Carlisle
According to a Greek myth, humans originally had four arms, four legs and a head with two faces.
As punishment for an offense, Zeus cut the creatures in half.
These halves are today's humans.
They suffer from their incompleteness; each is looking for the lost other half.
And Carlisle missed his.
There were many myths surrounding humans, love, and even more surrounding vampires. Carlisle had theories all his own; as a God-fearing man, he had always believed that as a vampire, he no longer played a role in religion-at least not a positive one. He was damned, cursed, and would eternally atone for the crimes of his clan. So it was until he met Lily.
It was incomprehensible to him how a creature like him deserved such happiness. At first he thought it was a gift.
Like the hope in Pandora's box. After all the evil had descended on the world, only hope remained. He had always thought that hope was supposed to reconcile people with evil, but the more he thought about it, the more he came to the conclusion that hope was nothing more than another evil. It made people simply endure all the suffering in the hope that things would get better.
No happiness was better than finding one's companion, and no suffering was greater than losing one. Marcus was the walking example. So maybe it wasn't a gift but just another punishment.
Carlisle shook his head and earned astonished looks from a patient.
Her eyes immediately glazed over again and she looked at him with a look Carlisle knew all too well. It was absurd how appealing his appearance was to people. Of course he knew it was a trap.
Even more absurd was that he didn't even need that attraction since he was a vegetarian. It would be easy for him to feed on humans. Presumably he could pick a woman every night in any bar, or really any place, without a fuss and disappear with her.
An unpleasant thought, even without Lily it was always unthinkable for him to socialize in such a way.
He knew how melodramatic he was and he tried with all his might not to drive those around him crazy with it. But what was left for him to do but pester Alice and stare at his cell phone?
Jasper avoided it as much as he could and he couldn't blame him. It was enough if he was suffering from his own feelings, he didn't need to drag anyone else into it.
Alice had told him about Lily's hunt. It surprised him less than he wanted to admit. He knew what her slip had done to her, and he wasn't surprised. Jasper had been abstaining from human blood for decades, and yet he suffered from the presence of humans. Of course it broke his heart, as it did for all humans who died but what could he do? He couldn't blame her, not even if he wanted to.
Alice next vision troubled him much more.
It had taken Emmett and Jasper to keep him from running to her right away. It bordered on a miracle that he had stayed in Forks despite everything.
Carlisle didn't begrudge her her success, how could he not. But he would have liked to have been there. Of course, he also knew that if he had been, the situation would have looked very different. He would have tried to handle it diplomatically and Lily would have held back as always.
A thought crept up on him.
What if she had no intention of returning? What if she had a taste for her new life in which there was no room for him. He didn't want to be the chains that constricted her. That was the last thing he wanted to be.
He had been so confident that she would miss him as much as he missed her that he had immediately pushed the terrible thought away. He relied on Alice and her word.
How could he not.
But her next decision broke his heart into a thousand tiny pieces.
For the first time in his existence, Carlisle felt a pain he didn't know how to bear. To be rejected by one's mate was as rare as it was absurd. He had never heard of such a case, but perhaps that was only because the other half had not survived.
He noticed himself getting more and more involved and suddenly felt completely out of place in the hospital. The stares felt like needles on his skin and with every second, he felt more and more uncomfortable.
He had to get out of here.
He apologized and blamed his abrupt reaction on an illness, he didn't care how strange he was acting. It didn't matter, sooner or later he would leave the hospital and not return until everyone who could remember him had died. So what did he care if a few nurses and doctors thought he was strange.
Carlisle got into his black sedan and took a breath. Her scent was faint, it had been too long since she last sat in that car. Memories flashed through him with a clarity as if they were just happening.
He remembered driving through the forest, dangerously close to the edge of Quileute territory. He remembered how little he cared, how his thoughts revolved around her, and how irrepressible his longing was.
His cell phone vibrated and jolted him out of his thoughts.
Briefly he hoped to read her name on the display and now he had to pull himself together not to sound too disappointed when he saw the name of his first son.
The conversation was short and for the first time since Lily's departure, his thoughts circled around another topic.
Bella was pregnant.
In his entire existence, he had never heard of anything like it, but when he considered all the facts, it seemed impossible to him that a human body could survive such a thing. He knew about the immortal children, they were almost the downfall of the Denali clan but these children were not born, at least not their vampiric existence. They were created, just as he was created and just as his family was created. The thought of such a child being born was so inconceivable that Carlisle simply didn't believe it was possible. They had to operate it out or Bella wouldn't stand a chance.
He thought of turning her. The poison that was making its way through her body was destroying everything. Tattoos, cancer, mestastases, and possibly a fetus? Was that it? Carlisle took a deep breath.
He missed Lily. Right now, he could use her closeness to sort out his thoughts. He had to tell her, after all, it was his family and therefore hers. Briefly, he thought about how quickly he had grasped the thought, and it occurred to him that he would be only too happy to use this opportunity to bring her back home. A naive part of him clung to the hope that she had now found what she was looking for.
But had she?