Questions Of The Heart.
Bella's Point Of View
I was standing in front of Carlisle's desk in his home office. I was glancing around at all of the paintings and pictures he had hanging on the walls. I held my arm out in front of me so he could stitch up the wounds from Edward throwing me backwards to stop Jasper from attacking me.
"I never wanted to have a party," I say, looking down at the floor.
He chuckles softly and says "It's not your fault." Then he adds, "Jasper hasn't been away from human blood as long as the rest of us."
"How do you do it?" I ask.
Another chuckle. "Years and years of practice."
"When you didn't even chose it. That must have been really hard."
"Like everything else in life, I just had to decide what to do with what I was given." He said, pulling the thread the rest of the way through before tying it around the end of the tweezers again.
"Did you ever just think of doing it the easy way?" I ask.
"No. I knew who I wanted to be. I wanted to help people. It brings me happiness. Even if I am damned, reguardless." He says, the last part catching me off guard.
"Damned?" I ask. "Like...Like hell?"
He glances up at me, before nodding slightly and looking back down.
"Carlisle, you couldn't be damned. You couldn't. It's impossible." I say.
"Thank you, Bella, you've always been very gracious about us. By all other accounts, though, we are damned. But I hope, maybe foolishly, we get some measure of credit for trying" He says.
"Do they all think like this?" I ask.
"Edward doesn't believe there is an afterlife for our kind. He believes this is our afterlife. And it exchange for this limited immortality, we've lost our souls."
"So, that's it? That's why he won't change me?" I ask.
"Imagine the situation in reverse, hm?" He taps my chin. "If you believed as Edward does, could you ake away his soul?" He sticks the end of a metal prong in to the candle flame and lights the blooding water and tissues before blowing the flame out.
"But, you changed Jade." I said.
"Yes, I did." He said, looking to the picture of his wife on the bookcase. "For the selfish reason of I couldn't live without her."
"That's not selfish, Carlisle. You love her."
"That, I do. She makes me feel like I still have a soul. A heart. Though, I am afraid, we both know that I am nothing but a cold shell that has nothing to offer her." He says, leaning against the desk beside me. "Yet, for some reason, she still stays and that alone, means more to me than she will ever know."
"I've seen the way she looks at you, the way you look at her. She's your entire world." I say, knowing everything I was saying was true. I knew how much they hated being away from each other. I knew that they could out-do me and Edward in that respect.
"She is. She means everything to me." He smiles. The only time he ever actually smiled was when he was asked about her or when she was around.
"How old was she when you changed her?" I ask.
"She had just turned twenty-one."
"How did you come across her, if you don't mind me asking?"
"She was in a car accident. Her heart was giving out and she had flatlined by the time they brought her in. I did everything I could because I knew when it came down to it, I'd change her. That was always a last resort for me. But, she wasn't breathing and almost every bone in her body was broken beyond repair." He explained, wincing at the memory.
"But, you knew her before then?" I ask, already knowing the answer.
"Yes, I did. Her parents were..horrible. She was brought in when she was seventeen for a head injury and when I first saw it, I knew she was it for me." He smiled again.
"Love at first sight exists for vampires?" I smile a little.
"It does." He smiles.
I smile and leave him to his work. While walking through the house, trying to find Edward so he could take me home, I knew that what Carlisle and Jade had was everything I want for me and Edward.