All characters, etc, in the following story are the creative property of Stephenie Meyer!

So I apologize for how short and lame this chapter may seem, but I promise it's necessary! Hopefully you like it!

Chapter 3

Empty

For the year following Edward's change, the three of us lived as nomads. We traveled from forest to forest, allowing Edward to hunt as often as he needed. The moving was necessary so we did not deplete any particular wildlife population; also so no one would see us. Several times we had near encounters with hunters or hikers traveling in close proximity to our camp, at which point we would abandon it and set up elsewhere. Carlisle and I were always careful not to let Edward get too close to humans, but he inevitably was able to smell them at those moments. And though we were sure he caught their scent, he never showed any desire to return and hunt them.

Being in the woods meant having little to do to pass the time but explore, hunt, talk and think. Luckily for me I was always intrigued by what I might find on the forest floor; be it animal bones, unfamiliar flora, or even interesting species of insects. I mostly kept to myself, though I wished badly that Edward would join me. He, too, kept to himself, and I found that even when Carlisle and I carried on conversations the boy rarely joined us. He was no doubt discouraged by his physical age – 18 and 140 are two very different ages – and I was sure he felt especially disconnected from Carlisle for that same reason.

Sometimes I would travel to whatever town might be close by, usually under cover of night, to buy some new books for us to read. We always went through them more quickly than we could buy them, but it was a treat to pass the time. After we each finished a book we'd pass it around until we'd read every one. They were mostly history books and language books, some about modern technology, and some fiction. I tried to get a good mix of topics but I didn't do very well.

The rare moments when Edward did talk to us it was almost always about the books we were reading. Carlisle and I were happy to discuss them and often we'd spend hours talking about everything we'd read while hiding. Occasionally he would look at Carlisle disapprovingly, and I always assumed it was because our father was thinking of something questionable. This always made me laugh, and I often found myself watching Edward's face for any type of reaction. I also mused at guessing my father's thoughts, which kept me sufficiently entertained.

I held on to the hope that, one day, Edward would warm up to us. He was so young with an eternity ahead of him but he didn't seem to care. It was almost as if he was brooding about something, but what it was I couldn't be sure. I tried talking to him on several occasions, but he always cut our conversations short. He was never rude, always a gentleman. He excused himself when needed, always said "please" and "thank you". He did as he was told by Carlisle and worked hard on his control.

Regardless of his manners, after around eight months or so he rarely even looked at my father or me, and I began to fear that he would never be able to forgive us. He both loved and hated Carlisle for changing him, and was surely angry with me for allowing it. He never spoke his feelings but sometimes I could see them cross his stony features.

Some time around a year after his creation I caught myself staring at his face. It was so perfectly sculpted and beautiful, sparkling in the sun's rays. I couldn't think of any vampire, or human for that matter, whose features so held my attention. But within a quarter of a second his expression wrinkled into a scowl directed at our father.

Carlisle had his face in a book, sitting near a creek just down the hill from our camp. Edward looked very angry, his muscles tensed under some, unknown stress.

"What's wrong?" I whispered slowly.

He relaxed a little then turned to me. "Nothing, Isa, I just… I feel it's time for me to go."

Several long, strained seconds of silence stretched between us while I thought of something to say.

Finally, he spoke again.

"I'm sorry, I hope you can forgive me but I need to start my own life. I need to get away from here. You and Carlisle are so set in your ways and I'm just getting started! I want to go find what I'm capable of and stretch my limits. When I was human my mother was very protective of me, she tried to manipulate me into staying home from the war; she wanted me to be a coward just so she could keep me. I love my mother, but she didn't allow me to live my life. Now that I have a second chance, please let me be who I want to be, not what someone expects."

I froze. If nothing I could say or do would make him stay, then I wouldn't bother. He waited a few moments for a reply but, when I offered him none, he disappeared in the blink of an eye.

His departure was followed several seconds later by a rush of wind carrying Carlisle's scent, telling me he'd returned to camp. He dropped his book and knelt in front of me, keeping a comfortable distance between us.

"Was that Edward I saw rush off so quickly?" He asked breathlessly.

I nodded slightly, covering my face with my hands.

"Did he mention when he'd return?"

Unexplainable sobs raked through my body, making it difficult to respond.

"Edward is returning, isn't he Isa?"

I shook my head between sobs, reality crashing in.

Carlisle dropped to his bottom on the ground, wide-eyed with disbelief.

"Are you sure?"

I nodded again, silently thanking Carlisle for asking yes or no questions. There was no way I could speak around the gaping hole that seemed to have opened in my chest. My dead heart felt as though it had been ripped from its connections, leaving in its wake pain and emptiness.

We stayed there frozen for quite a while, perhaps even days. My chest ached more and more with each passing hour, and I knew just sitting there surely was making it worse. In spite of this, I couldn't bring myself to move. We must have looked peculiar sitting there in front of each other, two statues, staring off in different directions.

After an immeasurable amount of time I heard rustling in the bushes. Immediately my head snapped in the direction of the tree line, scanning the forest for the source of the sound.

"Isa, I think it best that we get out of sight. Let's return to the house in Chicago, we can figure out a plan once we've settled."

We ran to our house in silence, each lost in our own thoughts. Moving and traveling didn't seem to help at all with the pain in my chest. When we reached the house I collapsed into a fit of dry, crushing sobs on the couch in my old room. A year's worth of dust, which had collected on the fabric of the couch, shot into the air filling it with millions of tiny dust motes.

My body shook violently with strong emotion. I felt like I could go on crying for several days and I may have. When I finally finished I had no idea how long I'd been that way. I walked into the living room to find Carlisle on the couch reading a newspaper. There was a stack of them on the table, at least a week's worth. I had never in my existence cried for so long. The hole in my chest seemed to fill somewhat, but I knew it was there. Every time I thought of him it opened again.

"Are you feeling better, my dear?" Carlisle asked me sadly over the top of the paper.

"Yes, I suppose. Carlisle, what were you thinking about while you were by the river? When he… you know."

"I'm not exactly sure. I remember thinking about the Volturi and the things we learned while in their library. I thought about Edward's mother," I cringed at the sound of his name, "and her dying wishes. I can't remember much else. Why do you ask?"

"He gave you a nasty look, and when I asked what was the matter he told me he needed to leave and start his own life."

"Ah, I remember now. I was making future plans. I know he was ready to live more normally but I wasn't sure how to make it work. I was considering having him enroll in a high school, which I didn't think he would be too keen on doing. But Isa, I was only considering it, not making plans for him."

"I know Carlisle, you can't control your thoughts all of the time. He'll learn eventually that he can't take every thought seriously."

We sat in silence for a while, not knowing what to say. I worried that the once strong relationship Carlisle and I had would crumble under the emotional stress of abandonment.

"What should we do father?" I asked weakly, "We can't stay here long."

"Yes, I've been considering that. I imagine we can stay at least a two years, we really hadn't been here long before…well, before we left."

"I don't think it would be wise to say longer than a year, I'm already having to pass for a 26 year old and I can't stretch it much farther. And I'm sorry Carlisle, but you don't look a day over 23 and you're supposed to be in your early thirties!"

"Of course, you're right, I'm not sure what I was thinking…"

He placed his face in his hands and sighed.

It wasn't normal for either of us to be so helpless. Usually ideas bounced easily between us, each fueled by the other. After the boy left, the creative environment was depleted and Carlisle spent a majority of our time in silence. We hunted as necessary, no longer drawing any joy from our most natural of activities.

Life went back to normal, though, which proved to be somewhat comforting. The re-introduction of routine and structure into my life made things easier to handle.

Carlisle and I remained in Chicago for another year before moving to a different city, back to the first house we inhabited after my accidental creation.

Fixing up the house in Ashland also did well to keep my mind off of the entire situation. We left a note for him at the house in Chicago, letting him now where we'd gone. Our biggest fear was that he would come back and not know how or where to find his family.

I went back to school under yet another name, starting again at the BA level. Luckily for me I could – and do – go back to school every decade and live in perfect bliss. I was always happy when I was learning something. Of course I enrolled in yet another Anthropology program, earning high marks in every class as usual. And though I maintained my grades, I didn't feel as satisfied with my studies. It was like any joy I might have felt in the past was stripped from me.

I finished my newest Bachelor's degree in record time, around two years after starting. Never sleeping made it easy to finish quickly – I took more than a full load during the school year as well as summer, weather permitting of course. During the summer I mostly stuck to evening classes to avoid the sun.

Nevertheless, I had to be cautious. I always matched the pace of the highest achieving human so as not to appear unnaturally hard working. With the boy gone I had to keep myself busy constantly to avoid the hole in my chest.

I started a Master's degree at the age of "twenty", since I started my BA as an 18-year-old. A group of Archaeologists at my school were asked to conduct summer excavations at Machu Picchu near Cusco, Peru, and they invited me to join the research team. According to them I was young, fit, and talented, the perfect candidate for their particular research team. They offered me the opportunity of a lifetime, even my eternal one, and I turned it down.

Machu Picchu had been a sincere interest of mine since its discovery in 1911. Carlisle and I had once made plans to visit it after our time in Chicago was over. The creation of the boy put a wrench in our plan, but we'd hoped he would go with us when he was ready to be around humans.

The idea of visiting the city without him and Carlisle was a sad one. Carlisle had also expressed a lack of interest in traveling, something that at one point we both loved dearly. I knew Carlisle wished he could have taught Edward his knowledge, traveled with him and watched him mature. He loved Edward as a song already when he was human, a love that was magnified with his change to our world.

And though we hoped time would heal the wounds left in the boy's wake, the years continued to pass, each hard that the last. We returned to the house in Chicago again after I finished my master's, leaving a note for the boy with regards to our new location. When we moved again, I found a university to continue my education, to earn yet another Doctorate of Philosophy in Anthropology. I decided this time to focus on paleopathology, the science of understanding causes of death in ancient populations based on evidence in skeletal material.

Burials had always been of particular interest to me, one especially. When Carlisle changed me I had just come across a very unique burial, and was so caught up in my excavations that I didn't see him coming. Admittedly, though, I was only interested in the artifacts I found there, like many archaeologists of my time. But I was beginning to understand the importance of the actual buried individual as well, and so were many other leading experts in the field. Paleopathology was just gaining momentum, and I wanted to a pioneer of the subject.

Yet even new innovations in Archaeology, something that has never failed to excite me, couldn't lift my spirits. With the boy gone, life just seemed dull.

And so the years continued to pass with no sign of the boy. After another three years I finished my PhD and was offered a teaching position at the school, which I, of course, accepted. We knew we could only stay in the city for another two years, at which point we'd move and I would start the cycle again.

I'd hoped that the end of the 20's, the beginning of a new decade, would bring me some peace of mind. I hoped that I would no longer miss the brother I never had the chance to know, and I vowed to myself not to let him ruin the rest of my eternity.