Chapter Twenty Four: Caius.

"You know, I've finally figured out why most of you Volturi don't like F.R.I.E.N.D.S," said Bella, "I mean, come on- it's an American sitcom, and you're Europeans! I don't know why it hasn't occurred to me before-"

The door shut behind me, and although I could still hear her voice clearly through the two foot thick stone wall, it was slightly muffled.

Aro and Marcus faced me. Jane had remained in the room to distract Bella, which was something I was oddly grateful for.

It was surprising- even though that was delayed by the feeling of shock freezing my non-existent blood in its veins, after all, most newborns forgot all their human memories in the pain of the transformation- there were obviously many exceptions, but there was almost always slight memory loss… only this time it was different.

Abandoning pride, I slumped against the wall and slid to the ground, resting my head pointlessly against the wall. "What do we do? What do I do?"

"We need to take it slowly. She just remembered what happened to her family and friends. Even with her newly acquired mind, this is a lot to take in. I think underneath she is still grieving, even if she is not showing it."

I knew Aro's advice was true, but I was still not sure what to do, and it was not enough to satisfy me.

Of all of the things to happen, this was one of the most complicated. I now knew I could show compassion, it was just very, very difficult.

It did not help either that Bella seemed to be enjoying herself. She bounced around the stone cell and chatting to Jane like Heidi when she was introduced to a clothes store and an unlimited credit card.

Yes, I knew what a credit card was. Blame the insufferable mortal, now immortal, girl.

It was so complicated, yet so simple at the same time. Just let the girl grieve for now, and let everything else come later. Sure, because it's so simple.

Of course, Bella, in her time here, had taught me sarcasm. In fact now that I thought about it, most of what was in my thoughts was influenced by her… the way I talked, the way I dressed, the way I acted… Horrible.

And yet, somehow I didn't mind.

"Brother!"

Aro's voice cut into my thoughts, and I resisted snarling at him. "What?" I spat.

"If you love her-"

My head snapped up. "Will you stop, saying those infernal words?" I hissed. "Who gives a damn about what I want? This is about her! I do not want to have to keep reminding her the fact that everything she has ever known is gone. She remembers that her little town has been razed to the ground, remembers that her precious perhaps ex-boyfriend's family has been slaughtered, and everyone she has known is mutilated and dead- and all you can think about is to make allusions as to the fact that I love her-"

"Caius?"

With a hollow feeling of dread, I turned to come face to face with the absolute last person I wanted to hear that speech, with her voice cracking once more.

~~~(o.O)~~~

Bella

Unexpected.

I had remembered of course, but like Caius had said, I didn't want to keep remembering it over and over again.

Well, I mean- who would?

You don't exactly expect for one second to be talking to your BFF and then suddenly you hear three vampire lords outside talking quite loudly, and forgetting that the subject of their conversation has vampire hearing and can hear them as clear as day.

You kind hope for it all to be a bad dream that you wake up from and it's over. Although only when you bust through the door and hear the end of your arch-nemesis's seemingly heartfelt speech, and see him slumped on the floor with the two other vampire lords with somber expressions on their faces, you can't help but realize, once more, that it's not.

Especially when I had to remember all my memories when they came back full force.

So let me tell you something about the way a vampire's mind works. As a basic sketch- there's a lot of room to think. So while 90% was still trying to process information, 10% was talking to me very rapidly.

For instance: Everyone I know dead. Check. Place I called home, burnt to the ground. Check. Kind of- ex-boyfriend's family, heads ripped off. Check. Guy who is meant to hate my guts and want to kill me 24/7 and is very vocal about it (who also happens to be around two thousand and seventy years older than me) happens to say that his brothers think that he is in love with me.

I kind of expected for myself to start screaming and crying and breaking stuff like I remembered three days ago. However, that wasn't what I did. It occurred to me that Jane was still standing behind me, and the three vampire kings were still in front of me, staring, gauging my reaction.

In the end, I had no reaction.

"I think I need to take a walk." I said in a voice that didn't really sound like mine- all strangled and forced, yet also flat and toneless at the same time.

And then I ran.

It was the first time that I had ever moved so fast in my life- just flat out running, using all my pent up strength, pushing myself as fast as I could go- and yet I wasn't even marveling at the way the walls and corridors shot by, every detail being caught by my new vamp eyes, wasn't even marveling that when I passed a sunlight window, my skin caught on fire… I was just running.

I ended up in my room.

It must have been repaired since I had last been in it, because the place stank of bleach, which seared up my nostrils, and all the broken and slashed furniture had been replaced.

It was nice to imagine that the Volturi cared that much.

I didn't know why I was there- heck, every inch of me wanted to bust out of the castle, to run down the streets of Volterra and escape in full view of the sun, where everyone could see the new sparkling me… get torn to pieces for exposing their kin- no. For exposing my kind to mortals.

I shook my head in fast motion. I had already tried committing suicide once- I wasn't going to be doing it again.

They really were dead.

Before… before it hadn't really even seemed real, it all just seemed like I was staring through a glass wall at before, like a dream. I knew that they were dead, but a part of my brain seemed to refuse that fact.

Only now it was so real- so real, and yet so impossible at the same time.

Somehow, I ended up on the roof.

I didn't really understand how it happened, but one second all I wanted was to get out, and then I ended up on the slanting tiles of the roof, the dimming dusky sunlight glinting dully off my skin, my knees pulled up to my chest, and staring out into the featureless sky.

And then my new stupid sensitive ears picked up a soft footfall across the tiles towards me.

Somehow I knew it was Caius.

It didn't really surprise me somehow.

I couldn't bring myself to care.

He didn't say anything, just sat down next to me, his eyes fixed on the sky too.

I was uncharacteristically grateful for his silence. I couldn't bring myself to think about his supposed 'love' for me- it seemed out of character, and I didn't even want to approach the idea. He had his secrets, and I'd practically just lost everything that I'd ever known.

Call it self-pity, but, well, sue me.

"What do you want?" I asked dully, never taking my eyes off the sky.

He didn't answer for a moment, not looking away either. "You know, when I was a boy, I had always wanted to be a solider," he began unexpectedly, somehow even managing to startle me from the pit from where I was sitting. "I loved Rome, and I wanted to serve it in any way I could, perhaps I was a patriot- in part at least- my little brother, or rather half-brother as my father had many wives- Julius, he worshiped every step I took, he followed after me I suppose, we both wanted to make Rome great."

I didn't know where this was going- why Caius was telling me his life story… but it was a distraction. It was a story I could immerse myself in, instead of my own sea of self-pity and regret.

"I began training when I turned seven, and joined the roman army when I turned fourteen. By seventeen I was the youngest general in the Roman army, and my hands and sword were already stained red. You do not gain such a position with your hands clean… That was the year Aro was born… The opposing army's feared my name, and I felt like I was invincible- yet I was not arrogant, unlike Aro is now- only one night, on a raid to a small village just outside of Rome, it was a small assignment, only an escaped criminal headed for the arena, and I imagined that he would be simple to capture.

Unfortunately though, when we arrived, the man was already dead, and my men fled at the sight of something that looked like a demon bending over the corpse of the criminal. It was, as I soon discovered, a vampire.

Of course, like a fool, I attacked it, and my sword shattered against his chest. He must have liked my spirit…"

Caius's lips curved upwards in a cynical smile.

"-because instead of snapping my neck, he decided to turn me. I burned… I burned for five days… I didn't scream- didn't give the satisfaction of my screams… When the haze and the burning stopped, the other vampire had left, and I imagine I was the most uncontrollable newborn in past and present existence.

I destroyed over twenty towns sating my thirst. After all, I'd killed dozens before under orders when I was a human, and now I was stronger, faster… and it was a necessity. Perhaps it was a blessing that I ran north, instead of south to Rome… It took me twenty years to rein my thirst in, and then my thoughts turned to my brother. I had heard of Julius Caesar, raised to Prateorship- my younger brother- eldest after I, and I wondered, how much further he could extend the power of Rome as one of us- a vampire.

Only, when I reached Rome, he had been assassinated, and I felt no reason to remain. I had little love for my siblings, having rarely spent any time with them, therefore I felt little desire for revenge- and I would never attack or overthrow Rome- even then.

Perhaps it was on a whim that I decided to visit my old family. I did wonder after my sister, she was perhaps the only member of my family that I had missed, even slightly. She had been two when I had supposedly 'died', the first girl by my father… and I heard the senate ordering to have our family burned…

She was with Aro in a locked room conversing about the death of our brother, and while I was only planning on saving her, my dear brother took a sword to my neck."

Ordinarily, I would have fallen off the roof with shock, but somehow, nothing seemed surprising to me anymore. Whatever point Caius was getting to…

"Perhaps it reminded me of the way I had confronted the vampire that changed me that I decided to change him too. I wasted half an hour explaining who I was, causing my sister to throw a basin of holy water over me in the process… I would have turned them there, but quite honestly, logically speaking, it would have been nigh on impossible to spirit two screaming twenty four and twenty two year olds through the streets of Rome unobserved… We managed to escape just as the senate arrived, only to reach the main road into Rome and find Marcus- twenty seven, standing there barring our way. Even now, I do not know how he managed to be there of all places in the middle of the night… In any case, I was prepared to kill him, only to have Didyme stop me, rambling on with some nonsense about 'not him'… I could not be bothered to remain and press the point, but Marcus seemed to understand quite quickly- after all, I was meant to have been killed twenty years ago…

Details aside- we escaped- I turned them- and then we four immortals wandered the earth. We hunted and we killed- no direction in mind. Aro and I could not help thinking back to our late brother- a mere mortal, and yet he had been emperor of Rome…

And then we came across a coven of vampires- older than we ourselves, not nomads- but permanently settled in a castle in the depths of a city. They hunted at night, preying the dark streets for lonely passer-by's. The Romanians.

We overthrew them with surprising ease- and then the idea came to us of building the Volturi. Most of the original guard did not last long- killing each other off, or trying to rebel, causing us to have to end them…

And I was in Britain in 1002AD, looking for mortals that looked like they showed promise, and then I met her."

This was it. It was in the way that his face suddenly blanked and became emotionless. This was what it was all about… and I had a feeling that this, along with all the vampires I knew- this story would not be one of the happy ones, not even close. It was Caius after all.

"Athenadora. I suppose you have heard of her."

His face twisted slightly, and I tried not to wince at the expression.

"She was the daughter of an earl, her mother had recently passed away, her father buried his grief war, as did her brothers… when she left with me, she left nothing behind."

He paused, and I could tell he was editing. Editing out all the memories, all the details that probably felt like a rusty sword slicing straight through him when he thought of them… and in that way I could relate.

It felt like that now really. Trying to think about Charlie… Renee… Even the happy memories- well, they hurt the most. Remembering dancing in the rain with Renee when I was four, giggling when I stomped in puddles, trying to watch a football game with Charlie, and nodding off in the corner while he cheered on enthusiastically, oblivious. Then there was the playing in the mud with Jacob, exhausting shopping with Alice, studying with Angela…

"She was…"

He paused again, and I couldn't help but feel… sorry? No. Not sorry, but understanding. It was probably killing him to tell me this, I still didn't know what point he wanted to make, or whether he was trying to just distract me with a story that would probably be more depressing than mine.

"In any case," he continued, "She was… everything. I… I needed her, it wasn't like bloodlust- or plain instinct- I lived on her smiles, on her words… She was the one… In an ironic way, she was both my maker and destruction.

We were… I married her after a century, and for four hundred years…"

He stopped abruptly, his eyes suddenly strangely bright, his ruby eyes skyward, only this time, I felt that it was only to avoid my gaze.

"It was two days after Aro had changed Jane and Alec. We were in the caves, hiding their bodies- after all, two screaming fifteen year olds would be rather conspicuous… Athena went for a walk; she had always been claustrophobic…"

A pained smile twisted across his face.

"I went with her… and then just several miles from where the rest of the guards were, they ambushed us- attacking her first… I was so scared, so… useless. I… I lost control, and almost burned myself to death… and then they pinned me to the ground- I could do nothing… I was too weak… they had her by the neck-"

"Who?"

The question burst through my lips before I could rein it in.

"Werewolves," Caius snarled, the same expression on his face that I had seen so long ago when he attacked the vampire called Stefan. Cold, remote and unforgiving twisted together with heat, hate and fire.

"The filthy breed… I was on the ground, powerless… and they tore her to pieces, right in front of me- I could do nothing- not even struggle… just scream her name, over and over again… she didn't make a noise, not a single sound, she just kept her eyes on me, she had blue eyes when she was human… did you know that when we burn, we become human again for several seconds just before we turn to ash? Staring straight at me… and the worst part was, she wasn't blaming me… she was worried for me, even as she burned… right before my eyes, and I did nothing."

Caius's voice had been dropping lower and lower as he spoke, and it was so quiet that even my vampire ears had trouble picking up the words.

"-and maybe I would have been killed next, perhaps I even wanted to… but I wanted to kill those… those abominations… I wanted to tear their skulls from their spines, water the ground with their blood… only I couldn't, and then suddenly Aro arrived- he always had an uncanny way of appearing… he tore the beasts to pieces… and I have owed him for slaughtering the monsters ever since, yet I hate him for the same deed… I hunted the rest of the werewolves to extinction afterwards, but it wasn't the same… it was never the same again…"

He took a deep breath. "And then I changed, well I suppose I had always been that way, only by her… end, that side of me was unleashed, and became… I became everything I used to hate, maybe even without realizing it."

He took another breath. "And so time passed- we all moved on… in some way."

"-and then when we were at our weakest, the Romanians returned, having formed alliances with some passing nomads, they sought to reclaim their city… and then Didyme was killed before Marcus's very own eyes… and then Marcus sort of… lost it a bit I suppose.

And then you came along."

A wry smile seemed to crawl reluctantly across half of Caius's face, but it wasn't whimsical, or wistful, or even remotely happy, more like an acknowledging of the fact was all.

"Painfully annoying, blindingly frustrating and everything I despise in a person-"

"You have a point?"

"-and yet somehow, inexplicably, for whatever reason- this is not how I wanted you to find out- hell, if I had my way you'd never have found out in the span of around say… a few centuries or so… but- whichever way you put it, it ends up sounding the same… Isabella, I love you."

Aro

Marcus laughed.

It was a full hearted deep laugh, a sound I had not heard from him in over a millennia.

The sound even jerked me from watching Monica and Chandler coo over their twins.

"Brother?" I asked.

Marcus shook his head, a smile playing about face, for a split second resembling the cheerful man I had known all those years ago. "Finally."

"What… Ah." I felt a similar smile mirroring his creep across my face. "Finally indeed."

So. I am tired. I just spent 3 days in a car going from my home state to North Carolina. Good God I am tired.