I tried to write a chapter for one of my stories and I just couldn't. This is just a story that I may or may not continue with… I don't know. Tell me what you think!
Baby Girl.
They were leaving. My family was leaving. In just a matter of minutes, my daughter would be gone—
Probably forever. I'd been anticipating this moment since the moment they announced their engagement, yet it seemed to sneak up on my fast. And now I had a granddaughter to say goodbye to, too, and a son in law. I had to say goodbye to all of them. They were all I had left. I was never one for the soppy stuff, but this was heart-wrenching.
I'd just gotten my Bella back, and she was already leaving! Not even to college, but with her husband. Whom she married as a teenager, might I add. And her daughter… who I wasn't exactly sure the relation of. Yes, they said she was adopted, but she was just too much like them. I would have to bid farewell to Carlisle and Esme, my close friends. No, we weren't exactly buddies when Bella first came to Forks, but after they became in-laws, we'd bonded, naturally. I would have to say ta-ta to Rosalie, the best damn mechanic I'd ever met. She was better than Jake! Now what was I supposed to do when the old cruiser broke-down? Call Jacob? No. He was leaving me too! He was going to college, suspiciously the same day as the Cullens were departing. I might've been old, but I'm not stupid. He was leaving with them, I was sure of it. Sweet, innocent Alice was going away with Jasper, who she recently got engaged to. Good for them. They were good kids. There was Emmett, the only person who could fix the frozen pipes in a matter of seconds during the harsh Washington winters. He lifted mountains of firewood, and shoveled dirt like a workhorse. Kid wasn't afraid of gardening for his mother, either. He was tough and strong… but had a soft-spot when it came to family. I'd never really gotten close to Ali's soon to be wed, Jasper, but that was one of the most heart-breaking parts: the fact that I never would.
Ever since the beginning, I'd never liked the thought of my baby-girl growing up. When she first told me she was dating a Cullen boy, I wasn't ecstatic. Sure, I wanted her to be happy, meet someone, and fall in love… but I didn't want her to do that in high school. I wanted some time with her first. Since I missed out a lot of her childhood, and all of her preteen to teenage years up to when she came to live with me, I figured she'd wait a little and get to bond with her old man before teenage ditching me for her boyfriend. I mean, it was to be expected from a teenaged girl, to run off every once and a while with a boy and leave her pop in the dust, but I didn't have many memories with her to begin with, and I was counting on making that up with the time she was in Forks. She went out with Edward for a short while, before the baseball incident. I never really found out what really happened between them that night. All I know was that she came home from a date upset, claiming that she 'liked him too much' and that she didn't want him to break her heart, that she didn't want to be stuck in Forks like her mother. That hit me hard. Yeah, I was all for her staying single… but I never thought what happened between her mother and I would affect her decisions like that. It wasn't fair for her to grow up thinking that all relationships failed, that anyone she had feelings for would end up backing her into a corner. I never thought I would be the reason she was afraid to love somebody.
She then tried to leave, claiming it was too much to stay for even just one more night. It really made me hate myself. I could tell she felt guilty, but I wasn't mad at her. I understood. She was so much like her mother. She somehow ended up in Arizona. I guess she was looking for her mother and figured her and Phil had already left Florida. Or maybe Bells just needed a place to stay, and her old home in Phoenix was the first place she thought to go to. Either way, Edward followed her, begging her to hear him out. He tried to tell her to go back to Forks, if not for himself, then for me. I owed him for trying to get me my baby back to me. On her way up to meet him at his hotel, she fell and rolled down three flights of stairs, going through a window. She was nearly killed that night and ended up in a waking cast for months after her release from the Hospital of Phoenix. Cullen felt pretty guilty. You could see it in his eyes whenever someone asked about her cast, or how she hurt herself. You could see the regret in his eyes. Almost like it had hurt him to think that she was going to see him, and it was his fault she almost died. I knew how he felt. I was the one who drove her away, into the injury in the first place.
I watched through the months as the two grew closer and closer. She went out with him almost every day, and the days she didn't, she spent sulking around like a lost puppy- bored out of her mind. If she wasn't with him, she was with Alice. I loved Alice. She was smart and funny and downright adorable. She had an obvious respect for adults, and a practical view on life. She was the perfect role model for my daughter. That tiny little girl wiggled her way into my heart, almost like a second child to me. When both Alice and Edward weren't around, my daughter tended to preoccupy herself with homework and chores, never really going out with any other friends. Sometimes Emmett came over. He and Bella were pretty close. You could see from the way they interacted that he was the big brother Bells never had. He was protective of her and loved her just as much as Edward did, just in a different way. The three of them- Edward, Alice, and Emmett- were Bella's closest friends. She loved them. It was her boyfriend, best friend, and brother. How could you compete with that? Well… you couldn't, which is why she collapsed when one day, they weren't there anymore.
When I got a note from Bella one night in September saying she'd gone for a walk with her boyfriend, I wasn't surprised. They did things like nature hikes and walks in the park all the time. From what I'd over heard on the phone, they even had a special spot they liked to stop at when they went hiking together. After it got dark, however, I got worried. Edward always had her home by nine o clock at the latest, especially on school nights. I was also fairly certain they were both aware of the dangers of being in the woods at night time. I tried calling Bella's cell, but she didn't pick up, and when I heard a ringing come from upstairs, I knew she'd left it at home. I used her phone to call Edward, which was conveniently located in her speed dial as 'Babe *heart, heart, heart, kissy face*', but he didn't pick up either. I called Carlisle's office number, only to find that he had quit his position to move to none other than California. I started panicking. I searched through my daughter's contacts and called every one of the Cullens, but received no reply. It was bad. Really bad. After another hour and a half and several unanswered phone calls later, I phoned the police department. I told Hal, my cow worker, what was going on and he immediately sent someone. After Hal and the newbie from the department came up empty in a search in the woods, I called Billy and the Clearwater's, who sent several of the boys including Jake to come help find my missing daughter. After a lifetime of worry and sheer panic, Sam emerged from the forest, carrying a semi-conscious Bella. A deranged, semi-conscious Bella, who kept muttering "He's gone," over and over again, might I add.
The next few months were pure torture for me, as a father as well as a law enforcer. My lovely girl had been turned bitter. It was like she died- or worse. She was completely and utterly empty. That first month, I thought I was going to have to hospitalize her. She could barely eat and nightmares evaded her, making it impossible for her to sleep. She refused to move from the couch, let alone go anywhere. I was almost afraid of her. She was so depressed that it was hard to be in the same room as her. It was hard for me as a cop because I knew the signs. I knew the signs displayed before good kids like her turned bad. Her grades dropped, and she stopped caring. Even after that gutter-ball first month, she didn't fully recover. She wanted to quit her job, but I made her stay. It was the only thing besides school that she went to or did. I was afraid she would get into trouble if she was alone for too long. When I got sick of her moping and tried to get her to go to Jacksonville, she went into a violent rage and threw a temper tantrum more outrageous than she ever had as a four year old. That was when I realized she had the potential strength to do things like get into fights… And I knew that rages of sudden anger and depression were signs of drug use in certain circumstances. I found out eventually that she was clean, but for a while I thought she'd been doing something.
Things got better when she started hanging out with Jacob. The kid was good for her, too. He took good care of her, kept her as happy as humanely possible for her. He was almost as good as anti-depressants for her… but when a depressed person gets off their meds, the depression comes back. That's exactly what I witnessed happen to Bells. He made her euphoric, but the second he left, she was back to moping and sighing. Each time he left the room, it got worse than before. Even though Jake covered it up, the emptiness was still there. It scared me to think that it might always be there. No matter how many bandages he covered on her, the scars would always be there. And ripping off a bandage hurts like hell. He stopped calling her; he stopped answering her messages… Billy said he was sick, and wasn't to be disturbed, but he would barely talk to me. My own best friend. I never really knew what happened, but all of a sudden, after weeks of ignoring her and shutting her out (leading her into a deeper depression than before) Jacob started showing up again. As far as I knew, he'd gone insane. He cut his hair, got a tattoo and joined some weird-ass club with his friends. I didn't really care, as long as he didn't leave Bells in the dust again, she could hang out with them as much as she wanted.
Then Alice showed up. Right as Bella was starting to get better, her past decided to pay her a visit. Bells was so excited to see her old best friend that she didn't even think twice about letting her spend the weekend- possibly longer- with us. I was glad Bella was truly happy, considering it was the first time in a long while, but I was petrified of what Ali's little visit might do to her once she left again. And underneath all of that cheer and excitement, I think Bella was a little bit too. I talked to Alice about it while Bella slept, letting her in on the nightmares and waking up to her screaming every night, begging for them to come back to her. I told her about Jacob, and how he was helping. I threatened her, telling her to warn her brother about Jake, and what I would do if he ever came near my daughter again. Alice listened to it all… and even started crying at one point. I could see how guilty she felt, when she didn't even deserve it. Alice wasn't the one that left my daughter alone in the woods in the middle of the night without a trail. Alice wasn't the one who said she didn't care about my daughter. Her parents told her to go, and she did. Simple as that. Alice was the innocent one who respected her parents. It was never her fault.
When I came home from work, Bella was gone. Alice was gone. Everything was… gone. Bella had some cloths packed away, and her passport was missing from its usual spot in the junk-drawer. I was so screwed. The only thing she left behind for me was a vague note that said she left with Alice and that Edward was in trouble… Whatever that meant. She came back nearly three days later, once again being carried to me half-conscious, by a shirtless male. At first glance, I thought she was drugged or something. And from the exhaustion showing on the boy's face, she very well might've been. To say I was appalled that Edward had the nerve to show his face at my home after what he did was an understatement. I was about ready to lash out and get my baseball bat from the basement.
Talking to Bella in the morning was one of the worst moments of my life. She was a good kid, but bless her soul, when I found out that she'd jumped off a cliff- recreational or not- I nearly had a heart attack. I was pretty heavy on her punishment, but that was to be expected. Leaving Washington to help an ex-boyfriend… after everything he did to her… I just couldn't understand it. But he respected my wishes. He left at curfew, followed the rules of the house. Bella stayed happy, but more attached than ever, and that's what frightened me the most. I didn't want to know what would happen… if he decided to leave again.
I got even more anxious when the killings in Seattle began. I'd come this far, and I wasn't about to lose my daughter to a serial killer. I let her have her freedom, not wanting her to feel like a caged animal- though quite frankly, I was afraid she would get sick of my rules and decide to move in with her new and improved boyfriend-but I set my limits to "No going anywhere near Seattle" and "Hang out with your other friends". That last part was mostly for my sake. I knew it was a slim chance of him leaving, but for my own good, I decided Bells should be with others just in case Edward decided to end things again. I didn't think I'd be able to handle it if she had no other friends if and when history decided to repeat itself. I remembered the near-heart attack I had when Bella and Alice decided to take a weekend shopping in the city, and for a split second I thought they were talking about the one place I didn't want them near.
Bella graduated soon after. I couldn't believe my baby, well, wasn't a baby anymore. She'd graduated high school! I knew she would be going to college soon… leaving her old man behind. I felt like I was almost cheated. I had so much less time with her than her mother did. Every parent in the room had watched their child grow up since birth, whereas I only saw her every other summer for her childhood, until she stopped do that. I had limited time with her. From that point on I swore to soak up every remaining ounce of time I had left to spend with my only child. I vowed to make the best of what little while I had left of her. To stop the fighting that had been going on. To just enjoy our life together for as long as I had left.
After the killer mysteriously disappeared and the killings stopped, life became pretty uneventful. Bella and Edward were even more inseparable than before, which at first looked like they were enjoying their summer of senior year, but I realized it had to be more of that when they said they had to talk with me. My first reaction when she told me to sit down was to immediately assume she was pregnant. She saw the lack of oxygen that was making my face turn purple, and immediately assured me she was not expecting. That was about the time I noticed the ring. How could I have missed it? It was sitting, bigger than any ring I'd ever seen with a thousand diamonds, on her ring finger, waiting to be seen. It probably had been for weeks, actually. I was astonished and almost angry, at first. Had she not learned anything from mine and Renee's experiences? How could she marry so young, knowing fully well of the consequences? It was ridiculous! But as I thought of my lovely ex-wife, I realized they were in for it. I gave Edward my blessing, laughing. There was no way in hell Renee was going to go along with this, right? Wrong. Renee was ecstatic. She jumped at the chance to help Esme with the wedding plans. She was delighted to talk boys with her engaged daughter. She was excited to get dressed up and watch her daughter kiss the man she loved, vowing to become his. Typical.
Once I'd given my daughter away, I envied the boy more than anything. No, he wasn't exactly my favorite after what he'd done to her in the past, but truth be told, they loved each other… and he now had the privilege and chance to be hers forever. I could only have her for a few years. He took my baby away, and she went with him willingly, eager even. She loved him. She loved him enough to leave me to live with him. There was nothing I could do about that. As I kissed her goodbye, I knew it would be a long time before I saw her. She was a married woman. She was going to go to college soon. Soon she would be having children, texting me pictures from Alaska or wherever the hell she would be. Texts I wouldn't be able to open since I can't figure out an iPhone to save my damn life. As she got in the car, looking back once more, lovely as ever, I let a tear slide down my cheek. My daughter was all grow up, and I missed it.
She's been gone for about three or four weeks when I received the phone call from Carlisle. Bella was sick. Really sick. I almost dropped the phone. Was it some kind of a joke? No. Not, it wasn't. They'd gone to some excluded place near Rio, an exotic rain-foresty, beachy area. She'd somehow contracted some sort of rare disease, probably from an animal bite or something along those lines. He said it could be contracted from mosquitos down there. The only thing I really paid attention to was the basic message: My daughter was dying. I demanded to see her, and even tried to drive down to their house just out of town, but Carlisle said she was under strict quarantine, and he wasn't allowing visitors. When I objected, he sighed, telling me that it was not only for my sake since she was so contagious, but that if I carried some sort of germ like the common cold, I could potentially sign her will. It was better for everyone if I stayed away.
She was too sick to call. I would wait by the phone for hours on end, just wishing it would ring. It never did. If I thought I was worried all those times before, this was going to kill me. When I hadn't heard from anyone in the household for two weeks, I called. And called. And called again. Finally, on my fifth try, Esme answered. She sounded tired and sad, unlike her normally chirpy voice.
"It's been a long week." She sighed when I asked her what was wrong. That was not a good sign. When I asked about Bella, she practically burst into tears, only adding to my stress level. I heard Emmett saying "Mom, mom you need to give me the phone… mom, really." Over and over again until he finally got a hold of it. He apologized, assuring me it wasn't over yet. He told me Bells was a fighter. I knew the kid was trying to help he out a little bit, but I lost a little hope. Was it coming to this? Just hoping and praying she'd get better?
The first phone call I received from Bella herself was the first real ounce of hope I'd felt in a long while. It had been nearly three months since Carlisle had told me of her tragic illness. She sounded almost happy. She tried to get me to use vision therapy, telling me to picture her doing normal, every-day, healthy things, but it just made me feel stupid. My daughter was potentially dying, and she wanted me to imagine her eating a slice of pizza? That was just weird. After Bells got off the phone, I talked a bit to my new son in law. He was a wreck. I could practically hear his seam tearing apart through the phone lines. Rotten luck, marrying a girl only to have her die from an illness that was obtained on your honeymoon. I reached out to the boy. For the first time in a long time, we had something in common: The girl we loved more than anyone in the world was dying and we were completely useless.
I didn't hear much from them after that. There were a few quick chats here and there, an e-mail every once and a while, but nothing new. Three days in a row I got no new information. There was a single call from Esme saying everything was okay and then… nothing. Nothing except for one text from Jacob, almost a month later:
We need to talk. It's important.
I was frantic, to say the least. Did something go wrong? Surely I'd be the first to know, right? Unless Bella needed them to tell her best friend. Unless Bella wanted to talk to him one last time before she left the earth forever. Unless Jacob had been allowed to visit. Unless he was there while she died. I paced outside for an hour, when he finally came. He tried to speak rationally, but what he said wasn't making any sense. I didn't know the truth? He wasn't allowed to tell me certain things? He was… different? I tried to object, telling him I didn't want to know what was going on, but he insisted.
"But Bella's different now too." He had said, in hope of convincing me to hear him out. That was about the time he stared stripping himself into his underwear. I kept telling him to knock it off and put his pants back on, while covering my eyes, not wanting to see what he might take off next. There was a strange ripping noise, and a growl. Jacob's body shook, and his form faded in and out before lashing out into… a wolf? I yelped at the horrific sight in front of me. Jacob, the boy I watched grow up, the one who made mud-pies in my yard, who fixed my car every time it broke down… Jacob, free-spirited kid who helped my daughter through her toughest of times, the one I'd always loved and saw as my own son… was an enormous dog. He towered over me, walking around as if not to startle me, but it was a little late for that.
When he started shaking again I began to fear what he might do next. Would he transform into a bird and fly away? Or maybe a dragon, and set my house on fire? For all I knew, he was about to turn into a friggin mermaid and flop his way back to the ocean, swimming gracefully into the sunset with a set of blue dolphins jumping through the waves by his sides. What really happened, however, was much worse. To my relief, he had managed to get back into human-form… smack-ass naked. I yelled at him to cover it up, throwing his shirt at him, which he sheepishly used to hold around his waist. Was Bella a dog, too? I tried to ask how it had anything to do with my daughter, demanding what kind of animal she enjoyed transferring into. Was she a swan? How ironic would that be… and what about her husband, and the rest of the family? Did they turn into creatures, too?
"She wishes she were that cool." Jacob grinned.
Apparently Bells was not an animal… but she was definitely something. Something that was not human. I didn't really want to know what. She was a good kid, and I wasn't going to have my opinions about my daughter become altered because she was some sort of monster, not that she was a monster. She could be a… fairy? No, probably not. If he were a fairy, she'd be granting wishes, and hopefully letting me win the lottery. I tried not to think about what she may or may not be.
When I came to visit her that first time since her mysterious illness, she was different. She was paler, and her features were more prominent. She seemed longer and skinnier, yet full. I had to take a second look, just to be sure it was really her when I saw he sitting there on the couch. She was… stunning. Not that she wasn't beautiful before, but this Bella was absolutely flawless. Her snow white skin and healthy, long brown hair seemed full and luscious. She was blemish-free, and her skin was perfectly toned, not an uneven spot in sight. Her eyes seemed slightly off… they were brown, but not quite the right shade. They held an almost reddish tint to them. Though all of these changes and alterations surprised me, they were not what astonished me the most. The most shocking thing I saw when my eyes found her was not her appearance, but the baby that she was holding in her arms.
She had to be at least eleven months old, if not older than a year. She had amazingly long- for a baby- bronze, wavy hair and the same pale skin that Bella now held. Her cheeks were rosy pink and her eyelashed were long and beautiful. Small, light freckles dusted across her nose, as she giggled. This child had to be the most beautiful baby I'd ever seen. Of course Bella's birth had immense memories and meaning, but she paled in comparison to this lovely child staring at me.
The conversation I had with my daughter was kind of a blur. I was so happy to see her alive- and so shocked to see her like this, especially with a baby- that the words we exchanged seemed to haze together into one overall summary of what happened:
1)Bella had gotten very sick, She almost died, Her husband saved her life.
2) Bella started to get better. Edward's relatives which he didn't know about passed away. They ended up taking custody of the child as their own.
3)The baby's name was Renesmee, she was different, I wasn't to ask questions.
4) Bella was different, too. Edward saved her, but since he did she had to change. I couldn't ask questions about this either.
5) If I wanted my daughter to stay with me for any amount of time at all, I wouldn't ask anything at all.
Number five was more of a rule. A rule I followed… but it didn't stop them fromleaving permanently. Because now she was. She was leaving me. Even though I'd followed the rules… even though I never mentioned the new, strange qualities my daughter possessed, they had to go. I had just a short amount of time left.
So here I sat, reminiscing. When I taught Nessie to pla baseball with her Uncle Emmett, when I showed her how to ride a bike with Edward. The time I tried to help Esme in the kitchen, but almost ended up burning the place down. When my house got infested with termites and I spent the week at Edward and Bella's place, and caught them in the… okay, maybe I could forget that memory. But what about going swimming at LaPush beach with Jake, and my first shopping trip with Alice, where she bout out an entire rack of ties along with a heft amount of fishing gear as my 'early birthday present? Or those long, helpful talks with Carlisle? When I tried helping Rosalie with her car and she threatened to… there's another memory I could bear to suppress. But it didn't matter if I had a few bad memories- I'd take a thousand more just to be with them a little bit longer.
But as I watched their car pull out of my drive way, tears in my daughter's eyes, That I wouldn't be able to keep them here. Edward backed the car up slowly and my daughter looked me strait in the eyes mouthing a last "I Love you." To me, before their car drove off. For a split second I thought about calling them, or running after the car. Edward could never take care of her like I could! I was her father, goddamn it! And in that second I doubted his love in her, I saw him kiss her temple, a pause in his driving to comfort her, before he turned to look at me from the front porch.
"Thank you, Charlie. I'll take care of her." He mouthed, completely backing out and pulling away before they could second guess their decision and come back.
And just like that, they were gone. Out of my life. They'd made it clear they couldn't come back. They made it clear they couldn't visit. They didn't even tell me where they were going, or give me an address to send letters and packages to. How was Ness supposed to get my birthday present, now? I would have to text her later, and ask Bells. Texting was the only way she'd reply. Phone calls were allowed on certain occasions, but no video chats, period. Limited contact. It hurt to think that just a week ago I could hold her in my arms, but now we only had limited contact.
I would do anything to get them back.
To get her back.
I would do anything to rewind a few years, just before she met Edward, and spend a little more time with her. Or maybe, just maybe, I'd go back to even before then, all the way back to my time with Renee. Maybe I'd rewind to the hospital, the night she was born and just spend a little more time holding her in my arms.
Just me and my baby girl.
A/N: As I said… I wrote this because I got stuck, but if you like it, Tell me and I'll do more stuff like it! Thanks for reading! ( PS writing in Charlie's POV is actually pretty fun!)