Hi there! I'm Lisa, and here's the beginning of a Carlisle/Esme story—I know it's been done, but I love to think about how they met, fell in love, and so forth, so that's why I wrote this. This story's actually almost done—that is, I only have a couple chapters left to write—so I'm posting the first two chapters today to see what people think. Reviews are just…lovely, so please do that, if you'd like. (I only recently got a username here, which is really bad because I've been visiting and reviewing under random names for years, so here's a brief thanks to other Carlisle/Esme writers and fans—there are some really great stories out there ).

One other random thing: the title of this fic and all the chapter titles are titles of Wilco songs, because…I like Wilco. (They are on all my "Twilight Saga" mix CDs ). Disclaimer #1: I do not own anything written by Wilco.

Disclaimer #2: I do not own "Twilight"—Stephenie Meyer does. (I do have Carlisle and Esme dolls though. Yes. They exist because I made them—that is the extent of my obsessive fandom).

One: How To Fight Loneliness

"How to fight loneliness: smile all the time…"

Carlisle's POV

It was the beginning of the nightshift, and Carlisle had just begun his rounds when a nurse approached him hesitantly.

"Er, Dr. Cullen? Dr. Brooks asked me to find you. There's a woman in the morgue who came in just as his shift was ending, and he was wondering if you could declare the body. They found her at the bottom of a cliff—it looked like a suicide."

Carlisle frowned at the information, then smiled reassuringly at the woman in front of him. He was careful to keep his face immobile, struggling not to laugh as the nurse blushed scarlet. "Of course, Julie. It's no trouble."

Carlisle knew that the other nightshift doctor, Dr. Kline, always hated starting his shifts with a trip to the morgue; he was an older man, eager to retire, and more than being a bit moody, the man struck Carlisle as being rather superstitious. Then again, Dr. Kline did happen to have a vampire for a co-worker. If he knew it, Carlisle thought, suppressing another chuckle, his antipathy toward the morgue would be the least of his concerns.

Julie was staring at him blankly, and he wondered wearily if he should repeat himself. Julie was new, but Carlisle guessed that she'd already met with Dr. Kline's bad temper, thus her hesitation in coming to ask him to declare the body. None of the nurses wanted to make handsome Dr. Cullen unhappily. 'Lonely, single Dr. Cullen' was how Edward said they thought of him...

Finally realizing that she was staring, Julie smiled faintly. "Thank you…" she murmured before tottering off toward the Nurses' Station. Carlisle sighed, relieved that Edward wasn't there. The last time they'd gone into town together, they'd encountered another nurse, Ann, and her reaction had been similar to Julie's. Carlisle was used to it by now—humans reacted to their kind this way almost inevitably—but Edward's amused description of the woman's thoughts had given him pause.

Before he'd known Edward, Carlisle had had to rely on his own judgment when it came to deciphering the thoughts of those around him; having a mind reader for a son meant that there was no longer any uncertainty on this score. It was clear, after Edward's brief encounter with Nurse Ann's thoughts, that it was going to be time to move on again soon. Little over a year had passed since they'd come to Ashland, but already, the humans around him were becoming too attached. It wasn't just that most of the nursing staff seemed to see Carlisle as husband material. No, Ashland was simply too small a community for he and Edward to blend in as they had in Chicago. The smaller concentration of humans had made Ashland a welcome respite during Edward's final difficult newborn months, but it wasn't safe for so many people to know who they were.

Edward's steady progress and remarkable self-control aside, Carlisle knew that if Edward made a mistake, then it couldn't happen in Ashland. Too many people knew Dr. Cullen and his 'nephew,' and if they disappeared suddenly, it was certain to cause a stir. But if they moved on too quickly after someone else in Ashland vanished under mysterious circumstances, then they risked…everything. Exposure in human society would be bad enough, but attracting non-human attention…Carlisle frowned. He didn't like to contemplate how attractive Edward's gift made him to the Volturri. It had been decades since he'd last spoken to Aro, and since changing Edward, he'd begun to hope that their long estrangement would prove to be permanent.

As he moved quietly down the hallway toward the morgue, Carlisle turned over probable locations in his mind: a larger town would be ideal, and up north, where Edward wouldn't have to miss so much school on account of the sun. Edward was just a few weeks away from finishing his senior year of high school, and they'd agreed that as soon as he'd graduated, they'd move on. Carlisle smiled at the thought of attending the ceremony, seeing his son finish a rite of passage that Edward had missed when he'd been human, but then his thoughts returned to where they would be moving on to. The farther north one travelled, the fewer large urban areas there were, and it was too soon to return to Alaska, he'd spent a few years in Juneau less than a decade ago...

At the door to the morgue, Carlisle stopped, unnerved by the sound he heard from within. It was very faint, but unmistakable, and as he pushed open the door, he heard it again. Just inside the room, under a bloodstained sheet, he could hear a heartbeat. The quantity of blood alone made it clear to Carlisle why the woman who'd been covered up had been mistaken for a corpse. She was very nearly dead, her breathing too shallow to be audible to human ears, and her pulse was very faint. Carlisle touched her wrist to check what his ears had already confirmed, and then he pulled back the sheet. Something about this scent…

And then he saw her face. It was bloodied and bruised almost beyond recognition, but the scent proved there was no mistake. Her hair too was distinctive, thick and curled around her cheeks in tangled tendrils that were somehow just as lovely now as they'd been before. Without thinking, he brushed a blood-matted lock away from her eyes and stared down at her, mesmerized by the disparity between her appearance now and the way she'd looked ten years ago.

"Esme…" he breathed. To his amazement, her eyelids fluttered, and he could have sworn her heart sped up momentarily, but then it resumed its sluggish tempo, and Carlisle gripped the table she'd been laid upon until his fingers left dents. She's lost too much blood, he thought frantically. And her bones…her spine...

When he saw that her back was broken, Carlisle swallowed convulsively. There was nothing that could be done, absolutely nothing within the realm of medicine to fix someone so completely shattered. A human couldn't do anything…he thought grimly. Now that he'd admitted that it was the only way to save her, Carlisle tried to steel himself for what would come next. What would Edward's reaction be, never mind what Esme herself would say when the pain had passed? In Edward's case, Carlisle had had his mother's pleas to save her son as an excuse, not to mention his own desperation for a companion. To do this to Esme when he was no longer alone, when, given Julie's description, Esme had wanted to end her life, to do this to her without any kind of justification, save his own vivid memories of her, and the sudden desolation he felt at seeing her this way…could she ever forgive him for such a thing?

Her heartbeat had slowed even further in just the second or two he'd taken to deliberate the matter. Instinctively, he touched her hand, knowing that the chill of his fingers should illicit a response. Her hand twitched, and her eyelids moved again, more slightly this time than before. Already, he could hear the subtle changes beginning inside her as each biological process prepared to shut down.

"Esme," he whispered again, and there it was again, that sudden spike in her almost nonexistent heart rate. "Esme, I'm sorry, but I have to do this. I don't know why…" Slowly, he leaned over her and trailed his lips along her neck, stopping only when his mouth was just below her ear.

He meant to say, 'it'll be over soon,' but somehow he couldn't bring himself to lie, even when he knew how unlikely it was that she could even hear him. Instead, he whispered, "I'm sorry," one more time. Then he bit down, and as the skin of her neck gave way, his mouth filled with blood that was so much richer, so much more tantalizing than Edward's had been. As soon as he smelled a faint trace of venom issue from her still-bleeding wounds, he jerked his head away. It would have been so easy to keep going, to take just a few more mouthfuls, but she had so little blood left already that he was afraid of killing her before the venom had a chance to reach her injuries.

For a few seconds, nothing happened. Esme was so still that for an agonized moment, he thought he'd been too late. And then her heart beat again, stronger than before, and as he watched, she shuddered slightly. Her pulse had begun to accelerate, and Carlisle sighed, relieved but promptly anguished again when he thought of what the next three days had in store for her. Swiftly, he opened the door and glanced out into the empty corridor—he needed to get her away before she was able to scream—then he turned back into the morgue and scooped her up in his arms.

"I'm going to take you home now, Esme," he whispered. As he watched her, Esme's eyes rolled beneath their lids, and he could see the bruises on her face change color as the venom moved throughout her body, changing her as it healed. As he ran down the long, dark hall, then out into the night, he barely looked where he was going. Carlisle was memorizing her human face, wondering how it would be altered three days from now. When she awoke, newly immortal, what would he see in her crimson eyes? Could he really hope for anything other than resentment? It was puzzling, and more than a little disconcerting to realize that in over two and half centuries, the answer to a question had never been so important.