BEAUTY, Shining in Company with the Celestial Forms
Minisinoo

Mid-September brought the first cases of Spanish Influenza to Chicago, carried north and east from Kansas City.  Shivers of fear gripped not only the city but the nation.  In Edward's personal circle, Emily Wells was the first to succumb and she faded quickly, dying on the same day her brother first set foot in France, although they'd learn of that coincidence only later.  The rest of Teddy's family fell ill soon after, but Emily was the only fatality.  His parents recovered.  Edward's family wasn't so lucky.

Neither was Teddy.  Yet it wasn't influenza that laid him low.  Only two weeks into his first tour, he had the bad luck to fall victim to a German bombardment of his trench and the last thing he knew was ripping pain and the deafening blast of a grenade.  He woke in the hospital two days later, less his right leg from mid-thigh down but at least in possession of his life -- which was more than could be said for half his company.

And back in Chicago, Edward Masen, Senior came home from his law office early with chills.

Edward Masen, Junior never received another letter from Second Lieutenant Theodore Wells.  His own death-non-death occurred before Teddy's first missive from France could reach home -- never mind news of his maiming injury.  Edward Cullen, however, collected all the letters, a backlog of mail that came with the estate he inherited as a "cousin," thanks to doctored wills and the chaos following the pandemic.  By the time Teddy made it back to Chicago at the war's close, all three of the Masens had graves in the churchyard, and it was Teddy who climbed out of his wheelchair with his mother's help to weep bitterly and slide fingers along a name etched in granite.  "Edward . . . " he breathed.  "You should've been safe back here.  How could a just God spare me, but take you?"

Edward watched from just under a thousand yards away, wrapped in a long coat and black fedora pulled low against recognition and the bitter wind of January 1920.  He dared go no closer although he'd been turned over a year.  His eyes were gold now, not red.  Yet Carlisle had impressed on him the rules of their new life, and he worried less about killing Teddy himself than earning the Volturi's disfavor if he told his friend the truth.  Edward might be strong enough not to endanger Teddy but the Volturi wouldn't hesitate, and he'd take no chances with Teddy's life.  He didn't need to talk to Teddy, in any case.  His newfound abilities allowed him to hear all too well the quagmire of guilt and shame and anger roiling in Teddy's mind -- the loss of faith, the loss of ideals, the loss of his future.

Philosophy had failed them.

From a distance, Edward followed Teddy's life for a year.  Carlisle didn't object, just waited for Edward to learn from experience the truth all vampires eventually faced -- it was too painful to stay close to the humans one had known in life.  Edward couldn't speak to Teddy, couldn't reveal himself, could only watch as Teddy mourned and drank himself to sleep each night or smoked far too much.  But time healed, at least for humans, and perhaps a little for vampires.  Slowly, Teddy began to mend in heart and soul; he met new people and took up with old friends who'd survived the war or the pandemic.  After a while, it was easier for Edward to step back and stop playing voyeur as Teddy relearned how to live.

About the same time, a desperate Carlisle came home with the broken body of Esme Platt Evenson.  Edward looked on in horror as he realized Carlisle had bitten her.  "What did you do?"

"She jumped off a cliff; they brought her to the morgue but she wasn't dead yet.  I . . . I knew her once, Edward.  I was her doctor when she was young and happy."  Carlisle's face was a puzzle and Edward could see his foster-father's mental confusion clearly.  Even Carlisle didn't know why he'd acted as he had, but he hid it beneath confusion about the young woman's motivations.  "I don't know why she jumped; I don't know why a girl as full of love and joy as Esme would choose to kill herself.  I had to save her life.  I'm a doctor; I had to save her life."

Anger, not sympathy, overcame Edward.  "We're not living, Carlisle.  This isn't life, or didn't you notice?  You've stolen her soul like you stole mine, and without asking her first either.  Maybe she wanted to die.  Did you consider that?"

Carlisle shot Edward a mildly annoyed look.  "Nobody wants to die -- you, the mind reader, should know that.  They just don't know how to go on living in their current circumstances.  I've changed her circumstances."

"I'm sure she'll be very grateful," Edward snapped.  "If you had any real compassion, you'd drain her dry and let her die before the pain gets too bad."  And he stalked out of the little house they shared in a small Wisconsin town, slamming the door behind him.  He didn't return for days.  When he did, it was only to find that Carlisle hadn't heeded him.  A red-irised Esme was sitting in the kitchen, calmly reading a newspaper.  She smiled at him when he entered and rose, extending a hand.  "You must be Edward?  I'm Esme Evenson."

"Miss Evenson," he replied, taking her hand to bow over it, giving her his best manners.

"Mrs. actually," she said -- sadly.  "It's Mrs. Evenson."  And in a flash, Edward saw it all in her mind, the whole sordid tale -- a marriage of families as much as of individuals, none too different from the match he'd once considered to Teddy's poor, late sister Emily.  But he'd not have been the monster Esme's husband turned out to be.  Edward knew such things happened but it was only whispered about behind hands, brows drawn in sympathy.  After all -- and especially before the war -- what could be done about it?  What God had joined together, let no man put asunder.  Only death was an accepted escape for women in Esme's straights -- hers or her husband's.  Esme, however, had chosen the unexpected path . . . she'd fled when she learned she carried a child.  It wasn't her husband's cruelty that had led her to leap from that cliff -- no, love for her unborn baby had given her the courage to strike out on her own in a world unkind to such women, and Edward was a little awed by such courage.  When she'd lost her son only days after his birth, then she'd lost the will to live.  As Carlisle had said, she hadn't wanted to die, but hadn't known how to go on living.  Edward, who'd never had even a sibling beyond Teddy, much less a son, found the depth of her despair overwhelming.  He hadn't realized grief like that existed until he saw it in her mind.

And he was shamed too; he'd been so sure of his moral high ground.  Now he hung his head to realize that Carlisle had been right, at least partly.  Edward still wasn't convinced Carlisle hadn't stolen Esme's soul, but the state of her soul didn't seem to trouble her.  "I'm glad he saved you," Edward blurted.

Her smiled widened.  "Thank you," she said.  "I know you weren't happy, and I appreciate you trying to think about it from my perspective, but I'm glad he saved me too."  Her graciousness pierced him as much as her honesty.

He tried to accept her -- he did.  Certainly he admired her, and she seemed far more accepting of her new condition than he'd been at first himself, or perhaps she was just drunk on love for her savior.  And that was the problem.  The way she looked at Carlisle -- as if he'd hung the moon and stars -- mildly nauseated Edward, even while he hated himself for the cynicism.  They belonged together, Carlisle and Esme, two sides of one coin, and although intensely private people, their joy and radiance as they fell head over heels in love left Edward cold and outside.  He came to resent Esme as much as he respected her, and how he could feel two such contradictory things at once baffled him until he decided that he had to strike out on his own.  He let rebellion against Carlisle's philosophy conceal his real reasons because his real reasons seemed petty and childish and he didn't want to admit he could be petty and childish.

So in 1927, he left Carlisle and Esme behind to live as a real vampire, even while he refused to shed the blood of innocents.  Instead, he decided to take the truly twisted with him into hell.  Returning to Chicago, he committed himself to help cleanse his hometown.

The beautiful, up-and-coming city that had hosted the 1893 World's Fair wasn't the Southside he found when he returned.  The slide down had begun with Prohibition the year after Edward was turned, and if it had no impact on him personally, he thought Dry Law idiotic.  The quickest way to get people do something was to tell them they couldn't.  And Prohibition did give an opening to men like Johnny Torrio and Big Jim Colosimo, then Al Capone.

Capone had arrived from Brooklyn in 1919, at first a mere lieutenant to Colosimo, but a mixture of ruthlessness and cunning allowed him to climb through the ranks even as Prohibition drove the social wheels that would make Chicago into a haven for the Organization.  Yet if going after the mob had been Edward's original mission, he found that getting to vice kingpins like Capone was nigh on impossible unless he wanted to expose himself and incite the wrath of the Volturi.  Instead, he satisfied himself with listening at keyholes and passing on information to Eliot Ness's Untouchables.  Or he found ways to cut off some of Capone's cash flow.  When the stock market crashed two years after his arrival, economic disaster made things worse for everybody -- except the mob, it seemed.  Edward took on a new mission as a vampiric Robin Hood.  The money he recovered from Capone's operations he redistributed to families in need.  Certainly he didn't need it himself.

It wasn't just the sale of alcohol that financed Capone's business, but gambling, bookie joints, brothels and racketeering, or "protection money."  Edward decided to turn the tables and demand that one of Capone's sport bookmakers turn over the cash from a recent set of races in return for his life -- knowing full well the man's life wouldn't be worth much after losing so much cash.  Such a decision wouldn't end with a meal -- the usual punishment he meted out -- but he liked the poetic justice of it . . . money in exchange for the man's safety (however brief it might be).  He feasted regularly now; he wasn't hungry.

It was the stereotypical "dark and stormy night" that he chose to break into the small bookie office where he knew Capone's money handler would be working.  It certainly wasn't Capone's main headquarters in the Four Deuces; that was too well guarded and breaking in there would be too sensational.  So once again, Edward settled for smaller fish, and his choice of weather -- if somewhat melodramatic -- was also pragmatic.  No moonlight would reveal him, and it was too nasty out for the city police to be patrolling thoroughly . . . even if they could have caught him.  He made quick work of the guards then slipped, still dripping from rain, through the back door.  Upstairs in a corner office, he found a weather-beaten, balding man in a wheelchair, hard at work at a desk beneath a bare lightbulb, sleeves rolled up and ashtray full beside his adding machine.  He was sweating over ledgers, calculating profit and risk.  The stale smell of used-up Camels and overcooked coffee laced the room.

Edward didn't know what alerted the man, perhaps some second sense, but he glanced up, gray eyes narrow and full lips pursed -- and Edward froze just inside the circle of light thrown by the bulb.  There was no escaping now for either of them -- no moment of confusion, no mistaken identity.

Edward faced Teddy Wells twelve years after their last encounter in the flesh, and he could have kicked himself.  If he hadn't been so damn cocky, he'd have checked on the bookie's identity, not just shown up here.  Now, astonishment held him immobile long enough for Teddy to pull a gun.  But Teddy's mouth had fallen open too and the gun barrel wavered.  "Eddie?"  Edward was unchanged, of course.  He would look exactly as Teddy remembered him -- burgundy eyes aside -- and Edward could hear Teddy's mental shock clearly.

Edward stepped back out of the light, but Teddy wasn't fooled.  "Edward?"  His voice cracked and he rubbed his face.  "Am I . . . did I die?  How did I die?"

"You're not dead."  The words were pulled out of Edward almost against his will.  His own dead heart would have frozen if it still beat.  How could this be?  He couldn't do something that would get Teddy killed.  He couldn't.  But how had Teddy -- moral, philosophic Teddy -- become Capone's man?  "What about Plato?" Edward asked, his voice embarrassingly plaintive.

It was, on the face of it, a stupid question, but Teddy understood exactly what he meant.  "Plato lied," he said.  "The real world is corrupt and you can't escape it."

"I don't believe that," Edward said.

Teddy ignored Edward's assertion to ask the more pressing question.  "You died -- didn't you?  Or was it a sham?"

"No," Edward said, unable to lie to Teddy even now -- even if it meant they'd both suffer.  "It was no sham.  I died."

This admission seemed to confound the older man, who rubbed right between his eyebrows.  "Then . . . what happened?  You got better?"  Tense, confused, upset . . . it all fell in on Edward at once and he burst out laughing at Teddy's familiar dry humor, but Teddy just continued to stare.  "It wasn't that funny, Edward."

Getting a hold of himself at last, Edward stepped into the light again.  There seemed little point in hiding, and at least Teddy didn't gasp at the sight of his dark red eyes.  "I'm a vampire."

Teddy let out a bark of laughter himself.  "What?  Catch the flu and turn into Dracula?  Why aren't you drinking my blood then?"

"I'm not hungry at the moment."

Teddy's amusement went out as if snuffed.  "Stop joking around."

"I'm not joking.  I wish I was.  Look at my eyes.  Did I ever have eyes this color?"

"It could be a medical condition -- "

Teddy broke off abruptly as Edward appeared -- instantaneously to him -- in front of the desk.  "Can a human move that fast?"  And reaching across, he touched his friend's face.  "Is a human hand that cold?"

Yet touching Teddy again after so long had an unexpected effect on them both.  Teddy closed his eyes and sobbed hard -- just once -- and Edward couldn't pull away.  The living warmth of Teddy's skin held him like a magnet, pulling him back to a dark-but-less-stormy night twelve years ago, to a tender, whispered confession and a soft-lipped kiss.  "Ted," he breathed out, then sucked in breath and finished, "What the hell are you doing here?  You're not like this; you're a good man."

The question broke the spell and Teddy jerked away from Edward's touch even as Edward moved back.  "I'm broke, Eddie.  I'm broke, dad's dead, and life didn't give me a choice."

Edward sat down on the edge of the table.  "Your dad's dead?  How -- " He cut himself off, substituting, "I'm sorry."

Teddy waved a hand, almost impatiently.  "He blew his brains out with a Colt Single Action three days after Black Monday.  The Crash ruined us.  Completely.  He couldn't face it so he shot himself.  I found him in the bathtub."

Anguish, loss, and venom laced Teddy's voice and thoughts both, and with the ease of long friendship rekindled as if never interrupted, Edward bent forward.  "Tell me."

So Teddy did.  It wasn't a startling story, or even especially original.  The suicide of Charles Wells had left Teddy and his mother with mountains of debt, a failed bank, and the stigma of a family suicide.  They'd had nowhere to turn -- except to the Organization, and Capone had been happy enough to take on a former bank heir as a new bookie.  "So here I am," Teddy finished finally, shrugging and stubbing out the second of two smokes.  "The pay's good and I have all the whiskey I want."  He patted the stump of his right leg.  "It still hurts.  Ghost pain, they call it, but it's a hell of a note when 'ghost pain' keeps you up at night.  Liquor helps.  And cannabis.  Capone supplies me with both."

Despite the matter-of-fact tone, Edward could see the despair eating Teddy's mind as he related his story.  He was out of alternatives and the only thing keeping him alive was the knowledge that his poor mother's heart wouldn't survive it if he opted for his father's escape.  He was all she had left now, and Teddy had always been a good son, responsible.  Edward was sharply reminded of Esme and the overwhelming sense of being TRAPPED.  Teddy didn't even have the outlet of a wife to care for him -- or a lover.  There had been no one after Edward, at least none he'd cared for, only furtive encounters in toilet tea rooms and the dark corners of hidden basement speakos catering to "those people."  Perhaps Edward should have been horrified, but he wasn't the naive seventeen-year-old anymore, and a virgin only in physical fact, not in knowledge.  So rather than horror, his decade-dead heart broke even as his resolve stiffened.

"I'm getting you and your mom out of town," he said, standing so fast it made Teddy start.

"Are you out of your mind?  People don't leave the Organization, Edward.  It's not an option."

"Not an option for normal people.  I'm not normal, or human, and I'm getting you out.  Tonight."

Teddy's eyes narrowed.  "How did you get this way?  A vampire?  And what did you come here for in the first place?  It wasn't to find me.  You were as startled as I was.  I don't even know how the hell you got inside the building.  It's guarded."

"Not anymore," Edward said.  "We're the only people alive in here.  Well, technically, you're the only person alive in here."

Teddy gaped.  "How much muscle have you got working for you?"

"None."

"Edward -- "

But Edward had picked up the gun Teddy had discarded on the desk top and handed it to his friend, handle-first.  "Shoot me."

"What?"

"Shoot me.  Don't worry, you can't hurt me.  And I'm dead anyway, remember?"

Teddy dropped the gun as if it burned him.  "Don't be a jackass."

Retrieving the gun again, Edward raised it to his own head and pulled the trigger.

Only after he'd done it did he realize how Teddy -- survivor of the trenches and son to a man who'd shot himself -- would react.  He'd meant only to prove a point but Teddy let out a wild shout and dove right out of his wheelchair under the desk, falling in the process of course, as he lacked two legs, and banging his head.  Horrified at the flashbacks streaking through Teddy's mind -- the blood of war and blood on white bathroom tile -- Edward dropped to his knees and clasped his friend to him, holding on as tightly as he dared with his unnatural strength.  "It's okay, it's okay -- it's me.  It's now.  It's December 16^th, 1930.  You're with me, Teddy.  You're with me."

It took a couple of minutes before Teddy stopped gasping and shaking and clutching his head.  He'd shat himself too, and mortification made him apologize over and over.  "Stop," Edward said, gripping his wrists.  "Stop.  I didn't think.  It's my fault; you've nothing to apologize for.  Dammit, stop it."

It took another minute, but Teddy finally had control of himself and managed a weak laugh.  "I don't reckon this indignity is something vampires have to worry about."

"No," Edward said, half a smile in his voice.  "I don't piss, shit, bleed, burp, pass gas, or belch."

"Sounds like a miracle."

The smile fell off Edward's mouth.  "I can't eat either -- or not human food -- nor sleep, nor dream."

Teddy's eyebrow had gone up.  "Please tell me your whanger still works, at least."

Edward couldn't help it; he laughed again.  Teddy had always been able to make him laugh even at the worst of times -- and this counted as one of the worst times they'd ever faced together.  "The whanger still works," Edward assured him.

"Well, that's something," Teddy replied.

"It's something," Edward agreed, not going into it.  Instead, Edward lifted him back into his wheelchair.  "We'll get you cleaned up, don't worry.  But I think you can see that I'm pretty indestructible.  Guns can't hurt me.  A wrecking ball couldn't hurt me.  I'd put a dent in it."

"That's why you feel . . . hard?  Like concrete?"

"Yes.  Now -- do you trust me?"

Teddy gave him a faint grin.  "I always trusted you -- first and last."

"Then count to ten and I'll be back before you can finish."  He handed Teddy his gun all the same -- just in case -- then raced back downstairs at vampire speed and divested one of the dead guards of his trousers, a man who looked about Teddy's size.  Fortunately, there was no blood to stain them.  Edward had seen to that already.

These he brought back to Teddy even as his friend reached, ". . . nine . . . "

"Here."

"Damn!" Teddy swore, starting.  "It seems like you appear straight out of thin air!"

"Not quite -- I just move very fast.  I don't turn into a bat, either."

The bat crack made Teddy smirk, and Edward bullied him into accepting help getting out of his own pants, although he made Edward carry him down to the bathroom so he could clean himself up.  "Some things a man's gotta do himself."  Edward understood pride, so he stood guard.

Fortunately, nobody from the Organization had come to check on Teddy since Edward's arrival a little less than an hour ago.  They no doubt assumed him safe behind the machine-gun toting bully boys who'd been downstairs.  Edward had acted as silently as he was thorough, however, so the only gunshot had been the one he'd set off himself, but by that point, nobody was left to hear except Teddy.  Even so, Edward was twitchy.  Now that he'd decided on a course of action, he wanted it accomplished yesterday, but had to work at human speed for Teddy's sake.

When Teddy was decent again, Edward carried him back to his office, then asked, "I assume there's actual money around here, not just figures in your ledger?"

"There's cash in the safe," Teddy said, expression curious, "but I don't have a key.  Is that what you came here for?  You still haven't told me.  You wanted to rob Capone?"

"Not . . . exactly.  Well, yes, I did come here to clean out the cash, but not because I need it.  I was doing it to shut you down.  Well, not you, but this particular bookie joint."

"You were going to kill me?"

"No."  Edward would have blushed if he still could have.  "No.  I was just going to take the cash and distribute it to the needy for Christmas."  These days, there were plenty of needy.

"So," Teddy said, "you were going to take the cash and leave me behind to face the music?"

"Not you," Edward replied, almost desperate in his own defense because Teddy understood the implications exactly and the familiar full lips had thinned.  "Not you.  I'd never leave you behind.  We'll take the cash and you and your mom can use it to build a new life -- far from here.  Out of Capone's reach."

"There's very little of America that's out of Capone's reach, Eddie."

"I'll make him think you died."

"How?"

"Just . . . trust me."

Unlike before, Teddy didn't look quite as trusting.  "If I'd been any other man, you wouldn't be doing this.  You'd have taken the money and run, leaving him to Capone's tender mercies."

"But it wasn't any other man."

"Don't dodge, Edward."  His gray eyes were hard.  "If not me, it could've been a man like me.  Not everybody in the Organization is there by choice."

"The muscle-men downstairs enjoy their work -- "

"But they aren't everybody working for Capone.  I've broken the law -- I won't pretend I haven't -- but I'm no butcher."  His gaze was steady on Edward from his wheelchair.  "Do you have any idea what Capone would've done to me?  How he'd have killed me?  Not quickly.  Being killed by you would've been kinder.  If you're going to play judge and jury, have the good grace to be executioner too."

Shamed into full defensive mode, Edward said, "I am the executioner most of the time.  And I can tell the difference between a good man and a bad one."

Teddy didn't even have to scoff.  One word and his tone conveyed it all.  "How?"

"A . . . a gift.  When I became a vampire, I became able to read minds.  I know what people are thinking at any given moment, so I know their motivations."

"You do?  Do you read minds constantly?  Are you reading mine now?  If so, why are we having this conversation at all?  Can't you just . . . get it out of my head?"

Edward blinked.  "Er, it's usually polite to stay out of minds if I can, but I can read them when I want to."  Nonetheless, Teddy's harsh questions had pulled him up short, made him think.  In fact, he hadn't read the minds of the men downstairs, not deeply.  He'd skimmed them to see if they were aware of him, no more.  He'd needed to eliminate them so he'd eliminated them.  Now he asked himself what he'd have done if the man behind the bookie desk hadn't been Teddy?  Would he have troubled to look deeply into his mind either -- or just assumed?

Teddy was watching him as if he could guess the direction of Edward's thoughts even without Edward's gift, but they'd known each other a very long time.  "Would you have saved me if you didn't know me?" he asked now.

"Yes," Edward said.  He wanted to believe it, and needed Teddy to believe it, but when he reached for Teddy's thoughts, he found doubt -- of him, of his motives, and of just what Teddy had let himself in for.  This was Edward, yes, Teddy was thinking, but Edward stuck at seventeen still seeing things in black and white, looking for ultimate truth and philosopher kings despite being able to see into the thoughts of others.  Teddy couldn't read minds but knew better.  Most people were neither good nor bad but something of both -- complicated.  He'd stopped believing in Plato's fairy tales long ago, winged souls and shadows of perfection on a cave wall.  People muddled along as best they could, and truth was relative.

All Edward's careful justifications, his certainties and arrogances, and his belief that he was protecting the innocent by eliminating the evil -- it all came crashing down.  He wasn't Robin Hood.  He was a murderer, plain and simple.

He hung his head.  "I wanted to help.  I just . . . I wanted to make something right in the world.  I have . . . I have these special powers.  And I'm damned already -- a monster.  I have no soul.  I may as well do what I can to save those with a prayer of heaven."

Teddy's eyebrow flickered and he pulled out a cigarette, lighting it.  "You're still as melodramatic as you always were."  But this was said with a fond exasperation as he blew smoke.  "Edward, you're not a monster -- or no more of one than any of us.  But being . . . whatever you are" -- he gestured in place of an explanation -- "doesn't make you a god, either.  Stop acting like one."

Edward had no reply to that, so he changed the subject.  "At least let me get you and your mom out of town, set you up in San Francisco."

Teddy sighed.  "You haven't left me with much of an option -- not that I'm complaining.  I've no reason to stay here beyond nostalgia.  I'll go wherever you go."

"Then show me the safe.  We don't need a key." 

GO ON TO PART III:  BEAUTY