Disclaimer: Characters belong to Stephenie Meyer, no copyright infringement is intended.

AN: For those of you coming over from Love Is, don't worry, I'm still working on it. This was just in my head and wouldn't go away.


Chapter One - Black

The last clear thing I remembered of my human life was not darkness.

It was my mother's face as she kissed my forehead goodnight before the flu hit, hard and fast. It was a warm September night. Days were growing short and nights longer. We'd had another argument about the war and she'd urged me to reconsider for the thousandth time, telling me that war was not the glorious picture the papers were painting. My father had been away.

I didn't know he was still at the office, coughing up blood.

Less than a blur of a day later, he was gone, and the reaper was waiting for my mother and me as we tossed and turned on hospital cots, drifting in and out of consciousness.

The hospital was filled with sick bodies, crying children, and frantic nurses. Small, clear vials of various medicines clinked anxiously together as nurses struggled to keep up with the overwhelming influx of patients. There was no known cure and not enough of hopeful cures to go around, and it was the nurses' decision to choose who even had a fighting chance.

Dirty needles littered the counters and bedside tables as some nurses tried to fight the disease with fresh blood. An irony that was not lost on me when I became aware of what I had become.

I do not remember when the reaper finally claimed my mother. I do not remember being wheeled out of the cramped and humid room. I do not remember anything said to me.

I do not remember anything but the pain and the darkness of my rebirth.

It was excruciating. Unending. Incomprehensible.

Pain.

There was no other way to describe it. It didn't compare to anything I had ever known. It simply was.

The time I had broken an arm playing football with the boys in my neighborhood as a child was a dream in comparison. Every sickness I'd ever had was a blessing. I didn't know it possible to feel this much.

When physical torture finally ended, the mental torture began before I could even open my eyes. The voices in my head. There was only one to begin with.

It was an unfamiliar man's voice. It irritated me, like I should know it, because it kept calling my name.

"Edward… Edward, it's over now. Edward, open your eyes."

I did as he said and saw a man in doctor's clothing leaning over me. It was then I realized where I was – a modest bedroom in a strange home. I couldn't remember how I moved from the hospital to here. Panic stirred in the pit of my stomach and the painful throbbing in my throat drew my attention. It paled in comparison to what I had just been put through, but it was still impossible to ignore.

I glared at the man accusingly. He held himself carefully, and was he was clearly watching my every move. I did not want to trust him. He had brought me here, had put me through that pain, had thrust me into a world of uncertainty.

And his eyes…they glowed bright red. It was unnatural. He was unnatural.

I was unnatural.

So I shied away, and bolted.

It was only an instant before I was out the door and fading into the shadows of the coming night. The stranger called after me, but I ignored him and kept running. Another instant and instinct took over. The voices became mute and my throat became soothed.

It was then I realized what I had become; I was a creature of the night, a thing that survived on the still warm blood of living creatures. I'd heard stories as a boy, but never gave them much credence. How wrong I had been.

Vampire.

The word rang in my head as I tossed the broken corpse in front of me aside. I didn't know how or why, but there was no changing what I had become. I could not run from what I had become.

But that did not stop me from trying. I ran. I fled. I fought to escape the darkness.

It took me years to accept the fact that my attempts were futile. More years to accept what I had become. And more years to embrace it.

But I did embrace it. I became one with the night. The night became one with me. It was a dangerous dance, but we spun and leapt together, claiming partner after partner.

In time, I came across others of my kind, others that brought me further into the darkness.

One in particular, showed me that this life wasn't the burden that I'd originally perceived. He was running, like me, but unlike me, he was running towards this life, not away from it. He was running in search of something new, not hiding from the unknown.

He was much older than I, and had seen this life as a great adventure. I learned from him to forget the curse that rested on my shoulders.

I first saw him as he was finished a meal. We were in the frozen North, both of us searching for lost hikers, people that wouldn't attract attention.

He looked up at me in surprise, leaving the body to make a meal for other animals. "Hello there!'

I eyed him warily, nodding my greetings. I had not spoken to anyone in years.

"You're a nervous one, aren't you?"

I kept my distance, but his thoughts were kind. Curious, but kind. 'He probably doesn't see many of our kind out here. I haven't run into anyone in ages.'

"My apologies," I said stiffly, formally. "But I have never met another one like me."

"Never?" he asked incredulously.

"No," I replied simply.

'I'll be damned. No wonder he's so jumpy.' "You must be fairly young then. Do you even know your sire?"

"No." I didn't know anyone. Even if the man I saw when I first woke up was indeed my sire, I certainly did not know him.

He questioned me relentlessly about what I had done with my time since I'd been turned. In turn, he told me of his adventures and others like us he had met along the way as we continued to hunt that day.

And so began our strange companionship, this Garrett and I. Over the next several years, he taught about the history of our people, how I had become more than I once was, not less. When I confided in him the voices I heard, he was startled but not shocked. He told me of other gifts those like us possessed. He himself had nothing like it, but he wasn't disheartened. In his opinion, he was already so strong, he didn't need any extra boost.

During my time with him, I grew comfortable with myself. I laughed for the first time in decades when a particularly large pack of mountain lions took him by surprise, proving to be more intelligent and feistier than he had anticipated, leaving him with shreds of cloth for clothing.

What had once frightened me now held a certain allure. The dark was comforting to me. It was safety. The inky blackness covered my flaws. The creature I'd become was perfection.