Archive of Our Own

His melodic hum rang soundly through the quiet hospital halls. Even to his own ears, Carlisle knew he couldn’t match Liszt’s pitch and resolved to have Edward play it again for him when he returned to their home in the morning. There, in the cradle of their dark and warm thicket, books and sheet music piled either side of their armchairs, Carlisle could relinquish his body from his nightly human façade and enjoy Edward’s sweet sonata in comfort.

Night shifts brought an ease to Carlisle’s steps; the peace aided his breath and carried the tune from his lungs into the faintly echoing halls of Ashland Trinity Hospital. Night sidled up to him cosily and it embraced Her creatures with love. She deepened the white walls into lilac and soft blue, playing the steady humming and beeping of medical instruments like Her own string band. As much as he shirked Her company for the rising sun each day, Night made an amiable friend of Carlisle yet and sometimes, like tonight, he found Her quiet solitude peaceful.

The night shifts left him unbothered – he loved humans and held them with great affection, but they often roped him into uncomfortable chatter at the hospital. It was one of their quirks, he supposed. It endeared him but he couldn’t help but feel some relief when the hospital lay quiet and dark to let its patients sleep. His shoes clicked softly along the linoleum as he hummed the tinkling tune all the while.

He stepped quietly into the ward. The room was dark and scarce moonlight filtered in through the tall windows at the far end of the room. Six beds lined either side wall, each partitioned with a white curtain to shroud the patient resting there in darkness

One other nurse made gentle rounds of the sleeping patients. Carlisle smiled warmly to her, not for the first time finding himself selfishly grateful he didn’t tire like she would. The night shift was a long and burdening one for nurses.

Carlisle gently pushed aside the first curtain. With the patient in view, he listened to the steady beating heart that lay resting in the middle-aged man’s chest. Carlisle lifted the chart at the end of the bed and checked the details against his own measurements. He calculated heart rate in his head and listened intently for the clarity of the patient’s breath before noting both in the chart with his barely legible scrawl.

His dark golden eyes scanned the intravenous medication and, when he was content, Carlisle moved onto the next bed.

He pulled the curtain back and immediately noted the weaker pump of this patient’s heart. Mr. Rees was just twenty yet his features seemed even more boyish and youthful. The high cheek bones tugged Edward’s gaunt and flu-ridden face into Carlisle’s view and he mindlessly clenched his hand around the fabric of his coat pocket. Only when he felt his fingers burst through to the inside of his coat did he release it with some alarm.

Edward, of course, was safe and well in their home on the edge of town but he couldn’t help but draw parallel lines between this boy and his own. Edward was his – his charge, his ward, his responsibility at the very least. And at the very most? Carlisle loved him deeply. Someone loved this young man just as much.

He gingerly peered into his pocket to assess the damage he had done, poking his fingers through the shredded holes. He moved his jaw side to side and clicked his canines together in thought.

Exerting inhuman strength without realising it was always cause for concern. Control of his own actions allowed him to objectively measure his goodness – ever the scientist, ever faithful. But it had been over two weeks since his last hunt and whilst he was never willing to test the extent of his legendary self-control, his now torn white coat was a reminder that he needed to feed sooner rather than later. Carlisle sighed and closed his eyes, rubbing them with his thumb and forefinger before continuing with his rounds.

Examining Mr Rees’ chart, he read common influenza on the patient sheet – a diagnosis that altogether revived unwanted comparisons to Edward – but as the young man took a ragged breath in his bed, Carlisle caught the whistling rattle.

His eyes, genetically superior as they were, noted several other symptoms in quick succession: the sunken cheeks, limbs atrophied against the linen, shaking frame. He placed his stethoscope against his ears to be sure and set the metal resonator beneath the young man’s breast. The rattle went undoubted now, and Carlisle inwardly cringed as he heard the pleuritic membranes grinding against each other at each breath and then, worse, the wet slosh of effusion around the lungs. Human ears would have missed the sound of pleural tuberculosis.

Carlisle rubbed his eyelids with his forefinger and thumb once again, as if he could press deep enough into his skull to soothingly massage the ache in his mind behind them. He was unsuccessful. The prognosis for tuberculosis at this stage was not good, but he could start on treatment once he had a more human diagnostic method. He left the chart at the foot of the patient’s bed and marched swiftly from the ward.

He would take the blood himself and test it. What good would that do? The boy was not likely to survive tuberculosis, his body already ravaged as it was.

As he turned a corner and passed by the women’s ward, Carlisle’s mind began to wander in its need to take control and prepare. A positive diagnosis would mean quarantining the ward and increasing care for all the other patients to give them the best fighting chance should they have contracted the bacteria. It was a burden the nursing staff could manage of course but he would feel much more comfortable overseeing it himself. Would Edward mind if he were to add another twelve hours to his shift?

The thought of Edward’s name alone swam his boy’s face into view and Carlisle watched it quickly morph into the greyer, hollowed face of young Mr. Rees on the bed in the ward. In the dark and empty corridor, Carlisle released a pitiful groan. Whilst he had seen victims of tuberculosis recover, Carlisle knew that outcome was not frequent. Even still, recovery was a strong word and no survivor he had met could truly said to have ‘recovered’ from the disease.

He supressed the building anguish that unsuccessful patients brought him. Mr. Rees was still alive, and Carlisle was not a pessimist.

He lengthened his stride in the direction of the hospital’s store of readily sterilised equipment, bracing his hand to open the last set of double doors. One door swung open, and Carlisle stopped in his tracks as the scent engulfed him. He heard the heavy creak and the gentle thud of the wood batting its partner as the door closed behind him. The air in this underground corridor was cooler to his skin but his sinuses were stifled by the heat sticking its tender claws down his throat, scraping upward toward his tongue.

Despite the burning pain in his mouth, the gesture soothed him, hushed his worries for the forgotten boy upstairs. The heat crooned to him in a way it had only once before.

Columbus, Ohio. 1911

“Doctor Cullen, extremity trauma patient’s just been brought in. Parents aren’t happy, I think she could do with seeing to.” The nurse offered a sympathetic smile as she handed the chart over.

He took it with a ‘thank you’ and perused the first page of the patient details written there on his way to the emergency trauma bay.

He looked up from the sheet as he neared the assigned bed, his fine ears picking up the spitting groan of a young girl in pain. He almost smiled in sympathy until the scent hit him. Vanilla sweet and heady, it serenaded him and for moment Carlisle was overcome with a heated desire for blood. The shock of that fact stilled him in his tracks. He swallowed down the burn in his throat and blinked a few times, silently thanking his luck that he had fed the night before.

He pulled at the tie around his collar and clear his throat once more, trying to douse the burning there, and mastered his control with a great deal of willpower before rounding the corner.

The girl on the bed grimaced with a white knuckled grip on the linens. Carlisle watched as her father reached over and tugged her dress down over her bare shin. The girl ground out a sound as close to a snarl as he had heard any human make. “Oy gevalt!” She launched forward to shield her leg from the offense.

Carlisle approached the bed and checked his sheet again. “Ms Platt, is that correct?” He offered her a warm smile.

Her pained wince softened as she looked up at him. She nodded, “Esme.”

Carlisle offered her a hand to shake, accepted after a moment of surprise. “I’m Dr Cullen. I hear you’ve had a fall.” The girl’s handshake was as firm as any grown man.

Esme nodded, sending her plaited curls bouncing, “I think my leg might be broken.” She cringed as she said it and her voice was light and laden with the twang of the midwestern country.

Mr Platt, with a thick brown moustache and labourer’s frame, leaned over the bed and shook Carlisle’s hand. “Going too quick by the brook on our property.”

Carlisle nodded and turned back to Esme, catching her smile at his casual dismissal of her father. “May I?” He gestured to the skirt of Esme’s dress. “I’ll just need to take a look.”

She smiled at him easily and lifted her skirt up above her knees. Carlisle was greeted with the sight of her sockless and shoeless leg, bent at the knee as she pulled it into her body protectively and sporting the beginnings of a blue contusion around her ankle and lower shin.

Carlisle hummed gently as he assessed the very clear break. He glanced up to Esme, avid green eyes observing him carefully, “a nasty break. You must indulge me in the story.”

She smirked and opened her mouth to launch into detail before her mother cut her off. “A case of inattention. Head in the clouds, this one.” Mrs Platt didn’t seem cruel in her assessment of her daughter, but Carlisle noted the sigh that slumped Esme’s shoulders and the imperceptible roll of her eyes. He stifled a smile.

Mr Platt cleared his throat, “perhaps we could hurry things along? We wouldn’t usually make this trip, but our local doctor is away and I don’t like to leave the land to the hands for long.” The man checked his pocket watch as he spoke.

Carlisle’s practitioner alarm bells sounded in his head. One parent that did not divulge information on her child’s injuries, and another that wished to rush his child’s treatment were familiar and unwelcome occurrences. Somewhere in his head, hackles raised in defence of the girl. “I understand, Mr Platt, but it’s actually quite helpful for me to know how this happened.”

“Papa’s right,” her voice was stiff, fed up. “There’s a brook back home, I fell down the bank and twisted my ankle.” Her eyes locked on his dark golden ones and her brow creased in a silent apology for her parents.

“I see.” Carlisle was humbled by it – despite her undoubted pain, she pressed him with an apology for their behaviour. He assessed the awkward shape of her lower shin, masked by the blueish swelling. “You rolled this way over your ankle, hm?” He drew his little finger around the outside of her shin to her foot.

Once again Esme was cut off before she could speak, this time by her mother. “I’m sure bedrest would be enough, Doctor. She’s not bleeding and, well… the body’s mighty clever at healing itself, isn’t that right?” Esme closed her eyes in defeat and threw her head back into the pillow petulantly, shaking her head to herself. Neither parent noticed.

Carlisle gave his most patient smile, but he kept his tone firm. “Actually, Mrs Platt, it’s very important that we set this break now to avoid deformity as it heals.” A thought occurred to him then. “I’d like to take a radiological scan of Esme’s ankle,” he looked back to Esme. “It’s just a precaution but I want to be certain it’s just a simple break before we send you back to have it out with the brook.”

One corner of Esme’s mouth twisted up in a wry, lopsided smile and a chuckle bubbled out of her chest. Carlisle couldn’t fight the smile that he found in response to the sound.

“There are some forms that will need filling out for payment of the treatment and the scan.” He looked between Mr and Mrs Platt, “you can find them at the nurse’s desk in reception.” Carlisle’s tone was polite but brokered no disagreement and he watched the pair shuffle off, thoroughly dismissed.

Esme’s shoulders relaxed visibly as they left, and she exhaled her relief. “Sorry about them.”

Carlisle dismissed her apology easily and pointed to the knee of her injured leg. “Can you straighten your leg for me?”

She winced at the mere suggestion of moving it. “Do I have to?”

He laughed gently. “At some point, yes. I fear it’s not helping matters down here,” he gestured to the swollen ankle. “I’m going to have a feel around the swelling alright? Feel free to tell me where it hurts.”

Esme’s features twisted in reluctant anticipation of the pain.

He gently pressed the tips of his fingers to the sides of her knee and moved them slowly down towards the injury. Esme watched him carefully and flinched when he hit an unexpected tenderness. She spoke Yiddish in such a growl that Carlisle could only surmise it was an expletive. “Can you rate that pain for me? Make ten the worst pain imaginable and one painless.”

She breathed through the sharp stab in her leg as she thought out her answer. “It could be worse, I suppose. Nine.”

“It could?”

“Well, if you took a hacksaw to it it’d probably feel worse.”

Carlisle couldn’t help the laugh that rang from him. Ten, he noted mentally as he shook his head. “Well, I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news but we are certainly going to have to straighten your knee out before we get an image of the bone.”

She dropped her shoulders with a whine. “Is it going to hurt? The bone scan, I mean.”

“The wonderful thing about us city doctors is that we have access to all the latest and flashiest technology. We’ll be able to get a good picture of the inside of your leg without even touching it. You won’t feel a thing.” He gave a reassuring smile before pursing his lip in consideration. “That being said, I will need to help you get it into a better position before we can do anything else.” His voice was soft with apology.

She nodded with some residual unease before eyeing him with a sudden twinkle. “I don’t suppose you’d like to know how it really happened?” The sparkle in her eye painted yet another smile across Carlisle’s face, as if she was about to let him in on some exclusive scandal.

“You didn’t fall by the brook.”

She shook her head. “If I had I’d be wet, not broken,” she chuckled. “Mame would not be happy to know I was up a tree.”

Carlisle turned to the bedside medication cabinet in search of pain killers. “You must be exceptionally poor at climbing trees.”

Esme scoffed in mild shock at his response, in part due to his teasing offence but mostly because he made no scathing remark about the propriety of ladies staying earthbound. “I’ll have you know, Doc, trees aren’t so easily climbed in a corset.” She raised a brow in challenge.

He retrieved a packet of powdered codeine from the cabinet. “Hmm, I suspect you might be right. I certainly have no desire to find out.”

She flicked her thick, caramel-coloured braid over her shoulder. “Exactly right,” she shot a disdainful look in the direction her parents had left. “Mame keeps tightening it. Can’t hardly breathe in the thing.”

“It certainly shouldn’t be that tight,” he looked seriously at her with all the sobriety of a doctor concerned for his patient’s health. “I can’t condone any clothing that restricts your breathing, Esme.”

She seemed to sober to at the sound of her name in his voice, but it was clearly eclipsed by another wildly cheeky smile. “You think you could slip her a doctor’s note saying the same?”

He really tried to supress it with his doctor-ly sincerity, but the laugh won out, her twinkling green eyes and the bright smile that lit her freckle-spattered cheeks were simply infectious. He felt the warmth of her character lighting a happy little candle in his cold dead heart and the heat of that alone matched the burn in his throat excellently. “Let’s focus on this first and then we’ll talk favours.” Carlisle dissolved the powder in a cup of water. “For now, this will help with the pain.”

Esme took the cup from him and stared at it in scepticism. “Is this opium?” She looked at him with a brow up in challenge. “Because I’ve read about that and people get addicted to it.”

He bit his lip around a smile and tried to maintain her sincerity. “No, we don’t use opium anymore. Well, not in the way we used to. This is codeine,” he gestured to the cup. “It’s derived from opium but it’s quite safe to give you a small amount.”

She nodded and swilled the solution around in the cup. “Is it going to make me loopy?”

“I’ve only given you a small dose but you’re young still so when you get home, it might be an idea to get some bedrest – you might find your mother and father waiting on you,” he smiled conspiratorially. “You don’t have to take it, of course, but aligning the break will likely be quite painful.”

She nodded once and, with the constitution of a drunkard, knocked the solution back with a single gulp. “You don’t need to wait for it to kick in. Let’s just get this over with.”

When Carlisle had retrieved his eyebrows from his hairline, he left her bedside for a moment and returned with a Thomas’ leg splint. “If you’re sure.” He hesitated, waiting for her confirmation.

“Yes. Yes, I’ll just…” She took one of the pillows from behind her head and braced herself to squeeze. “Okay, I’m ready. Let’s do this.” She levelled Carlisle with a stare so fortified and sure, he was unsure if he’d seen such a determination in any other set of eyes.

He could only nod in agreement with her, she was ready. He placed the splint on the bed parallel to her own leg. “Alright, I’m just going to hold your ankle steady and easy your knee to the bed nice and slowly.” He braced the swollen ankle with his hand.

“Oh heavens, you’ve got hands like ice packs, Doc.” She closed her eyes and breathed out slowly until the pained crease deflated from her brow. “Feels good actually.”

He laughed gently and then, without hesitation, pushed her knee to the bed. She screamed profanity into the pillow, and he winced when his sensitive ears picked up the unbridled pain she let rip. He felt her shin shift into alignment when her knee reached the bed and swiftly slipped the metal splint beneath her leg. Carlisle ignored the stares from other patrons and stroked her knee soothingly as she continued to swear like a Yiddish sailor into the pillow for several more moments.

When she finally tossed her head back onto the bed behind her, tears were streaming rivers down Esme’s red cheeks and her forehead was smattered with sweat. He precured a tissue lightly dabbed it away.

When the breath returned to her, her voice was broken with tears. “Thanks,” she panted. “It almost feels better now.”

“On a scale from one to ten?”

“Six. Maybe seven.”

Eight, he thought to himself and smiled. “Right. Let’s get you to our wonderful radiology department."

Carlisle helped her to shift herself from the bed and lowered her into a wheelchair that kept her leg elevated straight. He caught her teary hiccup and offered her the handkerchief in his breast pocket.

Esme blinked a few times before accepting and drying her cheeks with it as he wheeled her beyond the turn off to reception and towards the radiology department.

Carlisle silently thanked himself for sending her parents away. Having to explain his every procedure to them tired him just thinking about. The girl was not dismissive, she was inquisitive, and her questions made her company charming.

He glanced down at the top of her head, only now noticing the fragments of twig and straw that nested in her hair and smiled to himself. It had been an exceptionally long time since he was sixteen, but he could suddenly see the appeal of finding escaping in the boughs of an oak.

The x-ray was blissfully brief with the help of the radiology assistant and after helping her onto the bed and assuring her that she would feel nothing at all as the x-rays passed through her shin, he had her back in the emergency bed to strap the fracture closed.

“Howd’ya become a doctor?” She asked him conversationally as he packed the sides of her splint with cotton wool.

“Well, I was good at school and I knew I wanted to help people. I spent a few years in medical school and found it interesting enough to inspire me to do well there too.” It was more personal information than he’d given any of his colleagues.

Esme arched a questioning brow at him then. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-five,” he lied casually.

She nodded and said nothing more on the subject, instead leaning back on her hands in thought. “I liked school. I finish this year; heavens only know what I’ll do now.”

He smiled at the ease of her conversation. “What subject do you like most?”

She smiled widely then, the kind of smile that went viral. “English – I like books. And drawing. That’s what I was doing in the tree. There’s a swallow’s nest up there and I was going to draw it.”

“Well if you stay away from trees you might have a better chance at making an artist of yourself.” He pinned the straps of the splint closed and started on wrapping gauze over the splint.

“I thought we agreed it was the corset at fault. I’m excellent at climbing.” She assured him. She winced at the pressure he put on her leg but carried on, “Besides, I can’t make good money in drawing.”

He smiled and shrugged one shoulder. “Monet seems to have done alright for himself.”

She laughed heartily at that and the sound turned the candle in his heart into a firework. “Monet is a man.” She said pointedly.

“Hmm. Whilst I am loathed to admit, I see your point.” Carlisle pinned the gauze tight to itself and gently patted her leg down to check for lumps in the bandaging. “How does that feel? Too tight?”

“Yeah, feels good Doc.”

“Wiggle your toes for me.” When her toes danced from where they peaked out from her bandage, he was satisfied. “Now you’re going to need a pair of these.” He retrieved the wooden crutches from their place beside the cabinet and braced her as she slowly eased herself from the bed and between the crutches.

“Give them a trial run.”

Esme pushed herself three paces with crutches and looked back at him. “Think I’ve got it.”

“Good. Now, by my watch, your parents will be about two thirds the way through that paperwork.  Shall we go find them?”

Esme bit her lip and looked at her mismatched feet before glancing up in the direction of the reception. Carlisle could see the reluctance in her eyes and understood it immediately – it had been a long time but he remembered being sixteen and he remembered the feeling of his father’s company.

She didn’t answer his question but looked at him with an expression that seemed beyond her years. It was equal parts confused and sympathetic. “How come you’re a doctor so young?”

Carlisle found himself laughing nervously under her perceptive watch. “I’m sure we’ve already had this conversation. Perhaps you have gone loopy.”

Esme didn’t laugh. “It’s a lot of studying in just a couple years. You don’t have family?”

He wasn’t sure how, but in no time at all this girl seemed to strip him of every carefully placed wall with ease. The charming and polite façade he gave out to humans and vampires alike that kept them at arm’s length had dissolved and Carlisle felt bare in front of the young girl. He had no lies prepared for her. “My family passed away a long time ago.” He said, quietly.

She gave an apologetic smile, but it was infused with sincerity and kindness. “You don’t have to be blood-related, that’s the beauty of family I guess.” She chewed her lip in thought. “There’s a real mangey cat that lives in our barn. Well, he used to be a stray but I suppose he found it in himself to trust me. Now I’m his family.”

“You must be a very kind-hearted person.” He knew that to be true as soon as the words left his mouth.

Esme shrugged. “Kind sure, but also just really lucky. If you find someone to trust then you can call them kind, and they can call themselves lucky.” She hobbled forward on her crutches and took his hand in her much smaller one and squeezed gently and with meaning.

The contact sent a sudden spiral of burning unbridled thirst through his throat and he held his breath so as not to tempt himself with the intoxicating scent of her blood. If he could sweat, he’d be sodden and Carlisle cleared his throat quietly.

She pushed the handkerchief back into his hand.

“Keep it.” He choked out.

Esme smiled softly at him and limped her way to the hospital reception. As Carlisle finally took a breath, he formed an immediate plan to find a new placement far, far away from this girl. He would clear his office and be in Chicago before the week’s end. He nodded to himself and followed after her.

Like an old friend, the scent wrapped him up in a long overdue embrace. Carlisle licked his lips, the serpent sampling the air. It was musical, his old friend. The corridor was silent and yet there was music, not the kind that lilted into his ears but the kind that swam through his nose and throat, clouded his brain.

He moved forward slowly; each pace lighter than the last as he followed that tuneful smell. His nostrils flared and he stepped right past the store cupboard. Why shouldn’t he follow that rhapsodic call? It was calling his name, his soul, who was he to refuse when his bones were only forged to respond. It was his right, his purpose on this earth to breathe in that vanilla song. He took another deep lungful of it and he felt it wash over him, leeching his mind of reason.

He reached the end of the corridor quicker than he could have guessed. It felt an eternity, the seconds between him and the source of that enslaving scent stretched his existence thin. He walked a tightrope edge, one direction existed for him and he paced that delicate precipice until he reached the end: the morgue doors.

Fingertips shook, twitching, as he reached forward to pull the door handle. He entered the morgue, and he was overcome.

His throat tightened and he swallowed reflexively around the branding iron stuck there. His black eyes rolled backward into his skull at the sound of that wet arhythmic pulsing calling to him and a growl licked its way out from between his teeth as he begged the Divine to answer it, to fill his throat with that pulse and quench the scorching thirst. His mouth flooded with venom and he was lost.

Carlisle shredded the white sheet from the body beneath and the sight of her glued him in place.

Her face was older than he remembered, bruised and broken. Her eye sockets were sunken and ringed in matching black crowns. On any other day, in any other mind, he’d recognise that her skull was surely fractured. Her lopsided shoulders screamed the tragedy of her broken spine.

Despite it all, her beauty conquered him. His fingers ached to touch her, ached more at the knowledge coursing through his venom that she was something angelic, something divine. Her forehead, high and marred, gave way to matted caramel ringlets. Selene glowed through her ghostly white cheeks, highlighting the veiny, lilac filigree beneath. He swallowed reflexively, the acidic venom burning his throat, urging him to drink this sacrament.

In his reverence he took in her sorry story and somewhere in the back of his mind two separate mechanisms slotted into place aside each other. A nurse’s story of a woman, too far gone, she’d been taken straight to the morgue only hours prior. The memory gave him reprieve, breaking through the cloud cover of his bloodlust, and somewhere far off, he could hear a warning to run away from her. It sounded uncannily like his own voice. 

Then her heart faltered and stumbled on blindly, slowing, he realised. With that the clouds blackened his vision again and he was lost to the scent of her wet and wanton blood, going to waste trying futilely to keep this body alive. A growl ripped up his throat and his limbs cried out at the thought of the silence that would follow if it were to come to a stop.

His clawed hand dwarfed her jaw as he turned her chin to expose her purple throat.

The smell was pungent and lewd and somewhere in the recesses of his mind, Aro’s voice murmured to him from centuries ago.

Do not waste a Singer. Such a gift should be savoured.

Yes, savoured. He wanted to savour her, this gift from the heavens. And if he were a creature of Hell, he would take his libation and pay his respects at this only shrine.

Carlisle bent over her and grazed the tip of his nose along her delicate throat, purring as he listened to her blood. It reached out to him, caressing his soul with flickering pulse. Carlisle took a deep inhalation of her scent and in an instant she soothed him beyond all religion. He heard eternity in her weakening heart and finally Carlisle Cullen could fathom.

Without thought he bit down. His teeth sliced through her like butter and nectar filled his waiting mouth. He huffed like a bull above her and pulled. Her tired arteries gave in without protest, finally relieved of their burden to sustain and he swallowed a mouthful. He groaned under the weight of his ecstasy, his eyes closing in bliss.

He held her chin gently with his clawed fingers, but his mouth became more urgent. He swallowed mouthful after mouthful of thick, metallic blood and still his thirst was not sated. He pulled back only to bite down again with an inhuman growl that spat flecks of blood from between his teeth. He gorged himself on the life she gave him so willingly and his eyes pricked with tears he couldn’t shed. Sweet and warm, her blood ambrosia.

A clatter on the morgue floor sounded behind him and whipped his head around with a snarl to defend his offering. His breath came in sharp pants as he took in the empty room. Carlisle looked down at the offending noise: his own stethoscope, slipped from his shoulders to the floor.

He blinked, the sudden awareness painful, as if he’d woken up for the first time in 250 years. The buzzing warring in his mind pulled his gaze slowly to her face.

“Oh no.” He whispered in abject terror.

He dropped her jaw and backpedalled until the wall behind stopped him, forcing proximity to his sin. She was a scene of horror. Her bruised and broken body lay exposed, her head tossed aside, and her neck littered with two crescent punctures. Her blood drooled lazily from the wound he’d made.

No. No, he could not have done this. His chest shook as he drew ragged breath over his burning throat. Almost two hundred and sixty years on this earth and he had never taken like this. He had never given in before. And now his promise to his God lay broken and wasted in her body. “Oh, dear God, no.”

He licked his lips in anxiety and tasted that damning blood. He hummed involuntarily at the flavour of her before snarling in fury at himself.

Of all the humans. She, who had only leaked light into the room with her exuberance. She, Prosperpina, blooming flowers and spring with just her conversation and hearteningly lopsided smile. His eyes watered anew, and he swallowed his emotion thickly. He knew it now. The devil took pleasure in his sin and it squirmed in delight as her blood filled his belly.

He could not move his eyes from the poor woman he had gored. He could hear her heart, slow and lazy, lethargic in its weak push. A thick dark pulp jumped from the wound at each slowing beat. The light spilling from her.

Once again, the thought of the silence in her wake pulled an involuntary noise from Carlisle, this time a sorrowful mewl.

He wiped the blood from his chin haphazardly as he looked over her. Her right leg bent at an unnatural angle and her femur protruded against her thigh grotesquely. Her spine was undoubtedly broken, he could see that now in the spacing of her uneven hips. His lip trembled as his gaze swept upward to catalogue her injuries. Her chest, covered only by her torn white gown, was bruised purple and black and her collar bone disappeared halfway across her shoulder before reappearing again at the base of her throat.

Her throat was torn open. The punctures, neat though they were, lay too violently against her delicate throat, efficient thoroughfares by which to satiate his thirst. The thought made his stomach roll and, for the first time since he awoke in a London cellar, a wave of nausea passed over him and he gagged.

And then his gaze focused on her face. The very sight of it hushed his heavy panting and slowed his bunching muscles. She was pale, blackened by the force of the earth’s abuse of her. Regardless she was beautiful still. Her lips were blue and the life that once rosied her cheeks lined the sides of his throat now. But her expression was delicate, peaceful. Prey or not, she was the archangel sent to soothe the fear with which her own divine face struck him.

Run.

Carlisle had resisted her once before and what then? He had run from her, only to leave her broken and bruised at the bottom of a cliff, awaiting his own evil. He clenched his hands into fists, numb to the lines his nails carved into the heel of his hand. There was no absolution from this cardinal sin. There was only her – Ms Platt.

Esme.

He would do just the same thing as he did before: he would run.

Without thinking, Carlisle pushed himself off the wall and went to her. He scooped an arm beneath her shoulders and another under her knees and almost stumbled back at the weightlessness of her.

A knitted blanket, stained brown with old blood, slipped from her lap and he caught it in his fingers, shuddering a harrowed breath.

Run.

His feet propelled him from the morgue, and Carlisle sprinted from the backdoors of the Trinity Hospital, her body in his arms and her blood sticking to his teeth.

Edward flexed his fingers against each other, missing the comforting crack that used to shake his knuckles, and lay his pen next to the loose paper on the table. He looked around him, his studies cluttering the small dining table, and got up from his chair.

His eyes scanned the low light of the living room, moon slinking in through the window to the back garden, and in an instant he could hear Carlisle’s doctor voice in his head, you shouldn’t be concentrating in the dark.

Edward huffed a laugh, vampire eyes don’t fatigue, he retorted to the phantom admonishment. Nevertheless, he crossed the room and started to light a fire in the nest of the fireplace. By the time the wood was crackling, he had lit a candle and brought it to his place at the table. It cast the deep purples of the dark room in a warming glow.

He sat back at the table and began to read over his work by candlelight, his fingers idly drumming a tune onto his thigh.

He had read no more than a single paragraph when he caught Carlisle’s familiar scent on the air. His brow creased in confusion, glancing towards the hallway. Carlisle wasn’t due home for some hours yet.

Edward flared his nostrils again and stilled, straining to listen for Carlisle’s footsteps on the stone path outside.

A minute passed and Edward heard the unmistakable beating of feet running at an inhuman speed. He looked up toward the backdoor in enough time to see Carlisle barrel through with burdened arms.

Edward stared in consternation at Carlisle as he crossed the room, expression frenzied, muscles bunched tightly, to ceremoniously lay the package out on the living room sofa. Edward stood slowly and gingerly approached him, eyes widening in horror when the package took the shape of a human woman, on the brink of death by the sound of her weak heart and faltering breath.

The room was still and silent as the men stared down at the woman. Night followed Her creatures into the room through the back door still open, throwing Her dark embrace around them. With a creeping chill he hadn’t felt in three years, Edward realised that the room was mute. Carlisle’s head was completely devoid of thought, something Edward had never witnessed.

He chanced a glance at the man and audibly gulped at the sight. The light of the fire threw Carlisle’s face into abominable brilliance, the warm glow lit the pale space beneath his eyes and tossed beastly shadows beneath his brows and nose. His chin was dark too, blood smeared, and when Carlisle’s frenzied gaze turned on him, Edward took an unconscious step back at the demonic blood red stare.

“What have you done?” Edward whispered.

Carlisle heaved a breath and huffed it out like a bull. He moved back across the living room.

Edward heard the back door click shut gently as he peered down at the woman on the sofa. She was barely dressed, her body lay awkwardly, broken and deathly pale. He could smell the blood cooling in the air though he couldn’t see where it was coming from. He didn’t dare touch her to find out.

Carlisle dragged a chair from the dining table across the wooden floor to the side of the sofa before sitting in it resolutely. He folded one hand over the other as if in prayer, elbows on his knees, chin on his knuckles and stared at the woman. Still, his mind made no sound.

Edward stared at him expectantly for a full minute. “Carlisle.”

Carlisle physically cringed from the sound but spoke, his voice low and deadly calm. “I think it’s quite obvious what I’ve done.”

Of all the things Carlisle might have said, Edward was not expecting that. “Why is she here, Carlisle? Why is there a woman in our house?” Carlisle remained silent, his eyes trained on the woman, incensed, and it infuriated Edward more than the blood-inspired thirst tempting him. “I think I deserve an explanation, Carlisle! Why did you bring her here?” He demanded, raising his voice.

Carlisle’s blood red eyes shot a deadened glare at him and the sight of it knocked the wind out of Edward. Since waking up in Carlisle’s home three years prior, Edward had not known fear. Frustration and anger made unpleasant company of him, but fear was unnecessary when he was the apex predator. He began to rethink that as he looked at his creator, strengthened on the fuel of human blood, weakened on his faltering faith. The predatory look in Carlisle’s eyes were frightening but the fear that knotted Edward’s stomach was born of the fact that this man did not look like Carlisle at all. The room chilled with the realisation that Carlisle was fallible and violently so.

“I brought her here for the same reason I brought you here.” Carlisle’s voice didn’t waver, but it held no intonation. It was even and fatally quiet.

Edward just shook his head as he stared down at him in horror. “I can’t believe this. Why her?”

“Because I bit her, Edward,” he ground out, anger starting to bleed into his words.

Edward goaded the emotion on, more confident at handling anger than he was at handling the lethal flatness. “And why did you bite her, Carlisle?”

Carlisle snarled, “you know very well why I bit her!” He spat. “You can see it in my head.”

“So say it!” Edward was furious. How dare Carlisle do this? Carlisle’s success had given Edward faith. How did this man dare to drag him into this un-life, to coach him like a guide and then rip the stability from underneath him just as he found his footing? “Or are you a coward? Are you really that happy to sit in silence and pretend that you’ve done nothing wrong. God forbid you do something wrong, God forbid the Great Carlisle Cullen fails.” Edward was working himself up into a shout and he felt his own anger at this terrible existence pour from his mouth. “Well God doesn’t forbid it! God doesn’t make rules for you and I, Carlisle. Look at us. Look at her. You’re going to believe there’s a god waiting on your soul after you—”

Carlisle’s lip curled back over his teeth in animalistic rage. “I claim no such thing!” Carlisle stood with such force; he sent the chair careening back into the wall on the other side of the room. “I never claimed to be perfect, Edward. By all means, impose your idealisations on me but don’t expect me to live up to them!”

“Then who will? Who’s going to be the good guy if it’s not you? You can’t do this,” Edward gestured to the prone unconscious woman, “and expect to be the good guy.”

Carlisle growled and took a menacing step toward Edward, “don’t you think I know that? Two hundred and sixty years on this planet in the devil’s image and I never succumbed. Did you think that was fun? Did you think it was easy for me?”

Edward’s nose scrunched in anger and he huffed but ultimately, he had nothing to say to that.

“Well, it wasn’t.” Carlisle spat lowly. “It was hard. It was a labour that I bore, intended to bear for the rest of my days. I don’t need you to tell me that resisting didn’t make me good.” Carlisle paused for a moment, shifting his eyes back to the woman on the sofa. “I never claimed to be good. I do what I do in spite of myself. I am the antithesis. If you lost sight of that, let this make it clear.”

Edward regarded Carlisle carefully, the self-hatred dripping from his tongue, the anesthetised look in his eye. In all their years of companionship, of counsel and affection, Edward had never seen Carlisle’s jaw set with such hatred. In truth, he thought it was likely that Carlisle had never felt such hatred. His chest was seized with an overwhelming sense of pity, accompanied by an anger at the earth and everything on it.

Edward closed his eyes and sighed before retrieving the chair once again. Ignoring the broken arm, he placed it behind Carlisle and watched the man sit.

Several minutes passed in silence between them, only the crackling fire and the still steady thrumming of the single human heart filling the space.

“If you could fetch the blankets from my bed. And perhaps a shirt, too.”

Edward nodded, not the least bit grateful for something to do. The silence of Carlisle’s mind unnerved him.

He flitted up the stairs and back down, two woollen blankets and a cotton button up shirt in his arms.

Carlisle muttered a ‘thank you’ and took the shirt first. Edward watched the doctor carefully dress the woman, averting his gaze in an uncomfortable concoction of propriety and pity. Carlisle slipped her arms into the cotton and buttoned it closed over her before laying the blankets over her limp frame. His hands were shaky and desperately gentle.

Finally, Carlisle locked his gaze on Edward again. “Thank you.” It wasn’t the first time he had said it but Edward swallowed the meaning behind those words. He heard the thoughts Carlisle didn’t have words to speak. Thank you for helping me. Thank you for helping her. Thank you for your patience, for not giving up on me, for being here.

Edward gave a joyless smile, reaching a hand over to rub Carlisle’s arm in support. Neither man was used to the comfort flowing in this direction. Edward had never been the crutch before but there was something soothing about it, something maturing. Their bond ran deep – that was enough for Edward.

He bit his lip, “how did you let this happen?” He spoke softly and, despite his words, his voice was devoid of judgement.

Carlisle swallowed around a knot of emotion, but it didn’t shift, instead it pooled in eyes that couldn’t relieve him. Another curse of this body, emotion was inescapable, relief unattainable. “Ten years ago I was living in Columbus, Ohio. I had a patient – oblique tibia fracture.” He paused and looked over the face of the woman, wincing at the blue of her lips. “She was so lively. She had a fierce set of lungs,” he smiled softly at the memory, “fiercer humour.” He sobered somewhat. “She was so alive.”

Carlisle’s eyes looked on as his mind wrapped him up in the image and laughter of the young girl. She had lived in her sixteen short years in a way that Carlisle had not encountered in his 270 or so, and it had made him feel alive. Her spirit was infectious, more striking was her honesty, and he remembered acutely how it seemed to seep from her body and straight into his venom filled mouth. The scent of that furiously alive and kind heart had teased him. He, who had lived dead for so long.

“You were really tempted?” Edward asked in amazement. Despite the evidence before them that Carlisle Cullen could indeed be tempted by human blood, Edward found it hard to reconcile that with the doctor he knew, the man that had spent several lifetimes immunising himself to his own urges.

Carlisle nodded. “Well, it was certainly the closest I ever came to entertaining the idea. But truthfully, I didn’t.” He shrugged one shoulder; his eyes fixed on his unconscious charge. “I had hunted the night before. And she was too…” precious, pure, wholesome. “I couldn’t. I overcame it without another thought.”

Edward watched the older man’s face. “But not this time.”

“No. Not this time.”

Edward could remember the pull of blood from his first year so vividly - he found it easy to sympathise with Carlisle. How many times had Edward himself contemplated murder for the sake of slaking his tormented throat? How many times had Carlisle been the person to hold him back and console him afterward?

Edward chewed his cheek between his teeth, a human habit. “Carlisle,” he began gently, “it’s our nature—”

“Don’t.” Carlisle looked at him, lip curled in disgust. Edward hoped the gold would return to his eyes soon, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever get used to the blood red staring back at him now. “Please, Edward. Don’t excuse this.”

Edward offered a half-hearted shrug. “You’ve resisted for so long, Carlisle…”

Both men stilled at the deep lungful of air the woman on the sofa suddenly took. She did not move or make any other sound but the sight of her body fighting death seemed to spur Carlisle on.

“Two hundred and fifty-eight years.” He reached his hand out to tuck the blanket closer to her chin, “that’s how long our nature has not been enough to excuse this. I won’t let it be an excuse now that I’ve finally…” He trailed off. Carlisle didn’t have words to aptly describe what it was that he had done. It was several sins rolled into one. It was violent and crass, and it was giving in. Worst of all, it was damning. He had damned himself and in doing so, had damned Esme Platt along with him. “You cannot change the standard just as you slip below it.”

Edward couldn’t argue with that. They shared the forlorn silence for a moment, even the crackle of the fire seemed sombre in the presence of the woman on the couch. “You remember her name.” It wasn’t a question, Carlisle hadn’t known the privilege of forgetting in centuries.

“Esme. Esme Platt.”

Edward watched the man’s brow crease in pain and passion, his eyes gloss with unabashed emotion, as he spoke the woman’s name. “Esme,” he echoed softly.

Carlisle reached a hand out to her again, his fingers adoring and gentle when he moved a matted lock of curl from her neck. His fingertips trembled and he cringed away from her skin, hesitantly returning his hand to his rest in front of his chin. Edward could hear every ounce of care in the man’s actions; perhaps too late, but certainly sorry.

“What will you do?” Edward asked.

Carlisle huffed a humourless laugh. “There’s nothing I can do now. It’s done. I can only wait and hope the venom is enough.”

“I didn’t ask what you can do. I asked, ‘what will you do’?”

Carlisle regarded Edward, seeming to understand what he meant. Edward could hear the Carlisle-shaped cogs turning the older man’s mind now, the familiar hum of his mind as he worked out a plan of action. Edward smiled to himself at the ease he felt loosen his chest as his friend seemed to come back to himself.

“I need to forge some paperwork for the morgue.” Carlisle nodded to himself. “I’ll call in sick with the hospital for now. I can’t leave her.” He looked at Edward suddenly, daring the younger man to suggest such a thing.

Edward simply nodded. “And when she wakes up?”

“When she wakes up, I’ll be here. I’ll do anything I can, anything she needs.” I’ll spend my life trying to liberate her from the Hell I’ve damned her to.

Edward heard him loud and clear, nodded and turned away, retrieving his shoes from the hallway.

“Where are you going?” Carlisle eyed him.

“To hunt. I’ll bring something back for you.” He voiced casually as he tied his shoelaces. He glanced up at Carlisle’s perplexed features. “You want the first thing she sees to be Beelzebub? You’ll scare the heartbeat back into her.” He gestured to his own eyes.

Despite himself, Carlisle huffed a laugh. “I’d appreciate that. Thank you.” Edward nodded and made for the backdoor, but Carlisle caught one of his hands in both of his own. He stared up at Edward for a moment. “Thank you, Edward.”

Edward gave him a soothing smile, once again hearing the words Carlisle couldn’t say. “You’re welcome.”

He left through the backdoor and Carlisle was alone in the house, the spit of the fire and the steady thrum of Esme’s heart a soundtrack to his thoughts. He heaved a sigh and watched Esme for a long moment, revelling in the silence whilst he could. If Edward was anything to go by, it wouldn’t be long until the screaming started.

“I’m sorry.” He whispered to her. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry you’re here.” His voice faltered and cracked, and he couldn’t continue. Carlisle bit down on his knuckle, using the pain of his razor-sharp teeth to resolve himself. “I’m here now. You’ll be okay, I’ll make sure of it.”

His whisper rang with the weight of promise, bolder than his vow into priesthood. He would offer her his whole arsenal and, if she accepted, he’d spend the rest of his days paying penance to her.

The broken wooden chair creaked under his weight. Carlisle’s gaze did not lift from her face. His throat, raw with emotion, constricted and he softly hummed Liszt’s sonata, comforting her as he began his vigil by her side.