A/N: I got the idea to do a series of stories showing the last days of the Cullen's lives from my longer story, Vanishing Acts. I did Edward's first because...well...everyone loves Edward. So, yeah. Let me know what you think.
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing Twilight.
THERE WERE BRIGHTER TIMES
The boy was dying. That much was clear to anyone, no medical degree required. A slick sheen of sweat had covered his body for the last few days, and he was getting worse by the minute. His heart was slowly, but surely, jumping toward the finish line.
If it weren't for the epidemic, he may have had a fighting chance. But as it were, the entire city was succumbing to the sickness, and he was just another victim. There weren't enough hands to ensure everyone's survival, and this boy was just another unfortunate victim.
His red hair stuck to his sweaty, flushed face, but he didn't have the strength even to lift his hand to brush it away. His thin, frail body lay on the mattress, pathetic in its sickness, but perfect in its form. He was a slight child of seventeen, his life barely at its dawn. The tragedy of it was overwhelming. This boy was bright, talented, and introspective. He was able to read people incredibly well and was frequently able to gather the meaning behind a person's words from the silence following a spoken sentence. He was broken and beautiful and dying.
His body suddenly convulsed, and he began coughing. His entire form shook with the movement, and he collapsed, shuddering, onto his pillow. It took most of his remaining strength to pull the thin blanket closer around his body, curling into himself in a futile effort to keep warm.
This boy had dreamed of serving his country. He had wanted to fight. Just a few more months, and he would have been able to go. The Great War, they were calling it. He had wanted to be great. The greatest tragedy of all is a boy stripped of his dreams and of his dignity.
As he inched closer and closer to his end, the blonde doctor visited him more and more, always gazing at the fragile young boy with sad, longing eyes. He would stay to stare for a moment before walking away, muttering too fast to be understood.
When the boy's mother was taken away, the doctor came back for the last time, his eyes hard. He stood over the boy, watching him in his fitful sleep, overcome with emotion. Slowly, carefully, gently, he lowered himself to one knee and reached a long, pale hand out to stroke the boy's cheek.
He stirred in his bed and, with an obviously monumental amount of effort, opened his eyes, awoken by the doctor's cold touch. His shining, green eyes were an ironic shade of emerald. Even in his last moments, his eyes sparkled with the inextinguishable light of boyhood.
"Doctor Cullen," the boy wheezed, his voice coming out in a low, rasping whisper.
"Yes, Edward, I'm here. What is it?" the doctor asked, taking the dying boy's hand in his own and squeezing it gently to show he was listening.
"It's my," he began, but his attempt at speech failed. He went into another coughing fit and fell, trembling, onto his pillows once more. "It's my mother. Where is she? They took her away this morning."
The doctor felt his heart breaking. He felt it crack, and the fissure grew steadily bigger the longer that he stared into the helpless eyes of the young boy. "She's…in a better place," he said, not meaning for the words to come out in a cracked whisper. He didn't know if he could bear watching another second of pain on this boy's face.
His green eyes slowly moved to his bedside, where a small picture frame rested. "My Aunt Catherine, then. Tell her I'll miss her. Tell her," he broke off, coughing again. "Tell her I love her and that…that I'm sorry."
The doctor wanted nothing more than to sweep the fragile, broken boy into his arms and make all of this disappear. He wished that there was a way. Any way. He watched as the boy's eyes slowly slipped shut, his goodbyes to the world stated.
The doctor's decision was made. He had a way to save this boy, and he had said he would do it at any cost. He glanced around the bustling hospital. No one was watching. No one was paying the small, frail boy any mind. He slowly wheeled the bed to the morgue, his eyes pained and tortured. Once there, he easily cradled the boy in his arms, and started out a window at an alarming speed.
The boy's heartbeat was slowing. The doctor could hear him closing in on death, could hear the blood moving with less and less force. He said a silent prayer that they would both make it through this.
When he arrived at his small city apartment, he laid the boy in a small bed and stroked the hair from his forehead gently, admiringly.
"I'm so sorry, Edward. I'm so, so sorry," he whispered, kissing the boy on the forehead lightly before he slowly lowered his mouth to his neck, as if he were about to kiss him again. With the first bite, the boy stirred, moaning lightly in pain. With the second, on the opposite side of the neck, he began to awaken, his thickly lidded lashes fluttering lightly. By the third, the fourth, the fifth, the boy was writhing in pain on the bed. On the sixth, the boy began screaming. The doctor made eleven bites in all.
He felt overwhelming sadness welling up inside his body, and felt his eyes sting, his body wracking with the sobs and the tears that would never fall. He sat by the boy's bedside for days, not leaving, whispering his constant apologies over and over. On the third day, the boy opened his eyes, and the doctor's grief was gone. The boy had been reborn.