A/N: This is my version of Carlisle and Esme's story, for now it's beginning. It's a bit different from what I think is generally known, but it just worked out like that in my head.
Disclaimer: Sadly, I own nothing (only Pat and Michael, but they're not the interesting part). It all belongs to the wonderful Stephenie Meyer.
I would very much appreciate any kind of feedback! Enjoy!
The Cliff
Her cinnamon hair, weighed down in thick strands by wetness, dirt and the cold, had lost its usual shine to the greyness of an overcast sky and a scattering of tawny sand that had settled with the retreat of the wind-built wave that had left her here.
Her black dress clung to her slender body, as if not wanting to let go, almost like claws on her pale skin where seams met her naked arms and the ankle above her bare left foot, the exposed calf of her right leg.
Small, crimson blossoms dotted the lake-water-saturated sand around her, tiny blossoms with long stems that dissolved into the licking tide. Trickling away, down miniscule waterfalls, one diminutive stone-pool into the next into Superior.
Just a few cuts, scrapes from the rocks below the surface of the turbulent lake, and the soles of her feet were bruised from walking – running, lingering? – without shoes on the rough cliff-top, edges like the blades of knives and shards of broken glass, sometimes. How ever those ended up there. A place too eerie to spend a summer night drinking, too hostile to human comfort. But kids, who knew, perhaps they found it thrilling.
Anyway it was not summer.
Anyway she had probably not cared about her feet. Or even felt the cutting and piercing.
Now they leaked blood, crimson and blossoming and drifting away.
Not what had killed her. Broken bones, Michael Burrows suspected, her body destroyed inside, or maybe just not enough air anymore, only flecks of sludge in her lungs and the leaden greyness of the icy lake.
No glimpse of her face. It was shrouded in the heavy cover of her hair that seemed to have draped itself that way, wanting to shield, to protect.
The wind was reckless, though, starting to erode the veil, thread by thread, lifting one hair at a time. Drying, despite the damp air, despite the cold.
He watched the water, whipped up, white foam bubbles dancing, bursting, licking at the slim fingers of her hand, slowly moving the sand, piling it and carrying it off again, until she began to sink into it, between the stones, a wet cold grave beneath a roaring cloud-heavy sky.
Not that he would let the shore swallow her. He glanced up from underneath the brim of his hat, peering through the misty air at the approaching figure of Pat, a dark blur some distance off, snuffling and grunting at the harsh weather.
Neither of them brushed the curtain of hair from her face as they lifted her onto the jute cloth, it would either be too bloody or still to beautiful, both nothing they wanted to look at now. Both would have made their stomachs churn in regret and pity and sadness.
Beauty lost, wasted, either way.
A while later, up at the cliff-top – not the one she jumped from, but a little to the East – they laid her down in the back of the cart, gently as if it mattered.
"My boy's in her class", muttered Michael, "liked her best of all this teachers."
Pat wasn't listening, looking off to the right, scratching his head as if he had something to be embarrassed about, and tipping his hat.
"Dr. Cullen."
His breath hitched for a second, nothing he could do about it. Damn, he thought. The same every time. Something about the doctor startled him, startled everyone each time he appeared. Over and over, the first sight, first split second was a small shock.
He looked liked an apparition, approaching them slowly, could have been one for all they knew. Wind, more violent up here, tearing at his scarf and coat and hair, pale skin like alabaster in the diffuse light between the lake and the land and the looming sky. Something about him always hovered right at the edges of the utterly unreal.
He stopped beside the cart, nodding to both men by way of greeting.
"You have the night shift tonight?" Pat asked after a moment of noise-infused silence, awkward for him and Michael, apparently not at all to the doctor.
"Yes", Dr. Cullen answered softly. Too quiet for this weather, actually, but strangely, his voice carried.
"Gonna bring you this one to the morgue", Michael said, tone regretful, yanking his thumb at rough jute cloth and dulled, wet, caramel coloured hair, just a few locks between the folds, as though they were reaching out, trying to find something to hold on to, or to tell them something.
"Who is it?" Dr. Cullen asked, his voice still even and calm.
He had noticed Michael Burrow's cart – the horse hanging his head, unmoving as though he might fend off the stormy gusts and stinging coldness like a that, like a rock – when he had driven by on his way to the hospital.
Michael Burrow's cart on a cliff-top just half an hour before nightfall, and the feeling that something had happened. Enough to make him stop.
He had watched them wrap her in jute and tie strings around her small, slender body, carry her up the winding, rocky path that climbed a steep slope where the cliffs began to subside and crack into a flatter shore.
"Esme Platt", Michael said, yelling above the wind. "Shame, really."
Carlisle frowned. So many people in three centuries, thousands of names and faces, and the stories behind half that number, impossible to remember it all, even for him.
But he had never forgotten Esme Ann Platt.
Columbus, 1911. What ever was she doing here?
Not a coincidence that they would never have run into each other in Ashland.
He only learned it later, but she had not even been there that long. Had taught school until noon and kept to herself at all other times, inhabiting a small house a few miles down the lake shore and a little inland, together with an unborn child and a secret, some story of the past no one knew.
He had been working at the hospital, sometimes daytime, sometimes at night, and had spent the remainder of his time with Edward, who still got bored quickly.
Not a coincidence.
Coincidence it was, though, that she should have come here. Out of all places.
That he should have come here with Edward. Out of all places.
He remembered her, sixteen and laughing, a leg broken but nothing else. Everything else safe and sound.
Cinnamon hair, gentle brown eyes that sparkled, and a cherry smile.
Pat was shaking his head. "Had her baby only a few days ago", he said. "Died yesterday, the boy." Shook his head again, and heaved a sigh that the wind tore from his lips and buried in the dark lake-water. "Can't blame her, I suppose, though a shame it is."
"Pretty thing", Michael mumbled, walking around the cart and climbing onto the seat.
"We'll get her to the morgue now", Pat said, and Carlisle looked at him with his peculiar eyes, always on the verge of being unsettling for a reason that even hours of late night pub discussions had not yet been able to uncover, amber in the fading light, always puzzling and unreadable, like something not of this world.
Always the same, Pat thought as he tipped his hat again. Every time he saw the doctor, he felt like he was seeing something he had never expected. Every time the doctor's eyes rested on him, he felt like a crystal ball, showing things, he knew not which.
What ever it was about Dr. Cullen. But he liked him.
"Yes, thank you", the doctor finally said, looked away and turned towards his car.
He had almost forgotten about Esme Platt. Broken leg and her cherry smile.
Quite a coincidence, he thought. That her life would have wound up leading her here today, a storm-swept cliff on the shore of Lake Superior, miles from the tree she had fallen off ten years ago, laughing despite all and despite the pain, looking at him with something in her hazel eyes that he had never seen before, tucked beneath a myriad of other things, like a tiny poppy flower deep inside a laurel bush.
Nothing to dwell on.
He caught just a fleeting glimpse of Michael and Pat, leaving just when he arrived at the morgue that night, a few minutes before the beginning of his shift.
Only some papers to sign, cause of death probably obvious enough after a fall through 300 feet of bitingly cold air onto a rocky shore.
Esme Platt.
He froze even before his hand had touched the cloth covering her slim body. After 300 years of searching for and finding the balance between life and death, if there was something that Carlisle could tell apart, then it were those two.
And she was not dead.
He could feel the rhythm of Esme's heartbeat even through the faceless fabric, through the stiff, damp coldness of her dress and the ice of her skin, across the inches of sterile, unmoving hospital air between his palm and her body.
Weak and faltering, but there.
He could smell her warm blood, with no storm to diminish the sweetness, it was the same as a decade ago.
She was the same. Esme. The only one who had ever given him trouble to stay true to his commitment. The only one who had ever made human blood seem so very desirable again.
She was the same. Intoxicating. And alive.
A mild frown brushed his forehead, then he carefully pulled away the white cotton.
She was beautiful indeed. A sadder beauty than the despite-it-all jauntiness of her sixteen-year-old self, but more mature as well, distinguished and exquisite. Lips powdery, white skin, dark lashes and elegant lines.
And now?
Coincidence that she should have come here.
Or fate.
He took her cold arm, her left hand, and sat slowly on the edge of the table she rested upon.
Esme, who found nothing more worth living for, breathing for, walking the earth for. Nothing to stay for, nothing worth seeking but the icy hard arms of Lake Superior's shores, blades of stone and the silence of the coldest of the Lakes.
What right did he have to pull her back?
But some things could not be fought. Sometimes, reason was too slow to keep up with intuition, and some things just felt right.
Tomorrow, or the day after, her parents would pick up an empty coffin. Neither Michael Burrows not Pat had seen her face. 300 feet where a long fall, and the rocks below were hard an unforgiving.
He left her with Edward that night, returning to the hospital only a few minutes late for his shift.
She would not wake up for hours.
But when she did, and the pain began, he stayed with her the entire time, three days and nights that were tinged with unfamiliar guilt for him and were nothing but a blur of confusion, pain and fear for her.
Then her heart stopped beating and she grew calm, eyes closed and no breath across her lips for a long stretch of time. He left her briefly when Edward got ready to hunt, and returned to find her sitting up, staring at him with huge black, crimson-rimmed eyes and a look of bewilderment on her beautiful face.
For a while, he just stayed a few steps away from her, waiting.
Edward's reaction had been hard to gauge, Carlisle had known as little about this way of changing as anyone else in the world, mythical creature or not.
Peculiarly, it was not easier this time. Maybe because he was wondering less how Esme would react, and more if she would remember as well.
"It is nice meeting you", she said quietly, "after all this time."
He smiled. What a strange thing to say.
He stepped closer, kneeled and took her hand. To her skin, it felt neither cold nor warm, just pleasant, gentle as silk, and reassuring.
She dropped her eyes, briefly, then they started darting around the room. "I am..." Her feathery voice trailed, gaze locking on something between the corner of the room and eternity.
"What?" Carlisle prompted softly, knowing the answer already.
Esme tore her eyes away from whatever she had been seeing, wonder and incomprehension written in them.
"Thirsty."
A smile, barely visible, wistful and with a touch of detachment, appeared on his lips. "I thought so."
He rose and walked slowly to the second door in the room, stopped there, but did not open it. He looked at her, waiting, so she followed.
He swung the door open for her, an elegant gesture inviting her to enter. Her black eyes, puzzled, searched his face for a moment, torn between distraction and curiosity, but eventually she complied and walked into the dark room.
Carlisle stayed outside, and closed the door.
Edward kept him company while he waited, asking questions, listening to questions. It all seemed like an experiment still, although it was the second time now.
He was pleased it had worked. Worried, that something might go wrong. You never know. And it was up to her, too.
He found her on the floor, kneeling, arms on her thighs, palms turned towards the ceiling. Blood on her skin and in her hair, on her dress, the carpet and the hazel – colour of her living eyes – fur of the deer. Not yet dried, fresh and crimson.
She had cried the last tears that her former life had left her body, over the deer she had killed.
Small, fragile, dead eyes wide in horror. The green glade in the forest long forgotten.
She looked up when she heard him approach, wet trails on her face drying, eyes golden and wide, frightened.
"What have you done to me?" she whispered.
He came closer slowly, and crouched beside her again, holding out a hand. She stared at it mutely, unmoving for a moment. If he had not known better, he would have said she could not decide whether to take or bite it.
She took it, a peculiar expression brushing her delicate face as their fingers touched.
"They're not cold now", she said after a while.
Carlisle smiled, surprised and pleased that she would remember his hands ten years back through time, growing-up and across two states.
"They're just as cold", he answered quietly, "only yours are the same now."
Esme stared at their touching hand for a long while, as though something mesmerized her, then she suddenly dropped hers into her lap and looked up at him. "What happens now?"
He gave her another smile, pained this time, and rose, walking away from her to a tall window.
"You're free to go, of course", he said after a long time, meeting her eyes again, the same sad smile whispering around the corners of his mouth. "This is not your prison."
"Not in more ways than one", she murmured.
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