We never took any photos.

Why did we never take any photos?

As I looked down at the paper in my hands, for reasons completely unknown to me, I found myself thinking of photographs. We’d had such a wonderful honeymoon all those years ago, and we never, never once took a photograph of it. We never preserved the memories.

And that was all it was now.

Memories.

Not that she would ever know that…

I suppose I should have known that, sooner or later, something was going to make her snap. I said it all along, I know I did, to myself if no one else, but she always denied that she was that weak. She was too strong to be disturbed by having a vampire for a boyfriend, a fiancé, a husband… she was too strong to ever let James worry her. I distinctly remember her telling me that, in the ballet studio, all she had ever thought was that she wanted to die quickly. She wasn’t worried about dying, so long as it was her and no one else. She was too strong. “Was” being the operative word. All she wanted was a fast death, not to suffer, and for nobody else to suffer in her place.

Shame, really, that ten years after she told me that, the exact opposite was happening. She was dying. And it was not going to be a quick, easy death. And she was not going to die alone, I knew that. I could feel it within myself. I would die with her, in spirit at least.

How ironic that one who didn’t believe in spirit would find out what it felt like to lose it.

I should really have listened to her all along, I reasoned with myself, because if I had, I would have lived the life I never could, now. I’d persuaded her to go to Dartmouth; I’d persuaded her to get a job. We’d spent so long procrastinating, so long just saying “Oh, well, I’m sure one more year won’t matter” that eventually I had run out of chances to turn her into a… a… a va-… into someone like me.

Alice had helpfully pointed out that I hadn’t run out of chances; she had been in (almost) the same situation when she was turned. “She doesn’t need to be in mint condition. She’s only 27 for Christ’s sakes! She’ll heal!” Alice had laughed.