Chapter 36:
Underneath Weeping Willows
One long week passed where Esme lamented the loss of the nameless child whose life was exhausted at her expense. Finally, perhaps a little selfishly, she took the time to mourn for it properly. She tucked herself away in her room with the curtains closed, and relived the memories of its siren-like scent, the terror in its glossy blue gaze as she attacked without precedent.
The thought made her mad, knowing that this child had belonged to a woman – a mother – that it was not hers to take. This sort of loss, as Esme had proved once herself, could result in suicide. In death. She could have been responsible for two deaths, both mother and child. This thought haunted Esme with every passing moment.
Edward's return had made Esme realize just how briefly he had been gone, and what it would have been like if he had never returned. That was the very curse she had put upon the mother whose child she had killed.
Esme mourned the loss of her own child, a loss she would never be able to rectify as an immortal woman with a sterile womb. She realized now that she had truly never deserved such a sweet, dependent infant. She had single-handedly slaughtered all innocence. Her son would have never survived with a mother like her.
And even as Esme knew in the depths of her heart that she was only relishing in her own self-pity, she could not help but believe that some part of her was made to be forever sadistic.
Her heart began to doubt that her gaze would ever blossom from cardinal to canary.
Edward found her during the times when her self-berating grew dangerous. He sat with her and explained to her that she must put her mistakes behind her, that she was and forever would be appreciated regardless of those mistakes. Somehow with each passing day, as the days grew steadily brighter, she had begun to believe his words.
"I must apologize again for everything I put you through, Esme," he said to her on a quiet, sunny morning when Carlisle was away. His face was strewn with apology, and somehow strained as if he were hiding something from her, still. "I know what you are going through, and trust me when I say, I understand your agony."
Esme had never heard Edward struggle with articulating his words before, and it was disconcerting.
"It's all right," she whispered, touching his shoulder.
"No, I... I want to also apologize for doubting your feelings for Carlisle," he said with a hesitant wince. Her attention piqued, she met his eyes for an instant before he looked down in shame. "I know I hurt you by suggesting you were only infatuated, but I can see now that... it is possible I was wrong."
A searing light filled her blackened heart at his words, and she felt like she was breathing clear air for the first time in weeks. This was a dangerous suggestion – a dangerous hope.
She shook her head softly. "Edward, you cannot tell me things like that."
Hastily, he took her hand, still not brave enough to meet her eyes. "I want you to have hope, Esme," he insisted in a husky voice. "I feel like I'm keeping you from being closer to him... I was selfish, but I wanted to distance you both. As long as he and I were distanced, I wanted him to be the same way with you."
Her thoughts were silent as Edward spoke, and she drank in his confessions with a merciful heart, not wanting to interrupt one breath from the boy. It was so remarkable that he was saying these things.
Why would you do that? she asked him, her mind-voice excruciatingly gentle.
Edward's eyes averted slowly in shame. "Because sometimes I feel like I'm losing him..."
Carlisle loves you. He will love you no matter what, Edward.
"I know that," he whispered. "That's why I feel so guilty."
She sighed. We have to work to fix this. All of us.
Edward looked as though he were struggling to nod, but wouldn't allow himself to do it. He stared at her pointedly for a moment then sighed. "First, I need your forgiveness."
Why did everyone seem to be asking for forgiveness lately?
He must have heard her hesitation, because he smiled a little sadly and averted his eyes. "Just say it, Esme... Just let me hear it so I can put this all behind me."
Carefully, she pressed her hand onto his. "Yes, Edward. I forgive you."
His brow rested in relief. "Thank you."
She closed her eyes and nodded, turning her face back to the subtle heat from the sunlit window. The warmth felt so fine upon her cheek.
"You shouldn't avoid Carlisle anymore," Edward interjected the soft heat with a softer cold. "He wants to make amends, but he's afraid that you won't give him the chance."
The sun sparkling on Esme's hands seemed to simper up at her – a fabricated brightness, a false smile.
"I don't know what to say to him," she admitted idly.
"He will hear anything, Esme. Anything you have to say."
She pursed her lips doubtfully and looked away.
"You don't know Carlisle the way I do," Edward explained with a huff of exasperation. "He wallows in guilt, Esme. Over every little thing. He's ridiculous."
She almost wanted to laugh, but her heart admonished her promptly at the thought.
"Because of you," her heart reminded, "He's hurting because of you."
To some extent, Edward could read Esme's heart as well. Forgiveness wore well in his eyes. "Trust me... He just wants you back."
Whether or not she would have allowed it, her heart was startled by Edward's sincerity.
It was now only with Carlisle where Esme felt her misgivings were still unresolved.
He had long since given up on trying to warm her back to life since their strange confrontation. She had not realized then, how addicting the doctor's insistent pleading for her to see the light had been. She longed to have that again – his constant attention, his overwhelming concern, his constant pacing by her bedroom door night after night. But she had pushed him past the limit, abused her situation until it was exhausted. Just as he had pushed her past her limit, showing her a side to him that made her want to retreat from the despicable mix of awe and fear she felt in seeing it. He was now silent as a statue, never bothering to speak to her because he was so certain she would turn his caring gaze away.
She missed the man she knew before it all. She missed the angelic, gentle, innocent Doctor Cullen.
But that was not Carlisle.
Carlisle, beneath that image of unattainable goodness, was purely man. He shared, with the rest of his sinful generation, every weakness and misgiving and thought inspired by evil. And for as much as he was capable of saving her, he was also capable of hurting her. He was in no way perfect.
It left Esme shaken to think that, until now, all she had seen of him had just been the surface covering a deep, dark, tormented ocean of tender fury and blazing blue passion.
Something in her wanted to drown in this ocean, and see what treasures he kept buried in the sands. She thought the pressure might prove too great if she were to take the dive, but she also believed it would be worth suffocating to discover.
Carlisle needed someone willing to drown in his ocean. Almost three centuries worth of water and waves were waiting to pull someone under. Though he did so little in the way of crying for help, he was drowning alone, and she could not bear to watch him drown for much longer.
Esme finally reached a point where she would have gladly disrobed herself of her pride and fell on her knees before this strange new Carlisle, begging him for the slightest attention she so greedily craved. But she had not needed to genuflect at his feet.
He had come to her.
It had been one of the rare moments when Edward was not at her side. She found herself in the lofty heights of a sparsely dressed tree behind the house, wishing its few remaining leaves would hide her from the rest of the world. Instead, they wilted off their branches one by one, like lovers parting with a final farewell, dying a death of contentment that she could not bear to understand.
People always said winter was the season of death, but Esme always thought the autumn was worse. It was that suspending thread, that hanging moment in time between the bittersweet warm wonders of summer and the harsh chill of winter, teetering on the edge of the cold misery to come. It was the tragic and taunting calm before the storm.
A strange heat wave had descended over their region, quite rare for the end of autumn. The present evening was an oddly lovely mutation of the three seasons. The coolness of a deep blue dusk permeated by a thick, almost tropical breeze. Chilly, yet humid, like a confusing fever.
It was that precise evening when Carlisle found her, lamenting everything that had been worth lamenting in her life.
His scent was like a needle in the crisp night air, a sweet vaccination, a hot spark to staple her dead heart in place.
Then she heard his voice.
In a brisk, bewitching British breath, he had sighed her name from just a few meters below.
With unbridled curiosity, Esme peeked over the branch to the ground beneath her and looked down at the doctor where he stood, one foot pressed proudly upon a raised root of the tree, claiming his stance with an unassuming flair.
"I recall once agreeing that you would never climb another tree again." His accent was free-flowing that night, a lilting chime that seemed to fluster even the innocent crickets in the tree around her.
A bittersweet pang hit her heart at the distant memory, though she pretended to be unaffected by it.
"Forgive me, Doctor. I don't recall such an agreement," she mumbled, cold and coy, averting her eyes from his handsome face.
"Will you please call me by my name?" he practically begged.
She exhaled in defeat.
"I'm sorry – Doctor Cullen."
The sweetness of his bothered sigh wafted up to her from where he stood by the base of the tree.
"Would you mind coming down from there for a moment?" he asked, polite and tentative.
"Must I? I rather prefer this height to the ground," she taunted in defense, both irritated and wonderfully inspired by his timid persistence.
"Shall I come to you, then?"
Her body tensed delightfully.
He wouldn't.
But the simmering magnetism that drew her to his body suddenly strengthened, and the taunting ambrosia of his scent swirled around her, more palpable than before. The cashmere caress of his sweater vest, and the buttery brush of his leather boots against the rough bark of the tree echoed from somewhere very near below her, and the unmistakable proximity of the sounds made her numb. She could only assume that he had scaled the tree in one swift ascension, as his presence now felt painfully close to her, but she could not see him.
She looked about uneasily for the unmistakable shock of blond, but could find it nowhere, even in the barren state of the old tree.
Acting foolishly in her mild panic, Esme freely jumped from her branch and dashed toward the safer, more obstructive trees near the lake, her every footfall upon the grass like a substitute heartbeat.
Breathing cautiously, she swept apart the feathery curtain of a weeping willow and took refuge in its shade from the intrusive twilight, hoping her new hiding spot would suffice.
She allowed the soothing trickle of the nearby waters to calm her nerves for a few minutes, taking deep healing breaths of nature's clean, untainted air.
Her eyes flashed open when the earthy perfume around her became infused with a scent far too intoxicating to be natural.
"Why do you run away from me?" The sudden softness of his familiar voice made her stomach flutter in alarm. His tone was positively heartbreaking, more appropriate if he had been begging for mercy from someone who held a sword to his throat.
She could just barely make out his figure, mostly concealed behind the lacy sheets of somber foliage that hung between them. She self-consciously backed away until she bumped against the bark of the tree, her nerves positively pulsing with a betraying excitement and a bout of delicious déjà vu.
"I...I wasn't running away...from you." She had to lie.
Carlisle sighed. "May I please speak with you for a while? I feel that we've been far too distant these days."
Oh, didn't he understand that it was better that way? Easier that way? Safer that way?
His arm lifted hesitantly with the threat to draw back the leaves, and she stiffened in defense.
"Please?" He made the word sound so delicate, so careful...almost affectionate.
Esme fidgeted with uncertainty, unable to find any way out of the trap she had created for herself. Then, he said something unexpected.
"I've been missing that mocking smile of yours."
Her eyes widened in surprise, and a trickling heat spread down her neck. Something in his words, in the teasingly melancholy but not-quite-flirtatious candor of his voice as he uttered the confession was, almost blatantly, romantic.
Whatever was he referring to?
She wasn't aware that she had a mocking smile...
"Oh..." All she could do was breathe the word, a frail wisp of air that hurt deeply when it pushed past her tremulous lips.
She could do nothing to stop his arm as it rose above his head, could do nothing to discourage his graceful fingers as they lightly grasped the thin green fringe and parted her protective curtain.
His head tilted to one side in modest consideration as he unveiled her hiding place. The jewels of his eyes fell upon her unthreateningly where she stood with her hands twisting awkwardly behind her back.
"Hello." His tone was light, amused.
"Hello," she returned shyly.
She could feel the stiff bloom of her own eyes dilating as Carlisle's fingers released the delicate vines, cloaking them both beneath the silent shade of the tree. The golden color of his hair was made a brilliant jade in the deep teal shadows, and his eyes gleamed like peridots, rivaling the glow from the fireflies that floated soundlessly around him. The warm wind that waved through the leaves mingled with the reflections dancing off of the nearby lake, giving them the impression that they were underwater. An ethereal shimmer of dull light danced over their faces as they stared at each other, too long to be entirely comfortable.
Carlisle spoke first. "I'm sorry if I startled you before."
Every breath he took and every blink of his eyes was startling to her. He could not apologize for breathing and blinking.
"Of course not," Esme lied softly.
His tender, Christmassy sort of scent made her extravagantly lightheaded, especially while confined within the canopy of limp leaves that surrounded them. Trapped them. Alone, together.
"I'm sorry for...many things, Esme," he continued, his voice low and regretful.
She sighed. "I've told you already. I've put it behind me." She sharpened her stare and tried to ignore the reminiscent churning in her stomach.
His responsive gaze was dark, purely saddened, and flush with disbelief.
"Have you truly forgiven me?"
Esme was mildly baffled. How many times must she offer her forgiveness? Couldn't he see that she was the one who needed to be forgiven for causing this entire mess in the first place?
"Why do you keep asking me to forgive you?" she asked him, struggling to keep her voice from flaking. "What do you need to be forgiven for, Carlisle? Your thoughts? That's absurd. I couldn't fault you for something like that. Something so...personal."
He bit his lip, and the gesture itself seemed so painful she almost winced.
"Nevertheless...I'm ashamed you had to bear witness to my behavior that night," he bowed his head slightly, his eyes soaked with unshed self-loathing. Suddenly his voice became rushed, "And...Dear God, Esme, I nearly ruined you by letting you believe you were the reason Edward fled. Please, at least forgive me for that."
She nodded with a mute whisper. "You're forgiven, Carlisle."
A lengthy pause followed where it seemed they were both holding their breath.
"Are you still upset with me?"
He was impossible.
"I never was upset with you," she began a little vehemently, then carefully softened her voice for his benefit. "Well, I was in the beginning. But now I'm just...confused."
He spoke roughly after a pause, "I wish I could take it all back, Esme."
"We cannot change what has been done," she reminded stiffly.
There was a sweet sort of humidity to the air, a warm drowsy haze that enhanced her dizziness as he stood across from her, staring at her as if she were a puzzle he was trying to decipher with great difficulty.
"Then why do you continue to torture yourself?" he asked.
For a moment she was confused. Carlisle folded his hands in front of him, and the faint clink of his knuckles against the metal fasten of his belt gave her the sudden urge to swallow audibly.
Then he elaborated.
"Esme, you should know that I was never one to dwell on mistakes made in the past."
So he did want to talk about her...accident. Well, it was easy enough for him to say that he was not bothered by it. He was a clean slate in the world of control, and would be forever.
She looked down in shame, mildly mortified that they were discussing this so openly.
"While you may think that you do not deserve forgiveness, I can only insist that this is untrue," Carlisle said. "Edward and I understand the pain you have gone through because of it. However, we also believe you have spent far too long grieving the matter."
He had included Edward's sentiments, perhaps as justification, but Esme had the faint suspicion it was really Carlisle's sole opinion being voiced, and it in fact had very little to do with what Edward felt regarding the matter.
She blinked, struggling to hold his gaze as his eyes furrowed in concern, and he stepped slightly closer.
"You were so quick to forgive us for everything we put you through," he reminded her in a gently passionate voice. "We only want you to be happy again."
Her eyes were locked to the taunting pillow of his bottom lip as he spoke, noting the slightly deeper color it had become after all the times he had bitten it.
"So, please. You must forgive yourself."
Still slightly too proud to show how touched she was by the care in his words, Esme looked to her feet and stiffly, but insincerely, nodded her head. She heard the gentle rhythm of his breath even out, and took it as a sign of relief.
It was completely accidental that her hand rose up to stroke the scars of her neck, fingers moving discreetly beneath the curtain of her hair. It was quite clear what she had been doing, and Carlisle caught her uncomfortably, his jaw tightening as though the methodical action tempted him to bite her again.
Her hands immediately dropped to her sides and clenched into fists, pressed back against the tree in defense.
There was a blistering silence that dragged on for a few moments before Carlisle spoke again, and his voice was noticeably quieter this time.
"I do not want you to think that I regret what I have done by changing you, Esme." He spoke candidly, but avoided underlining the words. There was no need to; they both understood what was being discussed quite clearly.
He placed one hand flat against the bark of the tree and continued in an almost frightened whisper, "However, I understand if you now...resent me for what I have made you..."
Her gaze flickered to his immediately, discovering that he was awfully close to her. His eyes were sad, and she had the sudden need to reassure him that her resentment could have never been possible.
"Carlisle...I could never..." She shook her head in vague disbelief, trying to find the right words while he stared at her in somber-eyed guilt.
He swiftly interrupted her before she could speak again, his voice faintly tormented, "Truthfully, Esme. Do you truthfully remain content with this lifestyle?"
"Yes." She had not needed to think before answering. No matter what his lifestyle, she would adapt to it and remain devoted to it as long as he wished her to. It was simply her fate to follow him in everything that he did. "I do."
The two tiny words hung between them. Though there was no echo in the thick, humid air, the words echoed clear as crystal in their minds.
His lower lip fell faintly as he stared down at her, as though in some kind of daze.
She realized immediately that she had to keep speaking, if only to relieve the weight of those two words that held so much more implication than she had intended.
"I'm...grateful," she stuttered anxiously, wondering why words always worked against her. "After all that's happened, I suppose I've come to accept the fact that I can never be human again." She tried too hard to sound nonchalant, and the tone of her voice came off sounding painfully artificial.
Carlisle exhaled uncomfortably. "Really? You miss nothing about your humanity?" He seemed more intrigued than concerned.
"As far as I can remember there was nothing worth missing..." she trailed, debating whether she should admit to the exception. "...Just one thing."
It took no time for him to respond with startling immediacy.
"Your son."
She turned away out of habit to hide nonexistent tears. "I could not have had him anyway."
Carlisle was silent, and rightly so. She had left him with no remotely appropriate responses.
"I suppose I was never meant to be a mother," she mourned.
"You know that isn't true, Esme," he assured in a warm, low voice. If sincerity were a knife, he would have stabbed her with it. After sharpening the blade.
Something inside of her prickled with hope, and she turned her face just a tad, still unprepared for the directness of his gaze.
"But it is. I can never have another child now," she murmured, dolefully challenging him to ease the sting of such a disability.
"We have Edward," he reminded her, the words melting on his tongue.
She nearly gasped.
"You have…Edward…" he amended awkwardly, a strange strain in his usually confident voice.
If she had Edward, that meant Edward was like her son. If Edward was like her son, then she was like his mother. And if Carlisle was like Edward's father, then...
"Do you consider me a mother figure to Edward?" she asked in a curious whisper, turning to face Carlisle with dimly flashing eyes.
"I… I know that he considers you a mother figure, yes," he said cryptically, carefully skirting the path he knew she intended him to take.
The stifling pressure of their proximity was suddenly unbearable, the tartness of venom slick beneath her tongue. It was all too ridiculous, but in her mind she had the most passionate drive to kiss him with abandon. To tackle him to the ground, land in the soft bed of clover, and never depart the safe canopy of this weeping willow. In this dream, she could have him all for herself...
"That does not answer my question, Doctor," she murmured, diving head-first into the glowing sea of his gaze.
The thrilling aroma of sexual tension sweetened every one of Esme's senses, her brief fantasy threatening to overrun her better judgment.
"Carlisle," he corrected, so softly that she could barely hear him. His velvety voice bore the blessing of his given accent, rolling the letters ever so slightly.
It was unlawfully lovely, the way he said his own name.
Esme blinked once in chagrin, but did not dare repeat his name. Instead, she turned away from the heat of his eyes, scraping little lines into the tree bark with her fingernails. "This isn't working."
She didn't know where the words had come from, or even exactly what they meant, but he had answered her as if they held all the significance they were both too afraid to realize.
"You aren't letting it work, Esme." His voice was so soft when she wished it would be stern.
The silvery glow of the moonlight was suddenly shaded by clouds, and the shadows dropped all around her, bringing a deeper chill to the thick night air.
Her lungs tightened uncomfortably, trying to contain the urge to sob. A tiny beetle crossed warily over her fingernail where she still touched the tree, and she looked upon it with empathy, all at once appreciating too deeply how someone so small and helpless felt. Her voice came out weak and flinty, "Can you blame me for feeling inferior to you, Carlisle?"
There. She said it. Quick and painless.
His eyes were drained of all their light in the shadows, and he turned his head down sadly.
"Please don't say things like that, Esme. It breaks my heart." His voice was so soft a dove could outcry him. "You've seen me; you've heard me say things I'm not proud of...despicable things. You are hardly the inferior here, Esme."
Her voice was faint as she turned her eyes away, "But your control will always conquer mine."
All at once, Carlisle burst in gentle vehemence. "Oh, Esme... The difference in our control is unmentionable at this moment! I have had centuries to overcome it. You have only just begun."
She could say nothing to this. Knowing it was true that her journey had just begun somehow stole her hope instead of restoring it. Her throat was like a vacuum, and no words would have been adequate to form a response.
"I know that you are still finding many things hard to accept..." Carlisle forced the words out, fluid and frustrated and still too gentle. "But you need to try."
She felt him come closer behind her, afraid that he would force her to meet his gaze. She would not let him.
"I already tried," she whimpered, hiding her face. "Oh, I'm so tired of trying."
Her hands felt clammy where they clung to the tree, and her eyes were weary. She could feel him so close that his breath was caressing the back of her neck, and when did it get this dark outside...?
"Don't ever talk like that," he said, and she was relieved to hear that the steadiness had crept back into his voice. "You have such promise, Esme. Such promise..."
The trifle tickling of his fingers as they caressed her hair caused her heart to quiver. They tucked several silky tresses behind her ear, and the tenderness in that slightest of touches was enough to make her body ache all over.
"I thought it was going to be so easy..." She shook her head in dismay, disappointed that the motion had frightened his fingers away. "I was just beginning to think that, maybe, I could have perfect control..."
His swift but cautious intake of breath told her everything before he said it. "There is no such thing as perfect control."
She wanted to believe him, but as long as he stood there, he would always be the living contradiction to his own prophecy.
Her eyes were heady with bitter adoration as she turned around to face him. "But there is, Carlisle," she countered numbly, with a wan half-smile. "There must be, because you have achieved it."
His gaze grew defensive. "There is no way to know if I will remain this way forever."
She barely let him finish his sentence. "You would never hurt anybody," she insisted idly. "You are too pure in heart."
His eyes sparked with inspiration, warmth, and something like vehement disagreement.
"So are you, Esme."
There was the faintest edge of a smile on his lips as he reminded her of this, and however greatly she might have wanted to argue its validity, she could not believe otherwise when he was looking at her with such draining compassion.
"How can you know this?" she asked quietly.
"I see it," his confession was delectably thick in his throat. "Every day, I see it. You've made it so plain... Can you not see it in yourself?"
She could not respond, but it was all right. He wasn't expecting a response. He was content just to stare and smile softly at her. He could have done it all night, it seemed.
Those mysterious forces of twining encouragement fought behind her again – a hundred tiny hands issuing nudge after loving nudge against her back, pushing her toward him…
It was like they knew just how desperately she wanted to kiss him.
She stared up at him, so very aware of the pulsing humidity between them, so aware that there was something racing behind his gaze that made her body flush with false hope. Their scents were swimming, and the sky was darkening by the second, and her venom was tart on the tip of her tongue. His lips were open just the tiniest bit, perhaps in awe, perhaps with the clinging will to say something to her…
But the first wretched wet raindrop that landed on her shoulder put an abrupt end to the magic. It tried to warn her before the rest came careening down from the darkened sky, but she had been too paralyzed to move a muscle.
The willow's flimsy branches did little to protect them from the monsoon that had come to drench their moment of climactic tension. They stood still, staring at each other as it rained down on them, almost grudgingly.
They could have ignored that rain if they wanted to. They could have closed that blockade of empty air between them and met one another, body to body, arms winding around each other in a beautiful, slippery embrace.
But it did not happen.
One blink of her eyes threw a match to their delicate pressure.
But somehow, it did not feel like such a tragic loss.
Carlisle smiled strangely as the rain shattered over them, and Esme could not help but smile back. It was so amazing, the way the frustration seemed to wash away with the rain. Was it really a cleansing shower from heaven that helped them to move on?
He did not take her lips, but he did take her hand. And through the pulse of the storm overhead, she heard his tender voice, drowning out everything else in the night.
"Come home with me."