A Pathologist's Guide to Getting a Date

by dab_of_paint

Summary:

Isabella Marie Swan, 28, had long since grown up. The Cullens left her high and dry, and while she could certainly see how hormones had made her a raving maniac for a melodramatic teenage boy, she did not foresee how much it would rankle to be shown a world where she'd have had all the time in the world—and then be cut off.

It started with the search for a connection to the ones that left—a medical career, maybe a way to get a glimpse of at least Carlisle Cullen—but she quickly noticed what had really fascinated her all these years: Death—in all of its beautiful, terrible glory.

Hence, she became a forensic pathologist.

OR

Bella Swan is smitten with Death, slightly cynical, and finds it a giggle-worthy idea to move to Florence to work as a pathologist in the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital, a little more than a stone's throw away from one Volterra Castle.

That was - before she'd had to do four consecutive night shifts because someone was an idiot and didn't clean up after themselves.

Hence, she sent the Volturi a brain, since they obviously needed one.

Aro thinks she's flirting. 

Chapter 1

“Now, what are we looking at?”

 

Silence.

 

Well, he couldn’t exactly fault his guard's reaction. Aro knew as well as they did what they were looking at.

 

A human brain.

 

Packaged professionally with cooling packs inside an organ transport box, which resided in a nondescript cardboard box.

 

While Felix and Demetri had stood at attention the second he entered the small office right at the front desk, Belladonna, their newest secretary, was crouched over her paper basket, the vile smell of vomit permeating the whole room. She looked up at him with watery eyes, a handkerchief pressed to her mouth in mortification.

 

“Someone sent a brain with the post," she whispered.

 

That much was obvious.

 

“It wasn’t addressed to anyone explicitly. Just to the “throne room”.”

 

That had him perking up; theories of possible blackmail, of a human knowing about their nature and trying to extort them to gain—what? Riches? Oh, the hubris of humanity! Or maybe it was an unfriendly coven playing a prank?

 

He wasn’t worried, not at all. In his four millennia on earth, he’d had much bigger things to worry about than the interesting, if slightly mad, idea of a mortal (or immortal?) sending body parts to them.

 

Although to know about a “throne room"—of course, they resided in an ancient castle, but addressing it to a throne room would suggest the knowledge of someone using said room. Maybe even knowing that there were kings wandering the halls.

 

So, it would make more sense for an immortal offender to send them body parts than for a mortal.

 

Now, there was one question left:

 

Why?

 

He strode over to the red transport box, sitting innocently on dear Belladonna's desk.

 

Inside, as he had smelled the very moment he entered the office, was a human brain. Grayish, relatively healthy-looking, with wrinkles that suggested a moderately intelligent being. Condensation clung to it; the ice packs inside were already half-melted.

 

Which would suggest that the package had traveled quite some way.

 

“No sender address?" he asked, quite unnecessarily; he very much doubted it would be that easy.

Before the secretary could even attempt to answer, he’d taken her hand, sifting through a happy childhood, a bad break-up, and a petty theft just last Friday—oh, Belladonna! You naughty girl!—and there- the package.

 

The box had, as his dutiful underling had already said, contained a brain. It had been addressed to the “throne room” in “Castle Volterra"—how quaint. It wasn’t even addressed in an official way—no street number, but a post stamp. From the post office in Peccioli, which was a little more than a half-hour ride away.

 

How curious.

 

And a letter.

 

Ah.

 

The mystery thickens. He grinned, a manic glint in his eye. Now, it was getting particularly interesting.

 

Instead of focusing on what dear Belladonna had seen, read, and thought, he flickered around the desk and carefully lifted the just as nondescript piece of paper.

 

There, on this lined notepad paper, in slightly tilted script:

 

To whom it may concern,

 

After months of being patient, I decided I would do you a favor.

 

Please get rid of the one doing your clean-up. They are sloppy.

Find someone with a brain.

Like Henry (I have no idea if this is his real name; in my head, the name just fits). That’s his brain you’re looking at right now. He seemed smarter than whoever decided not to disguise the teeth marks on his neck.

 

With the respect you deserve

(which is not much considering the reason I wrote.)

 

An annoyed citizen

 

Aro giggled.