Love Awakens Part 5. Chapter 1. April 1922.

"I stood there for a moment, waiting for my life to flash before my eyes, only to realize that there wasn't anything there. I had been completely drained. I couldn't feel anymore. It must have been freezing. . ." Her voice trailed off, her golden eyes focused on the gentle sway of the curtains at her bedroom window. I could smell the fresh scent of Spring brought in on the draft around the windowpanes. "I don't remember being cold. I don't remember being afraid."

I remembered that January night all too clearly—watching as the life escape her. I had been afraid: afraid she was too far gone, afraid I would lose her, afraid she would hate me for what I had done if I didn't. She looked down at her hands, wringing them in her lap, the fabric of her skirt twisted around them. I reached up slowly, sliding my fingers down over her silken honey waves of hair, the sunlight glinting off the individual strands.

"I was terrified, standing there looking down into the uncertain abyss," I confessed after a space of silence. She turned her head almost quickly enough to startle me. I felt my reflexes reacting as if I was under attack, but the look in her eyes melted the tension away as soon as I noted it.

Her delicate, arched eyebrows drew together, her lips parting slightly, but she didn't speak. I considered my response before elaborating. "I told you that it wasn't my choice, how I was attacked and left for dead, or the one who bit me just didn't care. I don't know. I used to want to know, at first, but I don't anymore." I shook my head, trying to toss the thought aside. "I tried to kill myself. . ." I paused when I saw the expression of horror that crossed her features. I didn't tell her that I wasn't terrified of pain or death but of the idea that I might survive.

I slid my hand around her shoulders, feeling the individual woven cotton strands in the fabric of her dress, the coolness of her skin beneath it. Wrapping my fingers protectively around her shoulder, I pulled her close. She reached up to tuck her hair behind her right ear before brushing her cheek gently against the edge of my shoulder, resting her head against me. The simple, gentle gesture caused a powerful sensation of love and longing to wash through me, and I reached up with my free hand to run my fingers across her cheek.

"I don't even want to think about you dying, Carlisle," she said softly, her voice broken as if she might cry.

The words carried with them the weight of all the emotions that had driven me thoughtlessly to her bedside in the hospital. I had her dying body in my arms before I had even begun to consider the full effects, the breadth of the potential consequences of my actions. I couldn't then, and still couldn't now, quite understand. Even as broken as she was, deeply, and not just physically, I saw in her a kind of beauty that surpassed anything I had ever witnessed. Nothing I had ever seen or experienced, not the paintings of masters, the operas of maestros, or the cathedrals of geniuses, nothing humankind had created to honor God, or even anything that God had created under the sun was more beautiful than Esme. I simply could not imagine her dying.

"You don't have to worry about that," I assured her, kissing her fragrant hair gently. "None of that works. I tried drowning myself first. I thought that breathing had to be necessary, but that is when I learned it isn't. I tried jumping off of cliffs—progressively higher ones. At first, I always landed on my feet, like a cat." I laughed slightly. Then, I ran my hand down her loose curls again, coiling one around my finger and setting it free, watching it bounce back into place perfectly. "I remember that though—that last blank moment of each time. I remember everything."

"I had a final awareness of consciousness," Esme said after a pause, her voice barely audible. "It happened so fast, and the pain came suddenly and violently, all consuming, as if my entire body was just smashed and crumbled. I just remember thinking 'forgive me' as this white flash exploded behind my eyes. Then, everything went black."

There was another long silence and I wasn't sure how to respond. I wasn't even sure she wanted me to say anything. I swallowed hard, squeezing her arm lightly. She shifted and I loosened my grip to allow her to move where she wanted. Both of her arms slid around me, hugging me to her and I wrapped mine around her as well.

"I thought that I was being pulled up out of the water—that is what it felt like at first, before I opened my eyes. I thought the pain was from the fall. The bite itself, I don't think I felt it. Do you remember it, when you were bitten?" she asked cautiously.

I nodded. "I do. It happened so fast. My attacker came from behind, which surprised me because I had just been chasing him. He moved so quickly that I didn't even register losing sight of him before he was dragging me away and throwing me down face first into the gutter. It knocked the wind out of me. I heard this horrible snapping sound. I think some of my ribs broke, maybe one punctured a lung. Pain ripped through my chest and back. I remember my face being slammed against the ground. I thought I was going to drown in the filth flowing down the sides of the streets. I couldn't scream. I tried, but the only thing that I could manage was this horrible wet, gurgling sound. I threw up before I started to lose consciousness, coughing up blood. I knew I was helpless and dying. I must have passed out, from pain, fear, blood loss, I don't know, but he didn't finish the job. Maybe the mob caught up with him. All I know is that I was alone when I woke up. The first thing I saw was the light from the torch I had been carrying flickering nearby, and I thought that I was on fire. Then, I was too terrified to scream."

Esme pulled me closer, pressing her face into the curve of my shoulder. I heard her take a slow breath.

"I thought I was in Heaven," she said with a choked laugh.

"Why?" It came out before I thought to question how insensitive it might have sounded, but she didn't seem fazed by it.

"You," she replied, turning her face up to look into my eyes. "The first thing I saw was you and that was my first conscious thought. I realized I was in pain, but it seemed like an afterthought, and I wondered if I was drugged or hallucinating then, but Heaven was my first thought. What about you?"

I shook my head. My experience had been quite the opposite: I had thought that I was in Hell. "I felt the pain before I even had my eyes open. As soon as I did though, open my eyes, I knew something wasn't right. I remember making the decision to try to pull myself up. I rolled over, still thinking I was on fire, and the least little effort caused excruciating pain, but movement already felt different. I think I must have needed glasses. We had them then, but they weren't very good and the exams weren't as precise. I could see well enough to read and function, so I didn't have any. Anyway, the vision correction was the most startling thing to me, which started happening almost immediately. It was, in fact, my first sign that my body was actually changing."

"What color were your eyes?" she asked, reaching up and carefully brushing her fingertip across the eyelashes of my left eye.

"Blue," I answered, blinking, surprised that even the feeling of her finger on the tips of my eyelashes prompted sensations of both love and longing.

"Blue like dark blue, blue green, or cornflower blue?"

"Clear blue, like the sky when the clouds dissipate after the Spring rain," I said. "And yours were a warm, rich honey brown."

"You remember?" she questioned, her voice softening.

"Of course." I remembered watching the red blooming, bleeding away the spirited dark color of her irises—a color I purposely committed to memory.

"What happened after that though?" she asked carefully. "After you woke up and knew something wasn't right?"

"It was fairly simple to deduce, even despite the pain and panic," I explained. "I had been hunting vampires. I knew I had found some and sorely underestimated them. I had been bitten and I wasn't dead. I was changing. I certainly couldn't go home; I knew that I could never see my father again. I crawled into a nearby cellar and waited. I had no concept of time, really. I used all my energy trying to concentrate on staying still, not screaming. I prayed that I would die."

The confession felt staggering now. Saying it to Esme was something completely different than thinking it then had been, than even remembering it. I was looking at the window again, musing about the suffering feeling as the last bits of my humanity were being destroyed. Had I known then that I was being preserved for this, to hold her in my arms, I wouldn't have ever thought those things. I wasn't certain words had the capacity to convey the entirety of that, so I turned to kiss her instead.

It was meant to be a loving gesture, but it rapidly grew heated. Her mouth fell open against mine, and she sighed against my lips. I inhaled through my mouth, breathing her in before sliding my tongue past her lips to taste her. My entire body stiffened when she returned the gesture, her back arching, pressing her body against mine. I leaned over her, one hand against the bed to brace myself, the other sliding up her back until it was tangled in her hair at the base of her skull, holding her head in place. She followed suit, gripping my arm tightly as she slid her other hand through my hair. It nearly sent me over the edge when she whispered my name against my lips breathlessly.

"I'm glad that I didn't," I said, pressing my lips firmly against hers once more, staring into her eyes, which were completely focused on mine.

"Me too," she answered quietly.

The thoughts came crashing together as we righted ourselves again. I scooted back onto the bed, leaning against the headboard and she settled into my arms. I had thought the searing pain from the venom was actually because I was on fire after I was bitten. I had never tried that—burning myself. I had ran far away from the only others of my kind that I had found, telling myself I had to flee from my home, my father.

I hadn't asked Aro, Marcus, or Caius how I might end myself; I enjoyed many aspects of their company for some time, but I never got involved in their politics and was unaware of the details of their punishment of the rebels amongst our kind for a long time. They seemed to find me extraordinary, baffling in some ways, but not deviant; therefore, I was never threatened by them. There were many things I chose not to ask them that I might have—more about how our kind are created, how they had met their mates. Despite my own terrible loneliness, I had resolved to accept my fate as a lone wanderer in the world. I could not imagine myself, at that point, condemning anyone to this existence, and I certainly couldn't imagine myself in love. Or, rather, I couldn't imagine anyone in love with me.

"Now that I think about it, I was really foolish," I said with a slight laugh as Esme slipped her hand in mine.

"What do you mean?" she asked gently.

"If I had really wanted to die right away, I could have just sacrificed myself to my father and his followers. I met others later, and they knew how to destroy our kind. I could have asked. Strange that I was so otherwise inquisitive," I mused. "But maybe it wasn't sheer stupidity or subconscious fear."

"Maybe you didn't want to die," she offered.

"Maybe I was just being made ready to be with you," I suggested with a small smile.

She didn't seem pleased by this theory though, frowning in response. "That sounds very romantic. And I love you so much, Carlisle," she replied, one eyebrow twitching slightly. "But I'm not really sure how some of the things that happened to me might have made me ready or better for you. I would have loved you anyway. I just can't justify that kind of violence."

I started to apologize, for saying the wrong thing and for the things that had happened to her, but then I realized that I knew very little about the details of that. I knew she had left her husband and family because of the way they had treated her. She had stated that Charles, her first husband, was a violent drunk and that she did not want to raise her child in that environment. Left with no other solution, she ran away. I knew that she had lost her son and attempted suicide in her grief. She hadn't offered more, and I had assumed that meant she did not like talking about it. Maybe she hadn't wanted to talk about it before, but maybe she was ready now. Maybe I was supposed to ask.

"Do you want to talk about it?" I questioned.