"So, are we even going to talk about it?"

Naturally, Emmett was the first to break. Though that said, Carlisle was almost impressed by how long he had managed to hold his tongue.

There'd been no grin, laughter, or comment of, "That was the greatest wedding ever" as he'd walked through the door with the others. Surprising, for Emmett, as he usually reveled in his complete lack of tact.

However, even Emmett realized now was not the time.

Since the rest of the Cullen family had returned home from the wedding, tense and nervous, no one had said a word. They had instead spread out across the living room, none leaving yet none doing anything either.

Rosalie and Emmett sat on the couch, eyes wandering constantly to Edward, trying to assess the situation, and likely wondering what the hell they could have missed while they were away.

Alice was seated by the window, staring out into the night, her forehead creased as she allowed visions to silently overtake her. Likely looking for exactly how this had happened. (Carlisle did wonder that himself, because surely, if Alice had known this was the result of the wedding, she would have at least tried to postpone).

Jasper looked as if he wasn't quite sure where to stand, halfway in the living room and halfway in the kitchen, much as he always wasn't quite sure where he stood in regard to Edward and his human fiancée.

As for Edward and Esme, Edward sat opposite from Rosalie and Emmett, Esme having guided him gently down onto the sofa. She now sat beside him, holding his hand comfortingly, but he didn't seem notice. Edward, for the past several hours, had been staring down at the carpet as if it were the only thing in the world.

Together the Cullens were a collection of marble statues in a modern art museum, dressed in formal clothing befit for a wedding, but wearing the poses of those attending a wake.

It was now almost midnight and no one answered Emmett's question.

"Seriously," Emmett started again, "Are we just not going to say anything? At all?"

Alice finally turned her head from the window and glared at Emmett, "About what?"

"About what?" Emmett balked, before motioning around them, "I don't know, maybe Bella blowing chunks then ditching Edward at the altar? Maybe that? I know I want to talk about it."

Rosalie winced and jabbed Emmett in the ribs, hissing out, "Blowing chunks?"

"Did she not blow chunks all over her dress?" Emmett asked, "Which was amazing by the—"

Rosalie jabbed Emmett yet again, which seemed to be enough to remind him of the time and the place. Namely, that Edward, the groom who had been abandoned at the altar, was sitting right across from him.

Emmett grimaced, then held up his hands in defense, "Look, just—When Rose and I left, Edward and Bells were this nauseatingly happy couple. We come back and… Anyone mind filling us in a little?"

"They were happy," Esme insisted on Edward's behalf, Edward seemingly unable to say anything in response, unable to even hear it.

Had they been happy?

A few weeks ago, before all of this, Carlisle would have agreed. Edward, certainly, came back to life as Bella reentered his world after Italy. Bella seemed much the same. Now, however, Carlisle found himself questioning even that.

Had it been happiness or only a desperate desire to be happy? He remembered Bella in the kitchen, stating that after Italy, she was determined to hold onto Edward, to not lose herself to the pit of depression, with everything she had.

Carlisle didn't think that was the same thing as happiness.

"And?" Emmett prompted, and when no one responded, he continued, "Happy brides just normally run away from their husbands? Is that a thing now?"

"Emmett!" Esme hissed out, glancing down at Edward, who still had yet to respond.

"What?" Emmett asked, looking around for some sign of understanding, "Come on, somebody's got to say it. We can't just sit here waiting forever, can we?"

"Well, we are vampires, forever's actually something we could manage," Rosalie noted with a small snort, the slightest quirk to her smile, only to try to suppress it as she glanced over at Edward.

Edward, however, didn't respond as he usually would. There was no eyeroll of exasperation, sharp retort, glare, or anything of the sort. There was nothing, absolutely nothing in him, the heart of him still waiting at that altar for Bella to return.

Rosalie let out an aggravated, and held up her hands as Emmett had, the usual indication that she was about to damn the torpedoes and speak her mind no matter what Edward thought of it.

"Fine, I'll start, since Edward's just going to pick it out of my brain anyway," Rosalie said, back straightening and eyes defiant as she looked across at Edward, "I'm more than a little surprised, I certainly didn't see that one coming. It'd be nice if Bella could have done it a little less dramatically, definitely a lot less publicly, but you know what? It was about damn time she started taking this seriously."

"Rosalie!" Esme interjected with horror, but Rosalie only spared Esme a flat look, as if to note Edward was going to hear it anyway so they might as well all hear it.

"We've all known that Bella was throwing away the most precious gift she had, a human future, for something she doesn't understand," Rosalie glared across at Edward, blaming him as the root of the whole mess with Bella just as she had from the very beginning.

She then looked at each of them in turn, just as accusing, "We stood by and we did nothing as we watched this girl, who wasn't dying, who should have had nothing to do with us, throw her life away because she thinks vampires are sparkly."

She amended her statement with a scowl, "Well some of us tried, but Bella didn't want to listen."

Rosalie's failed intervention, her personal confession to Bella, was apparently still a bitter memory.

"It might be a little late in the game, it might have been the most embarrassing moment of my life, but at least she finally came to her senses," Rosalie finished before looking at Edward rather lamely and adding, "Sorry it didn't work out, Edward, but even you thought this was the best option a few months ago."

Edward didn't even look at her.

Instead, it was Alice who gaped, both astounded and furious in the same instant, "Wow, you really just had to get that all out there, didn't you?"

"What's the point of bottling it in?" Rosalie asked, nodding at Edward, "He gets to hear it all anyway."

"Don't you even feel slightly bad?" Alice asked, "Don't you think that maybe, just maybe, Edward lost the love of his life? That maybe Bella just lost hers too?"

"I didn't see you doing anything about it," Rosalie dismissed, "And you must have at least seen this dumpster fire flickering on the horizon."

Alice scowled, fidgeted, and turned to glare out the window, muttering, "There must have been a dog at the wedding."

"What?" Rosalie asked.

Alice turned back, speaking louder, glaring daggers at Rosalie, "There must have been some dog at the wedding, and, I don't know, really determined to camp outside her house or something. I haven't been able to see anything about Bella for a week and a half. So sorry, Rose, but I didn't see any more of the wedding than you people did. Blame Jacob Black."

"Was he even at the wedding?" Rosalie asked Emmett in confusion.

Emmett shrugged, "Babe, we were barely at that wedding."

Carlisle couldn't remember either, he didn't think he'd seen him, but he'd also been very distracted by his personal horror that the wedding was even happening. More, as Emmett said, the wedding hardly lasted long enough for Carlisle to get a good view of all the guests.

Still, he hadn't known Alice hadn't been able to see the wedding. She'd spent the week glaring at him but had moved forward with the same confidence as Edward himself. From the way the pair of them had acted, what had happened today was not even a possibility.

"Can you see her now?" Carlisle asked her.

Everyone looked at Alice at that, even Edward looked up from the carpet to stare at her with empty eyes. They waited with bated breath for the answer to what seemed like the greatest question in the world: what would Bella Swan do now?

"No, just—" Alice rubbed at her temples, "No, I'm getting nothing, I guess Black had to talk to her after the wedding too. Like just attending the wedding wasn't good enough for him."

She then glared back at Carlisle, "Though I really should be blaming you. I told you what would happen, I told you very clearly what would happen, and you went and did it anyway."

Carlisle had been hoping that Alice would not bring that up.

"Did it?" Rosalie asked, looking over at Carlisle in confusion, "What does Carlisle have to do with any of this?"

"Shockingly little," Carlisle said with a wry smile.

"Carlisle," Esme said, now giving him a look akin to betrayal, as if Alice had just reminded her where the blame should lie, "Do you really think this would have happened without you? Can you really say that?"

Carlisle looked over at Edward, who was meeting his eyes silently, pleading for Carlisle to say something, do something, or else say nothing at all because saying something would destroy him.

Carlisle remembered the night before, his conversation with Edward, and he found that his patience had run out. He no longer had the will to remain silent, no matter what emotional blow it might land on Edward.

"Yes," Carlisle said, "Perhaps not now, but someday, we would have arrived at this moment. Bella and Edward should not have gotten married, and I'm glad Bella, at least, recognized that."

"Carlisle," Edward croaked out, his voice oddly rough, almost human sounding under the strain of his emotions.

Carlisle had already said his piece to Edward though, so instead he looked at the rest of them, "That said, I think I should make it clear, that no matter what happened today, what happens tomorrow, Bella is being turned."

"What?" Rosalie asked, her tone dull, disbelieving, outrage on the verge of being something far more potent.

Edward didn't say a word, but his mouth fell open in dull, wordless, horror. To him this was undoubtedly the worst future, the one where Bella rejects him, but becomes a vampire regardless. Carlisle imaged Edward had convinced himself that if Bella were to ever leave him behind it would only be for the human world, that Bella's link to the supernatural centered solely upon him.

It likely never occurred to him that this future was possible.

"She knows too much," Carlisle said, "The Volturi know that she knows too much. Perhaps Bella never should have been brought into our world, but she is here now, and there is nothing any of us can do about it. It is what it is and her joining this coven is not contingent upon marrying Edward."

"Bella was only ever here for Edward," Rosalie said, motioning to Edward wildly, "We brought her to our house, to that stupid baseball game, because of Edward. We wouldn't have even spoken to her, if it wasn't for Edward. Why is she suddenly joining our family if she's not even here for Edward anymore?"

"Because without our intervention she will die," Carlisle shot back, "And frankly, we might die too."

"It may not look like it, but Bella's life is in as much peril as any of ours ever were," he said, eyes raking over them all, willing them to remember the world they lived in and the laws they each abided by, "The Volturi will come for her, and if she's not turned, they will either turn her themselves or else kill her. As for us, we will likely be killed for flagrantly breaking the only law in our world, and I cannot say we didn't earn it." Carlisle paused then, looked at Edward, and added, "And she is worth more than her relationship with Edward."

"Then—" Emmett started only to cut himself off, look around at all the others, and ask, "Then is that it? Bella and Edward, it's… It's just over?"

Carlisle looked over at Edward, but he was back to staring at nothing, looking past Carlisle and through the wall as if he could somehow see Bella through it if he only stared hard enough.

And perhaps he did manage to stare hard enough because just then a phone rang. They all, as one, looked towards Edward. Only, by the second ring it was obvious that it wasn't his phone, it was Rosalie's.

She pulled it out with raised eyebrows, looked down at the caller ID, dumbfounded, "What the fuck?"

She looked over at Alice, panicked, just as the third ring sounded, "What does she want? Did she forget Edward's number? Why's she calling me?!"

Alice looked at the phone then back at Rosalie with the same amount of panic, "I don't know! I still can't see anything! She must—I don't know if she's changing her mind or still hanging around Black!"

"Holy fuck," Emmett said looking at Jasper, "Do you think she eloped with Jacob Black?"

Jasper's eyebrows raised and he looked damningly over towards Carlisle, Carlisle forcing himself to look away, only hoping that Emmett didn't notice.

Rosalie looked down at the phone in horror and indecision, finger hovering over the talk button, but before she could push it, Edward held out his hand.

"Rosalie, please, the phone," he said.

Rosalie hesitated, torn between handing it over to the person she thought Bella was trying to talk to, the person she perhaps should talk to, and taking the call herself in case Bella truly had meant to call her.

"The phone, Rosalie," Edward insisted, the barest flicker of anger appearing in his eyes now, the first sign of life in hours.

Rosalie handed her phone over to him. Edward pressed talk, Bella's voice loud enough to be heard by every single one of them, "Hi, Rosalie, it's—this is Bella, you probably didn't even know I had your number."

Bella let out a small, awkward laugh, but beneath it was something more than awkwardness. She sounded distressed, almost panicked, and barely managing to hide it. Carlisle glanced at the clock, it was now twelve thirty a.m.

Bella took a deep, steadying, breath and continued, "I know this is the first time I've called, and I know we don't really—talk. I know you don't like me, but I was hoping I could ask for, well, advice and a little bit of help."

Bella paused, waited, and then let out a tentative, "Rosalie?"

Edward looked at Rosalie pointedly, Rosalie looked back at him in disbelief, speaking in a tone inaudible through the phone, "She thinks she's talking to me, Edward!"

Edward didn't say anything, merely raised a single eyebrow.

"I'm not pretending you're not standing over my shoulder."

"Please," Bella said through the phone as the silence went on too long, "I'm—I'm sorry I didn't listen, you shared a lot of really personal things and I—I did listen, I really did, but I know it probably didn't seem like it to you. I'm sorry I came off like that. Please, Rosalie, I need your help."

"Do it," Edward said to Rosalie.

Rosalie grimaced, opened her mouth to say something to Bella, and then with determination snatched the phone back from Edward and hung up on her.

"Call her yourself," Rosalie said as she stuffed the phone back in her pocket, "I won't play messenger for you."

Edward scowled back at her, eyes burning, but before he could say another phone started ringing. It wasn't Edward's, as Rosalie had perhaps expected, but instead it was Carlisle's.

He looked down at it in surprise. He didn't even know Bella had his number.

They all turned to look at him as one. However, Carlisle had learned his lesson from Rosalie. Rather than give Edward the chance to ask for the phone, Carlisle promptly sprinted out of the house and into the pouring rain, managing to get just out of earshot before the call went to voicemail.

"Hello," he said promptly and heard an audible sigh of relief on the other end.

"Thank god," Bella said, "I thought I was actually going to have to come over."

"Bella?" he asked, "Was there something you need to ask—me?"

He paused at the last word, wanting to say Rosalie, but unsure of how to confess that Rosalie had answered the phone in front of everyone. That she had hung up because Edward had been hanging on her every word.

There was a long, damning, silence on the other end.

"Bella?"

The silence stretched longer, not simply uncomfortable, but nerve wracking. Almost unthinkingly, he found himself turning and walking in the direction of town and Bella's house. Something was very wrong, he could almost taste it in the rain, "Is this about the wedding?"

"No, no it's not about the wedding," Bella quickly confirmed, "It's—"

She cut herself off, not finishing the sentence.

Finally, she asked, "Have you ever wanted kids?"

He blinked, blinked again, that was a bit of a non sequitur, "Children? Don't I have six already?"

"Sure," Bella said quickly, "I guess they count but—real kids, like Rosalie wanted."

Oh, Carlisle thought slowly as he continued moving towards her house, was that it? Bella might not have intended to marry Edward, but maybe calling off the wedding had her thinking about the future she was leaving behind. The future she no longer had.

Perhaps she was finally wondering what it might be like to never have a child in her life.

That would explain why, of all of them, she would reach out to Rosalie.

"It's—" he sighed, "You understand it's not something we can do."

"Biologically, vampires cannot have children, we're a sterile race," he explained, "And adopting a human child would mean turning them, with or without their consent once they became of age. Children aren't a possibility in our world, Bella."

He wasn't sure what he expected her to say, but whatever it was, it was not her hasty, "Hypothetically, let's say, hypothetically, kids are on the table. Have you, you and Esme even, ever wanted kids?"

He looked down at the phone in some concern and bewilderment, not sure why she was asking him of all people, but slowly answered, "Well, I believe I can speak for Esme well enough. Esme has always felt the loss of her human son greatly. She treats the others as our children, Edward especially, and she's found comfort in that, but I believe she would have liked her son back at the very least."

Perhaps not a child with Carlisle, she had never spoken about that for all that she had apparently dreamed of marrying him as a girl, but maybe just preserve the child she'd had. She may have married Carlisle, but sometimes, especially lately, he felt that what truly drove her was the son she found in Edward.

"As for myself," he continued, "Well, I can't say I've ever really thought about it."

As a human he had expected that one day he would find a wife, that his son would inherit the parish from him as he had his own father, or if he'd had daughters then one of them would marry a man who would then inherit Carlisle's position.

His life had been so… bleak, in many ways, that he hadn't imagined getting married or having children. The idea of domestic bliss was so terribly foreign to him, it had only been him and his father for as long as he could remember.

Then Carlisle Cullen had died and become a monster.

By the time he had reconciled himself with his new life, found hope and faith in the world once again, he had accepted that children simply were not a possibility. It still amazed him sometimes that he'd managed to find a wife, Aro had always insisted that Carlisle's diet would send any potential mate running for the hills and Carlisle hadn't been able to disagree.

Bella said nothing to Carlisle's statement.

It was a long pause, half of Forks crossed under his feet, when she asked, "Can you… think about it now?"

He frowned, "I'm sorry, Bella, but I'm really not the best person to ask. I've accepted it so long ago that it's really not something I think about. You really would be better asking Rosalie—"

"No," Bella quickly cut in, "No, this is a very important, completely hypothetical, question for you."

He suddenly understood Edward's many statements about how Bella's mind was an unpredictable mystery to him.

"Humor me," she insisted through the phone as he caught sight of her house. Her bedroom light window was on and he could see her silhouette outlined against the glass.

"Well," he said, and rolled the idea around in his head. Children, his own children. Sometimes it felt like all he did was look after children between Edward and the rest of them.

He loved them dearly, but it often felt they only understood the value of human life as this strange, intangible, thing that they should care about. They followed his diet but discussed the casual murder of a seventeen-year-old girl at the dinner table. They treated their accidents, the times they ate people, as slip-ups or falling off the wagon. It was a form of gallows humor, a way to cope without drowning in guilt, but at the same time it felt so callous and he wondered if any of them truly understood what they were doing here.

Having another child on top of all of that?

When Edward alone had caused them so much grief in the past year?

He couldn't even imagine it.

At the same time, there was a vague, distant image of himself with a child, reading a story. It was too fuzzy to tell if the child was human, vampire, or something else. Similarly, their features and gender were indistinct, except that perhaps they were blonde.

It was… a nice thought, a nice, quiet, wish.

"I suppose it might be nice," he finally said, "For all that it's an impossible dream."

He stooped just as he came into view of her window, close enough for her to be able to make him out against the tree line. He saw her sigh, press her face against the glass, and stare dully at her reflection.

Then, narrowing her eyes, she must have caught sight of him through the rain. She squinted, leaned close to the glass and finally asked, "Tell me that's you right now and not Edward."

"Edward?" Carlisle asked, before catching himself and noting, "Yes, it's me, you sounded—I thought I should drop by."

Bella breathed out a sigh of relief and, before he could say anything, began opening her window.

"You really don't need to—"

"Nope, it's probably better this way anyway, come on up," Bella said, motioning for him to come in, not seeming to mind the pouring rain now coming into her bedroom.

"Bella, I'm not entering your room, and I am especially not entering your room through a window in the middle of the night," the very idea of it made him feel somehow scandalized, as if he were a voyeur or sexual predator.

Bella just looked through the window, down at him dully, and asked slowly, "Can you believe that's the first time someone's said that to me?"

"Yes?" he asked slowly, because who else would ever have cause to say such a thing to her?

"Close the window," Carlisle insisted, "You're going to get soaked."

"Nope," Bella said, "I'm not closing it until you come up here."

"Bella, you'll get sick," Carlisle insisted, but she didn't budge.

"You'll get me sick if you don't get your ass up here," Bella insisted.

"I don't think that's how that works," Carlisle said slowly, and before she could interrupt added, "And why do you want to talk to me so badly anyway? Shouldn't you—shouldn't you talk to Edward?"

Perhaps she, like Carlisle, felt as if she'd said enough to Edward. She had tried for two weeks to tell him no, he hadn't listened, and now there was nothing left to say. Still, what would she have to ask Carlisle?

Perhaps about turning but then why hadn't she simply said as much on the phone?

Bella laughed, she threw her head back and laughed, "Oh, I—I don't think talking to Edward right now would be a very good idea."

She then stuck her head out the window, looked down at him, and noted, "If you don't come up, then I'll have to come down, which means you're going to have to catch me because I am not waking up Charlie."

She couldn't be serious.

She moved towards the window, looking down at the ground, then him across the yard, speculatively.

Oh god, she was serious.

Before he could think twice, he vaulted across her yard, up her house, and through her window closing it shut behind him.

He turned to glare at her, "Don't ever throw yourself out your window."

She didn't even seem to notice though, instead, she reached over to her desk and picked up a pile of objects and shoved them into his hands. He looked down at them in confusion, only to become more confused, "These are pregnancy tests."

He inspected them individually, and yes, they were all generic pregnancy tests you could buy from any convenience store. Only, each had been used and featured a plus sign.

"So," Bella said slowly, "Turns out, you can get someone pregnant, not sterile at all, and… Congratulations, you're going to be a dad."

His mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. He quickly looked through each of the sticks, taking in her lingering scent and noting the damning plus sign on each and every one.

As if to provide him with further, damning proof, she lifted her shirt slightly to reveal a noticeable baby bump.

"Also, vampire pregnancies are terrifying and I need some serious help and Edward is not going to approve and I thought about it all day and I think I should keep the baby unless you and Esme really want a baby to raise or something and then I guess it's your baby and I can be the aunt though I don't know it might be nice to have a kid but ye gods this is soon but I really mean that I'm keeping the baby as in having the baby."

She didn't even take a breath, only afterwards did she take in a single, large, gulp of air.

Then, as he continued staring in dumbfounded horror, she asked, "Thoughts?"

Author's Note: The chapter we didn't have because this is all from Carlisle's point of view: Bella has a heart to heart talk with Charlie about running off on Edward (Charlie is perhaps a little too proud/pleased by the turn of events), she vomits up everything, gets the idea that maybe this isn't a sudden case of flu, has to wait for the middle of the night to sneak out (as poorly as one can with The Truck), enters Fork's only convenience score dressed like a bank robber and buying an entire pile of pregnancy tests while saying nothing (because news travels fast in this tiny town and she does not want the entire world knowing that Bella Swan, who just ran out of her wedding, is pregnant), takes all the pregnancy tests, cries at the results while probably playing sad music, has a real crisis thinking of keeping the baby or getting rid of it, decides that like Madonna she's gonna keep her baby despite preaching fathers (because Carlisle is a wonderful human being who deserves to have a child and this is Bella's only chance), realizes Edward might not be so hot to trot on Bella having a baby, calls Rosalie to freak out/potentially have damage control, Rosalie hangs up, and then she bites the bullet and calls Carlisle.

So, you don't know how much it kills me not to write Bella in a hoodie and a COVID style mask, holding up a notebook with writing on it, as she pays in cash for her birth control at a 7-11. But dammit, it's Carlisle's point of view so in Carlisle's point of view it stays.

Next chapter: Carlisle panics and everyone loses their collective minds.

Thanks for reading and reviewing, reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight