Bella seemed to be blessed with a remarkable sense of obliviousness.
Perhaps it was simply that she was among vampires and not sure what to make of their behavior. The only vampires she had truly known were the Cullens, and they were not exactly representative. Perhaps she had simply decided that the Volturi were a mystery to her and that there was no use analyzing their behavior.
Regardless, Bella didn't seem to notice the stares they were accruing or that the number of vampires loitering in the room with them was not… normal.
Jane was notably absent, thank God, as was her brother. However, Renata was standing right behind Aro, a look of morbid curiosity unmistakably on her face. Caius was glowering in the doorway making sure to glare heatedly whenever Carlisle caught his eye. Felix was pretending to play solitaire a few tables down, Demetri was openly staring, and the rest all had their noses in books they likely had no interest in.
By contrast, hundreds of years ago when Carlisle had been a frequent visitor of this library, he, Aro, and Renata were all too often its sole occupants.
Aro, bless him, also pretended not to notice and instead was smiling across at Bella. Before him was a wide array of prepared dishes, each with different ingredients and spices. Likely, Aro was hoping there was some magical combination of ingredients that might ease Bella's constant nausea.
How Aro had managed to pull this altogether in only a few hours was a mystery best left unanswered.
Next to Bella was a bucket for vomiting as well as the remaining blue Gatorade from the flight.
"My apologies for the locale," Aro said, "But I'm afraid we have a shortage of large tables. You see we, ah, have no dining room."
"It's cool," Bella said blinking at the food, "Am I, uh, supposed to eat all of that?"
Aro looked at it and back at her, "Well, you have not held anything down for three days, so, you might very well want to if you can. But no, we're simply… seeing what it is that agrees with your stomach."
Bella nodded uneasily and Carlisle felt a pang of worry run through him. Somehow, he just knew, Bella wasn't going to keep down any of this.
She took a large swig of her electric blue drink, "Let's do this!"
Carlisle couldn't watch.
And oh god, the first thing Aro passed her was the curry. Carlisle would tell him that this was the least likely to work, however, Aro never listened to reason when it got in the way of science. No, they would be taste testing every single dish.
Bella took one sniff and her usual pale visage turned sea green. However, rather than push the dish aside, Bella steeled herself and took a bite. She swallowed with visible difficulty, gagging as the curry made its way down, and did not attempt a second bite.
Instead, she just minutely shook her head, "Nope."
A few seconds later, she vomited bile and sauce into the bucket.
Aro glanced down at the curry, eyebrows raised, and made to reach for a plate of pasta. Carlisle, standing behind Bella, shook his head vigorously. Aro caught it, paused, and watched as Carlisle studiously pointed to a package of saltine crackers.
Aro passed the crackers to Bella, and she eyed them with some amusement, "I tried these already, actually, that first day I started throwing everything up. Didn't go so well."
Aro pointedly looked at Carlisle, as if to accuse him of having led Aro astray. Aro passed Bella the spaghetti. As could have been predicted by anyone, it was in the bucket not a few minutes later.
"Aro," Carlisle finally said, feeling far more exhausted than he should, "Please, this isn't going to work, we need to hook her up to an IV."
"Yes, well, Heidi is working on that," Aro said, not, of course, explaining how exactly Heidi was going to abscond with all this medical equipment. Carlisle suspected that he didn't want to know. In coming to Volterra for aid, Carlisle had accepted this sort of nonsense.
Bella flushed in embarrassment, "I'm sorry, I'm sure it's all great it's just—nothing stays down. This is—this isn't normal morning sickness, right?"
"No," Carlisle affirmed, as sick as women often became, they certainly didn't keep down nothing, and not for days at that.
Bella nodded weakly with a sigh.
Carlisle, however, found himself reminded that for all his relief the night before, the danger had hardly passed. Oh, yes, his family wasn't going to war with the Quileute tribe and he and Bella had survived petitioning the Volturi for their aid. However, Bella was not any more likely to survive this pregnancy than she'd been a day before.
And Carlisle still was out of ideas.
The only bright idea coming to him was that they really needed that IV.
"Is there anything you're craving?" Carlisle asked, rubbing at his face and forcing himself to concentrate, "Anything at all. When you picture how hungry you are… what is it you want to eat?"
Perhaps that would give some hint, some sign, of what it was her body was after. Salt, sweet, bitter, anything they could begin to work with.
Bella closed her eyes, thought for a moment, and then said worshipfully, "Red meat."
Carlisle blinked, "Red meat?"
"Steak," Bella clarified, her eyes still closed, lost in the tender imaginings of her steak dinner, "Really juicy, red, warm, steak. I would kill for some steak right about now."
Aro reached across the table, grabbed a plate of steak, and passed it to Bella, "It should still be warm—"
Bella didn't even wait for him to finish, she picked up the steak with both hands and, rather than tear off and chew any of the pieces, she stuffed the corner in her mouth and began to suck violently.
Everyone, Carlisle included, watched in morbid fascination as Bella proceeded to inhale the steak with a sound reminiscent to a vacuum cleaner.
Out of the corner of his eye, Carlisle noted Caius leaving the doorway. Likely, Carlisle thought with a wince, he would never let Bella or Carlisle forget about this moment.
(Or so Carlisle might be concerned, had Caius not so clearly tried to eliminate his coven and sacrificed an entire city to do so. What Caius thought and didn't think—Carlisle supposed it was no longer his concern.)
When she finished with the first corner, she moved the next, going so far as to moan, her eyelids fluttering. When she was finished, none of the steak had been eaten, instead it had been sucked dry and all the juice had been licked off both the plate and her fingers.
Bella said nothing, just looked down at the plate, the slab of meat in front of her, in stunned horror. Carlisle was sure his expression was much the same.
In the deafening silence, she simply said, "Well, that happened."
They all waited in anticipation for Bella to reach for the bucket. One second passed, two, then three…
Bella never reached for it, instead, she stared at the wall as if it were the distant horizon. Then, in a very small voice, she asked, "Have you got anymore steak?"
Aro, still staring down at the plate, said, "Of course, we can get you some but—I believe we may be able to do you one better."
Aro glanced at the room's other occupants, who suddenly moved to look extremely preoccupied with their given task. It didn't work.
"Felix," Aro called out, "If you don't mind terribly, would you go and fetch Lucia?"
Before Felix could do so, Carlisle desperately lurched forward, grabbing onto Aro's sleeve, "Wait! Please, Aro, at least test it first—"
"What's to test?" Aro asked, glancing down at Carlisle's hand in amusement, "Did she not just attempt to drain the blood from an undercooked cow?"
"And don't say it doesn't have to be human," Aro said before Carlisle could even make his desperate offer, "You and I both know that your starvation diet will not sustain both her and a child."
"Then wait for Heidi," Carlisle said desperately, "She's picking up medical equipment from somewhere, isn't she? Surely, she can take some bagged blood as well."
Of course, the hospital would be sure to notice it missing along with their medical equipment. More, stealing blood wasn't something Heidi would be able to accomplish on a routine basis. And that blood was desperately needed by patients, even a bit of it disappearing could mean that someone might very well die or have to wait that much longer for an operation.
However, Carlisle knew where Aro was going with this, and he knew what the secretaries were there for.
The secretaries' purpose was two-fold: the first, they offered a human face for Volterra. Living on the edge of humanity as the Volturi did, the needed living, breathing, humans as a buffer to mankind. The secretaries helped them blend into society, helped them maintain their cover and interact with the larger human world.
They were also served as an emergency meal.
"Bella has been starving for three days now," Aro reminded Carlisle, "Heidi will return as soon as she can, but I cannot guarantee you that it will be today or even tomorrow."
"I can wait."
And Carlisle suddenly remembered that Bella was in the room.
All eyes turned towards her.
She sat there calmly, gazed straight at Aro, and while there was fear hiding somewhere in her trembling fingers, it didn't reach her eyes. Instead, she looked merely determined and resolute, "I can wait, for Heidi, I mean. Don't get one of the secretaries."
"Bella, without some nourishment, you and your child might very well die," Aro pointed out, but Bella shook her head.
"We'll make it, we'll hold out, until Heidi can get here," Bella said, and then with a smile added, "Besides, you guys move faster than the wind, how hard can it be to steal a few pints of blood?"
"And in the meantime, I'll run to the butcher," Carlisle hastily added.
Aro was likely right, animal blood likely could not sustain her if blood was what she needed, but at least it would be something.
Aro clearly didn't like it, would clearly rather use the human blood on hand, but for all Aro had never understood Carlisle's choice he did understand this much. Bella had been promised vampirism with the option of not devouring human beings, Carlisle had made her that promise, and he would not break it. Not here, not now, not after everything.
If, after she turned, Bella chose the other path, then fine, that was her choice. Many had before, most had before, but he would not put her on that path while she was still human. He would not sacrifice human life even for this.
Aro would understand that much.
Aro sighed and nodded, "Very well, I'll make a call to Heidi, but if anything happens—"
"I know," Carlisle said, cutting him off.
If anything happened, Aro would be bringing one of the secretaries to Bella. However, Carlisle would be praying that nothing would happen. Bella had held out this long, surely, she could hold out a little longer.
If it came to that—he would think of something.
Aro just nodded, took a cellphone from his pocket, and quickly dialed Heidi even as he began walking out of the room. Renata scurried after him while the rest, sensing the show was over, slowly made their way out of the library.
Leaving Carlisle, Bella, the bucket, and dozens of plates of now cold food.
"So," Bella said with a rueful smile, "I guess I drink blood now. Pity Edward isn't here, he'd lose his mind right about now."
Yes, he undoubtedly would have. That, or he would have felt vindicated, as Carlisle imagined this was just the sort of thing Edward would claim he could see coming. That carrying a vampire's child would completely change her digestive system within only a few weeks.
Still, he looked at her curiously, "You can joke about that? About—him, I mean?"
Bella shrugged, too stiffly, the gesture forced, "Well—not really, no. But it—I saw it coming, remember? And for all that he did leave me—I left him first this time. So, maybe, if I can try to joke about it, about him, maybe one day I really will be able to leave it all behind me."
She gave him a look, "I'm guessing you don't want to joke about Esme yet?"
Carlisle tried and failed to smile, "No."
Bella nodded but said nothing. She didn't say that it was harder for Carlisle, that he had been blindsided where she had not been. She didn't say his relationship was more solid than hers or even less.
Carlisle was grateful for it.
Instead, she said, "You really think animal blood won't work?"
"It's—" he hesitated, not quite sure how to say it, "You know, Bella, that we're much weaker than normal vampires, my family and me. The animal blood—it sustains us, but only barely. I can't imagine it would support your pregnancy."
"Yeah, I guess not," Bella mused quietly, then, looking through the door said, "He really was going to bring me one of the secretaries, wasn't he?"
"Yes," Carlisle responded, his voice caught in his throat.
"Human life," Carlisle paused, trying to think how to put it, "Aro respects mankind and humanity's culture far more than most vampires. He respects humans themselves, individually, far more than most vampires. However, he has no qualms over the way he lives. To him, to them, the answer to this is obvious."
That he was giving into Carlisle's request, to wait for Heidi and bring donated blood, was likely only because it was a request that Carlisle had made. Had Bella been here on her own, Aro would likely have never even considered it.
Even then, had Carlisle and Aro's relationship not been in the tenuous position it currently was, had Aro not been seeking some sort of forgiveness from Carlisle who had none to give, then Aro would have likely spent hours arguing with Carlisle to just be reasonable and take the blood that was there.
The secretaries knew what they had signed up for.
Undoubtedly, as they spent time in Volterra under observation, Aro would try to talk Bella out of Carlisle's diet. Oh, he might be polite about it, might not push Bella the same way he had the young Carlisle, but he would still undoubtedly bring it up. His opinion was simply too strong not to.
He would respect Carlisle's diet, Bella's diet, only to a point and only ever with the barest tolerance he could afford.
From his perspective, he had spent over twenty years watching Carlisle starve himself, and Carlisle doubted Aro had any desire to watch Carlisle do it all over again. That was the price Carlisle paid for coming to Aro for help.
"I should get you that blood from the butcher's," Carlisle said, both to remind himself and to bring an end to his train of thoughts, about Aro, his time in Volterra, and the place they found themselves in now.
Bella grabbed his sleeve, stopping him before he could stand, "Wait, I just—thank you."
"What for?" Carlisle asked in dumb amazement.
"For looking out for me," Bella said, "I—I really do want to do the diet. I want to be a Cullen, even if the Cullens I knew—well—aren't a thing, and—thank you, for finding a way."
"Of course," he said gently, smiling back at her, and for a moment—
They just smiled at each other, saying nothing, but sharing a wordless conviction that everything would be alright so long as they were there for one another. This, all of this, it would work out in the end. Looking at her, Carlisle refused to believe anything else.
And then it struck him that he'd been standing there, staring at her, for far too long. He shook himself and stood up, pointedly moved away from her, "I'll be back as soon as I can."
She just smiled and waved, "Go, shoo, fetch me some pig blood."
"Your wish is my command," he responded, then swiftly made his way out the door, wondering why he felt so nervous and why her smile lingered in his mind even as he made his way through the halls.
Then, stopping in his tracks, he wondered how in the world he could have been so distracted, by her, by the blood revelation, by everything, that he had forgotten it was only noon. He would not be able to get that pig's blood, to steal that pig's blood, for several hours yet.
What was wrong with him?
Like a bad dream, Aro's words from the night before rang in his ears, "If that's not love, what is?"
Carlisle hadn't had an answer to that, had all but fled from the room, just as he had fled from the library now. If that wasn't love, he thought to himself dimly, then what was? Carlisle didn't know, apparently had never known what love was and wasn't, but—it was something.
Something bound him and Bella Swan together.
Such that, imagining her not following the diet, leaving not just what remained of the coven but him to pursue a vampire's more natural way of life—it hurt more than even the memory of when Edward had first left for those same reasons.
Carlisle, standing there dumbly in the hallway, realized that he wasn't sure he could go on without her. He could survive on his own for three-hundred years, he could survive leaving Volterra, he could survive both turning Edward and then Edward leaving him, he could survive Aro's betrayal, the collapse of his coven, but if Bella Swan left as well—
In that moment, he couldn't even contemplate it.
And that—it felt like damning evidence that perhaps Aro had been onto something. Carlisle, who had just had love slip through his fingertips, found the very idea of it terrifying.
Author's Note: Personally, I think the bucket is the star of the chapter.
Thanks to readers and reviewers, reviews are much appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight