AN: I do not own Twi-World/Characters, Meyers shares nicely for which we are all grateful!
I am sketching out future chapters at the moment, so any requests for scenes you'd like to see? PM or leave them in a review and I will try to work them into the story :)
CLEAR AND SEVERE
Aro opened the door to the stairwell and gestured for his children to leave.
Sulpicia flew up the stairs before them, relieved to finally be leaving the company of her family to have some time to decompress. It had been a humbling day for the queen of Volterra and she felt utterly ashamed of her eldest two sons, although Demetri's crimes had paled into insignificance compared to Felix's crimes!
By the time Aro and his young brood had reached their abode, Sulpicia was already out on the terrace, breathing in the night air in an effort to calm her fraying nerves.
"Go to bed." Aro ordered softly. "Not you," he said as he pulled Felix back. Felix stood in the middle of the room as Aro removed and hung up his cloak.
"I'm really tired." Felix muttered as his father passed him.
Aro tutted, "I'm sure you are!" he replied, pouring himself a drink. "You will stay in the tower until Magnus lifts your guard hall ban," Aro told his son plainly.
"That's a month!" Felix returned, thinking that was far too harsh. I feel like shit, isn't that enough?
"A perfect amount of time for you to think about how foolish you have been!"
Felix had been quite agreeable whilst outside the safety of his home. He knew Aro well enough to know not to push him too far in public - the repercussions were very rarely worth it. But now they were in their own chambers, a little of Felix's trademark bolshiness rose to the surface.
Aro could see his boy readying himself for a fight. When will you learn? Aro thought as he knocked back his drink.
"Go to your room and stay there." Aro ordered as he approached.
Felix wasn't ready to back down yet. "Carlisle gets to roam the castle still and I am stuck in the tower?"
CRACK! Aro slapped Felix hard across his mouth for daring to speak out against him now.
"Fuck!" Felix cursed, shocked by the force of Aro's displeasure.
CRACK! Aro slapped him again for his language.
"Regardless of what my idiot brother has put in your head, you are a child. MY child, for that matter and disciplining you is up to ME," he roared at his boy, the fire of his rage dancing in his eyes.
Felix started to back away, only to bump into his mother.
Sulpicia looked her son up and down.
Felix tried to work out what that look was. Is she angry? Sad? Both? he wondered.
Reaching out for his mother he tried to explain himself. "Mom, listen I ... "
Sulpicia batted away his hand, she didn't want him to even touch her. "No Felix, you listen! I don't ever want to hear of something like this happening again."
Felix threw his hands up in self-defence. "It won't, it won't," he promised.
"I am disgusted, completely disgusted ... " Sulpicia started.
Felix wasn't used to his mother being so vocal against him, he felt flooded with guilt and again tried to explain his actions. "It was an accident," he whined, wondering how many times he would have to say that!
Sulpicia stalked past her boy and took her husband's cup from him. Filling it for herself, she downed a whole glass of bloodwine in one. "Yes Felix I got that already - you accidentally what, though? You accidentally went out of the castle without our permission? Or ... perhaps you accidentally got so drunk you were unaware of your actions? Maybe it was an accident that you went to bed with a human girl?" Sulpicia fired off Felix's crimes as she walked back towards him.
"Well?" she questioned when they were toe to toe.
"No, that wasn't an accident." Felix admitted guiltily.
"Then what was?" Sulpicia pushed, jabbing a finger into her boy's shoulder as she spoke.
"Crushing her." Felix replied quietly, a wave of nausea hitting his stomach as he thought of the mangled state in which he had left the girl.
Sulpicia gasped and put her hands to her mouth. "Crushed?" She repeated. "You crushed her to death?"
She asked for confirmation although she didn't really want to hear it.
"I didn't realise what I was doing until it was too late. I was just too heavy handed ... too forceful ... "
Sulpicia shoved him backwards, Felix didn't resist her. "Felix you are an animal!" She growled at him. Felix was taken aback by the force of his mother's vitriol.
"Mom, please ... " he started to beg, only to receive a rather punishing slap for is efforts.
CRACK!
"Mom!" he tried again, cradling his bruised cheek.
CRACK! Sulpicia slapped him again on his other cheek.
"Go to bed! I can't look at you! I love you, I love you so much, but your behaviour disgusts me." With that Sulpicia turned her back on her son and went to join her husband.
Aro had stayed quiet whilst his wife spoke to their boy. It was a rare event for the two of them to be on side about correcting their children. Even when we lost Didyme Sully was furious that I punished Felix so harshly, Aro thought, remembering another hundred or so times where he had quite literally come to blows with his wife on similar occasions.
Felix had yet to move, standing dumbstruck in the archway.
"BED!" Aro bellowed. "I will deal with you in the morning," he told him, menacingly.
That thought will send me straight off to sleep! Felix thought, sarcastically.
"You okay?" Demetri asked as soon as his brother came into their room.
Felix shook his head sadly.
"What the hell happened?" Demetri pushed as Felix closed the door.
Felix crossed the room and flopped onto his bed. "Which part?" he asked his brother. He wasn't up for a full breakdown.
"All of it! You have lost your mind brother!"
Felix sighed. Yep, full breakdown it is then, he thought tiredly. "Well you know about yesterday already. And tonight was an even bigger disaster," he admitted as he kicked off his boots.
"Does Aro know which guard you and Carlisle had yesterday?" Demetri asked with a little too much glee and not enough sympathy for Felix's liking, not that Felix blamed his brother.
"Yup!" he replied, sinking into his bed.
"Oh man, what were you thinking!" Demetri laughed out. This is brilliant! "I would say Renata is off the table now that Basileus has scared her to death." Demetri was ready to howl with laughter.
Even Felix raised a smile now that it was all over.
Demetri was literally bouncing on his bed waiting for some more juicy information from his brother. "How pissed off was Aro?"
Felix shuddered. He knew he had a very long conversation coming with his father and he knew a part of that 'conversation' was going to hurt! "Yeah, he's pretty pissed off."
Felix shook his head thinking of the very mild spanking he had received in the library compared to his partner in crime. "I felt sorry for Carlisle, though. Basileus didn't hold anything back and it went on for ages - he really wore him out."
Demetri grimaced. "Humiliating," he said, voicing both of their thoughts.
"Carlisle looked mortified." Felix told him. "So did Aro actually," he added, thinking how odd he found his father's behaviour whilst Basileus dished out a beating right behind them. "And then Magnus ... " Felix started before Demetri interrupted.
"You had to see Magnus, too?"
Felix laid Aro's dress cloak out on the small table next to his bed. His eyes went straight to the torn shoulder. Shit, I hope Aro remembers he ripped his coat and not me, he thought to himself with the usual Felix logic.
Pulling on some clean bed clothes and perching on the edge of his bed, Felix finally replied to his inquisitive little brother. "Oh yes, we were marched back in the guard hall to apologise to Magnus and Freyr. Fryer looked disgusted with me, I don't think she accepted our apologies."
Demetri looked as sad as Felix about that. Having Freyr onside was very useful - losing her favour could be catastrophic for relations in the guard hall.
"Magnus disciplined you?" Demetri asked tentatively.
"TWICE!" Felix replied, still ruminating over how unfair that was. "First time he only slapped my hand, but fuck, it felt like he broke my bones," he said, aimlessly rubbing his throbbing knuckles. "And then when we went to apologise with every fucking guard in there listening in to everything we said. Bastards. He gave me a good five swots then, too, and Aro had only just finished belting me."
Felix knew Aro had let him off very lightly and Magnus, too, for that matter ... but the battering his pride had taken during the whole process is what really hurt.
"I cried," he admitted, "in the fucking guard hall and I stood there sniveling like a brat whilst Freyr told me what a prick I'd been."
Demetri didn't laugh that time; he knew how upset Felix would be about such an emotional display in public.
"What happened with the human girl?" Demetri had only heard snippets in hushed voices whilst they were all waiting in Basileus' chambers for Felix and Carlisle to return.
"I pounded her like she was a vampire and that kind of crushed her." Felix admitted quietly, as though someone may hear him. "I was drunk; I wasn't thinking ... caught up in the moment." He tried to explain himself to his Lothario brother, but even Demetri looked aghast at the idea of fucking someone to death! Felix saw the look in his eyes, it was as though he had swallowed bad blood or something. "Sully just raged at me, she looked ready to rip my head off," he said, tone dripping with self-pity.
"She is." Demetri informed him. "All the women are. They went on and on about your lack of respect and how shameful it is that you used a whorehouse." Demetri wasn't telling Felix about the sentiments he'd missed to hurt him further, he thought Felix should know the truth.
"Oh man, I feel bad enough about it already." Felix replied. "Sully just slapped me, like really properly, hard slapped me," he told his brother.
"I heard!" Demetri replied with a grimace. He couldn't remember the last time he heard Sulpicia even shout at one of her baby vampires!
"Have you seen my eyes?" Felix asked his brother.
Demetri dived out of his bed and across to Felix. "I heard that you drank human blood," he stated, still surprised that Felix had broken Basileus' decree.
"The blood came bubbling up through her mouth! I couldn't help it ... I kind of ate her face." Felix told him, though there was a hint of a smile there.
Demetri sighed as he sat next to his brother. "I have missed human blood so much," he admitted, feeling his mouth salivate venom at the idea of a fresh kill.
Felix nudged his little brother. "Basileus has lifted the human ban now," he told him with glee.
Demetri looked like all his Christmases had come at once!
"How else could he explain my eyes without the guard believing I had broken his decree and then being accused of me being above the law again?" he asked in a tone mocking Basileus' deep booming voice.
"Well, some good has come from your fuck up then!" Demetri said, bursting into loud laughter seeing the look on Felix's face.
"Fuck off!". Felix shoved Demetri off the bed and laughed heartily when his brother bounced off the floor.
"What he did was deplorable, Aro!" Sulpicia couldn't sit, her agitation had been rising all evening and now that she was finally in the privacy of her own four walls she felt tipped over the edge.
"I don't disagree with you; I am just as pissed off with him as you are!" Aro countered, feeling the need to defend himself.
"Are you? Are you really?" Sulpicia shot back. "Because from where I am sitting you appear to have let him go with a slap on the wrist for obliterating a young woman to death whilst having sex with her!"
Sully was actually shouting. She never shouted. Never.
Aro was starting to worry about his wife's state of mind. "My queen, I can assure you I haven't finished with him yet, and I promise you what he did was accidental and ... "
Sulpicia turned on Aro and started stalking towards him. "What?!" she asked, eyes turning black and boring into her husband's. "Felix accidentally left our lands, got steaming drunk, fought with humans, visited a whorehouse and ACCIDENTALLY FUCKED SOMEONE TO DEATH?!"
Before Aro had chance to respond with a few choice words of his own, light laughter travelled from Felix and Demetri's room. Sulpicia heard it too and flashed to her sons' room, leaving Aro fuming with the whole damn situation.
"No, no way! You don't get to laugh about anything, not now!" Sully raged at Felix as she thrust the door open.
Demetri jumped from the floor in surprise.
Felix scrambled to his knees on his own bed. "But ... " he started in defence.
"NO!" Sulpicia screamed back to him.
Aro could hear the exchange and rolled his eyes to the heavens. Will this bloody night ever be over, he questioned as he went to fetch his son.
"Felix get out here," he called from the doorway.
Felix looked nervously between his parents - it was a rare day that Aro looked to be the safer bet!
"He isn't sorry, Aro, he doesn't care. Look at him!" Sulpicia started in on her husband again, jabbing a finger into his chest as she spoke.
Aro closed his eyes for a moment. I won't stand for you screaming in my face woman ... you had better back down, he thought.
"What do you want me to do?" Aro shot back to his wife, just as agitated as Sulpicia.
Rather than backing down, Sulpicia stormed over to Felix and dragged him back to her mate. "Deal with him! Clear and severe," she ordered, pushing the two of them out of the room. "Unless you wish to join him you should get in bed and go to sleep." Sulpicia instructed Demetri before leaving the three of them to go back to the terrace, willing herself to calm down along the way.
To say Aro was dumbfounded would be an understatement. For a moment he watched as his wife left, wondering how the hell all of this was his fault!
Felix took his father's short inaction as a possible reprieve and tried to lighten the mood. He laughed gently and nudged Aro, as if to share an unspoken joke about his mother's temper… bad move.
"ARE YOU TOTALLY OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND!" Aro roared! Taking a fistful of the boy's hair, he dragged him out of his room and down the hall, not stopping until they reached Aro and Sulpicia's bed chamber where he threw Felix towards the bed.
Felix could feel himself start to sweat. "Dad, please. I am sorry, I am really sorry."
Aro slammed the door closed behind him, before flashing to his boy. His whole body vibrated with rage and rather than trying to contain it, trying to calm himself or find his level head, Aro allowed that rage to bubble up inside him as he stepped from one foot to the other, glaring at his son with eyes of coals.
He had to be careful, if his vampiric nature took over, he would have Felix submitting before anyone could do anything to stop him. Coming to his senses for a moment he spotted the dresser from the corner of his eye. The whip! That's it, I'll whip him, he decided as he flashed first to the dresser, ripping open the bottom drawer and then back to his fear stricken son.
"No, no, no!" Felix started backing up across the bed in panic.
"You can't whip me!" Felix called out. "Basileus - he said you can't!"
It was a desperate plea, but it stopped Aro in his tracks. The last time I whipped one of them, Basileus whipped me, he remembered with a lump in his throat. 'If you EVER whip my grandchildren again, I will deliver this thrice fold in front of the full coven.' Aro replayed his father's warning over in his mind. Shit. He cursed as he stormed out of his chambers and down to his father's door, where he knocked and waited.
Basileus came to the door in a bed sheet.
"Did I disturb you?" Aro smirked.
Basileus rolled his eyes dramatically. "How can I help you, son," he asked, adding quickly as he jumped to conclusions, "they haven't gone out, have they?"
Before Aro could stop him, Basileus called for Carlisle who came trudging out his door with a face of thunder still.
"What?" he asked petulantly.
Basileus sighed with relief. He didn't fancy chasing his boy around the castle right now. "Go to your room," he barked back to his youngest son.
Carlisle stormed away muttering a 'for fuck sake!' as he went.
"What is it, then?" Basileus asked Aro.
Nervously, Aro lifted the whip he held in his hand. "May I?" He asked, simply.
Basileus leaned into the doorway and crossed his arms across his chest. "Do you really think that is necessary?" he asked sternly. "Felix is regretful already, isn't he?"
Aro shook his head. "His regret appears to be dependent on the audience he's courting at the time."
"Aha!" Basileus replied, still not answering Aro's question. "You know, you could have just done the job right in the first place, Aro."
Great, just what I need. I already have Sully ready to rip my fucking head off!
"You know I can hear you, yes?" Basileus warned, hearing his son's careless thoughts.
Aro looked to the floor. "I was too distracted, it was awkward," he offered as an excuse.
Basileus scoffed. "Well you had better get used to it. I doubt we have seen the end of this yet."
Aro's head shot up. "I am not letting you use Felix again, Dad! You must be losing your head! Not a chance in hell will this happen again!"
"Hey!" Basileus shot back, annoyed by his son's tone. Pushing his boy sharply in his chest, he reminded Aro who he was talking to. "Are you confused? Who the hell do you think you are coming to my door and talking to me like that?!"
Aro bit his lip, willing himself to stay quiet. Fail. "This whole thing is your fault!" he accused his father, pushing into the hand Basileus held on his chest.
Aro watched as his father's eyes turned jet black before him.
Basileus screwed up Aro's shirt as his palm against his son's chest became a fist, drawing his boy in close. "You should choose your next words carefully," he breathed threateningly into his son's ear.
Aro wasn't ready to back down. I haven't done anything wrong, this IS all your fault! Aro screamed inside his head.
Basileus spun Aro and took hold of his arm in one hand, the other hand raised, ready to strike.
"Basileus?" Atia called out as she came to see what was taking her lover so long to return. "Oh! Aro. Are you okay?" She asked as she approached the pair. Seeing Basileus held his son in a vice like grip gave her cause for concern.
Aro noticed Basileus didn't relax his grip, but Atia's presence certainly halted proceedings.
Once she was close enough, Atia pulled Basileus down just enough to enable her to croon into his ear. "Are you really so intent on punishing all of your sons in one night that I cannot tempt you back into bed, my dear?"
Aro watched as Basileus started to waiver.
"I didn't come here for a fight, just your permission." Aro said quietly, whilst still being held in his embarrassing position.
Basileus leaned into his mate who continued to whisper in his ear.
Aro felt the grip loosening around his bicep.
"Go." Basileus commanded as he finally released his son.
"But what about ... " Aro tried to ask.
"My permission, yes? You have it, though I warn you to tread carefully, son. I am trusting you not to go too far. I would hate to have to make good on my original promise."
Aro felt a shiver go through the entirety of his body. Being whipped in front of the coven ... I would hate for you to make good on your promise too, Dad.
Aro re-entered his chambers, brimming with anger: over his father, his son, his wife – they were all pissing him off! He was relieved to see Felix was where he'd left him on his bed, though he was now asleep.
Aro slammed the bedroom door, startling his boy awake, and brandished his whip from the foot of the bed.
"But Basileus ... " Felix started.
Aro interrupted him. "Basileus understands my position. This is happening," he told the youth flatly.
Felix scooted back on the bed in an attempt to increase the distance between them.
Aro cocked his head to the side as he watched his son's attempts to flee.
Felix stopped when he reached the headboard, eyes flicking first to the window and then to the door, wondering if he could make it out of either before Aro caught him.
Aro knew what he was thinking. "You can try, if you like. But I WILL catch you and I can promise you now that you will pay for it." Aro sounded cold, so cold. It sent chills down Felix' spine.
"But you know I'm sorry, you can read my thoughts, you know!" Felix implored, begging his father to see reason.
Aro nodded along, it was true enough. "Yes son, I believe you are sorry but you still don't seem to realise the extent of your crimes! On my idiot brother's say so you have gone against me, your mother, Magnus, Basileus ... anyone else?"
Felix shook his head, feeling like a dick.
"You have shown your vampiric state to humans ... you do know what I do to vampires who break that law, do you not?"
Felix didn't answer, instead he started to sob softly.
Aro approached his son. Kneeling in front of him on the oversized bed, he took his son's head in his two hands. "You know what I do, because you have helped me do it, son," he said as he increased the pressure on his son's temples. "What do I do?" he pushed a final time.
You're going to crush my skull! Felix thought as he cried heartily under the pressure. The irony of 'being crushed' was not lost on the boy. "You kill them," he admitted. "You rip off their heads," he called out, cowering from Aro's vice like grip.
"SO WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?!" Aro bellowed at his boy, only an inch from his face.
"I WAS PISSED OFF!" Felix roared in reply. "Carlisle treated me like an adult and I wanted to enjoy myself and then I got drunk and I didn't know what I was doing!" Why did I say that?! Felix immediately questioned himself, knowing his rambling confession had just sealed the coffin on being allowed to drink ever again.
Aro heard his boy's thoughts. "That's right, you have," he said, feeling rather pleased. Aro took up the whip again and grabbed Felix by his hair, forcing him to lie across the bed. Aro remained on his knees, pushing Felix's head into the soft bedding to muffle his cries, as he took retribution out on Felix's hide for his most recent crimes.