ofthefamily | Return to Volterra.

It take five guardsmen in the end to hold Carlisle prostrate and still manage to move him to the main chambers of the Three, Carlisle not screaming, but talking, speaking all the while. They will hear him -- even if they would not let him go.

"Blind servants of the Three who do not question what they are told with the minds that survived their deaths - I kill your kin and you take me to Them instead to follow orders instead of taking me yourselves -- "

And under even the bravado there is a clenching of addled terror, of Please don't take me back to Them you can kill me here I won't mind just don't take me back --

We can't act now we can't act now we can't act now-- her thoughts are a mantra directed at Edward as they rush down the hallway. She has to keep him here, in the now, with her and Jasper. He cannot help Carlisle yet. He would mess everything up.

Things cannot get worse than they are about to be. She can't let that happen. She is a guardian of the future. Specifically: their future.

"We need to get out of the open." She whispers. "I can still see what will happen and Edward can listen to Carlisle, but we need to hide. We need, please."

Jasper could not agree more. Every step further puts him more on edge until, finally -

"Just - "

He grabs Edward by the shoulder, pushing and shoving Alice and him into the nearest room. A hiss greets them and Jasper, moving as fast as he can, grabs the occupant by throat, strangling a cry of alarm.

He breaks the neck - cleanly, smoothly, he's done this before - and the head drops to the floor before the vampire could so much as twitch out of his grasp.

"Check the cabinets."

Edward would really like to care more about that -- but he doesn't. He looks to Alice, and then to Jasper, even as he was paying attention to all the minds closest to see if they'd heard the hiss.

But no one cared if someone hissed in Volterra. There were always fights and violent outbursts in the shadows. There was always someone to put someone else in their place, to try to usurp the place of.

Edward said, at the quietest, "We're still in the clear."

The stregone is not.

Two vampires who come close enough to Carlisle to gag him lose fingers as they continue to progress towards the Three, passing doors of nondescript rooms and cells much like Carlisle's last abode in the past recent weeks.

Carlisle is near to panting, thinking of all sorts of things to keep his mind centered -

Name the bones of the human body and the tendons which connect joint to joint. In English. Italian. Focus.

- ready for what is ahead of him.

Still he struggles, throwing taunts at the guardsmen who remain silent.

The taunts bore the guards who hold him but only because they cannot do anything about them.

The swarm of red cloaks leave the hallways and tunnels, preparing to approach the main rooms of the Three.

Alice stares at her husband with wide eyes for a moment, her chest tight with worry. "R-right."

Instead of checking the cabinets, she slumps against them. This is taking too much out of her. She shouldn't be here.

She can't be anywhere but here.

"Alice."

She cannot fall apart on Jasper now. He needs her. He just -

He needs her.

He moves around her to rummage through the cabinets himself, shoving a blood red cloak (and a wave of calm) into her arms once he finds one. He tosses another to Edward as he pulls on one of his own with a grimace.

Where is Carlisle now?

Edward pulled it on. Not looking at it and hating it all the while. How many memories, how many random faces in them. In his memory and in his mind now.

Between the clamor of voices raising as the information passed and Alice, who's should his gaze stopped on a second because of where-how she was, he said. "Everyone's going to dais."

Everyone.

Pulling up his hood, covering his hair and obscuring his face, he turned back to the door they'd come in through and opened it again.

Carlisle arrives first to the central court of the Three, a raised dais and three high-backed ornate chairs the only furnishings in the slate-colored marble room. Circular and high-columned vaulted ceilings - Carlisle remembered thinking it near holy when he arrived here from France. Now he just feels surrounded.

"Aro. Marcus, Caius," Carlisle speaks freely as the guardsmen shove him into the center of the columns and retreat to their positions behind them. Carlisle trains his black-colored eyes to the occupants of the dais thrones. The main subject of focus to Carlisle was Aro himself, sitting in the center chair and looking at Carlisle as though he had just committed the most grievous of acts.

Maybe he did.

"Why, Carlisle?"

"Sorry, sorry." Alice mutters, distracted. She pulls the cloak on, pausing in pulling up the hood to run her fingertips over her temple.

"They're there. I...can't see." It's all happening too quickly and visions of them gone are still plaguing her as she presses for information for here.

She tugs her hood up and reaches for her husband. She needs him. "We can go out. They're all headed toward the Three."

With a pleading glance to Edward and a wait a minute in his thoughts, Jasper turns into Alice's reach.

"I hate you in red," he murmurs lowly to his wife as he straightens her hood for her. He takes a moment to meet her gaze, just long enough to garner strength to keep them both going and see this through. "Stay close to me."

Quickly squeezing her hand tight in his then, Jasper moves to join Edward at the door, peering out into the hall with him. Find someone to follow.

Edward waited for their moment, looking in the two directions of the hallways through other people's minds. Hands staying in his pockets, outwardly unruffled by the request or needs in his siblings that ask his patience.

He doesn't need to find someone. Everyone is going the same way and the crowd doesn't care at all for who is beside who. Everyone is aimed there. Everyone is going for the same assumed reasons, with the same assumed feelings about it.

No one notices when three people linger to take a spot near a doorway at the far end of the hallway, just as Aro asks for Carlisle's explanation.

"Perchè."

'Why', a repeat of Aro's question, and 'Because'.

"I do not deserve to be kept here."

The entire crowd around the dais heckled and growled at the insinuation of Carlisle's words. That it was some sort of punishment to stay in Volterra under the favor of the Three.

"Deserve? You will get what you deserve, traitorous -- "

"Caius. Please." Aro stands, stepping off the dais to approach Carlisle.

He's smiling, to Carlisle's barely suppressed flinch.

Alice is grimacing, looking like she wants to run away from here. There's a buzzing in this room, in her mind, that keeps her from getting a clear look at anything.

She glances at her brother. Her thoughts are a jumble of Don't do anything--what should we do--how will we fix this--

Jasper looks anywhere but at the Three - the floor getting a good stare for awhile, then shoulders - as he listens. He tenses when he hears Aro move, his gaze finally snapping to the dais, his mind racing.

He could manipulate the crowd, cause a distraction. They could snatch Carlisle and get out of there now. They don't just have to sit here.

But they do.

He can't move. Shouldn't. Even as Jasper's thoughts warred for the plan to move, Alice's voice reminds him not to. He can already see inside Aro's mind. The oiled twist behind the smile that he can see from so many different angles in his mind.

He'd really like to move now. Irregardless of his chances. The terse snarl, only half trapped between his chest and lock jaw, is lost in a room fill with people showing their displeasure at Carlisle's opinion.

Aro steps closely to Carlisle now, to the surprise of the audience gathered. He appeared to all watching as a friend leaning in to speak in confidence. They could all hear every word regardless.

"You stayed with us for near a century, Carlisle. We would have been able to come to an agreement if you had simply spoken plainly with me. Now I have to deal with what you have done here."

To interrupt a judgement is near tantamount to calling one upon yourself, but a younger guardsman risks it.

"Another is dead!" an unseen voice shouts from the hallway beyond the columned room. "Il stregone has killed two!"

The entire group seems to raise in a communal hiss when they look to see who is missing amongst their ranks. It is a relative nobody - a guard leaving a rear cloak room.

The death is an excuse just as much as it is considered a crime.

"I did not do this, Aro!" Carlisle returns over the noise in the room. "See for yourself -- "

He holds out his forearm, prepared for Aro's touch and the view into his past that it would bring the older vampire.

Aro shakes his head no and Carlisle pulls his arm back slowly to wait.

"Ah, but Carlisle," Aro starts, half-smile again.

"You enjoyed the one you did kill, didn't you."

He sees Carlisle's eyes flash upward, staving off a reply. It is all the confirmation Aro needs.

Broadcasting his voice around the room to bounce back from the high ceilings: "Leave, Carlisle. Just leave."

"We can't let him leave!" a guardsman cries out, to be immediately shushed by his kinsmen.

Carlisle wastes no time in pushing away through the crowd to flee and everyone is staring at the dais. Aro calmly turns back to his seat, bored again.

"Follow."

The deep, dangerous growl traps in his chest, sounding even when he won't let his lips part, while Aro plays his part. In no other case would one body matter, either as much or at all. But he see's the final part coming only seconds before it does.

Aro is masterful player; and he acts his part even to himself.

Edward only has enough time to register the flash of blonde hair vanish by them, his siblings own reactions, and then the smaller number of minds that will take part in the chase.

It comes without preamble. He's faster than any of them.

"Stall them. I'll see the way to the gate isn't blocked."

He does wait for either to agree. He runs.

He knows what both decisions mean.

Edited 2009-10-18 22:42 (UTC)

Wait, what.

Edwar -

But Edward is already gone and Jasper growls under his breath. So much for staying together.

He glances at the quickly departing crowd and does the only thing he can think of, his time with Maria paying off yet again. Confusion hits the vampire next to him like a ton of bricks, the urge to give chase dissipating rapidly from her and then another beside her and the next.

He's not sure how much time it'll give Edward; it usually worked better when he followed it by ripping his enemies' heads off before they could recover.

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