.:silence:.

Alone in his room, Aro paces, lips moving silently, as though he is trying to remember the words to something long since forgotten. Yet another apology is tested, then ended with an uncharacteristic snarl. He feels vaguely, unpleasantly unbalanced, as though a hole has been torn through his heart, then neatly patched. Silken and polished on the outside, he can sense a horrid, echoing emptiness beneath his fingertips as he presses his palm to the plane of his chest.

Aro tries to hold his mind in check, but every time a silver strand of thought slips through, Sulpicia's agony colours his vision, spreading in spirals like blood in water. If anyone else was the cause of her suffering, he would ensure their immediate death but now he can only turn the blame inward.

I'm—I'm sorry. I didn't intend to lie to you, but I knew that you would want nothing to do with me if you were aware of my gift. The only thing worse than you hating me is being the cause of your pain—

He stops himself abruptly in the middle of the choked, too-vehement confession before more roughly-hewn thoughts can spill out. It alarms him to see unfeigned emotion in his mind, raw, vulnerable and real, though his sudden idea is more troubling. Somehow, he finds himself wishing to be ordinary, gift-less and blind to the minds of others.

He shakes his head, lost somewhere between anger and desperation. One woman has reduced him to this, but he cannot let her know. Instead, he spends the morning practicing apologies until the phrases are smoothly lovely as pearls.

-

The bathwater around Sulpicia steams and seethes, hot enough to raise throbbing welts on a mortal's skin. She submerges herself without wincing, praying that the heat will cauterize the wounds raked across her mind. Aro's scent, warm and crisp as late-summer berries, clings to her hair and she swipes her fingers through it furiously.

I can't stay angry forever, she muses in her distanced way. I'll forgive him, enough to laugh with him and listen to him. With time, I will not care—

Cool reason shatters, and Sulpicia bites her knuckles hard enough to break the skin, choking back a scream. She is young by mortal standards, an infant by immortal terms, and nobody can expect a heartbroken girl to contain her grief.

A few moments later, a perfectly composed young woman with feather-bright scars on her hands washes her face and counts the tiles on the mosaic wall, not even a tremor betraying emotion.


Author's Note: A few people commented last time that they'd like to see more of Aro's emotions, and I included a bit of that in this chapter. My interpretation of Aro is that he's not the sort to spend a long time contemplating how he feels- he'd rather fix whatever is bothering him, and only worry about the accompanying emotions afterward, if at all.

Happy Halloween, everybody! Go gorge yourselves on candy and engage in dubious shenanigans with your friends. That's what I'll be doing.