Hi everyone! Sorry for disappearing for so long, but I'm still searching for a job; however, it now looks like I'm going to be substitute teaching for a while, so at least I'll have that until I get something full-time. (And I have an interview on Tuesday, so maybe that job will become a reality soon; either way, I'll do my best to update more frequently in the future. :)) This week's chapter takes place about ten years after Carlisle sought out the Volturi. Though he's lived with them for a while and has grown accustomed to their ways, he still can't quite bring himself to accept their diet, and he's eager to learn how to help people too; soon, I'll be doing a chapter focusing on Carlisle's early days as a medical student. :) Thanks for your reviews, and I'll see you again soon!
Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer, not I, is the author of "Twilight," so I can only borrow Carlisle…:)
1694: The Battle of Texel
The sun had finally set, and Carlisle and Aro were taking a turn through the streets of Volterra. Aro was, as usual, captivated by the grandeur of his city, but Carlisle was too distracted to consider the beauty of architecture or scenery. He was thinking about the terrible things he'd seen in France.
"Really, it's quite an impressive tale," Aro mused. "The sort of naval victory that will be celebrated in song and verse long after its principle characters have left the mortal world."
Carlisle nodded absently. "I just can't stop thinking about the people I saw in Paris. I've seen starving humans before, but never so many, crowded together like that…"
"Didn't the Battle of Texel solve all their problems?" Aro asked, bemused. "Think of it, Carlisle: brave sailors and their daring captain, taking back food needed for France and capturing Dutch ships and prisoners to boot! It's a fine story for those of us who can avoid dwelling on depressing scenes of starving humans."
Carlisle shook his head absently. He was too used to Aro's cavalier attitude toward human life to even get angry. "Of course the victory at Texel is a fine thing for the morale of the people of France, but it isn't going to end the famine that's been plaguing the country in one fell swoop. Ever since I left Paris, I've been thinking about everything I saw there, and I've been wishing I could do something to help."
Aro snorted. "Help? Really Carlisle, you're the only person I know who could utter such a ridiculous statement with a straight face. What, may I ask, is the point in helping starving humans?"
"Putting the concept of compassion aside, since I know that argument won't sway you, I'd invite you to think about the future. You enjoy many of the fruits of human labor," Carlisle pointed out. "If I were to save human lives, who knows—I might be saving a future painter, or mathematician, or philosopher. Even if you can't appreciate the intrinsic value of human life, I know that you can see its extrinsic value. If you didn't, then you wouldn't be a patron of the arts and sciences."
Aro smiled. "True enough. The extrinsic value of humans is something I can appreciate, at least as an abstract concept. However, not every starving French urchin is going to grow up to be of use to me—in fact, the majority will be good for little but a meal. In that sense, famine is a great boon to me and the rest of our kind, excepting you and your abnormal appetites. After all, the blood of dying humans may not be as palatable as that of the strong, but it's easy to obtain, and in a crowd of starving peasants, a few of their brethren are rarely missed."
Carlisle sighed quietly—he'd tried not to think of it, but of course members of the Volturi had recently enjoyed great meals in France. Supposedly, vampires everywhere tended to gravitate toward wars and famines, because as Aro had said, the hunting was easy, the game plentiful, and little suspicion would be aroused among the surviving humans when the dust settled on the calamity. Carlisle's recent time in France had been truly eye-opening: contrary to his expectations, however, his time at various universities there, and the knowledge he'd gained from reading and study couldn't hold a candle to what he'd learned about himself.
Though he was incapable of starving to death, seeing humans suffering and dying as the famine in France reached its peak—hearing agonized cries in the streets and watching the remains of the dead be disposed of—had pained him terribly. The helplessness he'd felt then, combined with an intense desire to ease the affliction of humans in need, had helped Carlisle to realize something: it wasn't enough for him to simply live without human blood. Rather, if the limitless time stretching out before him was going to mean anything, he couldn't just spare human lives—he wanted to try to improve them too.
Aro, of course, had scoffed at this idea when he'd told him about it, and Carlisle too could see the obvious pitfalls of becoming the world's first vampire surgeon. Caring for sick and injured humans would of course put him in direct contact with human blood, something that he still wasn't exactly comfortable with. However, Carlisle reasoned, he'd been a vampire for nearly three decades now, and he no longer had to fight the urge to attack humans in the street. His throat still burned at times if he hunted irregularly, but wasn't it at least possible? Wouldn't his determination to help, not to hurt, be half the battle when it came to resisting human blood? And with regular exposure, surely he would become desensitized…eventually.
As terrible as witnessing the famine had been, strangely, it had been a relief to know that he could still feel compassion for human suffering. In Volterra, where such sentiments were ridiculed and human life itself seen as being equal to that of livestock, Carlisle had learned to hide his emotions as best he could, and he'd worried that if he suppressed his feelings for too long, eventually, he might cease to feel anything at all. After a few years of study in Volterra, combined with interesting (if rather depressingly nihilistic) conversations with Aro, Carlisle was still determined to observe the diet he'd chosen for himself, but he'd given up on his desire to convert the vampires of the Volturi to his way of thinking. They'd lived for centuries, and in some cases millennia, on the blood of humans, after all; every immortal he'd spoken to over the past decade had quickly made it clear that though his way of life was considered an amusing novelty by Aro, no one had any inclination to share his status as an oddity.
"Really, Carlisle," Aro said, chuckling appreciatively and thereby extricating Carlisle from his troubled thoughts. "You're the only creature I know who would voluntarily spend more time thinking about hungry humans than a glorious naval victory."
"If suffering isn't extraordinary, then neither are glorious victories of any sort," Carlisle said dryly. "You've seen enough of human history pass to know that few things are truly unique. There are nearly always parallels to past persons or events, and I'm surprised that you're even still impressed by the paltry accomplishments of mortals."
"Ah, but as you just said, some humans do impress me," Aro said with a grin. "Humans whose exploits and accomplishments will outlive them, who in essence make themselves immortal, have value that even I can appreciate. The suffering of the nameless masses, however, is a story as old as the earth itself, and it fails to interest me."
Carlisle frowned. Over the past decade, he'd left Volterra periodically to travel and study throughout the continent, in part because he craved knowledge that couldn't be found even in Volterra's vast library, but his desire to travel was also inspired by the frequent urge to escape the Volturi. It pained Carlisle that Aro was, at present, the closest thing he had to a friend. Liza, who was living in some rural corner of France, hadn't answered his letters in years, and though her silence didn't surprise him really (she was, at best, an unreliable correspondent), still, he wondered what sort of society she'd found, if any, among other immortals, and if hers was a happier home than his current dwelling place.
After ten years of life in Volterra, Carlisle recognized that his existence there, though better than a life of solitude or one among the vampires living in London's sewers, was far from what he'd hoped it would be. As he and Aro moved silently through the dark streets, Carlisle realized that he'd stayed there as long as he had because even the poor facsimile of friendship he'd found in the city seemed so much better than the prospect of having practically no friends at all. Since encountering the famine in France however, Carlisle realized that regardless of his wish for companionship, soon, he would have to brave the rigors of loneliness and go off on his own, perhaps permanently. In Volterra, he could do nothing but stand by as other immortals ended human lives, but outside the city…perhaps he could learn to save human lives. Instead of simply repressing his monstrous nature, maybe there was a way to rise above it.