Aretha Tesla: A Worthless, Lying Heathen

Aretha neatly stacked her excessively large pile of papers, filing them all into their respective folders, and stood up for the first time in three hours, stretching and yawning. It had been another long day at the Sanctuary. Files, warrants, orders of arrest, attempting to organize strategies… It was exhausting, and all the more difficult to put together without a shunter. Without Niccolo… But he’d left, and wasn’t coming back. And she liked to think he was happier this way.

She strolled down the New York City streets until she found her portal in a small back alley, and fell through to find herself in the garden just outside her cabin. Fake half-smile still plastered on her face, she stepped onto the porch, and immediately felt that familiar sting under her eyes. He was definitely not happier this way. And neither am I… You idiot, Niccolo… But crying wouldn’t change anything, and Aretha knew it. She had to keep her head up- Mevolent was back, and she needed to act like the dependable authority figure she was supposed to be. So she sighed deeply, and stepped inside her house, heading for the basement. If she was ever letting go, she would have to decide what to do with all those paintings.

The wooden floorboards creaked beneath her feet, and the sturdy ladder she descended already felt old, even though it had only been there a few months. She turned around, and stopped in her tracks. She gasped, tears streaming from her eyes before she could fully register what she was seeing, and she dug her fingernails deep into her arm. In the tiny basement room she saw herself with her family- the three of them tied carelessly to tables, and she standing over her brother with a raised rusty scalpel.

“No, please…” Aretha whimpered, barely able to form coherent words, as she watched herself tear her family apart. “No, stop!” She cried out, her plea mixed with the sobs that had already overtaken her. She begged her past self to stop, to die, kill someone else- anything, anything at all, to keep her family safe. But either the four people in front of her were no more than an elaborate trick of the mind- and she’d trained herself to know the difference- or they were some other form of illusion, because when she tried to pull her younger self back, her hands fell straight through, as if she was touching a ghost.

Maybe minutes passed. Maybe hours. Maybe only seconds. It made no difference to a girl with no perception of time.

“Have you had enough?” A familiar smooth voice sounded from the shadows in the corner of the room, and she froze, staring at the spot, too excited to realize that he wasn’t quite the man she remembered.

            “Niccolo?” She whispered hoarsely, her voice trembling just as much as the rest of her body.

            “Yes, it’s me. The real me.” He said “real” as if there was some obvious alternative. But before she could ask, he continued, “The version of me you spoke to was a copy. A clone. A fake.” He stepped out of the shadows, revealing a tear-streaked face, his voice growing angrier, but also more pained. “I, meanwhile, rotted in hell,” He elevated his voice to some cross between a snarl and a yell; even when he’d nearly killed her, he’d never yelled at her before, “Looking at what you see now every day.” His voice cracked and broke every now and then, and the sound of his smooth voice quivering was what scared her more than anything else. He was broken. Really broken. And maybe this time she couldn’t fix him. “Not just every day- every hour, every minute, every second. And it matters to me! I can feel time passing! And I killed them all- every one of them- over and over! And you never even thought on it, did you?”

            She just stared for a moment, hating herself for feeling relieved that at the very least the illusion he’d made for her was gone now, until he still hadn’t spoken and she began to think he meant for her to answer. “I-

            “Shut your fitlhy mouth, you little heathen!” He hissed at her, cutting her off. “You worthless,” a strong gust of air shoved her against the wall behind her, and she could feel the painting her back was pressed against break beneath her as the air rushed out of her lungs, “Lying,” excruciating amounts of pain and guilt suddenly assaulted her mind, and she couldn’t feel the tears that ran like rivers down her cheeks anymore, “Heathen.” She felt a blade slice deep into her stomach, cutting through God knows how many of her organs, and her skin began to burn and boil where the knife had touched it. She screamed out loud until the pain was too much, and blackness overtook her. It was a welcome relief.

            In a haze of anger, guilt and darkness, Niccolo felt a familiar presence touch his mind. Oh go look what you’ve done to friends, Aro told him, and all at once his will came rushing back to him. He might have lost himself immediately to another name if it weren’t for the sight before him. All of the nearby paintings were torn and spattered with blood; Aretha’s blood. And Aretha was… “Oh, good God…” Releasing the air he hadn’t even realized was holding her up, he caught her limp body and healed her quickly. He thanked God he had reclaimed control when he did, or he would have dragged her to the palace and torn her apart more “creatively” than he had Zafira. And because he had no idea what he should do, or what he could do, he left Aretha on her bed upstairs, gently brushed the tears off her face, left a note by her bedside, and set out in search of someone, anyone, who could put a stop to his madness.