Story Notes: Special thanks to TheUnderStudy for beta'ing & evieeden for banner making.
This is AU in that these are scenes from the human lives of the Cullen family. I'm a history geek, to be honest, and the periods they lived in fascinate me so I tried to write them as realistically as possible. Each chapter has six scenes from various points in the human lives of each of the seven Cullens, the last always being their last moment as a mortal human.
It will be posted in the order that they were born to their mortal lives. It's finished, so all chapters will post quickly.
I hope you like it...
Twilighted validation beta:whynot
Author's Chapter Notes: This is Carlisle's story...
If any one of the house of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn among them eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from among his people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life. Therefore I have said to the people of Israel, No person among you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger who sojourns among you eat blood. "Any one also of the people of Israel, or of the strangers who sojourn among them, who takes in hunting any beast or bird that may be eaten shall pour out its blood and cover it with earth. For the life of every creature is its blood: its blood is its life. Therefore I have said to the people of Israel, You shall not eat the blood of any creature, for the life of every creature is its blood. Whoever eats it shall be cut off." (Leviticus 17:10-14)
I wasn't listening closely as my father ranted on and on about the latest scourge he'd found to be threatening the very humanity that we all so well knew and loved. It was vampires and I thought it bordered on the ridiculous.
My thoughts were blasphemous, on a good day, and I as sat in the church and listened to him speak. I was certain they were presently condemning me to hell.
I didn't care, though.
It had only been a week since Anne and the child still growing in her were killed in the fire. This was, by all accounts, the remembrance service for my wife and the child that would have been in her arms had a few more weeks been allowed to pass. Were I my father, I would have picked something faintly more appropriate to say.
Anne deserved the world and I couldn't help but believe that I'd given her a very poor life. She told me a thousand times that she had all she wanted in the world, but didn't she deserve more?
I loved her, though, and I was too heartbroken to tell my father my thoughts.
Anne had always told me that I should stand up to him; that I should not let him rule me. But I didn't listen.
He was my father and he was to be respected.
My father said that Anne must have sinned greatly to have her life snuffed out. Those were his words, not mine, so young. When I reminded him, again, about the child she carried, he said the sin must have been even greater for God to deny the child a chance at life as well.
That's when he raised his eyes to me and asked what sin I had committed to deny my child a chance at life.
I had only one answer on my lips as I went into the rainy night; only one answer I knew he would accept, "Marrying Anne."
While the meat was yet between their teeth, before it was consumed, the anger of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord struck down the people with a very great plague. (Numbers 11:33)
My father had been livid when I said that my sin was marrying Anne. He was even more outraged that I refused to seek his guidance for how to right that wrong and cleanse my soul. However, I could never cleanse my soul of marrying Anne. I wore her love as much as I wore the skin I was born in. I would rather be burned at the stake than pretend like loving her was anything other than a gift from God.
"Give me your attention, son," my father demanded as he lit a candle on the table. "Anne has been gone these two weeks now. It is time you get to work and do the work of our Lord."
I had worked, when Anne was with me. I ran a bookstore for her father; his eyesight was too far gone to run it any longer himself.
Anne was the only one home when the fire broke out. A partially thatched roof and a building filled with brittle old papers was a true recipe for disaster. I should have been there, I should have saved her. Instead, my father had sent word that he needed my assistance and I had gone.
I would hate myself for eternity. I could have saved her. I would have.
I made my most solemn vow in that moment. I would never again allow myself to smile or laugh or do any of the things that Anne had so loved to do.
They sacrificed to demons that were no gods, to gods they had never known, to new gods that had come recently, whom your fathers had never dreaded. (Deuteronomy 32:17)
I stood at my father's right hand side, turning the pages of his Bible as he preached on the evils among us. Again he spoke of vampires, but this time witches were equally the focus of his attention; simple heretics apparently not being enough anymore.
At present, he was seeking volunteers to form a hunting party to seek out these abominations.
I knew I would lead one of the groups. I'd already been told that I would.
I didn't want to. It seemed a waste of time and extremely dangerous.
Then again, danger was calling me. Perhaps I would be killed. Then, having died doing the work of our Lord, I could join Anne and our child.
We were going to call our child John, were we to be blessed with a son, and Mary, were we to be blessed with a daughter.
My father neither knew nor cared about that. He'd never approved of Anne, calling the daughter of a shopkeeper too low for the apparent high class that I wasn't entirely sure that I inhabited.
Yes, I would carry out this duty assigned to me; all in the hope that I would die.
I could all but hear Anne scolding me for such thoughts. Without her by my side, it hardly mattered anymore.
My father need never know the true reason behind my sudden zealousness.
There are those whose teeth are swords, whose fangs are knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, the needy from among mankind. (Proverbs 30:14)
For the first time since the fire that took Anne from me, I ventured into a bookshop. I wanted, no, I needed to research vampires as much as I possibly could.
My father had found enough willing volunteers to form two parties. One would focus on witches, hunting those that hid deep in the folds of society and bringing them into the light of day. The other group would seek out vampires. The vampires were to be killed immediately because their teeth were like swords and they would kill us if given half a chance.
I volunteered to lead that more dangerous hunting party.
I don't know that my father had ever been more proud of me.
I turned the pages of a book that was filled with vivid and gory descriptions of every manner of vampires. There was the incubus and the succubus and countless others that I'd never knew were said to exist, I couldn't help but wonder how this fit in with the true teaching of God and Jesus. Would They really want us to smite another being without ever trying to understand that being?
The God that I loved before He took Anne from me would not.
So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. (John 6:53-21:25)
For once, I was alone in the church and I took the chance to scan through the Bible that, aside from turning pages for my father, I hadn't looked at since Anne was killed.
Anne was Christianity personified. We didn't have much when we were married and yet she dropped coins into the hands of the washerwomen and fruit sellers that had small children clutching at their skirts. When she saw the very worst, she searched for the best inside of it. She refused to believe that there wasn't good deep inside of every being, accepted by society or otherwise.
When I discovered it, that all Christianity is based on a loose idea of vampirism, the doubter in me wonder why I had agreed to take on a mission against what Jesus himself had said. The believer in me, though, won the day, convincing me that such a literal, subjective interpretation of things was completely irrational and sacrilegious.
I didn't fall to my knees and beg forgiveness from the figure above the altar, but I did steady my resolve. I would do what my father had asked me to do. Why? Perhaps because he believed that his Father, the Father that created us all, had asked him to do it.
Sadly, that was enough for me.
You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. (1 Corinthians 10:21)
The London night was dark save for the flaming torches we held in our hands.
The plan for the night was to go into the poorest parts of the city, to venture into the sewers beneath the streets and to destroy any vampires we found residing there.
A dozen young men, myself included, were filled with false bravado as we ventured into the street. We were positively certain that we could defeat whatever supernatural beast might confront them.
As we slogged through yet another dreary and dank sewer, I found myself beginning to wish for a supernatural beast to confront, or maybe even kill me. I was to be disappointed. There were none to be had.
Not until we were again at street level did I feel the change in the air.
Convinced that it was simply a result of the adrenaline draining from me, I wasn't paying attention to what was happened ahead of me. The grate on the street opened suddenly and three waifish figures floated into the gloomy London night.
They charged at us and we twelve brave souls fled like cowards into the night.
I'd ran six steps away when I stopped, waiting to be killed. "I love you, Anne," I murmured as time slowed nearly to a stop.
The sudden, flaming burn on my neck told me that things might not turn out quite as I hoped…
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