[Onorata history]
Edward Masen Cullen:
Affiliation: Antimafia Commission
Rank: Soldati
Relations: Dr. Carlisle Cullen ("father"), Esme Cullen ("mother"), Alice Mary Brandon ("sister"), Rosalie Hale ("sister"), Emmett Cullen ("brother"), Jasper Whitlock ("Brother")
ONORATA-VERSE BACKGROUND:
Born to two relatively wealthy parents just outside of Reggio Calabria, Edward Anthony Masen lived almost a charmed life. He was handsome, intelligent, intuitive, was a piano prodigy, and had two very loving parents. There was nothing to indicate that it would ever be otherwise.
That was, however, before the outbreak.
The disease that ravaged the eastern portion of Reggio Calabria and the nearby towns left most populations affected devastated. Edward’s parents became one of the statistics. Edward himself became one of the many orphans, traversing between their disease-ravaged towns and the edge of Reggio Calabria itself. Being barely 12 years old, his assets were frozen until he could reach of age and, having no family to guard that wealth for him and take care of him, the boy had no idea what his future looked like. He had decided, upon his parents’ deaths, that an orphanage was out of the question. However, that also meant that he had nowhere to go, but the streets.
That was where he was found by the Antimafia Commission. A Dr. Carlisle Cullen of the Antimafia Commission, to be exact. Although Dr. Cullen didn’t tell Edward at the time, the boy later found out that the AMC had been scouting near the disease-stricken areas, looking for orphans and homeless people to take in for their genetic experiments.
Edward was hesitant at first, even thought of refusing the offer given by Dr. Cullen, but in the end he decided he had nowhere else to go. The offer of a shelter and food and a friendly face in exchange for a few experiments didn’t seem that bad to him. He was hardly sure what the experiments were for, but, being 12 years old and having just lost his parents, he hardly cared.
The experiments, as it turned out, were the AMC’s way of exacting their own vision of the future-a Reggio Calabria not ruled by mafia members or prostitution or criminals in general. The AMC was testing and experimenting in order to create their own human weapons against the growing number of criminals in the city.
The experiments that Edward took part in were attempting to genetically alter humans to become stronger, faster, with heightened senses and abilities. They seemed fair enough. What no one expected were some of the results. Not all of the children survived. And not all of those who did reacted to the experimentation in quite the same way that Edward did. But there were a few and they were definitely noticeable.
Edward hadn’t particularly cared what the experiments were or how they were being exacted until he noticed the change in himself. The green eyes that turned red. The already pale skin that became almost ghostly so. The increased speed and increased strength. The insomnia. The thoughts of others that began running through his head in addition to his own. But most importantly, the thirst. Edward found that he craved human blood. He wanted to feel it, to see it, to smell it. Often, he came on the border of wanting to taste it. It was a thirst that turned the temperamental boy almost violent.
It was this violence that the AMC picked up on. They had found other children who had reacted similarly and set to train them to fight in the streets, cleaning them so efficiently of the criminals that loitered about at every corner. It was set to do the same to Edward. That is until Dr. Carlisle Cullen interrupted them.
The good doctor insisted that he be allowed to train Edward himself since he had been the one to experiment on the boy. Edward had no qualms about this. Carlisle had been the only one Edward had even grown attached to within the past two years. Transferred without question into Carlisle’s care, Edward began to slowly unwind all of the resentment and doubts and secrets he had. He told Carlisle that he could read minds, that he couldn’t sleep, and that he had this insatiable thirst for blood. Carlisle, in turn, told him another secret. That he himself had been a part of a similar experiment decades ago. Carlisle, too, had a thirst for blood. But he had managed to control it. And he wanted to help Edward do the same.
It took another year for Edward to begin to control the monster inside of him to Carlisle’s specifications, but by the time he was 14, he had almost grown quite good at it. Carlisle trained him and took care of him and, although Edward continued to work for the AMC through Carlisle, it was the doctor’s opinions that mattered the most to him. Carlisle became a father figure to him and, it seemed, that the doctor himself felt the same. He adopted Edward, who became Edward Masen-Cullen and shortly after married a woman he had fell in love with, Esme.
It wasn’t quite that Edward was unhappy. It wasn’t even that he didn’t feel challenged. Carlisle and Esme were the best adoptive parents he could have asked for and the job of containing his monster while cleaning the streets for the AMC (peacefully) as well as attempting to control his telepathic abilities was enough to keep him challenged and occupied most days. Still, Edward grew more restless. It was something that Jasper Whitlock, one of the other children who eventually came into Carlisle’s care, picked up on quickly, being the empath that he was. Jasper was the first child that Edward grew close to, albeit reluctantly. Just as Jasper couldn’t hide his thoughts from Edward, Edward couldn’t hide his feelings from Jasper, the two kept one another in check. Still, it was difficult, because even being so talented and “gifted” (as Carlisle put it), their abilities were yet another thing that set them apart from the other children.
By the time Edward turned 17, he felt frustrated, restless, bitter, and, to an extent, lonely. If that wasn’t enough to make him feel rebellious, then what he saw on the streets certainly helped in those regards. He saw blood, death, drugs, prostitution, despair, misery, and all of the deadly sins combined every time he took a job. It disgusted him, how filthy and corrupt the city was. And, eventually, Carlisle’s passive methods were not enough for him.
In August, two months past his 17th birthday, after a heated argument with Carlisle and Esme both, Edward packed what things he had and left the Cullen household, the division of the AMC that Carlisle oversaw.
Now, a year later, Edward lives in an apartment by himself, having finally come of age to access his family’s wealth, and takes orders from the AMC, choosing to exact the street cleanings and other demands in the way he thinks is most efficient-by working with his monster and not against it. Sometimes he feels a pang of guilt for what he left behind and for the monster he’s slowly become. But then he looks out into the mafia-controlled, sin-riddled streets of Reggio Calabria and finds his determination again.