"I'm so sorry," Bella announced to the room, her voice cracking on the words.
She'd been sounding awful for days. The fluids in her IV were keeping her alive, but even drinking water seemed to disagree with her more often than not.
"You don't like it?" Marcus asked to confirm.
"Look, it had Jennifer Aniston," Bella explained, her face flushed but not nearly so flushed as it would have once been, these days she was a steady shade of pale, "I'd never seen it and–I thought it would be cute. I liked 'Friends', how could I go wrong?"
Aro heard Marcus sigh in relief. "It's a terrible movie," he confessed.
It was a sign of just how sick Bella was that Marcus had stopped telling his honest opinion about her movies. Now, he sat through her romantic comedies and kept his mouth dutifully closed, echoing Renata and Bella's sentiments about how touching it was when the penguins performed their mating rituals or else, when pressed, saying something like "I like the way all the actors knew their lines" or "the color balance and composition was pleasing".
Any other time it would have been funny, watching Marcus' eyes widen minutely in panic as he scrambled to reassure Bella he had in fact enjoyed her movie, but–
She was so very, very, sick.
"Oh, it's awful," Bella agreed, shifting in her pile of blankets, "I mean–I think she slept with her dad. I don't care what he says, she just slept with her dad. And she liked it."
Bella then turned to Marcus with wide eyes, made all the wider by her gaunt cheekbones, "This may be one of the last movies I watch–and I wasted it on this. I am–so upset right now."
Marcus nodded. "It is upsetting," he replied dutifully.
It was at this point that Carlisle remembered to shuffle out of his zombie-like daze. He checked on Bella's IV and murmured, "If we could be a little more optimistic, please."
"I'm not dying of starvation," Bella told him, clearly lying through her teeth, though whether she was trying to be funny or genuinely trying to reassure him was beyond Aro. Bella had been taking her seemingly imminent demise much better than the rest of them.
Carlisle looked up from her IV to take her in in all her emaciated glory.
After a pause, he told her quietly, "Bella, if this keeps up– your organs are going to start failing. And when that happens– things will proceed quickly."
Unsaid was the fact that she needed to prepare herself for the worst. Carlisle would not give up on her until it was over, but–
Aro had seen in his mind the countless of patients Carlisle had lost in this way, be it the mentally ill whose anorexia hollowed them out, the starvation victims that followed in the wakes of wars and droughts, and the impoverished.
"You have to eat something," Carlisle said, seemingly more to himself than to Bella. Bella's failing health had–taken its toll on Carlisle. Of course, everything had taken its toll on Carlisle in this past week but watching as Bella wasted away had not done any of them any favors.
Aro was starting to worry that if (he refused to think the word 'when') Bella died, there would be not just Marcus who plummeted back to where he'd been at the start of all this, but Carlisle as well.
Marcus was–holding up.
He'd begun to spend an increasing amount of time with Bella. With classes thrown out the window and the charade all but forgotten, he was as much a fixture in her life as Renata herself was.
Aro supposed that this new man Marcus had become might prove more durable, more weathered, should the worst occur. Perhaps he would survive.
But Aro had seen in his mind the bond that was between Marcus and Bella. It was one of the strangest Marcus had seen in his life, no relationship is exactly like another but theirs was–
It was a bond between an art student and her alien professor she would die for because he was kind, and an ancient vampire and the human who'd brought him back to life, that had since become his wife. There was no other way to describe it, insufficient though it seemed. They simply were.
Though, judging by the conversation they'd had when Marcus got back from– from his mission, and Bella asked him what they were to another only to receive the "wife" answer, which she then proceeded to panic about, they were not without their complications.
(Poor Marcus had been relayed the terrible, disastrous, no-good history of her parents' marriage complete with her mother being run out of town.
Pointing out that she was carrying his child and fish or not, Marcus would not father a bastard, had only made Bella talk about feminism, and turn to Sulpicia and Renata for support. Aro had to say, he was sorry to have missed that conversation.)
"Hey, I've been wondering," Bella said, motioning to the gathering of vampires around her, "Why are your eyes different colors?"
Carlisle's lips formed a thin, humorless, smile. "I feed on animals, not humans."
"Oh," Bella said after a beat.
The room became awkwardly silent. Even more silent than when Renata had realized just what 'Rumor Has It' was going to be about. Rather than another delightful romantic comedy, Renata was subjected to what might as well be the fictionalization of her family history on screen.
Starring the man who was never called 'uncle' but might as well have been for all that he made a point of sleeping with every woman in the same family.
There was a very clear and pointed question in Bella's eyes.
"You might have noticed Caius refers to me as 'malnourished', 'sickly', or 'vegetarian'," Carlisle said, the smile only growing thinner. "It's because my diet is not as fulfilling as human blood, and I am weaker than your ordinary vampire."
"Carlisle, only you call yourself a vegetarian," Aro said with a sigh, because even if Carlisle was– recovering, that was the absolute worst joke Aro had ever heard in his life. It caused him agony that Carlisle had so willingly embraced it (to the point of saying it unironically).
Carlisle looked up. "Animal-drinking-vampire doesn't have the same ring to it."
"When he says weaker he means that, by our standards, he looks like you right now," Marcus clarified, nodding his head pointedly towards Bella's clearly starved stature.
It spoke volumes that Carlisle was too– hollowed out, to refute that, as he normally would.
"Oh," Bella said, then did a double-take towards Carlisle, "Wait, are you dying too?! You can't die, you're my doctor!"
"No," Carlisle said, at the same time as Marcus said, "Possibly."
"It's been three hundred years," Aro said, "I was–extremely concerned for a time but–he's held out this long."
Carlisle sighed as he realized that he wasn't getting out of this one without explaining more to Bella. His eyes grew tired at the thought.
It was very clear that he would rather be staring into space, or else, pulling Aro out of the room.
Aro knew that Carlisle had wondered if Esme could last on the diet inside these walls. Jasper had little choice in the matter, his gift compelled his choice in diet and Aro would be hard pressed to circumvent that. Esme though–she would now face temptation every fortnight, every time Heidi returned to the castle, and Sulpicia was sure to discuss just how easy it was to not live on Carlisle's diet and be ashamed of her slips.
With Edward now dead, Alice lost, Rosalie and Emmett in hiding, Carlisle's makeshift family, his hope for the non-violent future of vampirism, faded away.
"I have stayed on this diet for nearly four hundred years," Carlisle said, his voice inflectionless as he stared straight ahead, "My strength and speed has been the same, my sensory input is as sophisticated as it first was, my mind is sharp, I have no memory lapses or lapses in consciousness. Our kind can't be compared to humans, for obvious reasons, and I have yet to find another organism that we can be compared to, but– I have in myself seen none of the signs that I would expect to see from a starving creature. Even when I turned– my family," he just barely dodged saying Edward's name, "and consumed human blood for that occasion, I did not notice any changes afterwards, that is, there was no indication that change I had not noticed, had snuck up on me."
"Petrification took centuries," Marcus observed quietly.
"You've petrified since I was last here," Carlisle retorted.
"Petrified?" Bella asked.
Marcus held up a hand, waved his fingers, "Our skin."
"But you can move it just fine! Can't you?" Bella asked, now looking distinctly worried.
She looked between Aro, Marcus, and Carlisle, her eyes growing wide as she was suddenly now seeing a room full of sickly vampires.
Maybe they could form a band.
"Oh, it's really more a fashion statement than anything else," Aro noted, "Used to be quite in vogue too, because if you had enough leisure to sit around petrifying then you must truly have power."
"Now it's just us," Marcus mused.
Aro placed a smile upon his face. "We're special," he hummed, and winked at Bella and Carlisle.
Bella still looked worried, while Carlisle didn't seem to notice.
Bella refocused on Carlisle. "Have you thought about drinking human blood once in a while? Maybe a blood bag?" she asked gently.
Carlisle only smiled, and shook his head with a slow exhale. "Our kind cannot feed on humans without killing them. I will not commit murder, just so that my taste buds will be happy and I can punch slightly harder. I get by, no matter what Marcus here believes. It would be a pointless death for the human."
A look of resolve entered Bella's eyes, "Well then, when I become a vampire, I think I'll–"
Marcus put a hand over her mouth, "Do not finish that sentence."
"Mmm!" Bella cried, and Aro saw her jaw move as she tried to open her mouth, presumably to lick Marcus' hand.
Carlisle, however–it was as if he'd come to life again. Gone was his exhaustion, his ever present grief, replaced by utter shock and then–hope. Hope that Aro knew he'd never experienced before, even when his family had taken up the diet or when he'd found the Denali.
"You do not understand what you're deciding on," Marcus cautioned, "You are promising to live in unbearable agony for the rest of your days. You would purposefully be making yourself vulnerable, physically weakened."
"Mmm-mm mmhm hmm!" Bella replied, her eyes narrowed in determination.
That girl had made up her mind.
"It's not agony," Carlisle told her, his eyes aglow and a smile lurking on his lips as he leaned forwards, suddenly rejuvenated.
Marcus looked sharply at Aro, daring him to say the truth, Aro hesitated, "Carlisle has–grown profoundly used to it. He is the only vampire I know–save his… cousins–who is immune to the scent of human blood. Which, of course, is why he's your doctor."
"Mmm!" Bella insisted, and pulled at Marcus' arm.
"His children never learned the same control," Marcus noted, "His wife is in shambles and could never leave her house."
Then, slowly, he let up his hand, though still kept it above her face, ready to clamp down again if she still wanted to eat rats.
"Maybe-he's-immune-to-human-blood-because-of-the-diet!" Bella erupted, as fast as she could the moment she was released.
They all turned to look at Carlisle.
"Tanya, Irina, and Kate–until they took up the diet they–it improved their control immensely," Carlisle said hesitantly. By which, of course, he meant that they finally stopped eating their lovers in bed.
"Jasper," Marcus said pointedly. "Terrible control. He's been on the diet for sixty years."
"And he has a gift that makes him feel what others are feeling," Carlisle pointed out gently. "And a very difficult past."
"He controlled himself just fine when I saw him in the tower…" Bella said, inching away from Marcus' hand.
Marcus let his hand drop. "If you paid close attention, you might have noticed he wasn't breathing, and he stayed at the opposite side of the room from you."
"Well–I think I should try it," Bella said, "Look, it's not like I have this burning desire to eat people. Carlisle said it, that's murder. If I can avoid that, that's… you feed every two weeks, right? That would… that would be a lot of people," she said, her voice very small and apologetic by the end of her talk.
"It will be harder than you can imagine," Marcus said softly, "In the first year–the first decade–the control required to resist is nearly impossible."
"I'll get you through it," Carlisle promised. "My– former daughter, Rosalie," his voice stumbled over the words, "she's been a vampire for nearly eighty years. She has never fed on humans, never even lost control."
"A success rate of one out of four," Marcus remarked dryly. "Encouraging."
"Edward would have–" Carlisle went dramatically silent, as if his tongue had run away from him. He stared out at the room in numb horror.
No one said anything.
"I'll do it," Bella said, her raspy voice steady. "I'll do it, and I won't give up. And if little Junior also wants blood," she smiled down at her protruding stomach, "then he can have animals too."
They all looked at her stomach.
There was a very long pause.
"Does Junior want blood?" Aro found himself asking, his voice unnaturally high pitched.
Nobody said a word.
Finally, Carlisle said, "Huh."
"No damn animals," Marcus said quickly, his eyes flashing.
Aro quietly marked that down as Marcus' first swear in two thousand years.
"No, no," Carlisle agreed, "And this close to the city I'd only find rats and pigeons which–that would be asking for trouble."
Marcus nodded, his shoulders lowering near imperceptibly in relief. "I'll get a secretary. Giulia, Francesca, or the other one?"
Aro winced, oh he really liked all of them. This current batch of secretaries were such lovely girls, each a very hard worker, and certainly didn't deserve this for their years of service. And now he had to choose which one they could afford to terminate.
"No, no secretary!" Carlisle protested. "Hospital. Or–Aro–since we're already pretending to be a private medical practice, can you purchase blood bags?"
"Immediately?" Aro asked, "That's–I believe that's going to take a few days at the very least. And she may need–if she has to consume as much as we do in a fortnight–that's a lot of blood, Carlisle."
"Secretary," Marcus confirmed, and got up.
"No!" Carlisle protested, and in a flash he was standing in front of Marcus, blocking him.
Marcus gave him a look up and down, and Aro didn't even need to read his mind, he could see the decision to chuck Carlisle out of the way forming.
Carlisle could see it too, because he danced back. "Aro," he said, "which hospital was it you stole that ultrasound from?"
"That will take hours. Secretary," Marcus continued, walking towards Carlisle.
"Compromise!" Aro contributed, and ran up to stand between them, placing one hand on each shoulder. "Bella doesn't need a whole secretary. We can ask for a– a small donation. Humans do that! Nobody dies."
Marcus turned his head slowly to look at Aro. "Bella is dying."
"Yes, but look at her, she's tiny, she couldn't drain a secretary even if she needed to. We can get one pint from each, that's three pints, then Carlisle gets back from the hospital, Bella has all the blood she could ever want and I have secretaries!"
Carlisle nodded enthusiastically. "It'll be nicer for Bella too. She's still human, you don't want her committing cannibalism."
"I vote no to cannibalism," Bella added, "I mean, if that's an option."
"And what if some disaster should occur," Marcus asked, ignoring Bella in favor of glaring at Aro, "What if there's no blood in this hospital of yours? What if there's no hospital at all, and it's been burnt to the ground? What if you are waylaid?"
"That's completely ridiculous and you're running out of arguments," Carlisle said.
"Then it would be terrible if we were fresh out of secretaries in three days because we used them up, wouldn't it?" Aro supplied.
"There are other hospitals in Italy," Bella added. "If it does burn down, you could find another hospital."
Marcus stared at them.
"How about this," Bella said, "if you kill a secretary over this, I refuse to drink."
That seemed to settle matters.
Marcus fixed his eyes on Carlisle. "She gets enough blood."
Carlisle held up his hands in surrender. "She will get so much blood, she can bathe in it. She can bathe in the Roman bath in it."
Which meant, of course, that Carlisle was going to be sprinting that blood out of the hospital in a wheelbarrow. Probalby hating himself while he did it, too, because while it was not direct murder–someone in that hospital was going to need that blood desperately.
The only solace, Aro supposed, was that Bella appeared to need it just as desperately.
"Alright!" Aro clapped his hands. "Let's go ask my secretaries to imperil their health and provide bodily fluids. Lucky we don't have an HR department!"
A flurry of footsteps resounded then there was a knock at the door.
"Master," Alec stood awkwardly in the doorway, Jane behind him, using Alec to hide herself from the room's occupants.
"Yes, Alec?" Aro replied.
Alec opened his mouth, closed it, and then stepped aside to reveal Caius.
Who was holding a lidded bucket in one hand.
Oh.
Oh, no.
Oh, Aro just knew what was in it.
Aro supposed that he could be glad that Caius had found a plastic bucket. It was a nice blue color. If it had been one of those steel buckets–Aro didn't know what he'd do.
As it was, Aro couldn't help but think that with his white hair, with the red outfit he was currently wearing, that Caius looked like a nightmare's version of Saint Nicholas, come bearing gifts.
Carlisle turned back from looking at Caius to stare at Aro. He set his eyes on Aro. "Your rooms, after we're done here."
Aro nodded quickly.
Of all the ways he had dreamed of one day resuming his love affair with his beloved Carlisle, becoming Carlisle's equivalent of stress smoking a pack of cigarettes had not been on the list of possibilities.
"I've been hearing her vomiting all the way in the tower for a week," Caius explained, sounding extremely annoyed, "Sulpicia tells me you halfwits have been feeding her through a tube."
"An IV," Carlisle corrected, eyes locked on the bucket, the bucket which smelled awfully like Giulia.
Caius snorted in derision and stalked towards Bella.
He shoved a styrofoam cup at her, which Aro didn't even know where he'd procured when there were so many beautiful gold chalices in this palace that Caius could have chosen instead, opened the bucket lid, and with a ladle Aro also didn't know where Caius had gotten it from, poured a dollop up of blood into Bella's cup.
It sloshed around in the cup, and spilled slightly on Bella's sweater. She flinched.
"Drink," Caius demanded.
"It's still warm," Bella said in a shaky voice.
"It's fresh," Caius explained, to clear away any lingering doubts that kindly Caius may have simply heated it up in the microwave.
Despite her earlier proclamation, Bella found herself in a new scenario. Whether she liked it or not, Giulia was now dead. If Bella did not devour Giulia immediately then the other secretaries were very likely to soon find themselves dead. And if she didn't drink then–well, Caius would dunk her head in and waterboard her in the blood until she drank.
"Francesca lives. So does the other one," she instructed, pointing a finger at first Caius, who snorted, then Marcus.
"Silvia," Aro supplied.
Bella nodded. "Silvia lives."
Then, she put the cup to her lips, and drank.
The first swallow was hesitant, but–
Then, as a starving man who had suddenly realized he was starving, she started desperately gulping down the contents of the cup.
She snatched the ladle out of Caius' hands, and helped herself to a second serving.
Caius turned to grin triumphantly at the others.
And Aro–he watched the girl literally turn colors. One moment she'd been sheet white, paler than even their kind, gaunt, hollow-eyed, and on death's door. The next she was flushed, still pale but with color rising in her cheeks, her eyes bright with a spark of life again. And–she filled out, the weight she'd lost–it wasn't back entirely by any means but she no longer looked starved.
Aro was witnessing a miracle.
A miracle accompanied by a human girl, starved out of her mind, gleefully committing cannibalism.
And still she was drinking.
By the time she was done, she'd had nine full cups.
She… hadn't drunk all of Giulia, but she had certainly drunk a lot of Giulia.
"Where's the rest of it?" Marcus asked after a beat, motioning with a hand for Caius to bring out the rest of Giulia.
Caius pointed wordlessly to his throat.
He held up his hands before Marcus could say anything, "Look, we have more secretaries."
"We do not have more secretaries!" Aro spat, "I will be ordering blood bags–and Carlisle will be fetching some as well."
"Carlisle can't leave," Marcus noted dully, "Bella is dying."
"Bella is–I don't know what she's doing but I don't think she's dying anymore!" Aro said, waving a hand at Bella who was now curiously looking down at her hands.
"No, actually," Carlisle said quietly, his eyes still on Bella.
Aro turned to look at him.
Carlisle, somehow, looked just as concerned as he had before, as if the mystery had deepened, not untangled itself. "Aro, this– this is unlike anything I've ever seen. I don't want to assume that– that just because she looks well now, that that's necessarily how she's going to stay, or even, that she actually is well. If she can recover this fast, the reverse might also hold true. Don't you see, this is– this isn't– human."
He shook his head in slow horror. "If Bella can no longer consume human food, if she now craves blood instead - what do you suppose that means for what's happening within her?"
Bella said nothing for a moment, just stared at Carlisle wide-eyed, then asked, "Is it weird if blood now smells like flowers? And that flowers smell suddenly delicious?"
Carlisle nodded wordlessly, the terror in his eyes clear to see.
"Then I suppose I will be fetching the blood bags," Aro said dimly. And sheep for Carlisle, as at best he'd only be able to make his way down to the sewers for a few rats, which was hardly enough.
And, internally, he noted that with this Carlisle would no longer be taking cigarette breaks.
"Good," Carlisle breathed.
"On the bright side," Bella said, "I don't think I'm starving anymore? Hooray, and–"
She cut off and clutched her stomach. There was the sound of a loud crack coming from inside her. Wheezing, Bella explained with tears gathering in her eyes, "I think he just kicked a rib."
"He's stronger," Carlisle said.
"Yeah," Bella said, eyes now closed, "Just a wee bit. I'm guessing no pain medication?"
"Yes pain medication," Carlisle replied firmly, without missing a beat. "We'll try morphine."
"Oh, you're bringing out the good stuff," Bella said, "I am–my dad would kill me if he heard this, but I am down for morphine."
Carlisle shot out of the room.
"For the record," Caius said, "I'd like to note that I'm a much better doctor than Carlisle."
"Do not antagonize my doctor," Marcus noted, not even looking at Caius.
Caius was unfazed, he merely grinned as he walked towards the door, a bounce in his step.
"We suspect he will have to open her womb with his teeth, you would eat her," Marcus continued.
"Yes, well, I'm not the starving monk. You sure Carlisle will keep it together?" Caius sang as he all but danced out of the room. Had Athenodora been there, he would probably have dip-kissed her in the doorway.
Aro… had not thought of that.
Perhaps he should return with an entire flock of sheep. Yes, clearly, they were going to need emergency supplies on hand. Otherwise it was waterboarding Carlisle in blood before the operation, telling him to drink.
And Carlisle would not be happy were Aro to do that.
Which meant that Aro was bringing him many, many, sheep.
Or possibly even bloodbags.
If there ever was a time when Carlisle would recognize the need for him to drink human blood, then this would be the one.
Yes, surely, under the circumstances, he couldn't object to that. They could give him some of Bella's extras, it wouldn't even be going out to fetch more.
Aro eyed the Giulia bucket.
… too soon, he'd need to build up to this. Preferably, with Marcus absent.
As Carlisle returned, not a minute later, Aro turned towards him with his brightest smile, a request that they have a private conversation for nonsexual purposes on his tongue (though, perhaps, to get Carlisle to agree he'd have to wait it out before clarifying that he only wanted to talk).
However, Carlisle beat him to it, "I'm afraid you have a guest."
He looked as if he'd seen a ghost. He moved towards Bella stiffly, refusing to even look at Aro, as he began arranging his equipment and motioning for Bella to roll up her sleeve.
He also looked distinctly annoyed.
"A guest?" Aro asked.
"Eleazar's waiting in the throne room."