┏━━━━⋆｡‧˚ʚ ❀ ɞ˚‧｡⋆━━━━┓

MARCHING FORWARD

AS THE TIME GREW CLOSER TO THE CULLENS INEVITABLE DOWNFALL, BILLIE'S NERVES WERE POSITIVELY FRIED.

There was really no explanation for it, but whenever she thought too hard about why her brain always itched when their name was brought up, her nerves only increased tenfold.

She thought she had it under wraps, thought that no one had really noticed her jumpier than normal behaviour, but she was proved wrong the minute a familiar blonde vampire cornered her in the halls.

"What's gotten into you?" Jane inquired with the tilt of her head, eyes searching Billie's form for any sort of explanation as to why she was being so weird lately.

Billie feigned confusion, eyebrows furrowing. "What do you mean?"

Jane rolled her eyes, nearly stomping her foot onto the ground for good measure, too. "You've been so antsy lately that it is now making me antsy," she growled out, "me! I do not get antsy, so reveal the issue at once!"

"The fact that you're using the word antsy to begin with proves otherwise," Billie snickered, only to receive a slap to the shoulder from the shorter girl in front of her. "Ow— okay, fine! Yes, I've been a little anxious lately."

"Why?" Jane asked, or really, more like demanded.

Billie was stumped on that part too. "I don't know?" she offered with a grimace, extending her hand to block Jane's hand that was about to hit her shoulder once more. "I'm being serious! My head— it just feels a bit... wrong?"

Jane sobered up at that immediately. "Wrong?" she questioned, concern bleeding into her tone. "Billie, have you been feeling alright?"

"I'm fine," she was quick to dismiss, "but, I can't shake the feeling that something is going to happen."

The girl's eyebrows unfurled on their own. "I can assure you that nothing will happen. The matter with the Cullens will be the least of our concerns in comparison to the Forks terrain."

There it was again— that pesky itch in the forefront of her mind. She couldn't hear Jane drone on about how the terrain had a serious mud problem, couldn't see her scrunched up face as she described said mud, because her mind was providing a bleary image to her.

An overcast day, clouds of rain pouring down. Slippery mud and root branches unearthed, waiting for a civilian to fall. A crutch. A feeling. Being hunted.

Forks terrain.

She snapped out of it when she felt a hand on her forehead, blinking out of her daze and finding her eyes now settling onto Jane's equally as pale face. "Where did you just go?" she asked, retracting her hand when she saw Billie's eyes come back into focus.

"... my head feels wrong."

˚ʚ ❀ ɞ˚

Billie was fidgeting in place, the feeling of inquisitive eyes on her was beginning to grate on her nerves.

Jane had dragged her to Aro's study immediately, barging in on whatever meeting he was obviously holding in preparation for what was about to come. At the sight of Jane's seriousness and the clear distress on Billie's face, the others in the room were dismissed without a second thought.

The petite blonde was dutiful on filling Aro in on what had just occurred, reminding him that this wasn't the first time that Billie became trapped in her own mind since her rebirth. Though he tried not to let it show, Billie had come to know Aro just as well as he had come to know her; the concern floating around in his eyes made her stomach twist angrily.

"That'll be all, Jane," he said once said vampire finished her rant of all the things that were wrong about Billie.

Jane, for the first time ever, physically hesitated at his command. "But—"

Aro's head turned to her, unspeaking yet saying but a thousand words. Billie watched as Jane clenched her jaw, before she gave him an uncomfortable looking bow. She was out of the room before Billie could even realize it.

His hands were on her face, deeply crimson eyes scouring over every detail he could find with fondness. "Something tells me you have your own answer to what has been going on," he said to her, a ghost of a smile on his lips.

Billie shrugged. "It's not a solid answer," she explained, and before she could feel herself be transported back to the terrain she saw in her mind, she felt her hand latch onto his wrist as a means to ground herself. "I'm from there, aren't I?"

A part of her knew this, but seeing it confirmed it.

Aro didn't even need to ask her what she was on about, surely having his own answers of her problems in his own mind. "Yes, you are."

The itch returned. "Did I know them? The Cullens?"

She should've expected his response, his hands dropping from her as he muttered out the confirmation with disdain. "You did."

The urge to scratch at her throat bubble within her. Stress. "They're the faces— the people I see sometimes?" and it wasn't as though she was asking him while she gestured to her head, because she was merely saying the words to make them real. The words sounded real coming from her tongue, but the pressure in her head was still wrong.

"They've condemned you to this life."

She could hear Aro's word clearly in her mind, as though he was telling her the same sentiment once again. They were the unnamable figures in her mind— the Cullens.

Was that anger she was feeling? "I didn't want this."

"I gave them careful instructions on how to care for your safety," Aro explained, watching the girl before him start to pace. "The Cullens evidently disregarded them. You were entangled in their antics, yes, but I've given them far too many chances."

The threat was clear as it loomed in the air. He'd excused their actions too many times before, and evidently the news of the Immortal Child was the very last straw. It was the very last straw, and the very last excuse Aro could utilize in successfully getting rid of the biggest problem on his hands— that much was clear.

And though Billie was feeling absolutely gutted by the betrayal of these people she supposedly once knew, the same people who had either knowingly or unknowingly thrusted her into a life of immortality, she still found herself halting in her aggression.

"Can't we just give them a stern talking to?" she asked, and her voice was lowered significantly into something akin to a whisper.

She didn't want to voice it aloud, but with the itch forming in her head once more, she couldn't help but think that maybe something else was amiss. Sure, the Cullens might have disregarded her safety, but had they truly been monstrous enough to turn a child into a vampire?

Aro's sigh could be heard next. "It's not that easy, amore."

Just like that, the fate of the Cullens was properly sealed, and just like before, she knew he was already going to say that.

"Yeah, I know."

⋆｡‧˚ʚ ❀ ɞ˚‧｡⋆

[ wyn's note ]

billie is so close to having her memories unleashed... meaning the epic stare down between the cullens and the volturi is happening in the next chap!

we're closing in on the end, guys! strap TF in ;)

all my love xx