A/N: *sneaks in* *places this on your table with a cup of Ceylon tea and ginger biscuits* *runs away before you can say anything and disappears down the driveway with a shrill scream*

Chapter XIX: Closed Door

A harsh, consoling rhythm throughout the night, the evening storm thrummed against the stained glass windows of Altheia's private quarters in the West wing. The Diary of Anais Nin laid cold, abandoned on the rosewood settee next to her bed long ago, and now that the rain inside her had subsided, the skin of face felt thick, cold – her eyes too sensitive.

In this late night and in this dimlit space of the West wing there was nothing else to do but succumb to the promised peace of sleep, and yet Altheia chose to lie there, still mortal and still overly weary, unmoving as she elapsed the night in deep melancholy. She drifted in and out of mindfulness, sparsely listening to the skies of Volterra as it continued its sonorous downpour – this time, without her eyes to join in chorus – and any second now, she hoped that she would start to feel, or at the very least feel alive, again.

Dawn nearing, she registered the arrival of another visitor when the door to her bedroom opened. Weighted footsteps crossed the wooden floor quickly to get to where she was laid, and Marcus' tall silhouette walked into her field of vision, only to see him hesitate before cautiously settling on the space of the floor right next to her bed.

Their faces level now, Altheia's langorous eyes raked through the brunet's appearance under her pale nightlight. Marcus spoke with great caution.

"Aro was here. Do you remember?"

Marcus smelled nice and fresh – no iron particles lingering the air despite his recent hunt. His hair was wet, backswept, his cotton clothes brand new.

"Altheia."

There was genuine concern pulling at his features, and when she finally moved it was to blink and look to the ceiling.

"Are you somewhere I can't reach? Do you hear me at all?" Marcus' hand reached forward and cupped her cheek. "Altheia, please."

His thumb grazed the edge of her eye and Altheia suddenly shifted awake, conscious. "Marcus! When did you— agh!"

As if her throat had been ridden with salt, her voice broke halfway through and Altheia clutched at her throat as she battled through a flurry of heaves and coughs. Marcus winced.

Unlike Aro when he saw her state, Marcus anchored himself and stayed. He softened his voice even further and guided her breathing, silent and lenient until clarity found its way back to her again.

"I'm here... I'm here."

By the time her coughing spell stopped, his frown had settled over and casted a shadow that marred his face.

Lightheaded, Altheia had laid herself back and threw an arm over her face. "Sorry, the storm must've drenched me on my way back last night..."

"Last night?"

"Yes... I went out. To think."

"To drink, you mean. Your smell... you smell." Marcus accused.

"Before you tell me off, I was back before it was too dark. The weather just worsened on my way home."

"Alcohol is poison. You know this. You have to be careful with how much you take."

Altheia pressed her lips together in mild annoyance. "I'll remember that next time."

Marcus sighed. "And your mirroring. You've figured it out, haven't you? How it works."

Dry lips twitched. "Maybe."

"Aro said he couldn't read you when he was here. Earlier. You wouldn't speak to him – like you couldn't see him at all. Like he was a ghost." Marcus waited until Altheia blinked again. "But Aro found and read Caius just fine and – Aro knows now. He's furious." Another pause. "He told me. I'm sorry about Caius. What he said..."

Altheia moved her arm away. "Are they fighting?"

"I won't lie to you. Yes, they are."

"Ah." Altheia shook her head. "You can stay here then. So you won't hear them."

Marcus let out a slow, pained, heavy breath. "I can hear them from here just fine."

Altheia wavered. "Can you tell them to stop fighting about it? What Caius said – Aro shouldn't... I accept Caius as he is, even if he doesn't accept me."

"And isn't that the irony?" Marcus mused, chin up to the air. "It must pain him greatly to fight fate like this." As Altheia turned and stared, he rested his chin on the palm of his opposite hand and tapped the edge of his left eye with his index finger. "Bondsight, remember?"

"Yes, I remember. Bonds..." Then she followed as a morose chirp, "Or the lack of them."

Marcus' lips pursed. "Well, the bond between you and Caius is—"

A strained smile, "I don't want to talk about it." She felt better off not knowing.

The brunet let out another sigh. "If that is your wish."

His fingers went from her cheek to up in her hair, soothing, and combing. Altheia pushed his hand away and muttered crossly, "Stop it. I don't want to sleep, either."

A look of deep consideration passed before Marcus acquiesced. "Alright. Why don't you tell me about your ability instead? I am curious."

Cold muscles protested when the girl finally moved from her spot on the bed. Dispelling her queasiness with a shake of her head, Altheia rearranged her pillows and leaned her back against the headboard. Marcus didn't move from the side of her bed, still lounged on the floor, his eyes keen on her silhouette.

"I think... it's about honesty. Full, tactile, reciprocated honesty," Altheia began, her brows furrowed in concentration as she spoke. "When Bella and I met on the plane – she was wholehearted. Desperate. She said she needed my help, and the open-book state of her, I swear... I had to hold her hand. To offer comfort."

Marcus waited.

"Do you know what that's like? To be in her shoes, to be someone who's never asked for help, and have no choice but to ask for it – from a stranger, at that? To decide that you'll never abandon anyone, despite the countless times you have been in the past? That was the Bella I met then, and she could not help but be the real, vulnerable her."

Altheia reached for Marcus' cold hand. Caressing each of his fingers between her own, "Desperation bleeds past one's skin. It crumbles your defences and shows everything – too obvious, too quick, too much. I met Bella at her lowest moment, and, one woman to another, I wholly understood why she was in that plane at all. I understood her. Like I'd seen myself. A mirror."

Marcus seemed unconvinced as she continued.

"The night Aro and I were in Palaia..."

Marcus' eyes darkened.

"We were talking... touching... a lot. Despite every matter we'd danced around since Aro and I met, there were no pretenses between the two of us back then. Aro wanted me to see him, accept him, and the entirety of him beyond that – and I did. I do. That night, everything we said to each other – they were truths. Complete, vulnerable truths... I was closer to him than anyone else he'd allowed to be in his life. And, well. I was ready to give everything. I was open. I gave him me."

Marcus glared at her. "What load of nonsense."

"Well, it's my theory, it doesn't have to make sense to you!" In her sleeplessness, Altheia's mirth was faint. "I just feel like that's how it happens. Each person is a book, you see? In openness, great intimacy, and understanding, what else can I do but digest each story and truly know them as they are?"

"If that's the case..." Marcus held onto her hands, smooth as satin. "Why haven't you copied me, then."

Angling her head, she was distracted by his touch, "Hm?"

"What are we, if not intimate? What is this—" he raised their twined hands pointedly, "—if not openness? You have me. Even more, you understand me, don't you?"

"Well... I..." Altheia thought hard about it. "I don't know." Entirely dismissive, "I couldn't possibly see metaphysical ribbons out of nowhere. Maybe my eyesight is going bad? Really bad – the other day I had to wear reading glasses while cataloguing, did you know?"

Disappointed by her impertinence, the vampire hunched himself onto her bed with a long-suffering groan.

Altheia snorted at the image of his petulance. "But yes. I do. I know you. You are such a profound person, Marcus, and I love you. You see the world for what it is, what it feels like," Altheia said compassionately. Bending over, she reached for him and this time, she was the one running her fingers through the ends of his hair to attempt at soothing. "But just because I understand those parts of you, doesn't mean I already see as you do... can feel as you do... or even become you. Maybe my own biases cloud my sight. I wouldn't know."

Altheia adjusted her place and Marcus let her pull him onto the bed. Glancing out her window – the storm had birthed a windy, drizzling sunrise – and she claimed gently, "Or, maybe.... Maybe you haven't been honest with me at all."

Scarlet eyes shuttered. "What do you mean?"

"Between the four of us... Did the Bonds ever tell you it would be like this?" Their gazes locked, maroon caged in honey, "That it wouldn't take so long before Aro and I gave and took so much from each other –that the way he loves, he stops at nothing – that the moment I began to love him, I would end up scaring myself—" Altheia took in a shaky breath. "Because I am scared. And I think the Bonds told you. I'm human, profoundly human, and Caius was never going to humble himself for the notion of love. So I think you knew. And I love you, Marcus. I do. But you were completely prepared for this fallout, weren't you?"

"What do you..."

"Did you think it could just be you and me in the end? Honest, Marcus." Altheia squeezed his palms meaningfully. Marcus' gaze dropped to their twined hands, and at the horrified look of realization crossed in his eyes, Altheia offered a weak smile. "If you lie now, I'll know."

I think it's about honesty. Full, tactile, reciprocated honesty... In openness, great intimacy, and understanding, what else can I do...

"I..."

A mirror.

Marcus seemed to be at a loss for words. In his voicelessness Altheia seemed to find her answer. Her knowing gaze sunk his heart.

"I'm not—"

Three abrupt knocks on the bedroom door interrupted the two, and a guard's voice asked for Marcus to respond to the North wing immediately, at Aro's behest. Marcus pulled away.

"Go," Altheia told him softly. "Tell Aro I said arguing is useless."

Maybe you haven't been honest with me at all.

Marcus nodded, though still not meeting her gaze again. She watched him rise from the floor and head to the exit. He idled there, hesitating next to the doors after he pulled them open, adjacent hallway lights illuminating his dress shoes and her carpeted bedroom floor.

"Once he's calmed," Altheia continued, her tone even, "and if you still want to... Come back here. With Aro. To me. Let's let the rain pass."

Marcus barely spoke, so low and still she heard him. He sounded sullen. "You still wish for me to return?"

"Of course I do."

"Don't you resent me?"

"Resent you?" She frowned in confusion. "For what?"

He caught her dumbfounded expression and managed to inject exasperation in his response. "You know it now, Altheia. I'm not an honest man. Even if you love me. Especially that you do. You'll never know me like Aro lets you know him – I'd never let you. There are wicked parts of me – thoughts so dark – that I'd never want you to see. I see, I understand, I manipulate – how else was this coven built? How else have I survived this world before you? And you... You are so vulnerable, so pliant to me, and, if in the future, I can have you for myself, I would commit the worst of wrongs to keep you." He hesitated. "If, in the future, I can have you without Caius, without Aro, without anyone else, and all I have to do now is keep quiet? I will. And I won't be sorry."

Altheia blinked once, frowning. "That's... That's... That's so..."

"Vile? Selfish? Dishonest?" Marcus suggested, scorning himself.

"Normal, Marcus."

She was forcing herself not to laugh. He seemed to be so seriously bothered by the matter at hand that her depreciative reaction had his face contorted in frustrated disbelief.

"So keep your secrets and your thoughts and don't tell me everything. So keep being selfish. I won't judge you. It doesn't make you a bad person, and it certainly doesn't make you less of the man I love."

"You...!" Marcus' mouth kept opening and closing. Eventually, he shook his head and snapped at her, "You are not normal."

"Why, darling, that's so sweet of you to say," Altheia bit back sarcastically as she huddled back into the comfort of her satin sheets. "And they say romance is dead. Anyhow, shoo. Come back soon with Aro in tow, yes? Preferably calmed down and ready to hum lullabies."

Marcus regarded her incredulously again before he acceded. "Fine. I will go and tell him you are not acting right. That you are disturbed, deeply, in the mind."

Altheia snorted. "He'd love that."

Closing the doors behind him, Marcus sighed. It was true.

»»—- ❈ —-««

Another booming bellow, and Ariana's thundering heart worsened its rhythm in her chest. Any louder from the discordant tirade of the two monarchs happening in the hall behind her work station and she would have to barricade the nearby tunneling passages with quality soundproofing.

After all, as the incumbent Volturi secretariat, it was one of her primary responsibilities to maintain the grounds and its routes for orderly and obscured conduct of coven affairs. While the locals have had their own assumptions about the unnatural events occurring in the vicinity, rare as they were, Ariana simply refused to give fodder to their misguided susperstitions. In fact, her predecessor Giana had failed spectacularly at this exact burden when her frequent, careless use of the subsidiary castle ports led to one of them being found by a man named Charlie Swan – Bella Swan's father, no less – which later bridged his opportunity to accost the human Volturi scholar in one of the few times she ever left the castlegrounds alone.

The following week had been a disaster. For Giana the most. Ariana was thankful her head was still attached.

Muttering a prayer for Giana's reposed soul under her breath, the secretary startled when she saw Marcus Volturi, their most reclusive coven leader, suddenly appear and pass through the open lobby as he headed for the main hall.

Shoulders pinching, sitting upright as he neared, "Good morning, Master Marcus—"

"Your day is done." Marcus cut in quickly. "Leave. Else you have personally chosen to be here when Caius walks through those doors again and you will have spent your final morning in misery."

A single second passed, then Ariana had her shoulder bag hooked and tucked to her side as she walked briskly to the safest exit, soundproofing woes be damned.

She was not even going to think about the subject the vampire sovrans had been clashing about, no. Most of the dealings she heard about went out her other ear automatically in the interest of self-preservation. Her dismissal this morning signaled, perhaps, her first and only day off for the near time being, and she was going to spend it in Sebastian's arms. Bass. As a grand gesture for their ravingly physical night, she shouldn't even have left before he'd wakened, but she was a loyal workaholic and, well, duty called. The man had grown accustomed to sleeping in the flat above his bar and therefore slept like a bear, and to her advantage she might even have enough time to drop by the produce market and get their breakfast in order. Sebastian would wake long after she'd arranged their breakfast plates and start his day with coffee and frittata and be none the wiser.

As she secured the final latch of the brick and wrought iron gates, effectively concealing her exit path of the castlegrounds from view, Ariana's stomach churned. She was absolutely sure she'd taken care of everything. A few kilometers out and her nerves would calm, she was sure. Fortunately, she had more than enough time to clear her headspace from all the daily tasks that made her an anxious wreck, and with all the possibilities of today's day off (sexual escapades included) her psychosomatic bellyache was the last thing on her mind. Despite the unusually cold climate and morning drizzle, she was going to make the most out of the rest of her life, she was!

»»—- ❈ —-««

"The irony is not lost on me," Aro began in a pretense of nonchalance, seething, "that the reason I hurt you, and yet demur my instinct to end you, is because, well, you... are you."

The dark-haired monarch had the linen collar of Caius Volturi's dress shirt grappled in his right fist while the former struggled against the brick walling of the vacant hall. Aro held Caius on firmly despite his struggle, two booted feet no longer touching the ground.

"But I find that I am not cruel. So cruel as to inflict games of persuasion and skirting topics when, very clearly, you have decided for yourself that Altheia Beneventi is someone who does not deserve a man as high and powerful as you. You've said it to her face yourself. Why malign an honest man for his candor?"

Caius' chest rose in barely contained rage as Aro continued his low-toned tirade.

"And I suppose, in a way, you did take my previous advice. You have decided she is not one to care for, and therefore found no need to be kind. That you chose to throw her admirations towards building a civil relationship with you back to her face in your adamant, self-serving glory."

Aro loosened his fingers, lowering his grip very slowly, like he could change his mind and resort to violence at a millisecond's hesitance.

"I truly hope you stand by this decision," the telepath ended in a surprisingly wholehearted tone. "For your sake. You're never going to set foot in the same room as her again."

Caius scoffed and shoved his offending arm away. Red eyes flashing, "So this is what trumps years and years of alliance. Your loyalty is worth nothing – overtaken by petty affections for a petty woman!"

"But of course, Caius." Aro was completely unaffected. "Everything this coven has given me I owe to power. In contrast, everything I receive from her I owe to none. Here I am made king by you, explicitly because it suits my capabilities, but my entirety is hers simply because I myself insist. And that is what differs between us, yes? I want to be wanted by her. You want life's detestations and greatness and nothing else. No one else." Aro paused. "A true king."

"What's this?" Caius sneered. "You've heard too many consciences and now you think you know all good there is to know about everything?"

"Not everything. Just you." Aro's answering sneer was just as bad. "...Troglodyte."