This was originally "More than a Phase" and you can read those chapters if you go to my listed stories. But...don't? Because this version has a lot more love and care put into it in my opinion. Anyways, the idea developed because as I grew older (I first read Twilight when I was 13), I very much fell out of love with Bella as a character, and Edward was always sort of flat to me. With that in mind, I decided the series needed a new female protagonist, preferably one who wasn't going to let Edward borderline abuse her. And unfortunately, all the other relationships in the series are fairly awesome, adorable or badass, and I didn't want to split them up. So I turned to a pretty unorthodox solution, I think. This way Bella's out of the way, eventually,and Edward actually gets some character development! Yay!

Chapter 1: The Death of Edward Mason

"I told you! Mr. Blanchard isn't half as smart as he thinks he is."

He snorted, giving her half a nod of agreement.

"See, Eddie, this is why you're by best friend; your conversational skills are unmatched," Moira giggled as she clung to his arm like a monkey. Edward didn't mind too much.

Moira Hartley was cute, with a pouty mouth and blue eyes and curly dark hair. He grinned.

She was chatty and excitable, and it was easy to let her talk not just because he preferred not to, but he did legitimately like listening to her very sarcastic commentary. The girl had more wit than all his other friends combined.

The pair walked down the quiet neighborhood arm in arm, the picture of an attractive young couple.

The houses they walked past were nice, two storied, well-kept homes, clearly a wealthier section. But soon Edward and Moira passed a house with a blood red "X" smeared on the front, and their smiles sobered immediately.

"They say the Tucker family caught ill yesterday," Moira murmured, her voice trembling, her fear just as sudden as the silence that had fallen upon them.

Edward gripped her arm tighter and they hurried past.

These houses had been multiplying lately, it seemed. What started as one family's illness was now the tragedy the entire city.

They dotted every street, the empty husks of the homes they used to be. Children who used to play in the streets, asking him to play football were now inside, hiding from the Spanish Influenza, or nowhere to be found at all, having already been caught.

Moira sighed a long suffering sigh.

"Tommy was coughing this morning. I told him he'd be fine," she said.

He smiled in a way he sincerely hoped was reassuring.

"He'll be fine. He'll be back to his trouble making ways tomorrow, I'm sure," he told her.

They'd reached her house, and even though there was no cross on the front, approaching it seemed just as ominous.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Eddie," she said absently, barely waving as she slipped into her house.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and headed back home.

"How was school today, Dear?" His mom asked when he kissed her cheek in greeting.

Edward shrugged.

"Alright I guess. All anybody ever talks about is the flu," he told her, sitting at the table as she bustled around the kitchen, making dinner.

"Can't say I blame them. People are scared, Edward," she said.

His mother, Elizabeth Mason, probably knew that better than anybody. During the mornings she volunteered as a nurse at the hospital. People were getting sick, people were dying, more and more every day.

He told her about Tommy, and her face turned ashen.

"That poor child...the Hartley's must be terrified," she said, looking up from chopping vegetables to send Edward a grief stricken glance.

"Make sure you check on them first thing tomorrow. Take care of Moira, you hear me?"

He nodded.

"Yes ma'am."

That was about when his father walked in.

It was obvious that if his parents, Edward looked most like his father. He was a carbon copy really. They had the same serious faces and quiet intelligence. Their hair was the same bronzed unruliness and they were the same sort of tall dark and handsome, the reason Elizabeth had married George Mason in the first place.

The only difference was his green eyes, which glittered with amusement just as often as his mother's did.

George was a policeman, a job that in his opinion required every bit of his natural seriousness, but he managed a wan smile as be greeted his family.

Edward could see in his eyes what his voice wasn't saying.

Someone else was dead.

He sighed.

"Lydia Johnson."

Edward's eyes shuttered closed, miserable.

Lydia Johnson was probably the smartest person he knew. Her father worked at the high school, and she could almost always be found with her head in a book.

She worked in a diner downtown on weekends, and sometimes he'd come in and buy a pop, because she liked the company while she worked.

They'd gone out a couple times, but she was always a better friend.

She lived three blocks away from here.

And she was gone?

His mother put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"Edward? Son, will you be-"

No, he wouldn't.

"I think I need to lie down, he muttered, unable to look his parents in the eye.

He stumbled up the stairs, went into his rim and shut the door.

He didn't come down for breakfast.

He woke up to sirens, and sobbing, and jerked awake at the hands that were holding his feet and shoulders.

"What the hell!?" He shouted twisting out of their grasp and falling to the ground.

The two men in hospital uniforms dropped him in shock. Their faces were covered by masks, and their hands were gloved. "He's alive!" One of them shouted out the open door, and he couldn't help but think 'Of course I am! Why wouldn't I be?'

"What are you doing?! Why are you in my house?!" He yelled, except he knew from the sorry looks in their eyes exactly why they were there. But be could pretend. That this wasn't happening. It wasn't real.

Until he followed that same man's face out the door to an ambulance sitting on the curb, and the sheet covered body being loaded inside. That damned white sheet that hid the face but had slid up, past the feet, revealing George Mason's favorite loafers.

"I'm sorry young man, but you're going to have to come with us," the man was saying, even as Edward sank to his knees.

Most of the hospital was being used solely to treat flu patients. The sick filled almost every room and corridor, and the smell of death had in two days, replaced his memory of fresh air.

He spent this time playing chess with his mother, or humming that concerto he'd been in the process of learning to play, even practicing his French, which he hated.

Anything to not dwell on the fact that his father was dead.

They couldn't go home, couldn't move on, or mourn, because not only was George Mason probably resting in an unmarked grave now, but the quarantine rules required them to stay in the hospital for a week, to make sure they weren't contagious.

He tried to ignore his mother's anxious mutterings, but as a nurse she knew- if they didn't have the flu, in this house of death, they'd catch it long before the week was up.

In the second day, Moira joined them.

Just Moira, no Tommy, no Mr. or Mrs. Hartley.

He'd rather have never seen her again, than to see her eyes so empty.

On the third day, his mother started coughing.

They moved her to the "sick ward" as if it truly made any difference.

The last thing she said to him was "Death is nothing to fear, it's the easiest thing you can do." It might have been less than reassuring, but he'd already accepted that he was going to die here.

It was his fourth day there that a doctor managed to have time to see him.

He was really young. Couldn't have been older than thirty, very pale, and blond. But his most interesting feature was his golden eyes. They seemed too bright to be natural, but Edward hadn't known then that there was anything else.

Dr. Carlisle Cullen was something else.

His movements were precise, and silent. He seemed to know more than any person Edward had ever seen before, but he had this kind of gentle demeanor.

He was clearly a busy man, Edward had heard some of the nurses whispering about him being the best doctor the hospital had, but he seemed content to talk to him about the most mundane things. School. His family. Religion, once or twice.

He found out they shared an interest in medieval history, of all things.

Shame he'd met the man as he was dying.

And he was.

The coughing set in on the fifth day, the fever and shakes the day after that. He had a few days at best.

He'd been in the hospital for six days when Dr. Cullen walked into his room, with a terrible determination on his face. In the grip of the Spanish Influenza's fevered delusions, Edward barely noticed when the young doctor sat at his bedside.

He barely heard when he told him his mother's request- her final request- to save her son. If he hadn't been so far gone he might have questioned how Dr. Cullen planned to go about doing this. He was genius, yes, but the man was only human.

He didn't feel the moment Carlisle bit him. He'd later learn that the deceptively young looking doctor had no idea how to go about creating vampires and hadn't stopped biting until Edward had started screaming.

But when that burning started flooding through his body; agony ripping through him like his blood had been substituted with fire, he couldn't help but notice.

They didn't have much time to get out, much less for him to adapt to the idea that he was now something definitely not human.

They ran to his home, the only home he'd ever known, to get some of his things.

That damning red paint was smeared across the front, the reality of it slamming into him unexpectedly. His parents were dead. He was...He was a vampire. It was Carlisle's grip on his arm that prevented him from sinking to his knees, and made sure he made it in the door.

"Quickly, Edward. Only things you can fit in one bag," Carlisle warned, and he sprinted up the stairs to grab his clothes, the urgency of the situation keeping him in track.

He flitted around his room, throwing pants and shirts and a single pair of shoes into the bag. Carlisle sighed behind him when he started adding sheet music to the rest, but he wasn't about to leave it. His father was the one who taught him to play. These were his.

The elder vampire gripped his shoulder.

"That's all we have time for," he said solemnly.

A flash of memory had him sprinting towards his parent's bedroom anyways.

By the time Carlisle followed him, walking at a human pace, he'd gotten what he needed.

His mother's wedding ring dangled from a new gold chain from around his neck.

Newly red eyes locked into golden ones.

"I'm ready now."

Sigh. So much building to be done. This Twilight is very different, if you hadn't noticed.