Roman has always been terrible at finding the right words to say to Marnie. Here's the thing: they were never really close, that special mother-daughter bond that they were supposed to have had fizzled away someday like it was nothing and neither of them had noticed until they thought it was too late. It was a mutual thing, a mutual understanding, but it still hurt her all that time because, well, Roman was one of those people that loved so much, too much, and with everything that she had.

Running into her apartment, grabbing her passport from the top drawer at the far left of the kitchen all while giving her mother a rambled, hasty explanation of what was going on, and then leaving without Marnie saying a single thing had hurt a lot. Terribly.

Parents were supposed to care, it was part of the job they signed up for.

She hoped it was because of the shock. That somehow she had startled her mother into such a daze that she couldn't find the words to say or maybe it was all the leftover emotions from the death of a family friend that made her reaction time sluggish.

But she should have at least gotten a concerned phonecall.

Roman blamed all of this on her dad. This was his fault even if she didn't know how yet.

He should've just been here.

In fact, it was terrible that Roman barely knew a thing about her father when he was still technically in the picture. He has still Marnie's husband. He still called and sent letters, but just never to her.

Some primal, instinctive part of her knew that he didn't want her as a child and that he would rather just forget that she exist. She had stopped wondering what she had done wrong a long time ago, but that wasn't going to stop her from blaming her problems on him if she could — and if the situation with Marnie was anything to go by, it was his fault.

Still, seated against the window of the plane as Bella slept fitfully against her shoulder, she had to wonder if this was how things were going to be until she finally moved out.

They needed to talk and Roman loved saying that, it seemed, but she had never actually summoned the courage to go through with it. She had so many people she had to sit down and honestly discuss things with but she had never actually done so — aside from Emily, but somehow that didn't feel quite right to her because it was the other woman that did all the talking and still Roman had never quite gotten to say what she wanted.

How was she supposed to tell someone to there face that something they had done, something they had based there whole life around, didn't sit right with you? That it was fundamentally wrong if it wasn't for the supernatural aspect of it.

Roman had never been the confrontational type unless she had to. She was a procrastinator at heart, the kind of girl to push things aside until they could no longer be ignore. She was a floater, always willing to do her own thing.

Talking to Marnie about their relationship scared the shit out of her. Talking to Bella about there relationship scared the shit out of her.

And sure, she was brave when it counts. She had to be.

She was also happy most of the time, optimistic, but that didn't mean she wasn't the sort to beat down on herself when she was uncertain.

Roman was uncertain a lot lately.

That was going to change. She was going to make it change.

Bella was asleep. She could feel the steady rise and fall of her chest with each breath. It was a bit of a relief, really, because how else was she supposed to gather the courage to speak to Alice alone?

She had her own things to say that didn't involve the trip or the obvious, enlightening things that Bella had known to ask, no, this was different, personal, and it wasn't all question.

It was clearing the air one person at a time.

It was fixing things so she didn't feel so broken.

She needed order and she was going to correct that.

"I'm not trying to steal Bella from your brother. That isn't what this is," Roman blurts, wincing at how loud her words come out. "I care deeply for Bella. I am crazy in love with her. I would do anything to make her happy and if that means Edward then so be it."

"Roman..."

"But I'm also in love with your brother. Just as much and just as crazy. I know how ridiculous that sounds but there is something in me that just knows with absolute certainty that they are both my soulmates that I can't find my feelings for them," she rushes out, bulldozing through anything she might have to say. "It's a little unconventional and strange, but I swear I'm not just saying it to be greedy or because I'm some disgusting person. Sometimes people love more than one person and I'm one of those people and I'm not—"

"You are not a disgusting, horrible person and you aren't greedy," Alice interrupts with a kind, welcoming smile. "You are maybe one of the most genuine and heartfelt people I'm ever going to have the pleasure of knowing, and if my brother was going to be with anyone, it would be you girls."

It takes her a minute to wrap her head around her words and it makes her dizzy with delight when she does.

"Really?" She whispers, unable to help the awe in her voice and unembarrassed by it.

"You wouldn't have come if you weren't and I look forward to getting to know you."

"You, you think I'll be around that much, that you'll get to know me?"

Alice smiles. "What has Bella told you about me?" 

"She hasn't really told me anything. She wasn't really comfortable speaking about you guys so I didn't want to push her."

"I'm glad to hear that you were there to help her," she speaks sincerely, the words a touching comfort, and Roman tries hard not to blush. "I've always hoped that everything would work out but you changed your mind so fast and often that it was hard to pin you down."

"Ah, Bella might have mentioned something about you being psychic. I wasn't sure how much to believe..."

"So she has told you a little," Alice teased with a sly smile.

"I guess so, but my head has been all over the place."

Humming, she tilts her head back, closing her eyes and had Roman not known better she would have believed her to be asleep. "I can see possible futures as they are on that course. People change their minds or make different decisions that change things. I see the most likely possibilities."

"That's really cool!"

Alice giggles. "Yes. It is, but sometimes I have to keep myself from getting excited in case things don't happen."

"Like what?"

"There was you, actually. Every time I expected you to appear you switched course and everything changed. You gave me quite the headache with your flickering, Roman."

"Oh, I'm sorry! I have a hard time sticking to certain decisions and it gets so much worse around Bella and Edward because I just get so nervous and flustered that it's hard to get it words out!" She stammers, a hand coming out like she could physically offer the other girl her apology. "Things only ended up happening with Bella because I got hurt and she was freaking out because of the blood. She's the one that asked me to spend time with her."

"She has a very strong edge to her character for someone that acts so demure," Alice points out.

Roman nods quickly. "Oh, yes! Bella's wonderful! She always knows when to take charge and just does it."

Her eyes twinkle with something, a kind of distant joy that takes Roman by surprise. "Maybe she just needed a reason to find that inner voice."

At that, she lifts the phone at the back of the seat, murmuring something to Jasper that sounds too much like a final goodbye that makes her heart hurt. This wasn't fair to either of them. Roman should never have let Jacob answer that phone. 

The thought of not going home wasn't one she wanted to visit, so she didn't. Instead, she let herself focus on anything else -- everything else. 

"Edward has always had trouble hearing your thoughts, you know. He hardly noticed, but I always did. It was easy when I could understand why you were able to avoid him sometimes," Alice comments. "I've never been able to see what someone's gift is going to be, but I've always been certain about you." 

"A gift? Like what you can do?" 

"And Edward's mindreading, and Jasper's pathokinesis. There's a high probability that you'll have one if you become a vampire," she whispers. "Most of the guard has a gift. That's why they keep them all around." 

"Do I become a vampire?" Roman breathes in anticipation. 

"Ah, ah, I'm not allowed to give you spoilers." 

Pouting, she turns back to the window, wondering if that was even something she wanted for herself if such a thing ever came up. It was obvious that Bella wanted that because the girl nearly died without him, but she wasn't involved with any of that. 

If Edward wanted her, if they both did, enough that they were willing to spend forever with her, then she would likely take the change in a heartbeat, that was just the kind of person that she was, but she didn't know anything about being a vampire, didn't even known if that life was something that she could live with even if it meant she was with them. 

With Bella sleeping on her shoulder, reaching forward to pull her closer whenever she moved too much, and Edward's life hanging in the balance, depending on them, she decides that she would do anything and everything to stay with them if she was wanted. 

Roman didn't realize what Alice had done to distract her until they landed. 

They went from one plane to another, long flights that made her cramp and itch with the need to move. She tried to sleep through most of it to beat down the warring emotions that fought for control of her thoughts and actions. It worked, for the most part, only waking when Bella silently prodded her awake to update her on one thing or another. 

She wasn't quite sure how she could be so touched by the simple action of Bella including her, as if she still considered her to be some incredibly important person in her life even as they were on the way to save Edward, the man that Bella had been yearning after for months. 

It gave her disgusting hope and if Alice's encouraging smiles were anything to go by, she was willing to let that hope build just for the sake of it. She was a psychic, right? Why would she lead her on pointlessly? 

Landing, Roman was awake and ready to jump from her seat the moment the seatbelt sign was off and that's what she did, grabbing the bags and darting down the aisle after Alice and Bella. The humans had to keep up. They couldn't move so quickly, but that could have been a great thing since Alice was there with a canary yellow Porsche when they came stumbling out into the sun. 

She stuffed herself into the incredibly tiny backseat, poking her head so she was between the pair, hair whipping around her with the speed. 

Car theft wasn't such a big deal when no one could keep up. It was an emergency anyways, and lots of things could be excused. 

It was easy to ignore the crime that they were currently involved in when she was zooming first through Florence and the Tuscan landscape. The blur of the world was wonderfully striking, hypnotizing, and she couldn't look away from it. 

She didn't need to focus, she could feel them getting closer, the familiar click in her mind connecting likes strings. There was a map in her head, a detailed thing that felt as if she had personally done it herself, and she could feel him as they got closer. 

It wasn't far now. She could already see where he was. 

"I'm going to get you as close as I can, and then you're going to run in the direction that I point you," Alice orders as they get closer to Volterra. "Stick close to Roman. She'll make sure you don't get lost." 

Bella nods frantically. 

"Try not to trip. We don't have time for that." 

The sun seemed impossibly bright where it sat in the sky. Roman swallowed. The city was beautiful. The castle was daunting. She closed her eyes. It was close. 

"There," Alice pointed and she got the distinct feeling that it was only for Bella's benefit. "He'll be under the clocktower." 

Pressure built as they climbed up the hill, traffic slowly building, and she slipped on her bag in preparation to make a break for it. Climbing out of the car would cost her a few precious moments and she didn't want to slow anyone down any more than she was. 

She could spy them doing checks as they slowly let people into the city, redirecting cars to park alongside the road. They would need to get out soon. They wouldn't be able to go any closer. 

 Alice spoke quickly in a fierce, low voice, "I can't see what the guard here will decide now—if this doesn't work, you're going to have to go in alone. You're going to have to run. Just keep asking for the Palazzo dei Priori, and running in the direction they tell you. Don't get lost." 

"Palazzo dei Priori, Palazzo dei Priori," Bella repeated the name over and over again

Nervous, she shifted in her seat. "Let us out now. I can get us there." 

"What?" Bella blurts. 

"It's an old city, an old Italian city. Most roads, if not all, lead to the centre where he'll be," Roman says quickly, confident. "And all these people will be moving to the same place in the same direction. We just have to follow the crowd." 

They turn, eyeing the roadblock and the two cars ahead of them stopping them from entering the city. Bella swallowed. 

"Okay. Okay, let's go," she breathes, already climbing out the car and shifting the seat so that Roman could clamber free. 

She grabbed her hand immediately, darting forward. She shoved others out of the way as she went, thankful that she was coordinated enough for both of them. 

Her hold on her girlfriend was strong, sturdy. It reminded of the times that she had guided Bella in the woods, pulling her along with little thought of getting lost -- because she had never before gotten physically lost. 

People with red cloaks were everywhere, shouting happily in Italian, and she leaned on, following the flow of the crowd as she tuned out Bella's occasional questions. Roman couldn't let herself be distracted now, not when she was so close that it vibrated in her chest. 

But the crowd thickens and she trips over her feet and Roman slows, eyes darting around. The clocktower was right there, right across. They would never push through all these people in time. 

Her mind screamed, Bella tugs on her arm. "Not that way." 

"What?" she gasps, cheeks pink from running. "Why not?" 

Roman swallows. "Do you trust me?" 

Eyes connect and she's swimming in brown that shone love and acceptance under all of the panic and stress. "Of course." 

Nodding, she pulls her to the street over, pulling her into a small alley that barely fit them side by side as they sprint.

There were only a few people to push through before they were falling into the parade path and darting to the other side into the fountain. 

And then Bella was stumbling forward, water splashing with each step she took, hair whipping around her face, and Roman was struck by the beauty of her all over again, by the extremes, Bella would go to save the man she loved.

She watched as they crashed together like two pieces drifting home, Edward's arms wrapping around Bella like she was his purest form of happiness and Roman was certain that she heard the way her heart cracked like fragile pottery under the hand of something so much stronger and powerful than herself.

The way Bella leaned into him, so natural and open, not so different from the few moments that they shared, but so incredibly different all the same. Bella would shout her love for him from the highest of rooftops if it was demanded of her -- she would stand before a court of vampires revered as kings knowing that her life would be unimportant to them in any way.

There had been times, too many to count, that Roman had watched them together, wishing to share in the beauty of what they had, but never really finding a way she could fit in. Having always been a particularly good finder, Roman knew that there were times where it was necessary she hides herself away to deal with her own wounds -- even if she didn't have any.

Allowing herself to be caught up with the crowd of people in cloaks shouting in Italian as they celebrated the end of something they did not know controlled this city, Roman was carried through with nice people old and young that spoke to her in sparse, limited English, a red cloak of her own being wrapped around her shoulders as they invited her to join in on the celebration.

It would be hard to distract herself from her broken heart she didn't have, but Roman knew she had done it before, had carefully reconstructed the beating organ with the frail pieces into something new and evolved that might withstand the next blow that she was dealt. 

They just needed a moment to themselves, Roman tells herself, it wasn't time for her.

Dancing to music fast and slow, her breath catching at each hand that gripped hers to spin her about in a wave of moves, Roman could feel herself sweating lightly, her feet aching from the way she jumped about. Food and music from celebrating made their way to her, her mind too absent to think any of her decisions through as she accepted anything and everything handed to her.

Pretty girls and handsome boys spoke to her in lilting Italian, people that, had it been before the arrival of the Cullen's in Forks and the new-girl Bella, Roman would have hidden away within an alcove just out of sight, a nearly private brushing of lips that anyone could have stumbled upon. Some part of her jumbled brain told her to drag them off, smile back at them coyly as she enticed them with a flick of the hips and a bat of lashes that would somehow make her even in a bitter twist of the word, but her body burned at the idea -- rebelling against the possibility, the concept of kissing anyone other than Bella because the girl's lips were the sweetest, most precious thing she had ever tasted, and Roman knew that only Edward would be a passable comparison.

It was as the sun began to set that Roman knew she ought to be working on a way home, with plenty of American cash on hand and her credit card, it was a simple task to find a cab to the airport, a fixed fee that was filled with stifled, but otherwise delightful conversation from a man that knew a bit more English than the others due to his occupation.

Her lips were dry, the loneliness of the backseat of the cab bringing unwanted tears that were heavy to her eyes as they begged to be shed -- Roman kept smiling for the man, her laughter unabashed and open as she carried on with the conversation while forcing the crying of her heart away from her thoughts.

"I came with a friend," she told him after he asked in so many words, why she was leaving Volterra alone. "But she met up with someone else and I didn't want to get in the way of that."

"You are leave alone? After come all this way?" He asked, and Roman recognized the hidden wisdom in his gaze as he looked to her through the rearview mirror.

"She loves him very much, and I don't know what it means for me anymore," Roman whispered, voice hoarse as she forced the words out while trying to withhold the bitterness. "Now isn't the time for me to be here."

She knew this before it started, how Bella's love for Edward would always shadow any feelings for her, and Roman had accepted it, told the girl that it was fine because she was desperate for anything the girl would give her -- even if it resulted in her own destruction. By leaving Roman, wouldn't force Bella to say the things she dreaded so dearly, she would simply let it occur naturally as if she had never existed.

She had never existed to Edward anyway. Wiping her out of Bella's world would be easy for him.

Roman was a coward before she was anything else. She was a coward that would rather run than face her fears, and she was fine with that -- it worked. Hiding was something that she could do. 

Paying more than was necessary to the driver followed by hasty, stammered thanks in Italian that she had picked up over the few hours she spent here, Roman entered the airport with her head spinning as she tried to think of her next course of action. She was truly grateful that she had thought to grab her knapsack style purse on her way out the car as she chased after Bella shouting directions and guiding the way to go.

With it, she wouldn't need to struggle for money to get home. Her bank account would be weeping, but she still had enough from years of working as a ranger and as a Junior Scout leader during the summers to fall back on if anything were to happen.

Roman would be sure to thank her mom for forbidding her from spending her money on frivolous things when she got home.

She was digging through her bag when she found the stray ticket that was neatly stuck in her agenda, the top sticking out to display it was a return trip to Forks through a series of complicated connecting flights, and Roman nearly choked on her sob when she realized that Alice knew this would happen with enough certainty that she would plan for it decisively.

Was she always meant to be alone or was there the possibility that she could have been happy with them, despite what Alice had clearly foreseen? Had this been what the psychic meant when she had never made a definitive decision? 

Roman didn't want to think of it as she made her way through the different gates and checks to get to the plane. 

Being the one to stand in her own way was utterly painful. 

Having always been last to leave it was more than fitting that she was first this time around in a way that she knew was somehow ironic. Always aiming to please, Roman was always the one that ended up hurt -- it was only fitting that she did it to herself this time. 

At least there would be plenty of work for her at home that would keep her mind busy as she poured herself over maps and hiking trails. She could lose herself in a tangle of trees and dirt in a way that she could never truly get lost because Roman had always been able to find her way home no matter what came to pass.

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oof. ya girl skipped the volturi and fled italy like the coward she is !! I love my little coward !! 

unedited 

2019-11-04