EPOV

"What did you make of his commitment?" Carlisle asked through his thoughts as Bella left the room.

"I cannot say that I believe him," I replied honestly.

"Nor can I," he thought.

"I think he's looking for a chance to get out of the box without being tortured. I think that if he can make an escape that he will."

"I agree with that," Carlisle said. "Though he wouldn't get so very far, would he? He's only a head now, after all."

"I wouldn't say that he is without imagination though," I said. "Just a head he may very well be, but he tends to find ways to weasel out of things. He is limited in what he can do for himself. However, I wouldn't put it past him to have someone working for him on the outside."

"After all these years?" Carlisle asked out loud.

"It hasn't been very long, Carlisle. It's been less than a decade. When one has lived for thousands of years, what do five or six really mean?"

"True. You make a wise point. But who would be out there waiting for him, and how would they be able to communicate? I wonder…"

I shrugged my shoulders. He stepped toward his window and looked out into the darkness.

"How are you holding up, son?" he asked, turning around to face me.

I shrugged my shoulders again.

"With Tanya and Marcus both out there, and both actively against us, I have to admit that I'm worried, Carlisle. I don't know that I'll be able to protect my family from all the dangers that surround us now. I can feel something coming for us, but it's not as simple as saying that someone is coming for us. It feels stronger than that, and mysterious. And with only Caius – our enemy – to guide us to some strange source of power that I've never heard of to help cure my daughter of something that I don't even know is wrong with her – it's only that I can't say that I trust Caius to do it. I don't believe that he'll lead us to her. I wonder if he'll lead us into a trap instead."

"I can feel it too – that something dark is out there watching and waiting," he said, turning to look out of the window again. "But I'll tell you now Edward that if someone or something is coming for you and your family then they are coming for all of us. None of us will stand by while you, Bella, Brook or Catie are in danger."

The support and warmth that I felt coming from my oldest friend relieved me somewhat of the pains that naturally surround a man when he has reason to worry.

I reminisced of a Christmas day before my daughters were born. I remembered carrying the strawberry blond lock in my pocket up to this very office. Aside from Bella, and of course Emmett, Jasper and the Wild Cards who were there on the scene, Carlisle was the first to hear the news.

"Carlisle," I had greeted him as I entered the room.

"Edward, Merry Christmas!" I remember how bright his smile was that morning. "What brings you up to my office? Shouldn't you be around the tree with the family?"

"I could ask the same of you, Carlisle," I chuckled.

He chuckled back in reply, and although we seemed to be making fun small talk on a day where no stress should have penetrated the walls of our home, the truth was that I was sick with fear of how my father-figure and dear friend would react to the section of hair that I had pulled from Tanya's head. I was worried that he would be disappointed in me for taking revenge on her the way that I had, and I was afraid of having to break the news to her family – to admit to them that I was the one who had killed her.

"Is something the matter, Edward?" he had asked. He could always sense when something was off with me. He didn't have to read my mind to know when I was troubled the way I had to read his. He was the one I couldn't hide these things from, aside from Jasper, of course, who always knew exactly how everyone was feeling at any given time.

"I…" I hesitated, meaning to say yes, but not wanting to break the news on Christmas morning. I didn't want to ruin the entire day for him. Christmas Day was always his favorite day each year.

"You can tell me what it is, son. Have a seat," he said, motioning to offer me a chair in front of his desk.

"I've done something," I started, not sure where I ought to go from that point. "I've done something that I fear you won't be pleased with. I know our natures regarding how to react to an enemy are very different. I know you are more controlled than I, but…"

"When you say 'enemy,' you mean to say…"

"Tanya," I clarified.

"Go on," he prompted.

"I am not so in control as you, Carlisle. I haven't the gift for mercy that you have."

He sat down in the chair behind his desk and crossed his hands, leaving both index fingers straight, bringing them to his chin to ponder on my words as he leaned back in his chair.

"Mercy," he chuckled lightly before his face grew stern with thought. "It is only in our best interest to show mercy if that mercy gifted is in the best interest of all the people," he said to my surprise. Did he know what I'd done to her? Could he tell without my having to say it?

"Carlisle, I…" My voice cracked and faded. I literally didn't have words to tell him that I'd slaughtered Tanya in a most violent manner just hours earlier.

"From the deepest desires often come the strongest hate," Carlisle said with a knowing glare. "Tanya believed that she loved you, though I would argue that she didn't understand what pure love really was. Yet, she did believe that she deserved you and that Bella didn't. From those premises comes her motivation to destroy your wife, Edward. To destroy Bella. And your instinct is to protect the woman you love by any means you have available to you. That being said, we find ourselves in the present circumstance."

"The present circumstance…" I whispered.

"Yes. The one wherein you've removed the threat to your wife. I assume that's the predicament we're in?"

I nodded.

"Don't cast your eyes downward, son. You have nothing to be ashamed of." My head sprung up to look at him as he continued, "If Tanya was left alive then it wouldn't have been in the best interest of the majority. She is an enemy who would never stop until she got what she believed she wanted. I am proud of you for your willingness to protect your family, Edward."

"You are?"

"Yes. I am. In your situation I sincerely believe I would have done the same. I would have torn apart and killed the threat. I assume you burned the remains?"

I nodded. "I have this," I said, pulling the lock of hair from my pocket.

"Why do you keep it?" he asked.

"To show Bella. To show the others. I want them to be assured that she is gone. I don't want them to worry anymore."

"Your word would have been enough. No one would believe you to lie about such a thing."

"Thank you, Carlisle. I know my word would be enough. But I wanted to have something to show them, nonetheless. I want them to be able to know for themselves."

"Perhaps that is why your word is so solid? If you have proof then you always show it."

I never would have kept the trinket if I'd known what it would bring us. I had no idea that it would – or could – be used to bring my enemy back. I should have burnt it as well, but I'd left it lying about until Irena came and stole it away.

"I wish one thing, though," Carlisle had continued that morning.

"What's that?"

"I do wish I could have seen her burn."

I was shocked that those words came from his mouth. I was already surprised that he would be proud of me for my actions, but this seemed too great a gift of understanding from him now.

"What?" he asked. "Can't I have passionate feelings too? Am I not human, or was I not once one?"

"You were once one," I answered.

"And in many ways, I am one still. So are you, Edward. That is what we forget about ourselves, I think."

"What's that, exactly?"

"Men are men; the best sometimes forget. We were born human, Edward. That's how we came into this world and that's what we were designed to be. Along our way, as we were making our way to die, our bodies altered so that they were no longer subject to the pangs of death. In turn, we had to surrender other parts of our humanity for a season. But we've made choices, this family of ours. We've agreed to abstain from human blood, and in so doing we've restored a large part of our humanity. But just because other vampires do not abstain from human blood doesn't mean that they are completely without humanity. They are still prone to all the weaknesses and prejudices of the mind. They are still prone to intimate attachments. They still enjoy humor and have desires the way men and women do. Even though they cannot die human, they were still born human. For mercy has a human heart; and cruelty has one too. Both derive from the human senses, son."

"What of an enemy like Tanya? Would you argue her to be human as well?"

"I tell you this, my friend, that there are people (men and women both, unfortunately) who have no good in them – none. There are people whom it is necessary to detest without compromise. There are people who must be dealt with as enemies of the human race. There are people who have no human heart remaining, and who must be crushed like savage beasts and cleared out of the way. And I do not doubt that Tanya was one of them."

"What of other enemies that shall come among us?"

"Let me ask you this, Edward: Can you do an immoral thing for moral reasons?"

"Are you meaning to ask me if the end can justify the means?"

"What wouldn't you do to protect your wife? What wouldn't you do to protect your children?"

"Nothing," I said sternly. "There is nothing that I wouldn't do."

"What if the end is their safety and well-being?"

"Anything would justify that."

"Anything?"

"Anything."

I was drawn back to the present moment as Carlisle turned from the window to face me again. He moved to sit in his chair behind his desk the same way I had found him on that Christmas morning several years earlier, with his index fingers propped up against his chin, deep in thought.

"What will justify the healing and protection of your daughters?" he asked. Had he known what I was thinking? Did he realize the terror that stretched up my spine as he asked the question most parallel to the one he had asked on that Christmas morning?

"Anything would justify that," I reaffirmed.

"Anything?"

"Anything."

"We must think on what our enemies will be capable of, Edward. Their hearts are far removed from them and they will not likely be swayed to offer us mercy, should we happen to be captured by them."

"Knowing this, then, I would say we likewise offer them no sort of mercy."

"I agree," he said, nodding his head sharply. "But we have an advantage over our enemies, you know."

"How is that?" I asked.

"We understand that they are not more than a human can be. All the evil or all the good that we or they hold the seeds of reaping and sowing, all of these things derive from our most intimate human emotions. And we, son, understand human emotions well, don't we?"

"Men are men," I said with a smile.

"Yes," he nodded. "And the best sometimes forget."

...

A/N: Giving credit where credit is due -

"But men are men; the best sometimes forget" (Shakespeare's Othello, Act II).

"Mercy has a human heart," and "Cruelty has a human heart" (William Blake's Songs of Innocence & Songs of Experience, respectively; these two sayings are from poems that are one another's counterparts).

"And I tell you this, my friend, that there are people who have no good in them – none. That there are people whom it is necessary to detest without compromise. That there are people who must be dealt with as enemies of the human race. That there are people who have no human heart, and who must be crushed like savage beasts and cleared out of the way. … And I do not doubt that this man – whatever they call him, I forget his name – is one of them" (Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit).