Chapter Text
Edythe, Sulpicia, and I were watching the sunrise as we stood outside on the balcony of the estate, side-by-side, recovering after more of our antics. The countryside was incredible, but I felt too clouded and distant to take in it properly.
Sulpicia only had one more full day with us before she had to go back to being the Countess, and I was trying to not think about it too hard, but watching the sun peek over the rolling green hills–as pretty as it looked–made me too aware that I couldn’t stop time, and it hurt. I hadn’t fully realized or appreciated how spoiled Edythe and I were last year, getting to spend every day and night with her for over a month. It was frustrating that I’d been human for so much of it; it made me wish that I could go back in time, enjoy it properly.
Even though I knew the sun itself wasn’t actually moving upwards, I wanted to reach into the sky, take it in my hands, and force it back down below the horizon. I wanted to call Marcus and Athenodora and tell them that Sulpicia wasn’t allowed to work for the next century, because Edythe and I needed her.
But, I couldn’t do either of those things, so I just stood helplessly and unwillingly as the sun slowly revealed itself to us.
“What’s wrong, Beau?” Sulpicia asked softly, shocking me. She must’ve seen something in my expression, which meant that she had been looking at me, not the sunrise. It honestly made me feel better. “Wait, now you’re smiling.”
I laughed a little, then turned my full attention to her, and lost my entire train of thought. The low rays of the sun lit up her skin, brightened her already vivid eyes, made me cloudy for a different reason. “Hm. Sorry. Nothing’s wrong anymore.”
She narrowed her eyes just a little. “Well then, what was wrong before?”
I shrugged, kind of wishing she hadn’t asked. “Gonna miss you.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Edythe sighed. “You’re going to be very busy soon.”
Sulpicia seemed to click on her stoicism, her expression flattening. “I promise I’ll make time for you both.”
The mood between us changed then, and a heavy feeling unsettled me. Saying this all out loud seemed to be a mistake, our little glass bubble of bliss shattering.
The silence between us was as painful and tense as it could’ve possibly been, and I felt more and more uncomfortable as it dragged on and on and on.
“This is killing me,” Sulpicia huffed, sounding surprisingly exasperated and desperate, given her earlier detachment. “How can I make this better?”
“Resign,” Edythe suggested, her tone playful, but kind of demanding. “Come back to LA with us for all of eternity.”
As much as I also wanted that, I worried that that was the wrong thing for her to have said.
Sulpicia looked away, staring straight at the rising sun, validating my worry. “I’m sorry you have to share me with my empire. I hope you two will be patient with me.” Her stoicism was back, and it was giving me whiplash.
I wanted so badly to go back to a few minutes ago, and eat my words and avoid talking about any of this.
“We’ll figure it out,” I finally replied. “I can be patient. You’re worth it.”
Edythe nodded. “You really are worth it, Picia. Please don’t worry. I was only kidding.”
She didn’t look away from the sun. “I’ll always worry, but I’ll also hold all of the time we’ve had together close to my heart.”
She was talking about it like it was ending, and it sent a sickening shot of anxiety through me. It was a hell of a lot easier to have sex than it was to talk about the details of our relationship. I thought hard for a way to sway the conversation to something lighter, something that sounded less like it was over. She wasn’t disappearing. She just had to work. It wasn’t a big deal.
“We’ll be okay,” I promised. “Let’s just focus on today, alright?”
Sulpicia’s breath became uneven, her chest rising and falling without rhythm. Her eyebrows furrowed, and her lips shook as she frowned.
She was crying.
“Hey, hey,” I murmured, putting my hand on her back. “Come here.”
She quickly turned and collided into me, wrapping her arms around me so tight I could barely breathe. I held her close, and Edythe made a soft, sad noise, then walked around me, hugging Sulpicia from behind.
“We’ve got you,” I whispered, resting my cheek on the top of her head.
Her breath was shaky, shallow, labored. I felt helpless.
Edythe kissed her shoulder, then buried her face in her wild curls. “Quit it, my sweet love. Listen to my thoughts.”
At first, I worried that Edythe’s words were too harsh, but Sulpicia let out a tiny laugh.
“But I can’t read his thoughts,” she complained, holding me even tighter, nuzzling her cheek against my chest.
“I can talk though,” I reminded her. “All you have to do is ask, and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
Edythe let go of her, taking a half-step back, so that Sulpicia could loosen her hold on me a little and look up at me. She kept her arms around my waist as she met my gaze, her expression unreadable.
“I love you so much that it hurts , Beau.”
I frowned. “I don’t want you to hurt.”
She just sighed, then released me, and walked inside to the bedroom. Edythe and I followed, and watched as she sat on the edge of the bed.
“You two talk,” Edythe said, smiling for a reason that I couldn’t begin to understand. “I’ll be downstairs.” She kissed me and Sulpicia on the cheek, then darted out of the room.
Officially confused, I sat beside Sulpicia. She immediately crawled onto my lap.
“Sweetheart,” I murmured, cradling her. “What’s going on?”
She exhaled slowly, resting her head in the crook of my neck. After a long pause, she mumbled something in Latin, then sighed. “Sorry. English is hard when I’m upset. Clunky.”
“I’ll start learning Latin soon.”
She laughed, full, robust. Happy, or amused, at least. “Darling, that’ll take lots and lots of time and patience for both you and myself. The Latin that I speak is unlike what you’d hear from…well, anyone in the world.” Her tone took a shift at the end, her amusement gone. “I use more formal, classical Latin when I speak to Athenodora. But, she’s younger than I am. I grew up speaking a form of Latin that doesn’t exist anymore. There are so many phrases that I can’t fully translate to any language, especially English…. Beau, I’m the only person of my generation alive. My true mother tongue only exists within me. It’s all I have left from my human years, and–like with everything else–Aro tried to forcibly remove it from my mind.”
The thought of Aro trying to erase the things that made her who she was made me feel sick. I held her a little closer. “Well, he’s dead, and I’m here. I have all the patience and time in the world to learn your language, Sulpicia. Even if it takes a century.”
She exhaled sharply, sounding genuinely irritated. “And there’s the painful love again. Why does it hurt so much? The things you say to me…they make me feel like I’m burning.”
That didn’t seem like a good thing, but she was cuddled up to me still. Staying put, on my lap, despite that fact that my love was…hurting her? “Is there something I should do differently?”
“Be less understanding. Be less kind. Be less thoughtful. Become a terrible listener. Ignore me.”
“Okay, well, you’re shit out of luck on that.”
She groaned, then kissed my jaw. “Let’s just have sex, I don’t want to talk about my feelings.” She continued to trail kisses down my jaw, up and down my neck. I didn’t want to upset her by pushing her away, so I just patted her back a few times, in a pointedly non-sexual way.
“Sex will be your reward after we talk.”
The kisses stopped, and she raised her head to look at me. Her eyes were soft. “I guess that’s a fair deal.” She rested her head back down in the crook of my neck, and few seconds went by before she spoke again. “There’s a lot on my mind, but at the core of everything, I’m afraid of losing you. I’m afraid you won’t always be willing to wait for me.”
“You don’t need to worry about that.” I absentmindedly detangled ends of her hair with my fingers. “I can endure missing you.”
“I hope so,” she whispered. “Falling for you has been one of the most terrifying things that has ever happened to me, because I need you and Edythe. I’ve never needed anyone before. I hate it, and sometimes it makes me want to close myself off, but you always figure out a way to disarm me. I don’t even think you do it on purpose. That vulnerability makes me feel weak.”
“Being vulnerable doesn’t make you weak.”
“That’s why I said it makes me feel weak,” she retorted. “I know I’m not weak. However, I’m not impervious. I worry about the woman I’ll turn into if I lose you and Edythe.”
“You are not going to lose us. I promise.” I wrapped my arms fully around her, holding her to me. “I need you, too. We both do. Hell, I’d be dead without you.”
She laughed under her breath. “That is true.”
“What’s the real reason you saved me? I mean, you barely knew me at the time.”
“That’s a loaded question.”
“Is it?” It seemed pretty simple to me.
She raised her head, and kissed me on the cheek. “Do you want the full explanation? I’ll have to start at the very beginning.”
“Yes, please.”
She wiggled around in my lap. “Okay, then lemme go.”
“Oops.” I hadn’t noticed that my hold on her was that strong. I dropped my arms, releasing her. “Sorry.”
She laughed as she crawled off me, moving to sit cross-legged on the bed. I mimicked her, and we sat facing each other, our knees touching.
She took a breath before speaking. “It begins with the moment that I read Edythe’s thoughts in the driveway when I first arrived, as she sat in that old twenties car, with you behind her in her Aston,” she started. “Such a shame what Royal did to those poor cars…. A tragedy for Edythe.”
“My memories of that night are so murky,” I admitted. I remembered vague details of when Royal had attacked, mostly that–at some point–I had been sitting alone on a mountain road, and had called Sulpicia for help. I remembered how soon she arrived, how seriously she took my pain. “I remember you helping me, though.”
Her eyes got wide, sad. “Oh, Beau. When you called me, I thought I was going to die from the pain I felt for you. You were so upset, and so cold…. ” She shook her head. “If I start talking about that, I’ll forget to say what I want to say.”
I nodded, knowing how easily she could derail from her own stories. “So, you read Edythe’s thoughts. What happened next?”
“I saw the most beautiful, pure, excruciatingly sorrowful love story I’ve ever witnessed…between an immortal and a human, no less!” She was getting lost in the memories now, looking at me without really looking at me. “As every single thought and memory Edythe had with you up until that point unraveled within my own mind from hers, I felt increasingly overwhelmed and awestruck. You, in all your glory, like a god in the mind of a child’s, like a sun in a sky that has never been touched by light, like fresh blood after starvation.
In her thoughts, you were backlit like an angel, always a constant aura of gold around you. This is still true, of course, but I didn’t know you, yet. Seeing a stranger like that felt devastatingly profound.” She paused, staring into my eyes for a moment. “I met you with the most biased mind anyone could have. Edythe’s love for you was–and is–so strong, so whole, so emotionally potent, that it changed me instantly. I couldn’t look at you and see some regular, human man. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop seeing you as Edythe sees you. It was very, very confusing.”
I wasn’t sure exactly what to say, so I just let her continue.
“I tried to talk to you like I would any human I had to interact with against my will, but you were too…weird. I wanted to figure you out, to push your buttons, to get inside your head and see why you were the way you were.” She pursed her lips. “One part of me was in love with you. Another part of me wanted to experiment on you like you were some alien creature. And, the last little bit of me saw you through the eyes of a leader. You were, within the first two days of me knowing you, my unrequited love, my lab rat, and my potential recruit.”
That was…a lot to take in. It made me remember all the times her and I talked about horribly morbid things, how often she seemed to test me. However, all while she was doing that, she was caring for me. Loving me. “You aren’t exaggerating about this.”
“Not in the slightest, Beau.”
“Huh.” It made sense, but I had to admit that the lab rat thing kind of stung. “So, how’d you cope with that? What’d you do next?”
“We have to go back a few steps,” she murmured, her eyebrows furrowing. “When I first shook your hand. Your big, blue eyes, so bright in the white lights of Edythe’s garage, looking down at me with no fear. Your hand was so warm, soft, weak. You said: ‘ it’s an honor to meet you, Sulpicia’. I tried so hard to dig into your mind, but I saw nothing. Nothing except for those stupid blue eyes.”
“Rude.”
She smiled. “You were so handsome for a human. But, that moment, when I shook your hand, was when that split of my feelings for you happened. At the time, I thought the safest of those perspectives was looking at you as though you were a potential recruit. I thought I could stick with that, but it was impossible.
As I wrested with feelings of love, I wanted to keep you away from harm. As I became more interested in your strange existence, I wanted to sit and learn about you, not teach you or train you.” Her eyes drifted past me as she stared unseeingly at the wall. “And then you told me that you saw yourself as vampire prey, that you knew your place on the food chain, and were happy with it. What the fuck was I supposed to do with that? Never, never in my almost three-thousand years had I ever met a human who would say something so outrageous, so insane, so…so full of self-hatred.”
I didn’t remember telling her that, but she wasn’t wrong about the self-hatred thing. “I kind of hated everything back then. Except for Edythe. And you.”
She was quiet for a moment, and then she laughed a little. “You reminded me of myself.”
That one took me by surprise. “Really?”
“Yes.” She looked down at her hands in her lap. “You and I reacted very similarly to the poor ways our…exes treated us. After I was free from Aro, I wanted the world to either fuck off or burn, and I wanted the same for myself.” She looked up, meeting my eyes. “I related with your darkness, with your glorification of murder, with your resigned state of being, and your flagrant, dangerous lack of fear.”
“That’s a long list,” I replied, still trying to digest everything. “You’re right though. McKayla messed me up.”
She nodded. “Relating with you in that way added to my love for you, to my desire to get close with you in a wholesome, selfless way.” Looking away again, she smiled. “And then you accidentally killed a cartel leader, and all you cared about was the fact that you ruined Edythe’s dinner. A man after my own heart. My cute, deranged little human. Again, the desire to study you bubbled up, as well as my desire to recruit you.”
It was weird to be confronted with so many memories I could barely recall, and even weirder to hear about how much she struggled with how she felt about me. I hadn’t had to struggle at all in my path to loving her. Not even a little. “Is that how you still feel?”
“No, no.” She looked at me then, her expression serious. “My love for you won over everything. You’re not an experiment, nor are you a pawn. You’re the man I love.”
I smiled. “So, if I’m remembering correctly, Edythe’s family visited after the cartel deal. Anything to say about that?”
She shrugged. “It was terrible, for you and for her. I was glad I could help deal with the aftermath.” There was a sudden wicked glint in her eyes. “I was so proud of Edythe for tearing off Royal’s arm.”
“What?”
“You don’t remember that?”
All I could remember was being in the living room with all the Cullens, and that there was an argument. “Not anymore.”
“Do you remember provoking Royal?”
“I provoked Royal!?”
She nodded. “You were crazy, Beau.”
“I needed to be committed.”
“No. You just needed to become a vampire.”
That made me smile. “It definitely helped heal me.”
“Good thing, too.” She patted my knee. “Edythe was worried vampirism would make you worse, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t. Had I been wrong…well, you would be underground with the other newborns right now.”
“Yikes.”
“Yikes, indeed.” Her smile was warm, a little amused. “Should I continue?”
I nodded. “Please.”
“The next night, you proposed to Edythe,” she breathed, her tone full of adoration. “My sweet, lonely Edythe, finally engaged…and to a worthy, wonderful, romantic man. Right after, I started to feel crushing guilt for loving you. I masked it as well as I could, blaming it on Edythe’s thoughts rather than my own, but she knows how to get into the depths of my mind.” She laughed suddenly, and loudly, kind of interrupting herself. “And then I accidentally got you drunk!”
“You…got me drunk?” I thought about when I proposed to Edythe, which I remembered. We went to the beach, I tricked her into looking at a ship that wasn’t there, and I got on one knee, and asked her to marry me. I remembered getting home, being excited to tell Sulpicia, and then…nothing. “I don’t remember that at all. ”
“We had some drinks to celebrate, and I gave you some of my wine.” Her smile was mischievous. “I didn’t think about it’s potency. I started asking you ridiculous questions about your morality, what your limits were. It made me fall more in love with you, watching you try to answer my questions eloquently as you got more and more inebriated. That was when I half-ordered Edythe to change you as soon as she could.”
“Half-ordered?”
She pursed her lips. “I wanted to put my foot down, force her to do it, but I couldn’t handle upsetting her. So, I just helped her realize she was more prepared to turn you than she realized by essentially threatening her. Not my greatest moment, but I believe I was in my right to press the issue. You staying human was only hurting you.”
“That it was.”
“So,” she continued. “After you had fallen asleep, Edythe confronted me about my feelings for you. I tried to evade it, but she kept pulling my own thoughts out and showing them to me. Regardless, I continued to be coy, so she just gave up and reassured me that I was allowed to love you, but I wasn’t allowed to touch you. I made her promise to keep quiet about everything. It was simple, but it was the tipping factor. After that, I couldn’t deny how I was falling in love with you all on my own, outside of the influence of Edythe’s thoughts. I started loving you for my own reasons.”
I grinned. “Sap.”
“Guilty as charged.”
I was surprised she hadn’t deflected that. “So, what then?”
“Then, I tried to not listen too hard to you and Edythe having sex, and continued to just…exist. I no longer worried about what way I should’ve seen you, and just saw and experienced you without thinking too much about it,” she answered. “And that leads us to my departure to Italy, and yours to Forks.”
“The departure you never took.”
“Mhm.” She looked away, seeming to gather her thoughts. “I was going to run across the continent, swim through the Atlantic, but I couldn’t stop worrying about you. I had reached Four Corners before I turned around and ran to Forks. Something about all that desert, stretching out for miles and miles. It made it impossible not to think about you. I knew that McKayla was there, probably waiting for any opportunity to hurt you, and that made me think of Aro.” She took a deep, slow breath. “So, I went to Forks. I already knew where your house was because of Edythe’s thoughts, so I went straight to it. Hid in the trees.”
“Was I already there?”
“No.” Her mouth pulled to one side. “I feel a little guilty for not just innocently knocking at your door once you did show up, but I was worried I would scare you, and I really had no business being there. As I watched you from the forest, I fought with myself the entire time. My split feelings for you bubbled up again, and I started to convince myself that I was there to protect a potential recruit.”
“Is that why you were there?”
“Not in the slightest.” She sounded ashamed. “But it was easier than admitting that I’d fallen in love with a human. If anyone asks, that’s still the truth. Doesn’t mean you ever have to actually join, but…that’s the story.”
My eyebrows furrowed. “What do you mean?”
Her explanation came out in a rush. “I lied to Athenodora and Marcus about why I stayed in the States. I told them that you were an invaluable asset, and I had to be with you until you were turned and stable. It is remarkably convenient that you’ve already done work for us.”
“So, everyone thinks I’m here to join?”
“Kind of, yes.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Sulpicia.”
“What was I supposed to do? Tell them I was falling in love with a human? Breaking my own laws?”
I just stared at her, because being honest was exactly what she should have done.
“Beau, you don’t understand how politics work. It was the only way I could justify being away for so long. I never, ever go on solo missions. If it looked like I was just taking some fun vacation, Marcus would’ve forced me to come back.” She frowned. “I didn’t want to leave. It’s what I had to do to have them let me stay.”
“And if the truth gets out?”
She seemed to get less upset, her expression softening. “You saved Lawrence. You publicly won a match against Felix. My work is done, the proof of your excellence is there. It may ruffle some feathers that I was dishonest, but…was I truly entirely dishonest?”
“Were you?”
“I mean, yes, but I could easily make an argument that both my love and your usefulness motivated me to stay, even if the latter is less than one-percent true.”
Politics were so convoluted. “Well…let’s just go back to the story. Did you see McKayla break in?”
“Of course,” she answered. “I wanted to gut her then, but how could I have explained that away? I had no proof that she was going to hurt you. Plus, human affairs are human affairs. I told myself–a sort of compromise–that I would only intervene if I had evidence that your life was in immediate danger, even though I wanted to act much sooner.”
“Was it hard for you to…wait?”
“Very.” She reached up, and trailed her fingertips across my cheek, down my jaw. “I had no idea she had a gun until she pulled it out, but when she said you were stupid, and then called Edythe a whore….” She hissed slowly, quietly. “Controlling myself was ultimately impossible. I was already at the door before she pointed the gun at you.”
I smiled, slow at first, then completely. “Then you saved me.”
“Then I saved you,” she echoed, her expression as warm as her voice. “So, in conclusion, I stalked you and interfered in your life because I love you. I guess I could’ve just told you that, instead of that long-winded explanation.”
Oh, yeah. I’d asked a question. “I liked the explanation. You’re a good storyteller.”
“When I want to be,” she replied with a wide smile. She looked happy again, her eyes sparkling a little.
“Do you feel better?”
She nodded, still grinning. “Remembering how hard it was to love you in the beginning reminds me how far I’ve come. I can handle a few uncertainties.”
“Me too," I agreed, taking her hands in mine. “I love you. You’re stuck with me and Edythe.”
She gently squeezed my hands. “Just how I want things to be.”
While I had no idea what the future held for us–and was frankly too afraid to ask–I felt the connection between her and I stabilize in a way it hadn’t before. She was right about there still being uncertainties, but we loved each other. For now, that was all I needed to be sure of. The details could wait.