A/N so here is the second chapter—I hope you are enjoying it—it's a little slow at he moment but I needed to get Esme's story down--- some Edward coming soon too for any team Edwardians out there—I love him to bits so I had to let him have his say—he's a new vamp too so a little more wreckless than the Edward we know and love from the saga—please review if you like it—I would love to know what you think and any ideas you might want to see in here somewhere. I will pot chapter 3 as soon as I can get it down!!

I don't own any of these characters; they are the property of Stephenie Meyer. I am just fooling around with them ;)

Chapter 2.

My life continued in the same way as it had before my brief stint in the hospital that summer. My Leg healed and I went back to the mundane day, to day, monotony of my world. I was different now though. My Handsome Doctor was always in my heart, and my head, I daydreamed about him constantly, and dreamed of running away to find him. I was too afraid though. As time passed the whole episode became more dreamlike to me. I struggled to remember his face and voice—it was fading away. My mother worried over me, fretting that I had become melancholy, and that I would never be the same again. She guessed that I was heartsick over the Doctor. I overheard her discussing me with her friend in the parlor one day.

" I don't know what to do with her, she's just not the same girl since she had to stay in the hospital, I think she took a liking to that handsome Doctor, and then he upped and left, just like that. I hope he didn't have his way with her, and… damage her…she won't talk about it though. How will she find a husband if she wont talk to anyone?" she whispered to her friend. I wondered why she didn't realise that her voice would carry right in to the kitchen where I sat sewing. I sighed, and cleared away the quilt I was working on. I would have to do a better Job at pretending to be fine. I loved my mother and didn't want her to worry. I made up my mind to get on with my life. My beautiful doctor would never return and I could not pine for him any longer.

Time passed an I found I was able to push my feelings deep inside me, and I only thought about him in the dark watches of the night when I allowed myself to imagine how things could have been if he had not disappeared into the night, like a dream vanishing upon waking.

In 1916 Shortly after my 21st birthday, I began courting Charlie Evenson. He was working as a farmer near to my house, and though I hadn't seen much of him in the intervening years since my encounter with Carlisle, we still spoke on occasion. He had grown into a Handsome man. And the mean streak he had shown when we were younger was all but gone. I was not in love with him, but I didn't mind his company and I resigned myself to the fact that no one would ever measure up to my mysterious doctor. So I ought to make the bet of what was handed to me. My parents approved and encouraged the pairing. With him in my life It was easier to forget the things that might have been, and focus instead on making a future for myself. When America joined the War In Europe, in April of 1917, we realised that Charlie may get drafted to the front line, and our parents decided that we should marry. It was a small affair, and we spent our wedding night in the small cottage that my father had rented for us. I very quickly realised that I was wrong about the mean streak being gone. The face I saw when we closed the door that night, was very different to the one he had shown me up until that day. The mean glint in his eye as he took in my figure while I removed my dress, made me shudder. When he called me to him, I almost couldn't take the few steps over to the bed. I knew what a wife was supposed to do on this night, and I had been strangely excited and scared about it, all at the same time. But now as I stood before his greedy eyes, fear won out as the dominant emotion.

"Come here wife. You have a duty to perform." He chuckled darkly. His eyes filled with lust and menace. I took a deep breath and walked over to him. He grasped my shoulders, digging his calloused fingers into my soft flesh, and kissed me roughly.

" I have wanted you for so long." The way he said the words, with a greedy possessiveness scared me more than his eyes. "And now I have you…I can do whatever I want to you." The accompanying smile was a leer. I could smell the whisky strong on his breath, as he began to fumble with my corset and petticoats. He ripped the scanty garments from my body and thrust me backwards onto the bed. The next hours were excruciating and terrifying. When he finally collapsed, spent, on the bed next to me I curled up onto my side and cried silent tears into the rumpled, bloodstained coverlet. I felt utterly wretched and alone. When I spoke to my mother about his behavior, she told me I was overreacting and that a woman's Life was never an easy one. She counseled me to be a good wife and Keep quiet about my reluctance, telling me that I would get used to it eventually and that it would hurt less as time passed. I struggled to see anyway that grasping fingers, and biting teeth, on the softest, most delicate parts of me would ever hurt less. But I tried to be a good wife and I found that if I meticulously kept to his orders, then he was easier to be around. His meals had to be ready on time and the house kept spotless. I sometimes wished that I could have been a mind reader, so as to get everything perfect for him before he needed to "teach" me how it should be done, in his own special way. If mistakes were made, his retribution was swift and harsh. He beat me in the kitchen, and raped me in the bedroom, and largely ignored me everywhere else, unless he wanted something.

In late 1917, after the most sad and difficult months of my life had reawakened my longing for my lost angel, Charlie was drafted to Europe to fight in the war. I was exultant; I could barely hide my relief at being freed from my hellish life with him. I had heard that few returned from the frontline and I imagined my future as a war widow—I would escape and begin the teaching career I had dreamed of. My father was no longer my Keeper. My father had given me away to this cruel man. And now he was going away! I was free. I began to plan my life.

As I packed him off to war, feigning distress at his going, he turned to me, an evil glint in hi eye, which I had come to know so well.

"I will return to you, my wife." He sneered "Death himself could not keep me from you." And I knew it was a promise. His eyes roamed up and down my body and he pulled me in to kiss me hard on the mouth. And while his face was still close to mine he left me a parting threat.

"and Don't you forget who your master is now. Keep your legs closed while I'm gone, slut, If I can smell another on you when I return I'll beat you till you're deader'n'dead." He snarled in my ear so that only I could hear him. He turned and headed down the lane toward the waiting cat that was taking all the draftees to the harbor. As I watched him go I knew that he was telling the truth. He would come back. Whatever it took.

Time passed and I fell into my daily life, silently hoping he would never come back and did the only thing I could do. Wait. And act. All my friends were so desperate for their husbands to return. I thought I had better behave that way too. It seemed that, as peaceful as my life was without him, it was streaking by too quickly. Seasons sped past me at light speed and then, when we heard news that the war was over in Europe, and that our hero's would be back by the next spring the air of celebration around me was almost too much to bear—I couldn't join in their happiness. I wanted to mourn. I was terrified. I reasoned that he might have changed by being in all the suffering of a war, that it might have taught him some humility. But in the back of my mind disturbing ideas percolated, about the new ways to inflict pain he might have encountered in his tour of duty.

The holidays passed in a blur and before I could stand it, he was back, and I found my fears about him becoming even more cruel and twisted from his stint as a soldier, confirmed ten fold. There was a new edge to him now, a threatening menace in his eyes that made me fear for my life. He had tasted the thrill of killing, and it had been something he had enjoyed immensely. Now and then I would catch him looking at me out of the corner of his eye and I felt sure he was planning ways to end my life. I believed that, if I hadn't been of use to him as a plaything and servant then my days would have been nearing their end. His time away from female company had only served to make him more demanding in the bedroom. Every night he would advance on me, his lecherous grin making my blood run cold as he approached, bearing down on me. He had come back from war with the notion that he was invincible, and that someone like him deserved a son and heir.

"Make sure you give me a son, though, woman. I don't want no more FE-males around here, smelling the place up. If it's a girl then I'll slit its throat." He warned me.

His persistence paid off and in the fall of 1920, I felt a small fluttering sensation in my swollen belly. I knew that I was carrying his child, though I had not let him find out. And in that second, when I felt my baby moving inside me, a fierce surge of love washed over me, and I knew that I could not allow this man to ever lay his hands on my baby. I waited until he had passed out with the drink that night- I had been particularly attentive in re-filling his cup as we sat in the parlor and silently watched the fire in the grate burn away to nothing. After he had had his nightly taste of me, he quickly began to snore loudly and I knew that he would be out for at least 10 hours. I crept out in to the scullery and got the bag I had packed and hidden just after I felt my child inside me. I opened the latch and slipped out into the night. I had a little money saved up and I made my way to my cousin's house in Milwaukee. I stayed with her for a short while, as my pregnancy progressed, and I was fairly happy, but I knew that I needed to find a place for myself. It was a few weeks later when I discovered that my parents had heard of my whereabouts and planned to come and fetch me back to my Husband and my hellish existence. I headed north to a small settlement just outside a town called Ashland. It was easy to blend in. To become just another war widow, and I took a teaching post in the local school there, and found lodgings. I tentatively began to feel like things were looking up. I wasn't truly happy but I sensed it was a possibility. As my baby grew, so the ache in my heart shrank till it was just a sad memory. I should have known it couldn't last.

A few months later my son was born, but he was sickly and the doctors feared he would not survive the night. I think it was my sheer will power that kept him breathing for a few more days. I couldn't stand it, watching him fade away, struggling for breath. The pain I felt in his coming demise was acute, and, as I sat in the warm room watching the small bundle in my arms slip away I knew I would soon follow him. I despaired at the hand that life had dealt me. It was not a hard choice. I didn't have one single thing to live for. Everything I had ever wanted was not to be mine—there would be no happily ever after for me. I was twenty six years old and my life was over. all meaning fading away with the final breaths of the child in my arms. My child. My Love. My life. Over.

I don't know how long it was that I clung to my sons cooling body but when the nurse tried to take him from me, it was like I was suddenly broken from a trance. I stood up and handed my beautiful son to her.

"He's gone." I whispered I leaned down to kiss him goodbye and then I walked out of the door. I did not look back. I walked out of the hospital and kept walking. I had no plan, and no clue which direction I was going in. After an indiscernible amount of time, it could have been minutes or days for all I could have told you, I simply reached the end of the land. That was it. There was a sheer drop in front of me I couldn't see anything below a few feet down in the dim light from the waning moon. I stepped off into nothing. As I fell my mind felt freed of all the pain it carried within it. The air rushing by, blew it away from me. I wasn't scared. I was happy and peaceful. As my body hit the ground there was one blinding, shattering moment of pain and then I was floating away. I thought I must be dead because there was no pain. I couldn't feel my body at all. I wondered why I was still able to think.

Maybe I was a ghost, but I couldn't see anything so that couldn't be right. surely ghosts must be able to see where they were going…I drifted in and out of coherent thought musing about where I was and what had happened to my body, and why I hadn't been taken up to heaven. I came back to reality with a large jolt of pain, when rough fingers began moving my broken limbs around, and jostling me where I lay. I realized then that I was lying on something hard and cold and that I hurt very much. I wasn't dead. I was just hurt. So badly that I had drifted away –closed myself off from the pain. I wished I could do it again, this was too much to bear. I tried to cry out but I couldn't speak or make any sound. I couldn't open my eyes or move any part of my body there was a sickening crunch in my neck and a white-hot sheet of pain and then only thudding agony in my head, I wondered vaguely if my head had fallen off my body. I heard voices around me talking in hurried tones.

"do you think she'll live?"…."I doubt it—her necks broke I think…straight to the morgue with this one –we're too busy to take her to a ward and have a doctor tell us what we already know" …"can you feel a heartbeat"… "nah she's already cold anyway…"

Blissfully I drifted again. And I was floating in cool water…was I dreaming? I couldn't tell, but I was peaceful and there was no pain anymore. As I floated I began to think about my doctor I could almost hear his voice in my ear…

"Esme? Is it really you?" How odd. It was a strange thing for my imaginary visitor to say. After all it was my imagination so obviously I would know. I felt a little irritated in this, one of my final moments my mind chose to come up with an unrealistic hallucination. How typical of me.

"Why have they brought you here, while your heart still beats?" the voice whispered. I tried to answer, but I couldn't find my mouth. It seemed that hearing was the only sense that I still possessed. If I was hearing, not imagining. And what did that mean? if I was hearing? Was it possible that he had come back for me –too late? now that I was on the verge of dying? The irony was not lost on me.

"I am going to save you my dear. It might hurt, but I promise I'll stay by your side and afterwards I will explain everything"

I felt my self being lifted and I was sure I must be floating up to heaven because I felt like I was flying. I lost coherent thought again and I was back in my cool water floating and drifting. Sudden warmth began to creep around my limbs and I realized I could feel myself again, my cool water was getting warmer… hotter even. It was too hot, uncomfortably so… I found I could move my fingers and I heard a new voice—smooth and quiet, like velvet, nearby me…

"Carlisle, she's moving…come quickly" the voice said. Carlisle. The voice had said Carlisle. Despite the pain, I felt a sense of relief wash over me. He was here. My Dark Angel had returned. It took me less than a millisecond to have this thought but in that time the water had become unbearably hot around me. I was boiling alive. I tried to find my voice. I had to tell him to get me out of the water. But it was nowhere. I found my eyes though, and forced my lids to open. I was in a small room, lying in a bed. And two men were standing over me. One was a strikingly handsome young man with tousled bronze hair and the same strange golden eyes I remembered so well. And the other was Him. I gasped out the words before I even realized I had found my voice.

"You're…Here" I gasped.

"Yes my dear, I'm here. Rest now. I'm not leaving. Ill never leave you again my beautiful Esme" as he spoke the words I felt the burning water seep into my body and my bones caught fire. Every part of me was aflame. It must have been my own screaming I could hear, but I couldn't make myself stop. I slipped into the fire and felt myself burning away. My thoughts jumbled and disjointed. This continued for what felt like eternity. I forgot all about Carlisle, and his young friend. And I knew that I had gone to hell and was burning for my sins.