A/N: I've wanted to try a Twilight Fic so I am doing one about Esme Cullen. I started it in Carlisle's POV, though.

Prologue: This Wasn't Reason, It Was Fate.

Never, in all my years of living, had I ever expected to meet Esmeralda Anne Platt-Evenson again. It seemed as if just yesterday I had been healing her broken leg from when she had become too adventurous and taken a dramatic fall. They say things happen for a reason—this was more than just reason. This was fate. I stood watching her shallow breathing—they brought her here to die. They wanted her to die. They weren't even going to try and resurrect her broken body—or faintly beating heart. I could easily see why they wouldn't, but at the same time I questioned why they had put such a low value on someone's life. She was just as deserving as all the other near-death patients fighting for their lives desperately in the medical wards. It wasn't like they could hear them dying, unlike me. I could hear everyone's death right down onto the very last pulsation of blood through their veins and heart. I looked over the beautiful woman before me. Her hair caressed her heart-shaped face lovingly as if to provide comfort to the bruises across her jawline. As my fingers the skin brushed of her arm I watched as a trail of goosebumps followed. Her body shivered from my cold touch, I could her her heartbeat skip once. A hoarse, pain-filled groan was my response from the involuntary shudder she had given from my icy touch. I frowned. The fall she had taken had broken almost every bone in her body, it would be fruitless to even try to mend her bones by popping what I could back into place and bracing them. Yet still, I wanted to give this angel a chance at life, this woman who was helpless to the cruel fate of this world. Running my fingers across her bruised and scraped jaw, I sat silent for a few moments. I watched a few goosebumps appear along where I had moved my fingers, just as they had when I grazed her arm. She was human. I wasn't. She was the epitome of life – and I was the meaning of death and evil. I'd been labeled a monster for years. A heartless, man-eating cannibal who cared nothing of the lives of those around him. I refused to live that life. I refused to be that kind of man my father had chased down in the streets of Volterra when I had been a young boy.

Thump...Thumpa...Thump...

Slower and slower her struggling heart began to beat. I knew her blood would be moving slowly, but I could beat that. I knew I could. I ran my tongue over my cold lips. She was too precious to lose. She was way too precious. She was someone I wanted to save – I couldn't let her die, but something stood in my way. Could I really destroy Esme this way? Could I honestly take this angelic being's heartbeat so selfishly and make her live this life? I was a bit disappointed in myself for my answer.

Yes. I could. I definitely could.

If I had a heartbeat I knew it'd be racing at this decision. God, what was I thinking? Who was I, a Devil's creature, to do this? I grit my teeth in thought, still debating. I was wasting moments. Moments that could be used to save Esmeralda and make her mine forever. The Morgue's door shut softly – the last assistant for the night leaving. I was now left in the room full of dead bodies, left to rot until the Cornoner arrived and took them away. The moonlight shone brightly through the window above Esme's bed, the light illuminating her face. Her breathing was growing slower. I only heard three heartbeats per minute now. I gnawed into my bottom lip, my fangs gaining my attention. The windows that had been left open to avoid a near unbearable scent allowed in a soft breeze, moving the translucent curtains around Esme's bed in a ghostly manner. It almost seemed to be something from a horror movie.

Two heartbeats per minute...

There was no time to waste.

I lunged.

Esme was now...dead.