Love Never Dies


Act XV: Past The Point Of No Return

Bella

I awoke from those dreams slowly, conscious of someone's cold hand clasping my own. I felt groggy but essentially strong again, after my mystery bout of illness.

That moment in the throne room had been weird, and it freaked me out.

Those cold hands moved, caressing my hand, and I opened my eyes, thinking it must be Edward.

It wasn't. It was Aro.

"You're awake at last," he breathed, the dim sunlight streaming in through a window making his skin glisten. I laboriously levered myself up on my elbows, and he bent to help me. "Easy, Isabella. You have been unwell for the last few hours."

I noticed then I was lying on a very comfortable bed, the duvet drawn up and around my waist.

"Where am I?" I asked, pushing my hair out my face. "What happened?"

"You fainted in the throne room. I brought you here, and you've been delirious and feverish for the past few hours," Aro told me, releasing my hand to pour me a glass of water from the side. I took the cool glass, relishing its chill against my still hot skin as I sipped the water. I felt any lingering dizziness fade, as I looked up and into Aro's crimson eyes.

I was achingly aware that I sat opposite a man…vampire that had murdered thousands, who was notoriously ruthless and powerful.

But at that moment all I could see was the…adoration in his crimson eyes.

"Who are you?" he breathed, so quietly I had to strain to hear him.

"My name is Isabella Maria Swan-" I began but he cut me off impatiently.

"I know your name, Isabella. But how can this be? I lost my darling 125 years ago, and yet here she sits before me, as beautiful as the day I lost her," Aro frowned puzzlingly at me, and I sighed.

"Where's my bag? The bag I was wearing when I fainted?" I asked, looking around for it. Aro leant down and produced it from somewhere near his feet, handing it to me. I upended it, holding the diary, photographs and letters together, and sliding them across to him.

"Maybe these will help," I explained, as he took them gently. "You see Christabelle is my great-great-grandmother. That's her son, Giacomo," I pointed him out to Aro, as he stared down at photos in his hands. I couldn't see his face. He unfolded Christabelle's letters, and inhaled shakily.

"She loved him very much," he breathed, and I could hear the pain in his voice. I reached out my hand to touch his unknowingly.

"She loved you too," I whispered, and he flinched, moving away from me.

"You know nothing. If she had loved me, she would have let me save her," he murmured, walking away to stand before an open window, as I slid from the bed and followed him. He still clutched the diary, closed, in his hand.

"I know plenty," I replied without heat. "I was there, I saw it!"

"How could you know?" he asked, still not looking at me. I inhaled shakily.

"I-she was wearing a brown jacket and dress, with a white shirt, which you ripped down the centre in that alleyway. You tried to get her to stay by saying you would let her live as a human, in Volterra, with her son," I told him firmly. Finally he turned back to look at me intently, and I swallowed.

Somehow I felt like I had just passed some sort of test.

"And how do you know that?" he asked, moving towards me. I moved back, eyes wide, at the sheer seductiveness with which he moved towards me. Everything in me called to me to stand my ground, to answer the desire rising in those crimson orbs but I did not.

I couldn't, I was not Christabelle.

"Answer me, Isabella," he purred, as I felt the cold stone wall dig into my back, and he leant over me, his arm resting above my head letting me know quite unequivocally that I was not going anywhere, anytime soon.

"I-I dreamt it. For the past few months, I've been dreaming of you and Christabelle." I replied honestly, realised I was not getting out of this easily.

An eyebrow rose on that beautiful face, and I fought to repress a shiver.

My heart cried out in agony, because I knew that Aro could not be feeling anything for me. He still loved Christabelle.

"You are so alike. You look like her, sound like her, move like her. You are her." he replied, and my heart sank even further.

"I know I do, but I am not Christabelle." I replied defiantly, tilting my chin haughtily. I ducked beneath his arm and headed back towards the bed, searching for my sneakers. "Where are Edward and Alice?"

"In our custody. They grew somewhat difficult after I took you away, and had to be restrained," I heard him reply tacitly.

"They aren't hurt?" I asked, turning back to face him. I sat on the bed, and pulled my sneakers on, retrieved from the side of the bed.

"No. From what I have heard, Marcus extracted a promise from them to change you in return for your safe passage home," he sounded disgruntled, and I sensed the decision had not been one of his own making.

"I see," I breathed, turning away when I felt his body against my back. I shivered, feeling his silent command to turn to him, resisted it with all my strength.

"Don't leave," he said, and I felt the words tremble against the nape of my neck. Feeling tears spring up, I faced him.

Oh how could he know that he had made it impossible for me to stay, when he'd shown me that all he wanted was Christabelle?

"Would you be saying that, if I didn't look like Christabelle so much? Would you want me to stay, for me?" I asked, looking up into his eyes. He remained silent. "I am not Christabelle. I know I may look like her, sound like her, love like her, but I am not her."

"Assuredly not. You are more stubborn," his lips quirked wryly, and mine did the same. I sobered quickly however, as I realised something.

I was in love with Aro, had been for months, even perhaps as far back as that first dream when Edward was still with me. I had fallen in love with a man I had never met, until today.

"I cannot stay. I won't do that to either of us. You would hate me eventually, for reminding you of what you can't have, and I…." I trailed off, unable to finish my sentence. I would die loving him, no matter what he did to me.

Aro's eyes bored into my own, as he tilted my chin up with his hands. I shivered at his cold touch, closing my eyes.

"What are you doing?" I murmured, unable to hide a moan of appreciation when his fingers caressed down my throat, then glided over my shoulders.

"I can hear every thought a person has ever had, with just one touch…but not you. I cannot hear your thoughts, I could not hear Christabelle's. It must run in the family," he breathed, and my eyes snapped open. Now I was angry, angry that even now he continued to compare me to my ancestress.

"I will always be in her shadow in your eyes," I sighed, picking up my bag and already heading for the door. "Keep the diary. I think she would have wanted you to have it."

"Do you remember the last thing Christabelle said to me before she died?" Aro asked me abruptly, as I was about halfway to the doors. I stopped, arrested, before I answered without thinking.

"Remember, love never dies. I will find a way back to you," I whispered, and he nodded.

"And so you have come back to me, at last," he asserted, but I shook my head.

"Maybe in a way, she has come back. But not in the way you desire, Aro. I am not, and never will be Christabelle Renzi," I replied coolly, turning back to the door. "You are too trapped in the past to take the future you could have, and I won't stay here to be someone's shadow."

"Isabella!" he cried out, both anguished and yet angry, domineering. Imperiously commanding.

I spun around, my own temper rising with a vengeance. I had fallen in love with a dream, and now I was paying the price for it. "My name is Bella!"

Both of us stood there, feet apart, me with my untidy hair hanging in front of my face, and he with all his groomed perfection and dark seduction, breathing heavily.

"You would leave?" he asked me, one last time and I nodded.

"I'm going," I replied. Back to a father who still needed me, and back to friends who I would lose in a year's time. Back to Forks, and a life without love.

But thanks to Edward, I had learned to live without that now.

"I could stop you, I could keep you here," he warned me, and I eyed him consideringly.

"Then you would have neither me nor Christabelle. All you would have was a slave. Is that what you want?" I asked him, still standing by the door. I could distantly hear voices approaching behind it, and I knew our goodbyes were coming.

"No, I don't want a slave," he replied at last, and I sighed. "I do not know what I want."

"I know," I replied sadly, already turning away. "When you do, come find me again."

"Bella, wait!" he called, walking up close behind me as I reached for the door handle. I stopped, and turned once more, my heart beating faster than I could count its throbs.

Aro was standing uncomfortably close to me, and his hands rose to cup my face. I waited with painful anticipation, as his lips lowered to mine.

The first touch was gentle, tentative but it was enough to set my skin aflame, and my lips throbbing. Our lips brushed, locked and fused together, as I dropped my bag and went willingly into his arms as he kissed me, sensually calling to everything in me. My senses stirred, like a cat in the sun, stretching languorously for him. I felt a cool weight against my lips, and I relinquished them with a sigh, letting him invade my mouth in a cool, conquering perusal which devastated my senses. I pulled myself closer, sliding my hands into the silken curtain of his raven hair, locking around his nape.

Abruptly his kiss turned demanding and urgent, and I met his demands with my own as our tongues duelled and teased at the other mercilessly. I knew I was growing dizzy, but I didn't care.

I never wanted to stop kissing Aro.

His hands slid down my shoulders, down to my waist, pulling me flush against him, so every part of our bodies touched, the 'V' of his Volturi pendant pressing against my chest. I sensed the coiled tension in his limbs, felt it in my stomach, slowly unfurling into desire as I pulled away, but not too far.

Aro's hold on me would not allow that.

I retreated just enough to look up into his eyes, and whisper against his lips.

"Do you want this because of me, or because of Christabelle?" I breathed, searching his eyes. What I saw gave me hope, as I pushed at his chest.

He released me reluctantly, his eyes trained on my face as I picked up my bag and retreated back towards the door.

I felt the door open behind me, and I escaped from that heated room, and the gaze of a man who would long haunt my dreams, without the stimulus of an ancestor.

I could only hope the damned man would come to the conclusion I wanted to make on his own. I could not do it for him.

I would be making a mistake if I stayed, and I sensed I was making a mistake if I left.

But I could not abandon Charlie, not yet. I had my own chain to the mortal world, but this one was not as binding as Christabelle's had been.

I could only hope I possessed the strength to make it through the years to come.


I walked out into the Italian twilight with Edward and Alice, trailing silently behind me. I guessed I would soon be interrogated by them, but they were thankfully silent.

We were flanked by Demetri and the hulk, which I had since learned was called Felix, Caius leading us out.

Alice's stolen yellow Porsche was waiting for us, and as they slid into it, I was stopped by Caius's grip on my arm. I looked around, and into his crimson eyes, so like his brother's yet they seemed even more merciless and uncompromising.

"You are making a mistake, human," he growled, and I tore my arm from his grip pointedly.

"It's a mistake I have to make. For both of us," I replied softly, turning towards the car. Gathering my courage I turned back to the haughty immortal. "And by the way? The name's Bella."

I thought I glimpsed a flash of approval in Caius's red eyes before he turned and left with his guards, disappearing into the shadows. Overhead rain clouds has amassed overhead, as I looked up at the castle of the Volturi, and saw Aro standing there, in one of the windows, watching me.

I gazed up at him, torn, shaking with my pain at my decision.

But I could not stay and love him, while he still clung to Christabelle. I would not.

Gazing up at him, a line from a song came back to me then, and I sang it, knowing he would hear me.

"Love never dies, Love never falters. Once it has spoken, Love is yours…"

I broke off then, tearing my eyes away from his, the connection between us broken but our souls bound together irrevocably forever.

My vision glazed over with tears as I climbed into the Porsche, and Alice drove out of Volterra.


Please don't hate me! (Ducks flying heavy object)

I will sort this out, I promise.

Oh yeah, I haven't done a disclaimer in a while. : I own nada, not even Aro…