AN: I have loved all of your reviews and my inbox has been completely overwhelmed with the constant messages of 'Favourites' and 'Alerts'. Because of this, and the massive boost to my ego every message gave me, I am giving you another chapter. Do not expect this all the time though, I'm just giving you a reward so you will all tell me how amazing I am some more...

Chapter 1 - Edward

My name is Edward Masen. You heard me. Masen. I was born in 1901 in Chicago Illinois to Elizabeth Masen and Edward Masen Sr.

I don't remember my father at all, and that fact often brings me some guilt, because there are other things I remember very clearly that apparently took priority in my mind when my brain was choosing which memories to wipe away and which to keep while I burned through my change into this... existence.

In 1918 Edward Masen Sr., Elizabeth Masen and Edward Masen Jr. all died of the Spanish Influenza. After that I was just Edward for a while.

My father died first. He died at home in his bed with my mother by his side, crying. I fell ill the next day. Terrified of loosing both her husband and son, my mother took me to the hospital. Problem was that the city was in the middle of an epidemic. The hospital was over flowing with the dead and the dying.

She stayed with me, trying to care for me, but when you're surrounded by that much sickness there really is no way to avoid catching it yourself. So, despite the fact that I fell ill first, she died first. She exhausted herself trying to keep me alive, trying to make me better, and only resulting in her death.

The doctor that was taking care of us when she died was truly a beautiful man. Even in the midst of my sickened, hazy, delusional mind, I came around enough to see him. Enough to appreciate that, if I was going to die, at least I was going to die looking at the most beautiful man I'd ever seen in my whole life.

My mother spoke to him just before she died. I was completely out of it at the time, but I would later learn that she had asked our doctor to make a promise to her, to swear that he would do absolutely everything within his power to save me.

I don't know if she fully realized what she was doing or not. If she completely realized what she was asking and who she was asking it of. Because it turned out that our doctor wasn't what he appeared. He was a vampire.

A vampire named Carlisle Cullen.

Carlisle put a sheet over my head and wheeled me out of the ward of dying patients towards the morgue. No one questioned it. Why would they? People were dying everywhere. What was one more body?

He took me from the hospital and managed to get me back to his house undiscovered.

He changed me that night. The night that Edward Masen died and just Edward replaced him.

I woke to my new existence with a peculiar new skill, at first I thought the change had driven me crazy until Carlisle explained to me that some of our kind were gifted with rare, unique powers, and I was apparently one of those few. I could hear his thoughts. Not just his, but everyone's. But only his thoughts were the ones that mattered to me.

I quickly learned that he had been thinking about creating a companion for years now. He was lonely and exhausted from his solitude. When my mother had asked him to save me, part of him was ridiculously excited by the idea. He felt guilty for that; selfish, really; but would never admit it to me aloud. However I could hear his thoughts; he couldn't hide anything from me. Not for long.

But I kept things hidden from him.

It's incredibly easy to keep secrets from people when you can hear their thoughts. You can anticipate when they may be suspecting things and can change your actions, or carefully plan your words to mislead them in the direction you want. I've mastered the art of lying. No one is better at it than I am.

And part of me hates that.

I was filled with both great dreams and terrible fears during my first year with Carlisle. We had to stay away from civilization during that time, while I learned to control my vampire thirst. That year with just the two of us, alone in a cabin in the woods was incredible. Carlisle was amazing to me. It was idol worship. I realize that now, he was the only other contact I had with anyone, human or vampire. But I was utterly infatuated with him. I was in awe of him. His thoughts of wanting a companion put a seed of hope in the back of my mind, but the way his thoughts always reflected a fatherly caring for me, always shoved that hope back down.

I had no idea how Carlisle would react if he knew of my feelings. I had no idea what his opinion on that sort of thing was. He had lived so much longer than me, and I learned early on that his father had been a pastor; a religious man. I had known religious men, and I knew what they thought of people like me.

Carlisle never thought about relations outside of the norm around me, so I didn't know what his reaction to such a revelation would be. So, my fear of the unknown kept me quiet.

When we finally did decide to rejoin the rest of the world we needed an identity for me. A name for documents, and to tell any people we had to interact with. Obviously I couldn't be Edward Masen anymore. He had died.

Carlisle suggested I go by Cullen. Our cover would be that I was his brother. And so I became Edward Cullen. But I would not always go by that name. Only when I was with Carlisle would I go by that name. And I would not be with Carlisle for much longer at that point.

I had been afraid of my secrets before then, but the more years I spent with Carlisle the more I suspected that I didn't really need to hide myself from him. I was going to come clean with him. I was going to tell him everything. I was still terrified. He was all I had. If he rejected me, I had nowhere to go; no one to go to. It was these fears that had kept me quiet for as long as I had been. But I was convinced that he wouldn't reject me. Carlisle would never love me the way I loved him, or thought I loved him, but he would never kick me out either. I knew that. And I could accept that in his mind, I would always be his son and friend, and nothing more.

But before I had a chance to finally reveal my true self to him, everything changed.

It was 1921, we were living in Ashland, and he came home from the hospital with her in his arms.

I won't go into details right now. Let's just say that after some time progressed, I realized that I could never stay with them and actually be able to be myself. I could never be me, as long as I was there. And I would always be alone. And it was because of her.

And so, a year and a half after he brought Esme home, I left.

It was nearly 1923 when I left, and I wouldn't be back until 1929. Looking back, those were the best six years of my life. I should have just stayed away... no. No, I don't really think that. And yet I do. Despite the freedom and self-discovery, I also succumb to temptation during that time, and if I had not finally returned to Carlisle, I can only imagine what I might have become.

During my years away, I was Edward Masen again. I was me. But when I returned to him I reverted back to Edward Cullen. But it was more than just a name then; it was my mask. The two names denoted the character I played. One was my true self, and the other was merely a part I played in an elaborate play. Nothing about me was real. Edward Cullen became an entirely manufactured persona.

In the beginning it was my armour; my protection. If anyone thought poorly of Edward Cullen, it didn't matter because that wasn't really me. Nothing bad said about Cullen could hurt me, because that wasn't me. But eventually Edward Cullen shifted from being my armour and protection, to being my prison. It happened so slowly I didn't even notice until it was too late for me to do anything about it.

In the mid 30's our family grew with the addition of two new members, and in the 40's I stagnated. I left for brief trips numerous times over the years to visit old friends I had made during my years away, but I always came back. As far as my family knew I was just going on extended solitary hunting trips to get away from the noise of everyone's voices in my head. Emmett, my brother who Carlisle had turned in 1935, imagined me sitting in the middle of the woods, or on top of some mountain, meditating or playing the role of some sort of ascetic.

The thought made me chuckle. If only he knew what I was really doing...

By the early 50's I was officially trapped in an endless rut. My 'hunting trips' away from the family were becoming more frequent, longer and were doing less and less good. My friends wondered why the hell I even went back anymore since I was always so miserable when it came time to part ways and return home; I honestly had to agree with them. I planned to leave over and over again, but always chickened out in the end.

The fundamental problem was that I loved my family. Emmett and Rosalie only made it that much harder to leave because I cared about both of them to a tremendous extent. My infatuation with my sire had died long ago, and all was left was familial love. I could never really think of Carlisle as a father, even though he saw me as his son. But I hadn't been in love with him since I left him and Esme in the 20's. Now he was simply my best friend.

My best friend who didn't know me at all.

But that was the biggest problem. None of them actually knew me. It wasn't their fault. It was all my doing. I kept the real me completely hidden from all of them. Trapped inside the persona I created to protect myself. And it was that terrible, depressing, reality that finally made me decide to go.

At first I wasn't even sure if I'd tell them I was leaving.

I knew I was being a coward. I should tell them. But I just didn't know how to do it.

I had my things packed. I'd reduced my trinkets and collectibles to the bare essentials and had four boxes packed away in the trunk of my Caddy. Considering how much of a hoarder and a pack rat I was, narrowing down my possessions to four boxes was quite a feat.

My duffle bag was still in my closet. I would be leaving most of my wardrobe behind, since the clothing I wore around my family right now was mostly made up of cardigan sweaters, Rayon button-downs, and casual suits with dress jackets. In my bag I had packed all my Daddy-o and Sir Guy shirts, my Teddy boy jackets along with all my jeans. I felt far more comfortable in those clothes and I felt more me wearing them, but that didn't really mesh with the image my family associated me with.

In addition to the clothing I intended to bring, I'd packed a considerable amount of cash into it from my trip to Nevada last January with Mary, Randal, and Garrett. It had been great seeing them all again, and I'd given a hefty portion of my winnings to Mary and Randal since they wanted to try buying some property that they could call home and use as a base.

They weren't about to switch their preferred diet, but the stories I'd told them about being able to live in one location for multiple years at a time had got their imaginations running. They had only ever lived the lives of nomads before and the idea of home was appealing. It wasn't like they couldn't run a couple hundred miles in any direction for feeding to keep people from connecting them with any unusual deaths. So they had decided to give living in one location a try for a while.

Garrett, in contrast, was the eternal wanderer, and just relished the opportunity to party with the group of us and laugh his ass of while I suckered people out of their money.

Garrett had met up with me only a couple hours after I'd left my family's home, for the drive down to Nevada, and he'd nearly died laughing when he'd seen me still wearing a pink rayon shirt with dark, mod motif, cotton blend slacks. I had intended to change into something more comfortable before meeting up with him, but he'd shown up early at our arranged meeting place. I'd literally had to start kicking his ass before he'd stop laughing and finally get into the damn car.

He spent the entire trip in Vegas cracking jokes on my preppy 'Ivy League' style, even though I'd stuck to jeans and Daddy-o's, or a straight up Teddy-Boy look for the rest of the trip.

Once I'd gotten back home, I had put the remainder of my winnings into several separate checking accounts that I had created using various aliases. I had already made up my mind to leave my family within the year, even as early as January, and knew it would be a beneficial precaution to spread the money around.

Of course my family was completely unaware of any of this. As far as they were concerned everything with me was just peachy. Nothing was unusual.

This was a week like any other. We were living near Powell Junction in Idaho's Clearwater National Forest, and since it was midsummer, we were secluding ourselves to our home in the mountains, while Carlisle commuted into town for the night shift at their tiny hospital and played the happy, helpful human.

We had been living in this house for a little under a year. Hunting was plentiful here, and the home we had built was spacious and comfortable. But I still didn't feel like I'd lived there long enough to call it home.

I wouldn't miss this place.

The others were planning on going hunting tomorrow. I had claimed that I declined to join them because I had gone hunting with Emmett only four days prior. Emmett never passed up a chance to go hunting with the family though, so he was going again anyway. They'd probably be away from the house for three days before they got back to find me gone.

I would leave them a letter, I decided. I owed them at least that much, plus I needed to tell them not to come looking for me. They'd be worried if I left without any word.

I wasn't sure what excuse I would use as to why I was leaving the family. When I had left Carlisle and Esme in the early 20's, I had told them that I was fed up with the endless burn in the back of my throat. That I was sick of pretending to be human, and that I was going to use my skill as a mind reader to find human scum, and finally be able to give in to my natural instincts and desires.

That really couldn't have been farther from the truth.

I wasn't really sure that I could make that excuse fly this time. And part of me really didn't want to use it even if it would work. So I wasn't honestly sure what I would tell them. I was hoping that the right words would just come to me when I finally sat down to write the letter.

One thing was for sure; I would not be telling them where I was going. Although the truth was that I didn't really know where I was going.

I wasn't specifically meeting up with any old friends. I would probably visit some of them as I travelled, but I wasn't leaving so I could find them. I was leaving to find someone new. Specifically, I was leaving in hopes that this time I would find my someone special. I had been looking for that someone the first time I left Carlisle and Esme. I found a lot of good friends; plenty of 'friends with benefits'; but no one who was looking for the permanence that I was. None of them were looking for a lifelong mate. And that's what I wanted. That was what I had yearned for, for almost my entire existence. That special connection that joins you both for eternity the very moment you meet. I wanted to feel that binding that had echoed through others minds. When Carlisle found Esme; when Rose found Emmett. I needed to feel it.

I had no idea how long it might take me to find him. All I could do was hope he was out there. Somewhere.

But this day that had started out just like any other day took a drastic turn shortly after noon.

AN: I have adopted this story from 'Athey', creative acknowledgement to her for letting me play with her toys. This is my slash account as I do not want certain 'Prudes' who read my other work to know the inner filth of my mind. Please feel free to recommend any JxE slash or check out my favourites to read some truly amazing stories.