The Way I Love Her
Disclaimer: All the characters in the story are the property of Stephanie Meyer. I have borrowed them for my entertainment and (hopefully) your reading pleasure. I make no profit from their use.
Chapter 7: Carlisle's Conscience
Jacob decides to shift his line of attack to Carlisle, having exhausted all avenues at me. It is further proof that he has no understanding whatsoever of what the Cullens are about. I suppose that we are lucky that Ephraim Black was a lot sharper than his great-grandson. Or maybe it is because Ephraim had accepted his role as the Alpha without question. Perhaps Jacob's reluctance to accept his legacy is hampering his ability to properly fulfill his role.
"Your father took lives," he says.
"He took four lives, by your definition of taking," I say. "But he never sent any soul to its final reward, so to speak. He has never fed on human blood. or even killed a human by accident.
"He has spent centuries fighting his own nature to the point that he is able to work in hospitals, in the presence if large amounts of human blood, saving the human lives that he would more naturally take as a vampire. But each of us would have died anyway in the various physical states that we were in at the time of transformation.
"As a doctor, there was nothing that he could have done to save us. Without his intervention, we would have died anyway. He offered us each an alternate destiny, an ability to at least survive within the mortal realm. And while you may wish to define us as dead now, the present condition in which we exist is nothing like death."
"How close were you to real death?" he asks, his curiosity peaked again, despite his reflexive disgust at my explanation.
"I had a lethal form of influenza and only hours left to live," I reply. "The fever that had killed my parents was raging through my body. At that time there was no way to stop it. My mother had begged Carlisle to save me any way that he could before she died.
"She knew that I would be following her shortly if he didn't. And so he did. He took my dying body back to his home, bit me, and then waited for the change to take place. Technically, he is my creator, but in my mind, he is my father."
"It's a pity he didn't just let you die," he says sarcastically. "And the others?"
"Esme had jumped off a cliff," I say, somewhat amazed at his obviously morbid curiosity. "They brought her straight to the morgue, but there was still enough life in her for Carlisle to save her. She had recently lost a child, and tried to commit suicide to escape the pain of that loss.
"When she met me and learned that I was Carlisle's 'son' she immediately adopted me as her own child. She did so even before she and Carlisle fell in love. Although that did not take long to follow, since, unknowingly, he had created his own true mate.
"Rosalie was next. She had been viciously attacked in the street and left for dead. Carlisle smelled the blood and could see that her situation was hopeless. She could not live. He brought her home, as hoping that she would be mate for me actually, but we didn't see each other that way. No one can force such a relationship on two people and therefore no one tries.
"In fact, because I refused to worship her beauty, she was pretty pissed. And she was resentful of the fact that, because I could read minds, I knew how vain she was. She really hated me for a while. But she was the one who found Emmet. Now, thanks to Emmet, she now merely dislikes me. He was her true mate.
"When she came upon him, Emmet was being mauled by a grizzly. He had been out hunting to feed his family. Before the bear could finish him off, Rosalie saved him and brought him home to Carlisle to change. We still don't understand how she was able to tolerate the sheer volume of blood. She must have loved him even then.
"He was a mess and had lost a lot of blood, but Carlisle was able to save him anyway. He had a very strong heart. I know that the word 'save' offends you, but the alternative for each of us would have been what you might call 'true death,' a complete departure from the mortal world."
"In your case, I wish that you had made that departure," he says sardonically.
"Oddly enough, we all do as well, which is why I do not take Bella's wish to join me in this life lightly," I admit. "Rosalie is the worst because she was so in love with her human life that she has deep regrets about continuing beyond it. Finding her mate has immensely helped her to reconcile herself to her fate. However she still regrets the children and grandchildren that she will never have."
"And that Bella will never have, if she chooses you," he says bitterly.
"Don't think that I haven't made that point before," I reply. "Rosalie has as well, one of her few acts of kindness towards Bella. Not that she would listen to her either. But she is only eighteen and at a point in her life where children are not a part of her vision of the future. If she changes now they probably never will be.
"Rosalie was, or rather is, eighteen too, but she was on the verge of being married. She wanted children very much before she was changed. In fact, she wanted children more than a husband. In an ironic twist of fate, she got the husband, but no children.
"Of course, the loss of her child was the reason that Esme was changed in the first place. Her yearning for children has never ended. That is why she has embraced all of us as her children. Esme wants Bella changed for more reasons than to keep me happy. She looks forward to the addition of another 'child' to our family. Like the rest of us, she will nurture and care for her as if she were her own daughter."
"What about you?" he asks. "Do you want children?"
"I'm seventeen," I answer. "When I was alive during the First World War, I was only interested in turning eighteen so that I could join the army. I never even had a girlfriend, or a sweetheart as we used to call them. Courtship wasn't on my radar screen at that particular time of my life.
"It was the same with Emmet, if you really want to know, and Carlisle and Jasper, who were also young. We come from time periods where men established themselves in careers before they even considered looking for a wife. In proper society, it was only fitting that the suitor should ask the girl's father.
"Part of that request included an explanation of how he intended to provide for a wife and family. I know that this may seem very old-fashioned and formal to you, but it is how I was raised."
"So will you ask Charlie?" he asks insolently.
"I will ask Bella first," I reply, pleased that I don't have to reveal that I have already asked and she has accepted. "Then I will ask Charlie for his blessing. You might call it my compromise to the modern world."
"What if I ask him first?" he asks, half-humorously. "Bet he says yes."
"Perhaps you would like Bella take break her other hand punching your face," I suggest amiably.
He grits his teeth.
"You think that you have this all figured out, don't you?" he says. "Don't underestimate me."
"I would rather that you don't underestimate me," I reply. "Bella is my first love, so to speak. That's a very powerful thing in any world. And in my case, it's not like to change how I feel."
"So then you really were 'frozen' before you ever fell in love? There's never been another girl?"
"Not in the last ninety years," I shrug. "We aren't fickle like humans. If there had been another girl, we wouldn't be here now."
"That really sucks," he replies emphatically.
"Was that an intentional pun?"
He glowers back at me.
"Is that's it," he finally says. "You have to wait a hundred and eight years to fall in love with my girl."
"That's about it," I say, ignoring his claim on Bella as a possession. "I don't know how it would have been if I had left behind someone I truly loved. It's the same for the women in my family. They never knew true love either. Both Esme and Rosalie were abused by the men in their lives. Esme's deepest emotional connection was to her dead child.
"And Alice never knew love because she has no memory of her human life. I think that's also why she has bonded so closely to Esme. Esme's love and devotion to all of us is irresistible, but even more so to one who has no memory of a mother, or the love of anyone else for that matter."
"I thought that the 'bonding' was only with mates?" he asks.
"No, there can be parent-child bonds as well," I say. "Three of our cousins n Denali were created by the same woman when they were teenagers. They consider themselves sisters and that woman was their mother. The connection has literally lasted for centuries."
"Was?"
"She committed a terrible crime in our world," I explain. "And that resulted in the forfeit of her life, such as it was. It has left a very deep scar upon her daughters. Because of the nature of the vampire, that scar will never heal. For the rest of eternity they will mourn her passing as if it were yesterday."
He looks at me as if he is unable to comprehend the concept of grief for an eternity. But then again, humans, even half-humans, have a very different concept of forever, than vampires.