Five Times They Never Met

Rating: M. (For language and suggestive situations.)

Acknowledgement: HollettLA: exquisite, witty, flawless. As always. xo


The Third Time (March 1941)

Solitude. It is a fleeting concept in Edward's new life, given his so-called "gift," and he both craves and evades it. Living with Carlisle and Esme had been an excruciating kind of isolation; being privy to their every thought and desire, every spoken and unspoken conversation, had a way of keeping him close and at arm's length at the same time, the worst kind of third wheel. Since he fled, he has found an entirely new type of seclusion: the freedom to hear everyone and know no one.

He listens to the dark, depraved, wicked thoughts of the city's filth and acts accordingly, refusing to feel the niggling regret that tries to worm its way into his carefully cultivated façade of indifference. Far too many decent, honorable, innocent people die; he refuses to feel a shred of remorse for those who deserve it. He takes all of the unsated desires still swimming in his very seventeen-year-old body and channels them into one: justice. He tries not to think of it as karmic retribution for specific people – his mother, his father, Isabella, Mr. Andrews, the nameless, parentless toddler girl – but the thoughts lurk anyway, the anger of the injustice still simmering in his hardened, venom-carrying veins.

He is quick, merciless, and finds absolution in the fact that he doesn't torture, doesn't prolong suffering, that he is saving innocents as he swiftly murders the morally bereft.

The night air is cool as he wanders along the city streets of New York, allowing his mind briefly to drift back to when he did the same thing as a young, human boy, on the precipice of having his life altered entirely without his consent. It was a theme in his human years: first Isabella, then the Influenza, then Carlisle. So many moments, absolutely no choice in the matter. He wonders, idly, if that is the reasoning behind the heady sensation of playing God, but he pushes the thought away, preferring to believe in at least some shred of righteousness that might still exist within his damned soul. A few blocks ahead, he sees a woman exit a small bookshop, the light sound of a jingling bell reaching his sharp ears as she turns and walks away up the sidewalk ahead of him. She appears and vanishes as she passes briskly beneath the street lamps, the sound of her small heels clicking on the pavement. She hasn't gone farther than half a block when a dark, silhouetted figure emerges from an alley shortly after she passes it, a haze of smoke appearing around his head, a cap pulled low over his ears. He flicks a glowing butt toward the curb, its orange tip flaring briefly before disappearing into the gutter.

Immediately, Edward sees his intent, hears his lewd thoughts.

Sweet legs.

Soft little neck.

Wonder how loud she'll scream.

He lags slightly, listening to the vulgar internal monologue, equal parts horrified and excited at the pending release. His, not the predator's.

He bites back a sudden laugh at the thought: as if he is any less of a predator. Suddenly, he is assaulted by other stimuli: a spiked heart rate, the sudden, sharply sweet scent of fear. The woman has peeked over her shoulder and spied her pursuer, and she's clearly intelligent enough to know that her situation isn't a particularly good one. Edward's distracted musings have let the man get close enough to reach out, and before he can close the distance between them, the man has the woman in his grasp and has yanked her into an alley.

Edward is a blur as he catches up, and as he rounds the corner, the woman's dress is torn down the front, her brassiere as visible as the terror in her eyes. There are four shallow, bloody scratches on the man's cheek, clearly left by the woman's fingernails, and he has one hand between her legs, the other holding her wrists pinned against the brick wall above her head. Just as the man slides his hand to his own belt buckle, Edward attacks, a swell of euphoric release washing over him, a heady combination of satiation and righteousness as the man goes limp on the cobblestone beneath them.

When Edward straightens, swiping across his lips with the back of his hand, he's mildly surprised to see the woman still standing pressed to the wall, her hands clutching at her ruined garment, her eyes as wide as saucers in the barely-there moonlight. He watches her warily, trying to read her thoughts and faintly surprised when he can't. He can sense her fear, her gratitude, her disbelief, her confusion, but he can't actually decipher any of the concrete thoughts that he knows must be swirling around in her mind as she stares at him. He wonders fleetingly who scares her more: the rapist or the monster.

"Thank you," she stutters finally, dropping a hand to push her skirt back down from where it had snagged in her belt, and as she does so, the front of her torn dress flaps open just enough to expose her soft, pearl-pink undergarment once again. Edward forces himself to look away, but not before taking a quick peek, because despite the life he is living, the years he has spent on Earth, there are parts of him that are still every bit the inexperienced seventeen-year-old who died thirteen years earlier, half in love with a dead girl he'd only known for a handful of moments. Still the well-bred young man who wouldn't dare look at a dirty magazine, set foot inside a brothel, or peep on an unsuspecting woman, he's never seen a woman less than dressed, and there are moments when his curiosity can barely be contained.

"You're welcome," he replies, and he watches as his voice has its impact, as the sweet scent of his breath invades her senses, replacing her fear with curiosity, with interest.

"He was…" She pauses, sparing a glance to the corpse lying in the alley just beyond them, before meeting Edward's eye again. "He was going to…" She trails off, the words unnecessary.

"Yes," Edward replies simply.

"Is that why?"

"Yes," he says again, watching her face, trying desperately to crack the apparent vault of her maddeningly silent mind.

She nods, smoothing her hands over the front of her dress as if wrinkles are its only problem, and catches Edward's eyes flick from her face to her chest and back up again. Her lips twitch as she pulls the two sides of her dress closed once more; Edward realizes, suddenly, that he's wearing a jacket he doesn't need, and shrugs out of it far quicker than he should. He panics for a moment, then remembers that this woman just watched him suck the life out of a man right in front of her; surely, the speed with which he sheds a layer is now a moot point. "Thank you," she says when he holds the coat out to her, and she slips her slender arms through the sleeves, buttoning the top few buttons to shield her undergarments from his eyes once and for all.

"You're welcome," he says again, eyeing her warily, wondering what the protocol is for dealing with someone who knows. He never thought to ask Carlisle, and fleetingly, he thinks about changing her – keeping her – but then he spies the glint of a small gold band on her left hand and the thought is gone as quickly as it came.

"What are you?" she asks finally, her voice barely a whisper in the darkness, but to his sharp ears, she may as well have shouted the question.

"What do you think I am?"

She tilts her head to one side, exposing the smooth column of her neck, and Edward swallows the venom that pools anew in his still-bloodstained mouth. "Something…other."

He nods. "Yes."

She mirrors the nod. "Not evil," she clarifies, and this time, Edward is the one who cocks his head to one side.

"Yes."

She shakes her head, the auburn of her artfully-pinned curls visible to his keen eyes. "No," she corrects gently. "Not evil."

Without looking, Edward gestures at the body behind him. "He would disagree."

"He is evil," she argues, and he sees a flash of defiance in her dark eyes, the same boldness that likely allowed her to land a blood-drawing scratch on the face of her assailant.

"Yes," Edward agrees. "But there are all different types of evil."

"Yes," the woman says softly. "But I don't think a man who saves a woman from the worst type of violation can be evil."

"That may be so," he allows. "But there's an operative word in there that doesn't apply to me."

She seems to be turning this over in her mind, and not for the first time, Edward wishes he were privy to the silent ruminations of this strange, unflinching woman. "What's that?"

"Man," he says, and he wonders if she can hear the sadness in his voice as clearly as he can. He doesn't think of himself as a man – perhaps didn't even when he was human, and only really just on the cusp of being one – and he doesn't realize until he admits it that, in this woman's eyes, he wishes he were.

As if granting him absolution, she gives him a soft smile. "Man," she says. "A different kind of man, perhaps. But a man nonetheless." She leans forward, pressing her hand to the thin cotton of his dress shirt; if she realizes that there's no warmth, no heartbeat, she says nothing. "A gentleman, in fact."

He wants to cry and to fly and to sweep her in his arms and to run away as fast as he can, but he does none of it, standing rooted to the spot, relishing the feel of a voluntary touch against him. A woman's voluntary touch. "Thank you," he says, his voice rough, and for perhaps the first time in years, he's grateful for his biological inability to shed tears.

She smiles, this time a bright, open, happy smile tinged with teasing. "You're welcome."

Beneath the glow of her smile, the soft affection in her eyes, he doesn't want to go anywhere, doesn't want to run, doesn't want to be left alone; for the first time in two decades, he feels human again.

Finally, he steps aside, bending to pick up her purse and her small paper bag from the bookstore and holding them out to her. She accepts them with a small smile; he follows her all the way home, watching as she disappears behind the heavy front door of a brownstone seven blocks away, listening to her husband's increasingly concerned questions and exclamations as she tells him of her ordeal. When he spies the tall, broad-shouldered man pull her into a gentle embrace through the window, stroking her red-brown hair and rocking her tenderly in his arms as he buries his face in her neck, Edward turns, feeling equal parts satisfaction at her safety and loss at the realization that he could never bury his face in her neck, hold her, keep her safe.

That night, he leaves New York and returns to the warm fold of Carlisle and Esme's embrace, realizing for the first time that there are different types of solitude, and knowing finally which type he prefers.