Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight.
Author's Note: I'm not sure how this one came about. What I do know is that it hit me when Megatron and I were on the phone late at night talking (she works the graveyard at a home for the mentally and physically challenged and gets bored, and tired, easily.) That's when she helps me with stories. This one, I'm quite partial to. I hope you find a little humanity left in the Volturi as I have. Reviews are love. -Delta
Once in a Lifetime
Alec was never one to play by the rules.
He made his own rules in this little life because let's face it…he was a hot commodity and Aro needed him too much. If he wanted to go out and fulfill this…need…then so be it.
Every time the hunger became to great, when just blood wasn't enough, he would shroud himself in his cloak and enter the dark peace of night around their castle and find himself exactly what he needed.
Taverns and pubs and every other name for the places he frequented meant little to him, but the women inside certainly did. Despite the fact he was turned so young, he was still a man in his own right, still craved the warm flesh of a woman beneath him. And maybe the blood that ran thick in her veins.
He would seduce and bat his beautiful eyes and they would follow him easily, almost too easily, into the dark corners of rooms in hostels close by. He would have his fill of their bodies and then their blood, and be done with them.
This was his way, and he hadn't strayed from his way of living for centuries.
Until her.
She was by far the most beautiful human he had ever seen. Hair the color of mahogany with eyes as clear as the Mediterranean Sea. And her name flowed so sweetly from his lips it was almost a sin to speak it.
Arianne.
She had been harder to take than any of his other victims, harder to charm her into leaving that small little tavern with him. Harder even still, to make him come to her.
But she had trusted him like no other had. Every other woman whom had followed in her same footsteps had been nothing but needy. Nothing but lonely and unwanted and he was there to change that.
If only for a second.
But she was different. So innocent and naïve than when he took her, he knew he would never be able to harm her. Never be able to kill her no matter how sweet her blood seemed to be. No matter how tempting her blood, the body that encapsulated said blood was almost too beautiful to kill. To end.
He had made love to her, in his first centuries of living it was the only time he could say that. Every other had been a quick fuck, nothing more. This…this was so much more. Too much more.
And so he left her alive.
Decades later, he came across a familiar scent on an even more familiar walk down to the wharf where he frequented. And her name ran across his mind for the first time in years…Arianne.
He found her, lying on her death bed, in the darkness.
The sight of her once beautiful body, so weak and fragile, seemed to pull at his dead heart like the weight of the world. And he knew with everything inside of him that if he were human, he would have been weeping at her bedside.
"Alec…my dearest."
Her voice was ragged, but still held the same tone. And it warmed his damned soul.
"Arianne, my love," he choked on his words, "what has happened to you?"
"An unknown ailment," she smiled meekly, "the doctor's are confounded."
He clenched his jaw and reached for her hand, much too cool to his own icy touch for comfort.
"You have not changed much in these past years," she mused, "I must be even more ill than I first thought."
"No, my love, it is not your sickness that deceives you," he placed her hand against his cheek, "Let me cure you. Please, let me make this pain go away."
She looked into his ruby red eyes for an infinite amount of time, so long that even he noticed the passing moments before she smiled, and shook her head.
"Maybe…if I had not lived this life so fully, I would have accepted your offer. But my life has been filled with love and many beautiful things," she cupped his face more fully with her feeble hands, "Even you. But I cannot ask for anything more, when I have had the world already."
That was when he climbed into her bed, and took her into his arms, held her tightly against his chest as he counted down the hours, the days, to her passing.
And when death finally took her, he saw the life, the beautiful life he had craved, dim from her eyes and leave forever.
Alec was never the same again.