«So… you're gifted, huh.» Jane said to fill the silence.

They would still have been standing in the alley behind the hotel, staring mutely at each other, if a young woman hadn't steered into the alley, made eye contact with Jane, and immediately changed directions.

Now they were wandering the streets aimlessly, Carlisle keeping his red eyes downcast while Jane fished a large set of round black sunglasses out of her jacket. They took up nearly half her face.

Carlisle wondered what Aro had been thinking.

Jane was one of the only Volturi members that Carlisle had never encountered while in Volterra. The Volturi was a busy organization, more so than usual when the European witch hunts made vampires think they had leeway with the law, and the guard rarely left Volterra without at least one twin.

The only times the two had met had been when Jane came purposefully too late to save Carlisle's family from a newborn army, and when Aro had brought her along with the rest of his guard to execute Carlisle and all his family and friends.

And from what Carlisle had seen and heard of Jane, she took great pride in spending her existence torturing people.

There was using her gift in service of the Volturi, and then there was sadism.

He did not truly dislike her, she was too young for that. All the same, there were certain people Carlisle could go without spending his day with, and Jane was one of them.

He bitterly reflected over these things, as well as just how painfully awkward each second that passed in deafening silence felt, engraving it in his memory. If he had to suffer, then Aro could damn well suffer by proxy when they met again.

«No,» he sighed, «Aro is mistaken.» Well, there was the matter of how humans didn't seem to fear Carlisle, Aro was right that that was strange.

But Aro's claims had been much bolder than that.

Jane looked sharply up at him through the sunglasses. «Aro is never wrong about these things. No, you're gifted. What is it?» She asked, but held up a hand before he could answer, «No, don't tell me, I want to guess.»

A grin spread across her face. It was entirely too gleeful, yet not at all menacing. Just so very excited, like Alice planning a party.

It seemed guessing gifts was a passion of Jane's.

Carlisle shrugged. «Just don't suggest that it's the power to change my eye color, because that's my joke.»

«The power to- really?» She made a disgusted face. «That isn't funny at all. Is it the power to control yourself? Since you're immune to blood, and your family doesn't eat anything.»

Carlisle gave her a funny look.

«We do eat things. Animal blood,» he corrected.

«And you're malnourished because of it. Aro told me your eyes are yellow because your body can't metabolize the blood properly. Instead of a healthy red, they turn the color of waste liquids.» She smiled. «Urine,» she clarified in a lowered pitch, lowering her glasses briefly so she could make direct eye contact with him.

Carlisle mentally groaned at Aro.

He should have known the man would tell everyone about that particular theory.

He was sure Aro hadn't even done it to mock Carlisle either, he was much too decent for that. No, the man simply enjoyed talking, about anything and everything, and apparently Carlisle's eyes being yellow because of urine was one such topic. Carlisle could imagine it had turned into one of Aro's many praises of his character, too. He'd certainly been impressed when he first came up with his theory, fully expecting Carlisle to say «Goodness, that's disgusting! Fetch me a human at once!», and Carlisle not only gave him an unimpressed stare, but went out into Volterra to eat a few rats, just to prove that no amount of disgust could make him forgo his faith.

This, in turn, had sparked a round of Caius begging Aro to find himself a lover who didn't eat rats in the sewer, and threatening to join the Romanians when Aro refused.

Either way, it seemed this had become common knowledge among the Volturi guard.

«He told you that, did he? Did he tell you it's just a theory?»

«Do you have a better theory?» Jane asked with an impish grin, knowing that he didn't.

It was easy to forget, even with her tiny stature and childlike voice, that Jane was eternally twelve years old. She hadn't acted like a child in either of their previous encounters. Carlisle suspected this was a conscious decision, that she went out of her way to behave as adult-like as possible so people wouldn't dismiss her as a child quite so easily.

But right now she was acting every inch the inquisitive child. She was charming, but he knew from dealing with young patients that she would not let this go until he admitted she was right, or gave her a better explanation.

Which he didn't have.

«No,» he admitted.

Jane lit up.

She was acting surprisingly congenial.

Carlisle was starting to wonder if Jane and Alec had secretly been triplets the whole time, and Carlisle was talking to Jane's pleasant sister.

This was not what he'd expected from Jane at all.

When his family had taken a stand against the Volturi, they humiliated them. And no one had been more humiliated than Jane and Alec, who'd been left to throw their gifts uselessly against Bella's unbreakable barrier while half the vampire world saw how powerless they were.

Carlisle had seen the hateful way Jane glared at Bella that day, seen her desire to unleash her gift upon every last fool who'd dared to stand before the Volturi.

She was too loyal to Aro to outright harm Carlisle when she'd been asked to guard him, but all the same, Carlisle had expected something more akin to being marched through the streets like a convict to the gallows while Jane whispered menacing stories of over a thousand years of killing and torturing vampires and humans alike.

He had not expected her to put the past behind them and make pleasant, civil conversation with him.

She was shockingly mature.

More mature than some of the adult vampires Carlisle had met over the years.

If this was what she was normally like, then he could understand why Aro was so befuddled by humans not being charmed by her.

«Told you. So is it the power to control yourself? That would, oh,» her eyes widened, «that would explain why you made that immortal child. Did you want to prove you could impose control upon one?»

Carlisle gaped at her.

Jane, twelve-year-old Jane, was really going to bring this into the conversation?

Carlisle would have thought this was a sensitive topic.

Apparently not.

«I did not make an immortal child!» He protested.

Edward had.

Not on purpose, of course, and Renesmée had grown up eventually, but that mess had very much not been Carlisle's fault.

Jane shrugged, blissfully uncaring of the fact that she herself was, technically, an immortal child.

Of course, Jane wasn't an immortal child in the way people seemed to believe she was.

Carlisle had had immediate questions when Aro first told him about immortal children, as he knew there were child vampires in the Volturi guard.

On that particular day Jane had been away on an assignment, as she nearly always was. No one put the fear of God in the demon world quite like Jane, and so she was always the first choice for being sent on missions, even before her brother. Alec had just gotten back from a mission, though, and so it had been Alec that Aro had summoned to his chambers that day, along with one of the beautiful maidens the Volturi kept in the castle.

(Carlisle had been greatly amused when he learned Aro had modernized beautiful maidens into hot secretaries. He wasn't wrong, but something about Aro holding up two sexist archetypes and saying, «Is this not the same thing?», and not being wrong, was funnier than it should have been.)

«An immortal child,» Aro had intoned to Carlisle as Aro walked a circle around the nervous-looking young woman. Her name had been Giulia, and she had some of the loveliest brown eyes Carlisle had ever seen. «Is a vampire who is frozen at too young an age to ever learn control. They can never be taught, nor do they understand why they should be. Alec?»

He'd held out a thin knife, which Alec accepted with a grim look on his youthful face. Giulia had paled, but she obediently held out her hand as Aro indicated.

Slowly, and ever so carefully so as not to draw any more blood than necessary, Alec had drawn a thin line across Giulia's soft skin with the knife, drawing brilliant red blood that trickled down her wrist, dripping enticingly to the floor.

Carlisle had not yet perfected his own control at the time, and so when Alec's grip around the knife was suddenly too tight and he crushed its handle, sending the blade clanging to the stone floor, Carlisle could sympathize.

Giulia had been remarkably calm, even when the knife fell. She had been tense, of course, pale and barely daring to breathe, yet she had stood quite tall, showing no indication towards disobeying the vampires around her. Still, Carlisle had decided to shoot her an encouraging smile, and it lowered her shoulders a bit.

«Alec still has room for improvement, I wouldn't trust him to create a vampire,» Aro had said softly, as he had watched Alec stand stiller than any statue, not daring to breathe but too set on proving himself to step away, «but he has learned control.»

With that, he'd dismissed Alec, who was gone from the room so quickly Carlisle's eyes had trouble tracking his movement, and offered young Giulia a cloth to stem her bleeding.

Afterwards Aro had picked up the knife's blade and taken Carlisle to see the true immortal children that had lived for centuries in the deepest catacombs beneath Volterra. As the irresistibly sweet toddlers turned into raging, uncontrollable beasts the instant they spotted the dried blood on the blade, Carlisle understood just why the creation of immortal children was forbidden, punishable by death.

Still, for all that Jane had learned control, as proven by the fact that she was walking calmly along the streets of Whitefish without killing everything in sight, the impish smile on her face was very much the smile of a child who was pleased she'd gotten Carlisle to admit his normal eye color was gross.

«Where is it, anyway?» She asked.

It took Carlisle a second to realize what Jane meant. «You mean Renesmée,» he confirmed, and Jane just gave him a look, as if he was being pedantic.

Well, Carlisle didn't know, did he?

Renesmée had supposedly gone to visit her grandfather's grave, as she was wont to do. She had yet to forgive her family for not making Charlie immortal and, to her understanding, letting her grandfather die pointlessly. Spending her weekends with Grandpa Charlie just as she had when he lived had become her passive-aggressive way of making them all sorry.

And, Carlisle knew even as he was powerless to help, it was the only way a girl who lived with an unchanging, immortal family knew how to deal with grief.

To Renesmée, humanity was what poverty was to rich people. It was a terrible shame others had to live the way they did, but Renesmée was above all that. For someone near her to be affected by death, the most human thing of all, was incomprehensible, unacceptable.

In this, as with many other matters, Carlisle was glad Renesmée wasn't frozen quite the way vampires were. Her memories weren't as sharp and her brain was wired more like humans. In time, her grief over Charlie would fade.

And hopefully, she'd understand humanity a little better.

But he'd rather not get into all that with Jane.

Especially since he had his doubts Renesmée was even at that grave, considering how Alice appeared to have missed the funny hats vision. Most likely, she'd changed her mind and gone to hunt with the others instead.

He didn't want to get into that either.

«She's camping,» he replied. And she was. Somewhere, Carlisle did not know where.

Jane hummed. «Can she eat human food?» She asked.

Carlisle smiled slightly. «We can all eat human food,» he pointed out, and Jane gave him a disgusted look. «But yes, Renesmée absorbs nutrients from human food. The flavor is dulled for her, though… not unlike how animal blood is for us,» he mused.

Jane furrowed her brow. «Weird,» she commented, and was silent for a few seconds. Then she looked up at him. «What was the wolf's blood like?»

Carlisle gave her a surprised look.

He hadn't expected Jane to be full of so many questions.

But he supposed Jane had to have a lot of questions about him, and not just about the supposed gift. Most vampires did, and Jane had been hearing about him from Aro. Anyone would be curious.

Strangely, for all that she had no relation to Aro, she was starting to remind Carlisle of him.

Her smile had that same brightness, her questions that same inoffensive curiosity for all they were invasive.

The Volturi were not a family in the way that Carlisle's coven was. They had strong relationships and cared for one another, yet while Aro was the closest thing Jane had to a father, he was her leader before anything else. A Volturi guard member was not a Volturi coven member, and the difference in rank was one of the many ways in which the Volturi remained archaic.

All the same, it was impossible to live with someone for centuries and not develop strong, personal bonds. And from what Carlisle had seen and heard of Jane, Aro's paternal devotion to her was one of the things most important to her in this world.

He wondered what her parents had been like.

His own Rosalie was frozen on the cusp of adulthood. Though she was an adult in most of the ways that counted, when she had found her place within the family she had chosen to be his daughter, not his sister. Ostensibly, this had been because she found his true age daunting and felt he was more the father than the brother type, but as the years went by and her smile shone just as brightly each time Carlisle supported and complimented her achievements, it had become painfully clear that he was standing in for the father she wished she had had in life.

He had met Mr. Hale on a few occasions and the man had been nothing but affectionate to his beautiful daughter. However, the more Carlisle would later get to know Rosalie, the clearer it became that her parents had put too much stock in her looks and too little in Rosalie herself.

While Carlisle wouldn't place all the blame upon her parents, there was no denying that Rosalie had been taught what her value was. She was eternally in a state of mind where she valued her beauty more than any of her other attributes, while also striving to be good at everything else so that she would be more than her looks.

And just as he was powerless in the face of Renesmée's grief over Charlie, with Rosalie there was nothing Carlisle could do but cherish her, and hope that she would one day learn to cherish herself for her own sake.

Something indeterminable about Jane reminded Carlisle of this part of Rosalie. She certainly seemed to have allowed Aro to usurp her heart a bit too easily for someone who had had an uncomplicated relationship with her human parents.

More pressingly, Carlisle was starting to suspect her questions would keep him busy until Aro got back, even if it took hours.

«It smelled just like human blood,» he answered, «though I can't say for sure if the flavor was the same, for obvious reasons.» He winked down at her.

She shook her head at him. «We'll happily spare a few wolf carcasses for your family, if you want. They'll be very upset with you if you had a feast and didn't share, I'm sure,» she said.

He smiled, and they walked in amiable silence for a few minutes.

He now regretted having never gotten the chance to know Jane before this. Her charm was undeniable, her smile contagious.

Yes, if Carlisle got the chance after this awful weekend was over, then he would quite like to get to know Jane better.

Of course, there was still the matter of Bree's death.

However, while Jane might not have been an immortal child, her brain was frozen at a stage where empathy required more effort than it did adults. More, she had spent over a thousand years executing criminals, by now Carlisle imagined the life of your average John Doe vampire meant nothing to her.

It was becoming clear why Aro had wanted them to spend time together.

The Jane who had rashly executed Bree Tanner, and the Jane who was speaking to him now, were such different people that Carlisle could understand why Aro would trust a child to be in charge of a mission in the first place.

Jane was just mature enough to be trusted, yet too immature to realize the full scope her actions could have.

Her behavior now only proved it. She was off duty so to say, and so she relaxed and smiled, as carelessly as any child.

He didn't know her well, yet Carlisle was starting to suspect that Jane lived in a strong «us» vs. «them» kind of world.

And despite their history, through his friendship with Aro, Carlisle appeared to have become accepted as an «us».

So no, if anybody, Carlisle blamed Caius for Bree's death.

Caius had given Jane the implicit order to punish the Cullens, one way or another, and she had carried it out. More, Caius would have made it quite clear to her that he approved of her actions.

If Aro had no intention of reconciling himself with Carlisle's family, that would only be fair, since Carlisle had no intention of reconciling himself with Caius.

«Back to the gift,» Jane mused aloud, «I'm guessing it isn't perfect control,» she said, drawing out the last syllable in «control» and straightening her beret as she pondered.

«Are you the plague?» She asked.

Carlisle blinked and stopped walking. «Am I- what?!»

She stopped walking too, and turned to stare triumphantly back at him. This was the look of a girl who thought that by jove, she had it. «You were a cleric in life, right? Aro said. And Christians thought we spread death and disease for the longest time, so you must have thought as much as well. So, you become a demonic underling, and Aro has this theory that gifts can be influenced, so maybe that prejudice made your gift the plague. And now you're a doctor because the humans around you keep falling ill!» she finished proudly.

She looked at him expectantly, as if any moment now he would grin, tell her «Spot on, Jane!», and give her a baby to eat.

«No?» She asked after several seconds of Carlisle gaping wordlessly at her.

«No!» Carlisle protested, loudly enough that several humans looked at him. «I'm not the plague!» He whispered loudly at her.

He spared a moment to wish his weekend hadn't gotten so off-track that he was now reduced to trying to convince a dubious-looking Jane that he wasn't one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

To think a mere twenty-four hours ago, he was waving his family goodbye as he left to spend a normal weekend doing normal things.

«Aro thinks my gift is charming and persuading people,» he finally explained to Jane.

«That was my next guess,» she countered without missing a beat, before her eyes widened as she took in what he'd revealed. «Really?»

Carlisle sighed, and threw his hands out in the air. «Debatably. I don't think it is, but if it is, then it's a gift that's impossible to prove.»

Jane frowned. «Heidi was difficult but not impossible to prove. She just thought she was pretty,» she said.

Carlisle shook his head. «Aro's theory is that I'm…» a lamp, his mind supplied unhelpfully as he searched for the right term, «irresistible. That people can't help liking me, and they're easily persuaded by me. That it's why I can live with humans.» He shook his head again.

Jane's eyes went very wide.

«I think he's wrong, in part because the vampire population would have switched to animal blood ages ago if I had such a gift,» Carlisle continued, before adding, «Aro would have been first.»

Jane's eyes were still quite wide. «I can't help liking you.»

She stopped walking and frowned up at him. «I've spent the past decade thinking you were the worst thing to happen to the vampire world, and now, after five minutes in your company I like you better than most of the people in the guard.»

Carlisle stared at her for a second before he gave a quick, humorless laugh. «Well, I'm glad you don't think I'm the scourge of vampire kind anymore, Jane, that's nice.»

«Hey, I didn't mean-» she began, but Carlisle cut her off.

«Jane, you just admitted to having had a strawman version of me. It's really no wonder, and not a sign of any gifts, that being around me in a civil setting where we make small talk would change your perspective.

If so then you must have a gift as well, because I'll admit that I haven't had a particularly high opinion of you either. Yet in the past few minutes, I've found that you're a very charming and agreeable young woman.»

«Really?» She smiled, her bloodless cheeks round like apples. She looked so wonderfully sweet that Carlisle found himself wondering, just as Aro had, how humans could ever find her frightening.

«Yes, really, Jane. We both think the other person here is great. If anything, we're proving that Aro fell victim to confirmation bias.»

Jane stared up at him for a moment, deep in thought. «No,» she finally concluded.

Carlisle threw his hands in the air. «Jane-» he began, but she shook her head.

«No,» she continued, «this isn't normal. I don't just get along with people.» She gave a sardonic grin. «It took Demetri five years of cracking jokes about the Romanians before I gave him the time of day. And the jokes were funny, I just didn't like his hair.»

«You didn't like Demetri because of his hair?» Carlisle echoed in surprise.

Demetri's hairstyle was perhaps a bit dated, but Carlisle had always thought he pulled it off. Better than most people would, in any case.

More, that was an incredibly petty reason not to like a person.

Jane, meanwhile, was looking quite morose. «I said that flippantly, but… I don't get along with people.» She crossed her arms in front of her, hugging herself, and looked up at him. «You just said it yourself. I have a reputation. And even if I didn't, I'm a child.» A bitter smile crossed her lips. «It doesn't matter how old I get, I'm still a child.»

She didn't have to explain.

In a guard filled with dozens of vampires, there were always going to be plenty of vampires that new and old members could form relationships with.

It was a common belief among vampires that a person's gift was an expression of their true self, one way or another. And this theory seemed to be correct in enough cases that when it came to a gift such as Jane's…

Well, she had a reputation.

Even if it hadn't been for the gift, she still would have been a child, and vampires did not have the reasons humans did to socialize with children. To them, an immortal child was something to fawn over and adore, or to pity. Maybe even euthanize.

It was not someone to form a friendship with.

Jane looked up at him with such sadness that he felt his heart breaking. «I do have many who are dear to me, but…» she gave a small shrug. «I suppose you have a point, maybe it is easy to win me over.»

Carlisle stared at her sorrowfully.

More and more, as he came to know the immortals around him, it made him wonder if there was a vampire in the world who wasn't, on some level, unbearably lonely.

He had pitied Jane and Alec for their youth from the moment he learned of their existence, but he had hoped that their very immaturity was a mercy keeping them from fully understanding just how sad their lives were.

It seemed this was not the case.

He found himself wondering who Jane would have grown up to be, had she had the chance. If she was this introspective at such a young age, it seemed the answer would have been someone quite wonderful.

But life had not turned out that way for Jane. And she would have to live with that forever.

«I'm so sorry,» he said quietly, and he meant every syllable.

Jane waved a hand, and looked a bit embarrassed. «Yeah, let's change the subject.»

Carlisle nodded, and opened his mouth to speak, when he heard her scoff lightly.

He looked down curiously.

«We're going to have to add me pouring my heart out to you with no provocation to our list of evidence,» Jane said with a wry smile.

Carlisle gave her an unimpressed look. «Really?» He asked.

And he did actually half expect her to laugh and say no.

But she didn't.

Instead, Jane looked utterly lost in thought.

Slowly, not wanting to attract attention from the humans around them, Carlisle started walking again. Jane followed, still silent.

Finally, she said, «No gift is impossible to prove.»

She looked sharply up at him. «A gift is something one vampire can do that others can't. There must be a test we can perform. We remove external variables, do the test, and see if we can replicate it. The question is what it's going to be,» she mused. «If we can't come up with such a test, you don't have a gift.»

She looked up at him, and was quite put out when she saw Carlisle grinning at her.

«Has Aro been teaching you about the scientific method?» He asked.

She relaxed and smiled slightly. «A little,» she admitted.

Carlisle laughed.

«Alright, so an experiment,» he said. «I could persuade you to try the animal diet?» he offered, and grinned when Jane burst into laughter.

«Oh, it's you,» A voice sounded. Carlisle looked up to see Dr. Mehdi standing in front of him, looking surprised and uncomfortable.

As he should, given that as far as he knew, Carlisle had murdered his lifelong friend and colleague the night before. And in a singularly brutal way at that.

How had Carlisle missed his approach?

Jane looked up at Carlisle questioningly. «It's one of my human colleagues,» Carlisle whispered to her too quietly for humans to hear, «act human.»

«I have an idea,» Jane whispered back, and before Carlisle could stop her she'd stepped in front of him to greet Dr. Mehdi.

Oh, no.

«Hi!» she said brightly, flashing a mouth full of teeth.

Dr. Mehdi paled and took an instinctual step back.

«H-hi,» he stuttered, his heart suddenly racing. He had that look on his face that all humans got when a vampire approached them.

The look that they knew they were in danger, they didn't know why and it didn't make any sense to them that they should feel that way, but they couldn't shake the feeling either.

It was, Carlisle would admit, not a look they ever had around him.

«Jane, what are you doing?» he whispered so Dr. Mehdi couldn't hear.

«You said Aro thinks your gift is why the humans like you, so I'm trying to charm the human,» she whispered back.

Dr. Mehdi shot Carlisle a panicked look. «Cullen, you know this girl?» He asked.

Carlisle smiled as reassuringly as he could, and stepped up next to Jane. He put a hand on her shoulder so she wouldn't approach Dr. Mehdi any further.

«Sort of,»» he said, «I mean, yes.» He corrected after receiving a look from Jane. He pulled her slightly closer, hoping it'd make her appear less threatening.

Dr. Mehdi nodded, relaxing slightly. His heartbeat slowed.

«Now that's interesting,» Jane murmured so Dr. Mehdi couldn't hear. «Alright, you try to intimidate him, I'll try to calm him down,» she whispered quickly.

Carlisle realized with horror that no one had told Jane that there was a federal investigation going on, one in which Carlisle starred as the prime suspect. Carlisle could absolutely not afford to walk around intimidating anybody.

He couldn't start explaining to Jane either, she would break her human girl cover in an instant and he couldn't get into an argument with her in front of Dr. Mehdi.

Not to mention, judging by the look Dr. Mehdi was giving him, the man was plenty intimidated already.

«Let's not do that, Jane,» he whispered. «We can prove the gift with someone else, just not him,» he continued quickly.

Jane frowned, but gave a small nod.

Dr. Gibbons appeared from a door just behind Dr. Mehdi.

Carlisle concentrated for a moment, and sure enough, he could pick out the heartbeats and voices of not just Drs. Gibbons and Mehdi, but all his colleagues. They were inside a coffee shop three buildings down.

He supposed he shouldn't be surprised his colleagues had stuck together after he left them at the police station. They couldn't very well go enjoy the resort either after what had happened, and that really only left sitting around to mourn together.

None of them had texted Carlisle.

There was no doubt.

They thought he was the murderer.

Carlisle cringed internally. «Jane, be human, it's extremely important,» he whispered to her, and she frowned again, but seemed to take his words to heart.

Dr. Gibbons came up next to Dr. Mehdi. «Cullen,» he said, giving Carlisle a one-over with narrow eyes. «You ran off,» he accused.

He then spotted Jane, and took a full step back. «Um,» he said, giving her an alarmed look.

As well he should.

Jane was lovely, but her features were too perfect to truly be childlike, too fey to be human. Her limbs held too much agility and strength, and her posture was too still. Her large sunglasses and bold fashion statement weren't helping her look normal either.

Dr. Gibbons' eyes snapped back up to look at Carlisle, and he looked utterly confused. «Who is this kid, your niece?»

«No!» Carlisle exclaimed.

Dr. Gibbons looked from Carlisle's hand on her shoulder, to Jane's porcelain-like and far too perfect features, to Carlisle's own porcelain-like and far too perfect features. All vampires looked on some level similar, venom had a very distinct effect on human tissue, yet Carlisle realized with a heavy feeling that Jane looked more like him than Jasper looked like Rosalie. They both had androgynous, delicate, North European features, full lips, and similar face shapes.

Dr. Gibbons' frown grew deeper, he looked dubious.

Next to Carlisle, Jane's eyes lit up dangerously, and he knew in the moment before she opened her mouth, what she was about to say.

«Don't,» he whispered quickly, feeling not unlike an animal staring down the barrel of a gun just as the hunter squeezed the trigger.

But there was no stopping Jane.

She schooled her features into a look of utter hurt and betrayal, and stared accusingly up at Carlisle. «Why do you always say that when we're in public?» She yelled at him, her eyes welling up with venom.

She spun towards Drs. Mehdi and Gibbons, who were staring slack-jawed at her. «I'm his daughter,» she said with a thick voice. «Fath-Dad gave up custody since his wife didn't like me,» she continued, basking in the look of utter shock on both humans. «And then he adopts a bunch of other kids, like I'm nothing. I never see him anymore!» she continued, her voice cracking artfully at the end.

As he noted her remarkable acting skill, Carlisle dully remembered Aro telling him how in slower periods, the Volturi guard liked to put on theatre productions to entertain their leaders and each other.

Then she covered her face with her hands so Drs. Gibbons and Mehdi wouldn't see her grinning, turned, and ran in the opposite direction.

Carlisle was left with two shell-shocked humans.

«Oh my god, Cullen,» Dr. Gibbons whispered.

Dr. Mehdi stepped slowly backwards, a look on his face like he didn't even know who Carlisle was anymore. Carlisle might as well have told him why his eyes were red.

«I-» Carlisle began, but no explanation came to mind.

About a block away, Jane was giggling helplessly.

Carlisle closed his eyes in shame. «I have to go,» he whispered.

One look into the reflection in a passing human's eyes told him that the two doctors were standing exactly where Carlisle left them.

Carlisle horror grew as he did the math, as they inevitably would once they recovered from their initial shock.

Carlisle was pretending to be twenty-seven. Jane looked around twelve, maybe a bit older given her Trinity cosplay.

Carlisle Cullen would have been fifteen, at most, when he had her. Most likely fourteen.

The family's cover story this time around had been that he was from the foster system, and had decided to give back the second he was financially able. Esme had been aged up slightly, putting her at thirty-one, and her money put him through medical school. Maybe it made Carlisle look like a gold digger, but they needed to explain how someone as young as him wound up with not five, but seven foster kids.

Carlisle realized with horror that now that a critical eye would turn towards their family, Esme would look like a pimp.

In earlier decades, when society was more patriarchal, people thought nothing of Carlisle keeping his wife out of the way.

Now, however...

Esme marries a beautiful young man straight out of the foster system, in exchange young Carlisle gets an education. Then she adopts a series of the most beautiful people she can find. All of them teenagers, just the right age where they're not too young, not too old.

No one ever sees her, no one is ever invited to the house they all live in, and Carlisle goes alone to all PTA meetings...

Oh, god.

Of all the backstories his family had ever had to explain themselves, this one was by far the darkest.

Technically it had been Bella who came up with it, as she had been eager to mastermind a foolproof backstory. But they had all approved.

Truthfully, it was nice that someone in the family had shown some zeal for a credible backstory. Carlisle himself had given up on being normal when Alice and Jasper showed up. So, when he had to cover for seven people, his top priority had just been to not let people think they were a cult.

He could never tell Esme, Carlisle realized. She'd die on the spot, vampire invulnerability be damned. God, he hoped she never found out.

Carlisle himself was currently dying on the inside, if anything he was surprised he hadn't turned into a pile of ashes right there on the sidewalk.

And fathering Jane at a depressingly young age fit perfectly with this awful backstory.

Troubled fourteen-year-old teenage father Carlisle had dropped his daughter like yesterday's news as soon as he had a rich wife. Or some other, dreadful story, like Jane being conceived through statutory rape or teenage Carlisle being declared an unfit father.

At least if he was meeting his bastard daughter, Carlisle now had a reason to be in Whitefish that wasn't having woken up one day wanting to maul his coworkers. It was a terrible reason, though, and Aro would probably scream.

The doctors would tell the feds, Carlisle was sure, and they in turn would make the most of this.

And they would find no record of Carlisle Cullen having any daughters, making it all even more of a mess.

Carlisle bitterly cursed the fact that he couldn't reach Jasper. He needed fake papers for Jane, now.

«Jane,» Carlisle hissed when he passed her table.

Jane was sitting completely frozen, holding a napkin to her face to hide her expression as she tried desperately not to start screaming with laughter for all of Whitefish to hear.

More gracefully than any cat, she rose from her chair and jumped the fence to land next to Carlisle.

They walked in silence for several minutes, as Carlisle led them out of the town, into nature where there would be no humans, and Jane tried to keep her composure.

They made their way into the trees, and in the next instant they were several hundred yards away from any humans.

At which point Jane crumpled to the forest floor, and gave herself over to hysterical laughter.

«Jane,» Carlisle sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Jane kept laughing.

Carlisle's phone buzzed.

It was a call from agent Westley.

He ignored it.

And Jane kept laughing.

«Admit that was funny,» she eventually said.

«It wasn't funny,» Carlisle replied. «Although it did prove I don't have a gift.»

Jane sobered and straightened up. «No, it doesn't.»

«Did you see how they looked at me?» Carlisle demanded, throwing his hands out before him. «They clearly don't think I'm wonderful!»

«Did you see the way they looked at me?» Jane parried. «They were both terrified of me, all humans are. But they acted so normal around you, Carlisle. Sure, they were a little uncomfortable, but they weren't scared the way they should be. I agree with Aro, there's something there,» she stated confidently.

Carlisle shook his head. «They've known me for two years, I see them nearly every day.»

«Then let's find a human you don't know.»

«Jane-» Carlisle began, but she held up a finger, her eyes glowing with another bright idea she'd just had.

«And you're not going to just calm them down, because you've been a doctor for centuries. If there's some trick to making humans feel at ease, then you've mastered it by now.»

Carlisle frowned, he had never had to worry about making humans feel at ease. But he didn't tell her that.

Jane continued her reasoning. «Aro said you're persuasive. Did he specify how?»

Carlisle's eyes narrowed. «Jane, where are you headed with this?»

She grinned.

Carlisle sighed. «Aro thinks I get people to… hear me out. When they otherwise wouldn't,» he explained to her.

Jane's grin widened. «Then you're going to approach a human who doesn't know you, and get them to do something bizarre. Not unreasonable, just something weird that they wouldn't normally do. And then if you succeed I'll find a different human and try the same thing, I'll copy exactly what you did,» she concluded happily.

Carlisle stared at her.

«I'm under a federal investigation,» he said.

Jane blinked. «I'm sorry?» she asked, as if he'd spoken in a foreign language.

«The human who was killed and the Child of the Moon. The humans found both bodies, and they've zeroed in on me in this investigation. A federal agent wants to interrogate me,» he explained.

«It's why Aro left, he's looking for the best way out of this mess,» Carlisle continued.

Jane got a look of dawning, terrible, realization on her face. «When I drew attention to you in front of those humans…»

Carlisle's lips twisted into a wry smirk. «That was poorly timed. Although you didn't make me look that much worse than I already do, so…» he trailed off, and laughed humorlessly to himself while Jane sat there in mortified horror.

Best not to tell her precisely how much worse she had made his backstory.

«The one time I talk to humans I'm not hunting…» she whispered to herself.

Carlisle shrugged. «At least you made me look less perfect,» he said flippantly. «According to Alice, that's been a problem,» he told her.

Not anymore, he thought to himself, and laughed aloud again, perhaps a bit neurotically.

From wholesome all-American family man to axe murdering prostitute with errant bastards possibly born of statutory rape running around, all in less than twenty-four hours.

Let it never be said that Carlisle had not taken Alice at her word when she asked him to be less perfect.

Jane's lips twisted, still chewing on the federal investigation. «Do you think you could ask Aro not to tell Caius about this?» She asked.

Carlisle burst out laughing again, as loudly as Jane had laughed this time.

Jane gave him a panicked look, to her this was far from a humorous matter. Carlisle covered his mouth with his hand, and composed himself. «I'm going to let Aro explain this one,» he chuckled.

He'd have to make sure he was in the room when Jane approached Aro. He couldn't miss this.

Jane still looked concerned.

Carlisle removed his hand to grin openly at her. «You won't get into trouble, Jane, don't worry about it,» he said.

Jane turned pensive. «You have that much power over Aro?» She asked.

Carlisle blinked. «No, that's not why. And I don't.»

Jane's eyes narrowed, as something seemed to occur to her.

«Aro adores you.» She stated point blank.

She tilted her head in thought. «You walk into Volterra with no gift of your own, yet after one touch of your hand Aro lets you join the coven. You get free access to his library, you get, uh,» if she was human she would have blushed very brightly as she tried to find a non-embarrassing way of defining the explicit part of Aro and Carlisle's relationship. She ended up making a vague hand gesture towards Carlisle, «you get close,» she settled on, before continuing, «there's paintings and murals of you everywhere. And then when you leave Aro talks about you nonstop for centuries!»

She was looking at him with new eyes. «I don't think we need an experiment,» she said quietly.

«I didn't join the coven, I was more of a guest…» Carlisle began, but trailed off.

Funny how there was no human food in his system, yet he felt like throwing up all the same.

Jane was still just staring at him, her eyes as wide as they had been when she learned he'd eaten the wolf's heart. «You have a gift,» she whispered.

Carlisle stared at her for a near minute.

A memory surfaced.

Just over half a century ago, he had been out driving with Rosalie. They'd been on a deserted road when they came upon a human family who'd been in a car accident.

Carlisle had jumped out of the car and gotten the humans out as quickly as he could, peeling the bent and broken metal of their ruined car away like wrapping paper.

There had been four of them, three adults and one toddler, no older than a year old. The child had been the only one not injured, but it was cold, and frightened. As Carlisle labored to save the adults, Rosalie had tried to pick up the child, wanting to comfort it.

Even in its confused and disoriented state, or perhaps because of it, the child had given an ear-splitting scream in terror when it saw her approaching. It had rolled around to crawl away as quickly as it could.

Rosalie had stepped back, looking so small and hurt. And the child did need to be comforted and kept warm. Carlisle had picked it up and strode over to place it in her arms, quickly so as not to lose any of the precious time he had with the injured adults. As he did, he had willed it to be calm, to recognize that Rosalie was not a threat.

The child had calmed instantly.

As Carlisle successfully saved the child's parents and grandfather, Rosalie had sat inside her car with the child gurgling happily and tugging at her hair. The smile on her face shone brighter than the sun itself.

It had been a good memory, but now…

Carlisle looked up at Jane.

«We're doing the experiment.»


A/N: Shoutout to All_the_devils_are_here on Ao3 for pointing out the continuity error that I killed off Charlie only to have Renesmée visit grandpa Charlie. Hope I fixed it to everyone's satisfaction.

Also shoutout to The Carnivorous Muffin, beta galore.