An early Christmas surprise just for you!

A great big thank you to Findthewill and Slovesemmett. I have not met more wonderful ladies than you. You are a great fount of wisdom to draw from, a strong pillar to lean on, and the best friends a girl could ever hope for.

Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns any Twilight characters that may appear in this story and the framework for the canon events that it illustrates. The remainder is my original work. Copyright 2009 by Edwina Cullen. No copying or reproduction of this work is permitted without my express written authorization.

*^*

VENI VENI EMMANUEL (O COME, O COME, EMMANUEL)

Carlisle

Never in my wildest imagination would I have expected there would come a day when I would call another my son. Clearly, I did not possess the necessary constitution to be blessed with such a privilege, and yet the honor had been bestowed on me nonetheless.

The fact that I was not adequately prepared for the coveted task of watching over the young man lounging in the leather recliner across the room from me, did nothing to dim the intense pride I felt. Through all my lonely years, no prescient vivid fantasies had illuminated my dreary memories to prepare me for the imminence of a delight of such magnitude.

It had seemed a consummate reality that a vampire's existence could never include such idealistic perceptions as family. More remote, was finding another who was willing to defy his instincts, one willing to uphold my notions of propriety and who insisted on towing that opposing line from his natural tendencies. I knew this from the diverse encounters I had with the other vampires I occasionally came across since I migrated to the New World.

This truth had been no different for those I met in Europe either. Assuredly, after my stay with the Volturi in Italy, my hopes of ever finding another Stregoni Benefici had waned considerably with each passing day. I knew that it was not the norm to hunt animals as I – or now – we did. However, as the matter was more about the satisfaction of a craving than a necessary requirement for sustenance, I had not relented in my search for that individual, or people with whom I could harmonize. Needless to say, my efforts proved futile in finding such a prospect.

I ran my hand through my hair, remembering the brief surprise I felt at the words of the desperate and dying mother. Her unexpected request had suddenly brought a measure of acuity into my forlorn existence, making me consider again whether the only way to find companionship was to create a friend for myself. The decision itself had been easy to make, a mere look at the fetching young man was enough to convince me to accept him as my charge. And for a year and some now, he had been my companion, and my son.

Though it had not been an easy year, as it was fraught with erratic spells of intense bloodlust, somehow, we sailed through the most difficult time relatively unscathed. I had not expected the strength of his plight with his control. Quite truthfully, I had not known what to expect. Yet, as the year wore on, he not only found the will to resist, he also grew more comfortable with himself.

While he had not fully built adequate resistance from the temptation to drink from a human, I was proud that Edward battled so courageously to stay away from the honeyed promise. It is true that we had both floundered many times to reach this relative comfort, but the tumultuous experience leading to this realization had been well worth the effort.

I grimaced slightly at the memories of those moments when it seemed my still heart would somehow fail. Quite frequently, I had asked of the dawning day if the time had come when he would leave because I insisted he curb his thirst. Even though I strove to play my role as a father impeccably, I was without doubt, just as fallible as any other parent. Considering our occasional accidents as lessons on fatherhood, I noted every situation and circumstance that had led to mistakes and tried to avoid drawing my son into them again.

It was not exactly a simple task, especially since being without proper guidance from my own father made every enterprise seem new and insurmountable at first. After all, through my vague memories, the Anglican priest had seldom lent a hand to guide my steps as a young man. In some instances, he even seemed regretful of his role as a parent. Instead, he was quick to judge and even quicker to punish the supposed transgressions of the innocent.

I prayed fervently never to be like he was, reveling in, and extremely grateful for Edward's company. In my retrospection, I knew without a doubt that I would not have relinquished an ounce of the pain it took to place us in our current propinquity. I had not thought it possible that our camaraderie could thrive as though we were actually kin. After all, procreation was impossible for our kind. That had been a hard fact to live with, but live with it I had for nearly three centuries until God bestowed his blessing upon me with the most unlikely gift – a son.

A wistful smile pushed past my lips as I considered the day I found him at the hospital in Chicago. His face remained unchanged from that time. Despite his difficult newborn year, Edward had not lost the purity I had seen in the composition of his features. Though, the glint of perception, which I thought I had seen in his eyes then, now had a logical explanation.

As the young vampire's rampant thirst abated, so that our hunting trips had become less frequent, he had begun to venture slowly into the human world. Just by driving around the small Ashland Township in his new Cadillac, Edward had discovered a school and a passion for baseball. Nowadays, he could even stay around humans for extended periods.

At first, I was especially concerned, not only about his safety, but also about the ramification of his talent in facing the human world. During the first few months of his new life, I felt helpless watching him bear the sheer torture it was for him to be within the proximity of a thoughtful mind. He would hold his hands over his ears, struggling in vain to ward off the intrusion in his head.

Soon, he had mastered sufficient control over his talent as well. He intimated, sometime ago, that by focusing on a distraction long enough, he could draw away slightly from the dissonance of mental voices, pushing them to the back of his mind like a distant hum. Learning to ignore the unwanted thoughts that assailed his mind had also taken a great deal of effort, it seemed, and I had grown ceaselessly prouder of him for his determination.

I broke from my memories, suddenly wondering if…

"Not with you, Carlisle. I am quite attuned to your voice," he cut through, murmuring softly in answer to the direction of my thoughts before I could even fully inspect the possibilities.

In other words, the onus lies on me to think happy thoughts all the time, does it not? I teased.

He chuckled faintly, turning to the next page of the book he had chosen to read nearly an hour ago. The Grand Inquisitor? I asked, surprised by his choice, and amused that he had taken so long to finish half of a book that small.

You ought to read faster, I noted, drawing another chuckle in response as I rose from my seat to replace the old volume I had long set aside.

When I returned to my desk with the new scrolls I had chosen to while the time away, a pair of dancing gold eyes was trained intently on me from across the room. They seemed full of wonder and a hint of mischief, but the face that surrounded them held no such emotion. In fact, Edward's forehead had wrinkled as though he was in deep thought. The small smile that had been playing around his lips a few minutes ago also seemed to have dissipated.

"Have you any qualms, son?" I asked, wondering from whence his suddenly somber expression had taken root. He quickly looked away, as I glanced again at the book before him, questioning if that was the source of his worry.

That book touches on religion, you know?

"Of course, there are more religious books on these shelves than in a convent library," his sharp retort acknowledged.

I smiled, unsurprised by his reaction, Edward and I hardly saw eye to eye on the issue of religion. During this yuletide, it seemed his assertion that we were all damned and unworthy of salvation had grown even more resolute. I could not blame him. To this day, I was not certain how a vampire celebrated Christmas.

We had just returned from a celebratory expedition to Alaska, one which the young vampire had suggested. Not sure, but intrigued by the reason why he wanted us to venture out so far, I had consented to his plan to set out on the eve before Christmas, and returned the night after the boisterous New Years' festivities had subsided. It had been an exhilarating experience hunting Alaska's abundant wildlife and I yearned to repeat the journey. It was a good trip, son. We should repeat it often, I smiled.

He glanced up again, lifting an eyebrow when our eyes met and chuckled softly. Then, he shook his head slowly and returned to his lazy perusal of the tales from old England. I felt my shoulders slump as I returned to my own distractions. The young vampire must have already read the answer in my mind to whatever question he looked like he might ask.

"No, I did not mean to ask a question," he countered, immediately drawing my attention away from the pile of scrolls I had begun to unfurl.

I quickly set the spools aside and raised my head to look fully upon his pensive face. With my curiosity now piqued, I was surely not returning to them soon, anyway. I pursed my lips and waited, inquiring mentally about the observation he had intended to share with me then. Slowly, he sat up and laid the worn manuscript at his side, staring into the distance through the open shutters.

I waited patiently, or maybe it was impatience that had me breathless and silent. One thing was certain, I was eager for whatever discussion his observation was likely to lead us to. We ever so rarely had these sorts of conversations. Usually, he would ask a question, nod slightly by the time I thought through the answer, and eagerly move on to his next source of fascination. We hardly ever spoke our words aloud, let alone in a manner that emulated dialog.

"I have been pondering what it was like for you before my change. All day, you have hinted at a great depression, or sorrow of a sort," he finally breathed.

I quirked my brow in momentary surprise, slightly taken aback by the accuracy of his assertion, as it was not what I had expected at all. The memory of an old ache returned briefly, clogging my throat with the strength of its resurgence. I faltered, unsure how to proceed. Finally, and only after several seconds had passed, I parted my lips, and spoke a reply.

"Truthfully, it was quite agonizing to live by myself for so long," I managed, pressing a tight smile to my lips, and straightening up more in my seat to examine his outward reaction.

While his expression had not changed, I was not deceived; I knew he could see the images that ran through my mind. Those I tried to suppress seemed even more eager to come undone in the heat of the moment. I pursed my lips in concentration, hoping sheer force of will was enough to hold them away, as I was unwilling to subject my son to the depth of sorrow that had once assailed me.

"Of course, Carlisle, I did not mean to be intrusive. Pardon my excessive inquiry," he said, lifting from the couch and heading towards the door.

Confounded by the sudden direction our short conversation had taken, I reached out to beseech him to stay as he passed me by. His stoic expression, when he turned to appraise me, unnerved me greatly, causing guilt ridden pangs to pull at my stone heart. He stalked back to his seat in response to my plea, but continually kept his face impartial to my musings.

I sighed shakily, partly with relief and partly dread, as the memories I yearned to conceal broke through and flooded my mind.

"That book," I whispered, gesturing toward the yellowish brown cover on the seat beside him, "had once belonged to a nun who resided in the convent a few meters away from the hospital where I found you."

"Was the hospital built by their church?" he asked, interrupting my thoughts for a brief moment.

Yes, I nodded, thinking back to the snow covered yard of the small hospital I had worked at for five years. It was the Christmas of 1917, less than a year before I met the Masen family. The intricately woven wreathe hanging on the front door was the only sign on the structure that showed the yuletide had arrived.

Outside, a few children's dainty voices rose above the whispering howls of wintery winds and the crunching footsteps in the snow. They sang joyously, heralding the season with their unbridled excitement.

In sharp contrast, the poorly lit halls of the hospital housed many others who bore great agony in their bodies, including the nun of whom I spoke to my son.

"She had complications from malaria, and no matter what we did to try to save her, it was inevitable that her end had come."

Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini had been a kind woman to everyone with whom she had an encounter. Her dark brown eyes had always lifted in excitement when I visited her in her room at the hospital, eager to converse in Latin with the juvenalis doctoris.

Before she died, three days before she could hear the toll of the church bells she had been awaiting, I had gone to visit her again. She seemed even weaker than before, hardly able to lift herself as she reached for the book on her bedside table and handed it to me. Her eyes searched my face, brightly dancing behind her pallid willowy skin as I said my thanks. Their curiosity was evident with silent questions, some of which I was sure I could not quite answer.

Wordlessly, she had craned her neck to the side, angling for a better view it seemed. Her disease ravaged body protested, but she moaned feebly in response and squeezed her eyes shut to brace against the pain of adjusting her weakening body. Her trembling lips raised briefly in a smile at one corner, parting to let the words, "Benedictio Dei" through before she had settled down again, and quickly succumbed to sleep.

I could still remember thinking how gaunt her face looked in her slumber. She'd seemed distressed, with her forehead wrinkled in conspicuous agony, most likely from the pain in her rapidly deteriorating body. Turning away, as I could not bear to see her so, I tucked the old novel in my pocket, and walked out. Mere hours later, I returned from my other duties to hear that she had died from a heart failure.

Brought back to the present, I stood up to stand in front of the window overlooking our own snow covered front yard, contemplating how the time between then and now passed so swiftly. It had been exactly two years and three days since that day, but the aged memories did not diffuse the vivid pictures.

"She had lived on her own for all sixty-seven years of her life without a husband or child," I continued, turning to gather wood in the fireplace and start a fire. I sighed again, as I lifted away from the smoldering embers, knowing that I needed to explain myself further. "Having dedicated her life to the service of God since her childhood, she had denied herself of many worldly pleasures and lived a quiet, lonely life," I said, "So, I wondered."

After 280 years in God's service, I wondered if I had been called to serve as the old nun had. Even without a family, she seemed to have thrived in her endeavors, including the conversion of the hospital from its former state as an old hotel. It seemed her faith had kept her through her entire life, and I wondered that day, if similarly, it was God's will for me to stay unattached and only hold steadfast to His word.

Though I had debated this extensively, asking myself over and again if I had mistaken my purpose on earth, I also wondered if God actually listened to a vampire's prayers. If it was His will that I remain alone, why did my heart harbor this great longing for a friend? It was not my way to question my conviction about the wisdom of God, but that day, I worried. He had to know about this yearning – this burning desire to share my life with another.

I turned to inspect my son's silent demeanor, watching as his eyes narrowed from the sudden direction my thoughts and memories had taken. My attention now stood on the dark room in the small cottage I had owned in Chicago. In the hearth, an unnecessary fire had been lit to keep me company as the day before Christmas dawned on the city.

I succumbed and let the sorrow I had felt, while staring in the fiery piths, come rushing through once again. The feeling of dejection, when I subsequently readied myself to fill in for the colleague who had recently become a father, tore through me once more, feeding my telepathic son all the information he sought, and possibly more.

I saw it all again. It was two days after the nun had died, while I was hurrying to perform my duties, when a loud scream suddenly marred the perfect silence in the hospital – again. It was not the first time the soldier in the ward screamed in agony from the pain he had to endure every time he was due for this procedure.

Blood oozed from the punctures in the odd nooks of his frail body, and his eyes rolled back from intense pain. There was little else to do but to apply the leeches now. To save his life, his infected leg had been severed, but the swelling had continued, immediately calling for his physician's prescription to attempt this final resort.

Today however, he was less noisy. He clenched his jaws resolutely as he waited for the anesthetics to wear off, only grunting when the pain seized him. He gripped the bed sheets even tighter than usual, tearing thin strips in the sides as sweat broke over his forehead. The cool cloth Nurse Regina had tried to place on his head to calm him having fallen uselessly on the floor. He panted while his heart raced at double its normal tempo.

I watched his agony and felt for him. The pain killers we had administered had reached their limit. Anymore would have been an overdose and further taxed the health of the poor young man. He had barely turned eighteen when he was shipped off to the war, and sadly not much older when he returned. The leeches that now sucked on his skin were meant to fight the residue of gangrene his leg had accrued in the trenches at the front.

When he had first arrived, his bright eyes and easy smile had drawn me to him. After speaking for a while, I became awed by his intelligence and his zest for life. Eventually, when the decision had been reached to sever his leg, I had battled with the choice to let him be, or to take the chance I knew I yearned for. He would make a good friend, I had thought, one with whom I assumed I could spend eternity.

In the end, his family's visit to him, the day before his surgery, had averted my hesitation. Their excitement at seeing their ward had been both infectious and excruciating. Even in the face of his misfortune, his family seemed happy to see him. They had come bearing gifts and words of encouragement as they fussed, and prayed for their kin.

It was that same day, just a while after the young soldier's relatives had departed, that the hospital administrator, a stout professor and patron of the church that had built the hospital, approached me to inform me that I had been granted a week's holiday. I had been astounded. I did not need a holiday to further compound my loneliness, but he had insisted, citing my need to spend some time with "the family" as a necessity.

With my tongue tied, and knowing that a confession about my true state of loneliness would have raised suspicion, I had nodded my assent, deciding it was time to head out again, anyway.

"You could visit your family back in Ohio," he had suggested, offering a pitiful smile, returning my torment several folds over when a head of wavy caramel colored hair falling over shy blue eyes assailed me. My chest tightened at the images his reminder had brought up. My sanity threatened to snap with every unconscious breath I drew then – hanging precariously by a hair's breadth.

Had this man no mercy? I had wondered, looking him in the eye for traces of malice, that he should bring back my agony?

A beauty, unparalleled by any I had ever seen before, flashed through my mind, returning her soft curves and smooth, silken skin to its forefront to taunt my better judgment. Haunting blue eyes rose to peer at me, accompanied with the hint of a sultry smile. I had to focus every ounce of reason I had on the task of righting her broken leg lest I yield to the power of her staggering appeal.

She was my absolution and my nemesis. With a face so perfect – so glorious it shone like the sun, piercing through the gloomy depths of my bleak heart. My breath caught when her slender fingers unwittingly brushed closely past mine on their way to tuck a lock of errant hair behind her ears.

My eyes had strayed for a moment, following the graceful movement of her hand. She smiled slightly, darting her eyes from mine quickly to look down. I then returned to my task of trying to bind the fracture in her limb as carefully as I could to avoid causing her any more pain.

She could not know that the only reason I seemed so silent was because I needed to avoid looking up at her at all. Of this I was certain; that my control would have flown from me had I given in to the indulgence to linger a tad longer than was obligatory on her. I desperately wanted to press my lips to hers, and drink from her intoxicating essence. Her shy smile held a promise of new life for my lonely aching heart – a new life I had no hope of living if I stayed longer in Ohio.

I fled the continual torment a month after that fateful day, with her face imprinted in my mind and my unyielding sorrow weighing even more in every drag of the heavy steps that drove me away from her alluring splendor.

Contrary to my thoughts, my time at Chicago had only proved more onerous. My deepest desires for companionship had not been abated with the difference in location. Instead, my dilemma had amplified with the years.

I turned to watch the flames rapidly lick at the chunks of wood in the hearth, drawing myself from the suffocating memories of the past, and into the present. The fire raged on, though unnecessary for anything but ambience, as I moved to sit still in the chair opposite it and stare into its fiery core. Like that day in Chicago, its flickering shadows reminded me of sorrow, though this time, the grief was not mine.

A wailing mother mourned the death of her teenage son the eve before Christmas. Her distress knew no bounds as she knelt on the icy ground amidst the rest of her relations, and wept bitterly. The young soldier had died a few hours before, just as the bells began to toll in annunciation of Christmas.

I sighed, belatedly feeling Edward's presence behind me just as he placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder. His touch conveyed his understanding, causing a wave of tranquility to wash over my troubled mind.

"Merry Christmas," he whispered moments later, right before I heard the door knob behind me click quietly.

He had opted to leave me to the remainder of my memories, it seemed - as usual, he was the perfect gentleman. I laughed quietly at his thoughtfulness and turned my attention back to the raging golden embers darting sun-colored beams around the room. For a moment, I felt like I was sitting in my small cottage in Chicago again.

This time however, instead of the haunting memories of a dying soldier's screams, or the blinding smile of a beautiful temptress, I saw a teenage boy with golden eyes and messy red brown hair. He had a wide grin on his face, baring brilliant white teeth the same luminance as the snow covered expanse on which he had been frolicking. I smiled then, as I did now, when he screeched to a stop right before me.

"I love Alaska," he declared, "This is the best place to spend Christmas."

My heart soared with joy at his obvious happiness, so that when he asked if we could live in Alaska the following year, I had agreed immediately.

Yes, son, I thought in response to his earlier wish, it is a merry Christmas, indeed.

*^*

Author's Note:

Christmas is such a wonderful time of year; a time for love, family, sharing, and enjoying the dainty children's voices heralding a season of peace and goodwill to all. However, some children will not be able to spread this joy with us, or put smiles on our faces, because of childhood cancer. Though heartbreaking, all is not lost for our young ones. The Twilight fandom has decided it's time to give back some of our love for the Saga that brought us together to support Alex's Lemonade www(.)alexslemonade(.)org help fight childhood cancer. The Fandom Gives Back, at www(.)thefandomgivesback(.)com, will be holding an Author Auction to raise funds for this reason.

You can help to support this cause with a little contribution. For as little as $10, I'm offering a canon one-shot in Carlisle's point of view. So, come let's all join hands to help fight childhood cancer, and put a smile on a child's face this X'mas. The auction is open from November 15 - 20.

Thank you,

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

Edwina