A/N: And Now for Something Completely Different.
I thought it was probably about time to explain what was going on, and this chapter just kind of . . . happened. It's citrus-free, but it requires its own WARNING for violence and death.
And I'd like to add another reminder that these are NOT TWILIGHT CANON-STYLE VAMPIRES. If you expect them to be, you will be very, very surprised and confused.
Disclaimer: I own nothing of any value.
Carlisle's POV:
"Shit." There is a bottle of scotch in the bottom drawer of my desk, and I pour myself a generous glass before I relax into the leather and put my feet up on the dark oak desktop. "Shit," I say again to the empty room and, taking a swallow, turn my chair to face the corner closet.
I eye the closet for a few minutes, then, slamming my empty glass on the table, get up and freeze with my hand resting on the handle.
Just do it fast. Like a band-aid. For Edward. I jerk the door open and cough as I breathe in a cloud of dust.
Five years worth of dust. I haven't opened this closet for five years. And you can close it again in a minute if you just get what you came for. The beat-up wooden trunk on the closet floor is large and bulky, but I have no difficulty carrying it out.
I go to shut the door, but, before I can stop it, I find my hands doing exactly what I promised myself they wouldn't do: shuffling around the boxes of my old research, looking for a small, lilac-colored hat box.
I find it in the back corner of the highest shelf. There are paper boxes all over the floor, but I ignore them, return to my desk, and pour another scotch.
I lift the purple lid and there it is, the light scent of honeysuckle and apple blossoms that I would recognize anywhere.
Esme.
I lift out a sheer yellow scarf, the material soft and slight in my hands.
She was wearing this the day we met, golden boy and golden girl, at one of my parents' parties. I had never even heard of vampires, and my world was full of promise and light. I had just finished my doctorate at Yale, where I had already made a bit of a name for myself with a study of acute leukemia in children, the surprising results of which would soon be used to save lives. I was home for the summer before beginning a research position with the American Institute of Hematology, and I felt like I could do everything and have anything I wanted.
And I knew exactly what I wanted the moment I saw Esme. She was talking to one of my father's friends and leaning with casual poise against a bookcase in my father's study. Her hair fell in tidy, perfect blond ringlets, and she held a glass of white wine in her hand. She laughed, her laughter light and full of joy, and when she turned her head, her shining blue eyes met mine.
My father's friend introduced us. She was studying social work at Berkeley; her father was, like mine, a surgeon; she played the violin. Hungrily, I devoured each scrap of information she gave me, enraptured by every delicate gesture of her hands. She asked about my research, and her curiosity and quick understanding amazed me.
The rhododendron garden in my parents' back yard was in full bloom, and we sat there together on the grass for hours, talking about our hopes and dreams until the sun had set and hunger forced us to venture inside. On the way in, her scarf caught on a branch, and I slipped it into my pocket. I never told her that I kept it all those years.
I place the slip of fabric delicately, almost reverently, on the desk, and I remove from the hat box a black and white photograph taken six months after I stole the scarf. Esme is outside the church in her wedding dress, stepping into our limousine. She is radiant, and beautiful, and full of love, laughing in a shower of small white flower petals. She has one arm inside the car, holding my hand.
I look at that picture a little longer before I place it next to the scarf.
The next picture is of an ultrasound, a baby girl. Rosalie would have been her name, if she had lived.
The next picture is also an ultrasound, twins this time, who would have been named Jasper and Emmett. We stopped trying after that.
Strange to think, now, that it was Esme, not me, who found Edward. A social worker who often dealt with problem children, she was asked to meet a seven year old boy who had been found under unusual circumstances in his own home. There were three deaths: the boy's parents, upstairs, clearly killed by blunt objects, and, in the living room, the body of an intruder who appeared to have bled to death from an impossibly small neck wound. The boy, they said, was found next to this last body, covered in blood and hugging his knees to his chest. He refused to speak or move, and they had to carry him from the scene.
When Esme entered the narrow hospital room, it was love at first sight. Even under the oppressive fluorescent lights with his head hanging and his feet dangling limply off the bed, he was the most adorable child she had ever seen. She felt, she told me, an incredible need to take him home and care for him. She called this need maternal instinct, although eventually I began to suspect it had much more to do with Edward than with her.
By this time, my successes at the AIH—not to mention the sizable family legacy my father had passed on to me—had netted me more than a little power and prestige, so it was not long before Edward was a part of our family. Once he had overcome the initial shock of the loss of his parents and whatever else he witnessed at the murder scene—information which he never shared despite Esme's best efforts—he was actually quite a precocious child, cheerful and perceptive.
Esme and I blithely indulged him, as did his teachers and even his friends, to an extent that would have completely spoiled a lesser child, but Edward seemed to grow only more generous and patient as he was surrounded by affection. I often wondered later, when I knew the truth about him, was our behavior simply the natural response to a beautiful, brilliant, kind, and serious little boy, or was it something . . . preternatural that infatuated us all?
Perhaps we really were responding to Edward's physical perfection and his social and intellectual grace, but these could also have been merely side-effects of his condition. In the coming years, I was to test Edward for every measurable property, but I would never discern where the vampire ended and the human began.
But before I was plagued with such questions, Esme, Edward, and I had a few exquisite years. Camping trips, piano recitals, stories at bedtime—everything Esme and I had dreamed about and been cruelly denied twice before. All with this amazing child, who grew stronger and wiser daily.
I thought that I would have given anything for my beautiful wife and my beautiful boy. But would I still have chosen this perfect family if I had known what was to come?
Who knows? In the end, my safe little world came crashing down, piece by piece.
Edward was fourteen. One Friday in June, Esme's birthday, I came home early so I could surprise her with a romantic candlelit dinner. When I came into the kitchen, I couldn't even process what I saw. It almost looked like Edward was only cuddling with the neighbors' dog, who was wagging her tail as Edward stroked her belly and pressed his face into her neck.
Almost, except for the puddle of blood that was growing beneath them.
Edward looked up when he heard my bag of groceries hit the floor. His chin was smeared with blood. My stomach heaved in disgust. The dog fled the room to escape the tension as we stared at each other in horror. Her paw brushed against the paper bag, and an orange rolled out, landing in the dark red pool.
Finally, when eye contact became simply too unbearable, Edward wiped his face with his sleeve and stood, deliberately slowly. He placed the bag on the counter and, grabbing a handful of paper towels, began to mop up the floor. He picked up the dripping orange and moved toward the sink, apparently to rinse it off, but he must have heard the small, strangled sound I made because he turned to the garbage instead.
Apart from that tiny noise, I stood motionless and speechless while he removed all evidence of our encounter with practiced efficiency. At last, he surveyed the spotless tile and removed the bag from the kitchen garbage, tying it tightly and heading out toward the driveway.
He paused as he reached the kitchen doorway. He said, in a low whisper I could barely hear, "It wasn't hurting her."
I opened my mouth to answer, but he was already, impossibly, gone.
For the weekend, Edward managed to avoid our inevitable conversation by disappearing whenever possible and latching onto Esme when it was necessary to be at home. But he couldn't keep it up forever; on Monday morning, I was the one to drive him to school.
He climbed into the passenger seat and stared out the window. Clearly he would not be the one to speak first. Now that it was time to actually talk, I found myself increasingly tempted by the coward's response, to say nothing and leave Edward to his own devices. I was approaching Forks High.
No, Carlisle, he's your son. You have to know. I passed the school parking lot and Edward nervously ran his hand through his hair.
But what should I say? Tasted any good pets lately? "Edward." I took a deep breath. "I need an explanation."
"I think you should let it go, Carlisle." His voice held a dark edge that I had never heard before.
It was never a problem that Edward always called me Carlisle, never Dad, but for some reason it bothered me now. I pulled the car over. "I am your father, goddammit. Talk. "
"Fine." He ran his hands through his hair again. "I drink blood," he said flatly.
"Uh, I think I'm going to need a little more than that."
And so he explained, slowly at first, but soon he was gripped by the relief of finally sharing his secret and told me, I think, more than he intended. That he had felt, for as long as he could remember, a drive to taste blood, but that it had grown as he had aged. That, most of the time, he could restrain it, but sometimes it possessed him so entirely that he could think of nothing else, do nothing else, until he had given in.
He told me that after he drank the world was so vivid, so beautiful, but if he went without blood too long sensations were muted, colors turned gray, and food tasted like dust. That the thirst was often accompanied by violent urges, sometimes so strong that he would sit completely still for hours, with his fists clenched and his muscles tensed, unable to risk movement until the feeling passed.
He told me of the first time he remembered tasting blood, when he was four and impulsively bit his mother's wrist. Of the miraculous feeling of peace and power, intensity and release. Of his parents' initial horror and their gradual acceptance.
He told me that, apart from that time and a few tantrums when he had bitten his father, he had not consumed human blood, even though it provided much greater satisfaction. He gained the trust of animals as easily as he gained the love of those around him, and he learned to coax neighborhood pets to sit patiently as he drank from them. He never harmed them, he promised me, instinctively knowing when to stop if he wanted to preserve a creature's health.
He told me how difficult it was to keep the secret. When he was a young child, normal human movements had seemed painfully slow to him, but his parents had impressed upon him the absolute necessity of matching the speed of others. Before he knew better, he had expressed profound delight or disgust over scents that nobody else could even detect. He was frustrated by the growing difficulty of concealing his desire to bite, especially when people blushed or came very close. At school, he pretended a strong aversion to blood, turning away even from paper cuts in order to contain his need.
As I listened, my fear and shock were overshadowed by fascination. I knew my colleagues would laugh me out of the building if I came to them exclaiming that vampires were real, but even if I could never share my discoveries, I had to understand for myself the nature of Edward's biology.
At first, Edward was reluctant to participate in my experiments, but he seemed more willing as it became apparent that my scientific curiosity wholly eclipsed any emotional aversion to the aberrations Edward had been concealing.
First, we tested his speed, so fast that it was difficult to measure.
Next, his strength, much less impressive, but still above average; he wouldn't be leaping tall buildings in a single bound or stopping moving vehicles with one hand, but by the time he was fifteen I would have liked his chances in a fight with anyone—bodybuilder, karate master, or otherwise.
His hearing was only slightly better than average, but his eyesight and sense of smell were remarkable. His sense of touch, too, appeared to be abnormally acute. He could run his thumb across a piece of cotton and count the threads, or stand in the backyard and name every ingredient Esme was using to cook Sunday dinner.
I challenged him to see how long he could go without human food, surviving only on blood. That was a mistake; after only three weeks, he was unrecognizably arrogant and aggressive, skipping classes, starting fights in the hallway, hitting on girls in a manner I considered much too forward, especially for his age. His senses became sharper and his strength grew exponentially, however, so it took me several more weeks to persuade him to return to a diet that included human food.
Intrigued by these changes in behavior, I asked him to see how long he could live on food, foregoing blood altogether. After the first week he was so irritable and melancholy that I simply avoided him and Esme found him exhausting, complaining to me about the dramatic effects of adolescent hormones. He lasted a month, which suggested to me that, if he wished, he could live that way indefinitely, but I will admit that I was grateful when he came down to breakfast with subtle color in his cheeks, returned to his previous self.
At night, I often brought samples of his blood to the lab, spending many sleepless hours trying to determine what it was that made him different.
I found nothing to explain his impossibly low body temperature, his ability to remain perfectly comfortable in heat or cold, or his ability to heal wounds so quickly that you could watch it happen. I couldn't be sure, since I couldn't determine the cause of his healing, but I suspected there was little, apart from old age, that could permanently damage his health.
Unable to find any significant anomalies other than a spectacularly well-functioning immune system—he had never been sick, as far as I knew—I began to wonder if the cause of his condition must be psychological, not physiological.
I wondered, that is, until it occurred to me to test his saliva. Not often, but occasionally, he fed in my presence, and one day as I was watching him drink from a rat, I realized that the animal bled without dying for much longer than ought to be possible.
I stole into the lab at night with a swab, the contents of which I discovered not to be saliva at all, but some kind of venom. When mixed with blood, it demonstrated a number of curious properties. Most noticeable was that, when it made contact with the venom, the blood tripled in volume. I still do not fully understand the workings of this process, but its ability to increase the enjoyment and sustenance obtained from feeding is clearly apparent.
Edward's venom became a source of endless fascination for me. Its composition changed according to Edward's mood and the thoughts he had when he produced it. Anger and fear produced blood thinners and acidic substances that would cause great pain and increase the likelihood of the victim's death, while love and comfort produced beta-endorphins and other substances that dulled pain, promoted healing, and encouraged positive emotions.
Little did I know how extremely relevant to my own life these experiments would become.
Would things have been any different if I had told Esme in the beginning? It wasn't as though I didn't try. I began so many times, but I just didn't have it in me to destroy her illusion of our perfect life, her perfect son. If I had told her the truth, would it have been easier for her to accept my frequent late-night absences for surreptitious experiments, my absent-minded obsessiveness, my dependence on Edward as lab rat and constant companion?
Maybe I had already lost her when I chose to shield her from my secret world. Maybe honesty could have preserved our relationship for a few more years.
But no, it could not have prevented what happened in the end.
My experiments progressed until it became clear that I needed more than one sample to make any definitive claims. Edward, too, was thrilled by the possibility of meeting others like himself, who would understand who and what he was. We scoured all kinds of sources, from tabloids to volumes of folklore, searching for some indication of where to look.
Eventually, this obsession overshadowed my work with the AIH, and I was gently persuaded to resign. I told Esme I thought my research could be accomplished perfectly well from home.
My patient, understanding wife could see that talking about my resignation upset me, and she didn't press for details.
My office was strewn with pizza boxes, dirty plates, and stacks of paper, and I spent most of my time holed up in there. Usually, Edward would come in when he got home, and we would read and talk for hours. Every once in a while, the smell would grow too irritating for him, and Edward would haul my garbage into the kitchen.
Gentle and forgiving as always, Esme accepted silently as we became more and more distant from her. Caught up in my fascination, I did not notice the light and laughter fading from her eyes.
By this time, at sixteen, Edward was a much faster reader and quicker intellect than I, and it did not surprise me that he was the first to discover a possible lead on the location of his vampire brethren.
In the mountains close to Forks, there had been several reports of mysterious animal attacks. The victims, both human and animal, were wholly drained of blood.
Esme did not question our desire to go hiking together, and by this time I don't think it even seemed strange to her that she was not invited to join us.
I would have been completely lost in the woods, and Edward, in his excitement, grew exasperated with my slow speed. Fortunately, we only needed to travel a few hours, and Edward's superior senses led us directly to the mouth of a cave.
I could see no evidence of inhabitation, but Edward assured me that this was where he—she? they?—lived. "Hello?" I called out. "We mean no—"
"Harm?" a fluid voice asked wryly. I turned to see a lanky young man standing uncomfortably close behind me, his long hair drawn back in a ponytail. I looked into his empty, bright red eyes and a wave of nausea hit me as I realized how terribly naïve we had been to come here.
There was no civility in those eyes, but I decided to forge ahead as though this was the friendly meeting Edward and I had so foolishly predicted. "My name is Carlisle Cullen, and this is my son Edward."
The stranger raised his eyebrow at my outstretched hand, but extended a few fingers and shook it lightly. "James, and this is Victoria." He gestured languidly to a red-haired woman leaning against a tree a few feet away. "And to what do we owe the . . . pleasure of your acquaintance?"
His gaze settled on my neck and my pulse raced. What was I thinking, bringing Edward to meet these—these murderers as though they were kindred spirits? My usually articulate speech evaporated as James licked his lips and drifted closer. "I . . . um . . ."
Edward stepped into the very small space between James and I. He smiled a sneering, toothy smile chillingly similar to the one on the face of my predator. "We had reason to believe that I have much in common with you and your friend. I am . . . curious about our kind, and thought we might speak." The usual easy smoothness of his voice was magnified to match the flow of James's speech.
A dark guffaw erupted from James's throat. "You, who fancy yourself a human, pretending at weakness and spending your days shut up in dusty rooms? I can smell it on you, the stench of human food, of routine and obedience. No, we have nothing in common."
He turned to me, sidestepping Edward. "You have no idea what he is missing, what a coward he is, your son. He could be a king in this forest, stronger than any of the animals, if he just left behind your tiny, sniveling world. Feeling more, knowing more, taking more, beingmore, he could be more free, more powerful, more beautiful than you can even imagine. And yet he clings to your pathetic little race! Hilarious, don't you think?" He was very close now, his rotten breath brushing my cheek. I stood my ground, willing my heart to stop pounding, the blood churning loudly in my ears.
"But you . . ." He placed his hand firmly on my upper arm. "You are a curious man, a courageous man to come to our lair. Perhaps you would not waste such a gift."
Edward growled, an ominous, animal sound.
"Don't be ridiculous, Edward." James said offhandedly as he smoothed my shirt collar. "We have been living exclusively on blood for years now, and we are several times stronger than you have ever been. Can you possibly think you could ever pose a threat to us?"
Edward took a step back, his shoulders hunched but his fists still clenched.
"Yes, that's right. We are all friends here." He patted my cheek condescendingly. "Which is why I would like to present our human guest—Carlisle, is it?—with the choice of a lifetime. I am, going to bite you, I'm sure you realize that."
I nodded. There was no sense denying it.
"But I doubt you know that the effect my bite has on you depends entirely on my whim, and therein lies your choice. You can choose to remain prey, and I would be more than happy to show you the hospitality any real vampire would show a human visitor." He licked his lips and raised his eyebrows suggestively. "Or, if you would like, I can make you one of us. But I will not allow you to straddle the line like that feeble worm you call a son.
"I'll give you a few moments to decide: predator, or prey?"
I wish I could say that my decision was merely an act of desperation, that the possibility of transforming into a creature like this James repulsed me, that I would have agreed to anything to get home to my wife and my home.
But the truth is that I wanted him to do it. I had spent years now looking into this strange and glittering world from the outside, and I wanted in.
The truth is that I wasn't trying to get back to the ordinariness of my life. I was trying to leave it behind.
"Predator." My voice was quiet but sure.
There was a rush of air next to me, and I saw the blurred forms of Edward and Victoria, moving so quickly I could barely see them. In seconds it was over, and Edward was lying crumpled and unconscious at the mouth of the cave.
Victoria eyed me distastefully and crossed her arms. "Please finish up, darling. I'm getting terribly bored."
"Of course, dearest. Only I do find this part so very . . . fascinating . . ." He caressed the side of my face and I quivered with terror—but also with anticipation.
Instantly, I was pinned against the rock wall of the cave. He held my wrists above my head with one hand, his knee pressing into my thigh to hold me in place. I turned my face away from his, so very close. He extended his tongue and licked wetly up my exposed carotid artery. I shuddered.
And then he bit down.
At first it was . . . ecstasy. Spasms of giddy release, all self-restraint flowing out of me as I relished the powerful pulsing of my own blood.
And then it was pain. Fire, originating at the bite and writhing through my veins, searing me from the inside out. I scratched at the rocks behind me, burning alive. I saw red as the sound of my heartbeat filled my head, and I heard my own strangled screams as though from a distance. I would have fallen to the ground if James had not held me so tightly against him.
And then I had fallen, and James was feet away, my blood dripping from his chin onto his chest. But the pain hadn't stopped. Oh God, would it ever stop? I looked up at James, now crying openly.
He laughed his black, booming laugh. Victoria stood next to him with some kind of limp, disheveled form leaning against her—I couldn't see more than that as the pain blurred my vision.
"What's wrong, Carlisle?" he asked, feigning innocence.
"I can't—pain . . . too much—please" I gasped incoherently.
"You would like to stop the pain, is that it?" he asked.
In any other situation, I would have been offended by his placating tone, but as things were I simply nodded in desperation.
"It's easy," he said, thrusting the limp figure toward me. "This is all you need. Just drink." His words, now surprisingly gentle, soothed me.
My hands were full of human flesh—so incredibly warm, almost too warm to touch—and I acted without thought, propelled by instinct alone. I bit into the exposed neck, my teeth sliding easily through the skin and breaking the artery.
My mouth overflowed with blood. Hot, metallic sweetness gushed over my tongue as I gulped like a man who had been dying of thirst. As I swallowed, the searing pain subsided until it was a dull ache, and then was replaced with truly incredible sensation. As good as the ecstatic release I had felt only minutes before, but different.
I was so awake, my whole body humming with the energy of the blood, but I also felt as though I was coming to pieces, dissolving into a single-minded voracious need, wanting only more, more, more as I consumed the life that flowed down my grasping throat.
The life finally extinguished, the blood lost most of its flavor, and I slumped, sated, against the stone. My world went black.
Ask anyone who knows me, and he will tell you that I am a good man. I took in an orphan and cared for him as my own. I volunteer and donate to charity. My research has produced cures for God knows how many people.
But I felt more pleasure in taking this one life than I gained from all of those saved lives combined.
When I look back on all the things I've thought and done, that is what chills me the most.
My new sense of smell woke me. The moist cave; the fresh, bright leaves; a putrid stench of decay; Edward's clean scent and the lingering animal smell of the other two vampires, now gone. I felt like I could taste the sunlight, like I could detect individually every blade of grass and worm in the earth.
And, yes, I began to feel—every hair on my cheek responding to the slight breeze, the texture of each pebble beneath me, a rhythmic vibration in the earth. Finally, I opened my eyes and was mesmerized by the vivid, saturated color of the light on the leaves, the deep browns of each granule of dirt and crawling insect beneath me.
The vibrations grew more insistent, and I heard an accompanying scraping sound that piqued my interest. I lifted my head, and there was Edward, digging. His pace was unnaturally fast, I knew, but it felt natural to me.
I moved to go to him, expecting to feel the aftereffects of my ordeal. I was surprised to find that I'd never felt better in my life, so strong, so completely in control of my movements.
"Edward," I began. What was there to say? We both understood everything.
"Go in the cave. Don't look," he said, his voice strained.
And, of course, I looked.
If I thought my improved senses produced remarkable changes in the forest landscape, its effects on the corpse at Edward's feet were even more pronounced.
It was an old man, probably homeless. I could see the fingerprints in the dirt smeared on his sallow face, even the places where Edward had lightly touched him to close his eyes. As I focused on him, I could smell the rum on his breath and the old sweat on his shabby clothes—even over the rotten tang of the blood which had dripped from the wound I had made.
For a moment, I was only thankful that Victoria had chosen someone who would likely not be missed.
And then the guilt hit me right in the gut, visceral and withering. I staggered to a clump of bushes and threw up blood.
Afterward, I went into the cave and sat on a moist, ridged rock. I embraced the cool darkness, closing my eyes and barely breathing. I don't know how long I sat, blank and motionless.
This was what I had wanted. I had chosen this.
Eventually, Edward came in. He took my hand and guided me, like a child, into the light.
When the sunlight touched my face, I realized that I was ravenous. Before I could open my mouth, he thrust a backpack into my hand. In it was a sandwich and a live rabbit.
"Eat both," he said, and I did. I had the sandwich first, and I delighted in the textures made unfamiliar by their new intensity.
Remembering my experiments on Edward, I thought calm thoughts as I drank from the terrified rabbit, and its shivering subsided. Soon, I felt warring instincts; one told me it was time to stop, and another pushed me to continue until every drop was gone. But I was strong, now, in control. I placed the rabbit gently on the ground and it hopped away.
My house appeared as if in a dream, so much more vivid, more intensely real than it had ever been in my human reality. I touched the doorknob as though it were some foreign object with an unknown purpose.
Esme, apparently on her way out, opened the door before I could. Her surprised smile quickly faded when she saw my face. "Carlisle, your eyes. They're red." She backed into the foyer.
God, she was so beautiful. After years of marriage, the sight of her had grown ordinary, but now, with my vision born again, I saw her as she really was. The delicate curve of her cheekbone, her long, perfect lashes—I could count them from here—and the subtle traces of experience I could only now detect on the skin of her face. I almost fell to the ground, overwhelmed by the intensity of the love I felt for her. So much more than I had been capable of when I was a human.
"Oh, Esme, I have so much to tell you, so much I have been keeping from you! It's a miracle, what has happened to me. You'll never believe it." I followed her into the living room, rambling. "The research I've been doing, it's not on blood diseases at all, at least I think it's not a blood disease, although there is some indication that—it doesn't matter. The point is, Edward's not like—"
"I know all about Edward, Carlisle." Her voice was soft, but there were creases of anger at the corners of her eyes. "And now you too?"
I nodded.
She closed her eyes briefly, and her hands fell to her sides. "I see. Well then, shall we get started on dinner?"
She scuttled away, humming falsely, before I could answer.
Perhaps because I was older than Edward, the thirst for blood was strong from the very beginning. But the . . . other urges took a few weeks to appear. I was expecting the need for violence, and I chopped a prodigious quantity of wood in the first couple of months as I learned to control myself.
It was the things I wanted to do to Esme that surprised me. Edward had not told me about this. This was different from my need for violence, but just as strong, and just as black.
It was a need for possession.
And Esme tried to give me what I needed. She did like the renewed passion, the greater attention and devotion I showed her, but sex itself was a problem. I tried to make it into a game, the kind I soon learned, with the help of the Internet, that many humans played. Hoping the rules would make her more comfortable, I bought all the requisite books and toys.
But Esme was soft, reserved, romantic to the core. She responded to subtle caresses, quiet murmurs, candlelight and kindness. My rough touch hurt her, and she panicked when I held her down. She would not obey, and it enraged me.
And so it always ended the same way. Esme, on one edge of the bed, crying for her lost self-respect and for the tenderness I could not show her. Me, on the other edge of the bed, shaking with the effort of restraining my seething, naked want. Each one of us facing away from the other.
In the end, I was not surprised when one evening I came home late from work and she was not there. She tried longer and more bravely than I could have expected.
Another thing that Edward didn't tell me is that vampires never forget. I don't know if it is an anomaly merely of the head, or also of the heart, but I love Esme as passionately and miss her as fiercely as I did in the days immediately after she left.
Her delicate spring scent faded from the house eventually, but I can call it to mind any time I wish, as vivid and fresh as ever.
I swallow the last sip of my scotch, grown cool from the touch of my hand.
There is one more item in the hat box. It's the small envelope that Esme left on the dining room table. It contains her wedding ring and a very short note.
I have only spoken with Esme a few more times since the day she left. Two years ago, she called me to ask for a divorce. She is with another man now, one who can touch her softly and tenderly, with the reverence she deserves. A man to whom it has never occurred to dream of the taste of her blood.
Sometimes all I can do is lock the door to my office and sit very, very still, so fierce is my desire to hunt that man down and show him brutal pain. But most of the time, I am glad that somebody can make her happy if I cannot.
I turn the small envelope over and over in my hand. I do not open it. I know what the note says.
I love the man you were, Carlisle, but not the thing you have become.
It says that, as vampires, we have within our grasp all manner of sensual pleasures and intensities of feeling, except one. To give love and be loved, the way that Esme and I once loved each other—of that, as creatures of death, we are not worthy.
It says what I already knew, even before she left. You are a monster. To know you is to loathe you.
It says what Edward already knew, even before I told him. If you love someone, stay away from her. If you can't do that, at least hide from her who you really are. With the truth, you can only hurt each other.
So why is Edward upstairs in his bedroom with a beautiful girl? And why am I sitting here staring at this battered old trunk?
Could it be that, absurd as it is, knowing what has happened, and reckless as it is, knowing what will happen, that, somehow, we still have . . . hope?
Please, please, please review. I haven't decided whether or not to include more like this in the future, and I appreciate all kinds of advice. This is my first fanfic and it feels like the reviews people have given me are already helping me improve.