To Bella, it undoubtedly seemed as if Carlisle processed what she said in no time at all. This was because she was human, Carlisle's mind was made to process information on a much faster scale than a human's was ever capable of. That it took Carlisle a full thirty seconds, in which he sat down on her bed to stare numbly at the overwhelming pile of pregnancy tests, meant that a human Carlisle would have been sitting there dead eyed for well over thirty minutes.

Even then, the first words out of his mouth were, "Bella, I—Vampires are sterile, trust me, we cannot have children."

Bella sat down on the bed next to him, shoulder brushing his, so that she could stare moodily out the window with him. It was a motion of companionship, of friendship, and would have perhaps been a welcome one had she not just told him she was pregnant and congratulations, Carlisle, you're the father.

At her damning silence he added, "Bella, I know dozens of vampires, many happily married to someone of the opposite sex, many who desperately wished for a child, and not one of them has had children."

Again, she said nothing.

"I have known vampires who have walked the earth for five-thousand years," Carlisle continued, "And they do not have children themselves nor have they ever mentioned a vampire who has ever had children."

"Well," Bella drawled, "Given my history of torrid affairs and Edward's monk-like dedication to abstinence: it's either you or I'm the next Virgin Mary."

Carlisle choked on his own breath, wheezing on nothing. Unfortunately, Bella's eyes widened in fearful realization. She slowly turned to look at him, an idea clearly just having been made clear in her mind.

"Holy shit," Bella said slowly, "I—Carlisle, what if I'm actually the Virgin Mary?"

She kept staring at him, waiting for him to contradict her, but he somehow couldn't find the words to. Carlisle felt as if he was trapped between two impossible explanations. On the one hand, vampires could not have children and he'd never heard of a vampire ever having children. On the other hand, this couldn't possibly be immaculate conception with a virgin who was not quite a virgin.

One of these answers had to be true.

It felt very much as if Carlisle had been told to pick which excruciating poison would be used to kill him.

"Look, I'm not into the whole religion thing—" Bella started, putting sarcastic air-quotes around 'religion' as if the very word offended her, then paused, "I—If angels or God were a thing, I mean like an undeniable vampire type thing, you'd tell me, right?"

She scoffed, looking wild and desperate, even more so than when she'd shoved the pregnancy tests in his hands, "I mean, Edward wouldn't tell me, but Edward barely tells me anything. He couldn't even tell me he was a vampire, he made me guess, guess! I can't believe I actually managed to guess that one right."

Her face, if possible, grew paler as the implications kept sinking further and further in, "I mean, I know you're a Christian and all and I always thought that was kind of super weird what with the whole vampire thing, but… I just figured you were normal religious. Not, you know, 'I know for certain that angels are real, and I just played baseball with St. Peter' kind of religious."

Carlisle opened his mouth, closed it, and barely managed to get out, "I believe what I do on faith alone. I am not a prophet. I have spoken neither with God, angels, nor saints."

"Oh," Bella said for a moment, paused, and looked down at her stomach, poking at it with some wariness, "Well, was there anything in the Bible about Jesus growing crazy fast in the womb?"

"No."

"Are you sure?" Bella asked, "Because let's face it, this is just the sort of weird shit that would happen to me."

Carlisle very dearly wished he could disagree.

"Do we know when the angels are supposed to show up and say 'Congratulations, it's a boy'?" Bella asked, still poking at her stomach, "Because it's been a few weeks now and I feel like they kind of missed their cue…"

She trailed off, continued to stare fearfully at Carlisle, then blurted out, "Seriously, Carlisle, am I giving birth to the Messiah 2.0 or is this a half-vampire baby?"

He held up his hands, stood, and began pacing in her entirely too cramped bedroom, "Let me think, please."

He wanted to ask if she was absolutely certain there was no one else, that there couldn't have been someone else, except he knew there hadn't been. Bella didn't live that kind of life, as she said the only other would have been Edward and he—

He stopped in front of her, motioned to her shirt, "May I?"

She lifted it without a word and was quite noticeably pregnant. Far too pregnant at that, it had only been two weeks but Bella was looking much further along. With shaking hands, he felt her stomach and—

It was solid, too solid, firm, and cold.

Then against his hand, he felt the slightest nudge from the other side of her womb.

He quickly drew his hand back.

"Maybe—" Bella said slowly, "Maybe it's just that vampires together are sterile. Maybe—"

"The Denali routinely sleep with human men," Carlisle said swiftly, "Their—the original coven head desperately wanted a child, it never happened."

And the coven had nearly been destroyed by the desperate madness she had embarked on. If natural children were possible for vampires, Carlisle thought with some despair, then immortal children would never be made.

"What about men?" Bella asked, "I mean, what if it's just the women who are sterile? I mean, they don't menstruate, right? A man might be able to get a human woman pregnant, right?"

He opened his mouth, about to interject that he hardly thought his sperm could survive not only three-hundred years but also the venom that had originally transformed him, but Bella just gave him a look.

"Carlisle, it's either you or we're back to Jesus."

"I suppose," he said with a thick swallow, "I suppose it could, hypothetically, be possible."

He forced his eyes closed, forced himself to breathe out and look at this rationally, remove himself from the situation. He looked at her carefully, "Bella, if this is true… are you sure you want to have this child?"

She blinked at him, blinked again, and cupped her hand protectively over her stomach. "You don't want it?"

He shook his head desperately, "No, no that's not—I can't say I ever considered having a child but that's not what I meant. If you want this child, Bella, then I will do everything I can to ensure your and its safety. If you do not want this child—"

"I want him," Bella said, hand tightening on her stomach protectively, "I never thought about having kids either, and when I was with Edward, well, it was off the table just like you said. But—I want him."

"Bella, I do not know if you can have this child," Carlisle said slowly.

He motioned to her stomach, unable to help the fear rising in his voice, "Even after three-hundred years, after so much study into medicine, I know so little about vampire anatomy. I have no idea how we digest blood, why newborn vampires are so much stronger, why animal blood tastes at all different from a human's. I don't know how we move, how our skin scars and heals, what our skin is even made of. Until two seconds ago I had no idea a vampire could get someone pregnant."

He looked into her eyes, willing her to see what he saw, "Bella, I have no idea how the venom changed my DNA, how it changed that of my sperm. Your child could be fully human, I suspect it's not, and I have no idea what that means. Pregnancy is very delicate, your body is designed to reject malformed fetuses, it is very likely you will miscarry."

"And, if you do not miscarry," he frowned down at her stomach again, "Then given the fetus' rate of growth, assuming I'm the father and it's only been two weeks, then this pregnancy will be anything but safe."

"When have I ever played it safe?" she tried to joke.

"Bella," he chastised her, "This is serious. Think about this very carefully."

She nodded, flushing as she took in his words, and then moved her head to stare back out the window. It only took her a second, and by the determined tilt in her chin, the fire in her eyes, and the way her hand rested on her stomach he already knew her answer, "I'm keeping the baby."

The baby.

His baby.

It suddenly hit him with full force. This wasn't just some abstract half-human child, already enough to floor Carlisle and turn his world upside down, but his own flesh and blood created out of—Had it been an act of love or only a strange afternoon in a hot tub?

Whatever it had been, it was no longer simply a lost day in time, an odd connection between the two unlikeliest of souls, but a real physical being. He was going to have a daughter or a son, with Bella Swan, who until yesterday had been Edward's fiancée.

He needed to sit down.

No, there was no time for that.

He looked at Bella and the magnitude of what was happening hit him again.

If she didn't miscarry, if the fetus kept growing the way it was, it could rupture her internal organs and swiftly kill her. There was a very large chance that Bella wouldn't survive this pregnancy, at least, she wouldn't survive it human.

More, her father was bound to notice. Perhaps, if it had been a human child, then she simply could have passed it off as Edward's son. Charlie might be disappointed, but these things happened. However, it wasn't growing like a human child and Charlie, the entire town, would soon notice.

Before, the plan was that Bella would go off to college in a few months, that she'd disappear slowly on the other side of the country where her father the police officer couldn't start searching for clues. It'd be a quiet, unremarkable, thing.

Suddenly, they were out of time.

"Bella," he said, "I need you to write a note to your father."

"A note?" Bella asked in confusion, "Is—Is that how I should tell him?"

Carlisle just gave her a look, not quite able to believe his ears, but by the look on her face she had no idea what he was thinking. Bella honestly thought she could tell her father that she was pregnant with Edward's vampire father's child or else was the Virgin Mary.

"Bella," he said slowly, "You can't tell your father."

"Well, that's great and all," Bella said just as slowly, as if he were the idiot, "But I think there's a few things he's bound to notice."

Carlisle gently took her hands in his, trying to find a way to be compassionate while still get across what he needed to, "Bella, I'm not sure you'll survive this pregnancy human, and even if you did… On becoming a vampire, you must lose contact with every single person you knew as a human, including your family."

"Wait, what?" Bella asked, eyes wide and fearful, "You mean, I can't even email or call—"

"If you email, he might come looking for you," Carlisle said, "If you call, he won't recognize your voice. If he thinks you're alive he will want to see you. If you contact him after you change, if he thinks you're alive, he'll find out and then you will either have to kill him or turn him with or without his consent."

He squeezed her hand gently, "Just as, when Edward told you our secret, you were doomed to become one of us with or without your consent."

He could see the realization strike her then. He knew she had never thought of it that way, of just what Edward's reluctance to tell her had really meant, and that perhaps Bella putting it together had not been such a good thing.

At least she wanted to become a vampire, because the truth of the matter was that she had no choice.

"Not a suicide note," Bella said with quiet horror, "Please, I've caused him so much grief already. Not a suicide note."

"No," Carlisle assured her, "No, just tell him you're going to Port Angeles to clear your head. I, or someone else, will drive your car there and crash it into a river."

Her face crumpled, she bent over, and through muffled tears she said, "This might actually kill him. I've—I've been such a shit daughter. The James thing, then Edward in Italy… I thought we might actually have a chance to fix things, we had a really good day yesterday even with—well—everything—I can't do this to him!"

"You have to," Carlisle said, "Bella, I am so sorry, you have no idea how sorry I am."

She shook her head, "No, I knew, I mean, Edward told me. We talked about how I'd fake my death sometimes, he told me I'd have to fake it, kept asking me if I was sure I wanted to be a vampire since I'd have to do that, I just—I don't know, I thought maybe we could email for a while, I could make it gentler, you know? It didn't have to be now…"

She shuddered, gripped her own arms tightly, and after a deep breath asked, "If I'm dying today then what happens next?"

"You'll have to come live with us," Carlisle said, "You'll probably need to stay close by so I can—"

Monitor your health? Discover the joys of half-vampire children together? Anticipate the worst and try to prepare for it as best he could?

"Yeah, I kind of have been throwing up everything all day," Bella said with a weak smile, "I think that's supposed to be normal?"

Her smile disappeared then, and she asked the question Carlisle should have asked himself in the beginning but had been too distracted to even think of.

"What are we going to tell everyone?"

Well.

Rosalie and Emmett had no idea this had even happened. Carlisle was hoping he'd either have a chance to get Rosalie alone or else that she would somehow never have to find out. There was no chance of that now.

What would he say?

What could he possibly say?

And that wasn't even getting to Alice, Japser, and—

And Edward and Esme.

He felt as if the wind was knocked out of him and he found himself sitting on the bed with Bella again.

Bella weakly patted his arm consolingly, he barely felt it.

"Well, since you're probably—breaking the news to Charlie and attending my funeral," Bella said weakly, trying to put on a brave face in the face of the end of her human life, "I guess I can break the news to everyone else. If, I don't know, you think that's better."

He smiled weakly in turn, "I don't know if better's the term I'd use."

"What have they got to be upset about?" Bella suddenly asked, face flushed and eyes bright with indignation, "Edward and Esme asked us to do this. I mean, technically, this was always possible. Man sleeps with woman, woman gets pregnant, news at eleven. Besides, it's not like I didn't give Edward the opportunity to get in there himself."

Bella held out her right hand, pointed to the finger that until yesterday had featured a wedding band, "If he liked it so much, then he should have put a ring on it!"

Carlisle actually laughed, "Well, Bella, that was the problem. He tried."

"I meant—" Bella stopped, flushed, and then put her head in her hand, "Beyoncé, my queen, you have failed me."

He took her arm in his and helped her to her feet, "Together, we'll do it together."

"Walk arm and arm into Hell?" Bella asked as she stood, moving to the desk to swiftly write the note that would spell out the excuse of her death to her father, "I like it, Dr. Cullen."

"We've slept together, Bella," Carlisle reminded her gently, "We're apparently having a child together. I think we've moved far past Dr. Cullen."

"I don't know," Bella said musingly, "It makes you sound very distinguished."

"I feel anything but distinguished these days," Carlisle said, trying and failing to smile, but she didn't seem to notice.

Instead, she was hesitating over the piece of notebook paper. Scrawled in unremarkable handwriting, neither too rushed nor too thoughtful, were the words, "Heading to Port Angeles to clear my head, get away from Edward, I just need a little time to think. Love you, Dad. Be home by six, there's leftover lasagna in the fridge."

With a grimace she scrawled, "Love, Bella" at the bottom.

"That's—that's the last lasagna he's ever going to have from me," Bella said, choking on her tears and a laugh, "After this it's—It'll be fish fry forever, I mean, unless Sue cooks for him. I hope she cooks for him."

"He'll always love you, Bella," Carlisle assured her, "And in time he'll be able to move on."

"Will he?" Bella asked, "I suppose, eventually, he moved on from Renee but… It won't be like I never existed. And he'll have all my photographs."

When Edward left, Carlisle suddenly remembered, Bella said he had taken all the photographs with him. There was something to be said for that, but whatever it was, Carlisle couldn't find the words.

"Let me just put this downstairs and—" Bella stopped, looked around her room one last time, "And I guess I can't take anything with me, can I?"

No, if she took anything, anything that made this look planned then Charlie might start looking for a body. As it was, Carlisle could only hope that the river was enough, that it and perhaps a few loose articles of clothing could convince Charlie Swan that his daughter was dead.

"Alright let's—" Bella said only for Carlisle to put a hand on her shoulder and stop her.

"What's the problem?" Bella asked.

As if his body had a will of its own, he found himself answering, "Edward's here."

He hadn't been in eavesdropping distance, he'd only just arrived, but nevertheless Edward was now at the edge of the woods and staring up at Bella's window. Gone was the blank-eyed stare from the wedding, replaced by something darker and far more desperate.

"Oh, Edward," Bella said slowly, color draining from her face as she moved towards the window.

On catching Bella's eye, mouthed a single, desperate, prayer, "Bella."

"Oh, Edward," Bella repeated, face crumpling with grief, "Why are you doing this? Why can't you just—"

Bella opened the window, never minding the rain, and shouted through the torrential downpour, "Let go, Edward! It's over!"

"It's not over!" he cried back, just audible to the human ear over the rain, loud enough that he might wake Charlie Swan up.

"I barfed and ran out on the wedding," Bella said, rain now mixing with tears down her face, "If that's not over then I don't know what is!"

He moved towards the house, began climbing up the siding, up towards her window, "I love you, Bella! I know you don't believe me, but I love you! Without you, my life is an empty black pit, a world with no sun. Without you, there's nothing. Please, believe me!"

Carlisle suddenly felt as if he was in a scene he didn't belong.

Even though he had come to Bella to discuss, apparently, the child they were having together it once again felt like he'd stepped into a story that belonged solely to Bella, Edward, and young tragic love.

Edward knew Carlisle was here, certainly, but it apparently didn't bother him at all to have Carlisle witness this scene.

"Stop it, Edward!" Bella cried out, swatting at the air beneath her window, as if that might keep Edward out, "You're—We're done, it's over, you can't sneak into my room anymore!"

He couldn't what? Carlisle poked his head out the window to stare dumbfounded at Edward. Sure enough, his movements seemed more certain than they should even with a vampire's grace, as if he had taken this path many times before.

Edward had always had a habit of disappearing at night. Carlisle had just thought he went out into the woods, that's what he always used to do, it was what Carlisle had assumed he was doing. Apparently though, judging from the way Bella was acting, at least some of those nights had been spent climbing through Bella's bedroom window.

"I'm serious!" Bella cried out, "Please, don't—"

Edward pulled himself up to the windowsill only to be met with Carlisle slamming the glass down in his face. Carlisle offered Edward a pleasant smile and said in a voice that was perfectly audible to both Edward and Bella, "Go home, Edward."

"Carlisle," Edward said slowly, "Open the window."

"She told you to go home," Carlisle repeated, "Go home and wait."

"I have a right to speak to my wife," Edward said through gritted teeth.

"You're not married," Carlisle reminded him.

That was the wrong thing to say. Edward's eyes flashed, he placed his hands against the glass, pressed in ever so slightly, watching as cracks appeared in its surface.

"You told me to talk to her," Edward hissed, "Well, I'm here to talk to her, Carlisle."

"Edward," Bella whispered, seeming paralyzed by feeling, and then her eyes flashed in turn. She pushed Carlisle out of the way, Carlisle obligingly stepping aside, and flung open the window again.

She met Edward's glare unflinchingly with one of her own, "Edward, I'm pregnant, Carlisle's the father, and it's all your fault."

Edward looked as if he'd been shot. His eyes went wide, his mouth opened, he wobbled on his perch, recoiled, and then lost his grip and fell off the house to the ground several feet below. There, he lay on the ground, looking for all the world like a corpse, dark eyes open and unblinking.

Quietly, cautiously, Bella closed the window. She and Carlisle stared at the glass and watched as the fractures Edward had left behind spread then shattered. They stared as the shards of glass fell to the floor and the wind and rain began howling in.

Numbly, Bella asked, "If I disappear tomorrow, will this make it look like Edward kidnapped me?"

Carlisle said nothing. He simply stared at the window and imagined the headlines, Edward's face making national news, and the Cullen's future of living in a cave for twenty years until the tragic story of Edward Cullen kidnapping and murdering his runaway bride faded into legend.

"Well," Bella said eyeing the glass, "We could say that a tree did it or that I did it in a fit of rage at losing Edward."

Carlisle continued to say nothing.

Bella went into her closet and retrieved what looked as if it had once been a car stereo, "I'll take care of this, I'll meet you tomorrow."

When Carlisle slowly crept out of what was left of the window, he tried not to wince at the sound of shattering glass as Bella undoubtedly smashed her vanity, the sound of photo albums, books, and whatever Bella could get her hand on being thrown out the window (some hitting Edward), or her too convincing sobs that must have, in some way, been fueled by her grief of the world she was leaving behind.

He tried not to notice as Charlie Swan finally woke up, entered his daughter's room, only to enter a warzone.

All Carlisle did was pick up the unresponsive Edward, throw him over his shoulder, and quickly make his way out of sight.

Author's Note: An Edward a day lays to waste all plans of mice and men.

Thanks for reading and reviewing. Reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight