Description: A day after a journey with Professor Robert Langdon and Bio-Entanglement Physicist Vittoria Vetra 'cross Rome, Literature Professor and Religious Symbologist Sandra Zulueta was summoned by the Vatican, along with Robert, granting them unlimited access to their archives and the Papal Vaults. But Robert declined the invitation, leaving Sandra alone in Rome or in the Vatican, completing her scholarly work "The Mysteries of the Illuminati". Inside the Vatican walls, Sandra experiences roller coaster of emotions in her stay, along with the mysterious pope's chamberlain, Fr. Patrick Mckenna and the new commander of the Swiss Guard, former Lieutenant Chartrand.
After reading and watching Angels & Demons, I have planned to make a fanfiction about it. I'll be changing some of the spoilers and plot, including the death scenes of some the characters *wink wink*. This story follows the plot of the book and movie, but majority of the characters' personality are from the movie. A kind kudos to all the characters who played their role marvellously. I appreciated it, especially Ewan McGregor (Camerlengo Father Patrick Mckenna) for having that cute accent in the movie, but I didn't saw the point of changing Camerlengo Fr. Carlo Ventresca's character in the movie.
Disclaimer: I don't own A&D, Italy, especially Vatican City. I just own some of the characters and the plot
Chapter 1: Lasciate che gli angeli Guida (Let the Angels Guide You)
The Italian moon shone above Bernini's Triton Fountain, producing a diaphanous effect when the moon touches the water, it was beautiful. After five hours of witnessing three brutally murdered cardinals, chasing members of the Illuminati, and an antimatter planted near St. Peter's tomb and the camerlengo ran off with it (Thankfully the people inside Vatican City is alive, including him), she deserved to relax at an Old World luxury hotel.
The woman stared deeply at the fountain from her suite's balcony, donning a luxuriant robe from the hotel, the April breeze made her robe billowed, her cascade of thick, brown hair flowed with it, she looked more of a Roman goddess than a mortal. Pair of big, chocolate-brown eyes filled with unexplained sorrow. Half-Italian and a Filipina descent, no wonder and doubt. Hotel Bernini, Sandra thought, her full lips formed in a playful smirk. There is no other fitting hotel in Rome than this. Speaking of Gian Lorenzo Bernini. . .
Memories from the early hour flashed at the young religious symbologist's brown eyes. Five set of ambigrams showing the English words like Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Illuminati, respectively. Lofty pyramids. L'altare di scienza of the Path of Illumination, marked by statues of angels in locations relevant to the four elements. And the camerlengo's heroic fall and made it alive.
What a day, she thought in her native tongue. Or maybe I'll woke up back in Manila, reading the Unitas in the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House. She reassured that she was awake and in Rome by pinching her arm, but she is awake, indeed. Sandra was awakened from her deep thoughts as she realized pounding sounds coming from the door. Moderately loud. Vittoria said that nobody saw us. Must be room-service.
With further hesitation, she opened the heavy oak door. A man in his mid-thirties, wearing a black cassock, had brown hair and deep yet gentle green eyes stared at her. Her eyes fling wide open in shock. Impossible. Have I been hallucinating, he's at conclave at this very moment with the 162 cardinals. "His Holiness?" was all that Sandra could say. The man chuckled, "No, Ms. Zulueta. I have not chosen the place as the Vicar of Christ, I have turned down the election."
He turned down? Sandra didn't knew what to say next, she astounded by her visitor. She didn't only have a handsome visitor standing outside her suite, but a camerlengo supposedly acclaimed as the next pope. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. "Have I not been invited inside, Ms. Zulueta?" Fr. Patrick Mckenna broke the awkward silence that have surrounded them. "S-Sure, Padre. C-Come in, come in." Sandra stammered, opening the heavy oak door wider, enough to let the camerlengo to enter. He studied the suite, as if he was some critique, hired for cleanliness inspection.
"Oh, I almost forgot," Patrick gave the blue velvet box to Sandra who was closing the door. "His Holiness, former Cardinal Baggia of Italy, wanted to give you this."
Sandra scanned the box, on the centre; it held the papal symbol in gold, crossed upside-down skeleton keys over the triregnum. She glanced a surprised looked at Father Patrick before taking off the cover. Sandra read the handwritten note inside the box.
Mr. Langdon, Ms. Vetra, and Ms. Zulueta,
Although it is my profound desire to request your desire in the matters of the past 24 hour, I cannot possibly presume to ask more of you than you have already given. I therefore humbly retreat hoping only that you let your hearts guide you in this matter. The world seems a better place today . . . maybe the questions are more powerful than the answers.
My door is always open,
His Holiness, Marco Baggia
"A token of thanks," Father Patrick said. "From His Holiness and from his new chamberlain." He smiled warmly. Sandra nodded as she placed the letter near a table. Mama Mia! She thought. I bet a thousand halos that this is real.
"I could faint at the moment," Sandra exclaimed. Astonished by the content of the box. "Or just burst in tears!"
Say that she would like it. "Just make sure that Galileo's 'Diagramma Veritatis' will return from its home, in the future," the camerlengo patted her shoulder. "Please do ever gently." Sandra placed the box at the same table where she had placed His Holiness' note. She suddenly remembered the tragic death of the late pope, Fr. Mckenna's biological father.
"I'm sorry," she said, almost a whisper.
"Mi scusi?" What is she talking about? Fr. Patrick frowned, studying the female symbologist's face to understand what she have asked forgiveness for. "I'm sorry about your father, he must have loved you so much. Deepest condolences," there was similar pain in Sandra's voice to what has Fr. Patrick is feeling. "I have lost my father, too."
She remembered when she lived in Italy as a small child, she was with her father, while her older sister and mother is in the Philippines. She loved her father more than anything in the world, they were so close. Her father was a symbologist, too. She could remember taking her last days with her father, when she was a child. After they attended mass at Sant'Agnese in Agone in Piazza Navona for her birthday, she and her father took a stroll near the Fountain. They sat on the edge and gaze at the water, and the statues.
"Sandra, cara, non toccare l'acqua. Si potrebbe cadere e farsi del male." (Sandra, darling, don't touch the water. You might fall and get hurt.) Her father warned when Sandra leaned over the edge of the fountain, playing with the water.
"Non ti preoccupare, papà. Lunga come il mio padre è con me, non voglio farti male!" (Don't worry, Dad. As long as my father is with me, I won't get hurt!) Sandra was pretty stubborn when she was a child, she's not afraid of anything as long as her father was with her.
"Sandra, che uccello appollaiato in cima alla fontana obelisco? Sapete qual è il significato di esso?" (Sandra, do you see that bird perched at the top of the fountain's obelisk? Do you know what's the meaning of it?) Her father carried her and made her sat in his lap. She nodded happily. Being a daughter of a religious symbologist, she was taught by her father of different symbols in art.
"Sì, papà! Una colomba! E una colomba è il simbolo pagano per l'Angelo della Pace, giusto?" (Yes, dad! It's dove! And a dove is the pagan symbol for the Angel of Peace, right?) And she was right. They talked about religious art and famous artists throughout the afternoon. After that, they decided to go home in Bologna. They took a train to as transportation. When they arrived in the Central Station of Bologna, they stayed in the waiting room, since they were too tired to go home yet, after the traveling.
Sandra sat with her father, talking about da Vinci's Last Supper and Mona Lisa. Shortly afterwards, the roof of the waiting room suddenly collapsed. Luckily, she survived the explosion, having minor injuries since her father was there, shielded his own daughter from harm using his own body.
Four days later, in the Basilica San Petronio was the last place Sandra saw her father, he looked peaceful in his slumber. She tried to wake him up, but he won't. He's dead, truly dead. August 6 was the last day for Sandra's life in Italy. Then her mother took her to the Philippines a day after her father's funeral. She never came back to Italy until now.
"Thank you, Ms. Zulueta. Kind condolences to your father," Fr. Patrick said as he watched Sandra trying to fight back the tears. "Our fathers is with our Lord, in heaven, they will always watch us."
"Thank you, Father," Sandra wiped of the tears that were starting to flow. She played with her thick, brown hair, instead. Twirling her hair with her index finger, a moment of realization, she stopped what she's doing, she can feel her face turning red. The il camerlengo will thought that you're flirting with him if you continue to do that, Insegnante di Letteratura Sandra Zulueta y Bautista! And why on earth he will think of that? It's not like yo- Shut up!
"Father, have you ate something," Sandra asked sheepishly."If you haven't, care to join me for dinner?"
"Please, call me Patrick, instead," Fat-Patrick said, his face turning a bit red. "Thank you, but I cannot simply accept your invitation." "And call me Sandra, Ms. Zulueta makes me look old."
Temptation is a sin, Patrick. Just accept it, I'm no devil; besides, it's a kind offer. "What does the Vatican forbids good-looking priests to accept offers?" Sandra raised an eyebrow, waving a room-service menu. She can read hesitation on camerlengo's face, fighting opposite thoughts off. The only positive remark she got was a heart-warming smile from the priest, "I guess a simple feast won't hurt." I don't know why this woman challenges me.
Sandra went out of her suite and headed towards Vittoria Vetra and Robert Langdon's suite. She admired the two's cute relationship. And she feels it's kind of weird the two of them sharing the same suite. She immediately shook off the thoughts of imagining what would happen next inside their suite.
She slowly knocked at the heavy oak door. A second passed the door swung open, Sandra saw Vittoria poked her head out, wearing a robe like hers. "Good evening, Vittoria," she greeted. "Is Robert already awake?"
"Si," Vittoria smiled. Grazie, dio, I thought he will go back to being sleeping beauty. Vittoria thoughts of seeing Robert dressed like a princess lying in bed, in a hundred-year comatose, disturbed her. No! He will not have make-up! "Do you want me to call him?"
"No, Vittoria," Sandra grabbed Vittoria's arm before she could call Robert. "Actually, I wanted to invite the couple for a dinner with the camerlengo in my suite."
The Bio-Entanglement Physicist's eyes grew in shock, "Il camerlengo? Isn't he in conclave?" "I thought that, too, at first. He said he turned down the acclamation by adoration."
"I cannot believe it! After he ran off with my canister, saving Vatican City, and surviving former Comandante Rocher's terorism, he doesn't want anything in return? Per l'amore di dio!" Vittoria threw her hands in the air. Thanfully, she accepted the request and she whisk Robert out of the room, who was admiring the Illuminati Diamond in his hand that Lieutenant Chartrand of the Swiss Guard gave earlier. Robert's reaction when he found out that he will be dinning with the camerlengo, is too, similar from Vittoria.
The dinner in Sandra's suite went on perfectly, the four adults talked and shared few laughs by the balcony. They enjoyed drinking Dolcetto wine, eating frisee, truffles and risotto late at night.
"Father, aren't you worried that the College of Cardinals might find out that you're here, sipping wine rather than the ones you drink in Masses," Robert asked the young priest, sneaking passionate glances at Vittoria, which she returned, secretly. As a symbologist, Sandra knew what was going on (Thankfully that the camerlengo was oblivious to this).
"No, Mr. Langdon," Patrick replied. "Instead of me being the supreme pontiff, Cardinal Baggia, now the Vicar of Christ, has been elected. Thanks to you, Mr. Langdon and Ms. Zulueta."
Sandra and Robert smiled. "Mr. Langdon and I have brought down a wall of thick glass in your archives, and the question is: has the archives survived?" The colours on Robert's face drained as he remembered what happened when he left the Vatican Archives last night. The curator must have fainted when he saw the unruly scene.
"The archives had indeed survived, but the curator has fainted when he saw the pile of precious files and glass shards scattered, but at least no one got injured," the camerlengo sighed as he sipped some Dolcetto wine. Karma, Robert thought.
"Father Mckenna," Vittoria said as she managed to peel her eyes off Robert. "Does CERN gets to pay the damage I have caused because of my new profound invention, signore?"
"Well, that will be decided by His Holiness," Patrick simply replied.
After dinner, Vittoria was the first one to leave Sandra's suite, she said she received a message from CERN. Truthfully, it was a good excuse for waiting for Robert for a surprise (Which Vittoria, herself, told Sandra what was the surprise). Leaving the two symbologist and the camerlengo outside the suite. They bid goodbye to the camerlengo, but the pope's chamberlain forgot something to tell to the two professors, that was meant to be reminded ealier.
"His Holiness asked you two, Mr. Langdon and Sandra," the camerlengo stopped and glanced at Robert and Sandra. "His Holiness has granted you two, along with Ms. Vetra, unlimited access to our archives."
Tell that to your rude curator, Robert thought.
The camerlengo continued, "The pontiff will tell the details as you get to the Vatican, tomorrow. One in the afternoon. May the Lord will be with you always."
Sandra watched the camerlengo left, her eyes, again, full of sorrow. "I know what you're thinking, Sandra." Robert said, smirking. "What?" She felt her cheeks blushed.
"Aww, come on, Sandra. The way you look at the camerlengo, don't tell me you're harbouring those feelings," he laughed as if he pulled off the greatest joke.
"Whatever, Mickey Mouse," she rolled her eyes. "Goodnight. Tell Vittoria she's not allowed to access the archives until she learned not to steal documents."
Robert chuckled, "Goodnight."
Sandra went back in her suite and closed the door. If only I was allowed to, then I must not have felt this pain. She slid on the warm bed and fell into a deep slumber. She slept with exhaustion and perturbance.
Well, that's Chapter 1. Any questions? Then just PM me, and don't forget to review. BTW, I based Sandra's father's death on the Bologna Massacre in 1980, you can search it in the internet. See you guys on the next chapter. ARRIVEDERCI! -Reyna