1921

The burn started slowly.

When the embers of it began to glow, a decade prior, she was just a child and he was in the middle of a difficult day at the hospital he'd chosen. Her leg had snapped cleanly and he knew that the pain must have been intense to her. But she came rolling in on a stretcher, flushed with exhilaration and giggling breathlessly.

"Oh, oh dear. Leave it to me to hurt myself falling out of that old maple tree."

Her eyes sparkled back then with innocence and youthful mischief, her caramel tresses stuck to her cheeks and neck in places. He could see her pulse beating against the flyaways that lay on her skin and the involuntary flow of venom watering his mouth gave rise to guilt. It was a guilt that reminded him of why he battled his nature in a brawl of conscience every moment of his existence.

But he still managed to cross her path, even in the outskirts of Wisconsin. She was still watermelon on a midsummer's day, lazy in the sun. He could imagine her with her face upturned to bask in the heat. Beautiful. Sweet. Her heart sounded like the hum of a beehive. Honey blood in every comb --

"Ugh!" he groaned frustratedly in the same anguished way he had the first time he'd been entrusted to care for her. It was the first time he had ever walked out on a patient, a decade before.

Since the day he decided to exist according to his own set of rules, he managed the only way he knew how: by reminding himself that those around him were people. Human beings, just as he once was. Who thought and loved and suffered, just as he still did. If he could only remind himself of the fact that they were not his to condemn, then he could continue on. He was not the one to decide their fate. That ultimate decision was up to the Almighty.

He would've gladly suffered the torture of the damned as penance for all the maddening thoughts he'd had of the dying beauty on his bed.

In ten long years, that homely midwestern girl went from Esme Anne Platt of Columbus, Ohio to Mrs. Charles Evenson. Her cherub cheeks and golden hue were long gone. The faint scars were littered across her legs, her arms, one trailed along her jaw like a caterpillar. It was pale like the rest of her skin in the fragmented moonlight filling the room. She was dying. No medicine could free her from the trauma.

Yet, he brought her home. She was on the verge of getting what she intended on having before she spread her arms and jumped off that cliff.

"I must admit that I am embarrassed by my carelessness. I've never fallen off my branch! Had I a pair of wings on my back, this would have never happened," she blushed.

Her father chuckled from the corner where he stood. "But you do, my fallen angel, you do."

Bright-eyed and smiling, she looked up. "Do you think I'm a fallen angel, Dr. Cullen?"

The woman on the bed whispered him out of reverie, unsettled still.

"No, Charles...don't."

In that moment, her fate was decided.

The good doctor -- the healer, the caretaker -- bowed over the remnants of the girl he used to know and pressed his lips to her ear.

"He'll never hurt you again, Esme. I'm giving you your wings now so you can fly...please forgive me."

Her taste was sweet melancholy and the color of amber everywhere. Her sharp gasp rang loudly in his ears. Her racing pulse reverberated throughout him. The overwhelming of his senses became the whole world until he saw the lean figure of his young companion leaning against the frame of the door. Staring into those empty golden eyes, he was positive that his own thoughts were at his mercy.

When the doctor found the strength to wrench himself away, she thrashed about the mattress, contorted by the pain and frenzy. Her soft groans were the only sound left in her body; the only sounds in the room for a fleeting moment.

"All she wanted was her child, Carlisle," the boy said, "and nothing can bring him back. Not even you. You haven't saved her from anything."

He was gone on the tail end of a breeze.

Carlisle was left to face the consequences of what he'd done. And he'd never felt more alone than in knowing Edward thought him a hypocrite and in having failed to save Esme's soul.

God help him.