Olivia looked at herself in the floor length mirror. She was never one for short dresses, preferring long skirts over ones that if she were to trip, everyone would get an eyeful of her intimate parts. She hummed the melodic tune of her mothers lullaby, the tune forever imbedded in her mind.
Her necklace depicting the coven symbol of the Volturi rested in her cleavage, and she stared at it for a moment. She was in that 'adjustment' period as Veronica had called it. Her ruby red eyes rolled. Stupid Veronica. She knew that she had once loved all of her past coven, but whenever she thought even remotely of them, she felt detached from them. It was unsettling, and she knew Aro had something to do with it.
"I suggest you change." Olivia turned, sighing when she saw Alec. "What have I done to irritate or offend your highness this time?" She muttered before sitting on the edge of her bed. He moved from his position by the door, shutting it quietly.
"Your mere presence is an irritation itself." She scowled, narrowing her red eyes at him. "And so is yours." She snapped back. "Get out of my room."
"Shame. Demetri and Felix were looking forward to smashing you into the floor. Master is becoming displeased with having to replace the marble floors." He ignored her and Olivia snorted. "I didn't ask to be slammed into them, did I?" She snapped.
"If you bothered to learn how to defend yourself without cowering behind your gift, you wouldn't be, now would you?"
She rushed up so she was face to face with him, teeth bared. "And you don't? You cower behind yours like a scared little boy, afraid to be beaten! Show me I'm wrong!" She demanded and a low growl slipped through his teeth.
Olivia hummed smugly. "You were trained to master your gift, Alec. I'm being trained to master mine too, and to defend myself if I'm somehow blocked using it." She smiled slowly, taking pleasure in his anger. He had his weak points like his 'bitch witch' sister.
"But I did master mine, and no one has ever defeated the Volturi because of myself. You're just a amateur compared to me." He said back, and she shrugged. "I'm sure I am, but you forget something, Alec. I can do many things with mine, whereas you're just limited to senses."
He went to say something, but stopped. He then frowned. "Anything?"
It confused her; how easily he could flick a switch, so to speak. He could be hostile one minute, and apathetic another. Strange vampire mood swings, if you will.
"Almost anything." She said quietly. He was so darn confusing. Strange person.
"Show me then, if you're so powerful. Or are you just all talk, as the humans put it?" Her right eye twitched, and she sat down on the edge of her bed, hands resting limply on her dress skirt. "What do you want me to do?" She ground out, irritated. Why was she always doubted?
Was it because of her gender? Her age? Her size? So not fair.
"Create something from your past. That should be a challenging task enough for a amateur. She scowled but rolled her ruby red eyes and sighed, closing them slowly. She could sense the darkness, could feel it coiling about her heart, turning it to black coal.
A dark smoke slithered from her finger tips and she rolled her shoulders, fighting the darkness that clawed for dominance inside her mind and her chest. It was like a sickness, but it was a sickness that she controlled. It fought back, draining her strength when it was used in large scale attacks. But she was its master, or rather its mistress. She wasn't male, although master seemed better sounding than mistress...
A beautiful jeweled, silver, intricately carved hair pin formed in her palm and she opened her eyes, smiling fondly. It was a mere illusion, yes, but the sightwarmed her stone cold, unbeating heart. It was a nostalgic sight.
"What is it?" As if remembering that Alec was there, she sighed. "It was my mothers." Olivia said quietly, still staring at the beautiful piece of jewellery. "She wore it every day, treasured it like it was her most prized possession other than me, of course. She promised it would be mine upon my eighteenth birthday, but she died before that day came, not that it would have mattered." Her eyes flickered to Alec before she looked back at the hair pin. "Geoffrey came for me when I was fifteen."
"How sentimental of you." She shrugged at his mockery. "Perhaps. Everyone here must hold memory or two dear to them, clinging to them with every fibre of their being." Her hand closed and the image faded, becoming smoke that vanished into the air. "I cling to stupid moments like those because they remind me of the only person who truly ever cared wholeheartedly for me, the one person whose love was unconditional."
Another sigh, a sadder one, echoed around the room. "Because without those memories, I'm simply no one."
Olivia was exhausted. She was drained; mentally and physically. When she wasn't being smashed into the ground, she was being put through endless training with Alec, her best friend. Sarcastic much?
She couldn't stand the bastard. He routinely mocked her, which on turn just pushed her further. And then during the small time she was allowed to recuperate from her gruelling training, she spent it alone in her given room, reading, drawing scenes from her past.
Well, the best she could remember them, anyway...
So here she sat; reading The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald. It charmed her, reminding her of a somewhat distantly home with its so eloquently put description of the Jazz age. She had loved that time. Veronica loved to be theatrical in her hunting, teaching her how to blend into any environment with the appropriate wear and how to act when you wore that attire.
She missed England, with its horrendous weather. She missed staring up at the sky, not a care in the world. She missed having no responsibilities other than luring in food, being able to explore where she wanted within reason. There were times she'd gone and killed just for fun, something Veronica had encouraged in her first years as a vampire.
"If you get used to killing absentmindedly now, it'll become a natural occurrence as you mature," the brunette had said calmly as Olivia had stared at the dying man, repulsed with herself and how easily she'd punctuated his throat with a mere jab of her finger. Olivia had looked at Veronica with a sad, anguished look. "But how will I cope with the pain, the grief, the anguish at extinguishing another's life?" She had whispered.
That had made Veronica pause. Her crimson red eyes had stared into Olivia's black ones; a black so dark it looked like a bottomless pit. It was something that stemmed from hunger, a fierce burn in her throat.
"You make yourself numb, Olivia. You don't feel pain. You don't feel pitiful of the light you just snuffed out. You don't even feel remorseful. You just give into the urges, into the desire to kill. And if you continue to feel those foolish emotions, then you won't last a century like myself." She'd then looked at the man who was moaning in pain, the pain being that his life was slowly leaving him.
She had looked back at the new vampire. "You're going to deal with this," her finger had jabbed on the direction of the man, "and we are going to find someone else. A criminal, someone in the act of committing a crime. That is how you balance it out, my sweet girl. You kill someone whose innocent in the eyes of the law and then you take the life of someone who isn't. Now, finish this man. His pleading is becoming that of a whining child and I've never liked children."
And so she had. It was ironic to her, the fact that Veronica had been somewhat sour to children, but she'd been a child when she had been turned. Veronica had held her while she wept, had mentored her how to hunt under the radar. It was bemusing. Veronica had been a somewhat second mother to her, yet she hated children... Strange woman.
Olivia stared at Aro. "You want me to use the darkness to obliterate a Romanian force?" Watching her closely, Caius too, Aro nodded with a gleeful smile. "Yes."
"How big is the opposing side?" She asked quietly and he smiled wider. "Larger than the coven you belonged to."
Her mind began working a mile a minute. "A force that large could take me to the brink of no return, master." She whispered. Aro hummed, staring at her with interest. "You've advanced far in our coven, Miss Felton. Much more than you have with your original coven. Do you doubt you abilities?"
"No," Olivia replied immediately and he nodded. "I've observed your training through the minds of my other guards, Olivia. You're resilient, never surrendering. I've wondered if its because of your hard human life, so to speak. When my guards knock you down, you come back up. Why is that?"
Olivia smiled tightly, a tad disgruntled with him bringing up her abusive upbringing. "I've taken beatings and I've been tortured mentally. I'm sure you saw some of the methods used upon me in my youth." She shifted uncomfortably. "When one doesn't fight back like I did once upon a time, the aggressor takes it as surrender. I've spent my whole life, both human and vampire, surrendering to aggressors. I think it's time I broke a vicious cycle, don't you agree?" Her crimson eyes stared into the leaders with absolute sincerity.
He seemed satisfied with her answer, for he nodded once more. "Quite, Miss Felton. We don't tolerate surrender here. We train our guards to be resilient, to resist and to fight back. So, do you think, or rather do you know that you can obliterate this force?"
She smiled bravely. "I know I can."
"Excellent." He exclaimed excitedly, giving her that smile which still unnerved her. "We'll be calling witnesses to observe the punishment that you'll be swift and unmerciful to deliver upon this resistance. You'll remain with your hood of your cloak up at all times. We don't want to release the identity of our secret weapon, do we?"
Swallowing inwardly, Olivia shook her head stiffly. "No," she murmured quietly. "No, we wouldn't."