AN: What's this? An update? Something new? :O

This story popped into my head five years ago after reading Life and Death. My brain likes 'what if' scenarios and this has often been where my stories start. The question 'What if these two different versions of the same character were in fact siblings?' was just too good to pass up. However, after scribbling a few disjointed paragraphs, I ran out of steam and left it alone for years. With the release of Midnight Sun, my creative juices got flowing again and decided to flow into this delightful abandoned project, and here we are :)
An outline of what I changed/used from each book and why can be found in the beginning notes of the first full chapter. Enjoy!

Prologue: A Request

November 11th, 1919

The city was dark, the house doubly so as he hovered in the shadows watching it. He shouldn't be here, he knew that. The city was too crowded, too potentially tempting for his still fragile self-control. There were so many ways that this could go horribly wrong. And yet, here he was. He knew that she was proud of his progress, his mentor, his mother, that she wouldn't have let him come if she didn't think he could handle it. It would be of little comfort if he failed. Worse, somehow, not to live up to her expectations, than to simply take a life.

A full year since peace had come to the world. A little more than a year since his world had changed irrevocably.

He stood in the dark garden of his family's home and knew that if any of them could see him, they would not even recognise him. But his parents were dead, snatched by the disease that had almost taken him too. His sister had miraculously been spared and must be far away by now. The house was for sale, he had learned. It was his last chance to return and collect anything he might want. He couldn't think of anything in particular, but he would look. He would walk through one more time, and maybe he would at least remember.

The back-door lock was the work of moments to break – he said a silent apology to the new owners for the expense of replacing it – and he slid silent and swift into the black halls. The dark was no impediment to his sight. As he moved from room to room, he was increasingly disturbed.

The house was completely bare. Gone were the elegant sideboard in the dining room, the wide mahogany table, the matching hall tables where his mother always dropped her shawl and his father left errant papers. Gone were the fine curtains edged with lace, the paintings in gilt frames, the embroidered lounge set. Gone were his mother's prized silver and her beloved piano. Gone were all but the faintest echoes of the memories he had been hoping to find.

Despair, sharp and unexpected, gripped him and he fell to his knees in the middle of the barren family room, robbed even of its carpets and down to bare boards. He stayed there, like the stone statue his flesh now more closely resembled, for what felt a very long time.

As he rose to leave, still sorrowful but now loathe to spend another moment here in this hollowed-out shell, a sound caught the very edge of his awareness.

A heartbeat, weak and thready, but very definitely thrumming somewhere above his head. Just the faintest, muddled tenor of a mind not entirely conscious. A human life, somewhere in the house.

He froze, statue once more. He knew he should go, knew his control could not be trusted so close to a human with no other witnesses. Yet when he unlocked his muscles, his feet took him toward the stairs, toward the sound, almost without permission.

Upstairs was more of the same. Almost all the doors had been left open, the winter wind blowing down chimneys and whistling through the house, and he could see that each room was entirely stripped of every trace of his family. He followed the softly beating heart and then, when he saw it, the faint flickering glow of light below the one closed door. It had been his sister's room, once upon a time; he could still see the floral-decorated 'E' carved into the wood, a mirror of the gothic swirls on his own door across the hall. Quietly, warring with himself all the while, he opened the door.

A single candle, barely more than a stub, flickered in the far corner of the room. It had melted onto the exposed floorboards and he knew it would be a fair bit of work to prise up. Ashes were in the fireplace, but they had long since burned away, no hint of warmth left. In the wobbly, wavering light, a pile of dirty blankets resolved itself into a human form. A horribly familiar human form.

"Edythe."

The word escaped without him consciously allowing it, along with a rush of air. He quickly stopped his breath, not daring to take in the air that must surely be saturated with her scent.

His sister rolled weakly towards the sound of his voice. Her hair was tangled and slick with sweat, loose strands sticking to her shining forehead. Cloudy eyes focused on him, still half-hidden in shadow. Her mind was a jumble of delirium, barely able to hold a coherent train of thought, but it fixed on him, recognised him, and, to his surprise, accepted his presence without a hint of astonishment. Her voice, just a breath that crackled out of her lungs as if from underwater, nonetheless reached his sensitive ears.

"Edward."

He was kneeling by her side before he had thought of moving, all thought of thirst banished by just that one terrifying sound. He found her hand, thinner and paler than he remembered, held it delicately like the most precious porcelain.

She was speaking, though it sounded like every word pained her. "Oh Edward... my brother... you have come... come to take me."

"Edythe," he breathed, bending low over her hand but not daring to kiss it as he ached to. "What happened to you, sister? To the house?"

"Sold," she sighed, her green eyes, mirrors of what his had been, sliding closed. "Had to sell it all. You were gone, and Mother and Father. Gone, gone, gone." In her mind, a headstone bearing three names, the text illegible through the tears of her memory and the fog of her fever. She swallowed heavily but he could see it did nothing for her dry throat. "No more money... couldn't find work... couldn't ask for help... too proud." She laughed at herself now, just one puff of hollow amusement. Her other hand, pressed to her chest, opened slowly, revealing a glittering ring, rows of tiny diamonds glinting in the candlelight. "Kept this... just this... couldn't let it go... last piece of Mother." Their mother's smile danced across her mind's eye.

His still heart felt like it would shatter. Could it be possible that her life had fallen apart so thoroughly since his reported death? Clearly, it was. It had.

She opened her eyes again, pleading now. "Will you take me... to Mother and Father? I've wished... so much... to be with you all... a family again."

He shook his head. She believed him an angel, a spirit come to guide her on to the next life. She couldn't know that the gates of Heaven were eternally barred to him. "I'm sorry, Edythe. So sorry. I'm not with them. We won't be all together again. But you're going to them." Of this he was sure. She was good, his darling Edythe. And she was dying. It was not his sickness, he didn't think, but whatever had hold of his sister would take her in short order. "You take my love to them, you hear me? Be at peace for me."

"No!" To his surprise, there was some force behind the word. "No, brother, I want... to be with you. If you... if you live, somehow... I want to stay with you."

He shook his head firmly. "You don't know what you're asking for, Edythe. This isn't life, not the life you deserve."

She was crying now, tears making tracks down the side of her face, though he wondered that she was hydrated enough to form them. "Nor is... lying here... cold... dying. Please, Edward... please... save me."

Her voice faded with every word. Her mind was a whirl of desperate desire, her pleas echoing as she lost the strength to speak, and even those were getting frighteningly faint. Abruptly, he wanted to give in, to give her what she wanted, to carry her to his new mother and ask for the same second chance she had given him. Would this life be easier, somehow, with his sister to share it? Could he curse her to the half-life he lived?

"Please," she breathed once more, and his mind was made up. Pocketing the ring lest it fall and be lost, he rose to his feet, scooping up his sister, blankets and all. He turned his back on the candle and the thin mattress that had been her bed, crossing to the French doors that opened onto her balcony. He kicked them – another broken latch – and heard the candle blow out behind him. The night was cloudy; to her weak eyes, it was pitch black. She whimpered softly in his arms and he hushed her gently.

"Peace, sister. All will be well now," he murmured, praying that he was not lying to her.

He leapt from the balcony railing and disappeared into the night, leaving the house silent and dark behind him.