Athenodora washed up in a dark river onto a bank of strangely soft black sand. She forced her lungs to cough the water that she had inhaled and struggled to crawl further out of the water. Her body felt stiff and heavy and it struck fear through her. What could have caused her to feel this way? She had not felt weak or uneasy for millennia. She was indestructible… was she not? She struggled to remember how they came to be there or even who she was. She knew that she was called Athenodora, knew she had a mate and a family and could feel the bonds connecting them, but anything else was oddly erased from her mind.

She let out a little scream when she looked to her left and saw Sulpicia lying face down in the strange sand as well and forced her body over to her, lifting her sister's head and looking worriedly at her. "Sulpicia? Sister? Can you hear me?"

With a great deal of strength, she rolled the other woman onto her back and shook her slightly. She groaned then, seeming to rouse from whatever had fallen them, and began to choke up the strange water as well. Athenodora sighed in relief to know she was alive, at least. Even if she hadn't the slightest idea where they were or how they got to be there.

"Athenodora? Where are we?" Her voice sounded as weak and unsteady as she felt.

"I do not know… stand up. We must find Anna and Marcus and our mates."

Sulpicia stood up, both of them as stiff and uncoordinated as newborn fouls. They walked for a time and saw nothing but a grey foggy horizon as far as they could see in every direction with a wide river with murky grey water running as far as they could see to their right. It was only a few yards across, but both found themselves oddly disturbed by it and did not wish to go near it again.

Out of the fog they saw two people ahead, one sitting with their face in their hands and the other pacing beside them. They ran toward the figures, the first thing they had seen since waking, which seemed so long ago now in this oddly timeless place. The sand dragged them down slightly, but they breathed a sigh of relief when they realized it was Marcus and Caius. Dora let out a little scream of joy as she launched herself at her mate, clinging to him with all her strength.

Caius stumbled and fell over, feeling extremely heavy and useless as well. His body hardly even felt like his own, however he beamed with joy when he saw his mate, incredibly relieved to have found her. They pressed their lips together in a quick, passionate embrace.

When they looked up, Sulpicia was talking with Marcus. "You have not seen either of them?" they heard her asking him.

"No, I woke to Caius forcing water out of my body only minutes ago. I cannot recall anything," he frowned, "Anything except our family and Anna. I cannot even recall where we came from. It is… oddly comforting."

"What is that over there?" Athenodora squinted at the horizon where they saw a vaguely shaped shadow taking form. "I cannot see what it is…"

"Perhaps it is Aro?" Sulpicia asked hopefully, squinting for any sign of her mate.

Something gold glittered in the distance.

"Aro of the Volturi…"

A voice entered his consciousness and his head felt as if it were splitting open from the sound of it.

"You have committed many heinous sins for which you should be sent to Tartarus," the voice seemed bored, yet disapproval seeped into the tone. "However my brother insists that, for your years of service, you receive Elysium with your mate."

"Lethe, if you would…"

Aro felt water being poured over him, drowning him. He wanted to fight it but found he could not move his body.

"Respice post te. Hominem te memento."

The next thing Aro knew, he was washing up on an ashy shore, crawling clumsily throughslick sand from the grey murky water.

Anna found herself drifting onto that same strange, dark shore on a small raft. She was completely dry, and her clothing had been cleaned and restored from the explosion. The green dress looked as pristine as it did when she had first slipped it on. She did not know how it could be, as she remembered every detail of it and shivered in guilt. She knew it had been the right thing, but she still found herself crawling ashore and breaking down, weeping with guilt and horror for her terrible crime. She had not warned them, had allowed those men to murder her entire family. And now she would pay for it. Surely her punishment was to come.

Suddenly, from a few feet away to her left, she heard the sound of a lyre. It was a soft, gentle sound – completely at odds with the grey wasteland before her that she knew must be hell. A beautiful young woman sat playing the instrument. She was wearing a white chiton with a golden wreath in her hair. Her blonde curls tumbled about her neck and she smiled softly when she saw she had Anna's attention. Anna sat stunned as the woman began to play a hauntingly sad song, filled with longing, but there was love there, too. A sweet note here and there, contrasted by the melancholy on the lovely face.

"Where did you learn to play like that?" Anna breathed. The music seemed to melt into her skin it was so smoothly delivered.

"My husband taught me once…" she trailed off. "We have been waiting for you, Anna of the Volturi. The Queen will see you now."

The woman disappeared into thin air then, and Anna startled. It had been so long since anything had been able to startle her, although she suddenly was reminded of many times her own kind had frightened her with their speed, when she was still human. She stood up and brushed her clothes off of the sand that had been clinging to them. It was a very odd substance, as soft and fine as talcum powder but with a strangely sticky quality.

She saw a figure walking toward her and considered running. Anyone who she would see here in the Underworld was surely not going to bode well for her, but she braced herself for whatever punishment would await her, resolve steeling her. She had done so many terrible things, she knew she deserved whatever fate awaited her.

The fog seemed to clear around the woman as a luminescence that seemed to reflect out of her dissolved it where it hung around her. She was even more beautiful than the woman with the lute, with a fresh, youthful face, wearing a silky chiton with gold jewellery draped over her arms, neck, and ankles. She had a golden crown that seemed to radiate a similar light to her own in the shape of delicate asphodel flowers.

Anna took a step back in shock and the woman smiled gently, "Welcome to my kingdom, Anna Volturiae. I see Hermes ensured you stayed dry of the power of Lethe. You remember what you have done?"

Anna flinched. "I do."

"Then you must know the only place for you."

She flinched again and trembled slightly. She knew what was coming, every religion prophesized it… she would be punished in this afterlife for her deeds in her former life. There was certainly no shortage of wrongdoing to punish.

"Elysium," she announced in a clear voice, and she pointed Anna to a light in the distance that she somehow hadn't noticed before. As soon as she saw it, it seemed to grow brighter and closer until suddenly a golden field stood before her, beckoning her through the harsh grey mist. "You have done well, young one. Rest now and be with your mate. But first…"

The woman conjured a golden goblet and gracefully filled it with the murky water of the river and pressed into Anna's hand. "Wash yourself of the memories of that life. Go to your mate clean of your troubles."

Anna looked at the water, unknown feelings warring inside her. Forgetting everything… what a beacon to offer. Having learned the lesson of the dangers of indecision, she downed the goblet in one gulp. A strange chill took her as everything from that life emptied out of her into the dense mists around her. She dropped the chalice, however it disappeared before hitting the ground, as did the goddess who had given it to her.

She looked around, disoriented but oddly without fear. Her eyes raked over the golden expanse in front of her and it was then that Anna saw Marcus standing in the field, watching for her. Her face broke into a smile and she ran toward him, launching herself into his arms and tumbling through the soft grass. She looked into his eyes – they had now reverted back to his natural brown that they must have been in his human life, which held the colour of pine bark, the soft volcanic stones that washed up on the shore of his natal Aegean, and the bronze of a sharp, oiled weapon. For the first time since she had first seen him all those years ago, she did not look into the hypnotic red eyes of a vampire, but the eyes of her beloved.

She did not know how long they stayed there. Aro had joined them as well, only moments after her. Their family stayed there, never knowing hunger or thirst or weariness, but sitting among the wildflowers with an endless sunrise above them. It felt like an eternity and a second, as there was no passing of time. It had ceased to have meaning.

They were interrupted one day by the approach of a new group of people. The largest one, a man who made the air crackle around him with power and electricity, led them. Behind him there was a woman with oddly coloured hair, like the charcoal from the river they had drifted here on, a man with winged shoes and an oddly weightless quality to him, and the golden queen of the underworld.

The leader addressed them. "You have spent many decades in these fields but your time is at an end. I have need of you."

"What use could we be for Zeus, the king of the gods?" Aro inquired.

"Since your departure, the athantoi of earth have become unmanageable. I must send you back once again to take your place as guardians."

They all looked at him confusedly but the king of the gods remained impassive. "Lethe, return their memories."

The woman scowled but complied. With a flick of her hand, their faces all felt a mist of water hit them before comprehension lit their expressions and their memories rushed back into their minds.

"I am sending you back and fixing the mistakes of my child. Do not stray this time, or there will not be a third chance."

Still disoriented, they did not react when the man with winged shoes stepped forward and held out his hands, as they were suddenly hurtled through space and time, back into the world of humans.

Aro startled, standing in the receiving room of his villa in Rome and feeling as if the world had tilted on its axis. Had there just been an earthquake? That would surely explain why he felt as if his soul itself had been shaken loose. The sounds of the splashing fountain in the atrium and the smell of the humans outside grounded him as he stood there, acclimatizing himself to his body before opening his crimson eyes at the sound of one of their human slaves welcoming a man into the villa.

Ah yes, that must have been what disturbed him so. That dreadful common aedile was coming that afternoon to simper and beg money. He arranged himself on one of the couches, awaiting their entrance. Perhaps later he and his brothers would go hunting. He could not recall when they had last been, which was likely why he felt so unsettled. He could not recall any other reason for it, as he had spent the entire morning in bed with his beloved, having only just risen minutes before. Life as the king of the immortals was good, he thought to himself, as he allowed a predatory grin to spread over his face at the thought.

Glossary:

Tartarus: A deep abyss in the Underworld in Greek mythology where sinners go to be punished.

Lethe: A river in the underworld that makes you forget your human life. Rivers/places are also often personified as gods.

"Respice post te. Hominem te memento": "Look after you [to your death] and remember you are only a man."

Volturiae: "of the Volturi"

Athanatoi: Immortals

AN: Well, here it is, the last chapter. I honestly can't believe I finished it and it winded up being this long. Thank you very much for sticking with Anna until the end, I know that was probably a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people. I do have a sequel started and I've posted the first chapter, but here's a teaser to get you started.

"She was wearing a tunic the colour of poppies, which looked quite fetching paired with the red curls hanging loose around her small shoulders, he thought. Marcus had never held any interest in babies when he was human, and even less now that he was immortal, but he estimated that surely this little creature was hardly more than an infant.

She turned toward him then, her round face looking up at him and curiosity pulling on the sweet pink bow of her mouth. It was then that he felt as if he was going to collapse. Without warning or preamble, a mating bond sprang between them, yoking them together and he saw, even in the innocence of the child's face, that she had recognized it too.

She dropped the doll she had been holding and immediately held out her arms to him. When he did nothing, still frozen in shock, her face turned to an angry scowl, as if she were unused to not getting her way and couldn't fathom this new development.

"Lev!" she demanded, holding her arms up again.

He was too awe-struck to do anything except obey and carefully, gently lift the tiny human. His mate. His mind reeled with the fact. He had no idea how to hold a child and his hands itched between the need to clutch her tight to him so she didn't fall and so he could feel the warmth and softness of her small body, and the warning need to be careful with this precious, breakable thing.

Her face screwed up at his handling of her. Surely he was not doing it right, he despaired, as he held her by the waist and she dangled there between his arms.

"Shhh," he soothed and, on instinct, began purring to placate the disgruntled little creature. "Be still, little one."

He adjusted his hold on her, bringing her closer to his body so she was flush against his chest. She wrapped her arms around his neck, nestled her face beneath his chin, and let out a happy little sigh as she got what she wanted. That one little sound nearly undid a thousand years of control he had carefully cultivated and he once again fought the urge to clutch her tighter to him. Instead, he breathed in her scent, imprinting it into his memory. She smelled of the milk and sweet bread she must have been fed for her midday meal, but under it she was sweet like honey, and yet fresh like the air on the apex of a mountain."