Fandom: Twilight
Characters: Jane, Alec, Aro [and others, in passing]
Author's Note: Mortem Obire translates to meeting death. Reviews are much appreciated.
Imagine a brother and a sister caught between adolescence and adulthood, damnation and deliverance. Jump to conclusions, if you will, but consider that insults and accusations have been hurled at them for centuries. Remember that there are many sorts of monsters, and that perhaps they are the reluctant kind.
.-.
The bells toll the Angelus at dawn, day after day. Jane wishes she could find some significance in this. It must be so simple, so blissfully, beautifully, numbingly simple to have that one gesture (the slow rhythm of iron hitting iron) offer reassurance.
She does not want the slow insensitivity of time, or promises about a shifting future, she realizes and turns an innocent face towards the rising sun, until her eyes sting from the brightness. It is alright, though. Jane has always wanted to burn.
(Isn't it unfortunate when wishes come true literally?)
.-.
Jane and Alec have separate rooms that are connected by a stone passage, too narrow and dark for anyone but children to appreciate. This disconnected unity is a peculiarly tactful gesture on behalf of the Volturi (Jane wonders who thought of it).
Bedrooms are revealing, Jane has noticed and decided with gritted teeth that hers will disclose plenty of things, but most of them will be lies.
Her walls are papered with posters of bands she has never listened to (though she has been offered priceless artwork), and ridiculously colourful, striped sheets cover a bed that has never been slept in. There are conventional books on the shelves, even a few magazines (which have been made suitably wrinkled and dog-eared through an afternoon of effort) tossed on the floor for effect. A happy adolescent could be at home here, or a monster with a head full of whispering secrets. Jane is quite content with the result; it is a convincing façade of normality for a creature who cannot name her favourite colour.
Alec wanders in after she has finished redecorating (without knocking, because he is a brother).
"I like it," he says firmly, sitting down amongst the stuffed animals on the bed
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. I didn't know you liked Yeats' poetry though," he says, gesturing to one of the seemingly older books. Who's Yeats? I don't read poetry Alec, you know that, you know better, you're my brother, how can you believe me? Jane's mind screams as her body shrugs in response to her twin's question.
"Will you help me decorate my room, Janie?" (He is the only one who dares call her by a pet-name. She does not know how she feels about that).
She nods.
.-.
Jane breaks mirrors now.
Alec (a reflection and a twin) does not say anything, because sharing a womb and a death has little to do with comprehension. He allows his enigma-sister do as she wishes, because he cannot stop her and because he loves her (too little or too much?)
The reason is childish in its simplicity: she cannot tolerate lies.
Words, frail little whispers, are so much more powerful than all the blackness she can gather in her mind and unleash at will. She learned this when she was a mortal, and seemingly harmless syllables (nothing more than a mixture of letters and sounds) condemned her and gentle Alec to fire.
The falsehood of her life (a creature of the dark masquerading as a girl in a gloomy tower above a sunny city) grates and chafes against her, but there is so little she can do. Her reflection sneers at her, a woman caught in a child's head, a monster and a girl entwined, an incomplete twin, a paradox.
She puts her fist through mirror-Jane's face, wanting crimson to pool on broken hands. Then, she tries to reassemble the jagged shards, with no success. They are cleaned up and disposed of when she returns to her room.
My life and death have been spent trying to fit brittle pieces together in an unsolvable puzzle, she notices, then immediately rebukes herself for thinking in florid prose.
.-.
God is gracious. That is what the name Jane means. There is plenty of irony there, and none of it slips past the girl unnoticed. It was, after all, in the name of the Lord that she was burned. No, she has never received grace, or compassion from any deity, in life or in death.
The irony continues; she was saved from the fire and avenged by something that was once a man, and is now worse than any demon (cleverer, more manipulative, more sinister by far). She wonders sometimes whether she should thank him or curse him, but settles for obedience instead.
Let is be noted that Alec means guardian, and he is indeed his sister's keeper. He loves her, his beautiful little Jane, but in his (misguided) innocence, he cannot envision what he will have to protect her from.
.-.
Imagine a family (so distorted that the word barely applies, but so it goes).
There are leaders, three of them, and you will obey them, because they know your thoughts, understand your emotions and have whims as fickle as fireflies. They have wives, whom you can never quite trust because they hold an entirely different power in slender hands. There are guards who have no loyalties, no desires, no ambitions that have not been whispered into their hearts.
There is room for love (but only a little, at the periphery). It stays hidden in corners and shadows, whispered at night. Everyone knows what happens when love is too evident; the abyss in Marcus' gaze is parable enough.
Jane should know better. But she does not want to. But she is a member of the guard. But there are stirrings of feelings, beautiful and dangerous as glowing embers. But she must suppress them. But she is fifteen, and four hundred, at the same time…
The excuses swirl, until they sound like a chant, a repetition, a ripping of petals off a daisy.
He loves me. He loves me not.
.-.
Aro.
She is his favourite (a pet, a guard, a leashed monster), and she is not stupid enough to believe that her other merits matter to him in the least. He collects precious things, which means that she is precious to someone (a comforting thought), but also implies that she is a thing. Things should not seek affection or understanding.
Every once in a while, though, she catches herself starting into one of the hated mirrors, a thin finger tracing the outline of full lips in a gesture of forgotten sensuality. She wishes (that she were prettier, or at least older, that people respected her more and feared her less, that she could be a proper sister, the kind that laughs and plays and does not torture) until she cannot think about reality anymore, but only about lost possibilities.
If she is honest with herself (an unusual state for vampires) she will admit that the only thing she truly wants is for someone to burn for her (not because of her). Being caught in an inferno alone is hell, and Jane has been living there for several centuries.
.-.
Whenever she returns to Volterra (almost home after so many years) from one of the many battles she begins and ends, Aro acts so very pleased to see her. She wants to misinterpret every gesture, every casual kiss on the forehead, every endearment, but then she reminds herself that he would probably treat Caius the same way if the white-haired vampire allowed it.
Then, one golden, sunlit afternoon, she decides she no longer cares. She will cheerfully lie to herself, delude herself and live in a world of her own imagining, but perhaps she will be happy.
She is not, of course. Her shields have dropped and Aro knows everything, and does nothing.
.-.
Nobody questions Marcus too closely about his gift, but then again nobody questions Marcus too closely about anything. The common assumption is that he can see the profound connections between people (fraternal, familial, platonic, romantic). It is comforting to believe that he cannot sense sudden changes (love cooling, a spark of sudden lust, emotions free-wheeling). He can, but he does not mention it. The Volturi like their secrets, insignificant and obvious as they may be.
He knows from the very beginning about Jane, of course. Lust (perhaps love?) has been coiling around her chest, binding and tangible as chains, but he assumes that it will pass and does not pay it heed.
Marcus' downfall is his way of assuming. He should know better by now.
.-.
If vampires could have nightmares, they would wake choking, dreaming of fire blazing, swallowing them little by little until nothing remained. Deep beneath the bloodlust, the fury, the tentative affection, the jumble of personality traits repressed or emphasized by immortality, there remains the certainty that they will meet their end in flames.
The Volturi recognize this as well as anybody, but those who know about Jane (Marcus, Alec, maybe Caius) understand that the fire will reach them soon, in one of two ways.
The witch girl will realize that she is not loved. The last slender boundaries inside her will break, and the penned monster will crawl through. Perhaps they will all be tortured into insanity, or perhaps she will only choose to shatter their leader.
Perhaps not.
Aro may realize that toying with the affections of an aberration is not the wisest course of action. Her extraordinary gift will not protect her from the madness of one who was once willing to kill a beloved sister. Sides will be chosen, and an indestructible family will be torn apart over a girl.
One way or another, Jane will be nothing but ash by the end.
.-.
Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…
[Yeats, The Second Coming]