epilogue
a new thousand years
If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years, how man would marvel and stare.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
o.o.o
Aro is a patient man.
But until the moment he laid eyes on his long-awaited heir - squalling and so very pink - grown and so vibrantly, fiercely intelligent - he had not understood what he was being patient for. Had not understood what his patience was leading him to discover.
He despairs in quiet moments. He has been utterly foolish, wasting the lives of his first born and of her son, shuttering them far away from himself because they were not useful-
Mistaken. He'd been so utterly mistaken. It is not often that Aro will admit to hubris, but under the gentle-handed touch of his great-great-granddaughter, he is humbled. Brought back firmly to the ground. Anchored. Returned to sanity. Shown his mistakes, his ego, his arrogance. Spied the inevitability of his fall - because Aro was not unlike Icarus flying too close to the sun, the wax of his wings melting, faltering until he would drown in the great sea, the endless darkness and forever night.
He is a patient man - and a foolish one - but it has paid off.
Isabella has delivered everything that her very existence promised - a gifted child of his blood, a natural heir to his reign, the most priceless piece of his collection. And then, she had done the unexpected. She had delivered more than what was guaranteed. She had saved them all, in a way, and certainly from themselves.
She is a cerebral little thing, analytic and without artifice. A fixer of problems once she has been made aware that they exist. She had found solutions that Aro couldn't dream of - synthetic blood in tall, glass-capped bottles that tastes better than the real thing, a world of 6 billion people brought to peace without war or famine or pestilence, a unified global peace under rule of a council of elected officials from every nation who answer to the Volturi. A better way of life, all done methodically, scientifically. Deliberate. If he didn't know any better, he would be sure that Isabella had been gifted thrice over, with a roadmap to the future paved firmly in her mind - but he did know better. Her successful planning, each painstakingly cautious detail, came from the vast well of her intelligence, a thing that she gained, something she earned.
So long ago, when she was still bird-boned and green-bellied, she had sat in a parlor in the castle in Volterra and she had promised the world to the Volturi.
Aro didn't imagine that she would have attained the world so flawlessly -
But then, he does recall the moment of her coronation, as well - remembers the weight pressing along his hands as he laid a gleaming platinum circlet on top of a head full of cascading espresso-dark curls, a neck bowed in willful submission even though - in that moment - he had not been sure whom had dominion over whom.
His minds eye paints a lovely picture of his precious grandchild's bright smile, of the Volturi crest worn in a necklace between the dip of her collarbones, and he knows that - most days - it is Isabella who rules the world.
After all, is that not her right as the person who was solely responsible for changing the world over the course of five hundred years?
Patient as he is, he cannot wait to see what she will do in another five hundred.
o.o.o
o.o.o
Aro has never felt dread like this before - as if dread was pinching at the corners of his joints, from the roots of his hair down to the very tips of his toes, roiling in a stomach long-empty like lead and battering nails.
"I'm pregnant," Isabella repeats, this time frowning over her shoulder at her mate - Edward of the youthful and solemn countenance, the effortless telepath - before gliding forward, one hand settled over the slight roundness protruding from between her hipbones. Her other hand she holds out, palm facing upward. "Grandfather?"
Dread shifts into panic. His wide eyes dart down to her stomach, to the innocent parasite growing there - the thing that would steal her life -
Is that what you're worried about?
Aro startles at her voice within his mental space. Her hand is on his, just a brush over his own palm, and then more firmly as she smiles, showing him a collection of disorganized thoughts by rote before going on to explain them. She was not in any danger, although this is very difficult for him to believe. He has seen the birth of vampiric children, of course, and they are always unsuitably, wretchedly violent.
But of course - of course Isabella would have a solution already. She holds more doctorates in the medicine-based sciences than Aro can keep track of, all part of her determination to become a doctor for the hybrids that would soon begin to populate the world at a faster rate. She'd made no bones about wanting to suss out everything she could about her own biology, wrapped up for endless days in a laboratory with microscopes and Zeus knew what else. Aro didn't follow half of it; not his area of expertise.
He makes a token effort now, thought, as her thoughts ghost over the statistics that her brain has puzzled out, explanations for questions that linger far, far in the back of his mind. Male vampires are always fertile; female vampires not at all; and hybrid females barely at all. The margin is so slim for her to even become pregnant that it's almost staggering. This child growing within her was a miracle of all sorts of proportions.
…only a hundred years of unprotected sex to make it happen…says a thought far in the background, almost buried completely beneath the landslide of reassurances that Isabella is quite literally hand-feeding him.
Modern science, she explains and there are words thrown out like caesarian and phrases like, I've been working on a concentrated form of the healing properties within my - our - venom to be of use on humans suffering great injury without the risk of turning them and even Carlisle agrees that I should be perfectly fine.
Should be, echoes Aro's mind. There was nothing assuring about shoulds when it was quite possible that birthing this child would steal his precious granddaughter from the world entirely -
His eyes shoot over her shoulder to her mate, noting the fissure of tension in his brow. A small part of Aro relaxes; if even her mate is concerned, then he feels less ridiculous in his frantic panic in the face of her cool serenity.
"I'll be fine," she promises as she pulls her hand away.
"Will you stay in the tower?" Aro asks, cutting his teeth on his tongue to dull the sharp edge of frenetic energy seeping out of his mouth. It is a good thing they are all alone in the living room of this penthouse in New York, the new epicenter of Volturi rule; he can only imagine how darkly entertained Caius would be at his reaction to this news.
Isabella pauses, frowning. "Really, I ought to be in the lab back in Chicago - I shouldn't just abandon my projects…"
"There are labs here, love," Edward reminds her - thankfully before Aro has the chance to. "I'm sure Carlisle wouldn't mind manning the Chicago labs by himself for a while."
Her head tilts in consideration, light glinting off the crest hanging so lightly from her neck, fingers tapping twice over the swell of her abdomen. "Well, I suppose that would work. But based on my estimation, he'll need to be here for the delivery in January….I'll go call him about the arrangements…"
Neither Edward or Aro move as she wanders out of the room, plucking a slim phone from her pocket -
Aro meets Edward's eyes. Her life first, he thinks quite loudly.
Edward nods once - agreeing without argument.
Good. He is glad they are on the same page.
o.o.o
o.o.o
As fearful as Aro had been of this pregnancy, as Isabella progresses through the next month with an ever-growing stomach, he is entertained from his anxiety by a few light hearted moments. Later, he will reflect how glad he is that vampiric pregnancies for hybrids last only four months as he cannot imagine living for much longer with the worry clawing away at his psyche; Sulpicia is already quite annoyed at his obsessive motherhenning, and he feels that Isabella is not too far behind.
As it is, Aro is just relieved that he had not been foolish enough to interrupt Isabella's reading. He mate, on the other hand, had not hesitated to tease her as she reclined on the couch in front of the fire, Christmas light shining white and red over the living room. "Dead Souls? Oh, dear God," says Edward lightly, facetious.
Isabella tilts her chin up. "What? Too high-brow for you, 1918?" she hisses venomously.
Edward hastens to school his expression - he is right to be leery of irking her at the moment, as pregnancy has not turned Isabella into a peaceful example of nurture and motherhood. Quite the opposite; in fact, the closer she comes to her due date and the scheduled surgery that would safely remove child from mother, Isabella had been rather unpleasant to be around.
Aro slinks into the shadows, leaving his granddaughter to give her mate a tongue-lashing that he knows will inevitably be followed by a demanding request for some utterly disgusting combination of food that he would rather not witness the consumption of.
o.o.o
o.o.o
Twins, a boy and a girl, each with a shock of dark bronze hair and bright green eyes, healthy and gifted and so small that it reminds Aro he had never held a child, not even his precious Isabella.
Elisabet Rena and Theodore Charles Masen.
It is Elisabet who had inherited the closest approximation to Isabella's - and Aro's - primary gift, her pudgy snow-pale hand slapping against his immobile skin with a series of thoughts and images. She does not seem to respond to the thoughts in Aro's mind and Isabella confirms that Elisabet's gift seemed to go only one way. Theodore had inherited a better mimicry of Isabella's absorption, stealing thoughts as easily as Aro and as limited as Edward, again triggered by touch and again working in only one direction.
The twins were two halves of a whole - one who gave and one who took.
They all wonder if the twins will mature into giving and receiving more than just thoughts - if the twins also have a shielded shadow in their minds, if there would be one twin that would overwhelm with energy and one twin that would absorb energy like a sponge.
Time would only tell.
But Aro is a patient man - and a man who has learned from his mistakes.
He would endeavor to enjoy the lives of his great-great-great-grandchildren.
A/N: So, final official chapter and final official epilogue delivered in Aro's POV…because I like the symmetry and because he's a surprisingly easy character to write. Also, I really, really didn't want to write the pregnancy bit from Bella or Edward's perspective because it's so freaking done already - so we got it from Aro! Plus, got to resolve his character development. #winning
Why not Reneesme? Other than it being a stupid name? Ah, well. I wanted to honor both mothers - Elizabeth Masen and Renee Dwyer - and so we come very easily to the modern Greek and old English forms of both names, just because I like the spelling better. As to Theodore Charles, I wasn't looking for derivatives very much, but because I thought Teddy was just too cute for a baby boy and Ted is a shortened version of Edward (somehow) - for Edward Sr. - and obviously Charles after Charlie...Anyway, you can see how I linked everything up in my head. It always makes so much sense in my head!
And for pregnancy, here it is: The way I see it, if male vampires can get humans pregnant but not female vampires pregnant, that leads me to believe that a frozen uterus is just that - frozen. I mean, if I'm really thinking about it, on the surface it doesn't make sense that dudes can produce sperm forever but lady vamps just lose the ability to reproduce completely. However, human woman are born with like a crap-ton of immature eggs and once they run out, they run out; human dudes on the other hand are still pumping out little soldiers until they day they die. Unfair and stupid, but that's biology. (And a glaring plot hole, SM, I cannot believe she didn't explain that shit - ever.) Anyway, I figure that if hybrids still have a heart beat, they definitely are still having a functioning uterus - just maybe with a super slow cycle? And because of that, they're not exactly infertile - it's more like Russian roulette pregnancy with super-low odds of winning. Anyway. God, but how nice would it be to only have a period once every ten years? #livingthedream
As always, be brutally honest. I can take it.
~cupcakeriot
Note: Stay tuned for the outtakes, which I will hopefully finish before the month is up.