Libra's Symphony (Alec Volturi x OC)

Questioning

 April 27th, 1997. 8:53 am. Belo Horizonte.

Marina Amaral Ferreira.

Art student. Waitress. Only child.

I repeated those words to myself like a prayer. Alec had told me in the hotel that time was not the only thing that made vampires forget most of their human lives, the transformation itself took a lot of them away. That possibility loomed over me for the rest of the day like a dark cloud and I found myself trying to remember my whole life and compress all of my fondest memories into a few hours to be watched like a film, an artificial version of what most people believe to happen in the last moments preceding death. I already knew I would die in a way, so I tried to capture most of my life beforehand.

I was afraid that even with all of that effort I wouldn't be able to remember most of it all by myself, so whenever something would come back to me I would tell Alec about it. He couldn't forget, I just wished he would actually tell it all back to me once I was one of them.

I had no guarantee, I had to take his word. I knew he could simply decide to keep it all to himself and purposefully help me forget but I had no alternatives. I could only hope he wouldn't break his promise.

He wouldn't have liked it at all but I wanted to tell him about Luke too. How we met at the cinema years before as teenagers and instantly liked each other, how we would rather stay home cuddling and watching a film than go out at night, how we used to get in trouble for running in public spaces so often. He would probably just tell me to shut up and change subjects.

It would be pointless, I knew he would never tell me about Luke anyway.

I told him how I tried to learn how to skate as a child and failed miserably, how I loved to sing silly songs very loudly with my friends in cars and karaokes, that I loved mint chocolate ice cream and olives. I listed all my favourite museums, theatres and libraries. I talked about my favourite books and films and told him about every other trip I could remember, about everytime I moved and had to settle in a new place and meet new people. I spent quite some time talking about how I loved the hills of Minas Gerais and the view of Guanabara Bay. He listened to all of it in appreciative silence, smiling and chuckling occasionally.

He seemed to enjoy listening to everything I was saying as long as it didn't involve Luke and I felt a desperate need to throw it all at him, as much as I could, in the short time we had.

Not that he deserved to know anything about me in the first place.

I was just trying to clutch to myself in the tempest of those last moments and he was the only anchor available. When I felt I could no longer speak, tired and drained after that burst of energy, I sighed loudly and fell back on my seat dramatically.

"There is no more?"

He sounded disappointed.

"I can't remember much more, I think that's all." He kept staring at me expectantly and I shrugged. "I'm just twenty-one, how much more could there possibly be?"

"You're twenty years old" he corrected me, "you will not turn twenty-one."

That hurt.

"I really have to become a vampire?"

He looked up and covered his face with his hands in frustration before looking at me again.

"We have been over this times enough. Yes, you do. We went through a lot of trouble to make sure we wanted you and then to have you."

"Sorry, it's just really hard to accept. I don't want to be one of you."

"You don't know what you're saying" he countered dismissively, "you don't know what you want either."