Bella MacLeod's Twilight Fanfiction

Still Waters

By SkyDancingHobbit

Chapter 03: Ties That Bind

Anyway, you don’t irritate the Volturi. Not unless you want to die – or whatever it is we do.

Edward Cullen, New Moon, Chapter 1, p.20

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In somewhat of a haze Isabella walked back to her room, Marcus having relayed a message to meet there to Miss Cullen. Her body was quiet but her mind, oh her mind was running in a thousand different directions at once. A whirl with all she had learned and experienced in the last 20 minutes. Yet as she mused something occurred to her, the music alone had stirred her, despite the sense of intimacy the room provided and every courtesy of her host. Marcus was an enigma, cold as a mossy stone yet his eyes hinted at some long lost strong emotion. Shaking her head gently Bella put him from her mind as she gave the heavy wooden door a shove and went inside.

“Alice?”

Her voice echoed eerily off the stones for a moment as she glanced about. No trace of the immortal were to be seen. The soft pattering of the rain against the ironwrought fence on her balcony. As if prompted by an instinct born of long practice Bella crossed the room pulling on a warm raincoat before opening the side door. There standing alone, back to the door was Alice, venom tears it seemed to be falling in time with the raindrops. She only turned her head when the sound of Bella’s footsteps caught her attention.

“Oh Bella”

Before she knew how, she found herself with an armful of sobbing best friend cradled against her chest, protected by the material of the raincoat she had no fears of the venom. How long they stood there Bella couldn’t have said. At last the storm of weeping passed and her best friend began to calm. Her pretty features still twisted with her grief; she gently released her hold accepting a handkerchief her friend offered.

“I’ve been thinking Bella, the next flight back to Washington is in a few hours, my only question is, will you come with me?”

Bella had been looking out across the cobblestones now darkened with the rain. Her gaze locked on the tower where only hours before Edward had stood, shirtless and ready to die for love. Yet her lack of an emotional response troubled her greatly. It was almost unfair that Alice had tears that Bella could not express. Brought sharply back to the moment by a touch on the hand, she blinked jumping a few centimeters.

“Perhaps, I know not, knowing what awaits me I am loath to return to my father”

Perhaps it was the flat tone or her choice of words, containing such a marked difference from her usual pattern of speech that it roused Alice from her sad musings to turn fresh interest on her companion as they both returned to the plush apartment Bella called her own. While they had been outside an unknown hand had already lite a crackling fire and laid out a warm clean set of clothes. Into which Bella eagerly changed into while eager questions pattered her ears from the pixie

“Bella, are you drunk?”

“No”

“Inhale anything questionable?”

“I think not”

“Eaten anything strange?”

“Not to my knowledge”

“Then why are you speaking as if…”

She never had the chance to finish the poorly worded question for at that moment the door of her room swung open revealing Aro Volturi. So sudden was his appearance that Bella started behind the screen. It seemed some on her instincts for self-preservation remained. A positive sign as he interrupted their conversation gaily his brother in tow, they stood elegantly in the hall as if awaiting invitation.

“Ah, excellent! Already her speech patterns have begun to alter. A sure sign that indeed your vision was correct Miss Cullen, dear Isabella will you not join us my dear? I am sure you have many questions”

Almost on cue Bella stepped from behind the screen and even the unstable immortal fell silent. Dressed in a gown of long emerald silk Bella was truly a vision, though her hair was slightly damp it fell in waves of unbroken dusky red brown past her shoulders. A simple braid on either side of her head kept the troublesome bits out of her eyes.

“Beautiful”

The exhale was nearly beyond her hearing range and she dipped in a curtsy to greet the royals as her complexion flushed on impulse to the flattery.

“Thank you”

She paused unsure of how to address him; so simply settled for the comment dictated by the moment. He however waved a hand. Offering it to her after the movement was finished. Alice however was left with her mouth hanging open in a very mortal fashion no doubt a carry-over from the time she too once had a heartbeat.

“Come my dear you have much to learn, my brother you see is trapped in a sense”

Before she knew it Bella was accepting the hand, flinching on impulse as the cool skin made contact with her palm. He kindly took no notice as they swept from the room, his stride surprisingly gentle for an immortal, Bella guessed him to be several thousand years old. They passed along shadowed corridors and across carpeted halls coming to rest finally above a courtyard; from where they stood the party watched a lone figure cross the courtyard, kneel before a small plaque and lay a dozen fresh roses at the base. Had she known better Bella could have sworn she witnessed those proud shoulders shake slightly with some hidden grief?

“He has done this every night for the last 2 thousand years, that is the resting place of his late wife”

“What became of her?”

Her voice had softened and this seemed to please the entire party, had she at that time been able to feel, Bella had no doubt she would have wept. The knowledge that so proud and regal a man had mourned this fashion so long was enough to move a stone to pity. Yet Aro took a long time in answering her inquiry.

“There are places in this world Isabella where not even my kind are safe, it was in such that they lingered too long one summer and while he was hunting the town rose up in anger, prompted by some legend of our kind and when he returned all that remained of her was the white burned ash we become when finally we meet our end”

She listened and mused on his words, her eyes trained on the figure that had at last risen and returned inside without having so much as turned his head in their direction; though she was sure he knew of their presence.

“He truly must despise my people, fragile as we are for having to wrong him, yet this very evening he was so very kind to me, it is baffling.”

“Not at all Isabella, for you are his salvation from this endless mourning.”

“How so?”

Here the immortal uttered the most unnerving giggle Bella had ever heard, causing her to flinch away on instinct as he gleefully shifted his weight onto his toes and back again as if convulsed with some unseen mirth. It was a long moment before he regained any semblance of calm as he addressed them all with gleaming eager eyes.

“How Isabella, is the great mystery, but I can tell you why my dear” “My brother has a special talent as most of the immortal kind do, to see relationships. The bonds and ties that connect one living thing to another. Yet there is more to it, he can if he chooses also create the same. This he did with Didyme but –

as it was rather one sided was left ragged and uncompleted, a half bond, she was his singer and his lust for the love he so desperately wished, thought her to be his life mate. A mistake that sent him into black despair the moment she ceased to be, you my dear are something quite different”

” What am I?”

“You are his, Suus Eternus Diligo, His Eternal Love, the only woman in all eternity who can unthaw the ice around his heart.”