Disclaimer: I don't own "Doctor Who" or "Twilight", and the essential details of the original concept of this fic came from a video posted on YouTube by heroesdwtw- which has unfortunately now been taken off YouTube- and is used with their permission

Feedback: Much appreciated

AN: Some references to the classic series here, but it's all relatively straightforward and it mainly comes from the Fourth Doctor episode "State of Decay"; hope you like the overall premise anyway

The Future in the Past

"Oh my God..." I said, my eyes widening even further as I took in the sheer scale of damage that Esme's body had sustained; I'd always known that she'd been through a lot, ever since Edward told me how Carlisle had turned her in the first place, but to actually see her legs and arms twisted like that, the way her back was bent, the way her chest seemed to be having to struggle just to breath...

"What?" the Doctor said, looking at me in confusion. "Bella, is something wrong?"

As soon as the Doctor had spoken, Edward's description of Esme's condition in the last moments of her human life- the thought of his voice causing far less pain than it had in the past, even if I didn't like to analyse the implications of that too closely- flashed through my memory.

"They brought her straight to the hospital morgue, though, somehow, her heart was still beating..."

He might not have told me precisely what drove her to that point- and it wasn't exactly something I ever felt like directly asking him anyway; who would really want to discuss a situation where they tried to kill themselves?-, but that sentence had always struck me as peculiar even if I hadn't managed to ask any of the Cullens about it; how could someone make that kind of mistake?

I knew that Esme looked like she was in such a terrible condition that people could argue that she might as well be dead, but why would trained doctors assume that someone was dead- to the point of actually putting her in the morgue- when she wasn't?

Now that I was actually looking at Esme after her accident, I realised that there were far too many other anomalies about this whole situation; given how far we were from any kind of civilisation, to say nothing of any kind of hospital, making it unlikely that there were any doctors who might just 'happen' to be in the area to form a diagnosis, how could Esme have stayed alive long enough to be taken anywhere when she was in this kind of shape?

Edward would have mentioned if there'd been any kind of particular mystery about how Esme got to the morgue in the first place- from what he'd told me, she'd just been found and taken to the hospital by a group of hikers who'd found her after her jump while they were coming back home for the night-, so that ruled out the possibility of the Doctor and I getting her to a hospital in time as neither of us fit the image, but there might still be something that we could do...

"Can you... put her into a trance or something?" I asked, looking urgently at the Doctor; if the TARDIS could tweak my mind so that I could understand other languages, it didn't seem to be totally unreasonable to assume that the Doctor could do something like that on his own.

"What-?" the Doctor began, looking up from his examination of Esme to look at me in confusion.

"Just... do something to slow her heart down for a while so that people think she's dead at a casual check-over but actually keeps her alive for a few hours," I said, looking urgently at him as I glanced around; the sun was starting to set and I could just glimpse some people walking along the side of the river some distance away, but there should be enough space between them and us for the Doctor to do what I was asking him to do and then get away before anyone saw us. "Look, I'll tell you why later, but we don't have time for me to tell you everything right now; just believe me when I tell you that it won't change history, and... do it, please?"

For a moment, the Doctor simply looked sceptically at me, but then he turned around and crouched down beside Esme, placing his hands on either side of her head and staring intently at her before closing his eyes and bowing his head slightly. As I watched, Esme's faint but painful breaths- somehow, the fact that Esme was breathing was almost more strange than seeing her injured in the first place- slowed even further, until her chest had ceased to rise and fall altogether, her body so still that only my faith in the Doctor and my knowledge of the future allowed me to be sure that she wasn't dead.

"It's done," he said, looking up at me. "Now-"

"This... really isn't the time," I said, looking anxiously down the river at the group of walkers I'd seen earlier, still approaching our current location. "Just... get back to the TARDIS and I'll explain everything, OK?"

After staring at me in silence for a moment, the Doctor nodded in resignation and turned around to head back towards the ship, leaving me to follow him into the police box, sparing a last moment to glance behind me as the walkers began to approach Esme's body.

"Be safe..." I whispered, half to myself and half to the woman who could have been my second mother if things hadn't fallen apart at my birthday party.

It might not be quite the life she would have wanted, but Esme deserved to have her children...

Finally, after a run that felt like it had taken far longer than it should, we were inside the TARDIS once more, the Doctor setting the controls before he turned around to look at me, the glass thing in the central column- I thought that the Doctor had called the 'time rotor' at one point, but I wouldn't like to swear to it- moving up and down in the manner that indicated that we were in flight once more.

"So," the Doctor said, his arms folded as he looked at me, "would you care to explain why I did that?"

"That's... a bit complicated," I said, taking a deep breath to prepare myself for what I was about to do before I continued speaking. "That woman we just found... her name's Esme, and I knew her before I met you."

"Go on," the Doctor said, his tone a serious, grim one that I had only heard from him when discussing the Time War that had destroyed the other Time Lords; at least it looked like he was going to let me say whatever I had to say, regardless of his scepticism about my story so far.

"Well... she's a vampire-" I began, only for the Doctor's eyes to widen in what I could only describe as horror as he looked at me.

"A vampire?" the Doctor said, a cold hatred suddenly dominating his expression in a manner that I would have never expected to see in my friend's face.

"Uh... yeah?" I said, looking uncertainly back at him. "Look, I know that they've got a bad reputation-"

"The first major war my people ever fought was against vampires, Bella Swan!" the Doctor practically spat at me, walking over from the console to stand over me with a cold stare that caused me to momentarily flash back to that tortured Dalek we'd spoken with during that whole mess with the Arkheon threshold. "We drove them to extinction-!"

"You what?" I repeated, my shock at this turn of events replaced by indignation; James and Victoria had definitely been scary, but the Cullens alone proved that not all vampires were like that. "What about the ones who didn't want to be-?"

"They were a manifestation of pure evil, Bella!" the Doctor yelled, glaring indignantly at me. "Oh, maybe a few later ones didn't like what they were because it wasn't 'convenient' to be a blood-sucking fiend, but Rassilon wiped out the only vampires that might have chosen otherwise at the dawn of civilisation on my planet; even if I don't approve of what he did, that doesn't change the fact that every time I fought vampires myself, I ended up staking them, and now I've just-!"

"Hold on; staked?" I interrupted, holding up both hands to halt the Doctor's speech as my mind latched on to the anomaly of what he'd just told me. "You staked them?"

"Well... I varied it a bit- exposed some of them to sunlight after tricking them into travelling to a planet in a binary star system, that kind of thing-" the Doctor began, his anger suddenly replaced by confusion as he took in my reaction.

"But... stakes don't work on vampires," I said, looking uncertainly at him. "And sunlight doesn't either; their skin's some kind of... glowing rock..."

"They're silicon-based?" the Doctor said, looking at me in surprise, his anger forgotten in the face of this new information, a contemplative expression on his face.

"I... uh, I take it... the vampires you know... weren't?" I asked, looking uncertainly at the Doctor; after so long dealing with Jake's automatic anti-vampire attitude, I was already setting myself up for the possibility that I would face some kind of argument with the Doctor about what he believed vampires to be like versus my own perceptions of them, but so far he actually seemed to be listening to what I had to say...

"No, they weren't; completely flesh and blood creatures with an increased sensitivity to ultraviolet radiation, a certain sensitivity to garlic, and some even have issues with faith; crucifixes are convenient focuses, but really you could hold them back with anything so long as you believe in it enough..." the Doctor said, tapping his chin thoughtfully before he looked over at me as he finally came to a decision. "I think we need to take a closer look at this."

"'This'?" I repeated in confusion.

"These vampires you told me about, of course," the Doctor said, looking at me with a slight smile. "As I said, they don't fit any category of vampire that I know about; the vampires I knew were always flesh-based, and judging by your obvious concern for Esme out there, I feel safe assuming that she was a friend to you in the future?"

"She was... well, she was like my second mother," I said, smiling slightly uncertainly at my friend, the usual pain at the memory of the Cullens' departure lessened in the face of this sudden apparent mystery of their origins; I might only have the Doctor's word that they were different from other vampires, but I also knew that he had no reason to lie about something like that, and when I thought about it, it did make sense that there were vampires out there who did match the old stories more than the Cullens did. "She was the mother in a family of seven vampires, and they all drank animal blood; from what they told me, it didn't taste as satisfying as human blood would, but it did the job..."

"OK," the Doctor said, nodding gratefully at me as he contemplatively sat down on the chair beside the TARDIS console, swinging his legs up to rest on the console as he clasped his hands and tapped his fingers together as he stared up at the ceiling. "So, we know that these vampires can choose to feed on something other than humans even if they're naturally inclined to do so, we know that sunlight, faith and garlic apparently have no effect on them, we know that they're silicone-based rather than carbon-based... where to next?"

"Uh..." I began, rolling up my sleeve and indicating the scar where James had bitten me so many months before- it wasn't prominent enough to be obvious unless you were looking for it, and I'd been mostly wearing long-sleeved tops since I started travelling with the Doctor anyway-, "would this help?"

"This?" the Doctor repeated, putting on his glasses and walking over to examine the scar more closely, looking up at me inquiringly as he finished his analysis. "What is it?"

"I was bitten by one of those vampires- not Esme's family; a wandering vampire who just happened to be in the area at the same time as me- a few months back," I explained, indicating the wound in my arm. "The Cullens were able to prevent me from actually becoming a vampire by sucking the venom out, but maybe... I don't know..."

"There's some residue in the wound that we could use?" the Doctor finished for me, smiling as he took my hand and held my wrist up to his face, studying it contemplatively for a few moments before he smiled and looked back at me with a confirming nod. "It's as good a shot as any; to the laboratory!"