DISCLAIMER: SM owns all Twilight characters and settings. No copyright infringement intended.

WARNING: Contains accounts of physical and verbal abuse against a child. Please read with caution.

PART ONE

Chapter One – Weird Little Kid

Ten years earlier…

His name was Edward Anthony Masen and he was seven years old. He lived in a dilapidated little house with his foster dad, George and foster mom, Karen and his three foster brothers Mike, Tyler and Eric. He didn't much care for his foster brothers. They were all bigger than he was and they would gang up on him when he wasn't paying attention and hit him.

A long time ago, he would tattle to George, but George didn't want to hear about it and George might hit him if he interrupted football or baseball or hockey on TV; so he stopped going to George when his foster brothers hurt him and started going to Karen. Karen was better than George. Karen didn't hit, well not usually, but Karen would yell at him, call him a stupid little brat. The only good thing about telling Karen was that she would also yell at his foster brothers and tell them to leave the weird little kid alone because she was tired of listening to his shit.

Sometimes they would listen to Karen but usually they waited until Karen wasn't around and then they would hold him down and take turns punching him. He learned a long time ago that crying didn't do much good. In fact, crying made them laugh and hit him harder so he tried not to cry no matter how hard they hit him; even when they hit him down there and it hurt so bad that he saw black spots in his eyes.

He didn't miss his mom and dad except at night when he was lying on his mattress in the basement. He was lonely and scared and he didn't like the dark. The windows in the basement were small so even in the day time it was dark but at night there were no lights so he had to be in the basement without lights by himself. They told him it was because he made too much noise at night, but he couldn't help it. He had bad dreams and they made him cry, but that would wake up his foster brothers and sometimes George and Karen and that made them mad so he had to stay in the basement without lights by himself.

So then he would think of his mom and dad. He couldn't remember them that well. He just knew his dad was tall and thin and had a skinny beard and his mom had green eyes like him. Sometimes he thought about eating ice cream with his mom at the kitchen table. He remembered that she would take a big spoon full and put the whole thing in her mouth. When he tried to do the same thing she would laugh at him, because he would have more ice cream on his face then in his mouth and it was a good laugh, not like when Karen laughed at him when Mike tripped him. But mostly he just remembered that they sat on the couch and smoked stinky stuff that smelled like sugary house cleaner and burned his nose and they didn't talk to him much or remember to buy food except for the ice cream.

The best thing about living with George and Karen was that they lived on an Indian reservation. George was part Indian and part something else. Edward didn't know what it meant to be part one thing and part something else and he didn't want to ask because that might make George mad and it really didn't matter. Being part Indian meant that George got to live on the reservation and that meant that he had a lot of real Indians to play with and as far as he could tell, other than his three foster brothers, he was the only one that wasn't Indian. He didn't count Karen. Karen wasn't Indian, but she didn't go out and play with the Indian boys either, so it didn't matter. The Indians that he played with weren't like the Indians in the movies that rode horses and shot bow and arrows but Jacob said no one did that any more, not even the Indians he saw on TV. They were called Quill...yoots which he had a hard time saying so he just called them Indians and no seemed to mind.

The only time Karen went outside was to have a special cigarette. Sometimes she would walk him to his school bus and smoke one and then they would have a talk. She would tell him why he was a weird little kid and that he was lucky to have them and that he should learn to appreciate her and George instead of acting like an ungrateful little shit. But usually she stayed in the house with George and no one paid any attention to him and he only went home when the Indian boys were called in for the night.

He tried to stay away from the house and that wasn't hard during the school year, but now it was summer and he couldn't be outside playing all the time because the other boys he played with had chores to do and had to spend family time at home and only got to play with him when they were good. He didn't really understand that. He was never good and he got to play all the time but it wasn't much fun to play by himself.

When he had no one to play with outside, he hid in the basement. During the day there was enough light that came in through the windows so he could read if he held the book a certain way. Not that it mattered. He only had one book, Harold and the Purple Crayon and knew all the words by heart, but he still liked to look at the words and the pictures at the same time. Besides his book, he had nine green army men in various poses. He couldn't remember where he got them from and some of them had chew marks on them from a dog, so those were the injured ones. He would set them up around his mattress to protect him from the enemy in the dark parts of the basement. His only other toy was a baseball. He snitched it from the Indian boys after they forgot it in the grass one day and no one every asked for it back. Over and over he would roll the ball in his hands, lying on his back, tossing it up in the air and catching it. A baseball wasn't much good without anyone to toss it to, but he treasured it all the same.

They didn't eat at a kitchen table like most regular families did. They didn't even have a kitchen table other than a card table with a bent leg that made it lean to one side. Edward wasn't even always sure that they would be eating anything until he smelled something cooking. Then he might hear the boys fighting over the food left over after George and Karen took what they wanted and went to sit in front of the TV, but he waited a long time after he smelled and heard anything before sneaking up stairs and taking whatever was left. It wasn't a good idea to get caught in the kitchen by his foster brothers so he would run in and out as fast as he could. They usually ate off of paper plates because there wasn't enough clean dishes to use so the first thing he did when he came into the kitchen was grab a plate from the cupboard and a spoon from the drawer. He always grabbed a spoon; he could eat anything with a spoon and he didn't want to take the chance of grabbing a fork only to find out he could eat it better with a spoon.

They usually had something with noodles, maybe macaroni and cheese or hamburger helper without the hamburger. Sometimes there would be food in the bottom of the pan and sometimes there wouldn't be. If there wasn't, he would take the whole pan and leave the paper plate behind. In the basement he'd use his fingers and the spoon and clean the pan up as best he could but he was always hungry afterward. He had better luck in the mornings. Dry cereal was almost always in the cupboard and though they usually didn't have milk, he could get one or two full bowls before Mike would track him down and hit him.

He didn't like his foster brothers, but he didn't blame them for hitting him. He was weird. He knew he was weird. Even the Quill…yoot boys told him he was weird and they were usually nice to him. Mike said that even the way Edward looked at him would piss him off so he tried not to look at him at all. But sometimes he couldn't help it and then Mike would roll up his fist and punch him right in the face. If he didn't cry, Mike might let him go, but if any tears came to his eyes, even a little, Mike would drag him into another room or throw him down the stairs into the basement and jump on him, punching him until he couldn't breathe anymore and sometimes not stopping until he quit moving completely.

Tyler and Eric were younger than Mike and usually only beat him up when Mike was around to watch, but sometimes they would gang up on him and hold his head under water in the toilet, usually before they peed in it, but sometimes not. This was worse than just getting hit by Mike and Edward would get so mad he would cry which would make them laugh and encouraged them to keep doing what they were doing.

When he didn't get much to eat for a few days or when they ran out of food at the end of the month, he would stay outside almost all the time and when it got dark he would look through the garbage cans around the reservation for something to eat. He felt bad about doing it, but he didn't really understand why. He didn't think it was stealing, because it was in the garbage which meant they didn't want it anymore, but he still felt bad about it and never told anyone that he did it. But he usually found good stuff to eat; half eaten hamburgers, pizza, apples that only had one bite out of them and even desserts like cake with only the frosting eaten off. Sometimes he would find so much food he would get a little bag and take it home with him and keep it in the basement in the dark and eat on it for days.

One night, it was a warm night, after playing baseball with Jacob and Embry almost all day, Edward came home and found George waiting for him in the kitchen with a belt in his hand. George didn't usually hit any of them because if social services ever found out he would be in big trouble, but sometimes he would get mad and smack one of them without thinking about it and then they had to wait to see if the bruise or the swelling would go down before the next visit by the social worker. But Edward could see that George wasn't too worried about that now and unlike the other boys in the house, Edward didn't have any family so he never left for a supervised visit with anyone that would care, so they usually didn't see the suspicious marks on him.

"There's been talk around here that you boys ain't being taken care of too well," George said calmly as he slapped the belt against his thigh.

Edward didn't say anything; he knew better. He just needed to wait for his chance, then run, but right now George was blocking the door to the basement.

"You been talkin' to anyone about that?"

Edward shook his head no.

"What kind of stupid fucker do you think I am? You're the only one that runs wild with the kids around here and you're always yapping that big mouth of yours."

"It wasn't me," Edward said but he knew it didn't do any good to argue.

Well I think it was you, you stupid fuck…little weirdo always running around shooting your mouth off acting like some little smarty pants. You and those stupid kids you play with. That Black kid, he's the worst of the lot of ya. Damn Billy Black, I'd like to crush that bastard's skull." George was staring past him talking like he wasn't there. He got like that from time to time. Karen said it was because he had a damaged brain.

Edward didn't say anything hoping that George would forget he was there, but even with a damaged brain, he never seemed to forget that.

"What are you staring at, you green eyed fuck," George snarled.

"I'm not…I'm not…staring," Edward didn't know what staring had to do with it anyway.

"You're creepy, you know that kid. You got creepy weird eyes. No wonder no one wants you. Damn County doesn't pay us enough to keep you." He had that look again.

Edward decided he didn't need to go to the basement tonight. It was dark out now, getting late; they had played much too late. He should have been home and in the basement before George had so much to drink, but now he either had to face the belt or he had to sleep outside tonight and outside was starting to look like a pretty good idea.

"Where you going kid? Get your ass back here; I'm not through with you." George stumbled after him when he started backing up.

But by then Edward was already out the door and running into the dark. A quick look over his shoulder confirmed that George wasn't chasing him, but he cringed when he heard him yell.

"Yeah run boy, you have to come back some time and I'll kick your ass when you do."

He knew the neighbors might hear and he was embarrassed by it more than anything else. More than his hand me down clothes, dirty hands and face, run down house or the fact that he lived in a foster home. He'd take all of those things but he didn't like it when George or Karen yelled at them so others could hear, it made him feel bad.

Edward didn't usually go in the woods at night. It was easy to get lost and he knew if they had to come and look for him, he'd be in big trouble. Besides, the woods were scary, sometimes even scarier than the basement. True there was no George in the woods, no Karen and no foster brothers and nothing in the woods had every hurt him, but he knew that monsters lived in the woods and a monster could hurt him worse than he'd ever been hurt by any of them.

The woods were also wet and he really didn't like getting wet because then he would have to sit in wet clothes until they dried off. He didn't have very many clothes to begin with so he couldn't go around and get his clothes all wet just because he wanted to play in the woods. He decided he would walk along the path by the river so he wouldn't get lost and he shouldn't get too wet. Billy Black, Jacob's dad, was in a wheel chair because he had diabetes so he needed a good clear path to get down to the river. He fished a lot and he said someday he would take Edward with him, but so far he never had.

Now he ran down the wide path until he couldn't see any of the lights from any of the houses on the reservation any more. He was a little nervous, because there were weird sounds in the dark that he never heard in the daytime but he decided not to be a baby and if he just stayed on the path and didn't leave the river he wouldn't get lost.

Eventually he got tired of walking and sat in the grass with his back leaning up against a tree. He knew he had to wait to go back home until George was in bed which wouldn't be that long, but it was hard to know for sure because he didn't have any way to tell the time. He was excellent at telling time, but he didn't have a clock or a watch with him so it didn't matter. Pulling out three green army men, he thought he might play for a while but it was so dark he could barely see them even when he held them right up to his face. The army men all had guns, so he felt a little safer in the woods all alone. He was glad he brought the ones with weapons even though he didn't like to carry them in his pocket. The pointy things hurt when he sat down.

He wasn't sure how long he sat trying to play in the dark with his three man army, when he saw them. At first he thought maybe he'd fallen asleep and was having a dream because they looked like something a kid might see in a dream, a good dream, but after thinking about it for a while, he didn't think they would have that funny expression on their face, like they were surprised to see him if they were part of his dream.

There were two of them and they were the most beautiful women he had ever seen. They were like princesses from a story book and though neither one had crowns, he didn't think women so pretty could be anything but princesses. One had brown hair and one had blond hair and they glowed like a moon beam in the pitch black night. He was a little scared even though he wasn't sure why. It wasn't usual to see two princesses in the woods in the middle of the night by the reservation glowing like they were their own glow sticks, but they weren't monsters which is what he expected to see.

They were coming towards him and at first that didn't scare him, but then he saw that they floated towards him, like ghosts so then he thought that they might be ghosts and not princesses and this filled him with panic. But he was more curious then afraid so he only watched as they came closer and closer and he could clearly see that they weren't ghosts, they were real and solid people and they just moved different than anyone he had ever seen but he was pretty sure he'd never seen a real princess so maybe that's how they all moved.

They were whispering to each other, soft little whispers that he didn't understand, but he liked the way their whispers sounded, gentle and soothing, not like Karen when she talked or the teacher at school that didn't like him too much or Quil's mom who was nice, but didn't have a very soft voice.

When they were standing almost right in front of him, they stopped and the dark haired one knelt down so she was looking him right in the eye. She was more beautiful up close, maybe the prettiest person he'd ever seen and she was smiling at him in a way that made him feel good, a way he hadn't felt in a long time, maybe ever. She didn't look like a ghost now, even if her skin was the whitest he'd ever seen. She looked perfect to him, even more perfect then a princess should be, so then he began to wonder if she was an angel. He knew more about princesses then he did about angels, but he knew angels were beautiful too, maybe the most beautiful of all.

"Hi there, young man. What are you doing out here all by yourself?" The angel in front of him spoke in a voice that sounded like a song.

"I'm…I'm playing," he said holding up two of his army men. He didn't want to lie to her, but he didn't want to tell her he was hiding from George either.

"You're playing!" She exclaimed, but her voice didn't change in pitch or volume. "Isn't it a little late to be playing? Shouldn't you be home in bed dreaming, getting a good night's sleep so you can be ready to play all day tomorrow?"

He shrugged. That made sense unless said boy had George standing in the kitchen ready to whip him with a belt.

"And what's your name, sweetheart," she asked him softly, her fingers reaching out like she was going to touch him but then she stopped.

He supposed she must have seen that he was dirty and didn't want to get it on her hands which made him feel bad. He would have washed his face in the river if he'd known he was going to see princesses in the woods, but he thought all he had to worry about was monsters and he was pretty sure that they wouldn't care if he was dirty or not.

"Edward Anthony Masen and I'm seven years old," he replied thinking the next question would be how old he was, so he would just take care of that question right off the bat.

"My, what a fine name that is Edward Anthony Masen," the princess said in a delighted voice.

He smiled a little at that. Most people thought his name was stupid. Old fashion they said, but he didn't really know what old fashion meant except that it wasn't a good thing.

"What's your name," he said slowly, wondering too late if it was alright to ask. He didn't know if princesses or angels for that matter, had names and if they did, whether it was okay to ask what they were. The one in front of him looked back at the other one and he thought he saw the one standing frown a bit, but then her face lightened and he sighed. At last they didn't look mad.

"I'm Esme and this is Rosalie," the darker haired one said smiling gently at him. This time she did reach out and touch his face just a little, but she pulled her hand away before he could do anything stupid, like press against it.

He looked closer at Rosalie and thought that maybe her hair was glowing it was so golden and before he could stop himself he burst out, "Are you angels?"

Their laughter was like candy for his ears. He guessed it was a stupid question but he wanted to hear them laugh again so he was willing to risk it to ask another. "Princesses?"

And he was rewarded as they laughed again. He didn't think they were laughing at him so he didn't feel bad and even laughed a little too.

"No Edward, we're your neighbors," Esme said softly standing slowly. She held out her hand to him. "Now let's walk you home. I'm sure your mommy and daddy are worried about you."

He shoved his army men in his pocket and reached out for her hand trying to hide his disappointment that they were neither princesses nor angels, but then he decided it was a good thing, because if they had been either, he might never see them again. If they were his neighbors, he could see them all the time.

"I don't live with my mommy and daddy," he said thinking it was important to make sure they understood that right up front. He looked down at his hand held in Esme's. He was confused. Her hand was as cold as he'd ever felt from another person, but even more strange, it was smooth and hard. He felt like he was holding a round hard rock like the kind that he and Jacob found on the beach, but even if it was so cold it felt like an ice cube, it still was nice.

"Who do you live with, sweetheart," Rosalie's voice was as sweet as Esme's.

He didn't think twice about gripping her hand when she held it out to him and wasn't surprised that it felt just like Esme's. No, maybe they weren't angels or princesses but they were different from anyone else he'd ever met and that made him feel special.

"I live with George and Karen and Mike and Tyler and Eric." He decided not to mention the foster home part. He was embarrassed that his real mommy and daddy didn't want him and he didn't want these pretty ladies to think he was bad, because he knew that most kids in foster homes were bad or at least that's what he was told.

"I see, well that sounds nice," Esme said.

He didn't tell her that it wasn't nice, but thought she might ask another question and wished she would just so he could hear her voice again, but they walked, he between them, silently along the path of the river. So he thought he should speak again.

"I followed the river so I wouldn't get lost. There's a path here and as long as I was by the river and on the path it would be okay."

"You're a very smart boy," Rosalie said and he couldn't help but look up at her and grin. No one ever called him smart except George when he called him smarty pants and the office lady at school and neither one said it like it was a good thing. Not like Rosalie.

The closer they got to the reservation the slower he walked. He didn't want them to see where he lived and worse, he didn't want them to go and knock on the door of his house. Thinking about his two pretty princesses meeting George made him want to cry.

"Are you getting tired Edward, do you need me to carry you?" Esme's voice was so sweet but he shook his head violently and looked at his feet, humiliated that she thought of him as a baby. He had almost stopped, but now he walked faster, as fast as his legs could go without running.

He was surprised when he heard them talking, soft little whispers but even though they were having a conversation right over his head, he couldn't understand what they were saying. It was like grown-up talk, but instead of not understanding the words, he couldn't hear any clear words at all. The only thing he understood was Quill…yoot and border.

"Where is your house Edward, can you see it from here?" Esme stopped and she and Rosalie let go of his hands.

He flexed his fingers. They were so cold he could hardly move them; he wondered if they were sick. Finally he pointed, picking out the lone weather beaten white house in the foreground of the others. It was the closest one.

"Do you think you can walk back home by yourself?" Esme had turned him and lifted his chin up so his eyes were looking into hers. She had the most beautiful eyes, gold and sparkly.

"I'm not a baby, I'm seven years old," he said thinking it important to remind her of that. He knew he was short for seven but he didn't think he was so short that she thought he needed to be carried or walked to his house which wasn't even very far away.

"Oh of course, young man. What was I thinking," she said with an understanding chuckle. "We'll stay right here until you get safely into the house."

He thought that was very much what a mother would say and he felt a warm tingling in his stomach. Nobody ever talked to him like that before and that was probably why he couldn't stop himself from saying something stupid.

"I can come back tomorrow night, if you want."

He felt his ears burn in embarrassment when he caught the look that passed between them. He could always tell what people were thinking, even when they didn't say anything out loud. They didn't want to see him again.

"Now Edward, it's not safe to be out in these woods at night, even if you stay on the path by the river," Rosalie said, patting him on the top of his head when he didn't look at her. "We usually aren't out here either so it was just luck that we saw each other tonight. Okay?"

He nodded; deciding it was better that he didn't speak and say something else stupid.

"It was nice meeting you, Edward," Esme said when he turned away, so she wouldn't see his face and think he was a crybaby. "Maybe we'll see you in town one day,"

He waved his hand back at them as he ran towards his house. He didn't want to tell them that no one took him to town or anywhere else unless he was going to school and that was nowhere near town. When he reached the door he turned and looked but his beautiful pale princesses were gone and they didn't even wait to see that he was safely inside. Not that it mattered. Inside and safe was something that didn't exist in his world and George was still up waiting for him anyway.

Author Notes:

A couple of things…Part One of this story is being written in the third person because I wasn't sure that I or anyone else would find it very interesting to hear a first person account from a young child. But now as I read this, I realize I've pretty much written it in the first person and only changing the "I" to a "He" keeps it from being so.

The italicized words are meant to emphasis words that Edward hears from others or significant words in his mind. Often they will represent words above the intellectual capacity of a seven year old and they will probably diminish as he ages.

Reviews would be welcomed. ;o)