Chapter Text
When Bella awoke the next morning, the clouds outside her window had drawn closer together and it was a typical grey Forks day. It was still early, that much she could tell, but it was light enough that she could watch a particularly dark cloud meander slowly across the sky while the fogginess of sleep slowly left her brain.
She’d slept surprisingly well. It had been a while since she had slept through a night without nightmares.
Bella stretched lazily beneath the warm blankets, wincing slightly as her left shoulder clicked.
Then she froze, mid-stretch, suddenly recalling everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.
Jacob. Jumping from the cliff. Maybe seeing Victoria in the cold water. Carlisle, waiting for her in the house. Carlisle promising he would come by in the morning.
Bella leapt out of bed and was just pulling on her ratty old dressing gown, shivering slightly from the chill, when the sounds of conversation drifted up from downstairs.
She slowly opened her bedroom door to hear better, and a grin grew on her face when she recognized the voice of the person conversing with Charlie.
Carlisle.
He’d kept his promise.
She slowly exhaled the breath she hadn’t been aware she had been holding.
Bella slowly made her way down the stairs, wincing when the sounds of the wooden stairs creaking and groaning beneath her bare feet made the conversation downstairs grind to a halt.
She slowly made her way into the kitchen.
It was fairly obvious that she had been the topic of conversation.
Charlie was sitting at the table with a stack of toast and eggs in front of him, drinking a large cup of black coffee. Opposite him, Carlisle had his hands cradled around an equally large mug of coffee that he hadn’t touched. Bella was relieved to see that he looked more put together than he had the previous night, and his eyes were noticeably lighter. He was wearing his usual button-up shirt and dress pants, blonde hair neatly brushed back from his face.
And he wasn’t meeting her eyes, instead looking intently into the depths of his coffee mug.
Yup, they had definitely been talking about her.
“Morning,” Bella said, suddenly wishing she had paused to get properly dressed and feeling awkward in her patched up dressing gown and old sweatpants.
“There’s some more eggs of you fancy some,” Charlie said gruffly, gesturing towards the stove. “Carlisle got here a few minutes ago. He told me he ran into you last night.”
“Yeah,” Bella said, nervously glancing at Carlisle. She wasn’t sure what story he had told Charlie.
“We didn’t manage to talk for long,” Carlisle said smoothly. “I had to drop by the hospital, pick up one or two things. It was nice to see it again. I was just telling Charlie about my new position in Ithaca, how the hospital there compares to Forks General.”
Ithaca.
Huh.
Not sunny California after all then.
Bella padded over to the stove and piled a small helping of fried eggs onto her plate and sat down at the table as well.
“You came alone then?” Charlie asked Carlisle.
The unspoken question: Was Edward here?
Carlisle nodded.
“Yes, it was quite a spontaneous decision. I drove up yesterday.”
The unspoken answer: No, and he won’t be joining me.
“You liking Ithaca?”
“It’s certainly a change of scenery,” Carlisle said cautiously.
He must have realized at some point that Charlie was born and bred in Forks. And that he would defend it to his dying breath. Telling Charlie outright that anywhere was better than his beloved Forks was asking for a lengthy discussion and possible removal from the property.
Charlie hummed in response, before gesturing to the empty plate sitting nest to Carlisle’s elbow.
“You sure you don’t want anything to eat?”
“No, thank you,” Carlisle said hastily. “I ate before coming by.”
Bella shoveled some eggs into her mouth, only to almost spit them back out at Charlie’s next question.
“How’s Edward?”
Carlisle looked suddenly nervous, and Bella felt a little bad for essentially inviting him over to be interrogated. But she did want to know. She needed to know. Had Edward been hurting, depressed, just as she had been? Had he resorted to increasingly extreme activities in hopes of hearing her voice? Had his grades slipped, had he been unable to feed because everything took too much effort?
“He’s adjusting to the new school,” Carlisle said slowly. “Though he hasn’t found any good friends. It’s been...a difficult transition for him.”
Bella knew Carlisle was lying, since he had told her the previous evening that Edward was rogue in South America, but she hoped there was a little truth behind the lies. The small, mean part of her that wanted Edward to have struggled after leaving her silently rejoiced at the implication.
She wanted Edward to have hurt.
Charlie didn’t look too pleased at the answer, for all that he had disapproved of Edward.
“You pulled your family out of here mighty quick,” he stated. “Can’t have been easy for any of them.”
“I regret that we couldn’t transition more slowly,” Carlisle said. “But the opportunity was simply too good to pass up. And Esme received confirmation for a house renovation only a few days after I accepted the position in Ithaca. So, everything fell into place rather quickly. It isn’t the first time we’ve moved without much warning.”
Bella knew Carlisle well enough to be able to tell he was lying through his teeth and hating it. But she knew that the truth was that it was Edward who had pushed for the move. Not Carlisle. And certainly not Esme, who would never intentionally have done anything to hurt her.
“Esme liking it then?” Charlie asked, taking a large gulp of coffee.
“Well enough, yes.”
Carlisle hesitated before continuing.
“We’ve both been very busy these past few months. I was lucky enough to get a few days off in a row to come to Forks, but Esme is working towards a deadline. She wasn’t able to join me.”
Was it just Bella’s imagination, or did he seem to be telling the truth? At least fragments of it? Between the lines, it sounded as though the Cullens had been going through more problems than she had first thought.
“Certainly a change of pace then,” Charlie said.
Carlisle nodded.
“You want some milk with that coffee?” Charlie asked suddenly, gesturing towards the untouched cup.
“No, thank you,” Carlisle said pleasantly.
Then he took a few sips, which made Bella wince in sympathy. She knew from Edward that vampires could no longer digest anything other than blood. Carlisle would have to regurgitate the coffee later.
To his credit, it wasn’t apparent that he was choking it down rather than enjoying it. Bella could only assume that being in contact with humans as much as he was meant this wasn’t his first time having to pretend to eat or drink to avoid suspicion.
Bella finished her eggs and rested her fork quietly on her plate.
“Are you staying long?”
Bella stared at Carlisle pleadingly. One more day, she tried to silently communicate to him, wishing he could read them out of her mind. What was one more day? Carlisle was immortal. It wasn’t as though time was an issue.
Carlisle’s golden eyes flickered to Bella briefly, before returning his attention to Charlie.
“I will need to return home tomorrow,” he said, after a few seconds of consideration. “We’ve been a little short-staffed, I can’t stay away too much longer.”
“You got somewhere to stay?” Charlie asked.
The fact he was being so polite to Carlisle was a relief to Bella. He clearly didn’t blame Carlisle anymore for what had happened. If he had even blamed him in the first place. Which was unlikely. Charlie had never been anything but complementary when it came to Carlisle. It was his son that was the problem in Charlie’s eyes.
“I’ve been staying at the house,” Carlisle said. “We haven’t had much luck with selling it yet, unfortunately.”
Charlie hummed in response, before downing the rest of his coffee in a single large gulp.
Then he stood up from the table.
“Well, I have to get going,” he stated. “I trust you’ll keep Carlisle company?”
This was said to Bella, who nodded enthusiastically. She had so many questions buzzing around her head, enough that a day didn’t seem enough.
Charlie hovered awkwardly in the sudden silence.
Then Carlisle stood up and reached to give Charlie a handshake.
“It was good to see you, Charlie,” Carlisle said sincerely. “And thank you for the coffee.”
“Good to see you too,” Charlie said. “Give my best to Esme and the family.”
Then he turned to Bella.
“I’ll see you tonight?” he asked. He had been asking more, Bella suddenly realized. He was always asking her where she was going to be and when she was going to come back. Like he wanted to make sure she would be.
The realization stung.
“Yeah.”
“Alright then.”
Then, with one last nod to Carlisle, he left the house.
They both listened to Charlie start his car and drive away, leaving behind the kind of peace Bella didn’t want to break.
But she needed answers.
“You’ve been in Ithaca?” she asked quietly.
Carlisle nodded, then finally gave her a brief summary of what the other Cullens had been up to since leaving Forks. Bella hardly dared to breathe, not wanting to miss a single word. She felt like a drowning man who had finally been flung a life vest.
Esme was indeed restoring a house, a seventeenth century wreak a few minutes outside of town. That hadn’t been a lie. And Carlisle was indeed working in a hospital in Ithaca, but only nights and primarily in the emergency room. By day, he was lecturing part-time at Cornell for an Epidemiology course. Rosalie and Emmett had only recently rejoined them, having spent the past few months on another honeymoon in Europe. Apparently, they had spent several weeks in Prague, falling in love with the city all over again. Jasper was also at Cornell, studying Philosophy. Carlisle had run into him a few times in the library. And Alice had been doing research on her family, on who she had been before she was turned. She had found out more about her human life, filling in those long empty gaps in her memory, and still had living relatives in Biloxi, Mississippi.
Right now, they were all together again, and the rest of the family had headed to Alaska to spend some time with the Denali coven. Carlisle would be joining them there.
He didn’t say anything about Edward.
He didn’t need to.
When Carlisle stopped talking, they sat in silence for a few minutes, Carlisle lost in thought and Bella considering everything she had been told. She was happy for Alice, that she had found out more about the family she had once had. All she wanted was to call her and have her tell Bella herself, in that fast, excited way of hers.
But Bella no longer had an in-service number for Alice. For any of the Cullens.
Carlisle’s schedule seemed a little punishing, even for a vampire, Bella thought, suspecting that he was trying to distract himself from Edward’s continued absence. But she was happy for the others. She missed them so badly that even if Rosalie turned up at her door and told her she had vacation snaps to show her, Bella would fall into her arms weeping with joy.
Carlisle suddenly made to stand up again but froze when Bella immediately grabbed his wrist.
Surely Carlisle wasn’t leaving now. He had just told Charlie it would be tomorrow. She was supposed to keep him company, he was supposed to tell her more about Alice and the others. Panic seized Bella in an iron grip and for a second she felt horribly light-headed even though she was sitting down.
“I will need to head to the hospital, Bella,” Carlisle told her apologetically, standing awkwardly halfway between sitting and standing because of the vice-like grip Bella had on his cold wrist. “I’ll come back after, but it would be odd if I did not do so now that Charlie thinks I have. I know he sees Dr. Gerandy fairly regularly, and it will probably come up. I don’t want to make him suspicious.”
“You will come back though?” Bella asked. She slowly let go of his wrist.
Carlisle nodded at her.
“Of course,” he reassured her. “I promise. I’ll only be an hour or two.”
Then he looked down at the half-drunk cup of coffee and his expression turned suddenly embarrassed.
“I don’t suppose I could use your bathroom sink?” he asked, a hint of a wry smile dancing around his lips.
“It’s upstairs,” Bella told him, still trying to get her breath back after the brief moment of panic. “Sorry about the coffee.”
Carlisle waved away her apologies, gave her shoulder a gently squeeze, then left the kitchen.
Bella had to admit, the need to cough up all normal foods and liquids like a cat with a hairball was a major downside when it came to vampirism.
After a few minutes she heard Carlisle come back down the stairs and make his way out their front door. Then she heard his car pulling out of the driveway.
Slowly, Bella began to pile the dishes and collect them in the sink to wash up later, moving mechanically and barely focusing on what she was doing.
Her mind was still on everything she had just been told. It felt like she had been given too much information in too short a time span and her mind was still reeling. She hadn’t expected to hear from any of the Cullens again, and now she knew where they were and what they were doing.
The information felt illegal. Like she could find them again if she wanted to now.
After finishing with putting everything by the sink and giving the table a quick wipe down, she made her way upstairs. She pulled on a grey sweatshirt and some jeans, before making her way to the bathroom to brush her teeth and sort out her hair.
She had just finished running a brush through her dark hair when the doorbell rang.
Bella slowly made her way downstairs, unsure of who to expect. Surely Carlisle wasn’t back already? It definitely took longer than that to even drive to the hospital.
She cautiously opened the door a crack.
To reveal an irate looking Jacob was standing on her doorstep, wearing only denim shorts and a dark T-shirt despite the chill in the air.
Bella opened the door and gestured for him to come in.
Jacob had barely crossed the threshold before he began. She could practically taste the annoyance rolling off him.
“It stinks of leeches,” he snarled at her, looking around rapidly as though trying to make sure Carlisle wasn’t hiding in the shoe rack or hanging off a ceiling lamp. “Didn’t he have anything better to do than hang around here?”
“He was here for about an hour last night and then this morning, Jake-“
“Don’t they have that huge house anymore?”
Bella exhaled in exasperation, shoving her hands into her pockets.
“Jake, Carlisle didn’t break any rules set out in the treaty. He was here, no one had been hurt, he hasn’t been on Quileute land, I don’t-“
“Where is he now?” Jacob asked, pushing past her to stare into the empty living room.
“Out,” Bella said, crossing her arms.
She understood that Jacob was worried. But it was Carlisle they were talking about. She was pretty certain he had never hurt so much as a fly.
“Are they moving back here?” he asked, fixing her with a hard stare.
Bella swallowed, suddenly feeling an ache in her chest. Turns out the truth really did hurt.
“No,” she said, quietly. “No, Carlisle is leaving again tomorrow.”
Jacob ignored her downtrodden expression.
“Good.”
He finally relaxed a little, shoulders loosening. He took one last sniff, wrinkled his nose, then turned back to Bella.
“Are you alright?”
Bella laughed humorlessly.
“Carlisle would never hurt me, or anyone else. He was a doctor, remember?”
“You know we never went to the hospital after he started working there,” Jacob reminded her.
Bella was about to respond when the phone suddenly rang.
They both froze for a second, gazing at one another like two rabbits caught in the headlights.
Then Jacob answered it, while Bella waited a few paces away, gnawing anxiously on a hangnail.
“Hello, Swan residence,” he said coolly.
Bella could make out a female voice on the other end, but not much more. She held out a hand to Jacob so he could give her the phone, but he turned away from her.
“He’s not here,” he said coldly.
Jacob listened for a few more seconds before abruptly hanging up.
“Who was that?” Bella asked hesitantly, taking in Jacob’s murderous expression.
“The short leech,” Jacob said. “The girl one that dresses funny.”
Bella froze.
“It was Alice?” she asked, unable to control her irritation. “Why didn’t you let me talk to her!? What did she want?”
“She wanted to know where the doctor was. She didn’t ask about you,” Jacob said, before turning and making his way back towards the door with long strides.
Bella couldn’t deny that that stung. Alice had to have known she was there. After all, she had called Bella’s house.
Bella rushed after him.
“Wait!”
“I have to go,” Jacob said, reaching for the door.
Which opened unexpectedly, almost hitting Jacob in the face. A harried looking Carlisle stopped short at the sight of Jacob. Jacob looked equally confused but recovered quickly.
They stared at once another, Jacob tense and ready to fight, Carlisle tense and looking ready to bolt, though Bella didn’t think Jacob was the cause of it.
“What do you want?” Jacob snarled, moving in front of Bella.
“Hello, Jacob,” Carlisle said, running a pale hand through his hair. "Good to finally meet you."
He looked frazzled, as though he had just had the most horrendous news. It was miles away from his put together appearance at breakfast. He looked alarmingly similar to how he had the previous evening.
Bella pushed past Jacob.
“What is it?” she asked urgently. “What’s happened?”
“Alice just called,” Carlisle said quickly. “It’s Edward.”
“What about him?” Bella asked, worried by the lines of concern that seemed to have been etched into Carlisle’s youthful face in the space of the last forty minutes.
“He thinks you’re dead,” Carlisle told her miserably. “Rosalie called him just before I got here. She told him Alice had seen you jump off a cliff.”
“So, call him!” Bella said, voice rising in pitch. She had a bad feeling about this.
“I haven’t been able to reach him, no one has.”
Carlisle placed a cold hand on Bella’s shoulder, and she looked into his golden eyes, ignoring Jacob’s growl from behind her at the contact.
“Do you remember, Bella, what Edward told you about the Volturi?” he asked hurriedly.
Bella nodded. She remembered that they were a sort of vampire council who made sure that everyone followed the laws. And that they executed those who broke them.
“Edward has gone to Italy,” Carlisle said urgently. “To see them.”
Bella felt as though her stomach had dropped out of her body. It suddenly felt as though her lungs had stopped working.
She stared at Carlisle in horror.
“I have to go,” he told her. “I just wanted you to know, Charlie was worried my re-appearance would upset you. I couldn’t just leave.”
He swallowed uselessly and took a step back, golden eyes flickering to Jacob then back to Bella.
“I fear I may already be too late.”
“Wait,” Bella said, grabbing his arm. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go to Volterra, and hopefully reach Edward before any permanent decisions are made.”
Bella barely considered it before speaking. There was a spark in her chest, one she hadn’t felt in months. Not since Edward had left her on the damp forest floor.
Edward was in danger.
And she was going to save him.
“I’m coming,” she told him. “Let’s go.”
“Wait just a second,” Jacob suddenly broke in, pushing Bella behind him, further back from Carlisle. “She’s not going anywhere with you.”
He looked seconds away from tearing Carlisle apart on her doorstep.
“I agree,” Carlisle said.
“What?”
Carlisle turned to Bella, trying to make eye contact with her around Jacob’s broad shoulders.
“You can’t join me, Bella. It’s far too dangerous. You’re human, and you already know far too much. If I allow you to join me, you might not leave Volterra alive.”
“I don’t care,” Bella said, trying to get past Jacob again but he was annoyingly solid.
“Move, Jake!” she shouted in exasperation, pushing hard against his muscular shoulder.
“I’m coming,” she told Carlisle. “We have to go, like, now.”
She motioned towards the door.
Carlisle hesitated.
Bella finally ran out of patience and stomped her foot, uncaring of how childish she probabably looked.
“If the Volturi will listen to anyone, it’s you! Edward told me you were with them for ages and parted on good terms. And Edward needs to see me. You know he won’t believe you without any proof. He knows you’ll tell him what he wants to hear if you thought it would save him.”
“Bella,” Jacob started anxiously behind her, but she ignored him, keeping all her attention on Carlisle, who was looking at her as though he was properly seeing her for the first time.
“I cannot guarantee your safety, Bella.”
“You heard the doctor,” Jacob snapped. “Let him go to Italy alone, and preferably stay there.”
“Carlisle,” Bella said. “I am coming with you. Either you take me with you now, or I’m getting to Italy on my own.”
Carlisle’s face suddenly hardened as he made his mind up.
“Alright,” he said. “I suppose it only makes sense, he won’t believe me. He’ll need to see you. Bella, you need to write a note for Charlie to tell him where you are. I don’t want him to worry. I’ll arrange a plane ticket for you.”
Bella nodded, and immediately made her way to the kitchen, leaving Carlisle to call the airlines in the hallway.
Jacob followed her, waves of anger rolling off him.
“I can’t let you do this,” he said to her through gritted teeth. His hands were bunched into fists and he was practically stomping.
“You can’t do anything to stop me,” Bella told him, snatching a pen and old bill from the counter.
“Please don’t do this,” Jacob said desperately, the anger melting from his tone to leave only pleading.
“I have to,” she said. Her focus was on the note, on letting Charlie know she was safe, and would come back to him as soon as she could. “Edward’s in danger.”
Once she was finished writing, she left the note on the table, right in the middle, where Charlie would be sure to find it.
She made her way back to the hallway with Jacob hot on her heels, still begging her to stay.
Carlisle was waiting by the door, a backpack from Bella’s room in his hand.
“Do you have a passport?” he asked her hurriedly. “I packed you a change of clothes and something to read on the flight.”
Bella quickly fetched it and began to pull on her shoes while Carlisle stowed it onto the front pocket of the bag.
“You can’t take her with you,” Jacob said to Carlisle. “If anything happens to her…”
“I will do all I can,” Carlisle told Jacob calmly. “This goes against my better judgement as well.”
Bella jumped to her feet and gestured for Carlisle to lead on.
She turned one more time to Jacob.
“Look after Charlie,” she asked him, before pulling him into a hug. His warmth was a comfort, and she knew that he was just trying to look after her. He wasn’t doing anything from a place of malice.
“Please don’t do this,” he whispered into her hair, holding her so tightly it almost hurt.
“I have to,” she told him resolutely as she pulled back.
Then she followed Carlisle to the car.
As they drove away, Jacob was still standing by the front door, arms hanging uselessly by his sides.
Bella watched him shrink in the rearview mirror.