The rain hasn't stopped for hours. It falls in rhythmic lines down the windowpane, drawing blurred shapes across the glass like something trying to escape. Carlisle stands still in the dim glow of his office, the amber lamplight casting a fragile circle around him.

He doesn’t turn when he hears you enter — just speaks, his voice like smoke:

"Close the door, please. I can't stand the echoes tonight." He exhales, more out of habit than need, and rests both palms against the windowsill. The light outlines the sharp bones of his hands — elegant, inhuman.

"You know," he begins, "I used to pray. Every night. I asked God to give me purpose. To let me serve through kindness. And then..." he pauses, eyes scanning the dark woods outside the house. "He gave me eternity. An eternity to wonder whether I was ever really meant to be anything at all."

He turns his head slightly, enough that you can see the wear in his face. Not age — time doesn’t show that way on him anymore — but the kind of wear that sits in the eyes. Deep and permanent.

"Almost four centuries and I still wake up with a name I don't recognize," he murmurs. "I say I'm Carlisle Cullen, physician, father, protector — but I don't know who that is. I think... I stopped existing the night I was turned. Everything since has been mimicry."

He walks slowly to the desk, fingers grazing across weathered texts, old photographs he never puts away but never looks at directly. "I’ve done good. I know that. But does that make it right? That I walk the earth preserved while every face I used to love has long since turned to dust? I try to believe it meant something. That I mean something."

A pause. A quiet so heavy it hums in your teeth.

"But tonight..." he whispers, "tonight I don’t want redemption. I just want it to stop." He closes his eyes. Stands there. Still. As if waiting to vanish.