AN: Thanks guys, for all your support and awesome reviews! I look forward to what everyone thinks of this chapter. . . .

Thanks also to my betas: Angel & Twilightzoner. Also, I've put a playlist and youtube links to the songs up on my profile. Not songs for every chapter but rather a playlist for the whole story that I put together. Check it out!


Carlisle

I had not expected Esme to take to her new life very easily. After all, we all had experienced a certain period of adjustment. Edward was just nearing, I thought, the end of his. Unlike my newfound son, I was beginning to realize that Esme was going to fight her transformation and fight it with every newly changed molecule in her body.

Edward had been hesitant and scared, but we'd formed a genuine bond, and considering his alternative, he'd progressed past those initial days into a confident, powerful vampire. He controlled his thirst well, and we'd already started making small forays into more populated areas.

He'd never shut me out the way that Esme was doing, and as much as I hated to admit it to myself, the crux of this lay in the reasons for their change.

I had changed Edward because his mother had begged me to, and because he had had mere minutes to live—a brutal fatality to a barbarous disease that had claimed hundreds of thousands.

Esme, however, was a moment of weakness after centuries of restraint. Her death hadn't been a whim of fate; she'd molded her own destiny when she'd thrown herself off that cliff. I'd had no business interfering with her creation, but I'd done it anyway, daring to believe that somehow that she'd come to thank me.

After the sixth week of her self-imposed isolation in her room, I'd had more than enough to consider this incredibly foolish supposition. There was no reason for which Esme could possibly be grateful to me for snatching her from the jaws of death. She'd entered those jaws willingly, even eagerly, and I'd stolen what she wanted most.

The beautiful creature upstairs refused to leave her room, and no matter how much Edward begged for her to come hunting with him, she would not budge, even to extinguish the hunger that was no doubt tearing her apart.

Finally, a week into our stand-off, I'd gone to her. I'd taken three steps into the room before she'd nearly flown across it, in all her avenging glory, and knocked me back into the hallway wall, causing the plaster to splinter into a million shards. I'd picked myself up and made my way down the stairs not being able to even look at her. To stop the self-flagellation, I'd have to convince myself that I was undeserving of her abuse. I knew that could never happen.

Esme blamed me for ruining everything, and how could I not agree with her?

After the second week, I had taken to leaving foxes, rabbits and small deer, dead but still fresh, outside her door. The carcasses were always drained, and placed back exactly where they'd been, as if she could pretend that act of feeding had never taken place.

It was enough, I told myself, that Esme was at least eating and thus staying healthy and strong. As her creator, I could not provide anything more important than simple sustenance, but the gesture seemed small and insignificant in the face of all that I'd done to her. There was no single act, no matter how great, that could reverse the damage or suck out the venom that flowed through her veins.

I asked Edward to listen in on her mind occasionally, and so far, we were both relived to know that while her mood was deeply depressed, nothing had happened that seemed particularly untoward. Esme, it seemed, had not developed a gift the way that Edward had.

Truly, the only difficulty in Edward's change had been the dual burdens I'd placed on his too-young shoulders. Not only did he have to adjust to the all-consuming thirst for blood and his new strength and speed, but he'd also had to learn to dull the constant hum of others' thoughts that intruded upon his brain.

I had to admit that having someone in the vicinity that could read minds was an adjustment for me as well. I found that the snippets of information Edward discovered in my mind led to many discussions, some more uncomfortable for me than others. Edward had a voracious mind, and I fed it as well as I could. As soon as he was better prepared to be around humans, he would be able to go to school. But for now, he read ravenously, digesting book after book through the long, sleepless nights and the interminable days.

I wanted Esme to come out from her exile, and learn to cope as Edward had done, but as the fifth week stretched into the sixth, I began to wonder if that was possible. Theoretically, she could stay in her room indefinitely, with blood supplied by myself. I knew that I could not restrict her feeding in order to flush her out. I had committed enough egregious crimes against her. All I could do was give her the time she needed to come to terms with her new life.

Edward told me that Esme's thoughts were deeply dark and filled with hopelessness. I wanted to shed some light on the future for her, and maybe try to communicate that this life, while not ideal, could hold some promise. Unfortunately, Edward stopped me, insisting that Esme's white hot hatred of me had not palled, and in fact, with every week that passed, had only grown stronger. With time, she had even grown distrustful of Edward. Esme had purposefully and deliberately shut herself out from both of us, and effectively, from the rest of the world.

Esme

I'd always thought that death would be rather peaceful.

In this room, with only my thoughts to occupy me, I found that if I could learn to live with the unbearable thirst and the thought of living like this forever, and come to terms with my hatred of Dr. Cullen, then I thought perhaps I could find some peace, eventually.

So far, I hadn't had very much luck.

The desire I had for human blood was so all-encompassing sometimes that I hung onto the bed post, feeling the wood crumble beneath my hands, and sobbed silently and tearlessly. It was better after I fed off the animals, but still the gnawing pain never completely went away.

I told myself that it was Edward who left the animals, that it was his footsteps I could hear eerily echoing in the hallway outside my room. I told myself that it wasn't Dr. Cullen, but with my newly-enhanced sense of smell I knew that no matter what I wanted to tell myself, deep down I could hardly deny it.

When I'd first awoken, a hard knot of grief had been buried deep in my stomach, but I hadn't known exactly why it felt so strong and so permanent. I'd known about the cliff, and that I hadn't wanted to continue living a life marked only by misery, but the reasons for my feelings were hazy and indistinct. With all my time spent alone in silent contemplation, the memories were becoming sharper and clearer. As a result, my grief and anger only seemed to grow with each new day.

The leaves outside my window turned from green to red and gold, and still I didn't emerge. I wondered if I could stay here indefinitely - until my "newborn" status had passed—until I felt safe enough to leave here and go out among humans. Of course, I should have known that Dr. Cullen wouldn't permit that.

Not long after I started contemplating the idea of leaving as soon as I was more in control of my baser instincts, there was a quiet, polite knock on the door. My nerves jumped and I forced myself to stay calm. I needed to learn to control my too sensitive instincts because the sooner I did, the sooner I could leave Dr. Cullen far behind. But the scent wafting in from the crack under the door told me that this wasn't Dr. Cullen. This smell was young and fresh and full of boyish enthusiasm.

It was Edward.

I'd pushed him away initially, unable to bear the comparison of him to the child I had lost. Having him near made the pain stronger, not weaker. Now I could sense his hesitation, bordering on fear, from the other side of the door, and I hated that it was me who had made him feel this way. And for the first time since I'd woken up as this monster, I thought of something besides my own misery, and I almost hated myself for taking this long to push the focus away from my self-centeredness.

"Yes?" I answered softly, trying to make my voice as gentle as possible, so I didn't scare him away again. He was a nice boy and meant well. He only wanted me to understand that in his mind, the situation wasn't nearly as bleak as it was in mine.

But Edward couldn't possibly comprehend the demons I was wrestling with. That wasn't his fault, and I should never have taken it out on him.

The door opened gradually, and sure enough, Edward poked his head in, his copper-colored hair as messy as always. In that moment, I realized just how young he was - too young to have been the victim of a sickness that had not only claimed his human life, but doomed him to a half-life. Except, I forced myself to remember, the sickness hadn't been the deciding factor in his descent into living hell. No, that decision had been entirely up to the estimable Dr. Carlisle Cullen.

"Edward, it's good to see you," I said politely. I found it almost amusing that despite my suddenly killer instincts, I could still remember the lessons of etiquette that my mother had drilled into me. It hadn't been that long ago in actual years, but with the vast gulf separating my new life from the old, it seemed like ancient history.

"And you too, Esme." Edward entered the room carefully, watching me with those oddly-colored eyes that were becoming more similar to Dr. Cullen's by the day. He sat down on the bed across from me and reached for my hand.

It was odd that even though our skin was now totally different than when we were human, when we touched, I felt nothing strange—just a warm hand in mine. The same way my son's hand had felt in mine, except his had been a miniature version of Edward's. If I had been human still, I would have been blinking away tears right now, but the most I could manage was an exacerbation of the pain roiling inside of me.

"Edward," I managed to ask, through the pain fogging my throat, "how old are you?"

"I had just turned seventeen, ma'am, when Carlisle found me."

So much potential, washed away in the devastating power of a sickness too virulent to stop.

"You must be. . .grateful to Dr. Cullen for sparing your life," I managed to choke out. This conversation had quickly veered away from polite small talk, and I supposed I shouldn't be surprised. I was hardly in the frame of mind to have a chit-chat about the weather.

Edward looked up at me with those incredibly clear eyes, and it was almost as if my thoughts were mirrored there. I felt as if he could sense my inner desolation.

"Esme, Dr. Cullen isn't a bad man. He changed me because my mother begged him to save me, and he did what he had to do to keep his promise. He's been immensely kind to me and he would be to you, if you would let him. You shouldn't hate him as much as you do."

I stared at him in astonishment. Though I'd refused to leave the room, I hadn't told Edward how much I detested Dr. Cullen. I hadn't even told Dr. Cullen.

"How did you know that I hated him?" I demanded of Edward.

He shrugged and tried to keep his tone even and casual, but I could almost smell the alarm rising off him. "It seemed like you were angry with him."

"I am," I conceded, and then I looked hard into his eyes. "You know something, Edward. Somehow, you know everything."

He sighed. "I'm not supposed to tell you, Esme. Carlisle doesn't want to scare you."

I laughed a little hysterically. "Scare me? Scare me? I don't think I would be astonished if he paraded a werewolf in front of me."

"Esme," Edward said calmly, rubbing my hand in a soothing way, "sometimes when a human is changed into a vampire, they develop a gift. I don't think you have, but when Carlisle changed me, I did."

Before he even said the words, I knew what they would be. How else would he be able to know the depth of my abhorrence for Dr. Cullen?

"I can read minds," he finished. I thought maybe I should be angry with him, because he had clearly peeked into my thoughts, but surprisingly, the motherly instinct I held so dear took over instead. Maybe it was how he looked at me with the expression of a scared boy, waiting to be reprimanded.

"That must have been terrifying," I said reassuringly.

He nodded a little. "Sometimes it's so loud I can't block it out. But Carlisle is teaching me to dull the noise a little bit. I didn't mean to read your mind, well, except when Carlisle asked me too."

That did cause me to pause. It was harmless enough, I supposed, if Edward overheard me accidentally, but to have Carlisle purposefully have him eavesdrop? That offended me deeply.

Edward continued. "Esme, your thoughts are so sad," he said gripping my hands tighter in his. "Your little boy. . .when you think about him, it reminds me of my mother."

I swallowed hard. Of course he had overheard that particular part of my past—I'd been dwelling on it almost exclusively since I'd woken up.

"Yes," I whispered. "That's why I died. . . ."

"Esme," he said and then paused, clearing his throat. "Maybe. . .we could talk about it. Your little boy and my mother."

I tried to push out the automatic pain at the thought of sharing my most private, grief-stricken thoughts with this sweet boy, trying to focus instead on what he was saying. Then, suddenly, I understood.

He missed his mother. He couldn't talk about it with Carlisle, and because he sensed my loss as well, he thought maybe we could help each other.

I dismissed the idea of him being able to help me. Nothing could ever alleviate the pain that losing my boy caused me, but the mother inside me desperately wanted to help him with his pain.

"I think we could do that," I said slowly.

He smiled wide, and if I'd still had a heart, it would have broken all over again. There was something so unfair about this beautiful, eager-to-please, sweet boy having the instincts of a cold-blooded killer.

"Tomorrow," he announced, "we'll go hunting. You will like it."

I opened my mouth to argue with him. After all, I was not going to leave this room until I'd developed a strong enough aversion to human blood that I could leave and never look back.

"No, Esme," he interrupted, and his voice was final, "you need to come hunting. The sooner you learn to hunt for yourself, the sooner you can leave."

I found that his logic was sound, and I gave a small nod. He got off up the bed and walked to the door.

When the door closed and again I was surrounded by silence, and to my utter shock, a little bit more peace than I'd had before Edward's visit.