Finding Heaven
A/N: I wasn't planning to update this weekend because I don't have a lot of time, but I stayed up late to finish this short chapter to tide you over until the Edward 'hunting' chapter. Sorry if you're disappointed, but I didn't want to rush it too much and make it suck. Lol.
~Chapter 12 – Trust
EPOV
"Bella, would you like something to eat?" Esme asked her.
"Uh, I can't seem to keep anything down."
"You keep vomiting?" Carlisle asked her with concern.
"Yeah, and it doesn't matter what I eat, it just always comes back up."
Carlisle took her hand, and started squeezing the tips of her fingers gently.
I'm just checking her for dehydration – he thought to me.
"Ok Bella, you are showing signs of dehydration. Have you been able to keep any water down?"
"No, I can't even drink water right now."
Carlisle nodded. – Edward, if we can't keep her hydrated, then she won't make it much longer.
"What do we do?" I asked him.
Carlisle's mind went cautiously to IVs. "It's the only way," he said quietly.
I had already pulled Carlisle aside to apologize to him again in private, and I also explained my hatred of needles to him. I told him about Bella's mother and the horrific way she was kept, so Carlisle knew that I'd have issues with having Bella attached to IVs, but I also understood that Bella needed it.
Carlisle stared at me and waited for me to give him permission to put Bella on an IV drip. I reluctantly nodded, so he went into action.
"Bella, I need to hook you up to an IV to try to keep you hydrated, otherwise you won't make it another week."
"Oh…ok."
Suddenly, Carlisle's mind shifted to a new course of action. "Jacob, can I speak to you for a moment?"
"Yeah, sure."
"I think it would be best for us to return to Forks, for the duration of Bella's pregnancy."
"Why? I don't think it would be a good idea to tell her dad about this, he wouldn't understand."
"No, but if the Volturi decide to come after Edward, then perhaps the close proximity to the wolf pack may detour them a bit, or at least buy us some extra time. Plus, the rural location of our house there may be good for when the infant is born. We have no idea how it will act, so keeping it as far away from humans as possible, is best."
"Yeah, I guess that's true. I'll call Sam and tell him that you guys are coming back to the area."
"Thank you, Jacob."
"Sure, sure."
"Wait a minute, we're leaving?" Rose asked annoyed and frustrated.
"I think it would be for the best," Carlisle responded.
"No. We're finally in our senior year here, and I'm not ready to start all over again."
"Rose, going back to Forks temporarily, will offer the most amount of protection that we can hope for in this situation."
"Senior year? I thought you guys graduated before I came to Forks?" Bella asked.
"Whenever we move to a new place, we start high school again. The younger we pretend to be, the longer we can stay without people noticing our lack of aging," Rose explained.
"So you repeat high school, over and over again? That's so lame," I said while laughing.
"Well, as soon as all this is done, you'll be a freshman. You have such a precious baby face that you'll have to play the younger role with Alice." Rose said while trying to pinch my cheeks, but I backed away from her.
"Uh, no. I'm not going to play high school, that's ridiculous. You are all very strange, you don't kill humans, and you pretend to be high school students. You're vampires; you are far superior to any measly human, so why lower yourself by living like them?"
"Well, your human over there looks pissed at you," Rose told me. "You know, you really need to knock that Volturi attitude out. Stop thinking you're so superior all the time, because it's really upsetting your pregnant human girlfriend."
"Once she's turned, she'll understand."
"You didn't fall in love with a vampire, you fell in love with a human, so just remember that when you're snubbing your nose at the species." Rose said, then turned and walked away.
"So bro, I think we got off to the wrong start," Emmett said, and threw his massive arm around my shoulder. "I'm sorry for fighting earlier."
I just stared at him. I never had a vampire sit so close to me, little alone have their arm around me so casually.
"This is the part where you say, 'I'm sorry too, Emmett'."
"Right…well I'll get back to you on that," I said, and then got up and moved away from him.
Alice hugged me a few times over the decades, but that was as far as vampire affections went. Even when I had sex with various vampires, I still preferred to touch them as little as possible. For me, the only time a vampire should have its arm around someone who wasn't their mate, was when they are fighting and about to rip a limb off the other.
All of the Cullens went their separate ways, so they could prepare for their departure. They weren't happy about the sudden move, but after a minute, they accepted it and tried to make the best of the situation. Strangely, however, they were all happy about trying to help Bella, and they all seemed to really like her. We had only known them for a few hours, but they were acting as if we were already members of their unconventional coven. Bella and Esme were even discussing the future, as if it wasn't even a question that we'd still be with them.
"It's going to be so fun decorating the baby's room. I love decorating but I never got to do a nursery before," Esme told her.
"Well, I'm horrible with decorating, so I'll just leave that aspect up to you."
Rose came back into the house from wherever she had gone, and she must have had fifty bags. "I bought everything the baby is going to need. Clothes, bibs, bottles, baby toys, burp cloths, diapers. We're all set."
Rose started pulling everything out of the bags to show Bella, and Bella was actually interested in everything.
"Are you nuts? I mean really, do vampires go insane?" I asked her angrily. "This isn't some sweet baby who's going to coo and burp up its milk. I doubt the thing will even want bottles, and forget about the toys, all it's going to want to do is kill everyone."
I was so frustrated by all their optimism when it came to the demon spawn; they were getting Bella's hopes up, and that wasn't fair. Bella needed to understand that she's not going to get to mother the thing; we'll probably have to kill it right away anyway. If it's strong and uncontrollable, then we'll have to put an end to it before it draws too much attention. All we needed was the Volturi to find out about it, and we'd all be dead.
"Just because you want nothing to do with it, that doesn't mean that we can't prepare and get excited," Rose said to me.
I was about to jump at her and rip her fucking head off, but Carlisle came into the room, and I had already disrespected him enough.
"We're ready to go," Carlisle said to all of us.
I took Bella's hand, and helped her outside. We all piled into two SUVs, and headed to the airport. We would have just run the whole way, but the females had luggage, and Bella was in no condition to ride on my back that far. Bella tried to remain positive and light, but I could see it in her face, she was getting weaker and weaker by the hour. Carlisle said she'd be fine until we got to Washington, but that didn't stop me from still worrying.
"When was the last time you've been to the US?" Carlisle asked me as I was staring out the window of the plane. Bella was sleeping against my shoulder, and Carlisle was on the other side of her. He wanted to stay close to her, just in case she needed anything.
"Uh, nineteen eighteen," I said with a low chuckle.
"You haven't been back here since you first left to Italy as a newborn?" Carlisle said, surprised.
"No. I've been to France, Spain, Greece and a few countries in between, but I rarely ever leave Tuscany. Aro probably hasn't realized that I'm off the continent yet, because I've been gone for a few months at a time in the past, but I know things will get real ugly once he's figured it out."
"I imagine so," Carlisle agreed.
"I'm sorry for involving your coven like this. I actually didn't think the whole thing through before we set out to find you."
"Edward, I realize that you don't remember me, and we never had a chance to spend any real time together, but I have always thought of you as my son and I truly believe that your place has always been with us. We're a family, and families protect each other."
I shook my head at him. "I need your help with Bella, because you're a doctor and if anyone can save her, it's you. But once this thing is out of her, we're going to be on our way. I need to get back to Volterra, and since Bella has agreed to be changed, then I'll bring her back with me."
"Edward, of course you are free to do what you want, but Aro will know what you've been doing as soon as you go back there…"
"I know," I interrupted him. "But he'll stop at nothing to get me back there, and if I return with Bella as a vampire, then perhaps he'll forgive me for leaving with her. He wouldn't care if I left on my own for a while, but he knows that Bella knows the truth, and he would never stand for a human with that kind of knowledge being free."
"And what about the baby?"
I pressed my lips and shook my head again. "We both know that Bella won't make it long enough to carry it to term. She's going to get too bad, and she already agreed to let me end it and turn her, so it's only a matter of time," I whispered, so I wouldn't wake her.
"But there is a chance that they both survive."
"If by chance she survives long enough for it to be born, I'll turn her right after, and the monster will probably have to be terminated anyway. Immortal children are outlawed for a reason."
"This will not be an immortal child, it's half human, and it obviously grows. The same laws will not apply to the infant, so I think it would be best to come up with an alternate plan, just in case it does get born healthy."
"Carlisle, I really appreciate your help, but I won't draw the attention of the Volturi to your coven. If I stay with you, then they'll come looking for me, but if I go, hopefully I can convince them to leave you alone. It's the only chance that we'll all be able to survive this."
"If the infant is born, and poses no threat to anyone, then Aro will want it for himself. He's a collector of the rare and unique, and a vampire hybrid is definitely that. What will you do then?"
I thought for a moment. "It won't come to that. If this thing survives long enough to actually be born, then we're going to have to kill it right away. Vampires aren't angelic creations of god. No creature produced by one of us can be anything but evil, no matter what it looks like. This thing could be destined to bring the apocalypse for all we know; I mean, what other purpose would something like this have? Vampires are dead, we can't produce life. This is the work of something much darker than we could possibly imagine."
"Or maybe…it's a miracle," Carlisle said unexpectedly. Damn him. All the fucking optimism with this unconventional coven was really driving me nuts. Perhaps it was drinking all that animal blood, it must make them soft. But softness was weakness, and since I already promised Bella that I wouldn't kill humans anymore, I really needed to find a way to keep myself from becoming as pathetic as they were.
Rose was sitting behind us, so of course she was listening to our conversation and decided to butt in. She leaned over Bella's seat and whispered too low for humans to hear, "When the baby is born, you can go back to Italy by yourself. Bella already said she wants to stay with us, so she's going to stay, and so is the baby. You are just going to have to tell Aro that he needs to find a different a different new species to be fascinated with."
"You have obviously never met Aro," I said annoyed, and refused to say anything more on the subject, especially to her. I didn't need any of their permission to kill the demon growing inside Bella, because it was my demon to kill. I wasn't about to let some apocalypse ruin my eternity with Bella. I didn't wait over a hundred years to find her, only to lose her because we brought some devil baby into the world.
Bella awoke just as we started landing, and we immediately went to go rent a couple vans to take us all to their house in Forks. Bella fell back asleep during the car ride, so once we pulled up to the large white house in the woods, I carried her inside. Esme led me up the stairs and into a room which looked like it had been used as a media room. I laid her on the couch and kissed the tip of her nose softly.
"Shouldn't we get the IVs started?" I asked Carlisle, who came into the room and was gently taking Bella's vitals as she slept.
"She'll wake back up soon, as for now, let's just let her sleep. I'll keep checking her every hour or so."
"Ok," I said and just stood there watching her sleep.
"Yo," Emmett said quietly as he appeared in the doorway. "The mongrel went home. He said to call him if anything changes."
"Good," I said, glad to be rid of him finally.
"Edward, I think it would be good for you to go out with Alice and Jazz to get to know the territory. We are not allowed on Quileute lands, so you'll need to stay away from La Push, and you'll need to know the boundary line."
"Why would I need to know that?" I asked confused. I didn't plan on leaving the house, so there wasn't a point to learning the area.
"Edward, you will need to hunt eventually, and it would be wise to know where you can and can't go in the woods. Your eyes are darkening, so it won't be long before your thirst becomes unmanageable. I'm sure you don't want to be thirsty around Bella."
"I'd never hurt her," I said offended.
"Of course not, but there is no need to make yourself uncomfortable either. Besides, when Bella is turned she will need to hunt right away, and I'm sure you'll want to be the one to take her, so it will go much smoother if you know your way around a bit."
He had a point. Damn it.
"I don't want to leave her."
"If you still don't trust us with her, then perhaps Emmett and Jazz can go with you, and Alice can stay here with her. Surely you trust Alice with her?"
"It's not about trust," I said honestly, which actually surprised even me, "I just don't want to leave her."
"You really do love her, don't you? I have to admit, I had my doubts in the beginning. I thought you were just fascinated with her and nothing deeper than that, but you have definitely proved me wrong, which I'm very pleased about."
I laughed once humorlessly. "Maybe if I really loved her, I never would have put her in this situation."
"There was no way you could have predicted this. Not even Alice saw this coming."
"I can't lose her." I said quietly.
"You won't. I will make sure that she survives this for you," he said determined, and at that moment, I realized that I had complete confidence in Carlisle. If it was possible for Bella to survive, then I knew that he'd find it, and because of that simple fact alone, I trusted him more than any other vampire I had ever met.
*Sorry we didn't get to Edward's hunt this chapter, but I promise that it is coming next. Please Review.*