Apologies for the crazy formatting when I first uploaded this chapter - how embarrassing. Alas, read on and review :)

Part Nine

I shouldn't feel ashamed – there is nothing to be ashamed about – yet, despite this logic, I dread seeing him again, with the knowledge that he knows why I can't leave the castle often, why Aro is always looking over my shoulder, why I'm so different from the others.

He has the decency and grace to not mention it the next time I see him, days later, once I have organized my mind enough to feel like I can be around others without losing the scraps of my remaining sanity, little of it there may be.

Like always, I feel a little jarred after the occasional episodes that I have about that, but I can't let it linger in my mind now, not with his constant, albeit unintentional, eavesdropping. It was unnerving to have to censor myself so thoroughly, to the point where I couldn't possibly think something around him without him knowing it instantaneously.

I couldn't avoid him forever, though, and I was sure that I'd have to reveal it all to him eventually, it was inevitable, but I wanted to do that on my terms, if at all. Since I was supposed to be mentoring him, per Aro's orders, I couldn't just leave him in the wind whenever I got upset.

I had responsibilities. Responsibilities that involved dealing with a real, present person, rather than just stalking them on the internet whenever the Volturi bid it.

"You do what?"

I glance at Edward out of the corner of my eye, lounging in my usual chair while he attempted to drown everyone else out using my thoughts. If vampires weren't immune to human discomfort, I would have recommended that he stop hunching over in his seat and relax a little bit a long time ago.

He's probably going to connect the dots between what I'm about to tell him with relative speed and I'm not entirely sure how he is going to take it. "I help the Volturi navigate the modern age."

"What does that even mean?" he huffs, finally leaning back in his chair, thankfully. His tense posture was starting to set me on edge.

"Have you not thought about what happens when vampires end up in the news? Pictures, videos, it's all a constant threat to the secrecy of our existence."

His hand runs through his hair thoughtfully. "I just assumed that it didn't happen."

"Oh," I sigh, "It does."

"So, then, what do you do?" he gestures, brows furrowed. "Do you hack into databases and delete everything so no ones the wiser? Do you hunt down the people involved and threaten to kill them?" he half jokes. His jaw drops slightly at my expression. "Oh my god," he drawls, "you do."

"It mostly clears itself up – the humans are hesitant to admit that they aren't the highest species on the food chain – but when it doesn't, or someone doesn't let something go as confusion or a coincidence, I help the process along. I'm the best at using technology out of the Guard – it's not all that difficult, really."

"Not all that difficult," he repeats, a mixure of awe and exasperation on his face. "When was the last time you helped the process along?"

I bite my lip. "About four months ago."

He does the math quickly and scowls angrily, his eyes flashing. "That's right before I was taken," he hisses darkly.

"I know you're angry, but the Volturi would have found you without me. You weren't exactly… discrete, Edward."

"Are you fucking kidding me? This is my fault?" He is on his feet, pacing irately.

"I'm not saying that – but, I recommend that you keep in mind that without my input on when to… retrieve you, the resulting circumstances would not have been ideal. Aro wanted to take you sooner, but I knew you were going to college soon and it would be better to wait, to let you say farewell to your family –"

"I was going away for a semester, not sailing across the fucking ocean –"

"Regardless," I interrupt forcefully and he stops talking, although he is still pacing, "It provided you with more closure, right? It was better than whisking you away before you were ready to leave your home?"

His silence is all I need to know I'm right. "I'm sorry that this happened to you," I murmur comfortingly, standing to pat his arm. "I did my best to make sure that it was easier for you."

He starts to say something that I'm sure will be a cross of an angry retort and admittance of defeat, when he glances up momentarily and positively streaks over to the other side of the room. I look up at the same time that he says, "What the hell is that?" and sidestep in time to miss the fat spider that drops to the ground exactly where I was just standing.

"How the fuck did that get up here?" I muse to myself, instead of doing anything about it as it scurries under an armchair.

Edward seems to be less than enthused with my response. "I don't care how it got here – just kill it!"

"Don't like spiders?" I tease, glancing over at him. "It can't hurt you, you know."

He snorts. "I don't care if it can't. That doesn't mean it should be here, in my room."

I hold out an arm. "Well, by all means, then. Dispose of it."

While Edward was arguing with me, instead of taking care of the thing, it had made it halfway up the opposite wall, probably making for the ceiling again in an attempt to ambush someone else.

Edward's shoe, of all things, sails through the air before I have time to blink and somehow, miraculously, misses. Not only that, but it ricochets off the wall and I have to dodge it as it boomerangs past me.

"How the fucking hell did you miss it?"

"I don't know!" he exclaims, throwing his hands up in the air. "You're the one who knows all about vampire nature. I thought those things avoided us – something about predators and the food chain –"

"That only applies to animals," I interrupt irritably, edging away from the furniture in the room. In the confusion, it disappeared again. "Not to eight-legged demon spawn."

Perhaps it is a bit of an over exaggeration, but judging by the look on Edward's face, he agrees with my assessment. "Just keep looking," he retorts, eyes darting about. "It has to be somewhere."

Yeah, it's lying in wait for us.

"Don't be so dramatic, Alec," Edward mutters distractedly. "We just need to make sure it doesn't make a nest or something equally terrifying."

I'm not sure what that something would be, seeing as the thing can't technically hurt us, but glancing up to find a furry beast the size of a golf ball clinging to the ceiling above my head is not how I'd envisioned beginning my day. Neither is hunting down and annihilating said beast in Edward's room.

"You need to tune your fine motor reflexes, mate," I tell him, rotating slowly on the spot. Unfortunately, the stone floor acts as a decent camouflage for the fiend and I'm in the process of scanning the floor along the wall when Edward shouts.

"I see it!"

There is a bang, followed by some muffled cursing as Edward shoves a chair out of his way and descends on the rapidly crawling creature, which should be no match for our enhanced speed and dexterity. This time, Edward successfully captures the thing, seemingly not trusting his own abilities against that of the mutant lagoon pest.

"We are not near Venice, or its islands, Alec," Edward corrects, holding the small glass bowl and card at arms length and dumping the hell-spawn out the window and into the garden. "So, it can't be from a lagoon."

I raise an eyebrow at him.

"However, I'm willing to admit that it could be a science experiment gone rogue," he adds hastily. "It clearly won the first time we tried to kill it; that in itself means it deserves another shot at life."

"When it comes back to devour you in the night, I won't stop it," I warn, slouching into the armchair Edward had sent spiraling into the wall, both of which were fortunately intact. "It'll have a vendetta against you, now that you've attempted to off it."

"I doubt that."

I ignore his skepticism. "None of this would have happened if you hadn't freaked out and then missed the damn thing with your shoe."

"I know," he whines, defeated, and falls into his own chair. "I wanted la chancla to work. I didn't have the right shoes for it."

"Clearly."

We're quite for some time, but eventually I break the silence. "I'm sorry for my part in the events that led to you coming here," I tell him, catching his eye.

"I know," he says, and he really does. He can see it in my thoughts, my expression, the slumping set of my shoulders. "I'm not good at this, you know – being a vampire. I don't know who I'm supposed to be."

I gaze at him, really looking at him for the first time since he was still human. His strong jaw, angular eyes, perfectly straight nose. It's still him, the slight changes from the venom having only made his peculiar features more pronounced, his hair redder, and his skin lighter.

Edward's heavy brows furrow. His hand comes up to his face almost like an after thought, following the trail of my mental observations. "I had… freckles?" He looks puzzled and confused, as if trying to remember some obscure fact that he learned years ago and never quite memorized.

I can picture his human face as clearly in my mind as I can see his vampiric one before me. Frightened, watching me with a wariness that he had come to drop in my presence. Determination, much like that I still see in the set of his mouth sometimes. Bright, bright green eyes and delicate speckles of brown across his high cheekbones and the bridge of his nose.

"This – this is normal?" He gasps, staring at me intently. "That I – that I can't even remember my own face?"

Of course, he doesn't have to remember what it looks like, because if he ever wants a reminder all he would have to do is peek into my mind to see it for himself with a clarity that his human mind and eyes would never have been able to accomplish – but that's not the point, I can tell by the way his eyes harden and his lips curve into a perfectly sculpted scowl.

"Why can't I remember, Alec?" He demands, rightfully guessing that I know the answer.

The information flashes through my mind, all of Aro's guesses and philosophical ideas about vampires and memories – all the reasons why the change might have rendered us almost unrecognizable.

Edward slumps in his chair, crushed by the knowledge. He is silent for a long time, so long, in fact, that I begin to worry that I must have said something – thought something – inappropriate that might have set off his downward spiral.

His eyes finally meet mine. "Do you remember?"

I blink at him. What did I remember, exactly?

"What did you look like, Alec?" he asks, his eyes crinkling and his voice subdued. "Before all of this," he waves his hand around half-heartedly, "what was your life like? What color were your eyes? Your skin? Did you have freckles, too?"

"I don't know. I suppose Aro would, but I never thought to ask." I never wanted to ask. I had an easier time than Edward controlling my gift, having to really work at extending it to many people of my own volition, but that didn't mean that it wasn't a volatile process.

In the early years, any thought of my once-humanity was enough to trigger me, to set me off, and the consequences of losing control were dire. Aro had to isolate me from the others because, if I was in the same room with anybody at the wrong moment, my gift would take control and lay up anyone within reach – anyone who couldn't escape the mist sneaking up behind them. After things got better – because they never really got under control – I never had the desire to ask. I'd wanted to forget that part of myself, the once-human part.

The telltale twitch of Edward's eye signals that he knows I am about to lie.

I sigh irritably. "Some things, Edward, are best left unknown. I didn't want to know – I couldn't know. If you are really curious," I grind out, not angry with him, but rather at some inexplicable force that I can't name, at the swelling of unidentifiable emotion in my chest that smothers me from the inside out, "I'm sure that Aro, or even Jane, can answer your questions."

Jane has asked Aro all of these questions; the truth doesn't bother her in the same, incapacitating way that it does me. We were almost identical, still are, in ways that lost their meaning once we changed. She never had the qualms that I do about what happened to us; she doesn't have to try to not think about it like I do, rather, the thought of it strengthens her – hones her rage – and that is the one defining difference between us that our relation can't bridge.

I stand swiftly; my slacks whisper against my ankles as I speed toward the door.

He calls after me, halting me for a split second. He's heard all of them, my thoughts, of course, even if he hasn't quite caught their implications.

"Does it have to do with the fire I saw in your mind?"

The slamming door is all he needs to hear to know the answer.