The Golden Boy
I. Edward Masen closed his eyes dying of Spanish Influenza and opened them again in a brand new world. One full of unquenchable thirst and cacophonic noise, even inside his every thought within his head, with one radiant point of focus: Carlisle Cullen.
The doctor who had been seeing to all of his family. The vampire who had had saved his life, by taking it. The beacon of goodness that had prevailed against the onslaught of so much evil that had been thrust upon him for centuries. The man who had walked completely alone for all of that time.
Born the epitome of Carlisle's goodness as well as selfishness, Edward could do no less than set all of the goals of his life, even the entirety of his newborn infancy, on par with Carlisle's ideals. And he met each of them. Beautiful and talented. Arrogant and idealistic enough to make himself keep to each of his promises to Carlisle as well as himself.
For all the never ending thirst he never slipped and accidentally took a life. A claim that would only ever hold among three of them: Carlisle, Rosalie, and Edward, himself.
But never having taken a life accidentally was not the same thing as never taking a life. As Edward would and had taken many lives by the end of his first decade, once he'd rejected the entirety of his makers' way of life. All of those lives painstakingly chosen. Only the murderers, the rapists, the psychopaths. Stalked down and eradicated in darkest glory. Until he couldn't differentiate how he was not one of them any longer and returned to Carlisle and Esme in shambles.
With a knowledge, and lust, and shame, and understanding that could only be met and shared with his last brother, who would not arrive until three decades after the last human life he would ever take passed from the world.
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II. Hunger could have been like a scent that wrapped itself around Edward Cullen long before the introduction of his singer. Thirst might be a daily commonality, but until that droll little biology class Edward cared as little about blood as he did about people around him.
It might be a nice vague idea, but there was an ocean of blood already on his hands that made Lady Macbeth look saintly. Which choked most of his being, most of his daily life, most of that hunger in its first breath, no matter what people might say about him being forgiven, being the best of them. The want to atone, to be more, do more, fulfill exorbitantly high expectations he ascribed to the feelings of others.
Living with, and being made by, first with a man who never fell even in the blackest of conditions. Then, with a mother made of endless compassion and forgiveness. Eighty years of living with three couples, in every single word and act they did, both in his house and in his head, that were perfectly suited to each other and joyously relaxed about unending expanse of the future rolling out before them. Wanting, and never less than aware he was lacking in comparison.
His musical enamoration even matched Carlisle's medical in one hunger, and one lifelong denial: that of being known, seen, and recognized for their work. Neither could slip and become overtly noticeable, traceable, having to moving on when the threat or temptation to it might seem to be growing out from the whimsy of a impatient dream as old as they were.
And then, of course there was Isabella Swan. Emmett's laudable tales of his singers were nothing compared to gravity defying need that her scent struck him down with every time. Nor could it have any claims on the sheer gripping, maddeningly obsession mystery of her silent thoughts. Or either the love that shackled him to her existence, beyond hope, beyond doubt, beyond sanity.
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Next: The Loving Mother