Echoes From The Heart
Carlisle Cullen sat at his desk. It was dark outside; the house was empty and cold. No Alice to laugh away the night, no Jasper to make quiet snarky comments. No Emmett to knock over furniture, no Rosalie to tease him. No Edward to tease them of their thoughts, and – most importantly – no Esme to sooth his troubled spirit.
It was December 27th. The longest night of the year.
It was also the night Elizabeth had died.
She lay on the bed, among all the other dying patients. The fever lent colour to her pale cheeks; but her face was deathly tired. 'I.. just want.. to sleep,' she said sadly, her voice clouded and muddle by the fever. She drew in a ragged breath. 'But – I can't. Who'll look after him? Who'll look after him?' Her fever-bright eyes searched his, begging him for something he couldn't give. 'I.. know you can… save him.' Her voice had sunk to a whisper, and Carlisle felt as though his cold, still heart was being ripped out of his chest. She was going, he knew it.
So did she.
But he wouldn't condemn her to this life; he loved her too much for that. If circumstances had been different.. but they weren't. His thoughts were dragged away from those dark places by her hacking cough.
'I'll go get some water,' Carlisle said, rising from his chair.
'No,' she said. 'let me go.. but save him. Please.'
And that was that.
He let out a long sigh and rubbed his eyes with his hand. His thoughts turned to Esme: gone hunting, leaving him alone.
The first time he met her she was a girl of sixteen, fighting back tears as he treated her broken leg in the small, clean room. Her mother and father were quietly talking outside, but the silence was deafening. There was something about her.. even as she bit her lip in pain, despite the medicine he had given her, her eyes were filled with something – pain, but not physical.
And the feeling she aroused in him was something he didn't want to talk about. Yet as he stood outside her door, later- watching her laugh and talk with her friends animatedly, a thought crossed his mind: why did it have to be someone so happy, so content?
He smiled at that memory. That time was so much simpler.
The second time, it had been the powerful smell of her blood that led him to her twisted and mangled corpse at the footholds of the cliffs. But as he raced towards her, it dawned on him – she was still alive. He didn't even think before he started the progress that would keep her by his side forever.
He had refused to think of changing Elizabeth, not that she wanted it, either. But he had changed Esme without a cautionary thought.
Did that mean he loved Elizabeth more?