So, shoot me now.
I have a bunch of excuses, but I doubt that you really want to hear them. The good news is that school holidays are on now and my boyfriend is on holiday (which, just fyi, sucks balls), so the only things to distract me are sleep, friends and work (if I get the job that I think that I got, wish me luck).
I would just like to point out that I live in Australia, on the other side of the world from America, and have absolutely no idea about American geography. I did look up some stuff to make this chapter a bit more 'true', but still, Google can only do so much.
Please keep reviewing, enjoy.
On, and P.S. To ttyyyyytt, thankyou for the message and I am sorry that I have not replied sooner, but whenever I try to, fan fiction says that the 'user has disabled the pm function', and I can't. And then I got lazy and busy and couldn't post this…..
It's safe to say that Mrs. Mart, the elderly woman across the street, would not be able to tell that I had left the house. I gotta say though, the fact that my mother had hired her to constantly look through her window to see if I was there was a little odd, I mean, she was practically saying 'hey old lady that I barely know, please, stalk my son for me for 'sleeping' with his girlfriend'.
And on that note, I was eighteen, an adult, so what if I had Bella in my room, I should be able to.
Yeah, I was still pissy about being grounded, especially after Bella had brought to my attention that I was an adult.
But anyway, Bella and I had successfully left the house via the back door and were currently running through the forest ( or she was. I was clinging on for dear life. ) to the Cullen mansion. I was eager to talk to Emmett, and hoped that I might be able to sneak Esme in as well. I wanted to have this whole vampire change thing definite by the time that school started.
When we got to the mansion, Emmett greeted us at the door, gesturing that we should take a seat in the living room.
If I ever had any doubt that Emmett was the most relaxed of the Cullen's this was the setting that would reassure me. Whilst all the others had had an air of sadness or longing in their voices whenever they spoke about their human lives, Emmett seemed perfectly fine, if not bored as he started to tell me the story, diving his attention between me and the television, where for some reason he was watching a cooking show on the food network.
"I was born in Tennessee, in a little town on the Smokey Mountain. I was the middle child," Emmett grinned. Weren't the middle children meant to be the reserved and quiet ones? "I had a little brother and an older sister, Joseph and Angelina. My parents were John and Mary McCarty. The majority of my human life that I can remember was during the great depression, so making a living wasn't easy, and the fact that we lived in a tiny town didn't exactly help that." Emmett's brow furrowed.
"I know that my mother stayed at home, she didn't work, but my dad did, he was a lumberjack I think, and my sister got work in town as a seamstress when she turned fifteen, she was still working there at the time of my change. I remember that I had gotten a job with my dad at the same age. There was no real point going to school, so I went and worked instead. Joseph, who was three years younger than me, got a job with dad at fifteen too."
Emmett looked at the TV and sighed again, trying to remember I thought.
"We liked to go hunting, me, my dad and my brother that is. Sometimes, we would go with some of the other people that lived near by. We got free food this way, and something exciting to do as well. My mother was always terrified that we were going to get hurt on one of the hinting trips, but we always told her that we stayed together and that we were careful. And we always were.
The last time that I went, only my brother and dad were with me. I was twenty one at the time and had not really wanted to go. I had to cancel a date with my girlfriend." Emmett snorted. I rose an eyebrow. I had never thought about Emmett being with anybody else then with Rosalie, and was immediately glad that she was not here at the moment, but was shopping in Port Angeles with Alice. I wondered if she knew about Emmett's pre-material relations.
"Yer, I know, strange to think of me with anybody else but Rosalie, but at the time, I had not met her, and my mother wanted lots of grandbabies," Emmett laughed. "she wanted me to be married within the next ten years. She got her wish, but not quite as she expected. Eighty years later and sadly, still no grandbabies.
We had split up for some reason, that was not something that we usually did, and I was ecstatic when I found a little baby bear. I had never seen one before and stupidly went closer for a better look. I did not see the mother until I had gotten to close, and she had seen me to. She gave this giant roar, an I remember thinking that dad would come to help me, because there was no way that I would be able to take care of the bear, or myself, by myself. But if dad did come, I do not know. The bear started to run at me, and do you have any idea how fast hose things can go? And I panicked, I could barely move, let alone set up the gun. Things become a bit foggy after that, but I remember that something cold was wrapped round me, and then when I opened my eyes, an angel was staring at me.
"Please," She had told me. "Please just hang on." And from that moment onwards she had me hooked. I feel in love with Rosalie then, and I remember thinking that I could be alright with dying, because this angel was going to take me up to Heaven where we could spend Eternity Together." Emmett grinned. "I got some of it right.
After Carlisle bit me, I remember thinking that I had been sent to hell." Emmett frowned, a faraway look in his topaz eyes. "But I was confused when the Angel stayed with me, I did not under stand why she was still there. I thought that maybe I was being punished, but was still going to go to Heaven, and the Angel was here to remind me that everything would be alright."
Bella sighed. "And then you woke up." Emmett's booming laughter could surely be heard in the next town over.
"I was a bit of a hand full wasn't I?" Emmett, seeing my confused face, elaborated. "When I woke up, I was asking if I could see my grandmother, and they were all pretty confused by that before Carlisle asked if she was dead. I told them that she was, and he told me that I was, to some standard, still alive."
"You kept a surprisingly open mind." Bella mused thoughtfully. "Took us ages to convince Esme."
"I wasn't overly freaked out about the whole vampire thing, I was more interested in the perks, plus I was still shocked at the sight of Rosie. If she was there, how bad could being a vampire be?"
Very, I thought.
"They explained about the thirst, which was sooo bad, and took me hunting. I made such a mess, my shirt was in tatters and I had plowed over a bunch of trees and killed I don't even know how many animals. Took over fur hours to fill me.
When we got to the house, they all briefly told me their stories and went over the 'need to know' for being a vampire."
"We were all so unsettled about how well you were taking everything." Bella chimed in.
"Because I am so much bigger, I have to drink more to fill me whenever I hunt, and my body uses up the blood quicker. Most newborns hunt every second day, but I was drinking double of what most other newborns do and I had to go every day, sometimes more than once."
Emmett's eyes hardened, started to show a sadness that I had never seen there before.
"My control was, and still is, one of the worst in the family. The only person that has a harder time than me is Jazz, and that's just because my poor brother has to feel everybody else's thirst. About eight months in we went on a hunt, just me and Rosalie. We, we came across the scent of a human when we were sitting by the waterfall. I had never smelt anything so good before.
Without even thinking about what I was doing I started to run towards the scent, and at that time I was still faster than Rosalie. By the time that she got to me, the guy and the kid were dead." Emmett's voice broke on the last word.
I sat stunned, my eyes wide and my back straightened up. I had never thought about Emmett killing anybody, he was just too nice. Killing one person must have been bad enough, but killing two, and a child, that must have killed him.
"She was only young too, probably about eight. And you know what's worse?" Emmett turned his eyes towards me, and I almost shuddered at the tortured look in them.
"I killed her dad first. I drained the guy before I turned on her. She saw absolutely everything that I did, she had to see his snapped neck, his open dead eyes as I drank the blood from his neck. Then I killed her." Emmett started to take deep breaths, trying to calm himself I assumed. I did not know how to make things better, how to calm him. Hesitantly, I put my hand on his should and squeezed. He looked at me and smiled, though I could tell that the memory was still going to be on his mind for a while. "I was absolutely distraught. I locked myself in my bedroom for about a week, and by that stage the thirst was horrible and I could not help myself when they took me to the forest. After that I absolutely refused to go anywhere near the humans. After another three years I finally did though, and it took another after that until I could be near them for a whole day, and another decade until I became comfortable to do so, where I could go for a whole day without having to hold my breath.
And then, after about another ten years, we got the Pixie and the Soldier." Emmett grinned. "We had to move town after about three months, and in the new town I found my singer." I rose an eyebrow at this, knowing that that was what I was to Bella, and wondering how the others had dealt with their singers. "We were all walking along the dirt road to get to the house. At this part of the town, there were farms and everything was pretty secluded. I had run in front of the rest of them by about ten kilometers, to get away from Jasper because I had just made a rather, well, out of place joke about Alice. There was a woman who was hanging out sheets, and then the wind blew, blowing her scent to me, and honestly, I have absolutely no idea what happened for a time after that. I just remember Rosalie with her arms around my shoulders and Carlisle in front of me, calling my name. When I came into focus, I looked at my hands and they were covered in blood, and in front of me was the woman, her eyes still open, her neck practically torn off. Before I could make sense of what I had done, I could hear Jasper growling behind me.
That was when we realized that Jasper could feel everyone else's thirst as well as our other emotions.
I know that you probably think that this life is great, that we get looks and our mates and we get to spend so much more time with them then the humans do with their mates, usually. You probably think that the thirst is the worst part, and maybe you are right. But there is also the guilt, and the longing for your family, to be a part of society again. I missed my family so much, until the first incident I was still arguing with them, telling them that I should be able to see my family again.
This is not all easy Edward," Emmett was more serious than I had ever seen him. "a decision like this should not be taken lightly, there is no going back. But you have good control, and a good support team." Emmett smiled mischievously, his topaz eyes lighting up. "When Bella finally gets her head out of her ass, you should do just fine kid." Emmett ruffled my hair, before there was a crack, Emmett was sprawled on the floor laughing and Bella was slowly bring her hand back to her side, not looking at either of us.
Soon after, Emmett, looking much happier than he had been before, went upstairs to pack a suitcase for the trip, as they were leaving the next day.
Bella and I spent the rest of the day being more lazy than either of us usually allowed, laying on the couch and watching movies, whilst trying to decided what we were going to do in Chicago when we were there, including the Art Institute Of Chicago and The Lincoln Park Zoo, which I thought was a little bit ironic.
We were starting to think about leaving when an unusually timid looking Esme came into the room. I got the feeling that she needed to say something to us, and had had to for quite a while, but had only gotten the resolve to do so now that we were about to go.
"Hey Esme." I said, trying to act like her acting like this was normal, tying to pretend that nothing was odd.
"Hello." Her normally sift voice was quieter than ever, and as she shuffled into the room with her head down and her hands clasped in front of her, she looked small, meek and fragile, which was preposterous. I looked over to Bella, trying to gauge her reaction, and caught a spark of shock and recognition in her topaz eyes.
"Are-are you alright Esme?" I asked her, not liking seeing her so sad.
"Oh yes dear," She said quickly, hastily trying to reassure me. "I just wanted to know if I could talk to you about…me." Me eyes widened. Did she mean what I think that she meant? Either way, I nodded.
She let out a breath and walked over to me, taking the seat that Emmett had occupied hours ago for a similar conversation.
"I, I don't know, how much do you know about my human life?" She asked me timidly.
"I knew that you were human, and that you had a baby, and that the crib is upstairs." I supplied, not missing the way that she flinched. She nodded slowly.
"I was born in Ohio, in 1894." She sighed. "I had two older sisters, Grace was the oldest and Sarah was the middle child. We owned a small farm and my father would sell the produce in town, or sometimes ship the goods away. Our parents got Grace married when she was twenty to another farmer, like our parents were, and Sarah married by choice when she was eighteen. When she got married, my mother went into a frenzy trying to get me a husband, or at least to get people interested in me. I was sixteen." Alright, so I know that the times were different and that I was considering getting married at eighteen, but sixteen seems way too young. "She got me to wear a corset, which was something that I had been fighting against since I was fourteen. The problem was that I did not realize how much the corset would limit the use of my legs.
As I said, my parents were farmers. We all lived there until my sisters got married, then they went to live with their partners. I used to like to walk in the fields around sunset then climb up the trees and draw, if I got the chance. The day that mother got me to wear the corset, I finished my chores early and got the chance to go walking. I tried to climb, but when I had to life my leg up high to get it over the branch, the corset restricted the movement. I became off balanced and fell from the tree. I had almost been at the top. I could feel my leg cracking and it hurt so much, but no matter how much I yelled, my parents did not find me until a few hours later.
I was taken to the hospital, naturally after my mother had helped to clean me up a bit, a was treated by none other than Carlisle." For the first time she smiled a wide, genuine smile. It was obvious that even then she would have loved him. "I don't remember much of that night, the pain made me woozy and they had given me medication, but I remember waking up the next night, and when I looked over to the bedside table he was there. He asked me how I was, and explained to me everything that happened. They had had to reset my bones. I was there for a month, and the whole time, Carlisle was the one that took care of me, he would get nervous anybody else tried, or whenever he had to go for the day.
I always made sure to sleep in the day because Carlisle only worked in the nights. At first, I had been merely infatuated with him, but by the time that I was to leave I knew that I was in love. I loved the way that he treated me, he would hold my hand whenever my leg really hurt and he would sooth me whenever my parents had come to visit me. My mother was critical that I still needed to be at the hospital. She thought that I should be finding a husband not sitting in the hospital reading. Carlisle would listen to me about what I wanted to do with my life and tried to support me. Whilst I wanted to find a husband and have a big family, I wanted to be more than just some woman that relied on her husband for everything and spent the day cleaning the house and waiting for the others to come back. I wanted to help be, maybe by being a teacher of some sort. These were just some of the reasons why I loved him.
The only problem that as I was leaving, Carlisle was too. He came to me on my last night at the hospital, and I had plucked up the courage to ask if I could come back to visit him, which was outrageous for a woman to do in those days, but he beat me to talking. He told me that he had to leave Ohio, that there had been some sort of family emergency. That alone was odd as he had told me that he did not have any close family.
Without Carlisle's presence in my life I was more miserable than ever. I missed him and could not tell anybody, they would laugh at me and call me a foolish girl for thinking that my infatuation with the hansom doctor was love, or that a young girl like me had a chance.
A year later, my parents arranged for me to get married to a man named Charles Evanston." I heard a faint snarl and in a flash Carlisle was standing in front of me, still in a doctors coat and with briefcase in hand. His eyes were wide with fury and black. Carlisle was fucking angry. "It's alright darling, we were just talking about me as a human."
"But why about – "
"Because he was a part of my human life. And part of the reason why…." She rose an eyebrow. Carlisle sighs and sat next to her. "You get angry every time that you hear this Carlisle, why stay?" Carlisle did not answer but sat silently next to his wife with his hand in hers, reminding me shockingly of Bella. Esme sighed and rolled her eyes, but I could see a glimmer of amusement in her eyes and the touch of a smile on her lips.
"Anyway, Charles came from a well respected family in the community, and I remember how shocked and proud my parents were that somebody like him would agree to be with me." Carlisle snorted at this. "Honestly, I was too. He was a fair few years old then me, about five I think, and at first he seemed to be what every young woman would have hoped for in a husband. Nice, charming, polite and respectful. Plus with enough inheritance to support the two of us and a family, plus a good job. But even then I knew that I could never be truly happy with Charles. I often found myself comparing him to Carlisle," Here, Carlisle grinned smugly. I wasn't used to seeing this part of Carlisle, and wondered what the fuck this Charles guy could have done tot make the almost always calm Carlisle act like this.
We were married shortly after we became acquainted with each other. Of course we had heard of each other, or exchanged a few words out of politeness at a social gathering, but nothing that indicated a friendship or anything more than that.
At first, Charles was exactly as I had thought, but after about two months he…." Esme frowned and seemed to be struggling to find the right word. I got the feeling that she was trying to shield me from what had actually happened, but still wanted to give me the general idea. I wasn't sure that I wanted to know either way. "changed." She finally settled on. "Charles' true temper became apparent, and he developed a rather strong hand."
My eyes widened, my jaw clenched and my hand bunched the soft material of the sofa in a fist. Carlisle's reaction was similar to mine, Bella simply winced whilst Esme had no outwardly reaction.
"I won't go into any details, but you can imagine enough. Very few people found out what was actually happening, though I assume that other people would have had a suspicion."
"Then why didn't they help you?" I exclaimed outraged and unable to stop myself.
All the same, Esme smiled patiently. "Things were different back then. Even if somebody didn't agree with what was going on, what happened between a man and wife was not their business. The only people that actually knew were my parents and Sarah, but they told me that I must be doing something wrong to be making my husband so angry. They told me to be a better wife and then everything would be alright."
Carlisle growled. I imagined that I would have to had I of had the ability.
"When Charles was called to serve in the First World War, I was still upset, but nowhere near that of the other wives. I acted well though, I pretended to weep when I kissed him goodbye and exchanged encouraging words with the other wives but when I got home the day that they left I remember sweeping through the house and singing and baking pies, rejoicing in the fact that I would actually be able to eat them, because Charles never let me.
The time that my husband was gone were the happiest days of my married for me. I was free. But then, one day I was hanging out the washing and talking to one of the neighbors, and the back door burst open. Charles was back. I knew what was to come, so I quickly said goodbye to the neighbor telling her that I had missed my husband, and she never questioned me.
Charles was horrible. All that time at war when he was able to fulfill his bloodlust, forgive the irony, made him all the more thirsty. Except now there was no one else to hurt or to kill, just me.
Two months later, I found that I was pregnant."
I had already known that Esme had had a child, thanks to her new children, but I still found the image of her with a baby with a different man beside her, a man that was not Carlisle, who was clearly her soul mate, difficult to comprehend. The only difference now was that whenever I had imagined such a situation the other man had been looking at wife and child with love and adoration filling his not-gold eyes. Now, after hearing the beginning of her story, I somehow doubted that Charles ever looked at Esme such a way.
"I had always wanted a child, I wanted a big family with a loving husband that would kiss me when he came home. I knew that that was not what I would be getting with Charles. That night, after he had gone to bed, I grabbed everything that I could fit into a suitcase and some food, and I left.
I refused to let a baby be hurt by my husband, and I refused to risk the babies life with what Charles did to me.
I caught the train to West Virginia, then made my way to Arlington. I got a job at a diner and was reasonably happy, all things considering. I was still edgy and somewhat paranoid about Charles.
The town that I was staying in was tiny, ad everybody knew everybody. I was in my forth month of pregnancy and had been in the town for just over two months. There were two men that worked in the local post office, and the older man, a Mr. Johnston if I remember correctly, came into the diner every morning before he started his shift. One morning, when it was almost six am, after I served him he told me that a man had come looking for me.
"I was just cleaning up last night and the fellow came into the store, asking if I knew a Mrs. Evanston." Mr. Johnston had said.
"And I told the guy no, and he said 'What about an Esme then? An Esme Platt?'. And I told him yes, that you were living here. I asked the fellow how he knew you, and he said that he knew you from when you lived before, and I asked if you were a friend of her husbands from the war, because I remember you telling me how your husband had passed when he was fighting, bless his soul.
Then the man started to look a bit angry, and asked me where you were. I told him, I said, that I could not tell him your address, but that you worked here, usually in the morning, and that your shift usually finished about two.
'E said that he was going to stop by to see you after work."
By this stage I thought that I knew who he was talking about, it wouldn't be my dad, he would be to ashamed of what I had done to bother looking for me, so Charles was the only other option. He might not have loved me, but to him, I was his property, and I had no right to leave him. I imagine that there was talk about the town about what had happened and why I had suddenly disappeared, and Charles was probably ashamed, embarrassed and angry.
I asked Mr. Johnston the mans name, and he said Charles. I quickly apologized to the other workers and went back to the house that I had been renting. The owner lived next door so I apologized to her to and gave her the rent that I was owing her, then I caught the next train that I could get onto.
It took me to a little town named Ashland." Here, Esme shared a fond smile with Carlisle, who, despite his scowl, returned it. "I remained there for the rest of my pregnancy. I started to work at the local school. I was finally happy. When I went into labor, everything went perfectly fine. I gave birth on my due date, there were no extra complications for me or the baby and everything seemed to be going great. I was resting and waiting for the nurse to bring me the baby so that I could nurse him, but when she came back, she did not have my baby. She told me that my little boy had developed an infection in his lungs, and that the doctors were trying to fix him. They said that he was stable but that they did not want to try to move him. She said that I would be able to visit him the next day.
I was worried sick, of course, but she had assured me that my baby would be fine.
When I went to visit him the next day, he seemed fine. They let me stay with him but after a few hours, he started to…" Her voice chocked off and her hand flew up to her mouth, eyes clenching shut.
"Esme," Carlisle whispered, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and kissing. She took few moments to collect herself, then kept on talking.
"You don't have to – " I started.
"No, no, it's fine." She nodded determinedly. "So, he started to turn blue. I started screaming for the doctors to come and get him, to help the two of us, and they did but they couldn't save him. He was only a day old, and he died.
I-I couldn't handle the grief. I spent a few days willowing around the small house that I had rented, most of the time I was in the babies room.
After a few days, I decided that there was no point bothering living anymore. I had no family, very limited friends, my husband was abusive and my sweet little baby was dead. I decided that I was going to join him."
I stiffened at this. I already knew that something had happened to her to force her into this life, something that had threatened her life, but I had never assumed that she had tried to take her own life.
"I went to one of the cliffs and jumped off. I remember being so happy as I was falling, I finally felt free. Somebody found me a few hours later and called the hospital, but I was taken straight to the morgue. Luckily, Carlisle was working there that night. He heard the heartbeat and recognized who I was. He took me back to their house and changed me.
Waking up was….frightening….to say the least. I had been so desperate to die, but I was religious and knew that suicide was a sin, the pain of the transformation had made me think that I was getting my punishment for killing myself. When I woke up to see Carlisle, I thought that he was an angel, I thought that I had been forgiven and that I was in Heaven.
When Carlisle was explaining everything it took so long to convince me otherwise. When they took me hunting, everything started to crash on me and I was absolutely terrified. I locked myself in once of the rooms and cried for hours that I had actually killed something. The way that you lose yourself in the hunt is so scary at first. The first year is the hardest, for me anyway. The cross from human to vampire changes not just your body but also your mind. You think differently and that makes it confusing because you still like most of the same things. I don't know about the others, because they were all single and didn't have any romantic interests when they changed, but I loved to spend time with Carlisle, and I could tell that my feelings for him were developing and becoming even stronger than they were when I was a human.
Being around him helped me so much, but also made things so much more difficult because I had no idea that he felt the same way or how to handle the new emotions. You will only have half of that problem, luckily you know that Bella loves you, but the stronger emotions will be hard to handle especially when you are already in love."
I pursed my lips. "Are the vampire emotions really that different from the human ones?" I asked.
She threw me a look filled with sympathy. "I know that you probably don't want to hear this, but they are a lot different and a lot stronger. And I know that you love Bella, truly I do, but your feeling will get stronger when you get changed."
"Hmmm."
"I'm not saying that this life is easy, but you will have a great support team here, you will never have to be alone, you will be fine." She patted my knee. "Now, you two run along. It's getting late and you didn't eat lunch Edward, I have to work on my blue prints for the renovations of the house in Vancouver and Carlisle you need to go hunting, Rosalie and Emmett are waiting for you."
With that she jumped up off the couch and glided up the stairs.