It was like pacing through hospital corridors as someone whistled the Twisted Nerve main theme among unsuspecting passers-by - but Bella was not unsuspecting. The imminence of death unnerved her, and she wished Demetri would walk faster, take her far enough so that she couldn't hear Melissa's screams when the reaper collected her soul. His fingers in between hers were coated in her cold sweat, but he didn't seem to mind. Though the final decision had been clear enough, Bella needed confirmation. She swallowed dryly, trying to find her voice.

"Omnilingualism?" She all but whispered.

Demetri took her farther away from the drawing room before answering. She noticed with surprise that they were not going to the lobby. Instead, Demetri took her deeper into the castle.

"Gianna can deal with her workload on her own today," he said, sensing her confusion. "Yes, omnilingualism… she can understand what one says regardless of the language spoken."

Bella recognised the path to the library. If she wasn't working today, then why was he taking her there?

"It's not useful?" She guessed, happy that her voice was back to normal.

Demetri shrugged. "As it happens."

She knew it was a possibility and yet couldn't stop the wave of sadness that hit her. Eleazar was a vegetarian, she reminded herself; surely he wouldn't condemn Melissa to death?

"It could be useful," Bella pressed, but Demetri dismissed her with a wave of his hand.

"Eleazar is surely appealing on her behalf as we speak. If there is a case, she has an advocate. Don't trouble yourself with that now. It's not your problem."

Stubbornly, she was ready to fight him about it. How could it not be her problem? They made it her problem when they sent her to drag Melissa back into the castle just so they could prod her mind and discard her. He made it her problem, though she had to admit he probably didn't have much of a choice regarding that. They stopped at the familiar entrance to the library, where Demetri held her face in his hands, and she momentarily lost the will to fight. She held her breath as she waited for another outburst from him, but he calmly studied her, caressing her cheeks with his thumbs. She blushed, the iciness of his skin working as a soothing balm against the burning. She stared at him stupidly, trying to make sense of his actions. Was he searching for her mind under her shield again? She couldn't feel anything different besides the nervousness of being touched by him. Only one other vampire ever held her face like that. Was this touch anything like Edward's?

Horrified, she realised she wasn't sure.

She hadn't heard his voice in weeks, as well, not even the faint echo conjured up by her imagination. Did she still know what he sounded like?

I'm losing him.

He was never going to go back to Volterra, was he? He hadn't visited in three months and his messages were briefer each time he wrote. Was he not concerned? Did he believe she was safe in there, or did he not care? She tried to remember their short reunion when she first arrived there; she was so sure he did love her then… but now he was fading again and she knew it was by his own choice. Would it finally be as if he never existed? Was his aversion to the Volturi greater than his love for her?

If it is, then maybe his love won't survive this.

Demetri's hands moved, bringing her back to the present. Sliding to her temples, they pushed her hair back, tossing it behind her shoulders. She shivered when the strands brushed against her neck, but he didn't touch her there. His hands proceeded to slide down her arms and find her hands again, and her fingers twitched when he touched the scar James had given her.

"It occurred to me that the library was a rather inhospitable place for humans, and perhaps you wished to spend more time in here but were unable to."

She looked at the door again, finally seeing rays of sunshine spread on the floor through the glass panel. Her heart jumped with hope and then quieted down with incredulity.

He fixed it?

No, of course not, Why would he?

He stepped back, and her hands tingled with the loss of his touch. He gestured for he to go inside and she nearly threw herself at the golden doorknobs, expecting to step into the place she had pictured when she first stood there with Gianna months ago.

It was there.

Natural light bathed the whole room, bouncing off neatly arranged rows of bookshelves. The small windows near the ceiling had been enlarged, which surprised her the most. When had they done that, and how had she not heard the construction noise? How did they get rid of all the rubble so quickly and so quietly? She spotted the index cabinets a few feet away, finally seeing them entirely, but she had the impression that they had been moved. Bella scanned the place, comparing it to the mental map she had of it after her many excursions in the dark, and found that it didn't match. Whoever fixed the place - and she couldn't believe Demetri fixed it himself, or if he did, that he did it for her benefit - did more than enlarge the windows. The books were behind dark glass doors, lined up and clean as she was sure they had never been before. Looking around, she recognised the old computers near one of the walls, though they sat on a sturdier table and the oldest models had been replaced by newer ones. She saw large, beautiful rugs on the hardwood floors, with comfortable armchairs around them. Wooden coffee tables with arched carved legs sat at the centre, completing the inviting and cosy setup.

"We had to protect the books from the light now that we have larger windows," Demetri commented from behind her. "But I would say it was worth it. Though we don't need it to see, some natural light does lift the spirits…"

He paced around, observing her instead of the room. Bella found she couldn't bring herself to wallow in commiseration for a girl she barely knew inside the new library, as responsible as she felt for her death. She deserved to enjoy this, didn't she? Hell, she deserved to enjoy something, and a few books in a nice library were not a luxury. She could see herself spending her time there now, as long as not many people decided to do the same. She didn't expect to be the only person using the room, but she hoped to be the only one in there most of the time, at least.

"This whole makeover wasn't because of me though, was it?" She joked.

Demetri laughed. "I reckon it was."

"Right."

He didn't comment on her sarcasm, merely watching her walk through the rows of shelves. She had only the faintest idea of where the English fiction section was located, as she hadn't used the library for leisure until then, and took a moment to find it. The dark glass was not so dark that she needed to open the doors to read the bookspines, so she calmly read them with her hands in the pockets of her jacket. It crossed her mind that she was wearing denim pants with her denim jacket and she cringed, regretting the poor fashion choice.

She could be used to this, she thought. Whatever they truly meant by accommodating her so much was a problem for future Bella; right now she felt welcomed and safe enough. It was almost too much, having a day off and a renovated library at her disposal at once. Was this a reward for succeeding in their mission? She was probably overthinking this. The library was probably set to be renovated before she even got there, or they could just be striving to make her feel at home. Maybe the Cullens weren't worried because there was no reason to be worried; maybe she was safe in there. Still, she couldn't avoid the irritation that surged whenever she was kept in the dark about anything important. She sighed.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing."

He raised an eyebrow but she wasn't about to elaborate. Instead, she threw the question back at him.

"What about you? You were upset yesterday."

He smirked. "Worried about me?"

"Well, can't I be?" She shrugged. "Felix said you were working it out but he didn't say what got you so mad."

"Have I scared you?"

She frowned. That was fairly obvious, in her opinion. She had gotten used to Edward assuming he would terrify her with any small movement he made, even though Edward himself was not at all that scary. She had to admit that Demetri was scary, without even trying. It was her luck that he was always putting her at ease, consciously or not.

"Well, you did startle me. And then didn't explain it at all."

His face relaxed into a blank expression, as though something unpleasant dawned on him. "Forgive me. I had been… on edge as of late. I wouldn't say I'm upset." He leaned against one of the shelves, crossing one leg and shoving his hands into his pockets. "I'd say I'm restless, but I don't want you worried. You have enough on your plate."

She was distracted by the beams of iridescent light coming off of his skin. What little amount of it was left uncovered by his uniform erupted in multicoloured rays, mostly from his face. He wasn't wearing a cloak but the long-sleeved smoky grey shirt and equally coloured tailored pants he wore were embroidered with the same V-shaped emblem on his necklace. His hair glowed with a dark red halo and before she caught herself, Bella was gawking again.

For the love of God, what's wrong with me?

All vampires looked good, she chanted in her head. No reason to be this caught up on this one, was there?

He was exceedingly nice to her and did touch her a lot. She knew he only meant to try and cross the barrier of her mind through physical touch. Still, it seemed that the more she let him touch her however he liked without complaints, the more he did it. It had started to make her feel inadequate and she couldn't help but think it verged on inappropriate at times.

Focus, Bella.

Why was he so nice to her, anyway?

"No one cares about filling my plate when it's convenient for them," she forcefully crossed her arms. "When they need me to fly across the world to save someone from suicide, or if I have to drag a girl back to be slaughtered after she escaped death. We talked, I worried for her, and now she will die anyway. I guess it's fine to keep things from me as long as no one needs my help."

Demetri fought a smile. "That is a good reason to be upset, I suppose."

"Sorry, you don't want to hear about it. It's not your problem."

His dry laugh informed her that he didn't miss how she flipped the table.

She resumed her walk. He followed her closely and quietly like a shadow, stopping by her side when she opened a glass door to pick out a book. The golden letters on the cover shone under the sparkles from his skin. The Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole. How fitting, she thought. She should enjoy reading that one inside a haunted castle of her own.

"I don't presume to know anyone else's reasons," Demetri casually ran his index finger along the title of the book she held, "but speaking for myself, if I keep anything from you is because I fear your reaction to the truth. There are things you are not yet ready to hear and some might frighten you."

"That should be my predicament. It should be my decision to make. If something affects me directly I should have the choice to do with that knowledge what I think is best. Why does everyone else get to decide for me like I'm a child?"

The obvious answer hung in the air between them. She could read it in the flaming crimson of his irises, the unspoken words burning in the depths of his deadly eyes.

"Because you are a child. Because we're older, wiser; because we know better."

He didn't say it. If for fear of angering her further or because he didn't believe it, she didn't know. Instead, he smiled, suddenly amused by something.

"Right, fair enough. Let's begin with small things, then. Easy you into it."

He circled her, stalking her like prey or appraising her like an experiment, she wasn't sure. He stopped right behind her and she stood taller, tensing up. She felt his hands on her shoulders and his cool breath on her ear.

"The jacket you wear every day, this jacket," he squeezed her shoulders through the fabric, making her jump, "was mine. I bought it for myself and wore it for several years before it was placed in your wardrobe."

"What?!"

She tried to spin around but he held her firmly in place.

"Alec thinks it's funny to put my belongings in your way to see if you'll single them out."

She scoffed, unsure if she was outraged or entertained by this. Why would Alec do such a thing? It sounded like a test, but what could he possibly be testing that way? She almost laughed, out of embarrassment more than anything else. She had been wearing Demetri's clothes in front of him all this time and no one bothered to tell her? What else had she been using that was his?

Her face almost melted, so flushed it was.

I'm gonna kill Alec!

Demetri laughed, his whole body shaking. She could tell by how his hands were shaking on her shoulders and amid her mortification she felt the urge to kill him too.

"Well, at least you think that's funny. I would hate for you to resent me because of a jacket, as nice as it is."

"It is a very nice jacket." He agreed. He pushed her, making her face him. They were much too close to each other now. "You can keep it. It looks better on you."

She did scoff then, astounded by the absurdity of the situation.

He tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "As for the lost lamb you retrieved, it's a lesson as old as time: you don't name an animal you're raising for slaughter." She felt a knot in her stomach. It was not the insensitivity of the remark that hurt her, but more the fact that he played with her empathy to get her to agree to the mission in the first place. He knew Melissa never stood a chance and yet made her believe she could make a difference. How could someone so cold and with such disregard for human life truly care about her in any way? She knew she wasn't being raised for slaughter, but she was still an animal in their eyes. What could she be, then? A pet, at most; at least until they gave her immortality.

"You didn't need me to get Melissa back in here." Bella turned the book in her hands nervously, trying to keep the little distance between them. "You could have found her and brought her on your own, she couldn't run from you or fight you in any way."

"I could, but you want to be part of the guard. We're including you. Besides, I'll never pass up an opportunity to spend time alone with you."

She shuddered. Including her. In what sense did they want to include her? A welcoming one, or a binding one? If they wanted to convince Alice and Edward to stay there, having her shackled to that place made sense. It would also make sense for the Cullens to distance themselves from her in that case. Was that what the mission had been? A way to make her complicit so she would feel too guilty to leave? A way to test her?

"I just… I can't ignore it now. I feel responsible."

"I see. You don't care she is dying, you just don't want to be a part of it."

Bella flinched. He was right but was she wrong for feeling this way? She had to ignore all the tourists that fell victim to him and all the other vampires regularly, how else was she supposed to live there? She could easily not think about every other tourist that came into the castle with Melissa, all the nameless and faceless people she never had to interact with, but how could she ignore Melissa's death when they had talked and Bella had learned about her life?

That's because you shouldn't have done that.

She didn't have to do that. She took Melissa's survival for granted and if she felt any guilt about her death, Bella only had herself to blame.

Demetri ran his fingers through her hair again, as if to soothe her, and she found it disconcerting that it worked.

"Had the girl not left the castle, she would be dead now. Had you not retrieved her, she would be dead. Her death was certain from the moment Heidi picked her."

Bella fought the lump forming in her throat. "It didn't matter, then. It didn't matter that I got her back, so what was the point?"

"It matters that you accepted to go. It matters that you wanted to do well."

She was light-headed. As if sensing that — which he probably did —Demetri put a hand on the crook of her elbow and gently guided her to an armchair. She marvelled again at the changes in the room before plopping down unceremoniously. The book fell on her lap.

"Does it matter that I did well?"

He smiled, sitting across from her. "Yes. Though, of course, if you hadn't convinced her we wouldn't have held it against you."

She knew deep down she couldn't make much of a difference but it was still strange to hear that no one even cared if she succeeded or not, and that Melissa was doomed from the start.

Of course she was, the whole reason she came here in the first place was to be food.

"I don't like to think things are set in stone like that," she admitted. "Not that I feel so important that my actions should change the world or anything, but it's a little suffocating to think we have no choice."

"Choice is an illusion," Demetri stated matter-of-factly, oddly conformed with the prospect, "though we do have the power to change the future through our decisions. You should know, having a seer for a friend."

She did know this, which only made thinking of choice as an illusion all the more difficult. Alice's visions changed all the time precisely because people changed their minds all the time.

Alice. Bella missed her friend more than she missed Edward sometimes. She felt Edward fading as time went by, but not Alice. Bella missed her friend just as much as she did when she left for the first time. Her first and only real friend, if she cared to admit. The only close friend she didn't have to keep secrets from.

Even Alice hides things from me, even if I hide nothing from her.

She used to be just fine with this. For the first time in her life, she was not the one on top of everything all the time. It was a welcome break from parenting her parents and she was thankful, but how much of not letting her decide for herself was caring and how much was patronising her?

She thought of how much the responsibility placed on her shoulders since her childhood could have influenced her need for control until she heard Demetri's voice again.

"You said you find it suffocating. I, for one, find it very comforting. If the only certainty we have in life is death, vampires have none. It's soothing to think some things are simply meant to be. It takes all the weight of choosing from our shoulders."

There has to be a balance, she thought. Not making any choices is only freeing if you get to make your own choices most of the time. Otherwise, what are you being freed from?

"If we do have the power to change the future, then Melissa could have lived," Bella insisted.

"If she had a formidable gift, she would have – but she was born with this one. If she never took Heidi's offer to come here, her gift would be irrelevant, and she would have lived regardless of it. The inevitability of her death was a result of these two factors combined. Anything that happened after she boarded our plane was inconsequential."

Bella had to agree with him; accepting that would be comforting. She would have no reason to feel any guilt in that scenario. Still, the powerlessness that it brought her was anything but comforting.

"I guess… we can't expect to win against inevitability. I just don't like to think of anything as inevitable."

His eyes flashed with a certain mischievousness. "Good things can be inevitable, Bella. Perhaps you should focus on those."

She fidgeted with the sleeve of her jacket.

No, his jacket.

She hesitated for a moment, twisting the sleeve cuff in between her fingers. She felt the urge to take the jacket off now that she knew she had been parading it around when everyone knew it was his, but what would be the point? She had been wearing it for too long already and he said she could keep it. Still, the denim felt heavier somehow now that it carried meaning.

"It would give me peace to think of a few certain things as inevitable," she conceded. "Right now, I would like to think my transformation is inevitable."

"It is."

He said with such decisiveness that she instantly believed him. Without the threat of impending death it would be much easier to do a good job there. She felt sudden sympathy for Gianna, working there for so long with said threat always looming over her.

"That is comforting," she admitted.

Demetri got up a little too quickly, making her jump. Possibly noticing this, he moved slowly when walking over to her and taking something from his pocket. He put the object on top of the book on her lap and Bella instantly recognised the bottle of pills Gianna had given her. She nearly cried out with relief. She was dreading nightfall since she woke up, terrified of facing her nightmares again so soon.

"As a sign of good faith, here's to not treating you like a child. Make your own decision regarding this."

She snatched the bottle before he changed his mind. "Thank you."

For everything, she almost said, not sure of what "everything" even was.

"You are always free to choose, Bella. I hope you know this."

She nodded, equal parts confused and grateful. Maybe he meant to remind her she was not a prisoner there, something she did forget quite often. Maybe he just had no hope that she would quit the drugs.

He stared down at her ruefully.

"The sad thing about free will is that we are free to make all the wrong choices."

Glancing at her book, he smiled again and backed away. "I hope you enjoy your book… and the library."

He disappeared with barely a gust of wind, leaving her alone. She shoved the pills inside one of her pockets. She was more disappointed that he left than she had expected. She didn't really think he would stay to keep her company, but she didn't know she wanted him to stay until he left. He probably didn't want to bother her while she read, or more likely, he had better things to do. It was so stupid, but her eyes brimmed with unspilt tears. She dried them off with her arm, staining the jacket.

She didn't know what to think.

It was strange to imagine the loneliness was affecting her so intensely. She had always been quite alone, and never had many friends growing up. She liked to think she was close to her mother, but even her presence had always been overwhelming. This loneliness was different from her initial depression back in Forks when The Cullens had left. She felt alive now, just caged in forceful isolation.

Maybe Alice would visit her if Edward wouldn't. It was difficult for either of them to just waltz back into Volterra, she had to acknowledge. Perhaps she was judging them too harshly.

Then there was Gianna, the person with whom she spent most of her time, but Bella was one hundred per cent sure they would never be friends. The Italian couldn't be clearer about that if she tried. It was probably for the best; she couldn't afford to bond with any other human in there - she was going to let Melissa be a lesson.

Opening the book, she pushed all of her troubles to the back of her mind. She had always been good at repressing bad things and this was not a good moment to stop. She was determined to enjoy the book and the library, thank you very much. She deserved it.

Whatever Demetri was trying to accomplish with all the help he offered was a problem for future Bella as well.

a/n: I struggled with this chapter and am now sick of looking at it lmao it has been almost completely rewritten ugh idk the vibes were just really off
I'm mostly happy with it now so here it is. The story has been taking a darker turn in my head as I think of the next chapters and I might need to change the rating to M eventually. Not sure if I will cause I haven't decided yet what will be laid out and what will be implied.
Huge thanks to everyone that takes the time to comment, it motivates me a lot
Anyway, hope you like this chapter and I'll try to update again soon