Disclaimer: Esme, Edward, Bella, Alice, Jasper, Rosalie, Carlisle, Emmet, Jacob, and Renesmee all belong to Stephanie Meyer, but if the world were perfect, Edward would belong to me...

Second Disclaimer: (just in case) The Divine Comedy and every horrible detail of Hell belongs to Dante...take it please. I don't think I would ever want to claim that!

(But we're starting with the happy little ironic fact that Book One of the Divine Comedy (Inferno) is dedicated to Isabella!)

"No!"

What she was asking was absurd—seven tales that weren't mine to tell.

"Please?" she begged innocently as she looked up at me from underneath her thick eyelashes.

The amazing depth behind those angelic eyes had always shocked me. Before her turning, they had tortured me with the unspoken mysteries of the only mind that I could not penetrate, and now, tinted crimson still from the bloodlust that had become her newest penance, those cryptic eyes sang of the unfathomable sacrifice that she had made…the death that she had welcomed to be seated here today among her new family with our child asleep in her arms. I owed her my entire existence.

My breath stopped in my throat, the taste of her disappearing momentarily from my tongue and I glared at her, suddenly all too aware of what she had been trying to describe that fated night in Port Angeles when she had accused me of dazzling people. She was the perfect pupil, it seemed. I had to remind myself to breath again. More than a moment without her scent was agonizing.

What she was asking me to do was worse than agonizing.

She knew something of each one's death. They had all shared some small part of themselves. She had every right to know, of course. She was a Cullen now—a member of the family, and a carrier of her own horrific story—but not through my mind or from my lips. What she desired was a right granted only by those who had suffered each gruesome detail. Only they could justly relay to her the stories of their own journey into immortality.

But this was not the crutch that I would be able to fall back upon. I didn't need to read minds to know this. I could tell from each solemn face as I glanced around the room that permission had been granted long before I had entered. My clever Bella had instigated her own coup d'etat of sorts. I smoldered with resentment at the conspiracy behind it all.

Her hand was suddenly there on my shoulder, her expression pure and pleading. She lifted the shield that had always existed between us and her thoughts invaded my mind, absorbing every space that I had reserved for objection. They were memories of love and lust…of meadows, and feathers and endless nights without the need for sleep. My breathing increased. The heartbeat of our child fluttered between us as she brushed lips that would only seem warm to our kind against mine. She let her shield close around her once again.

"Alice says you lived them all…each death." Concern flashed briefly across her pale face, searching for confirmation in mine. She found it, and then and her voice was the most beautiful melody whispered in my ear. "Emmett tells me that only you can make me see the importance of each one…that you have a different way of understanding things."

So this was the motive behind their treachery…a hasty confession spoken years ago to ease the suffering of my dying brother. I frowned at her and pulled away reluctantly. She let me go, but I did not miss the worry that darted across her scarlet eyes. I could not bear to see her distraught. I brought my hand up to brush her hair away from her face and she smiled, relieved.

My perception of the gift that Carlisle had given each of us was quite unique, formulated around his undying religious beliefs and my obsession with the morbid descriptions of Dante Alighieri. I had long ago created in my penitent mind a sort of Divine Comedy portrayed exclusively by my family, and only made stronger by the arrival of Alice and Jasper.

Seven members in my family…seven inescapable deaths…seven souls trapped between existence and nonexistence…

The fact that Dante brought to the world's attention seven deadly sins seemed like an astounding coincidence…and I had lived much too long to believe in coincidence.

I had confessed this half created theory to only one soul. I had admitted with embarrassment which sins I believed were already represented, and which ones had yet to manifest themselves to only one half conscious mind and I glared this bear-like brother now with contempt. He met my eyes, amused. Of course he had told Rosalie. Of course she had told anyone who would listen. Of course my entire family knew by now…even my newborn wife. I allowed a growl to escape my lips. She silenced it with a kiss.

It was true. I knew each death well—most likely better than any one of my loved ones. The memory of the pain never faded, but the memory of all things human faded gradually with each victim's concept of humanity. The recollections they each had of their tragic turnings were too strong for them to relive completely with human minds and too trivial for them to remember entirely as a vampire.

I, on the other hand, had seen each one of them in every grisly detail with my vampire mind. It seemed a sick irony during those times that each of those I came to love were forced to relive their own death again and again throughout the pain of the conversion, and that I, with the unfortunate ability to hear their thoughts, was forced in turn to die their deaths alongside them. It seemed an even crueller fate that, of the two deaths that I did not have to witness, one was given to me in an inevitable projection of emotions, and the other came to me years later in the mind of a murderer.

What my beautiful bride could not understand was that to tell each tale—to pick each dark detail out of the deepest regions of each mind—was to force every being in this room to relive their last moments again, and to force me to die seven times. I looked around with chagrin. Each pale figure understood this fact. Each was willing to bear the individual earthquakes in their sanity to share with her their lives before the darkness, but the ultimate decision lay with me--the teller of the tales and the bearer of the final anguish.

I clenched my jaw and allowed my eyes to close as I accepted the inevitable. I could never deny her anything, but I did not want to see the pain in her eyes as she too became a part of each tragedy. Instead, I glanced over at Carlisle. He stared back, patient and knowing. His expression spoke volumes without words, and the message was simple. They had all given me their deaths…their stories were mine to tell. I sighed, defeated.

I began, of course, with the sins of the father…