Number 5- "I wouldn't mind death as long as I go out with your name on my lips" with Aro and fem!reader?
Seeking Death
a/n: yessssss as i wrote this i realized just how beautifully perfect this quote is for him, great pairing anon! this one's a bit longer and i served it up a hot side of angst. let me know what you think <3 Characters: Aro x Fem!Reader (used y/n = your name) Word Count: ~4100 | 15 min. read time Warnings: (light) Breaking Dawn spoilers, and of course angst/fluff
Note: vrăjitoare = Romanian word for 'witch'
Y/n had grown tired of the world. The longer she existed – living no longer felt like the right word – the more the planet felt like dusty decay. People were born, lived, and died all in the span of an eye blink.
She envied humans the ephemerality of their lives. It made moments sweeter, love stronger, and gave a sense of urgency to their day-to-day. For y/n, who’d been made immortal thousands of years before, time felt torturous and death was the sweet release hanging just out of reach. All the people she’d known and loved had died. The people she’d met in the years, decades, and centuries immediately after her transformation had died as well. Now, she saw a blurred parade of faces.
Meeting other vampires had once been a thrill, but at this point even they felt inexplicably dull. So many of them were so young and naïve, still clinging to the morality of mortals and basking in the afterglow of a time-limited existence. The drudgery of existing for close to a millennium would wear them down, eventually, like it had worn her down. But, in the meantime, she couldn’t stand to be around them.
So, she chose to exist far from others: humans and vampires alike. There was nowhere on Earth she hadn’t seen before, but occasionally the faintest whisper of a thrill could still be found in the solitude of nature. She chased that fleeting sensation to the remotest corners of the globe, challenging herself to go further into the wild then she’d gone before.
She’d stayed a while on Easter Island, her only company the large stone monoliths made by a civilization of humans long dead. Alaska and northern Russia had also afforded some opportunities for life away from the world. She found the cold agreed with her much more than heat, but after a century even snow-swept mountain vistas lose their luster. She called a few remote islands in the South Indian Ocean home for a time; after that, a cave in the Alps, an abandoned lean-to in the Amazon, a plateau in Tibet. She didn’t stay anywhere for too long before moving on, and she knew that her restlessness was reaching a fever pitch. Although she’d never imagined herself dying by another’s hand, it seemed that death was now a luxury she’d be made to beg for. And so, with that intent in mind, she set off back into the world of the living, hoping to find a vampire or two who would be willing to oblige her final request.
It was in her travels to this end that she first heard of the Volturi. The idea of a semi-governmental body in the world of vampires was not unknown to her; before this Italian regime, the Romanian coven had been long in power. She’d met the leaders of the Romanian coven – Stefan and Vladimir – and found them mildly intriguing for a time. She’d even lived amongst them for a brief period, but found that ruling over others was almost as boring as being ruled over. Despite Stefan’s objections (and eventually, pleading), she’d left the coven to strike out on her own. It seemed in the time since she’d left the world of organized vampiric clans behind, there’d been a change in leadership, and a rather bloody one. It was listening to the tales of the Volturi’s violent overthrow of the Romanians that piqued her interest; surely if the Volturi were threatened enough by other vampires in power, they’d be happy to rid themselves of one other potential rival. If needed, y/n was prepared to make direct threats to their rule to ensure that they responded with the violence she was hoping for.
With a plan in mind, y/n arrived in the sun-soaked city of Volterra. Y/n had lived in a region now known as Italy when she’d been transformed from mortal to vampire, freezing her forever at the age of 24. When she’d last drawn a breath, this land had been known as Maegna Graecia. Y/n supposed that, if anywhere in the world held the mystical title of ‘home’ for her, it was Italy. Therefore, it seemed tragically fitting and oddly poetic that this would be the site of her demise.
Volterra was densely inhabited by humans, a fact which surprised y/n in a vague, disinterested way. The Romanians had preferred to isolate themselves from humans, holing up in expansive, heavily fortified castles in the mountains. These Italian vampires seemed much more content to surround themselves with mortals. Y/n had little doubt that there was likely a strategic motivation for having one’s food source so easily accessible and apparently so ignorant to the threat that lived among them.
Unsure of how to find the Volturi herself, y/n decided that if she was patient enough, the Volturi would likely come to her. From all that she’d heard from the other vampires who had told her of the Volturi, they were keen administrators of their own territory and would no doubt know if an unidentified vampire loitered about long enough.
Careful to avoid the strong beams of sunshine that snaked through the narrow streets of Volterra, y/n allowed herself to explore the city, taking note of the new gadgets and unusual styles of dress that the humans wore. For all their weaknesses and shortcomings, humanity was an insatiably fad-driven race of beings, and it brought y/n some much needed amusement.
By the fourth day in Volterra, y/n finally had enough cloud cover to brazenly explore the unshaded outskirts of the city. As she meandered down a dusty road between two vineyards, a figure came into view ahead of her. To mortal eyes, he would appear a man, although y/n saw clearly the red tint on his eyes and the vaguely marbleized quality of his skin. He had dark, shoulder-length hair and was wearing an outfit of all-black. Exquisitely tailored Italian silk, y/n registered. If there was one quality that most vampires shared, it was a love for beautiful things.
Unafraid, y/n inclined her chin deferentially to the vampire by way of greeting, keeping her gaze even and her expression neutral. He returned her greeting with an interested smile, his head cocking slightly to one side as he approached her.
“Enchante, mademoiselle,” he purred, gently grasping y/n’s hand and placing a chaste kiss on the back of her knuckles. “I do not believe I’ve had the pleasure.” Y/n watched as he ran her hand through his fingers, his eyes darting back and forth as if reading something only he could see. A sad smile spread across his lips as his eyes met hers.
“You have a request for me and my companions.” His statement was not a question, and the certainty with which he said it revealed that he’d been in her thoughts. Y/n was not surprised nor offended; she’d met a fair amount of vampires who were imbued with certain powers during their transformation from mortal to immortal. She herself had not acquired such gifts, but she had assumed that the Volturi would have at least some number of their contingent with extra abilities.
“I do,” she agreed, her voice even. She watched carefully as he considered this admission, his fingers still tracing over her hand. No doubt she had quite a lot of memories for him to sift through, and she found that the intimacy of the act was not unpleasant.
“It’s a shame to lose one among us who’s seen so much,” he mused, his eyes still flicking through her memories. “Perhaps, I could convince you to reconsider.” He looked at her with hope in his eyes. Y/n was oddly struck by that. It had been so long since she’d felt cared about by another that she’d forgotten the feeling. Lonely wasn’t the right word for how she felt, for she didn’t find herself missing companionship. Unlike many other vampires, she’d never found a mate, and had largely given up on the idea. Resigned to an existence of isolation, she’d become quite comfortable with solitude. But to see another so affected by the idea of her not existing, it sparked a flame in her that she’d long thought extinguished.
She wasn’t convinced that this spark would be enough to change her mind, but she couldn’t help to smile back at the man.
“I’d be willing to hear arguments on the matter,” she quipped. The vampire smiled a genuine grin of eagerness as he let her hand fall from his.
“Please, allow me.” He offered his arm to her – a gallant gesture that earned a demure smile from y/n – and led her back towards the city.
*****
That day had been almost forty years ago. Y/n had never expected to find her mate in the Volturi, the vampires she’d planned to petition to end her existence, but fate clearly had other plans for her.
Aro had proven to be an exciting partner, and he’d rekindled y/n’s long dormant zeal for exploration. Together, they’d traveled the world, and although y/n had seen it all before, she found that with Aro it felt as if she were given a fresh pair of eyes. Sunsets were more vivid, flowers more fragrant, mountains taller.
Through their travels, Aro had introduced her to many vampires he knew scattered throughout the world. She hadn’t realized just how many of her kind there were, and she felt a certain affinity for the others she encountered. The Cullens were a particularly intriguing coven, subsisting entirely on animal blood and welcoming a mortal girl into their fold as one of their mates. Y/n saw Aro’s keen interest in the particulars of that storyline, and she felt herself similarly enthralled by the unorthodox practices of Carlisle and the handful of vampires who lived alongside him.
Although y/n was unconcerned by the threat of mortals knowing about vampires, Aro and the other Volturi were deeply unsettled by this, and it was the crux of their leadership to protect the secrecy of vampire kind from humans. To an even greater extent than his companions Marcus and Caius, Aro was particularly discomforted by the threat of exposure, and it was on this premise that he took great exception to Carlisle’s practices with the human girl, Bella.
And so, she found herself alongside the entirety of the Volturi coven – the mercurial Jane and her diffident brother Alec included, amongst others who lived under the Volturi’s protection in Volterra – standing in a large field in the Pacific Northwest across from the Cullens, an assortment of other vampires, and several large werewolves. Y/n had crossed paths with werewolves only a handful of times in her existence. They were natural-born enemies of vampires, and the only creatures y/n knew of that could kill a vampire (save other vampires, of course), so to see such a large pack apparently co-existing with the Cullens was a shock.
The werewolves bristled and growled eagerly, their sharp canines glinting in the late afternoon light. Y/n sidled closer to Aro, a coil of fear twisting around her gut. Not fear for herself, but fear for him. Aro was the leader of the Volturi, and she could practically see the target their opponents had placed on him from across the expanse of bluegrass. Next to her, Aro placed a protective hand along her back, his eyes dancing in her direction for the briefest of moments. Y/n knew he felt the same fear twining around his core for her, and the ferocity with which they would protect another was undeniable.
Tearing her eyes away from the wolves, y/n’s eyes grazed the other vampires assembled next to Carlisle and his clan. She recognized a few, including Benjamin with his smug smirk and the Denali coven, a group of vampires with similar “vegetarian” lifestyles to the Cullens. There were a few faces y/n did not recognize, including two striking Amazonian women with luminous cinnamon skin and an eccentric looking vagabond who hung back from the group near the treeline, uncertainty in his eyes.
Then y/n saw them. The Romanians. Stefan and Vladimir had aged since she’d last seen them almost 1500 years ago. Their skin was so white it was almost translucent and their bodies looked stiff with disuse. They had the same diffident, superior expressions y/n remembered. In the same instant that y/n saw them, Stefan saw her. A murderous glitter flickered in his red irises as his lips curled into a snarl, his body springing into action.
When y/n had decided to leave the Romanians, Stefan had implored her not to, and promised her a seat beside him as his equal, his mate, and the queen-apparent of the vampires. Y/n had known that Stefan’s affections for her far outweighed the benign friendliness she felt towards him for some time. Partly out of self-preservation and partly to avoid parting on poor terms, y/n had lied and told Stefan that she refused his offer based on the fact that she didn’t want that kind of power. In truth, y/n cared little for a potential mate’s power - or lack thereof; she had simply wanted to exit the Romanian coven without having to kill any of them. They’d been kind enough to let her live with them for nigh on three hundred years, and she’d enjoyed their ostentatious, violent lifestyle for a time.
Y/n saw the irony of her arrival in that clearing from Stefan’s perspective. The memory of her rebuke was fresh in his memory, that much was crystal clear from the savagery with which he responded to seeing her. And now, to see her standing next to the leader of the Volturi, the de facto vampire monarch, exposed her true motivations for turning down Stefan’s offer of eternal partnership. Y/n hadn’t anticipated meeting the Romanians here, but it seemed she had gravely underestimated the lengths they were willing to go to exact their long-desired revenge on the Volturi for usurping them centuries ago.
As these facts coalesced in y/n’s mind in an instant, she watched as Stefan, shortly followed by Vladimir, sprinted across the field. The ghostly white faces of the two Romanians were twisted into masks of bloodlust, and they were closing the gap between them with astounding speed. Acting on instinct, y/n threw her arm in front of Aro, shoving him backwards with as much force as she could muster. Aro was powerful, and larger than her, but the element of surprise worked in her favor. She felt Aro lift off his feet and begin hurtling backwards, away from the two Romanians closing in. In the distance behind them, the Cullens and their counterparts were all wearing various expressions of surprise, befuddlement, and horror. It seemed that the Romanians’ offensive was not part of the plan. Y/n hoped this would work in her favor, but she was unable to give that hope much thought before she was face-to-face with her two former associates.
Stefan reached her first. In a fit of spurned rage, he grabbed her forearm and began wheeling her towards Vladimir, a few steps behind him. Despite y/n’s initial assessment that Stefan had looked marbleized and immobile, the sheer force with which he seized her knocked her off balance. Her feet dug into the soft, muddy ground up to her ankles, but Stefan had already brought her in Vladimir’s direct line of attack. Y/n vaguely registered movement around her as the rest of the vampires and wolves assembled in the field sprang into combat. Vladimir’s lips peeled back, revealing his fang-like canines as he cocked his head, his eyes bored onto the side of her neck, his target.
Y/n had just enough time to crouch down. Stefan’s iron grip on her forearm didn’t yield, however, and she felt a sickening splintering sensation in her shoulder - accompanied by a sound like shattering glass - as her arm threatened to snap off at the root. Vladimir wasn’t able to correct, and he sailed over her head, grasping futilely at the air as he tried to stay his momentum. Before he’d hit the ground, y/n grabbed Stefan’s ankle, the closest part of his body to her, and wrenched his foot with all her might. The same crackling sound preempted the gratifying snap as his foot broke clean off his leg. He collapsed to his knee, loosening his grip on her arm, a roar of pain mingled with blind rage erupting from his throat.
Y/n seized her momentary advantage, rising to her full height and gripping the sides of Stefan’s face. She began to twist, fighting against him to wrest his head from his neck. The sides of his pale face cracked, and he snarled viciously at y/n, his red eyes boring into her. She saw nothing but hatred there, and a small distant part of her felt sadness for him. Stefan had been an entertaining companion, but his heart was shallow and fickle; one of many reasons y/n knew she could never love him.
As that spark of pity for Stefan flickered through her, y/n felt hard arms wrap around her neck from behind, lifting her off the ground. An accented voice laughed coldly in her ear.
“Nice to see you again, vrăjitoare,” Vladimir sneered as he put his arms to the task of twisting her neck. Y/n knew immediately that Vladimir had outmatched her; he was taller than she, so she wasn’t able to catch her footing, and with him behind her she had almost no chance of overpowering him, a tall order even from the front with proper footing. As y/n felt the flesh on her neck erupt into a thousand splintering fissures, she felt a panic set in.
Panic over death was not something y/n had felt since she’d lost her mortality. Even before she’d become world weary and set off on the path to seek her own demise, death hadn’t held the mystique over her that it had when she’d drawn breath as a human. But now, as she saw darkness seeping in at the edges of her vision, there was an indisputable terror coursing through her body. Y/n realized it wasn’t terror of dying so much as it was terror over not being with Aro.
Aro. She had lost track of him since she’d made sure he was clear from danger, but she knew without a doubt that he was watching. Undoubtedly, he was probably making his way back towards her at that very moment. Y/n could picture his expression, the franticness with which he would try to close the distance between them to prevent her demise. She knew his eyes would be trained on hers, gliding over her features, trying desperately to stretch out the fractions of instants between now and her death. Y/n felt a pang of regret rip through her; she refused to allow Aro to see her in her final moments giving in to pain and horror. He’d once rescued her from the edge of death; how ironic that he should now bear witness to it. The least she could do was give him an image of her at peace before she could no longer give him anything.
Y/n let herself relax into Vladimir’s death grip as she called up images of her life with Aro.
Their first hunt together, the fascination and adoration with which Aro let y/n pick her target… the shy way Aro had first shown her his chambers (“our chambers”, he’d called them) at the Volturi’s compound in Volterra… the swell of pride in his chest when he introduced her to old acquaintances he’d made across the globe, always using the term “my long awaited mate” to present her to the vampires he considered friends… the gleeful way Aro would scroll through her infinite memories, holding her palm against his bare chest with both hands…
These images, and the bone-deep serenity they conjured in her chest, allowed y/n to completely surrender herself to the inevitability of death. She waited, her face relaxed and her eyelids fluttering closed, for the final fracture before darkness took her.
But it never came. Instead, y/n felt Vladimir’s arms slacken like loose tree trunks around her neck as an ear splitting crack resounded across the field. Y/n fell to her knees, grabbing instinctively at her neck, a white hot pain radiating around her throat like a necklace. She was distantly aware of a figure stepping over her towards Stefan, who’d remained where she’d left him to watch greedily as Vladimir had made to end her. Y/n looked up to see Aro, his eyes afire with bloodlust, as he emitted a guttural growl and ripped Stefan’s head from his body by the root of his white-blonde hair. Stefan’s severed head dropped to the ground, his face still contorted in a frozen mask of shock and fear.
Aro sank to his knees in front of y/n, cradling her face gently between his palms.
“My love,” he murmured, his voice laced with horror. Y/n looked up at him, and although it had been thousands of years since she’d last used lungs, she felt breathless. His eyes poured into hers with unbridled intensity, and as he saw her return his gaze his face broke into a cry of relief. He pressed his lips to hers - messily and needily - as his hands raked through her hair. He gripped her close. Around them, y/n heard the sounds of combat lessening, and Carlisle’s gently but firmly given command of “enough!” silencing the final few moments of battle. Y/n cast a quick glance around; aside from Stefan’s and Vladimir’s headless corpses, it seemed that the remainder of the Volturi and the Cullens’ assembled forces hadn’t suffered any casualties. She noticed a werewolf limping away from the field, favoring one of its legs, and saw Carlisle helping one of his children - the surly looking dark-haired one who was mated to Bella - up from the ground.
“Why didn’t you fight? Why did you give up?”
Y/n had hardly registered Aro’s worried murmurs as questions until he repeated them several times. Gently, he guided her face back until her eyes were square with his, his palms still framing her face and stroking her tenderly, careful to avoid the ragged wounds on her neck.
“Why did you give up, mi amore? Why were you going to let him end you?”
Y/n had difficulty grasping Aro’s meaning at first. She felt her mind tiring as the adrenaline of battle wore off. Slowly, the moments she had thought to be her last slid back into her memory: the surrender she’d thrown up in the face of certain death, the peace she’d felt at recalling the beautiful life she’d discovered with Aro, all at a time when she’d thought herself entirely drained of capacity to care for beauty anymore. As the pieces fell into place, she realized that Aro had indeed been watching her at what she’d thought was the end, but that he had misinterpreted what he’d seen. He’d seen her giving up, when in fact she’d been giving over to the happiness he’d given to her.
Suddenly intent on correcting his mistake, she brought her hands to his, lacing her fingers with his as she brought their hands to his chest, inviting him to read her memories.
“Was it not enough, my sweet? Our life together?” His voice shook with emotion as he contemplated his deepest fear: that he had saved her selfishly from the end she’d wanted, and not given her anything in return.
“My love, no, I was not giving up,” she replied. She saw Aro listening and also watching, her memories becoming his as he watched her memories. His thumbs glided softly over the backs of her hands. Y/n remembered fondly the first time he’d done so, in the outskirts of Volterra, the day he’d saved her immortal life.
As she watched him read through her memories, she smiled indulgently at him.
“My dear Aro,” she murmured, “I wouldn't mind death, as long as I went out with your name on my lips.”
She saw his handsome mouth turn into a smile as the sincerity of her words soaked into his ears. He reconnected his lips with her, this kiss deeper and fiercer than the last, as he gave her his firm agreement on the subject…