(Joss Whedon and Stephenie Meyer object to being in the same sentence.)
(A/N: Post-BigDamnMovie and as canon-compliant in both universes as I can make it without re-reading the Twilight Saga. This is mostly just a River Episode with my take on Renesme's future thrown in for flavor.)
Cold Open
Clohie tried to be a simple girl. There was a safety in simplicity that she armored herself in. Out in the Kalidaya with such bad folk as those that had forcibly boarded the Singing Sail, being anything but what the men expected of her would've gotten her noticed and had them killing her or torturing her. Probably both, just for the hell of it.
As it was, they'd merely raped her, and more gently than she'd expected, then tossed her aside. She had more bruises than she cared to count and was sore in the nethers besides, with none but a few scraps of shirt left on her body, but none of her bones were broken and none of her flesh was torn bloody, so Clohie counted herself lucky and saved her anguish for the wreck of the Felurian.
Torn fragments of the shattered ship gleamed silver in Penglai's light. Clohie huddled by the small porthole, watching the silent dance of light and searching for the bodies of her sisters. It was to far away for her eyes to pick out faces, but looking for them was better than watching the brigands killing and looting the rest of her ship.
She was probably in shock, but couldn't think of how to tell for sure. The knowing that her sisters were dead seemed to have filled up her head, leaving no space left over for much feeling or any thoughts at all.
One of the burly men grabbed Clohie by the arm and dragged her up. With a few prods from his gun and some words Clohie didn't really hear, the man took her through the boarding tunnel and back into the small warship that a pirate crew really shouldn't have been able to get their hands on.
The man released her and Clohie stood numbly, watching the stars drift by as the brigand warship detached from the Singing Sail and flipped around to face the wreckage of the Felurian. There was a lot of cruel laughter and loud boasting among the pirate crew. One of them said something to her, but Clohie didn't hear and so she didn't move.
The man backhanded her and the force of the blow sent her sprawling to the floor. There she would have stayed, but Clohie could still see a bit of the viewport, so she weakly began to pick herself up. Her eyes sought always to return to the approaching wreck and pick out the bodies of her sisters, however futile the effort was.
Rough arms circled her waist and dragged Clohie's rear up in the air. Trousers were unbuckled behind her. It may have been the same man who backhanded her, but Clohie didn't know, and didn't wonder. Rough hands clawed at her exposed breasts and Clohie whimpered as her sore womanhood was again made use of without a passing thought given to her discomfort.
Their rogue warship nosed ever so slowly into the wreckage of the Felurian. Pieces of metal and cold bodies bumped against the hull, thudding softly. A faint whirring came from below as the warships small cargodoors opened to space. Voices from the men in pressure suits reported in over a comlink, but the words slipped out of Clohie's mind before meaning could find them.
Muscular hips collided with her bottom a final time as the man finished. He shoved her away and did up his pants. Clohie fell on her side, eyes never leaving the viewport, staring numbly through a forest of legs.
At that moment, the body of a naked woman, pale as starlight and unreasonably beautiful, thumped against the viewport, another of many. Her body flopped limply as she rolled over the bow and began to slide off.
Then the naked dead woman floating in the black reached out a hand, fast as lightning, and latched onto the hull. A shocked silence spread through the crew of hardened criminals as the woman's unnatural gold eyes opened slowly and her lips parted in a snarling grin.
She raised her other hand, balling it into a fist as if she intended to smash through the viewport like common glass, but before the blow fell, her eyes locked onto Clohie's. The fist froze, and the the expression that stole over the unnatural woman's face could only be described as vengeful.
And just as quickly, she was gone. A pattering of impacts trailed down the hull of the ship, but were quickly drowned out by the sudden explosion of angry shouts, incredulous murmurings, and fearful denials. From the comlink came a scream that suddenly went silent with brutal abruptness. Then another, and another. The last voice whispered fevered prayers before it also screamed and was cut silent.
The decompression alarm went off for a short moment before a resounding boom echoed through the ship, the sound of airlock doors forced open and then released to slam shut. The several dozen men who'd taken Clohie were shouting and scrambling over one another for weapons. There was a polite knock on the door leading from the command deck.
Everyone froze, and Clohie surprised herself by feeling enough curiosity to turn her head. The knock came again, light, polite, and mocking.
"Well, I did knock first. No one can say I didn't." The voice was unspeakably beautiful and rich, but the tone was wrong. It was calm and musing, but it was impossible to sound like that and still be loud enough to be heard through and inch of neosteel.
With a crack like molten thunder, the metal of the door bloomed outward and the impression of a fist was clearly visible for an instant. It snapped back, leaving only a bent lump, but then the strike came again and this time the metal tore. A pale, slender fist burst through, and then ripped backwards. The torn edges of neosteel gouged her flesh, but she didn't bleed.
Gunfire rang, pocking the door, but the pale bloodless hand was already out. Clohie caught flashes of icy skin as the inhuman beauty tore more and more of the door away. Someone threw a grenade, but the hole was already big enough for a person.
In a flash she was through, and the grenade exploded impotently in the stairwell. Armor-piercing bullets struck her exposed skin, blasting chunks of white flesh from her nude body, but still she did not bleed.
With an unbelievable grace, she slipped among the men and ripped the gun from the hands of the closest and tore it in half. She threw the stock hard enough to cave in another man's skull and jammed the frayed barrel through the chest of a third.
Clohie felt something strike her hard in the gut and then again in the shoulder. Bullets, probably. They were flying everywhere. It didn't even hurt, which was interesting. That meant she was in shock, didn't it?
In the time it took those thoughts to pass through Clohie's head, the fight ended. The last of the unconsious or dead men hit the deck with a clang and as fast as she could blink the nude woman was kneeling next to her.
"Hi there. I'm Bella. Sorry about that. Theatricality isn't usually my thing," the woman said as her hands moved lightly over Clohie's battered body. "Crap. I don't have the supplies to patch you up. I'm going to have to turn you. Crap again."
Clohie watched the inhuman beautry with mute awe. This woman who didn't bleed, who'd come out of the black and smited her captors like an avenging angel, her words Clohie heard. She might not be able to acknowledge them now but she would remember them later.
Clohie watched as the chunks of missing flesh from the gunfight grew back, leaving perfect unblemished skin. Bella's eyes darkened perceptibly, going from bright gold to more of a dim bronze as her body repaired itself.
Hands as cold as ice and hard as stone slid gently under Clohie's shoulders and lifted her from the floor. Bella leaned in close and pressed her lips to Clohie's neck, hard and cold like a statue, and her breath tickled Clohie's back.
"This is going to hurt, but its the only way," Bella whispered. "Just... give me a moment, so I can be sure I won't lose control."
An icy finger trailed down Clohie's belly, scooping up a bit of her blood. Slowly, Bella brought the finger to her mouth and touched it to her tongue. Bella went rigid, and for a moment could have truly passed for a marble statue. Careful and deliberate, she licked the blood from her finger and then nodded to herself.
Bell brought her mouth down to Clohie's neck again, and this time her stony lips parted against Clohie's skin. As gently as possible, Bella's teeth sank into her flesh and for the first time in hours, Clohie screamed.
The pain of it was incredible, burning right through her shock and eating into her body like acid in her veins. The burning pain was everything, crowding everything else out of Clohie's head. And it was getting worse. The fire in her blood was getting hotter and it was spreading.
Clohie screamed herself raw and then she screamed some more. The firey agony saturated her, becoming everything she was. Nothing she'd ever experienced came close. She wanted to die. She would rather have been beaten and raped a thousand times than endure another second. She would have murdered her sisters with her bare hands rather than endure another minute.
But the minutes stretched into hours stretched into days, and there was nothing but the pain.
When it ended, and the crystal clarity of immortal life consumed the scattered remnants of Clohie's human mind, she opened her eyes on her new existance and wondered what she was. It was like the pain had never happened, at least not to her. It was like her human mind had died and whatever she was now was so much more that a mere second of idle thought washed away nearly two decades of human life. Those memories were like watching a blurry broadwave on mute. Human pain and human horror. It wasn't worth keeping and because Clohie didn't cling to it, it slipped out of her mind, leaving only vague knowledge of her human past.
"Are you okay?" a voice asked. Bella. She was still there and had found pants and a shirt at some point.
Clohie wanted to stand up and in an instant she was on her feet. She marveled the way her body moved, effortless and perfect. She stared at her pale hands, marveling at the tiny facets of her skin that had been barely perceptable to human eyes. Looking around, her eyes stopped at the viewport and Clohie gasped.
Space. The Black. With her new eyes she could see deep among the stars and look upon a million wonders. Swaths of stars and swirls of galaxies, tiny but visible and beautiful.
"Ah," Bella said, looking out beside her. "Yes, it's quite incredible the first time you truly see it. The first time I ever went off world it caught me completely off guard. My husband and I stared for hours. Are you okay?"
"I am," Clohie finally said. "I shouldn't be, but I am. How can I be okay?"
"What do you mean?"
"I should be insane," Clohie murmured. "I was insane. There was nothing left. So how can I be awake and talking and thinking now? Who am I?"
"You're still you. Just a better you," Bella said, then she chuckled. "I was expecting you to ask what you are, not who. That's what newborns usually ask."
Clohie hadn't actually thought about that, but she was more than a little curious. "What am I? What did you do to me?"
"I made you like me," Bella said. "Immortal. Back on Earth-That-Was we were called vampires."
"Oh, so that's why I'm so thirsty."
Bella nodded. "Yup. That's the one bad part. Listen, I don't usually give the speech, but you have a choice now. Two paths you may walk, each with different hardships and different rewards. If you smell human blood, the desire will overwhelm you, and you'll kill and drink before you have a chance to think about it. Control can be learned but it is not easy."
Bella went on to describe the choice between human blood and animal blood, and Clohie listened and soaked up Bella's words. The term "newborn" was remarkably apt, Clohie thought. She felt new to the world, with a brain open and waiting to be filled.
"Lastly," Bella finished. "If you want to, we have the men who hurt you, still alive. They're tied up on the cargo deck. We can - "
"I want to see them," Clohie said.
"You don't sound very angry," Bella noted.
"I'm not," Clohie said. "But I want to look at their faces and see if that changes."
"Alright. Brace yourself against the scent. You're going to want to eat them."
Clohie followed Bella down the stairwell and emerged on the cargo deck. The inner airlock door had handprints in it and it was bent, not forming a full seal. Another vampire, a young man with bronze hair and black eyes, was guarding the survivors. He nodded to her.
Clohie looked upon the faces of the men turned up towards her, stark with terror, and she smiled. "My body had something you wanted, and you used it without the slightest care. Now it's your bodies that have something I want, and guess what? I feel like returning the favor."
Clohie inhaled deeply, breathing in the scent of them, and then she simply let go of herself. She fell upon the men like a demon, and their screams were sweet in her ears.