DISCLAIMER: SM owns all twilight characters and settings. No copyright infringement intended.
So much for short chapters. I see the word count has started to creep up again.
Thanks for all the wonderful reviews. I enjoy reading every one of them.
It was nighttime before they finally arrived at the doctor's house which was so big it looked like a bunch of doctors and their families could have lived there. All the lights were on and Edward could see his princesses through the windows waiting for him. He guessed he should probably stop thinking of them as princesses since he was going to live with them for a few weeks until social services found him another foster home.
"Ready Edward?" the doctor asked.
He nodded and sighed. He really didn't feel that ready. He felt nervous, more nervous than he had when he went to George and Karen's for the first time. He wasn't sure why. He supposed he wanted to give a good impression, even if he was only going to live with the doctor and his family for a little while.
"There's no reason to be afraid. You've met everyone but Emmett and they are all very excited that you're coming."
"Even Jasper," he blurted out before he decided that was an answer that he didn't want to know.
The doctor chuckled. "Yes even Jasper. I think you'll find Jasper to be completely agreeable and nothing like you remembered him in the woods. Our perspectives of people often change when we are in a different setting."
Edward nodded, unbuckled his seat belt and climbed out of the fancy car. He had no idea what the doctor was talking about but he could be happy if Jasper didn't have black eyes and look at him like he wanted to eat him.
He took the doctor's hand when he offered it to him and shuddered a little. It was super cold and super hard just like his princesses. He wondered about that. Maybe it was because they were related somehow. Not like brother and sister related but like the Quil…yoots who were Indian and part of a tribe. They all had the same color skin and black hair and brown eyes. Maybe the doctor and his family all had white ice cold hard hands and sparkly gold eyes and sing song voices and looked like they should be in movies because they were from a different kind of tribe. That made a lot of sense. He glanced up at the doctor who was looking down at him smiling.
He had told Edward to call him Carlisle and over and over Edward ran the name in his mind practicing it so he wouldn't mess it up, but he hadn't felt confident enough to try it yet and still called him doctor or sometimes Doctor Cullen like the nurses at the hospital did.
Esme was waiting for them by the door and she seemed pretty happy to see him, almost like she missed him which was ridiculous considering she didn't really know him, but it made him feel a little better and then he saw Rosalie with a big grin on her face and she looked pretty happy too so that made him almost completely forget that he was nervous.
"Ahh, don't tell me you don't remember me Edward?"
He looked at the beautiful face of Esme as she bent towards him, her hands on her knees. She was one of his princesses all right, but for some reason he felt shy and tried to slide behind the doctor who released his hand as soon as they walked into the house. Rosalie was next to her and a little behind Rosalie was Alice. He didn't see Jasper or the one called Emmett anywhere but that didn't mean they weren't hiding somewhere in the big house ready to jump out at him.
"Maybe we should get Edward something to eat, then we'll give him a tour of the house and show him where is bedroom is," the doctor said.
He wasn't really all that hungry. He had breakfast and lunch at the hospital and even though it was past dinnertime, he didn't think he ever ate so much in one day in all his life. He was tired though and sleeping sounded good even if they didn't have a mattress for him. His bruised rib hurt and his head hurt and he felt a little sick from all the anxiety of not knowing where he was going to go once he was released from the hospital.
It was only when it was almost nighttime and Doctor Cullen came into his room not wearing his doctor's coat and not looking like a doctor at all that he was finally told that he could go home with him. But now he was tired and wanted to sleep and he really didn't want to eat but he thought he better do whatever they wanted him to do so they wouldn't get mad at him and make him leave.
He took Esme's hand when she offered it to him and followed her to the brightly lit kitchen. It was the cleanest kitchen he'd ever been in. Esme helped him into a chair at the table and he waited for the others to join him.
"Do you like pasta Edward?" Esme said busying herself by the stove.
He didn't know what pasta was but he nodded his head, winced, then realized she wouldn't see him with her backed turned.
"Yeah that sounds okay."
"We already ate, but we'll stay and keep you company," the doctor said.
He sat at the end of the long table and Alice and Rosalie sat across from each other by him. Esme sat next to Edward and put a big plate of what looked like spaghetti in front of him.
He felt funny having all the grownups watch him eat so he tried to concentrate on his food. He normally didn't worry about things like holding his fork properly or using his napkin not the sleeve of his shirt but he had a feeling that things like that would matter to the doctor and his family so he tried to remember everything he'd ever been taught about table manners which only made his head hurt worse than it already did. At first he tried to scoop the noodles up but when that didn't work he speared them with is fork, chewing slowly and keeping his mouth closed.
"How does it taste?" Esme asked curiously.
Edward was holding his fork half way to his mouth. He nodded, took a shaky breath and put the fork down. He didn't understand why the adults were spending so much time with him. He wasn't use to it. To his horror he thought he might cry.
"Does your head hurt son?"
He blinked hard holding his eyes shut for a moment then looked at the doctor. He called him son again. Only the doctor had ever called him that. Not even his real dad had called him son, at least not that he could remember and he never remembered getting that fluttering feeling in his stomach before…that good feeling…that feeling that he belonged somehow. Then he remembered the doctor had asked him a question.
"A little," he replied.
"You're not very hungry are you?"
"Not very much." He didn't want to lie on his first day, even though it might hurt Esme's feeling. He glanced at her cautiously, but she didn't look mad or sad; just a little worried.
"It's been a busy day; maybe we should just let you get some sleep. Tomorrow we'll give you a tour of the house and introduce you to Emmett. Okay?" The doctor with his TV voice and sparkling gold eyes was smiling just a little and Edward thought that it would probably be alright to just go to bed even if it was a little rude. He didn't even notice when Esme got up from the table and was pulling his chair back.
"Come on sweetheart, we've got a bed all fixed up for you in my office."
She took his hand and helped him from the chair and he was so tired that he didn't even notice the others had already left the table and somehow Rosalie was in Esme's office standing by a real bed, not just a mattress on the floor.
She held out new pajamas too him and pointed to another door in the room. "There's a bathroom right there so you can go change and brush your teeth. Do you need any help?"
Edward yawned before he could stop himself, shaking his head then wincing. "I'm not a baby."
"Oh goodness what am I thinking," Rosalie said. "I'm afraid you'll have to remind me of that from time to time. We're not use to having little boys around the house."
He shrugged. "It's okay."
When he had finished in the bathroom he came out to find the doctor and Esme still waiting for him. He felt bad about that. They probably had other things to do that were more important than taking care of him, but he knew that's how foster families could be; all worried and hovering at first but then they would forget about him later, unless they were yelling at him or hitting him. He wished there was an in-between part, but he supposed that's how it was for all foster kids. Kids with real moms and dads probably didn't have that problem though he couldn't remember how it had been with his own parents.
"Here's something for your head, Edward, you can chew it."
The doctor gave him a little orange pill that tasted like orange candy then Esme helped him into bed, even though he didn't need help and she tucked in the blankets on all sides which was kind of nice and cozy.
"Good night Edward. I have to go back to the hospital so I'll see you in the morning and we'll have a nice talk okay?" the doctor said, leaning over and patting his chest.
"Kay," Edward said, not too sure he wanted to have a talk about anything. When adults wanted to talk it usually meant they were snooping around for information or were going to give you bad news. He didn't much like having talks.
After the doctor left, Esme dimmed the lights in his room but to his surprise she didn't leave. Instead she pulled up a chair next to his bed and in a move that surprised him she began stroking his hair. Her ice cold hand felt sort of good on his head and even better on his face which was puffy from where George's belt had hit him. Having Esme's hand on him was much better than the ice pack that the nurses at the hospital had used to try to bring down the swelling even though her hand was just as cold and hard. Maybe it was because her fingers could move around the puffiness on his face and over his nose and across his lips and never stayed in one spot too long. The ice pack was bulky and pressed into him and would touch some spots all the time but never got to other spots like right under his nose and above his lip that had a little cut from where the belt buckle cut him.
After a while he closed his eyes trusting that she wouldn't press down on any one spot too hard and hurt him. When she started to hum a song he didn't know he sighed a little thinking he was pretty much the luckiest boy in the world, having a beautiful lady that looked like a princess making his face feel better with her ice cold hands and humming a song like a real mother would when she was trying to get her own little boy to sleep. He forgot for a little while that he was just a foster kid and that he would be sent away once a real foster home was found and just pretended he was part of the family and wouldn't be going anywhere for a long long time. Thinking about that took away all the anxiety he was feeling and after that falling asleep wasn't that hard at all.
"Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?"
Edward froze. In his hand he held a blue coated soldier and was just about to put it out front behind a rolled up gardening magazine with his other blue coated soldiers. The red coated soldiers were advancing, their swords drawn, marching forward, paying no mind to the blue coated soldiers behind the magazine. It didn't look good, not with the blue queen captured and held prisoner in a shoe box prison under the big old desk.
"The blue ones are the good guys," he said slowly.
Jasper had hardly said anything to him since he came to stay with the Cullens and this was the first time he not only asked him a question but sought him out when he was by himself, but this time Edward wasn't afraid. Not even a little, this time Jasper seemed different. The doctor…Carlisle explained it to him. The doctor said that Jasper in a different setting wouldn't be scary at all, but until now he hadn't known what that meant, until now, he'd not been alone with Jasper in a different setting.
"Ahhh so the red soldiers have your queen?" Jasper motioned toward the shoe box prison.
He started to nod then caught himself. His bruised brain still hurt. He tried not to move his head too much. "Yup. She went for a walk all by herself without the…the…" he looked at Jasper. He wanted to say horseman but that wasn't right and he didn't want to look stupid. Not after the doctor and Emmett had coached him.
He put down the blue soldier and held up the horse with the blue soldier astride it. "The knight…" He blurted out triumphantly.
"That's right. If she would have stayed behind her knights, she may have been safe."
Edward put the knight down and placed the soldier behind the magazine barricade. He was sort of embarrassed getting caught playing with the chess pieces like they were his green army men, but from the moment he saw them on the chess board he thought they would be perfect substitutes. The pawns…his soldiers had swords, there were horses and even a king and queen. He knew that he wasn't suppose to play with them like they were soldiers and he shouldn't have them scattered all over the floor of the library, but he was bored resting in bed and his head hurt if he read too much and they were just sitting there on the chess board waiting for someone to play with them and since he didn't know how to play chess yet and didn't have anyone to play with if he did, he thought he could play soldiers for awhile until someone noticed him again. He just hadn't thought that someone was going to be Jasper.
It had been almost two weeks since the doctor brought him home from the hospital to live with him and Esme and their adopted children. Edward thought they were all pretty big to be called children but he didn't question it and was really surprised that they were going to start high school in Forks in just a few days. It was probably the best two weeks of his whole entire life except for the time that past summer when he got to play with Bella and he was careful from the very first day not to do anything stupid or act like a baby or do anything wrong that might make them send him away.
The biggest difference…well the two biggest differences between living with the Cullens and living with George and Karen was that he got to eat as much food as he wanted and no one yelled at him or hit him or called him a weird little kid. Of course it had only been two weeks. He couldn't remember exactly how long it had been before things got really bad at George and Karen's but he guessed it had been longer than that. Still, it wasn't like he was part of the family either. Foster kids weren't as good as having real kids or even adopted kids but he tried not to let it hurt his feelings when he was treated different then everyone else.
He got to eat as much food as he wanted but he didn't get to eat with any of the Cullens who always ate when he wasn't around which really didn't make much sense because he was around all the time. He guessed that they ate at night when he was sleeping because no matter how many times he woke up at night or how early he got out of bed in the morning, everyone else was always awake.
The eating part bothered him more than it should have. He didn't have to sneak into the kitchen looking for food anymore; Esme always had a big huge plate of food ready for him whenever he wanted; so much food that it would make the doctor laugh and he would feel bad that he couldn't finish it all. But he wished he could be treated like one of the family, instead of an outsider who had to eat separate from everyone else. He wouldn't even have minded if he had to sit at a kid's table or on the stool by the snack bar or even on the floor holding his plate in his lap if he could eat at the same time and in the same room as they did.
As far as not getting yelled at or hit, well Edward wasn't really sure if that had anything to do with his bruised head and rib and the fact that he couldn't really do too much that would make anyone mad or if it was because he was paying attention this time and wasn't going to break the rules if he could help it. Not that there were too many rules, but he tried to pay attention anyway because he had a way of breaking rules even if he didn't know they were rules, like when he started talking when George was watching sports, especially sports that were in the final minutes. He learned the hard way that interrupting George when he was watching sports could end with him getting smacked across the head or kicked in the butt if he got too close to where George was sitting.
So he was careful and tried to follow the rules or possible rules whenever he noticed them. The first rule was that they wanted him in bed by eight o clock sharp. No one had ever told him directly that this was his official bedtime but the first couple of days he was there, Esme had come into his room at eight o clock to put him to bed and to read a little to him which he liked, but first she had to wait for him to go to the bathroom and brush his teeth and he didn't think she liked waiting because most grownups didn't like to wait for little kids no matter what the situation was. So he made sure that he did all the things he had to do before eight o clock and then he would crawl into bed and be waiting for Esme to read to him and she didn't have to tell him to do anything.
The second rule was that he couldn't go upstairs. That was another rule that no one said out loud, but he guessed they didn't want him upstairs because he never got a tour of the upstairs and that was where all their bedrooms were. He knew a kid in the county home that stayed in a foster home and could only go into the kitchen and his bedroom and bathroom. The rest of the house was off limits so he figured the upstairs was off limits to him. He might sit on the bottom step reading a book but he made sure to never go any higher than that.
During the first few days he didn't do much but lie in bed and let his ribs and head recover and watch TV, usually in his own room but sometimes in the living room between Rosalie and Emmet. When he felt a little better the doctor who kept telling him to call him Carlisle, took him to his library that had a bunch of thick old books on the shelves. None of the books looked like kid's books but Edward didn't say anything about that, since it made sense that there were no kid's books, not even kid's chapter books, if the Cullens didn't have any little kids. When he was asked if he liked to read he told the doctor how he could read chapter books and had read two of the Harry Potter books and almost finished The Mouse and the Motorcycle before Bella had to take it back to the library.
"Do you have any Harry Potter books?" he asked thinking that maybe he just couldn't see them in the book shelves that lined every wall of the room. But the doctor had just shook his head, looking very much like he wished he did have those very books and that made Edward feel bad for mentioning it.
But the next day when the doctor came home from the hospital he gave Edward a bag and in that bag was the entire collection of Harry Potter books, including the three he hadn't even read yet. Edward was so excited he almost forgot to thank the doctor then he felt stupid because he knew the books weren't his to keep and he didn't want the doctor to think he was ungrateful that he was letting him borrow them for the time being.
Reading helped pass the time, but it also made his head hurt so sometimes Rosalie would read for him and he would close his eyes and lay in his bed listening to her voice and thinking that if she ever wanted to be an angel she could probably get the job. At eight o clock sharp, Esme read The Chronicles of Narnia books which were kind of confusing and probably meant for the super advanced reader. He tried to pay attention but her voice made him sleepy and he couldn't listen for more than a few minutes before he would fall asleep and then she would have to start all over the next night.
The one thing the Cullens didn't have a lot of besides kid's books, was toys; not that he minded that much but they didn't have any little kids that lived next door either so he didn't have anyone to play with. He supposed not having toys was because everyone was too old to play with them but it was then that he missed his green army men the most.
The big giant scary but funny Emmett, that he found out later was Rosalie's boyfriend, gave him a baseball and even played catch with him…well as much as they could in the house. Emmett said that Esme would get mad if they broke anything and Edward wasn't allowed to go outside yet, so they really couldn't throw the ball around that much.
Emmett, besides being really big and really funny was exactly like all the others. He had really white skin that glowed in the nighttime when Edward would see him run from the house and into the woods and he had sparkly gold eyes just like his princesses and the doctor and Alice and Jasper who hadn't had black eyes the entire time Edward had been there. He would also do dumb things like make faces behind Rosalie's back and when he did that, he wasn't scary at all. Edward thought that if he could stay longer than just until they found him a foster home, he and Emmett would probably have been good friends even if Emmett was in high school and looked like he could be Edward's dad.
But Edward kept remembering that he wouldn't be staying very long so he tried not to get attached; not to Esme who read to him or hummed a song for him and stayed with him until he fell asleep every night; or Rosalie who would keep him company when he tried to eat all the food Esme fixed him, even if it was impossible and she never yelled at him for leaving food on his plate which he always did. Not to the doctor who liked to be called Carlisle and had brought him the Harry Potter books to read and played checkers with him when he finally figured out that Edward wasn't smart enough to play chess. Or Alice who brought him more clothes in two days then he ever owned in his life and would hold them up to him one after another so he could see what they looked like without having to try them on, because his rib hurt too much; or Emmett, who made him laugh when he stood on his head with no hands to brace himself or would jump over the second story railing upstairs and land without getting hurt. And even Jasper who just stood around and didn't say much to anyone except maybe Alice, but wasn't as scary now that he wasn't in the dark and didn't have black eyes. No, as much as he thought he'd like living here, he knew that he would be leaving for another foster home soon and they would forget about him anyway.
After the first week, when they were still in that getting to know him phase, the doctor told Esme and Rosalie that he didn't need to have someone with him one hundred percent of the time, so they started to leave him alone a little more and he spent most of his time reading or watching TV. But when he started feeling better he got bored with just doing that and he wandered into the library to look at the old smelly books on the shelves and that's when he saw the chess set and the soldiers that weren't getting played with. He took them all off the chess board, stacked books together for the castles, dumped the shoes out of the shoe box so he could use it for the prison and was engaged in a big battle with them when Jasper found him.
He stopped playing and waited to see if Jasper was going to make him put all the soldiers back on the chess board again, but when he didn't say anything, Edward resumed playing rearranging the soldiers as they prepared to fight, throwing cautious glances at Jasper who was rummaging through a big high shelf of books, his fingers sliding along the bindings so fast that Edward thought he must only be pretending to look for something since no one could read the titles of the books as fast as that.
Finally he pulled a big book out from the shelf and put it on the desk above the shoebox prison that held the prisoner queen and flipped through it like he knew what he was looking for. Edward tried not to stare but Jasper was right in the middle of his battlefield so if he wanted to keep playing with the soldiers it would be pretty hard to pretend Jasper wasn't there.
"Come here, Edward, let me show you something."
Now pretending he wasn't there wasn't even an option and nothing surprised him more than to hear Jasper say his name. Obediently he stood and walked to the man that only a couple of weeks before had made him pee his pants like a baby. But now that Jasper was in a different setting he wasn't so scary and even if he was, it would be pretty hard for Edward to pretend he didn't hear him since he was right next to him.
But what surprised him more than anything was when Jasper pointed to the book on the desk and when Edward got closer and looked at it, he saw it was a battle scene very similar to the battle that he was having with his chess army men. There were blue coated soldiers and red coated soldiers and they were fighting in a big hilly field that had trees lining both sides.
"If you are going to beat the redcoats you need to trick them into thinking that all your soldiers are on the frontline," Jasper said pointing to the two groups of solders fighting in the middle of the page. "Then, while they are engaged in battle, you call up your reserves, the solders you've left hidden in the tree line, to attack the main force's flank.
Edward had only been looking at the main battle and hadn't noticed the other soldiers hidden in the trees just as Jasper said. When he flipped to the next page, the hidden solders had advanced on both the right and left side of the red soldiers who were only paying attention to the soldiers in front of them. He flipped the page again and now all the blue solders had surrounded the red soldiers who never saw them coming.
"Have you ever heard of Napoleon?"
Edward shook his head, glancing at the page in front of him and back up at Jasper. He was really tall up close. Taller than the doctor but not quite as tall as Emmett.
"Napoleon was a great military strategist, a great leader; he won many battles with fewer men than his enemy because he was smart and knew how to use what he had," Jasper said, closing the book. "I'll put this here on the bottom shelf. There are plenty of pictures of battles that show how he used his soldiers, so if you ever need help rescuing your queen you can look at this book for ideas."
He smiled and Edward smiled back at him, then looked down at his soldiers that were all lined against the wall behind the gardening magazine while the red soldiers were in the middle of the room between him and the queen. He reached down and picked up the blue king that was on a chair that acted as the castle. "Can this be Napoleon?"
Jasper cocked an eyebrow studying the king then nodded. "I think Napoleon always wanted to be a king."
"Where does he go?"
He opened the book again and flipped through it, finally landing on a page that showed a man wearing a short blue coat on a brown rearing horse up on the hill overlooking the battle field.
"Napoleon was never afraid to fight but it's important that he doesn't get captured so I would leave him either on the chair or maybe a little further back behind his soldiers, so they can protect him."
Edward put him on a pile of books behind his blue soldiers.
"And don't tell Carlisle that your red soldiers are the bad guys because the red soldiers are British and so is Carlisle. The blue soldiers and Napoleon were French. Mortal enemies."
Edward looked up quickly at Jasper, horrified that he made such a blunder, but when Jasper laughed at him he knew he was being teased so he laughed too. Being teased by Jasper wasn't like being teased by Mike and he was even sorry when Jasper put the book away and left him alone again to play. He sort of liked Jasper now and wasn't really sure why he'd been so scared of him before. Jasper wasn't scary and he even told him how he could get his queen back by attacking the red coated soldiers' flank and having Napoleon be his king.
He should have known that being happy and feeling comfortable about where he was and not having that anxoius feeling that stayed with him most days when he was with George and Karen wouldn't last and it didn't have anything to do with the doctor calling him to his office to do breathing exercises like he did three times a day. It was his least favorite thing about living with the Cullens mainly because he didn't want the doctor to see him cry and sometimes he couldn't help it when he took a really big breath.
But this time after the doctor finished listening to his chest with his steth-a-scope and told him to take a deep breath, as deep as he could and made him do that two more times even though it hurt even more than getting kicked in the ribs by George had, the doctor stopped listening and sat back in his chair leaving Edward sitting on the end of his desk without helping him down.
"So Edward, I have something I need to ask you."
Edward felt his stomach do a flip flop and he tried to think back to anything he might have done wrong that day that would have the doctor looking at him so sternly. He frowned, then his eyes widened and he remembered that after he played with his chess soldiers and defeated the red coated army men, saving his queen for Napoleon, he had taken one of the knights back to his room. He thought of taking more so he could set them around his bed like he had with his green army men that he kept under the mattress, but then he thought it would be obvious if more than once piece was missing.
At the time he had slid the bishop over a little and a pawn back a little hoping no one would notice the missing knight but he guess that a missing horse would be hard to hide. He felt his lip tremble and touched his fingers to it to make it stop. In the old days he might have lied. It was easy to lie when there was other kids in the house, kids that could be blamed for something he did. But there were no other kids that lived in this house and he didn't think anyone else could be blamed for stealing the chess pieces. Besides, Jasper had seen him playing with them so who else was to blame if one of them was missing.
"I took it." He blurted out before he could stop himself. It was right to tell the truth and if he told the truth he wouldn't get in as much trouble or at least that's what Karen always said, though that had never been his experience. His chin had dropped to his chest but he looked up from under his bangs at the doctor who was stroking his chin with his finger like he was thinking about something.
"You took what?" the doctor asked, in a distracted voice like he didn't know what Edward was talking about.
But Edward knew that trick. He knew that adults pretended that they didn't understand to make him say things out loud.
"I took the horse," he mumbled.
"The horse?"
Edward nodded. He really was a bad kid. All he had to do is be good for a few weeks and he couldn't even do that. Now they would make him go and stay in the county home.
"I'm sorry, son, what horse are you talking about."
Oh yeah, it wasn't called a horse…stupid…stupid.
"I took the knight."
He glanced at the doctor who looked completely confused, then he understood that he admitted stealing and the doctor didn't even know anything about it. He sighed and stuck his hand in his pocket, pulling the heavy chess piece from his jeans. He held it out tentatively.
The doctor smiled and shook his head. "Oh that's alright, you can play with it. Jasper told me that you and he discussed military strategy today. Did you finally rescue your queen?"
Edward nodded and put the knight on the desk. He was happy he wasn't in trouble for stealing the horse but that meant he was in trouble for something else. Either way it wasn't good.
"I guess we don't have too many things for you to do here. Maybe Alice can pick up some toys for you to play with…or better yet, maybe Emmett can. I have a feeling he would come up with some good ideas. Do you like playing video games?"
Edward shrugged. Emmett had shown him how to play a little but he never had video games before and he didn't understand the buttons, plus the lights and beeping made his head hurt and he wasn't very good so he didn't like it when Emmett watched him.
"Edward, I know this is hard for you and that's one reason I want to ask you something and I need you to really think about it before you give me an answer okay?"
The doctor had leaned forward in his chair and his smile was gone. Edward was glad his bangs were long so he could study the doctor's face without being noticed.
"Umm okay."
"I had a long talk with social services about you, then I talked to Esme and the rest of the family and we all agreed that rather than go to a different foster home, maybe you would like to just stay here with us for awhile."
Edward stopped looking at the doctor from beneath his bangs and openly gaped at him. He wasn't sure he heard him correctly and he didn't want to say anything stupid that might make it seem like he couldn't listen properly.
"Everything has already been taken care of as far as the paperwork is concerned, but that doesn't mean you have to stay with us if you don't want too. Living here is going to be a little different from most homes you've been in. We don't have any other little kids and we won't be getting any. We're also well out of town, so you won't have any friends to play with every day except when you're at school."
Edward was only half listening. He couldn't believe how lucky he was that someone like this doctor and his family would want him to live with them. He almost thought he was dreaming, but the doctor was talking again so he tried to listen.
"There are some other things you should think about too Edward. My family, we're different. We don't eat like other people or sleep like other people or even look like other people and because of that I'm worried that it might make you uncomfortable to be around us after a time."
"I wish I could be like you." Edward blurted out then clamped his mouth shut knowing how stupid that sounded, but the doctor only smiled a little. Edward couldn't be sure but he thought he looked a little sad. Maybe because he knew that no matter what Edward did, he would never grow up to be like them. He wasn't smart enough and since he wasn't really their kid or from their tribe he would never have super white perfect skin and sparkly gold eyes or be handsome like the doctor, Jasper and Emmett.
"Well I think we like you just the way you are. That's one reason we want you to live with us Edward; because you're special."
Edward knew that the doctor was just saying that to be nice. It was his way of saying he could never be like them, but he didn't care. He probably never felt as good as he did right at that moment, not even when he was with Bella. Still he thought he probably should correct the doctor. He didn't want the doctor to think he was a normal kid from a normal family because that wasn't true. He was a foster kid and everyone knew foster kids weren't anything special and probably not very smart and they never grew up to be doctors. Plus he was weird. Everybody knew that. Even his friends on the reservation said that and they wouldn't say it if it wasn't true.
He found himself shaking his head no as he thought about telling the doctor all of that so he would know that he was getting damaged goods, because Edward was pretty sure that this family could have any little kid they wanted and Edward didn't want them to make a mistake.
But then the doctor was standing by him so fast that Edward didn't even remember him getting up and he was lifting him up from the desk and giving him a big hug which surprised Edward almost as much as when he told him that he could stay with them as their foster kid.
"Now don't tell me you're not special Edward or I might get mad and when I get mad, I can be even scarier than Jasper."
Then he made a funny growling noise that sounded like a wild animal and could have been scary, but coming from the doctor, it was more ridiculous than scary and Edward giggled. The idea of the doctor being scary was pretty funny since he was about the unscariest adult he ever met.
"What? You don't think I can be scary?" He growled again, louder and if that sound had been coming from Jasper, Edward thought he might be super scared, but when the doctor did it, it only made him laugh.
"Nope," And to prove it Edward gave the doctor a little hug back, thinking he smelled a lot like Esme, Rosalie and Alice did. They all smelled like dessert.
"So does this mean you wouldn't mind staying with us for a little while." He pulled away a little and looked Edward in the eyes. "Because if it does, maybe you should go and tell Esme. I think she'd be very excited to hear that you would. I think she's waiting for you in your room."
"Okay…oh it's almost 8:00. I'll tell her right now," he said, not liking the idea of keeping Esme waiting.
Without another word the doctor put him down and even though Edward wasn't a baby and didn't need to be held, he was sort of sorry to let go of the doctor's neck.
"I just want you to know, Edward, that you've made us all happy…very happy that you're going to stay with us," the doctor said squeezing his shoulders before he let him go. "Especially Esme and Rosalie. They've both always wanted a little boy and now they have you."
Edward didn't know what to say to that so he just nodded and turned to leave the room so the doctor wouldn't see his face. It was too late to blame the breathing exercises for his tears now. Normally he would think that the doctor was being sarcastic, because he couldn't understand what he had done to make anyone happy. He was just a weird little kid, that talked shit and acted like a baby most of the time and there were a lot smarter kids out there that would make a better foster kid then him, but he decided he wasn't going to say anything about that out loud. He didn't want the doctor or Esme to change their mind and he would do whatever he could to show them that they hadn't made a mistake, even if it meant pretending he was special. He just had to pay attention so he could figure out what it was that they thought was so special about him and he would have to be careful not to make any mistakes.
"Don't forget your horse," the doctor called after him, but before Edward could come back for it the doctor was at the door of his office holding it out to him.
"It's not a horse it's a knight." Edward corrected, smiling so the doctor would know he wasn't being a smarty pants.
Author Notes:
The idea for this story came to me because I always wanted to see Esme and Carlisle with a child and though I know it's been done countless times as humans, I liked the challenge of leaving them as vampires. Carlisle's decision to welcome Edward into their vampire world is somewhat irresponsible given that even a seven year old is going to notice their eating and sleeping habits which is why I'm going to let him explain himself in the next chapter. ;o)
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