Author's note: For the record, I had no intention for this story to get so dark - but by this point it has a mind of its own and I'm just a dog on a leach. Again, trigger warning for unhappy stuff ahead.
I told myself that this sort of thing wasn't unusual – I knew it wasn't. And that man - he hadn't touched me anywhere inappropriate. He was probably just drunk.
With that out of my mind, I went upstairs to watch the coat room, as I had been told to do by Marion. The doors to the dining room had been closed, and would remain so for the rest of the evening. My only job now was to hand out coats and bags to guests that were leaving when the party was over. So basically, there wasn't much else to do now but wait.
The other secretaries were going to be busy all night downstairs so it was just me now on the groundfloor of the building – and since it was pretty late at night, not many people were moving about outside either.
For the first half hour or so I tried to keep myself busy, arranging and lining up coats that had fallen to the floor. The coat room was really just temporary, filled with those silver portable coatracks that the Volturi used when transporting their drycleaning, otherwise it was used for storage. But just like all the other rooms in the old building, it had a certain medieval charm to it. Even if I didnät know that much about history, I could still appriciate the intricate stone carvings and the hidden passages (yes, Helen had told me about those) which were located throughout the building, and the ones surrounding the piazza. She said it had something to do with old monks from the 16th century, who in secret built rooms in which they kept prisoners of war hidden away from the law.
But the coatroom was only entertaining for so long. I had to stay for at least another three hours at my post, so to have something to do I started to explore the rest of the rooms on the ground floor. They were usually kept locked up during the day, but for this evening most of them had been unlocked in order to store the guests belongings. I knew that tourists went on guided tours here, as I had observed large groups of people coming and going through these cavernous rooms. But I had never really felt any inclination or curiosity about the past of this place before.
But it was different at night. Maybe it was because nobody else was around, and I could look around undisturbed. Not that it should matter – but somehow, it did.
I had left the coatroom and continued down the main hallway, and went into the unlit room to my left. The thick wooden door was standing ajar, not fully opened. Usually, light attracts you more than the dark – but something that intrigued me about this door in particular was its size – it was not tall and magnificent like the others – instead the doorway was at least two heads shorter in height.
When I pushed, it seemed to drag across the floor, as if the wood had swollen over the years and become a snug fit to its frame. Something that usually happened when the air was moist after a storm or a rainfall – back in Forks, this was happenstance.
When, after some effort, I finally pushed the door open, I realized that I probably shouldn't have gone in there in the first place.
The room was not clean and organized like the others. Everything inside was covered in a thick layer of dust, and the ceiling was peeling away – I realized that it was old paint, frayed and unkempt. I realized fairly quickly that this was not a room that the tourists were allowed to see – myself included. I was just an intern and this was crossing the line.
But I was too curious to turn back now, so without looking back I carefully stepped into the narrow doorway, closing the door behind me. There was some light illuminating the room from above – much like the throne room a few floors below, it had a circular opening in the domed ceiling, the glass broken in several places. There was also a tiny window that overlooked the steep cliff by the side of the building, and the plane trees that grew below in the glade.
The rest of the room was filled up with what looked like random assortments of junk. Everything was so covered with grime that it was hard to make out what everything was, and the light was sparse – it took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust. When they had, I recognized that there were several old bookshelves stacked in one corner of the room, most of them empty – some of them haphazerdly filled with molding, rotting books. When I tried to open one and read it, the words had been eaten away by moths, and the paper reeked with mold. I blinked and sneezed against the dust motes floating in the air, completely baffled by what I was seeing.
Why had this room been left to just decay like this? It made no sense at all. The Volturi valued everything that was beautiful and elegant, and above all clean – so why this mess? Maybe they had forgotten about this room completely, and I was the first person to be here for several years. There many suitcases in here as well – all of them seemingly identical.
As a matter of fact, there were several piles in here of things that looked identical. There was one pile of stuffed (rotting) animals, a pile of bird cages in various shapes and sizes, and many, many cellular phones- some of which looked more than 20 years old. The room reminded me of something I had seen before, but I couldn't just put a finger on what that was. In the center of the room stood a single, wooden desk. It was the only neat part of the room – the surface perfectly clean from any dust or filth. On this desk was an assortment of what looked like old metal tins – but when I picked one up and turned it around, I saw that it was not a tin, but a music box. The one I was holding, when I rubbed some of the dirt of, looked like it had been around for at least a hundred years or so. I had never seen anything like it before. It was small, made of pure gold and on each of its sides were engravings – pictures that had been moulded into the surface.
But I felt strange, holding it. Like it was familiar to me somehow.
My hand felt around at the bottom, finding a key that I twisted around, winding it up. When the music started, I was startled to see the picture on the surface moving – behind a thin layer of glass, golden ships moved across rolling waves. In the foreground there were no forest, animals or people, but ruins – ancient temples that had crumbled.
And the music – it sounded bittersweet. Like something wonderful that had come and gone all too soon. This too, brought out an ache in me that was foreign, but I knew what it was when I felt it. Soon I was sitting down on there on the dirty floor, the music box still in my hands. I was so mezmerised by it and the tune it was playing, that I scaresely noticed anything else around me.
But even I noticed that I was no longer alone in the room.
When I heard him speak, it was already too late.
"Like a present, she waits for me..." he murmured, his italian old-fashioned and his voice slightly scratchy. My stomach tightened and I got up from the floor, turning around. It was that man again from downstairs, the one who had touched my cheek. We were alone now. I stared at the closed door behind him, panic rising in me. I swallowed, my lips dry. Dust was clinging to my lashes, making my eyes water.
It was easy to imagine that his eyes were red in the dark, so easy to be afraid.
"Sir, neither of us are supposed to be in here." I said, but he just came closer, eyes too focused on me. He shook his head calmly, hands in the pocket of his pants. He brought them out - they looked pale, even without the light.
"You're wrong about that – you are exactly where you belong. Besides, it will be easier for them if I take care of you here. "
My heart started to beat fast, my back slamming against the nearest wall where I stayed, unable to move. I was clinging onto the music box, which had gone silent. I began to shake my head, but I was already going through the motions, my eyes not really seeing him, but someone else.
"No." I muttered, but I was not heard. He was now right up against me, hand caressing my neck – as his other hand wretched the music box from my hands, throwing it to the floor. My hand were not my hands, and had gone limp against my sides. I heard him shift and press up against me, his breath cold on my skin.
"I've been wondering all night, what you might taste like..." he murmured, his voice now rough and too close, too loud to ignore – but my mind was already gone, disappearing as I only could watch as his mouth descended on my neck, his hands moving over my body, pinching and grinding against me.
I was a piece of glass, breaking all over again. Glass is just material, without feelings or memory. That was my only comfort.
But before something else could happen, the thick wooden door suddenly slammed open, almost falling off its hinges. Light flooded the decaying room and the man who had been on me turned around sharply and hissed at whatever he saw.
The sudden light blinded me, and I couldn't tell at first who was standing in the doorway. But whoever it was sounded angry. The voice that came from the person sounded like gravel, almost unrecognizable. Whoever the voice belonged to had the man who was still in the room with me start to shake, his hands no longer on me, instead clasped in front of him, as if begging for forgiveness.
"Nathaniel. I believe that you are expected downstairs. Go there, now." Ther person growled, voice uneven and filled with hardly contained anger. Nathaniel quickly disappeared, leaving me standing in the room, my body still against the wall. I could now see that it was Aro standing there, his chest heaving and his hands gripping the doorway on each side in a deathgrip. Detached, I noticed that he looked taller when he was angry.
My silk dress had torn a little at the shoulder, and when I attempted to fix it, I realized that I couldn't because my hands were shaking too much. All the while Aro was silent as he stared at me with wide eyes, and I knew what he saw.
I turned my head away, hair obscuring my face. It was so silent now that you could almost hear some of the music from downstairs. My vision was getting blurry, because my body had decided to cry.
"I'm sorry." I murmured.
He let out a long sigh, his hands relaxing against the doorframe – his frame shutting out the rest of the world. His voice sounded old and gentle when spoke, saying something that might as well have been in an alien language.
"You have done nothing wrong. "