I could never take for granted all the love this story got so far, so THANK YOU so much for reading, following and reviewing! You make this journey so fun!
Special shout out to CoppertopJ and gabby1017! Lovely gabby1017 is also an amazing writer, who has written lots of stories, so check them out and spread the love!
Now that we've (hopefully) recovered from the emotional impact of the reunion, let's see what comes next :).
This chapter has a trigger warning, you can find it at the very end - if you are not sensitive to any particular topics, you can skip it.
I knew all the paintings on these walls. I had seen them a lifetime ago, in houses that Carlisle, Esme and I shared over the few years we spent together before my leaving. The gloss of the paints had faded, but their ethereal beauty remained unchanged. At the very center of the arrangement of paintings, I recognized the antique wooden cross that had once belonged to Carlisle's father. It was a silent tribute to what he once represented to Carlisle.
But while the paintings and the cross weren't truly surprising, the presence of a particular photo was: the black and white one, encased in an ebony frame, showcasing the three of us at a banquet. I had not expected it to still exist, after all these years. Yet there it was, clean and well-kept, placed near a coloured photo in which Carlisle and Esme held their new kids by their side.
I perfectly remembered the day when that black and white photo had been taken. The nurses at Carlisle's hospital had organized a banquet to thank him for his incredible services soon after he announced he would be leaving Hoquiam. He protested initially, assuring them there was no need for any special festivities, but they went through with their plan regardless. Carlisle was too much of a gentleman to disappoint them by not showing up. That was the first time the three of us had appeared in public together.
It was a long night, during which I found myself hiding from the daughters of the nurses, who were more than eager to meet and dance with the doctor's son. Some of them even managed to write their home addresses on small pieces of napkins and slip them to me when they thought I wasn't paying attention. Little did they know I had no choice but to pay attention, since their mental noise was inescapable. Had they known that the only thing I wanted from either of them was to sink my teeth into their necks and empty the blood from their veins, their little timid fantasies would have turned into nightmares in seconds.
The night got better when a series of unexpected events led to me and Esme dueting - my fingers caressing the ivory flesh of the grand piano in the ballroom, while Esme's alto thrill accompanied the tender instrumental with the ease of a professional. Soon after our little recital ended, the one man who had been hired specifically to take photographs at the party showed up with his foldable camera - an expensive novelty at the time, considering that up until then, most cameras were robust, wooden concoctions - and snapped a photo of us. A simple moment, captured for the rest of eternity: Carlisle's hand on my shoulder, Esme cuddling at my chest with the proud smile that only a mother could have, and myself, standing upright, trying to smile despite my thirst.
Carlisle noticed my staring glance and couldn't reign in his delight.
"We've kept that one," he explained. "It was the only thing... left."
I knew there was no trace of judgement behind his words, but I still felt inclined to apologize again. It seemed that I had reached a point in my life when I had to do that constantly.
"Now we heard enough apologies in the last ten minutes to last us a lifetime, sweetie," Esme scolded me gently, sitting down on one of the chairs at the large desk and inviting me and Carlisle to join her. "No need to shame yourself into a corner to please us."
"Especially when he might do enough of that with his mate, if Alice was right," he thought to himself, as he sat down by her side.
"Alice is right," I let him know. "But I deserve every bit of that."
"What could he possibly have done to drive his own mate away?"
I moved one of the remaining chairs slightly, so that I could sit face to face with them. Once on my chair, I allowed myself to study them properly: they were soaked by the rain, just like me, but they didn't seem to mind. Because despite the fact that we had all calmed down to an extent, after the initial emotional blast, what was happening now was monumental.
They knew it. I knew it.
Although their faces had remained unchanged, certain things felt different - such as the way Carlisle's brows furrowed with concern whenever he thought I wasn't paying attention to his face. Or the way Esme's eyes glimmered with contempt when she dared to look away from me. I didn't want to be self-centered enough to believe that these little things were my doing, but I feared that they were.
"Where do we start with him? There's so much to unfold…"
"His eyes seem so sad."
Once again, they were not focusing on the blatant red of my eyes. Surely, it wasn't the bright crimson it used to be in July, since I spent the last month and a half feeding from animals, but it was far from golden.
My attention got momentarily distracted when I heard my name being called out from downstairs, only to realize it was Alice's mental voice, trying to get my attention.
"We are taking Bella hunting. Don't freak out, we'll be back sooner than you'd think. She needs this, those bottles were hardly enough."
I shifted in the chair, the idea of being away from Bella again sending my mind into overdrive. It was one thing for us to be separated by a few walls after spending so many torturous hours not knowing if I could find her - not ideal, but bearable. However, it was an entirely different thing for her to be away in this new town. It felt as if she was slipping through my fingers before I could do something about it.
Briefly, but confidently, I considered standing up and going with them. But Alice, whose attention was still on me, saw my intention almost instantly and rushed to mentally shout at me: "Just stay put, come on! Carlisle and Esme need this talk, and you need it too. Bella is way too thirsty to think clearly now. She'll be a little more willing to communicate if her hunger is sated. Tap once with your foot if you understand. Please."
As much as I hated it, it made sense. Annoyed, I tapped down with my foot, the sound reverberating through the thick floor, hollow and smothered.
"Thank you. You won't be disappointed."
I sighed, praying that she was right, and I made an effort to channel my attention back on Carlisle and Esme. None of them knew where to begin - and frankly, I felt at a loss too. The weight of all the things we didn't know about each other was all too powerful in this moment.
"I apologize, but I don't know where to start," I admitted.
"I've waited for this for so long, yet… I don't know either," Esme's thoughts reached me in no time.
"It's a strange feeling to even see your faces, to be honest."
"Is it a bad kind of strange?" she queried, a little afraid of what my answer might be.
"No. A few months ago it might have been. But now it's different. I'm… actually happy to be here. And at the same time I feel ashamed. I just don't know how to balance these two things."
"How about we do this from the very beginning?" Carlisle suggested. "We'll see where that takes us."
"Sounds fair," I agreed.
He smiled encouragingly, right as the door from downstairs got closed. I heard the mental and verbal chatter getting further and further away, soon enough disappearing altogether, until we remained alone. Just the three of us, like eight decades ago.
Finding the bravery to go back to that winter day when it all started - the day the first seed had been planted - wasn't easy. I thought it was difficult when I had to admit it to Bella, but I had not calculated just how much harder it was going to be when I would say the same words to the people I had hurt so cruelly. It was actually worse, because their minds were not clouded by any resentment. Carlisle and Esme were too good for that, of course.
They weren't even asking any questions about my red eyes. They were far more focused on the fact that everything about my appearance screamed 'desperation'. Right now, they only knew a few fragments of the greater picture, all of them from Alice's visions: the fights Bella and I had been having after leaving Chicago behind, how we met their friends, the Denali clan, without really meaning to, how Bella left abruptly after my confession.
The exact details of my confession were still a mystery to them.
Esme saw me struggling, although I had barely moved, and reached out over the desk, to place her palm on my hand. When I looked at her, she didn't say anything - not out loud at least.
"You don't know how we've dreamed of this moment. The last thing we'd do is judge you."
Her touch lingered, light as a feather, calming like a summer shower in the midst of a torrid day. Carefully, I moved my hand slightly, until my palm touched hers, feeling a strange solace growing in my core. Maybe I could do this. I owed it to them. And I owed it to myself to come to terms with all of my mistakes.
"It all started the night we stumbled upon Siobhan and Maggie," I began, allowing my sinful tale to unfold.
It wasn't easy. At times I stuttered, ashamed by myself. Other times I dragged, in a futile attempt to avoid a certain chapter of the life they didn't know about. And other times I had to stop and collect myself, before I could continue. Esme held my hand throughout all of this, gripping it a little tighter whenever my own words got me to frown or sigh. Carlisle's silent support inspired me to keep going.
By the time the saga of my murders ended, I became aware that I wasn't even halfway done. There were still so many things left to say, none of them good. So I began to tell them about Grace and how our companionship ended abruptly, when she decided that her unexpected passion for me had to be accepted at all costs. Just like it happened when I told Bella about her, I wasn't proud of how things had culminated.
But so help me God, Carlisle and Esme understood.
As much as their compassion floored me, it didn't make me feel any less prepared for the moment when I finally told them about the night Bella and I met. If everything up until that point had some amount of rhyme and reason, the rest had none of that. It was thirst and lust and love, overlapped into the strangest abomination - an abomination that somehow got me Bella, but that also stole her from me in the process.
What came after did me no favours either: the lying, the lack of outspoken commitment, the swindling excuses - all while being aware that we were mates. But I pushed through it, almost in a trance. It was painful and shameful and uncomfortable, yet I knew it was necessary to let it all out. Lying was no longer an option, not after the way it brought the worst in my life in the past two and a half months.
I feared their reaction to this the most.
When all was said and done, I felt drained and worn out, as if I was a frail human who had run a marathon. I let go of Esme's hand, trying to process the fact that there were no more secrets on the table. It was a surreal feeling, because for a second time around, I admitted out loud everything I had done to Bella. Silence fell over us, but only on the outside. Actual silence could never really exist for me, thanks to the curse of my gift. Their thoughts enveloped me in an unending cascade:
"Sweet Lord from above, this explains so much…"
"If only I could have been there for him…"
"I guess I can see why it happened this way… to find a mate in the human world wouldn't be exactly ideal."
"He hates himself for that, it's written all over his face."
"That poor girl though…. but there's still hope. There always is."
I pinched the bridge of my nose, in an attempt to chase the deluge of words that weren't my own away from me. When that didn't work, I talked again, to distract myself.
"So that answers your questions about why my own mate seems to hate me."
"Maybe 'hate' is too strong of a word," Carlisle inferred.
"We barely even talk at this point," I mumbled.
"Because she needs time, of course. You've had two months to analyze everything, she's had less than a day."
"I know - that's the thing, I know this, it's just… I'm aware I deserve all of it. Maybe I deserve worse, if I had to be fair. And… you know what? I'm sorry, you've probably had enough, since I've been speaking for over an hour now."
Whatever I had wanted to say disappeared, making room for self-doubt to plant its roots. I had to remind myself that as much as I needed an outlet for my agony, Carlisle and Esme were the last people on Earth who owed me that outlet.
"Sweetie, we haven't heard anything at all from you in forever," Esme intervened. "You can't possibly think we've had enough."
"You've always been too kind to me."
"You need to keep in mind that this is a happy day for us. Despite everything."
Once again, I found myself overwhelmed, realizing that I had done absolutely nothing to deserve any kind of sympathy. Yet they gave it to me anyway.
"I put my thirst before anything else," I grumbled. "Before her life. It's the worst thing one could do."
"As awful as it was… you had no training. You weren't built to resist human blood."
"How is that an excuse?"
"Don't get me wrong, Edward," Carlisle pointed out. "There are no excuses. However, it doesn't mean you have to forget what led you on that path in the first place."
There wasn't much I could add to that. I started turning his words around in my head, trying to process their meaning.
"Look, we don't know Bella at all, other than what you've told us about her," he said, adding more fuel to my dumbfounded state. "But the bonds within our world are unbreakable. They can be bent and put to test, but in the end they come out unscathed."
"It's how we're built," Esme added. "And you may have your doubts now, but you will understand what your father means."
I was ready to reply, when it hit me: she had just referred to Carlisle as 'my father'. I stopped to ponder over the weight of that particular word. In many ways, he had been a better father than my biological one. But for the longest time, I believed that that certain label died with my betrayal. Yet Esme said it with such ease, as if it was only natural to call him that. But was it natural? Could he still be a father to the son who had broken his heart?
They both noticed my distress, so they rushed to ask me what was wrong.
"Nothing's wrong," I assured them. "I was taken aback when you said… 'your father'."
"I'm not following."
"What I mean is… it's been so long. A part of me was convinced that time can't possibly erase the hurt I've caused you two - at least not to the point those labels we once used could still exist."
"Time doesn't erase love," he replied. "We would know."
I remained silent, struck by the sincerity that lied beneath what he had said. My eyes glanced back at the photo with the ebony frame, thinking back to how simple things seemed back then. Looking at our demure smiles, no one would have predicted everything that followed just one year after that photograph had been taken.
"So it seems," I murmured after a while, noticing once again the coloured family picture placed right by the blac and white one. "I'm certainly grateful you didn't let my actions hold you back."
Carlisle was no mind reader, but it didn't take him long to follow my train of thought.
"We didn't have much of a choice," he sighed. "In fact, we were convinced we had done something wrong along the way, something that prompted you to leave."
"Oh, yes, for the longest time I thought you were annoyed by how many times I asked you to play the piano," Esme added, looking down in embarrassment.
I chuckled bitterly at her confession.
"You know I loved that," I said. "Besides, it's never been your fault. It was something I had to deal with myself."
"Regardless, I should have been more careful… I might have seen the signs…" Carlisle contemplated.
"Please, don't beat yourself up for something that was out of your control," I jumped in, hoping to ease his mind. "If anyone's to blame, I am. Not you."
"This is not a blame game, son," he explained, nodding his head. "When you left, there were too many blank spaces, too many questions left unanswered… we had to find a justification."
"I wanted to come find you," Esme added silently. "But your father was convinced you would see such a gesture as us pushing you."
A part of my heart shattered at her admission and I fought the urge to reach over the desk to hug her. Everything still felt so fragile, and I didn't want to ruin it with any kind of misplaced petulance..
"I'm sorry I've put you through this," was all I said in the end.
"As much as your decision has hurt us… you needed this," Carlisle told me. "You thought you were missing out on something grand, so no verbal reassurance would have measured up to firsthand experience."
"I see your point. Not that it makes what I've done excusable by any means…"
Once again, my own apologetic distress seemed to break Esme's heart, so she hurried to ask the question that had been on her mind ever since she saw me again. It was also a question whose answer I didn't really know.
"So what do you plan on doing now?" she inquired. "Will you… stay?"
Disappointing her again was not an option. But neither was lying, so I went with the truth.
"I'm not completely sure. I probably wouldn't even be here if it weren't for Bella and her birthday wish, as I've told you already. So it all depends on what she wants to do from this point on. All I know is I can't be without her."
"Then I hope she never leaves."
Esme winked at me, fully aware that I had heard her. I smiled in return, although I couldn't fully return her optimism. I was willing to give Bella time, if that was what she needed, of course. But what if it wasn't enough? What if, sooner or later, she was going to tell me to disappear from her life for good?
For all I knew, she wanted that now. If she didn't, she wouldn't have run away. This was the most haunting thought of all. Even in her absence, it was eating at me without mercy, crippling me with the weight of all the unknown 'what if's. But I didn't want Carlisle and Esme to worry about me more than they had already done, so I did my best to focus on my other curiosity - the one that wouldn't hurt to talk about.
"All right, enough about me," I sighed. "Why don't you tell me more about you? About your family. I'm sure it's a much happier tale."
"Oh, there's so much to tell!" Esme exclaimed, full of joy. "Can I begin?"
"Of course, my darling," Carlisle approved.
I leaned back in my chair, watching as he turned his head towards her, to place a kiss on her cheek. I smiled in the face of this simple, yet honest display of affection. Deep down, I hoped to have that with Bella too, one day - even if, for now, that day seemed to be lost in the depths of eternity, somewhere unreachable.
Our discussions stretched for hours, flowing freely as the rainy afternoon turned into a rainy evening. Our clothes and hair dried up after a few hours, the only clue that they had ever been soaked by rain being the tight crinkles of the fabric. Just like I had told them everything there was to know about me, they did the same in return, not sparing any details. That was how I learned that the first few years without me almost ruined them both.
It started with little arguments, all of them centered around one thing: their different approaches in regards to my disappearance. Esme wanted to set off and find me, so that she could convince me to return. Carlisle wanted to offer me free will, even if that meant breaking his own heart in the process. He thought that I would have grown to resent them both had Esme gone through with her plan. Esme usually trusted his judgement, but that was different. She felt as if she was losing her child all over again.
Carlisle started sinking into his work more and more, as it proved to be a great distraction from the pain. He took on more night shifts than usual, to the point his colleagues got worried about him. Esme found herself home alone more often than not. She stood at the piano for hours, pressing the keys erratically, trying to find the tunes of my compositions. Alas, I had taken all of my music sheets with me, leaving her with nothing but her own memory to rely on.
It was August when Carlisle arrived home after a night shift and found the house completely empty. He felt as if his entire world came crashing down when he walked through the door, called Esme's name and the only response was his own faint echo. He had already lost me, he couldn't bear to lose the other half of his heart too. The note left by the hallstand was short and to the point:
"My dearest Carlisle,
I will find him, with or without you.
With endless love,
Esme"
He didn't think twice when he rushed out of the house and started running. It took him hours, but he eventually found her: hundreds of miles away from home, hidden in the darkest corner of a barn, with her once golden eyes painted red. He didn't ask how, he didn't ask why. He only asked if anyone had seen her as he took her in his loving arms, relieved when the answer was a soft 'no'.
That was Esme's first slip-up. Alone and suffocated by pain, she found it impossible to resist the call of human blood. They returned home a week later, only after they attended the funeral of the old farmer Esme had killed. Three days after their return, their bags were packed and they were headed further north.
Realizing that my leaving threatened to drive a wedge between them if he wasn't careful, Carlisle abandoned everything that tied him to the human world. He and Esme went to live in the mountains, alone, in a house that they built from scratch. That was where they mourned my loss in peace, but also where they understood that they still had each other, which meant that not all hope was lost. They never discussed the possibility of ever bringing someone new into their little family of two.
That was until they decided to face the human world again.
Six years after living in the wilderness, they moved to Rochester, New York, hoping that they could start fresh there. But on their first night in the city, just as they were perusing its broad streets, walking hand in hand, the faint sound of someone crying got their attention. The sound came accompanied by the smell of freshly-spilled blood. Carlisle's first instinct was to get Esme as far away as possible, to avoid a second slip-up on her part. But she insisted, and he had learned to be more attentive to her wishes after that gloomy night when he returned home to an empty house, so he agreed.
In a gangway, laying on the ground, in a pool of coagulated blood and stale sperm, they found Rosalie.
She was crying and trembling, with nothing to protect her naked form from the deceptively cold April air. Carlisle rushed to cover her with his own coat, noticing in passing all the bruising on her skin and asking Esme not to come closer. Yet when he turned to see his wife's face, he saw no trace of hunger. She had her hands locked as if in prayer, and only two words left her mouth: 'Save her'.
They didn't have to exchange any words after that. Carlisle understood that he was not only saving a young woman from the pain of being raped and left to die, he was also saving his daughter. They brought Rosalie into their home, where they waited patiently for her change to complete. Esme washed her carefully, erasing all the physical signs of abuse from her skin, and dressed Rosalie in her best silk gown she had.
The last thing either of them expected was for the beautiful blonde to open her eyes and shoot a hateful 'What have you done to me?' their way. Carlisle tried to calmly explain to her that he had tried to save her from a painful death by offering her the gift of immortality. Rosalie didn't want to hear it. Her mind was playing on repeat the last moments of her human life: how she stumbled upon her drunken husband-to-be and his friends on the streets, how one inappropriate comment from him turned into a several hours long gang-rape, how she felt content with dying after being betrayed by the man who was supposed to protect her at all costs.
Neither Carlisle, nor Esme tried to stop Rosalie from avenging her abusers. One by one, she took them down, saving her ex-fiancé for last. Carlisle and Esme didn't question her when she asked them to buy her the most extravagant wedding dress they could find. Dressed like a bride, looking like the most exquisite angel of death, she tortured to death the scum who she once thought she would marry. Not once throughout her series of avenging deaths did she succumb to her thirst, leaving all the bodies to rot without ever tasting their blood.
When she returned home, Carlisle and Esme expected to see Rosalie happy for the first time. But she wasn't, for she valued her humanity far too much. And each time she looked in the mirror, it served as a reminder that her choice had been taken away from her. But she didn't leave. She feared being alone far too much, so she stuck with her new family, for better or for worse.
Carlisle and Esme tried to compensate by making her every wish come true. If she wanted to redecorate her room in accordance with the newest trends, they spared no expense. If she wanted to refresh her wardrobe, one single 'please' was enough. If she wanted a vacation in the Alps, she didn't have to ask twice. They spoiled Rosalie rotten, in a bid to convince her that they wanted nothing but the best for her.
Things changed two years after she joined them. A vacation in the Tennessee wilderness turned everything upside down for all three of them - this time for the better. Rosalie was out hunting on her own - she never liked to have witnesses to this most barbaric act - when she smelled the appetizing tang of human blood. She followed the scent through a haze, losing herself in the forest, until she found its source. Laying in the grass, with a bear on top of him, Emmett could barely move as the massive animal was chewing on the ligaments in his arm.
He was only half-conscious when Rosalie broke the bear's neck and pulled him away to safety. Something about his curly hair and his blue eyes reminded her of the life she had been forced to leave behind - and that was the moment she knew. She couldn't leave him to die, but she couldn't save him herself either. She was still so young, which meant that her self-control was an unpredictable beast.
So instead she ran. She ran one hundred miles, carrying Emmett's gargantuan body in her arms, until she got close to the little rented cottage where her little family of three had checked in. She called Carlisle's name from afar, not daring to get out of the woods. And as always, she didn't have to ask twice, because Carlisle got out through the back window, so that he could be by her side moments after she called for him. He felt the strongest déjà vu when he heard her say 'Save him'. And just like it happened when Esme murmured those words two years ago to him, Carlisle understood.
Something changed in Rosalie that night: not only because she had found her forever mate, but also because she learned to see her adoptive parents in a new light. She realized neither of them acted selfishly the night they found her, and that their actions were rather a product of unexpected love and fondness than anything else.
The Cullen household became a happier place after that. Emmett was the kind of guy who took things as they came, without analyzing their meaning too profoundly. So when a blonde beauty saved him from an imminent death, he saw it as a blessing. When he realized he loved her more than anything, he could only be grateful at the thought that he had an eternity ahead with her.
Almost two decades later, Alice and Jasper joined them. Alice had already told me the story behind their arrival, so I didn't press for details when Carlisle and Esme reached that point in their story. Things got even better after that, with the six of them moving to a new place every decade. The kids went to highschool, sometimes to college, building and rebuilding their lives in a continuous loop that somehow never left them bored.
They showed me their family photo album, allowing me to step into their most intimate moments: the family birthdays, the holidays spent in sunny, completely isolated places, the graduations, the passing of time only noticeable if I looked at their outfits and the quality of the photos, since their faces remained unchanged through the decades. As I looked at the pictures, it was hard not to imagine myself in them too. But my little fantasy evaporated as soon as I heard a loud murmur approaching.
"It's a little past midnight," Carlisle announced after checking his watch. "That must have been one hell of a hunt."
It took me one second to fully register the implication of that - and even less to react.
"It's past midnight already?" I gasped, immediately raising up. "Fuck…"
"Language, sweetie."
"Of course, I'm sorry."
"Is something wrong?" he asked, a little puzzled by my reaction.
But when he heard Emmett singing at the top of his lungs 'happy birthday', clapping out of rhythm, the realization struck him instantly.
Bella's birthday really couldn't have come at a worse time.
"Oh," he breathed.
'Oh' was definitely an understatement.
Well, Bella's birthday wish was to meet Carlisle and Esme, but that doesn't mean our boy won't have a mini-anxiety-attack.
What were your thoughts on what happened to Carlisle and Esme immediately after Edward left?
Do you think Edward deserved to be forgiven so easily by them?
How do you think the hunt went for Bella and the Cullen kids?
I'd love to know your thoughts! Reading and responding to your reviews is the sweetest treat :).
Now you know I always post every week on Sunday, right? Well, next week there will be no update, because real life has been kind of crazy lately (nothing bad, just way too many things overcrowding my schedule in a short time). Don't worry though, I'll see you in two weeks, on Sunday, as usual.
And if by some miracle my schedule clears up and I manage to get back on track, there's a chance you won't even have to wait two weeks ;). But I won't make any promises.
Until next time, stay safe and happy!
TRIGGER WARNING: Brief mentions of the aftermath of a gang rape.