Carlisle's POV

My son was in love. And my daughter was fighting love. They were not my biological children, but they may as well have been my own. Esme and I had taken Edward in years ago, when he was still a gangly youth, and Rosalie when Edward found her two years ago just outside the commune entrance.

In every sense of the word, they were my children. And now they were discovering the joys and fears of love. From the moment Edward laid eyes on Bella, electricity had sparkled between them. Only, Edward didn't believe himself worthy of love, at least not Bella's love.

The day he came back after interrogating her, I knew. I could see it in his eyes. He was scared, scared of the emotions he was feeling, scared of what this all meant. By now, I think he had come to terms with it all. If there was one thing I could have said about that boy, it was that everything he has ever done had been done intensely. And now, it was Bella who seemed afraid of their love. Loving Edward meant loving with her whole heart and that meant giving up a piece of herself to someone else. A piece that would go into someone else's keeping, to break or to cherish.

It would only be a matter of time before the two would be inseparable, caught in those first blissful stages of love. I could tell Charlie was oblivious, as he often was whenever it came to matters of emotion; the man could be denser than a fencepost at times. I knew he probably would not like Bella and Edward's relationship. She was his only child, the last piece of the wife he still loved, and he had only just gotten her back. There was no stopping love, however.

At times, I understood why Charlie would dislike their relationship. Edward often came across as cold and unfeeling, but I knew he was filled with flames of emotion: Anger, love, lust, and vengeance.

When he had come to us almost five years ago, he had been broken. He had been so filled with despair and hate that I hadn't been sure we would be able to find the boy underneath. Yet, he was this way for a reason. Everyday I prayed we would get word of the Volturi's demise. They had destroyed so much without a single thought. They were animals, soulless creatures that decided people's fate on a whim.

Edward had lived in Chicago with his mother and father, and he had been the apple of their eye. He had been surrounded by their love and then one day, it had all been taken away. The Volturi had decided to determine if their labs had been able to create a strain of the Spanish Influenza as lethal as the one from the early 1900s. They had released the spores of the new virus on the west side of the city and spores that had been frozen for decades in ice on the east side. People from the west side had survived; people from the east had not.

Edward had been one of the few to make it out alive. When I'd found him, he had been malnourished, frail, and running a very high fever. Only through the grace of God had I been able to save him.

His recovery had not been an easy one, and it had only solidified the ending of his childhood. His sole reason for survival had been revenge. He had wanted vengeance for his parents and all the other innocent souls that had died because of the Volturi and their disregard for life. It had hardened him, made him cold and, at times, unfeeling. But all he had needed was a flame to thaw out his wounded heart. And Isabella Swan would be that flame.

Emmett was brash and overtly sexual, and, yet, he was exactly what Rosalie needed. She was my little ice princess, liable to shatter at the first hint of vulnerability. She made me proud everyday and humbled me, too. She had managed to go on living after a brutal assault when most others would have crumbled. I could only guess at what she had gone through, making educated assumptions based on the wounds I had treated. It had been clear she had been savagely beaten and raped, repeatedly. Finally, she had been left for dead, a broken, limp doll.

When Edward had carried her in, I hadn't been certain I could help her. I had been afraid she was too far-gone. But she hadn't been gone; she had simply retreated to a safe place inside herself. Only she never fully left that shelter afterwards. She lived, but part of her remained hidden, protected from the outside world. Emmett wasn't going to let that continue. He was going to set her free. He was going to love her.

And Emmett . . . well, he was a special boy. Constantly posturing and bragging, hiding his vulnerability behind a thick wall of . . . well, crap. However, he was a good boy, and he'd fallen in love with Rosalie the moment he had seen her. And she had fallen in love with him the moment she had laid her eyes on him. Of course, neither one realized this.

Rosalie wouldn't have saved him if an inkling of love hadn't existed in her heart for him. To be brutally honest, Rosalie viewed the world in a kill-or-be-killed way. The only time I really saw her compassionate nature was with the commune children. Her subconscious mind knew Emmett was the one for her. Just as I knew the moment I met Esme that she was the one for me. That was why she had saved him. I honestly believed she would have left him for dead otherwise.

Emmett wouldn't continuously egg Rosalie on if he didn't care. He was like a child: the only way he knew how to let Rosalie know he liked her was to irritate the holy hell out of her. Like the little boy in grade school who pulled pigtails, Emmett threw out sexual jokes left and right. I didn't know if he knew, but he was doing the perfect thing to get her attention.

They would fight like cats and dogs for a while, but one day they would go from fighting to loving. And everyone knows the more passionately you hate someone, the more passionately you love someone.

Although I was happy for Edward and Rosalie, I was scared. My children were leaving me. Not in the physical sense, but in the emotional. They no longer needed Esme's and my love; they had others now providing that, whether they realized it or not. I never thought I could love someone with so much passion my heart overflowed, and it hurt to now say good-bye as they entered the next chapter of their lives. I loved my children, and I would let them go. With a hug and a kiss I'd send them off, knowing they had found the greatest thing in the world: love.