I'm a sucker for time loops, they're my absolute favourite trope, and I also absolutely love Gifted!Carlisle fics, so while I'm in a Twilight renaissance phase I just couldn't resist writing a fic like this. I wouldn't be surprised if something similar to this has been done before, so do let me know if you remember anything like it and I will credit it. The title is also a reference to the iconic Cyndi Lauper song and I've used song titles or lyrics from songs relating to time for chapter names because I'm a self indulgent idiot.

We kick off in the weeks before the battle in Breaking Dawn, but we won't actually get there for a while because we've got a lot of backstory to cover to explain how the gift works and why no one knows about it. Carlisle is the only character who features in every single chapter of this fic, and while all Cullens make appearances they aren't consistently present. Aro is also listed because when things really get going he's the most heavily involved, but he will be absent for many of the Cullen backstory chapters.

No warnings apply for this chapter, but we will be visiting the backstories of all the Cullens later on. This will mean mentioning topics some readers may find distressing, mainly in a canon typical manner. The chapters will be labelled clearly with specific warnings and comply with the T rating.

Chapter 1: If I could turn back time

Carlisle Cullen was a relatively unremarkable vampire. That was the general consensus in the undead world. By the standards of their kind, he wasn't particularly fast. By the standards of their kind, he wasn't particularly strong. Indeed, apart from the curious value he placed on human life and his resulting peculiar dietary choices, he was as normal as they come.

Admittedly, even among his kind he was rather fair. He had died just at the right time, old enough to be a man not a boy, but young enough to have everything else going for him. He was tall and lithe. His peculiar golden eyes complemented his bright golden hair. His unnatural paleness didn't really look too unnatural given that he was the sort of man who had started out rather pale anyway.

Still, though.

Unremarkable.

Sometime around the 1950s this consensus began to become a little less widely agreed, because it became fairly common knowledge that completely unremarkable Carlisle Cullen had gained a rather large, rather remarkable coven. Or as he would say, family. All of whom had been persuaded to share his unusual diet.

This was rather remarkable, because in general vampires didn't get along all that well. They were territorial creatures, and without the sort of tension easing, loyalty guaranteeing gifts the Volturi had been known to employ, they often didn't do well in large groups. What's more, gifted vampires didn't tend to defer to ungifted vampires for long. Not without good reason. Certainly not when said ungifted vampire told them to do crazy things like 'drink from animals' and 'value human life'.

Around this time, as Carlisle Cullen had become a hot topic of gossip among travelling nomads and more stationary covens whenever they happened to run into each other, it also began to be noticed that no one really seemed to dislike the peculiar vampire. Almost universally he was regarded as slightly eccentric. Almost universally a coven member would crack a joke about trying the Cullen diet once a decade as a deer ran past and they'd all have a good laugh at his expense. But almost universally he was also well liked, and most of the vampires who knew him from Egypt to Alaska could recall a time when he'd done them a solid.

This, in turn, sparked rumours that Carlisle Cullen must be gifted. He must have some secret talent for persuasion, because how else could he be so well liked among such a generally violent, ill-disposed lot? No one had really thought that hard about it before, but the world was getting smaller, the undead population was slowly rising, and nomads now tended to cross paths with others at least once a year. News got around.

For those who were suspicious, cards were stacking up against the good doctor. How else could he control his large, gifted coven? How else could he be so universally liked, without even a whiff of a rumour that so and so from you remember where and you remember when wanted to make a move to thin out their numbers?

Now they were thinking about it, how else could he have simply walked into Volterra all those years ago, completely untalented, unremarkable apart from his eccentricity, and stayed as a guest for two decades when most others weren't welcome for two months? No one could remember a time when Caius had even tried to execute him, and there was nothing the ancient vampire loved more than a good execution.

The theories got back to the Cullens soon enough. They all had a good laugh about it. Carlisle was most decidedly not gifted. They all knew this for a fact. They didn't need to be mind-controlled to stay with Carlisle. He was their creator, their mentor, their father. He loved them and they loved him. That was all there was to it.

Except it wasn't, and he is.

Gifted, that is. Not in the way everyone seems to expect. He most definitely can't control minds. Sometimes he wishes it were as simple as that. Life – or death, as it happens - rarely is, though.

No, Carlisle Cullen has a much more complicated, inexplicable, and confusing gift. Frustratingly, it is something he can tell no one about. Not that it's a secret. He's tried to tell people – dear lord has he tried. Apparently, he's allergic to people knowing, though. It just doesn't work.

It's also almost entirely out of his control. He doesn't intend for it to happen. He doesn't summon it up at will and direct it into a useful form. Still, it has managed to dictate a good portion of his undead life.

It often happens when he least expects it. For a long time, he tried to deny that it could even be caused by him. That denial failed and faded a long time ago, though. All that's left now is an undeniable fact.

Carlisle Cullen can turn back time.

Thanks for reading!