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“I don’t see why you’re so obsessed with this animal diet, Carlisle. You’re an intelligent man. I just don’t understand,” Aro said for the fifth time that day as they sat in the truly massive Volturi library together. Carlisle was reading a treatise on the new method of preventing smallpox, and Aro was rereading Homer (in the original Latin, of course) yet again.
Carlisle sighed and fought the urge to roll his eyes, which would likely earn him an execution.
“It is against my beliefs to commit murder,” he replied.
Aro felt quite smug as he replied, “But you murder animals. Humans are animals just the same.”
“Humans are the creation of God put above the animals to rule over them,” the younger vampire said passionately.
Aro shrugged, leaning further back in his chair, “A matter of opinion. I was alive before your precious Jesus ever walked the Earth if indeed he ever did, and so your religious beliefs are hardly going to persuade me, Carlisle.”
“I do not wish to persuade you. I just wish not to have to justify my choice every second of the day.”
There was a glint in the Volturi king’s eyes as he spoke, “But you have never had human blood. You know what you are missing, my friend.”
After that, Aro took it upon himself to engineer opportunities where Carlisle would ‘just so happen’ to walk in while the guard where feeding. He hoped that the spilt blood would send him into a frenzy, but al,l that resulted was Carlisle spending two days in the forest hunting deer, and a lot of angry and disgusted glares when he returned.
“What do you think, Caius?” Aro asked one day during one of their very important and very boring meetings. “How should we deal with the Carlisle issue?”
Caius glared at him for a moment before focusing back on the map of Europe he was scrutinising, “If you care what he eats so much, tell him he has to eat humans and if he doesn’t, simply kill him.”
Aro whined, “Killing people is your answer to everything!”
“It’s your answer to everything too, don’t judge me!” Caius retorted hotly. “Or have you forgotten how every court that we have ever held has ended?”
“Yes, but I want him to want to drink from humans. I don’t want him to be forced to do it.”
“You sound like my wife, ‘I don’t want you to do it unless you want to, but if you don’t, I shall be angry’. Not logical in the slightest, regardless of who the sentiment is coming from,” the white-haired vampire snarked.
“You compare me to your wife a lot for a man who claims to have no interest in males,” Aro teased, all the while eying him nervously, fully prepared to run away at the first sign of danger. His witticisms had often meant that he had needed to run away from his brother to avoid being thrown from the castle ramparts, and he hadn’t always been fast enough.
Instead of threatening to kill Aro again, Caius turned to Marcus and said, “So, what do you think of the possibility of there being a pack of werewolves in Prussia? I say we scour the country and wipe them out.”
“If it would make you happy,” Marcus sighed.
Caius glared, “It isn’t about what would make me happy. It is about the safety of our way of life!”
“Ah, but our dear Marcus is right. Killing werewolves is rather a favourite hobby of yours, one that you are very good at, of course. It is just a shame that the fact that you are so good at it necessitated the depletion of their kind to the point where going out to hunt them all down just isn’t feasible as it would take far too much time,” Aro sniggered, but he knew that the day that the Children of the Moon were extinct would be a sad day for Volterra as Caius would have no outlet for his rage that didn’t involve either punishing the guard, antagonising his brothers or murdering his subjects for the slightest hint of an infraction.
“It will be a good day when they are all annihilated,” Caius countered, scowling and shifting in his seat as if he wanted to throttle Aro. That was a good sign, though. If he was moving, then things would most likely be ok. It was when he was completely still that there was a real issue.
“For about five minutes until you grow bored and decide to kill off the mermaids,” Marcus replied, deadpan. His eyes never focus from their glassy, barely seeing gaze.
“Well,” Caius huffed, “if they ever did anything to threaten us or the vampiric way of life, then I certainly would cull them all.”
“I saw a glint in your eye, Caius, old man! Is some of that old fire of our youth returning?” Aro laughed.
“Something like that, yes. In fact, I was thinking about how much I would prefer to simply get this meeting over and done with so I can go back to the tower and see my wife.”
“The one that is so illogical according to you? Maybe I should tell her that you said that,” Aro really had to stop antagonising Caius, but it was just too much fun. No matter how many millennia passed, his platinum-haired brother was just as easy to annoy as on their first meeting.
“Don’t you dare! And don’t you want to see Sulpicia?” He grumbled.
“Since I don’t keep my wife locked in a tower, I see her regularly, an hour or two won’t cause us to wither away and die,” a pause. “That was in bad taste, Marcus. My apologies.”
Marcus sighed, looking bored, “It hardly matters. Words are just noises floating in the air.”
Aro shot Caius a significant look, and his brother nodded but there wasn’t much they could do, he had checked out of life a thousand years ago and nothing that they could do would reach him.
“Well,” Aro continued, pointedly ignoring his faux pas, “Why don’t we send some scouts out to see if we can assess how many there are and then go from there?”
Caius grumbled, “Very well, I shall go with them.”
“We cannot risk you,” Aro argued.
“Let him go,” Marcus said, barely looking up, “he will only run off anyway if you don’t let him. Might as well not cause a fight.”
Aro grimaced but saw the justice in Marcus’ words. Besides, it wasn’t as though he had any true authority over his brothers, for all that he was the functional ‘leader of the three leaders’ in the Volturi.
“Alright then, take the time you need, Caius. Don’t get into too much trouble,” Aro said.
Caius rolled his eyes, “The pot seems to be calling the kettle black.”
Aro tracked Carlisle down in one of the smaller libraries in the castle a few days later. Clearly, the English vampire was trying to avoid him.
“What if the humans that you ate were sinful, what then?” Aro said by way of a greeting as he strolled in.
Carlisle looked up from his book and frowned, “Aro, please. You shall never convince me to change my chosen nature.”
“Please do tell me your reasoning just one more time.”
“Even if the person has sinned it is not my place to enact the will of God,” he replied and Aro rolled his eyes.
“So you say that the only reason that it is wrong to kill is because your God says so?” The Volturi king loved to argue and debate and even if it was unlikely to convince Carlisle at least it would be something to distract him from Caius who was still upset about not being able to go out and hunt werewolves. “What happened to humans being people too?”
Carlisle fought back a scowl and Aro snorted, knowing that the young vampire would be shouting if he wasn’t afraid of being executed.
“I view man with the highest regard,” the blond said eventually, closing the book he was reading with a finality that signalled his immediate departure from the library.
Aro waved jovially at his quickly retreating back.
The next time Aro found Carlisle he was walking around their gardens, an indulgence that Sulpicia had insisted upon.
“What if you met your true mate and they ate humans?” Aro said by way of greeting, moving to walk in time with Carlisle’s humanly slow pace.
Carlisle looked frustrated but at least did him the honour of genuinely considering his question, “I would try and make her see the error of her ways but if she was set on it then I would accept that. But I would not change my own diet.”
Aro hummed in thought, “What if they, sorry she,” he corrected, smirking, younger vampires was so delicate about not seeming to be interested in same-sex love, “what if she insisted that you change to her lifestyle?”
“Maybe I would, is that what you want to hear? Yes, if she really wanted me to I would probably try just to keep her happy but I know that it would ruin me,” Carlisle seemed genuinely distressed, which, despite everything, hadn’t been Aro’s intention.
“Oh, Carlisle,” Aro said, not unkindly, “you need to learn to forgive your nature. You cannot help it any more than the leaves can help to fall in autumn.”
“But that is just it, I do not think that drinking human blood has to be a part of our nature. I believe that we can rise above it and if we can do so, is it not our duty to?”
“Did God not create everything with a special place on this Earth according to your bible? Maybe our place is to keep the human population down? We cannot be certain,” Aro had studied Christian mythology and of course, he knew what the minds of those he had touched knew but he still found their rules incomprehensible and considered them just a way to control people, effective but still. Such things should be cast away when they left their human life.
“I appreciate that you are trying to understand my viewpoint if only to argue against it. Though I cannot help but think that if your view is to do whatever pleases you within the rules of the Volturi then what does it matter to you if I drink the blood of humans or animals,” Carlisle said, his implacably kind expression serving to put Aro on the wrong foot.
“It doesn’t matter, I merely think that you are missing out on one of life’s best pleasures,” he replied his an ease that he didn’t feel.
Carlisle looked at him astutely, “Perhaps. Or perhaps you do not wish to think of what my choice means for the future of our kind, that there are other options for us. Perhaps one day we won’t have to hide.”
Aro eyed him sharply, “What are you implying?”
Carlisle held his hands up in placation, “Nothing. Merely that perhaps things do not always have to be as they are now.”
“That is a very human way of thinking, you know that our kind is unchanging.”
“Perhaps, or perhaps we change merely takes more time for us,” the blond replied calmly and Aro knew that he had lost their little debate, at least for the moment.
“You tread far too close to treason,” Aro warned, his eyes narrowed.
Carlisle held out his hand to him, “I harbour no untoward thoughts.”
The Volturi king shook his head, not taking Carlisle’s offered hand, “If you say so, dear Carlisle.”