Three figures cluster at the top of the stairs, whispering, holding hands. The tall one gasps and the small one holds his hand and the pretty girl clasps hers to her mouth in an ecstasy of despair.
The wind in the trees is a jagged scream and downstairs a boy flexes his fingers and –
"This is middle C," says his mother.
Edward is fidgeting, his body a wriggle of long hair and little boy limbs, the day too warm and the bench too hard for him to pay attention.
But then she presses down, and oh, so this is what she meant.
God no longer speaks with mortal men but Edward isn't a man and he's just seen the light.
He spends three days in agony and three in mourning and on the seventh day rises again.
Church turns out to be a waste of time. No one ever mentioned that the angels were the true demons and he's starting to think it was all a pack of lies.
Resurrection isn't all that great, either.
He sneaks into mass anyway (the Catholics always had a great sense of pageantry) and snickers through the homily. Lazarus, come forth!
The music is the only redeeming part of his morning, fragile tenors and a pipe organ that seems to play to heaven itself.
Just in case, he filches a bottle of holy water on his way out.
It doesn't work.
Carlisle Believes. It is an undercurrent of faith so strong that he gives it capital letters.
There is an irony somewhere, just beneath the surface, and Edward is sure that if any existed, some deity must be laughing in sheer delight at the centuries-old demon with the cross in his home.
Yet the boy he was and the man he will never be both refuse that path.
He might be damned, but he wants to do a thorough job of it. Nobody ever accused him of being a slacker.
He comes home. Eventually.
It is to find change. Funny thing, change. He hadn't assumed it was possible, had been sure that they merely existed, stagnant and eternal in the fast-flowing world.
Yet Esme's thoughts are a constant challenge to that idea, and much as he hates to admit it, perhaps he was wrong.
(It is the first warning sign, the one he should have noted: arrogance does not become him)
Esme is a surprise, all the more so when he accepts one simple fact. He likes her.
Not in the way he should like her, furtive glances and poems composed on a summer day. She is lovely but not at all temperate and he is smart enough to know what it all means. Carlisle's distracted thoughts encompass a fear he won't even admit to himself.
But he likes her company. They talk much of the day, of new ideas and old fears, Louis Armstrong dancing a 4/4 beat through their speech. Anthony Patch he is not, but together they tear through Gatsby, savoring the title. The Beautiful and Damned. If only he knew.
"Come along, Gloria," he says, one hand twined with hers.
She wonders if this is the way all new mothers would feel were their sons suddenly thrust on them full-grown. He knows her feelings are anything but motherly. She doesn't ask, though, and he never tells.
Three figures cluster at the top of the stairs, whispering, holding hands. The tall one gasps and the small one holds his hand and the pretty girl clasps hers to her mouth in an ecstasy of despair.
The wind in the trees is a jagged scream and downstairs a boy flexes his fingers and –
Everywhere else the decade Roars. In Rochester, it flows. Allegro, transition, codetta, recapitulation, finale. Sonatas become his love, his obsession, and dimly he finds it in himself to wonder when the two words became synonymous. Then the music swells to capture him again, now Pathétique, then Eroica, fingers pressing down and foot tapping in time.
In between this, he finds himself with Esme.
Feet propped up on the piano bench, eyes closed, he sees himself through her eyes and can almost believe he is human again.
Esme gets closer to Carlisle and their debates become restive, reasons for him to push away and her to run.
Predictably, she starts on religion. He wants to laugh at the juvenility of it all. As if he can't read her mind. He knows what she wants from him and he never did master the art of saying no.
Ten minutes later his anger is real and her hands are clenched into fists. Who is she to force her beliefs on him?
"Souls?" he scoffs and has the pleasure of seeing her stiffen. "Whatever soul I have lies right here."
His fingers curl over the keys, paler even than ivory. Her eyes follow them.
Score one, he thinks, watching her hurry away.
Her mind is a tangled mess, an absence of thought and a riot of feeling.
How right he is they will never know and his fingers splay over the instrument as if it were a lover.
Winter passes loudly and so does Rosalie Hale.
She comes to death with shrieks of fury, her hands reaching at an invisible enemy until he is not sure whether it is King or Reaper she wishes to destroy. Either way, it takes all three of them to hold her down. Eventually her mind clears, and her body moves past its dying throws.
She is, he thinks, a diamond necklace. Beautiful to behold, but a burden to wear.
In short, he can't resist her.
He tries anyway.
She curls in the shadow of a palm tree. Ridiculous thing in a house of vampires, but Esme insisted, her eyes narrowed in a glare, and once again he is helpless before her.
Rosalie is even worse, and he knows even before she does that this will not end well.
"You know," she says idly. "I could have had any man in Rochester."
He hears the real meaning behind her words. And I still could, yet here I am with you. Where is the gratitude?
"I am no man," he reminds her.
"Which is why I won't reject you."
She stands, the movement becoming a dance of sensual grace, and he reminds himself that she is no Esme. She won't be the first to run away.
Their gazes lock for the briefest of moments and then – He does.
On the best of days her mind is a jumble. He could lose himself for decades among that labyrinth, uncertain if he wanted to find his way out.
He tells her this one night and she laughs, voice harsh against the warm night, almost an accusation at the world for daring to be beautiful without her.
"And what would you find at its center?" she asks. "The minotaur or Ariadne?"
He regards her for a moment. The image in his mind's eyes is not of this coquetting Helen. Bloodstains and a white face, eyes ablaze with fury and a determination to resist the monster. Another type of angel takes shape before his eyes, and he speaks before he can remember to lie.
"I see Theseus," he says.
This time she is the first to leave.
He tells himself he will resist forever. He lasts a week, almost two.
Long enough for her thoughts to invade his mind. Young, loud, ostentatious, a requiem wrapped in a minuet, disconcerting and fascinating all at once.
He knows her better than she knows herself. He catches her thoughts even as her face remains impassive, lessons taught in the cruel and complex world of teenage girls and gossip.
His face, bathed in moonlight and shadow, catches her off guard and he knows that for just a moment she does not regret this life of theirs.
He gives in. If she can believe it, maybe he can too.
"I always knew you would," she says and he wonders which of them is the mind reader.
Months pass in a haze of quiet kisses and Carlisle's smug face (I told you so) and Edward agrees for once missing his characteristic arrogance. It is hard to remain superior in the face of such beauty and he knows instinctively that it will not last. Something this good never does.
Two days later his heart is splintering. He, who has tasted death and lived if life this may be called, falls against a tree in agony. His hunt interrupted, he hears Rosalie's voice in his head, her thoughts, for once, centered around another.
I think I love him.
And the world spins even as it falls apart.
Too late he remembers:
Theseus leaves the labyrinth for the Amazons, and Ariadne becomes just another footnote in his glamorous tale.
He hears them all the way downstairs, vampire senses sharpening every gasp and moan until he might as well be in the room with them.
He gravitates to the piano, nature's intended mate for him, and his hands hover above the keys.
EmmettEmmettEmmett is a constant refrain in his mind and he lets out a shuddering breath.
The first notes come with sudden force, loud angry strains that serve to drown out the noise above, and suddenly a sonata is taking form beneath his hands and he is falling, falling, falling, his heart thudding down a slippery slope and stars wheeling behind his eyes.
He smiles when he meets Emmett McCarty.
"Welcome to the family," he says, and so the movement ends, quarter note, half note and –
"Rest."
Three figures cluster at the top of the stairs, whispering, holding hands. The tall one gasps and the small one holds his hand and the pretty girl clasps hers to her mouth in an ecstasy of despair.
The wind in the trees is a jagged scream and downstairs a boy flexes his fingers and –
Suppose, the world was different.
Vampires don't exist, confined to fairy tales and bad romance novels, the kind that feminists everywhere cry up as demeaning to the cause and little girls hide under their beds at night.
Carlisle lives, grows, leaves his father's influence and goes to America. The New World, they call it, and so it is, free of the superstitions of the old one. Here at last is a place where he can realize his calling, and the Cullen School of Medicine becomes one of the first parts of Harvard College.
World War I passes, and a battle-weary generation returns home from the Flanders front to find a new sea of crosses facing them. Among them, a young man with untidy bronze hair and a faded uniform mourns, his head bowed at the top of Cemetery Hill, for the boy-cousin who never got his chance at glory.
Esme receives a scholarship. It's a new idea, this, that a woman can become a doctor, but the Cullen School of Medicine is renowned and even her parents won't say no.
Rosalie Hale still falls, victim to the kind of monster that will never die. She doesn't mind, much. Death has never been something that scared her.
This is not the world he lives in, and some things will never change.
He meets Bella Swan and the world is changed.
He can feel it shudder to a halt, the sudden stop of the universe as everything reorients to spiral around her, Principia be damned.
Esme smiles, her guilt assuaged, and he catches the tail-end of a thought before she can hide it. At least I'm not Mrs. Robinson anymore.
Rosalie glares and Emmett worries, old secrets dredged up between them, and Jasper knows but he won't tell, Alice flitting like a pixie among them.
Edward can almost find it in him to care, but he can't get past BellaBellaBella, her blessedly, maddeningly hidden mind and the sweet pulse of blood that calls to him, siren songs and a long cold night.
He starts spending the night and Rosalie stops talking, and in the back of her mind he hears it.
Is this revenge?
He doesn't know.
Teenage voices swirl in his mind, an endless loop of searching and wanting and confusion.
Where did I put my homework?
Why doesn't he like me?
I don't even want to go with him!
Maybe tomorrow I'll wake up as someone completely different.
He sneaks a look at the girl next to him, quick peeks, juvenile as every other boy in the room. Across the aisle, Mike Newton is doing the same thing, their actions movements in inverse.
Bella the x-axis, he thinks, lines of symmetry and a perfect divide.
La ronde, hold in four-time, one two three four, and exhale.
His fingers fly over the keys, music rippling throughout the house, and Jasper's contentment washes over him, spurring him on.
"Happy Birthday, Bella," he whispers, and hits the off button.
Paper cuts and broken glass and –
"I told you so," RosalieTheseusTanya whispers and he falls into the dark.
He spends eight months on the edge of the world.
Bella appears like Aphrodite from the waves, soaking wet and raving wildly. He doesn't hear what she says, eyes fixated on the wonderful illusion his mind has wrought and… she's dripping water on his shoes.
Half a moment and she's behind him, solid and real and so very alive.
This is the Rapture, he thinks. The moment of wonder before the reckoning.
Dimly he can hear the hallelujah chorus.
Lazarus, come forth!
"Resurrection," the priest says, two blocks away and a voice in his head. "What was, is, and will come again."
Amen.
Three figures cluster at the top of the stairs, whispering, holding hands. The tall one gasps and the small one holds his hand and the pretty girl clasps hers to her mouth in an ecstasy of despair.
The wind in the trees is a jagged scream and downstairs a boy flexes his fingers and –
Jacob Black is a constant thorn in his side. If thorns could actually hurt him and happened to smell like wet dog, that is.
Misplaced metaphors aside, he finds a sudden hatred of the Quileute tribe, one member in particular.
This is agony, he is sure of it, and though he has heard of it, this is yet another emotion he had never thought to feel. Agony, jealousy, and Mike Newton was nothing compared to this.
For the first time since his return, Bella fights him. This is something that they cannot agree with, and he knows it's petty, but he fears losing her. He knows it's only a matter of time. So does Jacob.
Both of them underestimate her. He calls himself a masochist, but that title is rightly hers. He's too selfish to say anything.
Pressed flowers and a faint hint of perfume (Pure Poison by Dior – the irony doesn't escape them) and the invitations are sent. The words are obscured by sheer paper and flower petals, but eventually everyone understands.
Bella Swan and Edward Cullen are getting married.
As Lauren Mallory puts it, "What joy."
The wedding is perfect, down to the fifteen white doves released at the end of the ceremony. Forks has never seen the like – with luck, it never will again.
It is strange to see the townspeople in all their put-upon finery. Mrs. Stanley attempted to straighten her hair; he can hear Alice's strictures on it even as he waits. Angry poodle, indeed. She really should be kinder.
(He doesn't mind, not really. They are all of them guilty of pride.)
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, he thinks flippantly.
Emmett, tie pressed and Bible in hand, grins at him.
Anything interesting? He asks.
A nod. Yes.
Rosalie catches their eyes and glowers. Their good moods evaporate instantly. Of all the people gathered there, she is the only unhappy one.
(If her red eyes give the bride away, no one says anything. Some things are safer to ignore.)
A glint of gold, quick words, Emmett stifling laughter.
"I do."
And that's the end of this story.
As far as anyone knows.
Three figures cluster at the top of the stairs, whispering, holding hands. The tall one gasps and the small one holds his hand and the pretty girl clasps hers to her mouth in an ecstasy of despair.
The wind in the trees is a jagged scream and downstairs a boy flexes his fingers and begins to play, crashing chords and long, slow melodies.
The music builds, notes climbing higher, faster, frenzied shrieks of music and –
Upstairs, the door swings shut.
The whole world is moving and he's standing still. Hands pause above the keys, head cocked toward the stairs, and then –
Silence. Absolute stillness and now no one in the house needs to breathe.
Lazarus, come forth.