When she sat still and didn't say anything were the times that Carlisle hated himself the most.

Her eyes, now a cold burgundy, stared at nothing but some sadness lurked behind them. Her red lips would pull down into a straight line, and she would make all of her features neutral. This always completed her neutral mask; when her face would conceal itself from Edward.

He knew she had endured much in her twenty six years, more than even himself and Edward combined could have witnessed in their human years. She was hard to the world now. He understood that. What he didn't understand, or maybe he didn't want to, he couldn't decide, was why she didn't want to talk about it. Usually when he saw a patient in the same situation as she, they wanted to talk. Vent, explain, and beg him to make it better, but she handled, or maybe she didn't, her grief without any other person's, living or dead, help. She didn't want to talk; she wouldn't look at him after he had taught her how to hunt.

Something about her drew Carlisle in and, as much as he hated to admit it, he wanted her to speak. She hadn't used her voice, her new voice, since she was changed. All she'd said was, “I'm thirsty.” The only other time she used her voice was when she wanted to go on a walk or to use her simple manners. She seemed decent; he knew she was decent. What he didn't understand about this, was how such a beautiful girl ended up with such a sick and twisted husband. It baffled him. Shouldn't she have the ability to make that decision for her? He had. He had been in what he thought to be love, now he saw he was infatuated with the illusion of love, it hadn't been love in the least, merely an obsession with something he'd once known.

This was her. And that is what killed him on the inside. How someone so vibrant, so radiant, so forgiving and friendly, had been dealt such a horrible hand in life. He knew her; knew much about her. She was Esme Anne Platt, the same girl who had climbed a tree about ten years ago and broke her leg, and she was here. She was the only girl Carlisle had thought about for months, years, after he'd first seen her. Edward had threatened him with numerous ways to die…again, he thought wryly. Carlisle hadn't cared, that silly illusion had presented itself again, and this time, he knew it was no illusion. The way he eyes, already light, would positively glisten at the sight of him. And her lips would pull into the softest, warmest smile he'd ever known. How he longed for that now.