Didyme's POV

I think there's still a cold place in my heart for this plane of existence existing in the first place. I've not been known to have such chilly spots in my life, but I can't help but hate the disorder. Maybe it's from being a spoiled princess and then queen, but I can't stand being here. Yet it seems that this is what I chose. Immortality means an unorthodox afterlife.

Not that I would have been able to fathom that this is what a true immortality meant. To see everyone that could have been or was your undying enemy in a plane of existence such as this. To be so cut off in the coldness, to have that life sucked out of you.

When you're burned you expect it to be quick, and it is, but that flash of your life as you succumb to your venom giving up what made you so strong in the first place... that's the most terrifying thing any being in any existence can experience.

"You've missed too much while you've been away from my arms, Didyme," Pandora's hushed voice called out to mine through our connected bond, "I should not be asking what I am about to ask of you, but you must understand that unless I believed it was necessary I would not be doing it."

"I trust your judgement," I said out loud, knowing she had the ability to hear and understand each word from great distances. "Though I should ask why you wish for me to be a player in this Grand Plan of yours. While I trust you and your ultimate goals, I am not often privy to what happens in the mortal realm or the people there. Not unless I knew them."

"Know them, Didyme. Just because you and I are dead does not mean that our light has been extinguished."

I smiled faintly. Pandora had the ability to do that to people. A woman of great willpower and an energy that could light up a room. Perhaps she knows that oftentimes she is too blunt for her own good, but here in the cold afterlife that is not an issue. She understands that everyone here, no matter if they were her enemy or not, respects her to a certain extent. Gods know that I do, with everything she has done for me down here.

Even when you see so little, you see more than most down here could dream of.

"What I mean to explain to you that I am taking you up in a way that hasn't been done before, and a way that I know will shock you. However, this is the only possible outcome for my plan, and I cannot allow our enemies to gain this knowledge before you do," Pandora explained with a serious tone I wasn't used to hearing on her.

Then it struck me hard enough to stop my endless wandering, even for just a moment. It was an almost impossible notion, but one I had to clear lest my thoughts remain clouded with assumptions. "You don't mean that you're trying to keep this from two certain ex-queens, would you?" I asked, quiet so nobody but Pandora could hear me.

When Pandora appeared out of thin air in front of me her face held a sternness that frightened me to my core. I felt like a child again, and one who had broken her mother's favorite vase. This time there was no perfect older brother to save me from the impending wrath and-

"Sulpicia and Athenodora will use this to wreak havoc if they dare figure this out, do you understand? I hate to ask this of you, Didyme, and I know you are not an avid fan of secrecy in even your afterlife, but it is imperative to the safety of everyone in your old coven that these spiteful women do not figure out what my Grandest plan of all is, understood?" Pandora placed her hand on my chin, lifting my face up to her height in a commanding pose of authority.

A nod was all that I could give, but it sufficed.

"We leave today, as I told you yesterday, but not to anywhere in this realm. You know the reason for me leaving periodically for long spans of time already. Queen Annalise Volturi is a medium, and a damn powerful one at that. Her role as the only person who can pass from this realm back to her own as a living being is something I need to pose with her, but as far as she knows I could be some fictional character she's made up to cope with her own childhood trauma. Or that is what some people, our enemies Masen and the remaining Romanians, believe," Pandora began to explain, hiding the two of us behind a tree.

"It would be foolishly dangerous for her to come from her world, a place where she will have control over her power, into a place such as this!" I exclaimed.

The First One let out a deep sigh of annoyance and folded her arms like a child. "There was a reason I made sure she had this power and it was because I know she can handle such a thing. Believe it or not, Didyme, some of us don't want to be dead for the next three thousand years. Good Lord, a thousand has already been too much time for me. Being alive was so much easier."

My already frozen heart froze over and I stopped feeling my chest rise and fall at her words.

This wasn't something I'd ever thought I would hear. Not in my two thousand years of death and not my thousand years of life. A chance to live again.

I suddenly realized that wasn't what I wanted.

"You should have thought of someone else to bring with you. Someone else who knows everyone. I don't want to be ressurected," I admitted with a short, albeit fake laugh. "My place is down here. Since the burning, my place has consistently over the past two thousand years been with the people down below."

"Even though you hate it here," Pandora snipped. "You can't keep on doing this to yourself, Didyme. Everyone good and decent down here will confirm that you deserve good things."

My feet dug into the crisp snow of the ground, my eyes wandered to the snow that fell down softly onto the trees from the sky. Even if I'd decided I hated this cold, this was where I was placed. In a way, this is where I belonged. I may never know if death was waiting for me all those years ago, if this longing for a home I hate is because I didn't get the death I deserved.

"Didyme, love, nobody deserved to be murdered in front of their husband, just as those children down here didn't deserve to be turned." The things Pandora said couldn't console the deep somber feeling in my chest that loomed over this effortless winter. 

My voice would have broken if I dared to speak.

"I could always bring you back. Give you enough chance to say goodbye, then you could come back. With Anna, this place may not be forever as it once was." A hand was placed on my shoulder as I stared off into the distance. I could barely believe that this was happening to me right now.

Never had I been given a real choice. I needed Aro, and if being with Aro meant immortality that was my only option. I needed Marcus, and if that meant being killed for being his bride, that is what my fate was. Getting to go back, to see things as they are now.

They never tell you how much your own death changes how you see your life.

"Marcus knows that my death wasn't his fault, doesn't he?" My voice cracked and it took effort to look Pandora in the eye. "Aro and Marcus have their mate now. Caius can finally be happy with being a king of a people who desperately need it. You said that they have a hybrid child that they adopted together. Me coming back will only disrupt their peace. I have no right to impose on them my presence when they're so happy."

They deserve to be happy. Gods know how hard that they've worked to deserve it, to create a life that they would be comfortable raising a child in. It's been a little over two thousand years and Caius finally is able to do what he's always wanted to do. Aro can put his all into a kingdom and a child. Marcus has moved on...

How could I be any happier than knowing that the people I left behind can be living their best life, even without me in it?

"You and I are two different people, Pandora. You want to go back and be with those you left behind. But how can I knowing that they're happy? Perhaps your coven is struggling, maybe it just isn't the same without you, but my family is thriving."

I couldn't help but look away, not ready to see the look of shame on Pandora's face as I rejected the offer. I just... I don't want to be alive. I might have wanted that, once upon a time, but things are different. Circumstances change.

And you just can't fix what isn't broken.

"You don't need to be alive for what I have planned for you, Didyme, but you need to speak with those who you left behind. There are barriers that have been put up between the sire lines of our species that I can't break by myself," Pandora said softly as she inched closer to me, her hair littered with fallen snowflakes.

"Every line leads back to you," I whispered.

"We have information that this may not be true." My face paled as the breath left my lungs. "How was I created? Not from another vampire. It is not pure venom that runs through my veins. I created my first child. My firstborn was the first sire line. My second, when created, had little control over themself when they fed and thus created very few children, but that line still exists. Do you understand what I'm explaining to you, Didyme?"

I shook my head, barely able to keep myself from running. What if everything we've been told is a lie? What if we know nothing even after ten thousand years?

"Didyme, some lines can't handle certain things their original sire can't. Take animal hunting, or gifts, or even how long it takes for them to get hungry in the first place. If we take a body from the line we came from, or a line that may accept the venom-"

I cut her off instantly, without hesitation, "You're planning on taking a vampire's body and possessing it like a puppet master would it's puppet? I cannot. I truly cannot-"

"-How many criminals are created into vampires for nefarious purposes, hmm? We have indication that they would be able to move on, to have their soul go to either heaven or hell or whatever else is away from this place. I am not amoral, Didyme. In fact, it is possibly a more moral opportunity than sending them down here when executed," Pandora combatted with a sharp tone.

"Why do you need me then? Why aren't you doing this by yourself? Why tell me of all people down here?" I questioned, threatening to move away from the tree we stood behind.

"Anna knows of you. She would let you possess her if it meant finding the vials so many of the fallen Volturi could arise once more." I shook my head.

"You already know that I don't want to be alive anymore. To bring me back and kill me would just send me right back here and you know it!" There were very few times where I allowed my temper to get the best of me, but I couldn't help but wonder why I had to be involved in such an experimental subject. "You know that I cannot refuse you. You are the First One and we are bound to fall to our knees in your worship, but I... I can't communicate with Annalise Volturi for you. I am not her friend like you are."

"What should it matter that you are not her friend, girl? She thinks highly of you, far more than she ever could of me. The two of us may have known each other for three years, but we are not suited for diplomacy. You are." Pandora exhaled. "I just need for you to come with me into her pretty little medium mind and ask her if she could ask Aro where he left the vial of your venom."

"I don't see why you want me to do this still, diplomacy or otherwise."

"Because Caius will get mad if he finds out that Maeve is actually just the name that his decided to give to the First One whose name is actually Pandora. He thinks that I don't omit information which I most certainly do. I'd rather not sow distrust within the lives of the Volturi when they've got a wedding to plan and two hybrid kids to wrangle. Just... do this for me. I promise that I know what I'm doing."

"You're lucky that I'm not my brother, you know? And that he can't hear this. He would have slapped you to Saturn for this."

"I shouldn't have told you about the solar system, Didyme."