"No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks."

~Mary Wollstonecraft~

Chapter 6: Making a Friend of Death

Leah can't help but be on edge, and after three weeks of waiting, the constant buzz under her skin is beginning to irritate.

"Maybe they won't come," Wu tells her.

Leah remembers watching the three Volturi from the distance. She can remember Aro's eyes specifically. "They'll come. He'll come."

He's too much of a cold, calculating prick not to.

When the bells ring, she is expecting it. She is almost willing it, she's that fed up of waiting. There is the same familiar hustle, the same whispering and chattering. The monks take it in their stride. Leah has always admired their steel when it comes to facing almost certain death.

Leah used to be scared of dying, used to wake in a cold sweat hearing the crack of Jacob's bones as his body forced them into a twisted reset.

"Everybody dies," Wu told her plainly when she once enquired.

"Yeah but most people want to live a while before they die," Leah replied, earning herself that same blank, placating stare.

"So death is not the problem? The enemy you fear is time?"

She hates how he can make her question things that she never would have even bothered thinking about before. "I suppose."

Wu almost seems to take pity on her. "If time is your enemy, then perhaps death can be a friend. A balm to soothe the aches and strain of living. You have no cause to fear a friend, to fear the peace a friend may bring you."

Leah thinks back on her friends; her school friends who started avoiding her in the street when she stopped taking their calls, her childhood friends who outgrew her long before she became a monster. She thinks about her pack, her family and then memories turn into a bitter lump in her throat and she can't think no more. "Maybe. Or maybe I'll just make death fear me."

...

Aro is all charm. He compliments her, flatters her, panders to her every ounce of self-esteem and ego.

Aro is a liar. Leah knows that much.

When he looks at her, it is with the gaze of a hungry lion.

"I've heard many a story about your escapades here. I must say, you are becoming something of a legend amongst my kind."

They are sitting in the main gardens. Leah is picking a flower apart between her fingers and trying to appear bored while she catalogues every word and nuance. "Well, it's not hard to kill a few leeches," she shrugs.

It earns her a bright, full toothed smile. "Apparently not."

"What do you want?" She fixes him a hard stare, tired of playing games.

"I want you to join my guard." Aro replies, with a nonchalance that sets her teeth on edge. He might as well be asking her to lend him yesterday's paper.

"I kill leeches for a living. Why the hell would you want me around you?" She already knows the answer but she wants to hear it out loud. Aro is a conqueror. He wants her because she is special, one of a kind. He wants her because then he will have one thing that nobody else has, that nobody else could have.

"Because you are interesting and I like interesting things." At her blank stare, he sighs. "I am sure that your friends, the Cullen nest, have no doubt filled your head with all sorts of unsavoury notions about me, but I assure you Miss Clearwater, that the arrangement I am proposing will be mutually beneficial. By joining the Volturi guard, you will be fulfilling your sacred duty to help regulate and control the vampire threat, in the best way."

"While ignoring the Volturi's tourist buffets? Yeah, I heard all about your feeding habits. Can't say I find snacking on a bunch of art geeks too appealing to be honest."

Leah almost admires the fact that he offers no denials or excuses when he says, "Measures will be taken to ensure that you are protected from such activities. Trust that your sensibilities will never be deliberately offended, that your honourable sense of duty shall never be compromised. Instead, you will be given the power to fulfil your duties far more actively than you have been able to so far. You have done well here, after achieving nothing in Washington, but your resources are limited, you enemies are almost eradicated from here. I offer you an abundance of both."

He's good. She'll give him that much. Maybe that is why he has lasted this long.

"So, I get to kill leeches, on your payroll, and I don't have to get my hands dirty?" She narrows her eyes. "Sounds almost too good to be true. What's the catch? "

For a moment, Aro just stares at her, as though he is expecting the punchline to a joke. "Do you know how many of your kind I have encountered in my long existence? No more than 40. Do you know how many of them were women?"

The answer hangs between them before Aro fills the gap. "You are your own greatest asset, Leah. You don't realise the power that your simple existence gives you. You are singular. Truly unique. A well of unexplored potential. I am offering you a chance to see the bottom of that well but you are still bound by your codes, and trapped by your own misguided sense of honor."

He stands, regally and elegantly. "I both understand and admire your resolve, Miss Clearwater, and I will permit you to carry on clearing up our vermin in the surrounding villages." He grins and Leah is overcome with a deadly urge to hit him in the mouth. "Hopefully one day you will see that you already do our work for us, and what I offer you today is a chance to reap the benefits. Good day, Miss Clearwater, and be aware that our doors are always open to you, should you decide that you are worthy of fulfilling your role on a grander stage."

He leaves without much fuss, having planted the seeds in Leah's head. Seeds that she is determined to starve off before they grow.

...