "But I think first we need to continue with the story of Bella's history, because I somehow doubt that anybody here, besides maybe Bella and apparently you Eleazar, is entirely aware of Bella's past."
I for one am very curious as to how she ended up a vampire, and back in Chicago, alive, for that matter, thought Eleazar. I smirked and he grinned at me conspiratorially. He knew I was a lot more desperate to know the specifics of Bella's past than I was letting on and I did not have the patience to stop and explain the theory of reincarnation to him.
"Bella?" I asked, coaxing her forward with her story.
"Right," she nearly smiled in response to both Eleazar's and my thoughts before she continued, the corners of her mouth even twitched, "Well, I waited about an hour for the strange looking men to return, but they never did. So I followed them down the drain," she said it so matter-of-factly, I stared at her in shock, "It was large, and dark, but I saw the men jump down it, and I was eager to find my mother, or at least find what happened to her, so I jumped after them."
I groaned, loudly. "Oh Bella, why is self preservation such a foreign concept for you?" I begged to know.
I was too stunned by the beauty of the smile she shot me to argue again, so I remained silent as I waited for her to continue her story, "It was a lot further drop then I had anticipated," she admitted guiltily, perhaps seeing the error in her ways, "It hurt, and I scraped up my hands and knees pretty badly, I could feel the blood dripping down them, but I was used to getting scraped up like that, I was always a rather clumsy child," she added, and Emmett chuckled, "After a few minutes to regain my composure, I got up and started walking away from the fading evening light that the drain above me provided," she explained, completely unrepentant.
"Oh Bella," I sighed, "Please tell me this isn't true. Tell me you didn't try to follow a group of vampires through a dark underground drain while you were covered in blood."
"Relax Edward, she survived," Emmett shushed me, and I flinched.
Bella continued as if uninterrupted, "After what could have easily been hours of trekking through the dark abyss of the underground system of tunnels beneath Volterra, I finally saw a hint of light."
"Just great," I muttered darkly.
"When I got a little bit closer, I could see the figure of a man silhouetted in some sort of opening," I think I hissed with that addition to the story. Bella eyed me warily, "I stopped short when I realized what I was looking at and tried to hide against a wall, hoping that he wouldn't see me because after all, I was looking for the people responsible for taking my mother, and most likely they would be dangerous."
I rolled my eyes now, "But of course whoever it was probably saw you from a mile away."
"Oh yes, I most certainly did," Eleazar answered, shocking me into silence. So Eleazar was the first vampire Bella had met, besides the cloaked guardsmen. I physically tried to reduce the tension in my stance but gave up after a short second. "But I was trying very hard to control my bloodlust," he explained, and my tension increased so that I was sitting straight up clutching Bella's waist with far too much force, and probably more still than an ice sculpture, "I knew Aro would want to question her," he continued warily eyeing my tensed pose, "He would want to find out how she got there in the first place. The tunnel which led to the castle was not exactly easy to find." I watched a most unwelcome memory of Bella's young bloodied body hiding against the walls of the dank tunnel flash through Eleazar's mind. My tension momentarily wavered as I flinched and Eleazar eyed me apologetically.
"She was covered in blood though," said Carmen, impressed by her husband's resistance. Eleazar simply grimmaced at the memory, no more proud of his resistance than I. "It is a very good thing that you found her and not somebody else from the guard," she mused and I found myself nodding in agreement.
"Indeed," he sighed, then continued the story, "I had Ottavia, a human working at the castle, help Bella get cleaned up so that she could speak to Aro."
"It was terrifying and confusing," Bella gave her point of view, "His eyes were black and crazed, I could just tell he wanted to eat me or something to the like, and then Ottavia," she paused to allow a slight shudder, "Well, she was sickly pleasant, she only served to make me more uncomfortable and I hardly took notice of the fact that she meant me no harm."
"The Volturi had a human working for them named Ottavia?" I asked, amazed.
"I don't know what her real name was, but Aro decided to call her Ottavia because she was the eighth human they tried to keep in employment," Eleazar explained flatly.
"Eighth?" I gasped at the same time as Carlisle.
"Did she know what was going on inside the walls of the castle?" Carlisle asked.
Eleazar nodded his head.
"And didn't she stop to think that maybe that could be her?"
"She hoped that one day, they would change her," Eleazar answered in the same flat tone, "Really she was just a toy, an entertainment to them."
"Things are certainly very different from last time I was in Volterra," Carlisle mused unhappily.
"I brought Bella before the brothers," Eleazar said regretfully. "Aro asked her how she had found the castle, and she refused to answer," Eleazar continued with a hint of humor, she was so brave, even from the first moment I dragged her out of the tunnel, that's why I felt the need to protect her, he thought to himself.
"I bet Aro didn't like that," Carlisle said softly.
"He most certainly did, on the contrary," Eleazar contradicted, "He thought it was hilarious, her obstinacy, that is."
When did he become so sadistic? Carlisle wondered.
"Aro was quite as amused as a cat with a ball of yarn; right up until Bella demanded the brothers tell her what they had done with her mother."
I groaned once again and wrapped myself more forcefully around Bella, glad to have her in my arms. "They were taunting me, and I just knew that they were the ones who were responsible for her disappearance," she sighed.
"Didn't you even care what would happen to you?" I demanded.
"Of course I did," she sighed, "If something had happened to me, I knew that it would kill my Babbo, but at the same time, I sort of knew it was too late, that they already had me. There were too many of them for me to escape and I decided that I just had to know what had become of her before I died."
"Of course you did," I sighed in agreement.
"At the time, there were two new additions to the guard, twins named Jane and Alec," Eleazar picked up the story once again, "They were of course powerful, and Aro decided that it was time to give Bella a taste of who she was up against. Jane can torture people with her mind, you see, and she's a sadistic little thing at that. I watched in silence as Aro ordered Jane to use her powers to torture Bella."
I felt myself stiffen at the words, but I waited for him to continue. "Nothing happened though," Eleazar explained. "Jane's ability to torture people is a lot like Kate's gift." Kate narrowed her eyes at the comparison but Eleazar simply shrugged it off. "The pain you feel when affected by one of their gifts is simply mental, it does not really affect your body."
"Bella's mental shield?" I asked suddenly, recalling Eleazar's earlier words.
"Naturally," he replied. "Bella was completely unaffected by Jane's gift. She simply stood there in all of her bravery and arched an eyebrow at Aro as if questioning his sanity."
"Bravery?" Bella scoffed, "I was shaking in my shoes, rooted to my place in complete fear, that girl barely looked older than me, but the way she looked at me was so—horrible," she concluded.
"Thinking Jane incompetent, Aro had Jane test out her gift on a random member of the guard, I was glad to be in his favor at the time because Aro did not choose me," Eleazar grimmaced. "It of course brought the guardsmen down to his knees, screaming in agony."
Bella cringed as well, remembering the incident. "After that Aro looked at me with a new eye, almost jealous," she said, and I detected traces of anger lining her tone, "He approached me and asked me to hold out my hand. I was too petrified to disobey, he was so strange looking. He touched my hand with a very expectant look on his face, and after a few long moments he released it and smirked at me with that same coveting gleam in his eye."
"He tried to read her thoughts?" Carlisle asked.
"But he couldn't, could he?" I added.
"He asked me to read her next," Eleazar explained as he nodded in response to our questions, "That was my main purpose on the guard, reading gifts and identifying gifted vampires to join us. I found Alec and Jane, Demetri before that, and a few others."
"When gifts are powerful, I can usually read them, even when they're still human," Eleazar explained.
"You can sort of feel them," Bella corrected, and Eleazar looked at her quizzically.
How do you know that? He wondered internally.
"I can borrow gifts," Bella responded to the thought and Eleazar smiled, he was only partially surprised at the fact that Bella read his thoughts. In his mind he had already built up a slight understanding of her gift, and I found myself hopeful once again that he would be able to provide us a better understanding of Bella's talent.
"I was wondering about that. When I read you that first time, all I could feel was that you were powerful, it's a hard feeling to identify, but I've gotten good at it with practice. I focused on you for a long time, before I felt the faintest hint of my own gift reflected back at me, I must have stared at you for a good ten minutes right there in Aro's chambers, trying to understand your gift. It was mostly fruitless though, and I gave Aro my best approximation of your gift, that you were a shield, and a powerful one at that."
"He asked me to join the guard after that," Bella said, disgustedly. "He said my choices were to become a member of the privileged group that protects the city, or face the same fate as my mother."
"He underestimated her understanding of right and wrong," Eleazar chuckled, though I was at a loss to find anything humorous about a vampire threateningly my Bella's life, much less the Volturi.
"I pretty much told him to go to Hell," laughed Bella and Emmett joined her while I remained stoic, still unable to find amusement in this situation.
"Now I can guarantee he didn't like that answer," Eleazar again joined Bella's laughter, but it was half-hearted, and that made me worried. He cut off suddently, "So he told me to kill her, to take her out of Volterra and kill her however I wanted," he admitted regretfully. I was too far lost in the story and his memories to notice if I growled or not, but the thoughts around me seemed to pick up on a growl, so I made a special effort to keep quiet so I could hear what happened next, and try not to offend Eleazar who had somehow helped Bella. I reasoned in my head that even though Eleazar had admitted to beholding Bella's lifeless form, he probably hadn't killed her because they would be on much less friendlier terms now.
"Too bad you were such a softie," Bella laughed again, only half-way ignoring me as she rubbed soothing circles on my hand which was still clasped tightly on her side.
"Yeah, you had already won me over with your bravery," Eleazar smiled affectionately at Bella, "Bravery which I had been searching for myself as I realized more and more that the Volturi were not quite the just and fair law enforcers I had thought."
Irinia, Kate, Tanya, and Carlisle all looked taken aback by Eleazar's confession though. "They spared us our lives when we were connected with a crime," Irinia whispered. Long ago, the Volturi had paid the Denali's a rather unpleasant visit when their mother had created a vampire out of a human baby. Immortal children was the term used at the time to describe such volatile creatures which threatened the secrecy of our existence because they lacked the brain functions necessary to learn. The Volturi took it upon themselves to not only destroy all the immortal children, but punish their creators.
Eleazar stiffened minutely before answering, "They killed your mother," he sighed, "Don't tell me you're grateful."
The trio simply stared at him in varying levels of indignation. Garret was the one to break the silence, speaking out loud for the first time since my arrival with Bella. "Oh please," he sneered, "Those Italian Superiors are the very essence of corruption. They will put an end to any vampire that hunts within their city, yet when one of their own meets someone with super sweet blood, they turn a blind eye and let him break their rules."
I found that I almost immediately liked Garret and Eleazar's thoughts were as amused as mine as we both sent him small grins of approval. I decided to bring our attention back to the story of Bella's very first life which I was more than a little impatient to understand, "So how did you get Bella and her father to America?" I knew better than to think that Bella would go anywhere without her father, because that would potentially leave him in danger, so if Eleazar was going to take Bella anywhere, he would have had to take her father as well.
"I covered Bella's mouth to quiet her screaming and ran her through the underground tunnels until I was certain that there were no vampires close enough to hear us. When I stopped I put her down and made her promise not to scream. The promise was not effective right away, but eventually I convinced her that if she wasn't quiet she would be killed right away, by somebody other than me. Through teary eyes, in the dark tunnels beneath Volterra, she begged me to let her go because her father needed her. I of course had no intention of harming her, so once I explained that," about fourteen times, he thought with a hint at humor, "She demanded to know what exactly I was since I could run so fast and who those men were back in the chambers."
"Always the hard questions," I sighed and gave Eleazar yet another conspiratorial smirk which he returned, as Bella's eyes narrowed dangerously in response to our internal teasing. I noticed right away that while the narrowed eyes were still quite becoming on her, they were not quite as adorable as they used to be. Rather than the angry kitten, Bella seemed much more like a tiger. I searched for a word to describe it, it was almost... sexy?
"Yes I imagine she probably gave you a fair share of difficult questions in the two life times you've had with her," he chuckled and Bella's narrowed eyes had straightened into one of amusement as well. I wasn't sure if it was in response to Eleazar's statment or my thoughts.
"Actually this is the third lifetime, I've had with her," I answered quietly, not sure whether I wanted to delve into this story just yet.
"Third?" He of course, had to ask.
"Yes, well, I had a brief meeting with her in Chicago, while I was still human. She was probably thirteen or fourteen years old. She made quite an impact on me though," I smiled, as I turned to give Bella a chaste little kiss on her hand. I imagined she would have blushed had she been able to, particularly in light of my previous thoughts concerning her angry face and the latest twist in my thoughts which spurred from the electric pulsing which I had deliberately brought to my lips. "But that still begs the question, how did she end up in Chicago?" I finally said when I was able to bring myself back to the pressing matter of Bella's past.
"By boat," Eleazar answered, simply. I crooked an eyebrow at him, waiting for him to clarify.
"Once I had explained our natures, and the fact that I needed to get Bella out of Volterra as quickly as possible, she vehemently refused to be taken unless I brought her Babbo as well."
"She can certainly be stubborn when she has a mind to," I smirked again, and Bella's eyes returned to their narrowed state. Definitely sexy.
"That's for certain. She said she would bite through her lip and cause herself to bleed so that I would be forced to drink her blood inside the walls of the city, against the wishes of the brothers, if I didn't stop to pick up her father," Eleazar almost laughed.
That effectively shut me up. I stared at Bella in shock. Tempting a vampire by threatening to make herself bleed was just a new low for the level of self preservation she had.
"You did what?" Emmett choked out through his loud guffaws as the rest of my family and the Denali's simply stared at her in shock.
"Well it worked," Bella defended impatiently, her chin jutting out slightly in most obvious support of my comment about her stubborness.
"So I ran her to her father's house, and we took the horse drawn carriage which he apparently used as a taxi for a living, hardly bothering to explain to him our frantic rush." I momentarily tried to picture the horse and carriage Bella's Babbo had employed to drive my human family home from the concert in downtown Chicago. I wondered if it was the same one.
"All I told him was that I found the men who killed Mamma and that we had to get out of the city because they were after me," Bella explained.
"We took the carriage to the nearest port, and I dropped them off, and paid the captain of a ship bound for Portugal heavily to leave within the hour."
Bella looked at him with thankfulness written all over her expression as he spoke. "The captain allowed the horse and carriage onto the ship as well, I gave them all the silver that I had and told them to board the first ship bound for America."
"It was enough to get us to America comfortably, and to get us a decent place to rent when we reached Chicago, where my father had some friends."
"Wait, wait, wait," said Carmen suddenly. "Was that the night I met you by the port?" she asked Eleazar, "This is the girl you saved?" she questioned further.
"The very same," Eleazar repeated my words from earlier.
"I'm so glad I was able to help you break away from those corrupt rulers," Carmen sighed contentedly.
"Me too," Eleazar agreed. "I don't know how long I could have continued lying to them about what happened to Elena. Aro would have demanded to read me eventually."
"So how did Bella die, if Aro never found out from you?" asked Rosalie suddenly.
I stared at Carlisle in shock when I both heard and saw his thoughts. Of course he had a theory, but it was not one I liked. "But I hardly had any human memories, and he didn't even say or think anything about Bella after he read me. Surely reading my thoughts after I changed couldn't have lead to him finding Bella?" I tried to defend myself as I replayed the encounter Carlisle and I had had with the Volturi shortly after my change. I hoped beyond hope that the memories of mine which Aro saw hadn't contained any recollection of Bella. It would have alerted them to her presence in Chicago when she was supposed to be dead. In other words, I would have been responsible once again for causing Bella's death. I let guilt fill me for a moment before Bella began rubbing my shoulder. She could both hear my thoughts and feel my emotions. I fought fuitily to resist the sense of calm which began to fill me because I knew it was artificial.
"Relax," she said softly. "It wasn't your fault, and don't you dare try to make it into your fault."
"But I let him read me without a second thought," I groaned.
"There's no way he could have seen a memory which you couldn't even picture yourself," she again tried to comfort me.
Eleazar frowned, and I felt the return of the clenching in my chest, as if my dead heart was somehow able to react to the fact that not once, but two times I had been responsible for Bella's death. "He can read your memories, even if you don't remember them anymore," he sighed, "He can see every thought you've ever had if he concentrates hard enough, and if what you say is true, that she had such a large impact on you, then thoughts of her would have been lingering in your subconscious, coloring a good number of your conscious thoughts. He would have seen her, and recognized her, and realized that I was lying," he sighed and Irinia gasped.
"Eleazar, how could you lie to the Volturi like that?" Irinia half shouted, "We're lucky they haven't come to punish us all!"
"Do not pretend that Eleazar didn't do the right thing by lying to save the girl you see before you," Carmen defended.
I agreed and nodded fervently as I listened to the two women fuming in their minds. "So you were there, when they killed her?" I asked and my voice broke on the last few words, but I needed clarification now.
"I was in Chicago, yes," Eleazar said, "Carmen was with me. I think Carlisle was still in Chicago at the time, but Carmen and I were intent upon keeping a low profile so we didn't try to stop by," he explained.
"But we never really got the chance to meet up with Bella and her father again as we had planned," Carmen continued the story now.
I sat in complete silence as horror overtook me. This was the part I was scared about. The part where Bella died. And now it was all my fault. "So what was that plan you mentioned earlier?" I asked Bella now, trying to put off the inevitable.
"I saw Jane one day when I was in town to pick up some groceries," Bella sighed, and I kept my groan internal at least. So I hadn't chosen a good subject to try and avoid talking about Bella's death. "She motioned for me to come to her, and oh how clearly I can just see that evil glint in her eye when she saw me," she stated, lost in her human memory. A small part of my mind again marveled at the fact that she could remember this human past of hers so clearly when she had died two times and lived two separate human lives after that time.
"Luckily it was bright out, and I remembered all too well what Eleazar had told me about how vampires couldn't expose themselves in the daylight. But overall, I knew it was too late. I realized that there was nowhere I could run where they wouldn't find me, so I went to the closest vendor and purchased some sheets of parchment paper and an ink pen," she stated with resignation, and I most certainly did not like where this story was headed. This sounded like a final letter, or even a will of some sort, I internally cringed at the thought.
"I wrote a long letter to my father, making it as cheery as I possibly could. I told him that I had been seeing a man, and that I was pregnant, and to save our family shame, that the man and I were eloping. I was seventeen and quite old enough to be married," she added, "Babbo had always worried that I was trying to care for him too much and that was why I never accepted compliments from any of the suitors. I knew he would actually be rather relieved to hear that I was hiding a relationship from him. I had heard that there was a ship leaving for Italy that day, so I told him that the two of us had jumped on that ship bound for Italy. I described in as much detail as I could the fact that he was the man of my dreams and that he didn't have to worry and I would come back once everything had blown over. I even went so far as to describe what he looked like," she cut off, looking at her hands longingly.
The feeling of longing swept the room quickly and before I could take notice of the thoughts of everybody in the room, I began rubbing soothing circles on Bella's back much like she had been doing to me. Bella seemd to notice after a moment that she was projecting her feelings, and she withdrew as Jasper helped her quickly replace the emotional climate of the room with one of tranquility.
She already seems to have a pretty good understanding of how to work my gift, thought Jasper, impressed, it took me years to stop unintentionally projecting my stronger emotions.
"I just didn't want him to suffer and think that I died," Bella said quietly, ignoring Jasper's thoughts, and now it was my turn to feel impressed. Bella was exceptionally good at handling my gift as well. I still struggled to tune out the mental voices of those around me.
"Want to hear how I described that ideal man who I eloped with, in an attempt to let some hint of contentment flow onto the pages?" she asked suddenly, eyeing me with what seemed to be irony in her expression.
"I bet I know," said Alice, "He had messy bronze hair and startling green eyes didn't he," she stated verbatim the description Bella had given when she told Alice about how we met the first time in Chicago.
"The most beautiful boy I had ever seen," Bella turned to face me with a new light in her eyes, and I heard Tanya's new internal sigh of appreciation and acceptance, finally allowing that maybe I had found my match in Bella. Bella's perception of me was completely ludicrous, of course, but all I could do was smile in response.
"I made two copies of the letter, and then I wrote one more letter to the only other person who would realize what really happened," Bella explained, returning to her story.
"Eleazar?" I asked and she nodded.
"I had no hope that he would find it because I had no idea that he was in the city, but I figured that if he was still tied to the Volturi in any way he might be able to find me. It explained everything, and asked that he check up on my father to make sure he believed I ran away to Italy."
"What did you do with the letters?" asked Emmett, voicing the question in nearly everybody's minds.
"I kept that letter tucked in my dress and asked two random young boys I passed to deliver the other messages to my house," she replied, "I gave them all the money I had, but I didn't entirely trust that I would be able to randomly pick an honorable person to deliver my message. That was why I wrote two, doubling the likelihood that my Babbo would get at least one of the letters." Even in the face of iminent death, Bella was practical.
"And he most certainly did," Eleazar answered. "I was the one who found your body just outside of town, and I read your letter," Eleazar said sadly, allowing another unwelcome memory of Bella's broken and limp body to fill my mind. I didn't have the strength to cringe, so I simply sat silently and waited for Eleazar to continue speaking.
"I wanted you to have a proper burial though," he sighed, "So I carried your body once more far outside of town to a rural family's home. I asked if they could help me bury my daughter," and at that he paused to look at Bella fondly, "I always wished that if I had had a daughter, she would be just like you, so brave, and clever, and caring about her parents. I did the one thing I could for your memory by having a proper burial even if your father couldn't know about it."
"Thank you Eleazar," Bella said almost silently.
No, thank you Elena, for showing me your bravery, he thought. "Carmen had been waiting for me a few miles down the road from the country home, and she followed my scent and attended the burial as well," he added, effectively inviting Carmen to speak again when he could not.
"It was a very sad day," Carmen sighed, "The family had recently suffered a loss of a young daughter as well and they were very sympathetic. They helped us create a beautiful and moving ceremony. I wished that I could cry, simply because tears were the only appropriate response for the loss of this brave girl which I never met but Eleazar had spoken so fondly of."
"But apparently death was not enough to stop your soul from returning?" Eleazar asked now, directing his question at Bella in an attempt to gain access to the story of her return to life.
"Apparently Fate simply had other plans for her," I agreed, ignoring his attempt.
"Yeah plans that involved being with you forever," Tanya conceded, earning a gasp of approval and shock from Rosalie.
"Maybe Fate is a romantic," Emmett smiled, and we all laughed.
A/N Whether or not fate is a romantic, I can hands down guarantee that I'm a romantic lol. So who got annoyed with this chapter? Who wants me to redo it? Oh and an extra disclaimer, the little bit of Italian littered through this chapter was compliments of Free Translation . com, I decided I really like that translator.
If you reread it, thank you so much. I hope you liked it better, sorry it's soooo long!
Recs: "Wide Awake" by AngstGodess003 and all three stories by Jazz2305 (those are some amazingly good stories and Jazz2305 is officially my new favorite writer on this site).