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Chapter 19: He who replies to words of doubt

There was a knock on his door. Aro smiled wryly, easily recognizing Carlisle's distinct step and familiar scent.

"Come in," Aro answered, forcing himself to be polite even though he had no idea where he was finding this reserve of civility. The recent events made him feel uncharacteristically short-tempered.

Carlisle stepped through the door into the solar and remained politely close to it. "Aro," he said simply in greeting.

"Carlisle." Aro gestured to a chair. "Come in."

"How are you?"

Aro chuckled, shaking his head as Carlisle took a seat. "I am immortal and unchanging," he said. "And you have been spending far too much time around humans. You sound just like them."

"I take that as a compliment," Carlisle said, glancing around the familiar room.

"I meant it as one," Aro assured him in earnest. He took the seat across from Carlisle, leaning back comfortably and crossed his legs. "Things are quite a mess at the moment. Despite what you may think, I am truly happy to see you again. I have so missed our talks."

Carlisle's smile was congenial. "I thought you found them tedious."

"Well," Aro said tilting his head to the side, "perhaps on the rare occasion." When Carlisle only acknowledged this with a soft chuckle, Aro glanced in the direction of the door. "Where is your lovely mate?"

"Esme," Carlisle said out of human habit. "They're waiting in the library."

"Ah, good. I actually wanted you to myself, if that's all right," Aro admitted. When Carlisle looked confused, he explained, "I wanted to talk to you about these doubts you've been struggling with."

This wasn't at all the direction Carlisle had expected Aro to take. A guarded expression fell over his face as he recalled Aro taking his hand earlier. Of course, Aro knew every thought Carlisle had seen since they were together last, and knew everything Carlisle had been thinking lately as well as the reasons for those thoughts.

"I don't think that's a good idea," Carlisle muttered.

"But you're wrong," Aro told him sounding amused. "I know you're wrong."

"Aro..." Carlisle warned, feeling his temper rise to the bait. "Don't we have more pressing matters to discuss?"

With a dramatic sigh, Aro leaned forward. "I have existed for countless lifetimes, eyewitness to the ebb and flow of humanity. I have seen the extremes of beauty and horror that humans are capable of. Carlisle..." he trailed off, shaking his head, "you are a babe in your existence. You think you've seen things? I'm more than ten times your age. Don't compare yourself to mortals, my friend. It's as ridiculous as comparing yourself to a hummingbird. They burn out just as quick."

Carlisle was unmoved by Aro's words. Perhaps it was ridiculous to compare himself to a hummingbird, but it was equally as absurd to compare himself to Aro: A true super-predator, not just in his ability to kill, but in his ability to survive.

Aro recognized the stony expression and laughed at the irony. "You're as stubborn as their teenagers, and just as self-absorbed." He ignored the flash of annoyance on Carlisle's face. "You assume I'm too old to understand, to set in my ways to appreciate what you're going through. Yet you fail to appreciate that perhaps in my age and wisdom I might have a larger base of knowledge to draw from? I have touched the lives of hundreds of thousands; known their secrets, their sins and their dreams. I have seen parts of the world that I have never traveled to, and watched those places change over the years. I know the location of treasures unheard of. I know the answers to mysteries that have long since lost their questions. The people who have died at my hand took nothing to their graves. Have you never considered that I would have seen atrocities so heinous that even I would be surprised?"

Carlisle listened in growing embarrassment over his attitude. Except for the threat to his family, and the events concerning Rolle, he had always known Aro to be cautious, but fair; amusing, but wily. He coveted knowledge like no other, and it was not limited to books. He hoarded and protected music, art, and poetry... demonstrations of the human soul. What greater desire could there be for someone who had access to the birthplace of a man's dreams?

"I know you feel above them," Carlisle said softly. "I cannot imagine you feeling shock over their behavior as I have come to."

"Why not?" Aro asked.

"It would be nothing less than feeling dismay at a flock of chickens pecking an untended chick to death." Carlisle added sadly, "It's simply a fact of their nature."

"And you don't think I would find that act appalling?" Aro asked without judgment.

"I don't think you would bother yourself with the actions of 'chickens' in the first place," Carlisle answered honestly.

"So the chick would think that life is cruel and die in a valiant struggle, never knowing the farmer would fix the coop to protect other new chicks." Aro leaned back and steepled his fingers at his chin. "Only the cow would see the farmer hard at his work because the cow lived longer than the chick."

"I'm sorry," Carlisle said shaking his head slowly. "Am I the cow?"

"My point, my friend, is simply that you have nothing to worry. In fact, in my opinion, you are very close to understanding so... much!" Aro said excitedly, his hands rising in the air as if to encompass the enormity of it all. "You have no idea how little you've actually seen and yet you still sense the enormity of it all. That, alone, is a major leap in true understanding and knowledge."

Carlisle shook his head in confusion. "Seen what?"

"Il progetto grande," he whispered as if it were a great secret. "The big plan! The larger picture! The great tapestry!"

Carlisle regarded Aro uncomfortably. He felt like they were talking about the same thing, despite the labyrinthine conversation. Aro began to nod, watching Carlisle piece things together.

Aro was not a man of faith. He had come into being long before the shadow of the man, Jesus Christ. He had existed in a time when pagan gods ruled man's nature, not a single omniscient deity. For him, the notion of a single God was impossible to believe because he had been present at the birth of Christianity. It made no more sense for Aro to believe in God and a divine plan, than it would be for any man off the street today to regard his friend 'Chuck' as the catalyst for a religious revolution. It had to be hard to picture a person as a divinity when you knew them doing silly daily-life things, like bathing or spilling soup down their shirt. The idea that Aro, of all people, could believe in God's greater plan was both enlightening and unnerving to Carlisle.

"Only an immortal can even begin to see the skein of God's greater plan," Aro quoted from one of Carlisle's memories.

Carlisle could not believe what he was hearing. "What are you saying, Aro?" he whispered amazed.

Aro smiled, excitement glowing in his red eyes as if the sun were shining on rubies. "I have seen so much through the memories of so many, that I begin to see the pattern."

"What pattern?" Carlisle eagerly wanted to know.

"Before I answer, let me ask you... When was the last time you ever experienced déjà vu?" He waited impatiently as Carlisle tried to remember. "Never in all your immortality, am I correct? You only have a vague memory of it perhaps happening when you were mortal?"

Carlisle shrugged and shook his head. "I suppose."

Aro smiled widely. "Exactly as I suspected. You no longer experience déjà vu because you no longer sleep, and only in sleeping can the mind move between the boundaries." He could see Carlisle's confusion mounting, so he explained, "I believe déjà vu is not simply an illusion of an event that has happened before, but that it happens for a reason."

"And that reason is?" Carlisle prompted.

"Your life-force or soul or whatever you will call it, can see the plan and the pattern. It can see your future. I believe déjà vu is actually a dream you had in a past life of events that are happening to you now. Déjà vu is your soul, remembering the dream."

Carlisle sat back. "Aro..."

"Wait! Wait my friend, and let me explain," the elder encouraged, knowing he had lost Carlisle intellectually. "The first time I experienced it, it had no meaning. I had seen the vague memory of someone's dream, nothing more. Then centuries later, I watched that very dream play out exactly as it had been envisioned. I recognized everyone in the moment from my victim's memories years before. I began to pay closer attention, seeking out these memories of déjà vu.

"Suspect what?" Carlise asked again not able to refuse his curiosity. He had never seen Aro like this before.

"Déjà vu is only the conscious clarification, the actual event, of something that they saw in a dream from a past life," he repeated. "They dream about their future lives!

"I began to see the pattern myself through their memories!" Aro added excitedly. "What I have come to suspect over my existence is that when we become immortal, we take ourselves outside of God's greater plan, as you call it. You said it yourself. Only by existing for so long can we begin to see it at work; that things happen as they do for a reason. When we become immortal, we remove ourselves from the cycle, the weaving.

"They are the pattern. Creatures, people. Living and dying. THAT is the pattern. The circle," he said, pausing over the word, "of life! The reason they cannot recognize the patterns themselves is because the faces of all the people around them change. Even the sex and age... even species changes, but they are the same people they knew before—like actors playing new roles—but they are so grossly out of context that they think they are new people, not familiar ones. So when something happens, and they shrug it off to déjà vu, they are actually remembering a dream from a past life, where they dreamed themselves in this moment. That is why they feel they've done it before or why they feel they connect to another person on an unusually intense level.

"When you're "in the pattern of the tapestry," so to speak, you only see the threads around you. Only by removing yourself from the weaving, as we have done, can you rise above it and see where everything connects... and then you can only really see it if you can know every thought a person has ever had, as I have."

"Reincarnation?" Carlisle asked.

"Reincarnation. A soul. Does it matter what it is called?" Aro asked with a smile, remembering how much he missed being able to have conversations like this with Carlisle, and why he was so fond of him. Caius was too pedantic to grasp the greater meanings of life versus existence.

"But reincarnation presupposes that a being learns from his mistakes and grows from it," Carlisle reminded him. "That a karmic balance must be reached."

"Yes, yes, but by whose definition?" Aro asked. "Let's take out the religious overtones of karma and repentance for a moment, and simply refer to the idea of a life force."

"The church of George Lucas?" Carlisle almost laughed, but swallowed his amusement at Aro's confusion. He silently reprimanded Jasper and Rose for their love of pop culture. He could hear Emmett laughing triumphantly, however.

Aro ignored the comment when Carlisle's contrite expression went unexplained.

"You recall the tsunami in 2004?" he asked. When Carlisle nodded, Aro asked again, "Did you hear about the unusual connection between an infant hippo and tortoise?"

Carlisle simply started at him and Aro grew even more amused. "Stories of the lioness adopting a baby oryx? The polar bear that befriended a sled dog? The Koi that surfaced whenever the family retriever came to the pond? The Dolphin that bonded itself to a mutt? The deer that follows and nuzzles the rabbit?"

"You're implying that these interspecies connections..." Carlisle began.

"Are actually life forces that recognize each other from past lives?" Aro finished with a gleam in his eye. "Do you begin to see the power and continuity of it? How it binds every life? That they are eternally bound to those they recognize across time?"

Carlisle realized then that Aro felt no remorse at all in killing for he simply viewed his existence as a necessary role in the great circle of life, ushering in the next instance of a life force finding material form again.

"You imply that these things are predestined to happen? That there is no choice or free will?" Carlisle asked.

"Perhaps. Perhaps you and your mate knew each other before," Aro offered. "That is the strength of your connection, why some people are so bound to each other. Imagine la tua cantante. Perhaps it isn't the blood at all. Perhaps that is the only way we, who have forever removed ourselves from the circle, can recognize those we knew before, who are still within the circle. Our life force has been removed, but the call is still present, forever searching for those who were woven into the tapestry where we once resided."

"Then we were fated to become what we are," Carlisle concluded.

"No, but perhaps we are fated to go through life with the same people, souls, whatever you want to call it." Aro held his hands as if to capture the entire thought. "I haven't glimpsed anything to convince me that all beings still have free will. I'm not sure if you could call that fate in the literal sense of the word."

Carlisle considered this, recalling what he knew of the Indian religions whose doctrines incorporated such philosophies. In an attempt to distance himself from the cruelties of Christianity, he had studied many religions from Islam to Scientology. All of them had their positive aspects as well as negative ones. Carlisle was always left feeling as though the truth were somehow in the middle, but still just as vague and debatable as other philosophies regarding existence, knowledge, and values.

"Reincarnation, but not necessarily karma?" Carlisle asked aloud.

"Oh! Well, I don't know about that," Aro said, sitting back in his chair comfortably. "If their fate in this particular instance of their existence was to become my victim, then wouldn't their 'path of enlightenment' teach them to know better next time? Perhaps their enlightenment will be to never book a trip from Heidi," he joked.

"My point is," Aro continued, "that some part of them has dreamed of their future. I've seen it several times now, this... absolute certainty that events are playing out and unfolding just as they dreamed! Even we, who will live forever, cannot grasp the enormity of this, unless you have learned as I have how the tapestry is connected."

"Because you know another person's mind and have seen all the times they've experienced déjà vu," Carlisle clarified.

"Yes!" Aro's excitement was palpable. "You really should let me spend time with your young Edward, my friend. If he only knew what to look for! Oh, don't look at me like that," he scowled at Carlisle's mask of doubt. "Yes, what Edward can do is useful for the sake of power, but for the sake of knowledge... you have to admit that my gift is far more appropriate."

Carlisle regarded Aro in terms of a different motivating factor that he hadn't truly considered before. Rolle was right. It wasn't truly power that drove Aro and his zealous formation of the Volturi Guard. There was a much more personal motive.

Aro simply felt his life and the knowledge he had collected over the millennia were too precious to be lost. His ultimate vanity was that he felt he, personally, was too valuable to be lost; that if anything happened to him, the accumulation of knowledge he held would be like losing every printed character across the world, every scroll and every book. Aro didn't collect talented vampires solely to protect himself and their way of life, or even for the sake of pure power. He collected them out of self-preservation.

Carlisle carefully schooled his expression though he also realized the futility of this effort. When next Aro touched him, he would know immediately the conclusion that Carlisle had come to. He also realized that he had fallen into the same trap that Aro had with Caius: In the prolonged absence of any other evidence, it was very easy to believe ill-meaning whispers. Aro had fallen victim to Caius' whispers of the Cullens, just as Carlisle had begun to believe the perceptions that Aro was evil.

"Do you see now how you don't need to mourn their loss of life, even if they are very young?" Aro asked with surprising gentleness, now referring to the loss of faith and depression Carlisle had been struggling with since the terrorist attack. "Whether they die by our hand or another's, nothing is truly lost. Death is not forfeit of life. It is simply... something different. We are nothing but the arbiters of change, my friend. I'm convinced beyond doubt that they each find their way back and into the lives of those they knew before, just as they always have, just as it has always been. With new faces and new forms, yes, but always returning to those who lay with them in the tapestry of existence. "

Carlisle was silent a long time as he considered these words. Aro's observations had unsettled him and even with his supernatural abilities it took him a moment to process everything Aro was implying.

"And if those your existence is entwined with, fail you?" Carlisle asked, thinking of the father who ran off in fear and left his children to die alone. He thought, too, about Rosalie's fiancé who had attacked and raped her, and left her for dead. He thought about Esme's human husband who had abused her. "Are you doomed to endure their weaknesses again and again?"

Aro smiled kindly. "Of course not. They're just people. Experiences make people what they are, and only they can break the cycle, in this life or the next. A boy who is beaten by his father can choose to not beat his own children when he grows into a man. The abusive father, likewise, can choose to not beat his child in a future existence. The future is always changing based on decisions people aren't even aware they are going to make. Your Alice knows this."

Carlisle noted again the way Aro was careful to choose his words. Your Edward. Your mate. Your Alice. Aro was too meticulous with semantics to take their meaning lightly. He was sending a message of assurance to Carlisle in addition to their philosophical discussion.

"Aro," Carlisle said suddenly with the ghost of a real smile playing at his lips. "We cannot go so long between our talks again."

Their conversation felt familiar and easy despite the day's events, and though they were enjoying this reminder of why they valued each other's friendship, they both knew they had not touched upon the real issues between them.

§∞•••∞§

A/N: Love and thanks to my beloved and loving peanut gallery: Irishgirl, Songster and Emmanuelle Nathan. My special thanks to Philadelphic and Original_au for sharing their time and thoughts concerning reincarnation, philosophy and déjà vu. Thanks to Nikki Pattinson over at Twilighted for her super-awesome posting of my chapters.

He who replies to words of doubt
Auguries of Innocence by William Blake
http:/www(dot)online-literature(dot)com/poe/612/

A hippo and a tortoise tale
http:/www(dot)npr(dot)org/templates/story/story(dot)php?storyId=4754996

A lion and oryx tale
http:/www(dot)youtube(dot)com/watch?v=mD5bCNvAihU