a/n: Putting remarks first, since this is the last chapter. Thank you so very much to all of my readers, and especially to those of you who have shown me your encouragement and appreciation. Please enjoy the last chapter.

Levine's POV

I was slowly growing weaker.

The long days in the Volturi jail promised starvation. With starvation, my body decayed faster, as the sunlight flared through my veins, sensing a need for urgency. The sunlight captured in my body did not realize that far from saving me, it was only killing me quicker. I was still a long way from dying, but I could feel myself decaying. It made me feel fatigued, as the slow burn of sun in the very atoms of my body never gave me a moment of peace. I wished I would decay faster. I wished I would die.

Sabine and I had both been thrown in here as soon as the Cullens had left. The next day, however, Carlisle Cullen bargained for Sabine's freedom. She was released. But I remained in my cell.

I remembered the conversation I'd had with Sabine. Well, "conversation" might be putting it mildly, for it was proceeded by a very aggressive confrontation.

Sabina had made to attack me as soon as the guard was out of sight, and I let her.

She had been about to kill me when she finally asked, with distrust in her eyes, "Why aren't you fighting back?"

"Because," I whispered, with all four of my limbs strewn about the cell, "in your eyes, I deserve to die. I can't deny that."

"Kill me," I told her. "Before I regenerate."

Sabine shivered. Then, in a broken voice, she whispered, "Why did you have to kill Mikhail? Why…? He was my mate. You knew that."

"It's not that I wanted to hurt you or Mikhail. It was that for the first time in my life, I was free from the Volturi. Free from Chelsea's influence. I found that freedom intoxicating…" I confessed. "I knew if you or Mikhail took Annabelle back to the Volturi, they would use that as a reason not to grant me freedom. They'd say you were the ones that did it, not me. I had to be the one to bring her back. Only me."

"It was selfish, indefensibly so," I admitted, "which is why, if you wish to kill me, I'll gladly hand my life over to you, Sabine."

Sabine slowly crumbled, falling to the floor. She dragged my limbs back to me, holding them in place as my body stitched itself together.

"What are you doing?" I asked her. "I told you to kill me."

Sabine shook her head. "We're the same, Levine. We're both in the same position. Pawns in this game for power."

She buried her face in her hands. "What did we do to deserve this?"

Neither of us said anything for the rest of the night. The next day, the guards came to free her. Sabine looked at me pitifully, but we remained silent as we parted.

I lay in the cell and started up at the moonbeams coming in through the high window. The glass was unbreakable, except if shattered by ancient moon metal. I would know. I'd made it. I'd made all of these cells. It was only right that I die in them. I watched the light shift from moonbeams to sunbeams back to moonbeams over and over again.

I became very thirsty, but still, it was not the worst burn I'd ever felt. The worst burn I'd ever felt was when I was still human. I must have been seven or eight years old. I was an orphan. The state government told me that I could earn my wages by working at an international industrial factory. I didn't know this until much later, but France had contracted with the United States for the ongoing war effort. In essence, the United States would supply the money and production, while France would supply the raw metals from their colonial empire and provide human labor. Thus, I was shipped off to a smelting factory in Portland. No one ever taught us children what to do, let alone safely. Accidents happened everyday. I learned not to get too attached to anyone. In those days, medicine only existed for the very rich. It never made it down all the way to us low-class immigrants, many of us orphans from the war.

Medicine was like a fairytale; reality was punishment. Because we were so disposable, whenever any of us messed-up, we became victims of the managers' tempers. We all had to withstand it. In a foreign country, there was nowhere else to go. Thus, when I messed up an entire shipment of bullets, the manager of the factory saw fit to make an example of me by searing my body with white-hot metal. He made me hold out my hands and burned the flesh off of the palms. I screamed until my throat was burning too. That burn in my throat, that rawness – That was what I remembered now. Being thirsty as a vampire didn't even compare. At least for now.

When Aro found me, he told me that I had the power of sun, and that such an ability would make me worthy of joining the Volturi and of creating a home with them. What Aro had not considered in his calculations was that even suns burn out at some point. And I had long since burned out, centuries before the Cullens ever set foot in Volterra.

The days and nights passed and I watched the moon and sun trade places over and over again. Falling in love, but never together. The insignia that I had created for myself to mark all of my wares with – the insignia of the moon and sun enmeshed together – it was a complete fantasy. It could never happen. Such a love didn't exist in this cold, brutal world.

And if there was such a love, if the sun did shine on the moon, it only did so while shining on other celestial bodies just as brightly, if not even more brightly. It wasn't because the sun loved the moon in any particular way. Rather, the sun was just radiant. Knowing this, what moon could ever tame the sun or have the audacity to ask her to come any closer?

I don't know how many days passed, but no matter how the guards rattled my bars or how thirsty I got, I kept my eyes on the passing moonbeams and sunbeams ahead. Sometimes, I hallucinated that the sunbeams would shatter into a million iridescent and sparkling crystals that rained around me, piercing my body until I disintegrated into water. Then, the sunlight would pick me back up, as it did with all precipitation eventually, and I'd be nothing more than a rain particle, floating on a cloud...

I hesitated. Did I just imagine that shadow flitting across the moonbeams?

Suddenly, the window above me shattered with an ear-splitting crash. I jumped up as glass shattered down all around me, each piece an iridescent and sparkling crystal. But I did not die. Instead, a cloaked figure landed in front of me.

Two guards immediately came running. The cloaked figure immediately threw two vampire-metal knives at the guards. The knives soared through the gaps in the jail bars and lodged themselves into the guards. The guards screamed and fell backwards, clutching at their chests where the knives had hit them.

"Boy."

Stunned, I stared up at the vampire looking down at me. He had to be the most rugged-looking vampire I had ever seen. He had bright red eyes, dirty blonde hair, and unkempt facial hair. I knew better than to ask who he was. As I told Annabelle before, names were useless. But the question I asked was no better, "What are you doing?"

He scowled. "What does it look like? I'm getting you out of here."

Under his breath, he muttered, irritated, "Ever since puppy girl gave me this charm, I've been pulled back here, over and over again. It's been over a year sinceI've been avoiding this pull, and I can't seem to find a new track. It's driving me mad. I've got to get you out of here, so I can move on with my life. Not that I've any place to be, but I can't keep getting pulled back to the hellhole of Volterra now, can I?"

I didn't understand a word he said, except that he was trying to break me out. "How are you going to-?"

But he had already strode forward. He pulled out from his pocket a very familiar necklace made of moon metal. He pressed it against the bars. The golden bars turned into a dull grey of iron. He reached out and easily split them apart.

"Are you ready to run?" he asked me, grinning devilishly.

I hadn't fed for who-knows-how-long, but I knew that it was now or never.

"Sure," I told him. He seemed to approve of my casual answer because he nodded once, and then he took off. I followed after him. He seemed to be following some gift of his, some sense I didn't have, as he led me out of the Chambers. We dropped down into a sewage system that I, despite all of my years and construction at Volterra, didn't even know existed.

"How did you know this was here?" I asked him as we made our way through the underground tunnels.

"Europe existed far before the Volturi did, boy," he said simply.

Finally, the sewage system led to the ocean.

"We part ways here, boy," he said.

"Who are you?" I asked him, curiosity finally getting the better of me. So, this was how Annabelle felt when she asked me my name.

He grimaced at my question, but he answered, "Alistair."

"Now, if it's all the same to you, I'll be on my way," he told me. With that, lifting his foot, he stomped down and broke the heavy metal grate between the sewage tunnel and the ocean.

I followed him, diving into the deep blue. But whereas he took off, I stayed behind to meld the grate back over to make sure none of the trash would pollute the ocean.

Then, I swam out. I had no idea where I was. But there was a school of yellow fish swimming just a few feet in front of me. I figured I might as well as follow them. They looked to be bright and happy – like sun in water. I wanted to chase them and see where they went. They couldn't take me anywhere too bad, could they?

I wondered if the Volturi were already tracking me. Dimitri was sure to be pissed. This wasn't the first time I'd created trouble for him.

But whether I died tomorrow or in a millennium, what mattered now, was that for the first time – I was truly free. No Chelsea, no mission, no master… Swimming through the deep blue, as the sunlight shot down in broad, wavering rays and passed over the school of yellow fish, I wondered what my life would be like. As the sun faded away and the moon took over, I found myself in a hauntingly beautiful silver-black world. This could very well be a world of fairytales, I thought. I kept swimming, and the water felt cool on my palms. At least if I was ever captured by the Volturi again, I could tell Aro that I was not a child of the sun after all, but a child of the sea…