"No, doll! No, Bella! You mustn't, you can't!" A low growl escaped his throat. Who had done this? A little string of red trailed down her throat, shining in the moonlight against her porcelain skin. Who would have wanted…Then the answer came to him. He had.

It had been only a few days after she started crying herself to sleep again. In the little bit of time he had known her, Bella was forced to mature far too quickly. He knew that if he loved her, had promised to take care of her, then it was his responsibility to save her. The plan came to him in a second when he heard Bella talking in her sleep. "What have I done, Mother, that you hate me so?" she murmured. "What's wrong with me?" He rubbed her furrowed little brow until her whole face relaxed, and she wore a peaceful expression. Seeing his doll like this, there was no time to think of the consequences of what he had to do. He scooped Bella's small body into his arms and climbed out the open window. Then, he gently set her down in the flowerbed and quietly shut the window.

He woke Bella then; she quickly absorbed her surroundings with wide eyes. She gripped his arm tightly and caressed it with her cheek.

"You knew, didn't you? You know a lot more than most give you credit for." Bella grinned shyly and he pulled her onto his back. They took off running for the one place that gave him comfort.

In the pitch-black night, the water was a reflection of the sky. Only in patches of moonlight could the ripples tell them apart. But as dawn approached, it glittered with pink, orange, and yellow. Bella was cuddled tightly in his arms watching the scene for the first time. To him, it was all too familiar. It was only a mirror reflecting the empty days that had gone by. But now, he was seeing it for the first time. Though she wasn't worried now, he still stroked her brow and traced lines across her doll's cheeks.

She taught him everything over again. Curiosity was in her wide eyes as she reached for a butterfly. Trust played across her face as she let herself be petted. Her lips curled when she saw the sun's first rays reflected in the water.

But mostly, it was her eyes. He couldn't decide what they were. They seemed to hold everything. The most beautiful things he'd ever seen. Those eyes were the most precious, the most wise, of any human creature. They revealed her deepest emotions so that when her face was smiling, her sorrow was still apparent to everyone. They shone brightly when the sunlight skipped across her face...

He placed a small kiss on her neck.

"What's that?"

"That, doll, is love."

He couldn't have known what he was doing then. He leaned down to plant a string of kisses across her neck. When he opened his eyes, she was dying. In that moment he was ashamed, and he caught a distant memory…

It had been only a few days since his "rebirth," December 6, 1952. He was sitting on an uncomfortable chair in the library among a smug bunch of old ladies. Some were falling asleep at their books, others were repeating gossip, but it seemed as if each of their beady eyes were focused on him. Testing him, prodding him to release his new identity. He had gone into the library to hide and relax from his fears, but they followed him everywhere he went. And after the drastic transformation of, well, forever that he'd been through, it was surprising that libraries still even existed, or books, or old fat ladies for that matter.

"Hello!" chimed one of the ladies, the plumpest one with black spectacles that rested on her cheeks. He felt her suspicious eyes burning into his soul!

"I'm sorry miss," he cried, "I'm so—excuse me—I'm a vampire—Thank you..."

"Isn't it nice out!" she exclaimed, "The weather's shaping up lovely!"

"You-you don't understand. You see, I'm a vampire!"

"And so you are, sweetie!" After a few minutes, she looked up from her book. "I'm sorry, you're a what?"

And so he felt when he knew his love was to die. "No, doll! No, Bella!" he cried out, frantically patting the wound. No one could possibly understand his embarrassment, or his deep remorse. He had heard the names before. Pervert. Devil. Mental case. What was his name? As the generation of his acquaintances passed away, it lay on their lips, forgotten. My only love, he thought, my only love. A sad little girl who would not have the chance to finish her life. And selfishly, he couldn't bear the thought of being alone again. He was faced with the choices he'd chased round and round for the last century.

The little girl had never looked so beautiful as when she lay dying.