Hello, lovely readers. Welcome to my first story on both English and on the Twilight fandom.
Initial person to blame for this idea: Kopri, also my beta, who always bugged me about writing on English. One night I did, and the first chapter was born. I have her to thank. You rock, sweetie.
This story will be concentrated on the Volturi, alternating on one point to the Cullens, but it will have a fair share of both, with the final clash that should have been written on Breaking Dawn. I need some relief on that matter, and don't we all?
The Volturi---awesome characters that I sadly do not own.
Post Breaking Dawn
Born Dead
Part I
The Mother
The developmental task of the Mother Stage is accepting responsibility.
"I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; she will crush your head and you will strike her heel. To the woman he said: I will greatly increase your pain in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you."
Genesis 3: 15-17
Chapter 1
Birth and Release
There had been one time, she remembers, that her way of being lead her too far. She had been a wise 10-year-old at the time, even wiser than her brother or any of her classmates. She had been wise enough, indeed, to notice things at home were wrong. She also had been wise enough to ask no questions, then, she would get no lies.
Amelie knew it was wrong to steal.
Her parents told her so, many times, after watching kids at the streets, stealing worthless things. Worthless then. She never had the necessity to steal. Her parents always provided her the best things in life. But after her father died everything went downhill.
That's why she felt the urge to take the thirty euros in one single fluid motion that fell of Mrs. Bouillon's purse the night she helped her to carry her books to her house, just three houses after hers. She knew it was wrong but it did not stop her. In fact, she thinks it pulled her forward. Amelie did not even had enough notion about the proper value of money, but details were mindless.
Mrs. Bouillon, a widow, just like her mother, never said anything about the lost money—the young girl doubted the close minded and half deaf lady would ever find out—even though Amelie had the most bizarre wish to be discovered. She once toyed with the idea of the lady doing fooling her on purpose, and she tried not to think about this, because she did not like being fooled. She still doesn't.
The girl did not give the money to her mother, helping her to pay the bills, a casual lie doing the trick. She was just as selfish back then as she was now. She did not, however, spend it on herself either. She saved it under her bed; the most valuable possession she had, not precisely because of its actual value, but because of what it represented. She had gone too far and she had enjoyed it.
A macabre smile played on her lips as she remembered the incident, innocent back then. Innocent now as she took the first step that lead her to the unfamiliar and cold white room that could have so easily been her death. White rooms, specially modern ones like that one, were and oddity on Volterra. Death wasn't asking for her worthless life this time, though. In fact, death had something more deliciously painful prepared for her.
She knew coveting had nothing against murder.
This time, death was taking the purest thing she had inside of her, the last chance at redemption she had. Death was taking her child, and she was going to let her do it.
There had been a young girl talking a rushed Italian through a cell-phone at the clinic. Amelie had always been observant towards her surroundings, but this girl did not pick her interest enough to hold her attention. Amelie took a seat on the hard (and cheap) chair, listening vaguely to the conversation the girl was having, while she flipped a flyer that said 'Murder is not the answer'. Christians.
When she understood—barely, because Italian had been a pain in her ass just as that baby was since she moved to Italy—a few of the words the weak girl almost whispered, though, she looked her way. The girl barely bordered the edge of being eighteen years old, her entire petite body shivered as she cried. She had frizzy wild hair, its red being more orange than anything. Her face, washed up by constant flowing tears, was full of awfully dark freckles. Her eyes, though, were very pretty, but she was constantly closing them, and Amelie couldn't observe them more closely.
Amelie was tall, statuesque, with beautiful dark hair cascading her back in graceful curls—even though that lately, due to her lack of any beauty products by the medical procedure leaving her absolutely broke, it was more of an unattractive disarray. Amelie and her were completely opposites, because the girl was not pretty or even interesting in the way most people analyzed each other. Instead, she was genuinely scared.
That alone, made her more beautiful than Amelie would ever be.
And even though the majority of men thought Amelie was gorgeous, thoughts that lead to actions and actions that had lead to this, she knew she was nothing compared to the cowardly girl. Tears were running down her face even more constantly as the indecision attacked her. Indecision, Amelie decided, was almost as dangerous as temptation. They both clouded your mind, the allure of 'ifs' drowning you into the dark waters of sin, and eventually reached their goal: making you their subject, making you as human as everyone else was.
Amelie knew who she was and who she couldn't pretend to be. Knowledge about herself had smacked her in the face numerous times; she knew she deserved it, so she did not complain. She did not hesitate on her decision either.
Her eyes collided with hers, and the girl's eyes showed off nothing but sorrow.
Her call came to an end, her name passed through Amelie's ears, fading into a lonely echo in the room, and the clinic never knew again of the girl. As Amelie's name was called instead, she took exactly eight graceful strides and entered the doctor's office, thinking and feeling a lot of things. Envy dominated.
Because the girl with the broken eyes had a heart Amelie couldn't't covet and pass as hers.
"La mamma sta andando guardarla svilupparsi…" Mommy is going to see you grow.
*******
She wandered the streets, not really lost, just thinking about everything and nothing, with that same tone of bitter venom that had invaded her heart. She noticed a car that reduced it's speed beside her.
"Perché così sola? Voglia una certa azienda?" A somewhat deep voice asked her. With double meaning, no less.
"Hell would be more pleasing."
Three months had passed since that bump—quite literally, actually—had been out of her life.
And men still wanted to shag her.
She was almost bothered by this. Almost, because she had to admit sometimes it was useful. Like that time her Algebra teacher, back when she studied on her born-place, Wiltshire, gave her an A and kindly invited her to his home. Or when the neighbor insisted on buying her clothes. Maybe it would be more accurate to describe how that bastard that almost ruined her life was always a little too nice to her, while the only thing he received from her were sarcastic remarks, witty comments and an occasional insult when his praises caught her on a bad day. And bad days were all she had.
Her mother always told her to be polite, and Amelie had never been much of an obedient girl, but when her reflection on that Chanel dress caught her off guard, she had to thank him.
She could almost hear him thanking her back.
When she suppressed a groan as the car driver said something more obscene, he left her alone.
Her Italian had been progressing as she started working on a very much dead café downtown that opened 24/7.
Was that even called downtown on Volterra? She had to admit she was struggling with the lack of noise on the tiny town.
The café was small but not really cozy, and that was probably because she felt out of place everywhere. She still had to get a job and pay for her bills, though. After all, we live to work and worked until death. So she applied to be a waitress—job she was slightly ashamed of—and started working on a little café that only got crowded when she was not around. Not that she complained. On her night-shift she had 30% more chance of getting robbed or killed. Either she could kick the life out of the guy that dared to do the first or being sweetly induced to hell on the second. How she wished she could get her way.
As she ate a French muffin (that, yes, she gladly stole) minutes after she arrived at her work, she watched a man enter the café looking in every direction, like he was dazed by the light. Amelie could tell he was filthy, poor, homeless, stinky, and hungry. In some needs too as his eyes fell upon her. She just rolled her eyes and did not bother to be polite.
"Can I help you with something?" Or maybe a 'Do you have enough coins to pay a napkin?' would have done the trick. He looked puzzled. Oh, yeah, Italian.
"Posso aiutarlo con qualcosa?" She flashed him a smile to fool around with his heartbeats and his eyes seemed to widen.
"Mange-ge-rò un coffe e una focaccina." His voice was raspy and scared, Amelie observed. Maybe he had no money. Maybe she had intimidated him. Either way, she was pleased under her frustration.
She looked for the muffin he had asked and put it on the counter, carefully avoiding hand contact, and, as she served the plain coffee, she heard the noise of something that would add more frustration to her overall angry self. Coins. A lot of them.
She sighed. It would have been better if he would have just stolen it. She turned to face him, her smile even more difficult to form than before, and silently cursed him. Hard.
He just smiled sheepishly a toothless grin.
Could whatever-that-was-up-there condemn her to an easier hell if she did a good action? She knew the answer to her own question, but she still refused to take the money, more out of laziness than out of kindness. The man took the money, shoved it on his pocket quite manner-less, took his muffin with his coffee, and exited the café.
That's right. No thank you.
She was officially never doing that again, not even out of laziness. Next time she would get a grip and count all of the coins, even the tax.
Because then she remembered people were just as screwed up as she was.
When she decided to concentrate on her hate for the worthless man all night long as a distraction, the door swung back again, the little cliché bells of the door making annoying 'clings'. She did not look up to see who it was, but it could only be the filthy man with that kind of smell. The café was too small, indeed.
"God bless you."
Flawless English. She did not even bother to take those words seriously. Because even if she did, that man with those words could not have saved her. She could not even save herself. God would not let her.
As minutes went by painfully slow, so did hours. After three more sleep-deprived costumers, her shift ended. She took coffee for the way home; the night was chilly. Putting on her coat, the only coat that she owned, gift from the only bastard she could not stop, she exited the coffee shop, which at that same moment turned off its lights: the sun would come out soon. Her apartment was not far away, so she opted to walk. It would burn the calories of the muffin—and it was not like she was rich enough to have a car, as much as that hurt her ego.
She blamed the coffee about the bitter feel that appeared suddenly on her mouth. When the coffee left her delicate lips and her mouth, because she spit it back and threw it away, the odd smell went through her nose this time. Her nostrils flared. It was awful.
It was death. And she knew how death smelled because she had been in front of it various times.
Amelie was going to pass the smell for a dead cat on a nearby trash can and walk away, because only God knew that the last thing she needed was a real-life scene of a Stephen King's novel, when she heard a gasp that had not left her mouth.
She took the first step of the short stairs that would get her home, almost unwillingly, hesitant to see what made the horrifying noise. It was a bloody corpse, lying unnaturally crooked, molding the stairs perfectly like a rug made out of silk. She couldn't help to notice the blood on the walls was tinted oddly.
And like the curious fool she was, curiosity that would probably be her death later, she got closer and took a quick look. His eyes were widened, his throat sliced. He made no noise for the longest two minutes on Amelie's life.
He had died on pain.
She blinked twice before turning around and hurrying her pace to her home whispering something unintelligible for humans, not for the one killed, but rather the one that committed the murder, who was carefully watching her, because he was not certainly human.
"I hope God blessed you."
If you are actually reading this, you totally rock my socks and you should leave a review so I can give you a shout out.
Also to tell me what you think.
Until the next chapter.
"Read that. What language is it on?"
"Portuguese?"
"You are close…"
"French?"
"Closer…"
"England?"
That's what happens when my family tries to understand what I write. Don't let me suffer.
-Mia.
