THERE ARE SOME FATES WORSE THAN DEATH.

Anyone who has been kidnapped from their home by a delusional vampire would say so. She would. She didn't have a home anymore, he made sure that she wouldn't remember the world that she came from. Only the world that he created was able to exist. That was the way of things.

Not anymore.

The fact that he set her free was the best blessing that the young woman could have asked for. She'd prayed, and prayed, and prayed again for nights on end, hoping that what had happened that night would happen. She was free, damn it. She was free and nobody else could hurt her ever again.

Things were blurry when the venom hit her veins, but it didn't hurt any more than the blows on her back or wrists did. The same level of pain, but in different places. This time it was her heart, which beat so fast she thought it would explode. Instead of her wrists burning with blue bruises, her wrist was adorned with a bite that screamed freedom.

She wanted this more than anything. This bite was what made her better, allowed her to survive. She never would have made it as a human, she thought, and she would have died in his care. The second the kind man bit into her wrist, she was freed, removed from those pesky, awful thoughts that told her that she was worthless.

He was a liar, she wasn't worthless. Or useless.

The kind doctor decided that he would turn her, he asked her if she wanted that. Nobody would ask a useless person their opinion on a life changing bite. If she were useless, that idea wouldn't go through his head.

She hadn't been around someone kind for a long time. She didn't realize how long she'd been ruined until she looked into the mirror to find her hair braided, her skin now healed. The reflection she saw in her water bowls did not compare to the beauty she saw in the mirror now.

Beautiful. She was obsessed with her appearance as a vampire. For so long she'd been told that she wasn't as pretty, was too skinny in her arms and legs to be able to be useful for him. Yet when she saw herself as a vampire she realized she'd just been starved and beaten to look ugly. She was beautiful as a vampire. She was a vampire, a beautiful one.

No obsession had quite hit her like this one did. She stared at her appearance for literal hours as she heard people talking downstairs. She could have heard every word they said, but she didn't care for it.

She was beautiful and free. That was all that mattered to her.

Well, it was all that mattered until she was called downstairs, by no name other than dear. She didn't have a name, she remembered that. He made her forget. That remembrance brought it all back, and she soon remembered that she couldn't cry. The tears welled up in her eyes, but they never rolled down her face. They burned, made of pure venom.

It made her feel disgusting all over again.

Rosalie was the one to come upstairs, having understood her in ways that nobody else could. They were both broken on some fundamental level, so scared of being ugly just because someone made them feel that way. A man, to be exact.

"Dad wants you to come down," Rosalie explained to her, "One of the Volturi Kings is visiting today to see if he can see who did this to you."

Yes, she had explained this to her before. The way that her captor's world worked. She didn't know any other world than this. This was all that he allowed her to see. And he made her forget. Forget everything other than the knowledge that she would forget it. So she stopped wondering what was happening, would stop crying so loudly.

She would never cry again. Funnily enough, that is exactly what he wanted from her and only now that she has freedom can she fulfill this desire of his.

"I'll give him whatever he wants," the younger vampire responded, her bright red eyes still a sign that she was a newborn vampire, and a strong one at that. "Whatever he wants."

"You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. He will be respectful of you, Dad has assured you already."

Somewhere deep down she didn't fully believe that. She would never fully believe that this was true. Nobody can have purely good desires, that's what he allowed her to remember. His were just as morally nuanced as hers. She hit him once, that was not alright according to him. She was just as morally nuanced as everyone else.

She truly believed that.

"I'll wait and see," was how she responded to Rosalie, who had been nothing but kind to her. She didn't want to believe that Rosalie was nuanced as she. Perhaps she could be less, but surely she'd done something bad once. People always end up doing bad things. It's how you react afterwards that chooses whether or not you'll get punished for it.

"Jasper will be coming home now that all the blood is out of the house," Rosalie told her. "He's been told about some things, but not everything. You don't have to tell him if that's not what you want to do. It's your story to share."

Her story to share. She didn't see it that way. She was just a part of the story. He said that she wasn't the first, wouldn't be the last. So, weren't there other girls just like her that shared her story? It wasn't just hers, it was also his. She wasn't allowed to share his secrets, but now that she was free, she could without being punished.

"It doesn't matter," she lied. Her hands shook as she made her way away from the bathroom, out of the second story, and soon found herself in the living room surrounded by the remaining members of the family, other than the one person she hadn't met: Jasper.

She felt bad as soon as she found everyone. She hated lying. Free people shouldn't be lying. She wouldn't want to be lied to. She'd been lied to enough.

They didn't say anything when she came down. There was an open couch that she assumed she was supposed to be in. So, she sat down, patiently waiting for the conversation to start. It didn't. It was so deadly quiet that she almost wondered if she were in a dream, if she hadn't actually turned.

The silence was too familiar.

---

ARO WAS ON A MISSION THAT REQUIRED HIS FULL FOCUS, A PLANE RIDE, AND A DESIRE TO BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF ANYONE WHO GOT IN HIS WAY.

This was a mystery of a lifetime. He'd been going through everything in his memory to try and figure out who this rogue vampire could be. He'd never been able to figure it out, and everyone's memories never included a vampire that could be considered as heinous as this one.

Carlisle's next call had confirmed the turning of this new vampire. He'd explained that this had caused some tension in his family, mostly between him and Edward for reasons that Aro could not understand. From where Aro stood, the woman wanted to be turned. She wanted to be saved from the hellhole that she'd come from.

Perhaps Edward was just angry that his girlfriend hadn't been turned yet. Oh well, that wasn't his issue. Unless they didn't turn her by the deadline, in which it would immediately become his problem.

They really needed to speed up their timeline.

Nevertheless, the second that Aro had made his way into Forks from the airport in Seattle, he'd felt as if there was something off with the little town that he'd actually never bothered to visit. He never found a good enough reason to before now, and Caius abhorred air travel to the United States.

Plus, he was quite busy being King.

That feeling in his chest never failed to make him uneasy, but he did end up knocking on the door, being immediately greeted by the face of one of Carlisle's children. Emmett had always been a good vampire, having visited Volterra once when he was only a few years into being a vampire just to see how things worked. He'd played plenty of poker with Jane, Alec, and Afton, and had lost quite a bit of money.

Never gamble with those three, you will lose all of your money.

"Aro, good to see you again. Come on in," he was welcomed by the young man, who showed him inside.

The house was quite modern for his tastes, but it was clearly well built. He noticed first all of the family photos around the house of important memories post the creation of the camera. he appreciated the sentimental value of all of the graduation caps, showing that the children had gone to high school and college quite a few times. It was a lovely little house, really, and despite it's modern build, Aro couldn't find any issues with anything inside.

"She doesn't remember her name, so I wouldn't ask. And she doesn't really like being touched, so I'd ask her first and see if she's even willing," Emmett warned his king as he sat down on a barstool. "I suspect her memories have been tampered with. Edward said that her thoughts are jumbled, and they resemble those of a human who is experiencing severe amnesia."

What a terrible thing, Aro thought. As someone who saw the memories of almost everyone he came into contact with, the very idea of losing memories was terrifying. Memories were what made someone who they are. If memories had been tampered with, this man had destroyed the very essence of who this woman was and had theoretically shaped her to be his slave.

He honestly thought he would be sick at the thought. Drinking dead blood sounded better than this internal realization.

"I understand," Aro conceded as he sat down at one of the many soft chairs in the living room. "When is Carlisle going to get home from work?"

"In a few hours. He was expecting to be here, but someone had a heart attack and needed emergency surgery and Carlisle is the only trained in cardio," Emmett explained. "How are the twins?"

"Upset about their Queen."

"So she's Queen now?" Emmett asked. "Seems a bit soon, yknow?"

"I do not know," Aro retorted. "She is my mate, she is a vampire, should she not be the Queen of the Volturi yet just because she has only just turned?"

"You know I'm not the person who passes any judgement, Aro." He did know this, it was why he wasn't exactly offended by the question. "She's like a sister to me, River. Has been since she came into my life. She's really not all into that whole power thing. She likes helping people, she wanted to become a doctor until that trip to Volterra."

"What are you getting at, Emmett?"

"I'm just saying that giving her some more time to adjust, to fully bond with you, Caius, and Marcus, may do you some good in the long run. Throwing it all at her at once is probably going to burn her out. Being Queen is work, and she's only a Newborn vampire."

It was genuine advice, and words that almost stung to hear from a vampire so much younger than himself. Yet Aro wasn't unwilling to hear these words. He just wanted things to be the way they were supposed to be already, without all of the extra stress of this situation. All of the situations.

"I'll think about it."

Noncommittal. Maybe. Perhaps.

"Good. I really think that you four will work out in the end," Emmett said, turning his head to the stairs. "Oh, she's coming back down. Hey, dear, the King is here to see you."

"You make him sound so menacing," Rosalie quipped as she walked down the stairs. "Just be quiet with your voices. She said she doesn't like loud people."

"Is he not our King?" Emmett asked in a joking manner.

"Yeah, but he's also terrible at gambling and still owes me a favor," Rosalie revealed. "New Years Eve, 1982. Accidentally ate a pothead. Best night ever."

"You got high?" Emmett's eyes were wide with amusement. "Didn't realize vampires could get high from human's blood."

"The drug is in the blood," Aro whispered. He sighed. "Nevertheless, we have more important things to handle."

As he spoke, the woman was walking down the stairs dressed in one of Rosalie's nicer dresses. She bore an eerie resemblance to River. A creepy, disturbing, doppelgänger level of similarity to her. The only difference was her blonde hair, which was slightly wavy.

Things were making a bit more sense, and that was worse than being in the dark about it all.