𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐞 / 𝐈𝐈.

16.

16 - the chase
mentions of attempted suicide

"You're really going to go after him, Heather? After everything he did to you?" Leah asks as Alice runs around the house, packing my bags while I finish getting ready and preparing to leave. "You just started patching everything together, and the chances are, it all fall apart again. I don't want to see you go back to that place, I don't want you to disappear from my life again! And what if something bad happens, what if you don't come back? Or you come back like one of them?"

"Leah, wouldn't you do the same? If this was Sam, wouldn't you still try to save him despite everything he's done? Because I can't just let Edward throw his life away, I'd never forgive myself." I explain to her, pulling on my sneakers as Alice rushes my bags out to the car.

"What are you going to tell your mother? What is she going to say when her daughter runs away for the guy who broke her heart?" I fumble around the secretary's desk that sits in the entry, finding a working pen and scratch paper to scrawl down a note, a lie. I hate the timing, I hate running out again without saying goodbye when the chances of my return are low again. The apology is short, messy, the lie with it. But I don't have time to come up with something better.

"We need to leave now, Heather!" Alice calls from her father's Mercedes Benz, the car is packed with our limited luggage, tickets have already been called in, and our flight leaves from Seattle in five hours. Time is against us already and we don't know the finer details about Edward.

"I'm sorry Leah. I am, but I have to do this." I reply, leaving the house and locking the front door for once, and hurrying into the passenger seat of the car.

It's last spring break all over again, but this time I'm chasing after Edward to keep him away from death's door. And there's a lack of unity between my head and heart as Forks begins to speed away from my view. There's a lesser part of me that wants to leave him, good riddance he'd be gone, but God I can't. The louder side reminds me of what remaining care I feel towards him, the love I used to harbor. A love I hate to harbor.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

To the average eye, Alice sleeps the whole flight from New York City to Florence, her eyes shifting underneath my sleeping mask which I offered as she searched all possibilities. Looking for some hint or guide to Edward's future. I sit next to her, anxiously watching as I brush my hair and apply travel-sized moisturizer, we'd have no time once the plane landed.

We knew the beginning of his decision, how he'd called Rosalie just to check in with the family only to hear of Alice's sudden disappearance looking for me. How he called the home phone looking for an answer from Camilla Thomas, only to hear that she was planning a funeral. My funeral. And in his hastiness, his inability to think with logic he booked the next flight to Italy, seeking death from the only people who'd give it to him, the Volturi. He so easily decided to throw his life away just because of the idea of my passing, all his immortality down the drain because he didn't wait for Leah to tell him I could come to the phone. Now, I'm racing across the world, to save him, to be his savior. The idea makes me gag.

I used to think we saw eye-to-eye, him and I. We used to be so aligned and connected, I thought we wanted the same things, and had the same values. But as we were driven apart, it's become apparent how distant from each other we were. He may have wrecked my life, and I may have become a shell, but I wouldn't think of taking it so senselessly. Why he, an immortal being, relied on a singular human girl to provide his livelihood is a dangerous idea. A toxic, poisonous one.

"Anything?" I turn to Alice and ask in a whisper. The flight only had two hours left before we'd arrive in Florence, the with the speed Alice drives after, we'd only have a forty-five-minute drive to Volterra where he is.

"The Volturi have denied his request. I could've told you that on my own though, Aro is too obsessed with his gift to let him die." She sighs, a mixture of worry and contentment. "Which means we have more time. He has to come up with a new plan to garner the Volturi's attention and get a death sentence."

"Romeo," I mutter to myself, remembering something he'd told me in September the day it all fell apart.

"What?"

"He wants to become Romeo to his Juliet. Dying because he can't stand the idea of living without me." I tell her, wishing this plane would land already and I'm in Volterra so I can save him from himself and his dramatics.

"Of course." Alice clicks her tongue in disapproval. "His crime will be theatrical, dramatic. Typical Edward. Oh no!"

"What?"

"He won't even have to do much, the city is celebrating St. Marcus' Day today. The whole festival is celebrating the expulsion of vampires from the city. If he does the slightest thing to alert humans to anything unnatural the Volturi will snatch him and kill him without hesitation." She explains, almost pained by his dramatics. "He's going to expose himself to the humans."

It won't take much for him to piss off the vampiric royalty. They won't stop if he threatens the peace the people of Volterra so blissfully live in. From what I know and have heard, they've fought too hard to have a broken-hearted immortal teenager cause suspicion to arise about the truth.

When I get home, I plan on burning every copy of Romeo and Juliet.

Sana's Note
Yalllllll todays my birthday! I'm so excited!