Bella gave Aro a questioning look when the door shut after Carlisle, and mouthed "What?" at him.
Aro merely stared at the door, and listened to Carlisle's footsteps disappear in a matter of seconds. He knew where he was going, of course.
Damn you, Marcus.
What was truly vexing, no vexing was too mild a word, what was truly infuriating was that Aro had explicitly told Marcus to leave it alone. He had told Marcus that Carlisle-that he was not in a place where he could handle this.
And what does he do? Oh, he doesn't just say it to Carlisle, he says it to his fucking wife.
There had been a time, when Aro was young, when he thought half-measures were for the weak. That it's always going to have to all the way or none of it, or life will not be willing. This had served him well as a conqueror and lawmaker.
Caius, certainly, still thought of the world in this manner. Compromise was for the weak or those who wished to appear weak, which at the end of the day amounted to true weakness. Without fear, he felt, there was no respect.
However, then Carlisle had returned, a wife in tow, and with a commitment to her that they both knew he would not break.
And–
Perhaps he was a fool, perhaps Caius had had the right of it when he broke into the house of Athenodora's husband and took her for a wife, but Aro knew when he was defeated. And he'd rather have friendship, separated by continents and centuries as it was, than nothing at all.
The winner doesn't have to take it all.
It was not, he'd told himself, a zero-sum game.
Now, though–
Aro wasn't able to hate Marcus, of all the people in the world Aro could never hate Marcus. He had forever forsaken that right when he killed Didyme.
Even this wasn't truly-malicious. Marcus hadn't necessarily meant well, per se, he had been annoyed with Carlisle beyond all reasonable measure. However, he'd felt his actions were ultimately helpful (if perhaps allowing him also to thumb his nose at Carlisle). It was just that Carlisle himself meant nothing to Marcus.
So, Aro could not hate him.
But he wasn't entirely sure that he could ever truly forgive this.
They were brothers and forever tied to each other, and Aro knew better than to hold grudges against someone he intended to spend his eternity with, regardless of who they were.
And so, even now, even when this was still only a few hours fresh, Aro knew that it would be all he could do try and move on, accept that Marcus did this and live with the consequences.
"Aro?" Bella asked.
"Sorry," he said, "It seems Carlisle has momentarily remembered himself."
Bella frowned, but she didn't say anything. This was good, as he was not going to explain.
Aro smiled at her. "Would you like to help me fake your death, then? I imagine you might have some interesting ideas."
Recognizing his attempt at a diversion for what it was, Bella made a face. "Really don't, but… I could throw spaghetti at the wall for you? And you could say "yes" or "no" and then we narrow it down."
Aro flashed a smile at her. "By all means, dear Bella."
"Car accident."
"Then why is there no body?"
"It drove off a cliff into the water?"
Aro grimaced. "Divers are very good these days. If they know the location of your car, they will find you. And if they don't, you're a missing person again, and we're back to square one, only now we've ruined a car."
"Fire," Bella said, "I'm in an old, abandoned, building and it catches fire. I don't make it out on time and I'm the only death."
"A bit contrived, don't you think?"
"I'm very dumb," Bella insisted, perhaps a bit too brightly, "Say it's a haunted building and I'm there to see the ghosts. Naturally, I'm using an old style lantern because they're terrified of electricity, naturally I drop it because I'm me. Woosh."
Aro grimaced. "This necessitates you explaining your plans, in details, to someone first. Alas, you have no friends you would tell such a thing, and if you tried to tell your parents about your weekend plans, they would refuse to let you."
Bella opened her mouth, closed it, and appeared to think very hard about this fact. After a long pause she said, "Jessica."
"The one that loathes you because her love interest asked you out first?" Aro asked.
"She gossips about everything and even if she hates me, she'd love to tell Lauren that Bella Swan is in Italy chasing ghosts. In abandoned buildings."
Aro frowned at her.
Here ideas were supposed to be spaghetti at walls, not something she'd insist on. "And yet you die, on your first venture? Bella, we don't have a lot of time, we can't establish this hobby of yours. It's one thing for the extreme sports enthusiast to die on his seventieth jump, but on the first one?"
"I would," Bella said, "That was actually in my yearbook. Most likely to die young in a hilariously terrible accident."
Aro wished he could refute that but… technically, in a very roundabout way, it was true. Bella Swan was going to die young because she was about to be turned by vampires. It was both hilarious and terrible.
He rubbed at his face, "No, no, this won't work. Let's move on to the next idea."
"Eaten by lions in the zoo?" Bella asked, "It's very like me to fall into the exhibit somehow."
"Bella, you can't actually die. There'd be witnesses from something like that, and they'd DNA test your remains to verify your identity."
She threw her hands in the air, "Alright, what if I-commit suicide with a witness and jump into the ocean somewhere?"
Aro opened his mouth.
Closed it, frowned.
Goddammit, he couldn't think of anything better.
"What motive would you have?"
"I flunked art class."
He gave her a look.
"That was very embarrassing," Bella insisted, "Before Marcus I had a very good GPA."
"Also, I have no friends," she added.
"So that's your suicide note? A printed copy of your grade, plus "I have no friends"? Maybe make the "o" in "no" a sad face emoji, too?" Aro quipped.
"No, no, I mean-I probably wouldn't write a note if I were really doing it but if I was doing it-Goddammit, it'd probably be Shakespeare."
"Shakespeare?!"
Funny, how the more he got to know this girl, the more Aro was almost glad he couldn't read her mind. It would be too much for him.
Nevermind the hundreds of thousands of humans he had touched over the course of his life - Bella Swan would be too much.
"Dare I ask which passage we're using?" Aro asked.
God, he couldn't even begin to guess which one she was going to use. Frankly, he was surprised she wasn't using Hedda Gabler. He supposed that was what she got for receiving an American education.
"Hamlet's soliloquy, 'To be or not to be', Hamlet chose 'to be', I apparently am deciding on the less popular 'not' option."
"Isn't that a bit on the nose?" Aro asked with a wince.
"We're making this obvious to even the most casual observer," Bella pointed out.
"Is that your suicide note, then? A printout of the soliloquy, with an arrow pointing to "not", and then at the bottom you write "Professor Marcus flunked me, colon parenthesis"?"
"I mean, I guess I could add an 'oh cruel world' at the bottom or something, but-Look, if I'm in the headspace where I'm jumping off a cliff in Italy, I'm not in a good headspace. Bella Swan is not at her best, she is not producing her best work, or her best suicide suicide notes."
Aro shook his head. "Alright," he said, mildly dazed.
This, for the record, was why Carlisle should have stayed. He would have thought of something much better than this.
"Alright," he repeated again to himself, this was how it was going to be, he simply had to accept it, "Who is our witness?"
"The tour guide. I'll sign on for a tour of some place with cliffs, and then I give my note to the tour guide and hop off the cliff. Tons of witnesses."
Aro just stared, the vision playing out in his mind all too clearly. A cute, oblivious, American tour group with Bella Swan in its center. They would take a few photos of the cliffs, ah, what lovely cliffs. Then Bella dramatically walks in front of them, hands off her Shakespear to the guide, and jumps.
… She would fall.
She would definitely fall.
And then she would be taken to the hospital, where a suicide ward would be waiting.
Aro tried, for a long second, to think of another way for Bella Swan to die. Caught in a tourist stampede, fallen out of a window and into a fire, walked into a nuclear reactor–
Even ghost hunting and arson was starting to look appealing.
But he had nothing.
"You're going to need help," he said dazedly.
Multiple people helping at that. A pregnant woman couldn't be falling off cliffs, she needed someone to catch her in the air, as well as someone to make sure she didn't fall off the cliff in the wrong spot, and someone perhaps to fall in her place and disappear into the water, so there would be a splash.
Not to mention, someone in the tourist group to help her up, in case she fell on her way towards the cliff, and then naively let her go again, not realizing the girl meant to kill herself.
"Excuse me?" Bella frowned, looking oddly insulted by that.
"I'll take care of the details," Aro said hurriedly, Bella Swan had planned enough, "I think this will work. I'll select an appropriate tour, expect to do this tomorrow, the next day at the latest."
Carlisle, before he'd remembered his marriage was crumbling, had been very clear that Bella may not have much time left before she was quite visibly pregnant if not extremely ill. Carlisle-with every detail he learned his suspicions grew darker.
Bella nodded slowly, and, realizing their talk was over, moved to get up from her chair. In a flash, Aro was by her side to pull out her chair and take her arm.
Predictably, she stumbled.
She looked like she couldn't decide whether to glare or be grateful that he caught her.
"When I'm a vampire, will I be as unnaturally graceful as the rest of you people?" she asked.
Aro smiled, and opened his mouth to reassure her, when the words got lodged in his throat.
It felt–
In the moment before he killed his sister, he'd pretended to accept her decision, and let her have one, last, blissful moment before his teeth found her neck.
And, perhaps, a moment for her to relent, to take it back upon earning the victory she'd sought and say that she didn't mean it or she'd thought it through and decided against it. She hadn't though, she'd smiled in delighted relief.
Now, thousands of years later, he had every intention to keep Bella alive, would do very nearly everything to ensure that outcome, but–
There was an infection within her, venom that was spreading through her body creating a being that could very well kill her.
Aro could not guarantee her survival, no one could.
Perhaps he would not be the cause of her death, but to promise her the world, tell her about the wonderful thing she was soon to become when the dream could so easily shatter and leave her an empty carcass, no different from the billions of humans that had come and gone before her, felt too much like deception.
"I suppose we'll just have to see," he said instead.
"What do you mean, wait and see?" Bella asked in apparent distress. "You're telling me there are clumsy vampires?"
"I mean," Aro said looking mirthfully down at his hands, "That while I know much, more than I should, I don't know the future more than anyone else. You're the clumsiest human I've ever met not suffering from a severe medical condition, and there is a-spectrum among vampires. As a vampire, you would be far more coordinated than you were in life, but you might not be-quite as graceful as everyone else."
Bella gaped at him in horror.
"If it makes you feel better, I successfully taught Carlisle to walk as I do. He never does it, but–" Aro demonstrated his sliding gait. "We are very teachable."
Bella did not look much comforted by that.
"I'm going to go now," she said instead, hobbling her way towards the door, causing Aro to wince as he remembered just what she'd been up to previously.
Carlisle, being petty and in utter distress, had had her walk to Aro's study in an attempt to teach her something. Aro supposed the idea had merit, except he doubted Bella even realized there was a lesson to be learned.
He lasted a second before he swept her off her feet.
"Thanks," she smiled.
"Think nothing of it," he sighed, and started walking towards her room.
"Though, to reiterate Carlisle's earlier point," he said, "Please, Bella, don't do it again."
If only for the sake of his poor baths.
"He needed the handjob, though. Had to be done," Bella pointed out.
Aro squeezed his eyes together. The worst part, of course, was that it was only thanks to his gift that he knew that wasn't, in fact, a joke. Marcus actually had needed Bella's help, he had actually tried without her. And failed.
"Sorry."
"Don't antagonize the vampire with the power to drop you," Aro said with forced cheerfulness.
"I'm not antagonizing you," Bella said with a pout, "I was just explaining that there were, you know, valid reasons."
Aro only sighed. "Hundreds of generations have justified the most unspeakable crimes with those words. Entire wars have been waged over valid reasons."
"Well, now you're just being difficult."
"Be that as it may-" he said, only to stop.
Aro came to a sudden halt. He quickly hushed Bella, listening for a gait that he knew but was less familiar to him personally.
A few moments later, Esme appeared in the hallway.
Her mouth formed a small "o" at the sight of Bella in Aro's arms, and she gave them both a startled look.
"Ah," Aro said, feeling, oddly, as if he had just been caught cheating on-someone. Whether that was Carlisle or Sulpicia he didn't quite know.
"Hi," Bella said, waving.
"She-hurt her foot," Aro said, "And, ah, I'm afraid Carlisle had to leave."
Aro then winced, because of course, that might give her the wrong idea. Of course, he would have thought Carlisle would have wandered off in a horrified daze to find Esme and speak with her about-Well, the past. It seemed that Carlisle had instead wandered off to go hide in a corner somewhere.
And now here was Aro, noting that he'd just seen Carlisle.
"Is she alright?" Esme asked, and came a few steps closer.
"Cancerous," Bella said stiffly, her smile painfully forced and false, "But still here!"
"And hopefully you will be for a while longer," Aro mused aloud, his mind detouring back to Carlisle's ever-growing fear for her.
"Cancerous?" Bella asked, eyebrows raising.
"Alive, Bella, I meant alive," Aro corrected.
"Right. Well, me too. Cancer sucks, but hey! Can't wait to be rid of all this hair. Been wondering how I'd look in a wig. Or do you think a shawl would be better?"
Aro now completely understood what Bella meant when she had insisted that she could not lie nor act. He wished he was anywhere else right now, and that she could have done anything to make his job of standing here like an idiot any easier.
He nodded at Esme in greeting.
He–
No, he had nothing to say to her.
"If you'll excuse me, Esme," Aro said, "I have to get Bella back to her room. I believe Carlisle might be looking for you?"
Of course, how Carlisle could have missed her was beyond Aro. Which meant, of course, that he'd meant to miss her and Aro had just thrown the man under yet another wife-shaped bus. But really, what was Aro to do?
"Wait!" she cried, and in a moment, having run just a bit too fast, she was by his side, walking alongside him.
Bella gave her an odd look.
"I was– hoping we could– talk," Esme blurted, looking unspeakably nervous.
Oh.
Oh no.
Aro-he had to confess that he hadn't expected this.
Granted, he'd only seen Esme through the eyes of others: Carlisle and Edward, but she'd always seemed… Extremely non-confrontational. He hadn't thought she'd have it in her to confront Carlisle, let alone Aro, his alleged lover.
No, he thought she'd simply-shatter.
And that Carlisle in turn would be devastated by what this had done to her.
"Oh," he said aloud.
He found himself wanting the walk back to Bella's room to be long. Very long.
Bella, too, fell unusually silent. She of course knew about Aro and Carlisle, knew that Esme hadn't known, and perhaps had now put together that Esme suddenly did know but whatever she was thinking, she wasn't saying it.
Wise of her.
It was an agonizing minute before they arrived at Bella's door.
Esme opened it, allowing Aro to step through with Bella. He put her down on her chair - something in him wasn't quite brave enough to be seen putting people to bed around Carlisle's wife.
"Well, Bella, sleep well, pleasant dreams, I'll-" he'd been about to quip 'I'll most likely kill you in the morning', a reference to his beloved Princess Bride, but with Esme behind him he lamely finished, "-Provide details of what we discussed tomorrow."
"Awesome," Bella said, and smiled at him.
It was a distinctly encouraging smile.
Oh, yes, she knew he was in trouble.
He felt a surge of appreciation for her, as well as bitter regret that he hadn't said "Alright, Bella, let the slumber party begin. I'm so excited we finally get to watch the extended editions of Lord of the Rings together!"
Of course, while Aro was a coward when it came to personal matters, even he knew that there was no noble way of weaseling out of this one.
He closed the door to Bella's room behind him, and for a moment they both stood there.
They walked in silence back to his study. As usual, the hallways were empty enough to all but guarantee his privacy. Ordinarily, Aro rather appreciated that, now-
It would have been an ideal time for Demetri to interrupt.
He opened the door to his study, and immediately regretted it, because it smelled potently of Carlisle in there.
Of course, everywhere that Aro might have taken her-the library, the newly created laboratory, and even the tower had traces of Carlisle lingering in the air. Even only a few days here, surrounded by his family-he'd somehow made himself at home without either of them realizing.
Esme stood for a moment, and he saw her inhale.
Aro decided it was best not to acknowledge it. If she asked, he had his excuse, Carlisle had recently been in here with Bella for perfectly legitimate reasons. If she didn't-well, it'd just make it seem as if he had something to hide.
"Please, sit," he said, the words felt too loud in the heady silence. He gestured towards the couch.
She followed his direction, and sat down primly, her hands folded in her lap.
Perhaps it was just him projecting, but it seemed she was trying not to clench her hands together.
He took a seat next to her.
"Carlisle-" he cut himself off, realizing how damning it might look that this news had first come to him from Carlisle. Worse, of course, that Carlisle had come to Aro to complain that Marcus' had revealed the pair of them as lovers to his wife-to Aro, yes that wasn't good optics.
"I spoke with Marcus," Aro bravely corrected, "And he showed me what he said to you and Carlisle."
Esme nodded.
Aro wasn't sure if she wanted to say anything, or if he should go on.
"I am terribly sorry that you had to find out in that manner," he said after a few seconds, "I had hoped-Carlisle should have told you before anyone else."
That Carlisle had never meant to was moot point, and not something Aro could apologize for or explain on his behalf. Even apologizing on Marcus' behalf felt cheap, it wasn't his apology to give for all that Marcus felt no need to give it.
"Esme, let me assure you, your husband has remained faithful to you, and every intention of staying that way. He is utterly devoted to you," he continued quietly. He almost added that he realized how rich this was coming from him, but, well, what could you do?
At that, she turned to look at him, her wide eyes filled with grief.
"What happened between Carlisle and I was-a very long time ago," he added, "And I won't lie and pretend I do not care for him deeply but-he has moved on. I have accepted that."
"I spoke with Sulpicia," Esme finally said.
He blinked.
Now that he had most certainly not expected.
He supposed-there was a certain duty he could see Esme feeling she needed to perform, to tell Aro's presumably unwitting wife that Aro had cheated on her centuries ago. To Esme, Aro imagined his and Sulpicia's arrangement was utterly unthinkable. She'd assume that of course he kept her in the dark, or if she hadn't been then she'd been utterly miserable and resentful.
But given that Sulpicia was sequestered in her tower, he had assumed that, like Edward, Sulpicia would be at best an afterthought and all too easily forgotten by Esme.
"She told me you are in love with him," Esme said, something amazed in her voice, like she couldn't quite believe it.
Aro blinked, felt oddly put on the spot.
Also oddly embarrassed. He'd-Well, now that he thought about it, he'd never had to say it. No one, for that matter, had ever asked. When Sulpicia had realized that Carlisle wasn't leaving, she'd outright accused him of it. Marcus had always treated it as a given, undeniable, truth that was so mundane it was barely worth acknowledging. Caius had despaired of it but never questioned it and never asked Aro directly about it.
Even Carlisle had never asked Aro about his feelings, he was too busy being seduced into Aro's bed.
Esme shook her head lightly, as if to clear it, and her fingers tightened around each other. "I– understand, I am still… processing. I hope this doesn't come out wrong– I don't want to offend you."
She wrung her hands together, before forcing herself to still them.
Then, "You are both men."
Oh, yes, he'd been wondering when she'd bring that up.
Again, he had the best grasp of her through Edward (and what a terrible thing to say of a person), but from what he understood-that had not been a concept in her world. At the very least, it had not been a pleasant one.
Nodding to herself, Esme continued, "It is– in my life, I– I understand that the world is– no," she broke herself off, seeming to change her mind about the direction she was going.
She tried again. "I was surprised to learn love had been involved," she said, "I knew, even as a human, that men sometimes lie with other men, but I never thought– and when I learned you had t-taken my husband–"
She broke off, and threw a quick, alarmed look at him.
He let out a long sigh, "I have a very fearsome reputation. It is necessary and it is not-unearned. Given who I am, what it is I do, the power I wield, it's rather natural to expect the worst."
He smiled wryly to himself, "However, I do have-feelings, as well as principles. And I have found that the world is-it's not often what we expect it to be. You learned that yourself, both as a human in the worst way you could, and in the afterlife. I'm not sure what I can say to convince you that I, at the very least, always meant to do right by him but-I suppose there is the fact that I let him go at all. Surely, that of all things works in my favor."
It had certainly hurt enough that he had felt he had earned something from it. Or, perhaps, like everything else, it was simply part of the ever growing price he paid for Didyme.
She stared at him, eyes wide and her body terribly tense, as if any second now her courage would fail her and she would bolt. "Why do you love him?" she asked.
Now Aro was the one who wanted to bolt.
The sense of being put on the spot, of being embarrassed, returned.
He also knew that "He's Carlisle" or "Have you met him?" or "Everything" wouldn't cut it. He thought mournfully for the embarrassing amount of portraits of Carlisle hanging just about everywhere.
It was worth noting that, just as no one had ever asked if Aro loved Carlisle, no one had ever asked why.
Caius had only ever despaired that Aro did, in fact, love Carlisle.
"Esme," he began, "what do you know of my gift?"
She frowned. "It's like Edward's," she said, "You read minds but, ah, more than him. You see every thought instead of those just in the moment."
Aro nodded. "Correct, but have you thought about the implications of that?"
Esme's eyes fell on the table. "Well, you have to touch people, so you can be left alone. Edward can't."
He smiled wryly. "Yes… I suppose that's true," he said.
"However, Esme," he continued, "Where Edward gets only a moment in time, like a photograph, with no knowledge of what came before or after the thought he listened to, I get – everything. Esme, when I touch people, I see not just their surface thoughts, but every single thought, every single impression, every observation, that they've ever had. I see their hopes, fears, fantasies, with humans I even see their dreams. Everything a person is, is formed from the building bricks of experience, and I get to see not only the person before me exactly as they are now, but who they used to be, and how they have been shaped into the person they are now.
I touch a person, and I know them more intimately than anybody else ever can, than they know themselves. I can't forget any of it, nor block it out. Everything a person has ever been, or done, is known to me, and through the nature of my gift, their thoughts are mine and they become a part of me."
"Oh, that sounds-difficult," Esme settled on, clearly having meant 'awful'. He supposed this was not surprising, Edward had a love-hate relationship with his own gift that he liked to portray as 'hate' to his family.
He was constantly barraged by irrelevant thoughts from irrelevant people, unable to filter out the noise. More, he was an unwilling voyeur to his family, whose every thought he heard unless they put active work into blocking his gift.
However, Edward was unwilling to admit to them or even himself how very much he relied upon that gift and how relieved he was that it made him in some way special and more capable than the ungifted members of his family.
"It is simply who I am," Aro said with a shrug, "To be anything else… I have dim memories of being human, but the human Aro is a stranger to me. The idea of not having my gift, of seeing the world as I do, is nigh unthinkable."
Esme sat still, taking it all in.
"For this reason," Aro continued, "I don't so much gravitate towards people, so much as I gravitate towards thoughts. Well, thoughts and people are the same, but– people can't hide from me who they are. I always know, at a touch, exactly who stands before me."
Though Marcus, when Didyme had been alive, had always argued that he could tell far more about a man far faster with his own gift than Aro ever could. Men, he thought, rarely knew themselves and their thoughts were formed to justify their own actions. It was their relationships, how they wove themselves into the tapestry of mankind, that formed the truth.
Personally, Aro had always thought it was more that Marcus had a different, albeit incredibly useful, perspective of the matter.
Aro smiled. "In over three thousand years I have made rather few friends because of this. Not only is it a heady thing, to be known so deeply by another, making it difficult to maintain an equal relationship, but I am… a difficult man to please, I suppose. I can't very well be close to someone who sees me as a path to power, nor allow myself to be weak around someone that I know will seek to take advantage of that.
I am immeasurably fortuitous in that my dear Renata should turn out to be as uniquely and wonderfully sweet as she is. Her gift meant that I have to keep her close, and it is my everlasting good fortune that she should have the constitution that she does."
Esme shot him a small, albeit uncertain, smile at that.
Aro exhaled. "Your husband, Esme, has one of the most extraordinary minds I've ever known. And among the extraordinary minds, his is–" he searched for the way to put it. "In all the history of vampires, Carlisle has been the only one to outright refuse his nature, to shine so brightly that he defied vampirism outright and became something closer to a saint. He is so purely like light, and I'm a moth – and his intelligence, his charm, his beauty, all things I treasure, but it's that brilliance that blinded me the moment I touched him."
Aro flashed a smile at her. "You might even say it was love at first sight."
"Edward… He's sometimes said something similar," Esme clearly meant this-not as a compliment, but to let Aro know that she understood what he meant.
It had the exact opposite effect.
If Aro were willing to think cursed thoughts, then perhaps Edward was in love with Carlisle for much the same reasons that Aro himself was. Perhaps there really was something to his gift, superficially similar to Aro's as it was, that he'd seen a glimmer of what Aro himself had seen in Carlisle.
He just simultaneously wanted Carlisle to be his father.
Aro now felt vaguely dirty.
He, in fact, wasn't sure what to say now as all he could think of was Edward and Edward's thoughts and he hoped to the gods that he didn't sound nearly as deluded, depraved, and incestuous as Edward's internal worship of Carlisle had.
… At the very least, Aro could not recall having ever looked at his face in the mirror and wished that it could more clearly resemble Carlisle's. At least he'd never done that.
"Sulpicia told me you searched the world for her," Esme mused.
Aro smiled, glad the conversation was moving away from Edward. "Well, if you talked to her, I imagine you might already know what it is that made me choose her."
Esme stilled at that, her lips pursing.
Aro sighed, realizing that, it seemed he was going to have to explain, "She's very loyal, very kind, and she's also more intelligent than many realize. She sees things, sometimes, that I overlook but she does not seek power nor does she-resent me for who I am and what I devote myself to."
"No– no," Esme muttered, shaking her head. "I mean – you don't have to tell me. I understand, she's– she's quite extraordinary."
"Yes, yes she is," Aro said, blinking and not sure quite what to make of that. Sulpicia always left an impression, but it wasn't always-sometimes people weren't quite sure what to make of her.
Esme smiled to herself. "I think, in fact, her and I could perhaps become friends."
Well, now he really wanted to know what they'd talked about.
Aro also began to wonder where, exactly, this was headed. Asking him about his feelings for Carlisle, his intentions for him, now that was very reasonable and to be expected. Asking why Aro loved Carlisle was-a bit bold, but not out of left field.
Now that she'd brought it up, Aro too, wondered just what it was that Esme had seen in Carlisle Cullen. How much of it was real and how much was that young, human girl's fantasy. Aro did not think Esme quite realized that-if it came to a choice between Carlisle's ideals and his family, that he would choose his ideals.
But noting that she and Sulpicia could be friends, when she'd come to interrogate Aro for having taken Carlisle as a lover and still being in love with him...
So strange to hear from Esme, too, who was a woman for her family, and her family only. She had her husband, her children, and so far as Aro knew, from what both Marcus and Edward had informed him, it had never occurred to her to want more.
Esme took a deep breath, and looked up towards the ceiling. "Sulpicia told me how your marriage works," she said softly.
Aro blinked.
He had no idea where this was headed.
"She told me…" Esme worried a bit at her lip. Such a human gesture, for one who had barely been among humans since it became clear her control was never going to progress beyond a certain stage. "She told me that my marriage cannot continue as it has."
Oh, oh…
She wasn't the first to predict as much.
Aro hadn't held out much hope for it, when he'd met her, but of course he wasn't exactly unbiased. Marcus, also, had immediately dismissed it as anything lasting. Caius, of course, could never imagine anyone besides Aro who would ever put up with Carlisle, let alone his diet.
Even Bella Swan had recently noted that something was amiss in that relationship and warned Carlisle of its imminent collapse.
No one had offered a word of support for Carlisle and Esme's marriage save for Carlisle, Esme, and his children who had made it the hopeless bedrock of their family dynamics.
"Esme…" he began, but he had no idea what to even say to her.
"She told me that I have two choices before me. I can adapt, allow– allow things to– to change, and we'll be able to survive. Or, Carlisle and I can fail."
She turned to look at him, and steel he'd never expected to see in her eyes, steel he knew had not been there in Carlisle or Edward's memories, shone brightly in them.
Something had fundamentally changed in Esme Cullen, and Aro rather doubted Edward would recognize the flavor of her thoughts now.
"I love my husband, Aro," she said.
Then, she placed her hand in his.
All at once, the familiar rush of foreign thoughts flooded Aro, and years upon years of disorganized thoughts, impressions, feelings, half-forgotten human memories, and every little thing in between.
There was never much point in finding a sense of chronology in a soul. It was difficult, for one thing, but more, no person did truly define themselves by time and order. No, the way to organize a mind, to make sense of the vast amount of information pouring into him, was for Aro to find the categorizations, the priorities, that was held by the person offering their thoughts up to him, at least until he got to know them well enough that he could navigate the terrain of their mind with familiarity.
Esme was a creature who, by fate and tragedy, had been made into a rather simple thing.
This was not to say that she'd once had grand dreams or ambitions, but she'd once been in a position to have them. She'd been a girl who, unwittingly, had fallen in love with the wrong man. Not because he was awful, or that he could never love her, but simply because the universe itself had been working against her.
Esme Anne Platt had by unfortunate circumstances grown up in a town where Carlisle Cullen briefly lived. He'd been a comet, shooting through the darkened sky, who had briefly crossed her path and shown her kindness, and then he'd left.
And she had never forgotten him.
And whether this changed anything, whether the suitors before Charles would have been any better or any worse, was hard to say. However, when Charles had come into her life, when he had been everything she never imagined in a marriage, Carlisle's blinding light was still seared into her memory.
She'd rebuilt herself, threw away every illusion of stability she had ever known, and for a time Esme had been a woman who thought she might struggle and persist in this world. And then her child had died.
And then, in her darkest hour, she'd gotten everything she ever wanted.
After that, the memories were – oddly blurred.
It was the standard, a given, with immortals, that their human life was the precursor, the prequel that the reader forgets when he gets further into the book, that might shape who they are but is ultimately forgotten. After all, the immortal being they become shines so much brighter.
It had not been so for Esme.
Oh, her new life shone brightly, she was extraordinarily happy, but Marcus had been right. There was no deeper substance, no deeper point, or purpose, to her.
Esme Anne Platt hovered like a ghost behind Esme Cullen, one hand on her shoulder, refusing to let go just as Esme Cullen refused to step out of her reach.
In a sense, there'd been little for her to do as a vampire, because everything was suddenly there.
Her child was gone, but she had Edward who desperately needed her and adored her in turn. He was young enough to still clearly be a child but old enough that most of the child rearing was done and over already, he was with no effort at all her grown child.
She suffered the aftershocks of her first marriage, but Carlisle had never forced her to confront it nor pushed the boundaries she'd so carefully built around herself. She could be a wife like those she'd read about, those she'd dreamed of, without ever having to face the realities of what a wife was meant to be. And Carlisle himself was so hopelessly Carlisle that-he was everything she'd imagined he was. There was nothing at all she would have changed in him, and in that he ceased to be a person.
If there were other children they gained along the way, then they didn't need Esme's help. They struggled under the weight of their violent pasts on their own, or consulted Carlisle, and it was an unspoken rule that Esme was never relied upon nor ever troubled.
If her control prevented her from integrating with the human world with the others then that was no matter because for her the outside world had ceased to exist. She had her houses, her material possessions, and her family.
There was nothing for her to dream nor anything for her to want.
And then, Volterra.
She had at first been happy for Carlisle, that his old friend had reached out. Then, once she realized this meant he would be going to Italy, she took for granted she would come with. Carlisle wanting to go alone had been the first unpleasantness.
Then, within days of arriving, it all came crashing down.
This glittering world was nothing like any she'd ever known. It was not the American charade she had played with Carlisle for nearly a century. It was old, wealthy, and foreign, and immediately Carlisle slipped so easily into it.
In the first second of their arrival, Carlisle had not been a stranger to these people, but instead the bridge between his family and the rest. Everyone had greeted him not only by name, but with more familiarity than some of his closest friends.
The cover story was thrown out, no longer suitable for their new circumstances. Edward was sent home immediately, devastated over something that wasn't his fault and Carlisle simply would not relent on. Carlisle stopped sitting at their table, brought Esme to talk with the human girl.
And then Aro had come to the door in his robe and Carlisle had immediately, without word or explanation, disappeared with him for several hours. When he'd returned, it'd been with paltry, conflicting, excuses that made no sense and news that Bella had cancer which meant they all must leave.
And something in the back of Esme's mind, the sleeping Esme Platt that resided inside her, began to suspect the unthinkable.
Then Marcus had confirmed it.
Aro saw the Marcus of Esme's memory, how tall and looming he appeared, how utterly ruinous those words had been.
It nearly broke her.
Only a sense of duty, made all the stronger by her utter devastation, had compelled her to make her way towards the tower entrance, where she had found Sulpicia.
Aro didn't know if it was Sulpicia alone that could have saved Esme. Had she reached out to Aro, first, he did not know what he might have said to her in Sulpicia's place. Had she reached out to Marcus-well, Marcus had remembered how to speak but not how to hold his tongue.
However, unwittingly, Esme had made a good choice in Sulpicia.
It was not simply Sulpicia herself, beautiful as she was, but even the tower. It was the lighted, scented candles that Esme had never decorated her home with but found familiar in how they made a place one's home. It was the ethereal, ancient, grace of Sulpicia in her petrified skin and Greecian clothing, softened by the glow of candle light as well as her smile.
It was something about sitting down at the table, with the betrayed wife of another man, and having her only calmly smile at news that had destroyed Esme's world only moments before. And then, beyond all hope, offer an unorthodox but profound solution along with truths that Esme had never wished to acknowledge but had no choice but to accept.
Sulpicia had taken Esme by the hand, and like Orpheus led her out of the dark and chaotic Underworld, showed her the way back into the world. And unlike Orpheus, Sulpicia did not look back, just as Esme would not.
In Sulpicia, Esme had finally found the wife she had never known she wanted to emulate.
Aro refocused, and like an ocean wave retreating from shore, Esme's thoughts retreated to a manageable level, where they no longer overwhelmed him.
They sat together in silence for a few seconds, Esme watching him and him looking into nothingness, taking it all in.
And all that was left was the unspoken choice he needed to make.
It was a choice, of course, he could say no.
He, perhaps, should say no. He'd never had any desire to take Carlisle's bride as his lover for a great many reasons. Certainly, even had the idea ever crossed his mind, it'd be unthinkable for what it would do to Carlisle. He'd never forgive Aro for that.
But, this wasn't really about him.
Esme was like Marcus.
Years upon years wasted, spent in a fog as something not truly a living creature, content to remain as she was.
Yes, she was Carlisle's unwitting Marcus, a Marcus he'd never realized he even had because he'd never seen what she was beforehand. She'd only been a human girl who had happened to be his patient then an unfortunate corpse in the morgue.
She was perhaps never so far gone as Marcus, she could talk, could smile, could pretend to be a person but reality was a false thing to her. In any given moment, when she did speak, it was as if she were watching a play far different than the one her neighbor saw.
She had never truly felt, or wanted, anything until she realized what she could lose.
This was Bella flunking her class.
Aro could sit back, let her buy that ticket back to her country, and Bella Swan would become a memory, and the hopes of Marcus' recovery would be a memory as well.
Aro was not a misplaced art student in Italy, and he wouldn't lie to himself and say this was really about him either, but he had unwittingly become a very important step on Esme's path to her realization of self.
And, ironically, to saving Carlisle and Esme's utterly ridiculous farce of a marriage.
Of course, he was one to talk.
God, there was something to be said, wasn't there, that after all those years of Carlisle raising his eyebrows at Aro's marriage to Sulpicia, keeping his tongue but not his thoughts, that Carlisle's own marriage should end up exactly the same.
Esme now endeavored to be Sulpicia, a woman she greatly admired and firmly believed had matrimony all figured out.
And Carlisle–
Well, he had his choice with Sulpicia, just as Aro had his with Esme.
Carlisle would be offended, of course, but Aro could guess which choice Carlisle was going to make. He never had been able to say no to Sulpicia, especially when emotionally distraught.
(Which, of course, meant that Sulpicia was getting her hands on Carlisle first. Which was just awfully unfair now that Aro was thinking about it but he supposed par for the course given he'd unintentionally ruined Esme and Carlisle's relationship.
Besides, she had cleaned those baths. He supposed she deserved a reward.
… Though it didn't mean that Aro wasn't mildly annoyed at her opportunism.)
And, more–
Carlisle would understand that this was the way to save his marriage. Sulpicia and Esme were right, things could not continue as they had.
Carlisle would have to do his part.
And Aro would do his.
At least it would throw Marcus for a loop.
… Aro couldn't believe he was about to sleep with Carlisle's wife.
Distantly, the thought that this had all started out with such a lovely plan, a plan where everyone would follow their scripts, behave nicely, and then Bella would agree to become a vampire and all would be well, no one would be pregnant, came to him.
How far they'd come.
He smiled across at Esme, squeezing her hand gently and reading her surprise at his expression, "My dear Esme, I accept, though I suggest we relocate. I rather like this furniture."
She gasped quietly, but he sensed her relief. Though, of course, there was the mild shock that the following events would be so… energetic as to destroy the furniture. He thought, distantly, about reminding her that Rosalie and Emmett had destroyed houses.
She squeezed his hand, and he led her out of the room.
Aro found Carlisle in the library the next morning.
He smelled distinctly of lemon scented soap, the kind Sulpicia had very recently purchased and was currently enamored with. His hair, while clearly washed and brushed, was ever so slightly in disarray as if, even after having combed it, Sulpicia had ruffled her fingers through it.
Carlisle looked up at his approach, and his eyes widened at seeing Aro in a different set of clothes than the day before.
They stared at each other for a moment, neither one of them saying anything.
"So, I found this book on Mayan legends-" Carlisle hastily started, shoving the Ars Poetica at Aro in his haste, a distinctly not Mayan book.
"Oh, lovely," Aro said.
Carlisle fell silent, and they both continued staring at one another.
Aro now remembered, quite vividly, that Carlisle himself had never slept with Esme. Funny that.
"You don't suppose the new microscope has arrived yet?" he asked.