Chapter Six: Love Lives

"What was she like?" I found myself asking against my better judgment. I wanted to talk about anything that would take both of our minds away from the current situation. I wondered if his…whatever she was, was still in the castle. Did she know that he was down here?

"She is very kind," He said. I made a face. That was just about the most generic thing anyone could say about someone that they had been affectionate with.

"Is that it?" I pressed, scrunching my nose up.

"Saoirse, she was a child. As much as I enjoyed our time together, for all intents and purposes, she was just a little girl. She was sweet, and repressed, and eager to please." He explained. "She grew quickly, and she was…she is very bright."

"Aren't most of us?" I questioned, examining the beds of my nails, just for the sake of having something new to look at besides stone.

"I think I've had to execute enough idiots to know that some of our kind don't have a functioning braincell at all." He answered, his voice dull. "Why are we suddenly talking about my love life?"

"I just figured you'd want to talk about something else besides the bullshit that we are currently in." I said simply. Perhaps asking about the girl hadn't been the best idea for a subject change. "So, when you get out of here, what are you going to do about her?"

"I don't think there is anything to do. Aro won't have us together. No matter if both of us want it."

I didn't say anything for a little while. "I'm sorry. I… You should be able to be with whoever you want."

"Remind me to ask you about your love life at some point," He snorted, and there was a certain...joking sort of tone to his voice.

"That's going to be a very short conversation."

"Because you don't want to talk about it?"

I smirked to myself, "Because I haven't had a love life."

"I find that hard to believe. Surely you've been with someone in your time."

It was sweet that he thought so, but no. There wasn't anyone who interested me, and even if their had been, I had my focus on other things.

"I don't really hold much of an interest, in romance." I told him as I counted the speckles on the stones. Some of the time, it was good to have perfect eyesight, to be able to see anything and everything, even in the utter darkness. Other times, it was a burden. Even if I couldn't sleep, it was nice to be able to rest. When you couldn't shut away the light, it was hard to get your mind to settle down. It churned, endlessly with your own thoughts.

That's why I was so grateful to have him. His voice was a welcome interruption to my thoughts.

"I hadn't, either." He said. It was easy to picture his expressions. I imagined him thoughtful, charming. In a place like this, it was hard to obtain such a thing as charm, but that was how I pictured him. I wondered, too, what the girl had been like. Was she pretty? She must have been. I didn't think he would have an interest in someone who wasn't pretty. "Not until Euphrasie."

"Is…w-was that her name?"

He let out a short laugh. "You keep saying 'was', like she's dead. Yes, her name is Euphrasie."

"That's a weird name." I said.

"Her mother named her after a character in a book," He told me, his tone something of a scoff. Perhaps he found her name as peculiar as I did. "She was obsessed with it, from the second she came to the castle. Before Euphrasie was born, I would have to accompany her mother around the castle and the grounds. She wouldn't shut up about it."

Tenderly, I traced over the scars that had been carved into my face. There weren't many things that were able to cut through our skin, but Audrey had found multiple ways to do it. Whether it be by knives dipped in venom from the children of the moon, or whips coated in the same, our bodies were covered in scars.

"I suppose that is sweet, in a way," I mused, my gaze shifting to another stone once I had finished with the first. "I've always found it endearing when children are passionate about something."

"I hated it." He said, but his voice didn't give me the impression that it had truly bothered him. If it had, it wasn't something that caused him to go into an unpleasant mood to talk about now. "She would babble on and on for hours- and it was a long book. She always found something new to talk about. I didn't have the heart to tell her to drop it, for even a little while."

I ran my fingers down my face, my mind focused on my own appearance, even as I spoke to him. "If she bothered you, why didn't you just tell her? Kids can take a little bit of harshness."

"Aro wanted me to keep her happy," He answered, "And I wanted to keep Aro happy. I was in his palm for a long time. It was…everything that I knew."

I felt my lips curl into a smile. It was hard for me to believe that. He couldn't have been like the others. He was…good, and everything that I had always known about the Volturi told me that they were evil.

"How long were you with them?" I inquired, my finger tracing over a groove in the stone simply because it was something to do. You had to find something to occupy your mind, otherwise, you would go insane long before the torture ripped apart your mentality.

He paused for a moment, "A thousand years. More, if you want to get into the specifics."

"Damn," I murmured. "Did they change you, then?"

"When Jane and I were burned, for supposedly being Witches," He answered. From inside of his cell, I heard the familiar thudding noise that meant he had taken to tossing a bit of stone against the wall, over and over again. "Aro came. He stopped the execution. We were at the brink of death and Aro saved us."

"Why?" I questioned. "I don't mean….anything by this, but what did Aro want with two children?"

He let out a long snort. "For someone who hates the Volturi so much, you sure lack a lot of basic information."

"I hate the Volturi, so I have no interest in knowing the names and backstories of all of the members." I answered simply. He left it at that.

"Jane and I had…abilities in our human form. Some other vampire told Aro about us and he thought we might be useful?"

"Abilities?" I breathed. I had heard of only a handful of people who could legitimately do something outside of the realm of normal people. "Like what?"

"It's hard to explain. We could…cause things to happen. Bad things always happened to people who were mean to us. But… if people were kind to us, everything went well for them." He said, his words slow, carefully chosen.

"I wonder how badly things turned out for them after they tried to kill you." I said, trying to keep my tone light. "How old were you?"

"It was about two months after our thirteenth birthday. Even in those days, that wasn't considered to be a good number." He said, "I bet they thought we were going to make the entire village dissolve."

"That would be quite the gift," I mused, turning my attention to another groove in one of the stones. I wondered how long it would be until I truly had run out of things to do, to think about. I didn't want to consider the day that that would happen.

If one could live for forever, how many milenia of forever would be pure insanity?

"I think everyone should be grateful that Aro has yet to find someone who can cause entire cities to dissolve on a whim." He said, and I had to agree. If someone could cause whole cities to vanish, imagine what they could do to another vampire?

"I don't think I want to think about something like that," I admitted, drawing my knees up to my chest, perching my chin upon them. "Is…. Was your sister as loyal to Aro as you were?"

"More." He answered, "She practically worshipped the ground that he walked on. Jane has a...strong gift. He considers her to be an asset to the coven, at least for the point of punishment. She has been one of his favorites for centuries."

"You don't think she would choose him over you, though." I said, taking a strand of my blonde hair and splitting it into three parts. I didn't like braids at all, but I just needed something, anything, to do with my hands. I had to be thankful that they hadn't chained me to the point where I couldn't move. That, I thought, would be one of a few true tortures.

"She might. We've never had to face the question of what would happen if one of us was to leave the Volturi." He admitted. "Like I said…it's been all either of us have known for… so long. I couldn't really blame her if she decided to stay."

I snorted, biting back a true laugh. "If my twin choose Aro over me, I would beat their ass. You can't tell me that you wouldn't be upset if she chose him over you."

"It would break my heart," He sighed out, "But Jane is her own person. What right do I have to demand that she do something that she doesn't want to? I have no authority over her."

"What if you had to face one another in battle?" I asked, allowing the braid that I had made to unfurl, just to re-do it, over and over again. "What if you had to try and kill each other? I couldn't… I couldn't do something like that."

"Hopefully we won't have to, either. Even if she decides to stay and I choose to leave, I want to think that I know enough about the Volturi's laws that I wouldn't be on their bad side."

As though both of us weren't already on their bad side. Another worry flooded my mind. If Audrey's methods continued to get more and more…creative, we might not survive long enough to escape. A shiver ran up my spine.

I refused to die, but even more so, I refused to let them kill him. He didn't deserve to be in here. Nothing that he had done should have warranted such a harsh punishment, and most of the time, it seemed like he got it worse than I did.

I, who had willingly tried to take down the Volturi, got nothing in comparison to him. He, simply for falling in love with someone, was tortured almost twice as often.

"Maybe she'll decide that she cares for her twin more than Aro," I told him, trying to make my tone hopeful. I knew next to nothing about Jane, but I hoped that she would choose him.

"We can only wait to find out," He murmured. I could tell that he tried not to care what his sister decided, but he did. And so did I. I couldn't imagine how painful it would be to have someone you loved, choose someone who had all but destroyed your life.

"You two have been inseperable up until now," I reminded him, my eyes trailing over to the door. I could have sworn that I heard footsteps, but maybe my brain had just gotten so used to hearing them that it imagined a noise even when it wasn't there. "I don't suppose there's a chance that you would decide to stay with Aro for her sake?"

He was very quiet for a moment. I couldn't tell if he was merely thinking about his response, or if I had somehow managed to offend him.

"I think that's what they want," He admitted after a good minute or so had gone by. "Audrey talked about wanted to "fix" me. I'm sure you heard her while she was in here. They want me to stay. Aro needs my powers. I'm just as much of an asset as Jane is."

I perked up at that. He hadn't mentioned having powers, but if he was in the Volturi- and a high ranking member at that, then he had to have some.

"What can you do?" I questioned. He laughed at that, disbelief ringing in the notes.

"Opposite of Jane, for all intents and purposes," He answered, "She makes people hurt. I make them feel nothing."

"Nothing?"

"I can control senses. Take them away. I can make someone deaf, blind, mute, numb, or any combination of their senses at once."

I raised a brow. Scientists thought that we only had five senses for years, but in recent times they found out that we had many more.

"Can you control all of the senses, or just the traditional five?"

"All of them," He said, and he seemed rather proud of this fact.

"Why don't you use your power on Audrey?" I asked, turning a bit so that I faced the wall between us, rather than the door. "You should be able to take her out without a problem."

He sighed, "Audrey has a certain ability of her own that makes all of our powers useless. We call it a mirror."

"A mirror?"

"She reflects any attack meant for her back onto whoever had attempted to attack her." He answered. "If I tried to use my gift on her, I would essentially kill myself. I'd just…lie on the ground, unable to stop my own gift from affecting me."

"Figures Aro would find someone immune to attacks to be his favorite little psychopath." I huffed, "I suppose that means that my power wouldn't work on her, either?"

"I wouldn't try it. Even if it does work on her and doesn't rebound onto you, it isn't worth the risk. Besides, I don't think Aro's found anyone who's powers actually work on her."

"Hmmm, that he hasn't." A horribly familiar, demon-born voice whispered from the door of my cell. My bones became chilled. I should have noticed her. My brain had made-up her presence before when she wasn't here at all.

Of course I went totally deaf and oblivious the second she was around.