On Our Way Home

Chapter One: From Italy to Atlanta

Disclaimer: All elements of the Twilight books are the intellectual property of Stephanie Meyer. This derivative work is intended for entertainment only and is not intended for profit. I only wish to play with her characters and in her world....

All quotations of dialogue from New Moon are given to keep the story accurate to Meyer's books and characters.

Chapter One: From Italy to the USA

After helping Bella into the window seat, I placed her battered school backpack in the small compartment over our heads while Alice slid her Coach carry-on next to it. I gently closed the compartment door before moving in from the crowded aisle as tired tourists filed past us, toting their carry-on bags. Sliding into the aisle seat, I gazed once again into the beautiful eyes that I had never thought to see alight with life again.

Bella gave me a tight smile, the same smile I had seen pass over her features only a few times since we left Volterra hours ago.

There was something very wrong with that smile that haunted me, mitigating the joy that had exploded within me in that shadowed alley when I realized that I held a living, breathing Bella in my arms, the joy that had been renewed when our safety became a reality as Alice guided the stolen sedan past the Volterra limits.

Thankful for the wide first class seats that Alice had insisted upon, working her Alice-magic in obtaining them with much sweet talking and several generous bribes, I lifted the dividing arm between my and Bella's seats, placing my arm around Bella's too-thin shoulders and pulling her against my chest. Now she could sleep at last.

Ignoring Alice's frantic whispers to Jasper on her cell from the seat behind me, I sighed as I again noted the changes in Bella's appearance: the deep purple circles under her eyes that denoted far more loss of sleep than could occur during her travels to Italy and back, the drawn paleness of her face, the dull lankness of her once-shiny hair, the loss of fifteen pounds of weight, the unconscious shifting of her body as if she were in pain, and, most concerning of all, the tug-of-war behind those beautiful brown eyes. Gazing into her eyes once again as I cupped her thin face in my palm, I saw her love for me war with uncertainty, hurt, anxiety, and, worrying me the most, fear.

What was Bella afraid of now?

We had walked away from Volterra alive, all three of us, which was no small miracle. I now held her in my arms, allowing all the gratitude and love I felt for her shine from my black eyes into her brown ones. But the battle behind her eyes continued....

Breaking our gaze for just a second, Bella reached up to press the attendant alert button next to the reading light above our heads. I nodded in agreement, planning to ask for pillows and a blanket for Bella. Her drooping eyes and slow movements revealed her sheer exhaustion, and I couldn't wait to hold her while she slept, a simple act that I had missed horribly over these past months and, over the last twenty-four hours, had never thought to be blessed to experience again.

She had accepted my caresses in Volterra, during the car ride to Florence, and through the airport, but she had not returned them.

I kept telling myself that she was exhausted.

That she was in shock.

That she was still reeling emotionally from our narrow escape.

But I felt her weak resistance even now that we were comfortably seated, in her stiff refusal to melt into my arms as she had always done. While she slept, however, I could hold her as closely as I wanted to....

The attendant approached, her professional smile firmly in place. I caught in her thoughts the observation that Bella must be ill. Cancer, she decided, noting her thinness and sunken, empurpled eyes.