A/N: The conversation between Bella and Hannah in the beginning of this chapter is mostly supposed to be in a different language. I could have written it entirely in gibberish and then translated it in parentheses but I felt that would take away from the telling of the story and when ever I try to write in a made up language it always comes out looking like Italian.

DON'T BE TOO UPSET ABOUT BELLA IN THIS CHAPTER. SHE'S STILL A BAD ASS, BUT IN THE END I HAVE TO STAY AT LEAST SLIGHTLY TRUE TO THE CHARACTER STEPHANIE MEYER CREATED. SHE REDEEMS HERSELF IN THE NEXT FEW CHAPTERS SO DON'T WORRY! AND AS ALWAYS IF YOU WANT ME TO UPDATE YOU HAVE TO REVIEW!!!!

Chapter Fifteen

Past Anger, Future Discussions

With her mental shield wrapped tightly around her and Hannah, Bella listened to what her friend had to say. She didn't expect her to speak English or any other language any of the vampires would know. There were many Pagan languages older then their species and both Hannah and Bella spoke most of them. She would probably pick a language so strange and complex their eavesdroppers would think it was gibberish.

"E node mi cosa fio," she said. Perfect, the ancient Dien tongue. The first language Bella learned to speak other than English. The rough translation of that sentence was: "You're not the person you used to be."

"I know that, Hannah," Bella answered in the same language. Hannah wanted to keep this conversation between the two of them and Bella wasn't about to give any of it away by answering in English.

"Then why are you reacting the way you would have before the war?" she asked. Bella sighed and looked aimlessly at the confused faces all around them. "And I can't believe that all you had to object to in that plan is letting the Volturi go without administering your own form of justice. You're acting like this plan they came up with is your only option."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you have any idea how easy it would be to take all of these people back to Tunisia? It's not like they'd stick out or anything. I'm ninety something for crap's sake and I look fantastic!" She was waving her arms around dramatically confusing the on lookers even more. "I mean you weren't planning on staying here, were you?"

"I hadn't really thought about it," Bella said, honestly. Hannah sighed and rubbed her eyes.

"If you say this to anyone, and I mean anyone, Isabella Swan, I will cheerfully attempt to kill you, because we both know that it would be stupid easy for you to kill me… Whatever! You're my best friend and I can't lose you."

"That's something I have to talk to Edward about."

"It's not the only thing you have to talk to Edward about. Were you planning on telling him what you've been up to for the past sixty years? I don't know what you're so worried about, to be honest. He's a vampire, it's not like he can pass judgment."

"He killed people for nourishment, Hannah. I killed people for money. It's very different," Bella snapped.

"You've forgiven him for his past, why can't you forgive yourself for yours? Why can't you trust him enough to love you no matter the choices you've made? And it's not like he was forced to feed from humans, he made a choice the same as you."

Bella shook her head. "It is not the same."

"Well, I think that's something you should let him decide. Honestly, Bella, how do expect to talk about the future when you refuse to face your past?"

"That's enough, Hannah," Bella said in English, thus ending their private discussion. She kept her shield around Hannah for a moment giving her friend the time to collect and block her thoughts.

"Whatever, Bella." Hannah stood up and headed for the door, then turned back. "Just remember the plan they came up with isn't the only way to figure this shit out," she said in English. "You could very easily take Allegra, yourself, your boyfriend and the rest of his family back where you came from.

"The rest of these morons could split and the Volturi would show up in a week to an empty house. They'd never be able to find you!.... Or better yet, you could go to James and remind him that you did a huge favor for him and it's about time he paid you back, by coming to your aid with his ARMY in tow. But that's on you." She left.

Bella stared blankly at the coffee table in front of her. "Can I have a moment alone with the Cullens please," she asked, calmly. The room cleared out quickly and quietly. Edward shifted closer to her and Alice sat down on her other side, taking her hand. "I'm sure you've wondered what exactly I've been up to. What happened to make me go off with some man I barely knew to do a job he hardly described…." She bit her lip.

"Yes, we've all been curious," Carlisle said.

---

"I met James at a coffee shop in Port Angeles. I'd gone into town a few weeks before with Jessica… suffice to say the time we spent there didn't end well. But that's not the point. I went back looking for someone we'd run into, someone I thought I knew. I was so lonely. Jacob had stopped spending time with me, stopped talking to me even. I felt abandoned all over again."

Edward squeezed his eyes shut. This was a conversation he'd been hoping to have strictly between the two of them and sometime in the future. The explanations of why they'd done certainly things, why they had behaved in certain ways, what they were going to do now that things were coming together again. He'd been hoping to have this conversation in the distant future, after the Volturi had been taken care of and things settled down a bit.

"I drove past this coffee shop and saw the most beautiful car parked in front of it…. I thought, I hoped, it was one of you guys… so I went in and there he was."

"There who was?" Carlisle asked, gently. Bella's eyes were full of tears, but they didn't look like tears of sadness to Edward. They looked like tears of shame.

"James. I can't tell you why I sat down, I can't tell you why I talked to him, why I believed him. I can't tell you because I don't know. He made it seem like if I went with him, everything would be better. He knew I was pain and he said he knew how to make it go away. All I needed to do was go with him, to his homeland, train for a few years and then do a job for him.

"I felt so weak, so tired of being lonely and sad, tired of being left by the people who claimed to care about me. So I barely questioned him, I raced home in his car, leaving my truck outside the coffee shop and I packed, said goodbye to Charlie and left. It wasn't until I got there and he gave me an ingenious little shot that I found out exactly what he wanted me to do.

"He'd told me in the shop that it would be exciting, adventurous and so many other things. I jumped at the chance, in fact I was so excited it didn't really faze me when he told I'd be killing people for him."

The room was silent. The vampires listening outside were silent. Edward stood up slowly and looked down at Bella. His beautiful innocent Bella. He'd wanted so much for her when he left. A real life, with human friends, human loves and human losses. He'd wanted to preserve the wonderful innocence he'd so adored in her. It was one of the main reasons he'd forced himself to go. She was too pure for him.

But not anymore.

She'd been gone for five years in his world, but sixty in hers. Sixty years of killing for the king. It all made sense, now. All of the puzzle pieces had finally fallen perfectly into place. The knife in the painting. The dangerous job she couldn't do while pregnant. The missions she wouldn't give her all for now that she had a child.

Bella dropped her head into her hands and started shaking. She was crying.

"And I liked it!" she exclaimed. "I liked killing people. Channeling into them the hurt that festered inside of me. Making those evil strangers hurt the way I hurt. It was satisfying to know that I wasn't the person you left, Edward. It was good for so long to no longer think of myself as some weak little human who fell apart when her boyfriend dumped her!"

Bella cried for a few minutes, not in sadness, but in shame. Edward could feel the emotions running through her from Jasper. Shame, anger, fear. He just wished he knew what she was afraid of. Finally she wiped her eyes on the tissue Alice had handed to her, caught her breath and continued talking.

"After the war I realized that no amount of time or violence was going to make me whole again. Without you, Edward, I'm just a shell of a person. I realized that, I accepted that. I hated it. I hated myself, I hated my job, I hated my life! I got pregnant, drunk in the men's room of a dirty bar, on the anniversary of the day you broke up with me. Because even after sixty years I was still the broken little girl that James talked into killing people." She laughed, humorlessly at her own stupidity.

"The reason, the real reason that I forced Allegra to be your daughter and not Jon's is because I thought that would fix me. That it would put me back together again… It got rid of the job, which was nice, but it didn't make me feel any better. I'd look her, my precious little baby and I'd see you and my heart would break all over again."

Edward sat down again. He took her face in his hands and wiped away the tears leaking out of her eyes. She refused to meet his eyes and instead did something amazing. She pulled back the shield from her mind. She showed him exactly what she'd been doing in the years they'd been apart. He gasped as her thoughts flooded his mind. Images of exact killings, masses of prone bodies being torn apart and buried, battles that seemed endless. Violence, horrible, bloody and absolute. Her memories, her past.

Bella's thoughts went quiet and Edward sighed. Not in relief but in guilt. If he hadn't left her she wouldn't have been so broken, so weak and easily taken by James. Just as he thought, angered by that weakness, saddened enough to turn to liquor and a man she cared nothing for. Allegra was the silver lining. The only good to come from this horrible situation.

"Bella?" he asked. She still wouldn't meet his eyes. "Bella, please look at me." She finally met his gaze. "Did James ever make you kill an innocent?"

"No. Of course not. They were war criminals, murderers, rapists, the dregs of society," she said. Edward sighed, this time in relief.

"That's not any worse then what I did," he said. "Remember, Bella? Do you remember when I told you about my time feeding from humans?" Bella began to cry again, but nodded. "I thought I'd be immune to the guilt because I knew the evil thoughts in the minds of my prey. I knew my victims were really villains, just like you-"

"It's not the same, Edward!" she yelled. "I didn't kill those people for food. I killed them for money." She shook her head. "I'm no better then a whore."

"No! No, Bella, no!"

"I did horrible things for a pay check."

"You did those things to survive," Jasper said.

"What? No," Bella said, staring at Jasper, confused.

"If you had refused James after he turned you into a Dien, what do you think he would have done?" he asked, a sage look on his face. Bella gaped at him. "He would have gotten rid of you, Bella. You had no choice after you agreed to go with him, after he gave you that shot.

"After I was turned into a vampire, I thought I had a choice about my afterlife but I was wrong. If I hadn't done what Maria, the vampire who changed me, told me to do she would have killed me or hurt me in some way until I complied. I thought I chose to follow her, I thought I was doing the right thing for a long time. And I enjoyed it too, Bella. I knew it was bad to battle every night, to kill young vampires that never asked for this life, I knew it was bad and I liked it.

"But I changed, Bella. I realized what I was doing was wrong, not right. My conscious grew out of the hate Maria breed in me, and I could change. My acts were made from ignorance, yours from anger. Neither any great sin. I forgave myself, it's time you did the same."

Edward looked around, searching the thoughts of his family. Carlisle was patient as always, never judgmental. Esme was sad that Bella was sad. Alice and Jasper, forgiving. Emmett curious about Bella's skill level and Rosalie angry she couldn't play mommy for Allegra anymore. She couldn't care less about Bella's violent past. But they were all understanding.

"None of us blame you for what happened," he said, truthfully. The rest of the family nodded in agreement, even Rosalie.

"How can you forgive me when I can't forgive myself?" she asked.

"That's just something we'll have to work on," Alice said.

"You can't feel guilty forever," Emmett said. "At least you've never killed an innocent. All the people you went after were bad guys. I've killed plenty innocents when I was a young vampire and you don't see me wallowing in guilt." Emmett grinned, like everything he said was one big joke.

Bella laughed through her tears and Edward kissed her sweetly on the lips.

"Now, what was that that Hannah said about us just leaving?" Carlisle said, gently changing the subject.

"I could take us all back to Tunisia, the Empire I was living in, and the Volturi would never be able to find us," Bella said, wiping away her tears.

"Sounds like a plan, let's go," Emmett said.

"Sounds like an extremely short sighted plan," Bella corrected. "Hannah's never been too good with details. She sees the trees for the forest but never recognizes their significance."

"What do you mean?" Carlisle asked. Bella sighed and leaned into Edward's chest. He held her, loving how she still wanted to be close to him.

"Even if we leave and all of your friends scatter, their scents are all over this house. The Volturi will come, they will smell them and go after them looking for us. If the Volturi are willing to destroy a long respected friend and his family over a clearly contrived crime, don't you think they'd destroy the last people to see that family before it disappeared?"

"Damn," Emmett muttered.

"We have to have this out if we want it to end. But luckily I have a few tricks up my sleeve." Bella reached into her jean pocket and pulled out her cell phone. Edward looked over her shoulder while she scrolled through the contact numbers, selected 'Portia' and pressed send.

It rang twice.

"Isabella," her Greek accent was thick, her voice smooth. "I hadn't expected to hear from you for some time. Layla said you'd be getting married soon. I hope this is my invitation."

Bella looked at Edward and smiled, his heart seemed to grow two sizes at that twitch of her lips.

"I'm surprised Layla didn't know this call was coming," Bella said, never breaking eye contact with Edward.

"My daughter is a Seer, not a Prophet, no one, especially not me, expects her to be all knowing. I'm sure if I asked her now she would know, though," Portia added thoughtfully.

"Of course." Bella smiled at their private joke. "You are invited to the wedding, but that's not why I called. I'd like to ask a favor of you."

"Certainly. You've done much to ensure Layla and my safety. Anything I can do, I will."

"I have a feeling I'm not asking anything you haven't done before."

"Ohh… intrigue. Now I'm curious, do tell."

"About four thousand years ago you created three vampires-"

"Marcus, Aro and Caius." Portia sighed loudly. "What have they done now?"

She almost sounded bored. Edward exchanged a curious look with Carlisle, who was remembering his time with the Volturi. They'd told him they were all created by the same vampire who charged them with leading the vampire community. At the time they'd made it sound like that vampire was male.

"They have been told by an extremely unreliable source that my Allegra is an immortal child. They're coming to Forks, Washington to kill her and either kill my adopted family or force them to join their coven."

"When will they get there?"

"About a week."

"I'll be there in plenty of time."

The line went dead.