i never talk to the devil [c]

[JANE MAGDALENA VOLTURI]

* but i would rather be crazy ,
• I WOULD RATHER BE MAD THAN LOST IN THE SILENCE HOLLOW AND DRAB •

late night had settled easily over the normally bustling city of volterra. no matter how long she had lived, jane was always a little surprised at how quickly night crept up; perhaps it was because she didn't spend a lot of time outside during the daylight hours, or maybe she simply just didn't give the time as much time as she ought to have.

just after sunset, when nightfall was beginning to blend the sky from brilliant oranges to the dusky grayer hues of the darker half of the day - this was when she sought refuge away from the hustle and bustle. it wasn't much of a secret that she didn't necessarily appreciate the company of others - she might have, at one point, if she had been raised into a proper little girl who wore dresses and curtsied and smiled politely when she was supposed to. but she hadn't been. the coiffed collars and fine gossamer dresses she had grown up with had held no allure; she would never be those ladies. she would, eternally, be too young for anything like that.

during the day, she had to suffer through tasks that tended to grind on her last nerves. it became easier and easier for lies to slip from her lips - yes, quite and no, certainly i'm not irritated and i would be happy to help with this - popping and fizzing on her tongue as they ignited. she would have felt bad about not just telling them that she certainly did not want to assist with their stupid ball.

the preparations were getting stifling. when the time was nearing the next hour and mother night was slowly slipping her blanket over the city, jane sought refuge away from all of the noise and chatter in the clock tower. she would have suffocated if not for this break, surely; she was tireless, and invincible, and strong, but not strong enough to withstand the trials of planning a ridiculous ball she didn't even think was necessary.

sucking in a deep lungful of the heady night air, she leaned against the far end of the clock tower; behind her, the bell sat peacefully, and the man who was normally assigned to the task of ringing it had been spooked away by the youthful blonde. her cool cheek pressed against the marble, jane shut her eyes; another time and place, another jane might have been excited to plan a ball, and to have people around. but not this jane. not her.

ooc// please forgive this terrible post omg ksjhflasdf

[ALEC AMRIC VOLTURI]

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, there had been two twins in an old, old village--a boy, with dark brown hair, small in stature but innocently pretty, and a girl with blonde hair and the face, some said, of an angel. Of course, their faces were similar, such was the price of being twins, and they had been secure in their mud-brick house, or as secure as the paupers of Frankish England had ever been, at any rate. A happy fairytale, however, theirs had never been, and soon the two twins had found themselves alone but for each other; alone as the village turned against them with cries of sorcery; alone as they had been dragged up to the wooden pole with the dried grass and useless straw at their feet; alone as they had watched their own parents watch as they were lead away with fear in their eyes.

Alone as they stood there burning, but for each other, together in and together out.

A smirk quickly flickered across Alec's face as he slowly made his way up the steps of the Volterra clock tower, his movements silent but for the faint rustling of his long black cloak, still clasped across his pale, delicate-looking throat. Maybe he and Jane had been alone then, left to fend for themselves in a world unkind to them, but he found a kind of sadistic pleasure in the fact that now all those who wronged them were dead, slaughtered, reeking of their own fear by Aro. He had no sympathy for their end--they had gotten what they had rightfully deserved, no more and no less.

Raising his head, the young-looking vampire paused, his mouth twisting in a caustic smile even as he rested one hand carefully on the rail of the steps. If he wanted, he could curl his fingers and break stone; his pale, slender hands, which looked as harmless and pure as the face of his beloved sister, that were in reality stained with more blood than anyone could ever hope to imagine, whether direct or indirect.

Still, he had come here to find Jane, knowing, as he often just did, that she would be there, though he would not pretend to know the reason. As of late, he had been preoccupied with watching as the lesser guards helped with making the Volterra castle shine like the gleaming jewel it had been at the time of its completion, though he didn't bother to keep his amusement from his face as he did so, watching the most feared guards in the vampiric world lower themselves to mundane tasks and basic grunt work as they polished and preened and draped with gauzy clothes of gold, which they would all shimmer in when the time came.

To Alec, it was ridiculous. The blood of his enemies, laid out before him, pooling on the ground at his feet for him to run his hands through, would have been his preferred choice of decoration. Ah, but he was just as content letting Aro's will be as it would, so perhaps that wasn't entirely true. It did not, of course, mean he had to like the idea of the Forever Young ball one hundred percent, but he was not too concerned on the whole.

Jane, though...

"Sister." He pitched his voice low, with the usual teasing edge he adopted when he spoke to her, red eyes glimmering in the darkness even as he glided forward through the shadows, the darkness only broken by the slivers and streams of light that made their way in. Even in the darkness he could find her, though. He always could, even in the darkness he had pushed on himself as he tried to block out the pain of the flames, his head bent as he felt Jane's arm against his, his sole comfort.

Their story was, after, merely a fable that started and ended with the both of them.

[JANE MAGDALENA VOLTURI]

* but i would rather be crazy ,
• I WOULD RATHER BE MAD THAN LOST IN THE SILENCE HOLLOW AND DRAB •

it was true; once upon a time was a proper way to start their story, so intertwined were they that it was accurate to dub it their story in the first place. but this was not a fairytale to be allowed to end with 'and they lived happily ever after'. no, people did not usually tag the violent attempted burning of two children, and the resulting slaughter, with the end line and they lived happily ever after. jane's life had never been a fairytale, and she never expected it to be.

she had felt death's cruel sting, and had watched as he retracted his fingers from around her soul - had felt, instead, the violent, burning pain that came with being turned into an immortal girl-child. she did not remember much of it. things were foggy around that time, when she was stuck in the no-man's land of somewhere-in-between vampire and human; and, eventually, she had been officially condemned to live as a pretty young girl for the rest of her life.

young girl. she was tired of being young. she was too old, too mean, too cold to be young.

jane's mood was thoroughly blackened. this whole 'ball' business wasn't helping either - she couldn't fathom why they wouldn't simply take out those who were speaking ill of them. well, perhaps she could. aro had always been one for grandiose acts, for pinning his prey with pleasant smiles and rich, lavish affection. that's how she supposed he wanted to catch the cullens red-handed. but she would much rather have simply made them scream.

so deep in moody thought was she, that she didn't even hear alec. it was odd - lately, she had seen less and less of him because of the preparations dividing them, which she hated. any time alec was not by her side, her fingers itched to find his hand (she was too afraid to be alone, but she would never say it out loud) but every time she reached out, he was somewhere else, doing some other job, helping some other person. yet another reason to dislike this forever young ball.

so when she heard the soft voice of her twin murmuring a quiet sister, she shut her eyes for a moment. relief - she was so relieved. alec had always been intuitive to her moods, and it was all the more impressive when he could locate her without a hitch.

"dear brother," she greeted, turning dulcet carmine eyes on to her twin. she was older than him - by a minute, perhaps - but sometimes when her moods got this dark she thought alec to be the older one. "come to seek refuge from the preparations as well?" jane queried, tilting a perfectly manicured brow upward, her head quirking to the side. the rich timbre of her brother's voice was already soothing her fraying nerves, the faintest of smiles playing across sweet, rosy lips.

[ALEC AMRIC VOLTURI]

A lesser vampire--for there were none above them, none but Aro, not truly, and he always knew--would not have seen Jane's smile for what it was, so busy running would they be. For many, Jane's smiles promised invitations of pain and death, her presence signifying that, however well stuff had been going before, things were about to get messy. Many, he knew, considered her a harbinger of death, and dreaded ever laying their eyes upon her in person, but Alec was not one of those. For him, his sister, his beloved twin--in so many ways what he could not be and what he wouldn't want to be because then Jane wouldn't be Jane so much as a carbon copy of himself, and vice-versa--was his augur of peace and he merciful blackness that blocked out the pain and the frustration and the anger.

His own temper, mellow compared to his sister's volatile fits of rages, was only that way because of her in the first place. In her own way, she provided the balance he needed to, in turn, balance her, and perhaps that was why they were so dangerous; why many an imposing vampire had turned tail and fled when their names reached the ears of even the strongest vampires. Even the Cullens, for all they had stood before them with their allies clustered all around, had feared for their own safety enough to gather others. If it weren't for their shield, Alec knew that Aro would have ordered the attack, and though sometimes he still found himself confused as to why Aro hadn't, he also knew that something in the seer's vision had scared him enough to back down with a cheerful smile and a light-hearted goodbye, laced with a violent promise that this was not forever.

It hadn't bothered Alec. He had simply smiled in a gesture of mock-benignity and turned around with the other Volturi guard, matching his sister's stride perfectly, doing his best to lend silent comfort to the rage he knew she felt whenever they were presented with Bella Cullen-nee-Swan, the one person who could foil their gifts. This was a source of vexation for Alec as well, but it was a vexation he felt in his downtime, the kind that felt like it was absently tugging at his mind--there, but not so prominent that he could not ignore it.

Jane had always been made of different things than him, though--better things, perhaps, in the mind of their master, a fact Alec was resigned to; felt nothing about anymore. Jane was the angel of the Volturi, the sweet-faced girl would could kill and main with a smile on her face, drawing out the thrill of her hunt. Alec had always preferred to get things over with quickly. He didn't draw his prey out, and he didn't smile in pleasure as he did it. Instead he watched, with a tinge of fascination on his face, before abruptly cooling towards his target and finishing them. He was the one who would lightly tease his target, and they'd relax, and then he'd kill them quickly and without thought or remorse.

But he always enjoyed watching Jane as she worked.

Jane's eyes on his person was like a balm to the irritation he didn't know he'd be carrying with him, her voice comforting, and instantly he felt the caustic smile on his face relax into something more genuine, though the amused edge never left. It never did, though; not really.

"I came to find you," he said simply. "There is only so much of the chatter I can deal with before I cannot contain myself." And though it was partially the truth--he did so bore of the talk of the lesser guards as they planned amongst themselves, their voices varying in range and pitch as they discussed who to attend with and what to wear and a mixture of excitement and nervousness over encountering the other covens and, more specifically, other vampires with better versions of their own gifts, their fear of being replaced coming in so strong that Alec was hard-pressed not to smile cruelly at their obvious insecurity--he knew Jane would know the real reason he came down here.

I worry for you sometimes, sister, when you spend too long from my side, and I yours.

[JANE MAGDALENA VOLTURI]

* but i would rather be crazy ,
• I WOULD RATHER BE MAD THAN LOST IN THE SILENCE HOLLOW AND DRAB •

as night began to take over once again, the last streaks of orange and pink saturated by the deep blue of evening, jane felt the calming presence of her brother settle over her like a blanket. her gaze flickered away from him again, back to surveying the uneven landscape of volterra for just a moment - a single lapse of breath - before she shut her eyes again.

she couldn't recall, really, if she had always been like this. the young jane that had grown up in the poor village, who had let her mother braid her hair (reluctantly), who had wrapped her body around her father's legs as he tried to bustle around the kitchen - that jane was eclipsed by the shadow of now-jane, who didn't let anyone braid flowers into her hair. now-jane was clinging desperately to every shred of anger she could. what happened when she stopped being angry? would she lose her power? would she lose the effective thrill of fright she saw in her prey's eyes when they spotted her? if she wasn't angry - if she wasn't fearsome - what was she?

what she did know, however, was that they - the two of them - had always been like this. she had always been impatient, impulsive, wanting it now instead of willing to wait for it later. alec was calm - he was collected - he was the perfectly unruffled version of her, the one who could kill without a blink. she? she had to massacre. she couldn't simply kill. but alec's cold insouciance when it came to killing was something that she treasured her brother for even more.

it was further proof that they were, in fact, meant to be together. if their matching blood, their near-identical dna, their affection where there was none for anyone else wasn't proof enough, this was. alec was, for all intents and purposes, the perfected calming agent to her explosive temper. jane wasn't sure whether it was a good thing or a bad thing to realize that, without alec, she wasn't sure precisely who she'd be. they were a dual package - they came together, they left together, and rarely (but more frequently now, it seemed) were they seen apart.

"i came to find you," she heard alec say just as a breeze was whispering its way through the bell tower. "there is only so much of the chatter i can deal with before i cannot contain myself." another smile, her voice mellisonant when she replied.

"i grow tired of all of this preparing." jane shifted where she stood, perhaps uneasily - she knew she could tell alec anything, and he her, but she didn't need to hear the words to know that he had missed her as much as she had missed him. sometimes, jane thought absently, she felt on the verge of saying it out loud to him - i dislike being apart from you so frequently - but words had always seemed inconsequential when i came to relaying feelings. she was strong. she was brutal, and fierce - and she didn't need words to tell her twin that she was tired of never seeing him.

"tell me, dear brother," jane began after a moment, tilting her head so that her gaze easier sought his, "are you awaiting the arrival of the ball with much anticipation?" each word was inflected with a great and terrible sardonic tone, and she spoke as if the words were exhausting merely to say. "are you near quivering with excitement over the upcoming date? i am not - but i fear we have somehow given the impression that this is something of great importance to us, and this is why they bother us with their trivial needs that keep us apart."

irritated - she was irritated because people were constantly needing from her and alec and they were not servants to them, but certainly they couldn't say no without getting a reprimand from aro. the idea of displeasing aro was near as unsettling as the idea of actually having to attend the ball at all.

[ALEC AMRIC VOLTURI]

Alec's final footsteps brought him to his sister's side, situated there firmly, as if a hurricane could not move him from that spot even if it brought against him its full force. It was where he felt most at ease, standing beside her, the one place not of Volterra's old hallways here he felt he had a permanent place. Beyond them, the remaining streaks of colour in the sky were being swallowed by the blue-black of night, and Alec felt a sense of prevailing calm that he usually felt when it was dark out. The night was a vampire's ally, and the ally of any true predatory, where they could leave their respective homes without fear of being discovered by the weak humans that they ruled over, even if the humans were unaware.

"I can hardly contain my enthusiasm," Alec said in reply to Jane's question, hearing the irritation in his sister's voice and repressing a small smile. "There is nothing I would rather do more than spend my many days watching the insecurities of others manifest in a mass-decorating spree." Another smile played across his face, like shadowy tendrils were pulling at the corners, resulting in a frightening, cruel expression that, to many, had no business being on a face as pretty as his; so young and, too many, so naive. But this "naive" face had seen more death and destruction than many of them had seen in a lifetime. Within the first ten years of his immortal life, at a time when, at a mental age of between twenty-three and twenty-six (they had never been entirely sure of their birth year; such was the curse of being a peasant), he should have settled in his village with an average wife and three children, he had been watching with cold excitement as his powers immobilised an army one-hundred strong; watched as Aro's eyes lit up in delight as his old enemies were wiped out, save for a few stragglers that fled before his mist could reach them.

And then they had brought the leader before them, the one who had foolishly lead the charge against Aro and the rest of the Volturi, and Alec still remembered the horror in her eyes as she saw her army die around her, their senses cut off as their own minds drove them insane before the Volturi guard fanned out to destroy them one by one, until only she remained standing--the nameless leader, once so proud, now merely dirt beneath their feet. It had been Jane's turn, then, and Alec had watched with that same cruel smile on his face as the horror had turned to pain, and as her stubborn silence and shock had given away to a scream of pain and torture, her body dropping to the ground and convulsing as she screamed and screamed, helping in the wake of his sister's power, and still Jane had smiled, and Alec had felt his affection for her sore.

No longer were they weak children, crying for the parents who never came as the village turned on them, dragging them from the forest path where they had gone to assist their mother. No longer would they have to watch the affection in a loved one's eyes turn to fear, for they were the only loved ones either them had left, excepting Aro. With one decisive battle, he and Jane had proven themselves capable, beyond a reasonable doubt. They were no longer weak, frightened children, burning and burning because no one came, because no one loved them but each other, because their parents proved too weak to love them over the fear of their own children.

Witches, they had called them. Witches. The witch children, the sorcerers who would bring divine wrath upon their small village, unless they were destroyed.

How the tides had shifted, when now, instead of fearing the divines, they were the divines. They were the ones who wrecked vengeance on others; they were the ones with the control and the power. They were feared still, yes, but now they were virtually untouchable, and anyone who pitied them, anyone who dared take a stand against them, would feel the true wrath of a divine with no mercy in their soul.

His mercy now was resolved merely for Jane, and for their master--Aro, who had saved them from the fire, who had slaughtered all who had wronged them. What else could they do but give him their undying loyalty?

Alec became aware of the fact that his hand, which had rested on the banister, had begun to crumble rock, a result of the iron-like grip he had placed on it, and without comment he withdrew his hand from the stone, lowering it to his side before he returned his mental attention to Jane, whom it never should have left.

"Perhaps we should remind them of what happens when they separate us, then," he said, and though his tone was speculative it was brimming with an undertone of hardened steel and the kind of ruthlessness that came from years and years of practice. "Aro's ball will only last for so long, and we will remind them how much they have to fear us, will we not, sister? Who would make a more striking pair than we, when the time comes?"

[JANE MAGDALENA VOLTURI]

* but i would rather be crazy ,
• I WOULD RATHER BE MAD THAN LOST IN THE SILENCE HOLLOW AND DRAB •

doubtless, the others in the coven could not have understood the bond that ran so deep between their precious witch twins. they were treasures, to be sure, but jane supposed that the other members of the volturi coven had no real inkling as to how much she truly loved her brother, and her brother loved her. it was probably a difficult thing for them to comprehend - to think that alec could possibly love anything, let alone jane, the two of them being creatures keen on destruction. yes, she had decided to keep the things that she cared for to a near bare minimum - alec and aro - because she had learned a great, terrible lesson from her parents: burn everything you love and burn the ashes.

she had since recovered, she thought, from the spurning of her parents after all, it is a very traumatic thing, to find out that your parents had, as it seemed, neglected to tell you they no longer loved you. well, perhaps that wasn't true; perhaps their parents had still loved them, jane reasoned, but they had been much too susceptible to fear for their love to overcome it. it was unfortunate that the two of them - jane and alec, strong and full of ferocity - had been born to cowardly parasites such as their parents had turned out to be. you shall have to cry for me, jane had said absently, preoccupied with admiring her new strength, when aro told her of those he'd killed, for i've no more tears to shed.

and ah, yes - they had proven their ferocity, had they not? fittingly, their redemption had come in ash and flame, burning up the corpses of their enemy. that had been when alec and jane had, officially, become fearsome - because there was a difference between eerie and ferocious, and they had bridged that gap with as little as a blink.

a crooked smile tugged at jane's reluctant lips, quirking the edges up. her gaze flickered back to her brother, dim cerise in the light of the night, and the slightest of laughs - a mere tinkling in the air, a soft puff of laughter - escaped her lips.

"perhaps we shall," she agreed after a moment, unable to keep the delight of such a thought out of her voice. "provided aro does not scold us into not doing so. but what we do until he does stop us, however, is fair game, is it not?"

that will teach them, were the unspoken words refusing to leave her lips. that will remind them what happens when you keep us apart. had they not learned from the example made out of our village?

indeed, it seemed they hadn't - and it seemed they were intent on casually pulling them apart, as if it were not a problem, as if it were no big deal. they didn't understand what it was like to have only two people in the world you truly cared about. they didn't understand what came about when two children went onto the pyre together.

"come, dear brother," jane said, turning from the balcony. "it would be nice to roam the streets, away from this nonsense about the ball, would it not?"

[ALEC AMRIC VOLTURI]

At Jane's own smile and the soft string of laughter, so light and airy that a mortal's ears might have actually mistaken it for a wind chime or a wisp of wing, Alec felt his own face relaxing again, and though the edges of his mouth remained pulled in in a trenchant smile, his red eyes glimmered fondly at her. With his hands lowered to his side, he drew his cloak further around him, and if he were human perhaps one might have suspected that he was trying to shield himself from a chill. He was not human, however, and human weaknesses like susceptibility to the sun's heat or the evening's cold had long since ceased to exist in him, along with the awkwardness he found most humans possessed; the ones who wore their clothes like burdens as opposed to extensions of them, or the ones who fought their burdens instead of embracing them, using them to further themselves.

"Yes," Alec said in response to Jane's first question, and for a moment he just watched his sister as she spoke, taking delight in the sound of her voice, as he usually did, and the reminder that she, at least, was still here; she, if nothing else, was a constant. Although, that was a proud term. Constant were the walls of Volterra castle, constant was Aro's incessant quest for power and the dangerous ambition that Alec could not ignore, though his loyalty to the other vampire was strong. To Jane, however, his loyalty was even stronger, and Alec had long since come to accept and embrace the fact that his loyalty would always, first and foremost, be to her.

Her delight in the idea of causing pain to others made Alec incline his head slightly, eyes narrowed into pleased slits, but there was still a niggling thought in the back of his mind, one born of worry for his twin, with whom he could sense discontent, in his own little way. It wasn't a trickling feeling, a pervasive thought, so much as something that made his own skin almost seem to crawl, like he was experiencing it for himself. It was a feeling that told him there was something wrong, and, more specifically, that there was still something bothering Jane, but he conceded, inwardly, that it was likely her anger at their forced separation. Even so, he watched her a little more closely than he otherwise would have, focusing his attention more on her instead of just sitting back and feeling her presence, as he usually did. Part of their bond, which ran far deeper--deep to the point where if Jane wasn't there it felt like a physical ache, and his worry would silently increase, and he would joke a little less, tease a little less, his mind more focused on where his sister was at the time, knowing she would return safely, but always wanting to be sure--than most suspected, had allowed him to feel her presence more than he actually saw it.

Alec watched Jane turn decisively away from the balcony--away from the lingering colours that still streaked the sky, fading with every second, vanishing with the sun so despised by their kind but so loved by mortal creatures too weak to see the allure of darkness--and had to suppress another smirk. They tended to come out more when she was around, he would not deny that, for even when Bella Swan (or Cullen, he supposed boredly, but the nuptials of the Shield were of no importance to him) had come, stupidly following her Cullen lover, Alec's eyes had been only for Jane as opposed to what treat she had brought for them, the same kind of smirk pulling at the edges of his mouth as he had spoken.

"Sister, they send you out for one and you bring back two... and a half. Such a clever girl."

Allowing himself a small chuckle, with the vocal chords of a boy, higher than his actual age, Alec turned to follow her, as he always would.

"Yes, and the streets should remember this day well, lest you deign not to grace them with your slippered feet once more." The words were said in absent jest, but there was a serious edge to them all the same. "Lead the way, dear sister." Say the word and I will follow you.

[JANE MAGDALENA VOLTURI]

* but i would rather be crazy ,
• I WOULD RATHER BE MAD THAN LOST IN THE SILENCE HOLLOW AND DRAB •

as much as the vibrant colors of the day were a wake up call for the young blonde, the dusky hues of night were enough to sooth her quickly fraying nerves - a balm almost as apt to work as her brother's presence. the volturi were lucky indeed that they had managed to save both twins, as opposed to one; jane could not imagine existing in a world where alec was not a part of her life. she knew that, should he have perished in the fire despite aro's efforts to save him, and she had survived instead, she would not have wanted to survive in the least. they had come into this world together; they would go out of together too, and that had been a fact that she decided long ago, whether alec was aware of it or not. and there was little doubt in her mind that her brother would have done the same for her.

she couldn't lie, though - not to herself, at least (as it were, the silver-tongued falsities came easier to her now, when she was speaking to others). if there was one thing about her vampirism that she was grateful for, it was the fact that she needed no sleep to replenish her systems. she need only tear opent the throat of a mortal man, to crush the light from his eyes (but you never drink from the body of the dead, she remembers from when aro had schooled the two of them - together, as usual, because they were together in everything; you must stop drinking before the light dies from their eyes, or they'll take you with them). she wasn't required to close her eyes and dream - and that is, perhaps, what she feared most, this dreaming. there wasn't much she feared in this life, but being left vulnerable to the memories locked away deep was one of the greatest.

jane didn't want to remember every single detail of her life before the burning; she didn't want to remember the agonizing pain of the flames licking at her skin as it ripped through her, how she had screamed for them to please put it out. somewhere in the flames and ash, her only thought had been try and reach out to take alec's hand (they had come into this world together, they would go out of it together too) but she had been unable. that was what had been the real kicker for jane. not only had they attempted to deprive her of her life, but in her last moments they had left her no chance to find solace for herself and her brother.

those memories were hanging over her like a cloud, and she had to bite the inside of her cheek until it would have bled before she could get it out of her head. she could feel alec's worry - almost as if it were rolling off of him in thick, heavy waves - but she didn't have the heart to tell him that she had yet to stop thinking about how she had almost lost him, how she had never stopped thinking about how she had almost lost him, how it felt like she was losing him to all of the hustle and bustle of the volturi ball.

(she also would have liked to tell him that it pleased her to no end to think that she was the thing to make that smile come to his lips, but alas - it was not in her nature to be so open.)

"lead the way, dear sis."

jane laughed lightly. even when she tucked her hands into the dark, velvet folds of her cloak, they itched to reach out and take his, to reassure herself that he was, in fact, with her and not someone else. she didn't reach out, but she wanted to.

as they made their progress down the clock tower and into the ever-darkening streets of volterra, jane spared a glance over at her brother. she paused a moment, taking her time to retrace every smooth plane of his face - his face which, had she been born a boy or he a girl, would have perfectly matches hers; his face, whose high, soft cheekbones were the same cheekbones she had, whose delicate nose was identical to her own - and sighed a little, a smile coming to her soft, full lips.

"i think, dear brother, that this ball business is rather tiresome," she began, quite nonchalantly as she resumed their pace from before. "but i shouldn't like to go with anyone save for you."

[ALEC AMRIC VOLTURI]

It was not that he had anything more than a vampire's typical aversion to the light. After all, Alec knew more than anyone that darkness could be found in even the most light environments, just as even the sun burned with dark spots. Fire, for example, was considering by many to be light, and one of the most treasured building blocks of humanity. Fire kept humans warm, cooked their food, and Alec remembered watching as sparks lept from the chipped rocks to the bundles of dry hay piled in the centre of their hut, which was little more than wood held together by dried clay and mud, covered with a thatched roof of more straw. Some of the houses would have holes in the room for the smoke to escape, but theirs had not, the smoke instead escaping through the door, which his mother had always left open while she cooked.

In the winter, that same fire had kept them warm, even when their clothes could not, though it didn't always work. There would always be one death in the harsh winters, and sometimes Alec would catch himself waking up in the middle of the night, checking to make sure Jane was stil alive and well in times of sickness, when the village became filled with the sounds of the sick and dying. Oftentimes, his much young self would reach out, resting his hand on her forehead to check to fever or chills, and he would never sleep until he was sure she would be okay. In the mornings, the bodies of the dead would be burned from all around, and the people would return to work their lands.

So yes, Alec was intimately familiar with fire as both a briner and destroyer of life. But now, when the sky above them was streaked with orange in the early morning, the colours looking like fire across the dark stretch, he would often curl his lips into a sneer and glance away. A vampire such as him had no need for fire anymore, after all, not when all it did was have the potential to take, though it was often useful for disposing of his enemies. It was merely another reason why he greatly preferred the night, whose soothing coolness had brought with it the wrath of their master all those years ago, when he had plucked their smouldering bodies from the flames, his vampires fanning out to slaughter the villagers who had let it happen even as he had changed them both. He had almost begged for the flames then, but he hadn't screamed. He had writhed, moved, tried to get the burn of this new change to stop, please stop, but in his writhing he had encountered Jane, had grabbed her in the wake of a transition from mortal to immortal as if his life had depended on it, and he hadn't uttered one single word. He had locked the pain in the back of his mind, dealt with it silently, because this pain was what was keeping him with Jane, and him with her. And he would deal with this pain a thousand times over if it meant he could keep her by his side.

Jane was the other half of him, in so many ways. It went beyond shared features, beyond twin smiles and a unified lust for destruction, in their own little ways. Where he was the absence of everything, she was the bringer of pain. She was the obverse of him, as he was of her, like there was an observe side of a coin; the heads and the tails, one side the face, the other a design of choice. She was the pain and the screams while he was the absence of everything, the madness; she was the sadistic smiles while he was the mocking smirks; she was the one who killed slowly while he stepped forward and did it quickly. And yet she was not the light to his dark, nor was he the light to hers. They were both light and dark, the two of them, because being the observe in behaviour did not mean they were in nature. They were twins, and they shared the light and the darkness equally between them, as they always would. He would stop Jane if he needed to, calm her, keep her safe, just as she would do the same for him. That they did it different mattered little to him--or rather, not at all.

The mention of the ball made Alec's eyes narrow as he thought again on the various preparations being made, of all the false smiles and hidden motives that would be hidden behind intricate masks the day of the celebration itself.

"It will be over soon," Alec said, his eyes sweeping the quiet houses of Volterra. "Then I will not be drawn from your side by idiots whose lives would be mine to take for keeping us apart as they do." He smiled darkly. "I would so love to make the complacent guard fear us again, instead of believing us children to be swaddled and cared for because of our appearances." Disdain flickered briefly in his eyes, particularly when he thought of a certain vampire, but he pushed it aside when he heard Jane's next comment, turning his head towards her quickly, eyes burning faintly with mixed emotions. Slowly, another smile spread across his face.

"Why, dear sister, there would be no greater honour for me," he said, and though the words were drawled there was a genuine note that he knew only she would be able to pick up on. "And won't the rest of them turn green when you outshine them all.

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