Aro had often imagined Carlisle's return to Volterra.
He hadn't been able to help himself, even when the years had drifted by, had turned from decades into centuries. Nor had he stopped when rumor of Carlisle building himself a coven piece by piece and finding a mate for himself in America.
He'd wondered how Carlisle had looked, how he'd fared, after three centuries of subsisting on next to nothing. He'd hoped Carlisle was doing well but hadn't quite been able to believe it, not seeing Carlisle's weakness the way he had in Volterra.
Aro had never seen anything like it before, it was not the rapid decline of a starving vampire, a creature not quite living but not quite dead, but something that seemed slower and more insidious for it.
No, he'd hoped that Carlisle was doing well, but in his heart of hearts he'd doubted that he could.
Still, he'd imagined Carlisle's return. He'd look the same as he had when he left, perhaps with a bit more rueful of a smile. He'd claim it was just a short visit, perhaps a week at most, but then one week would turn into two and they'd both know it was nothing more than a paltry excuse to save a little face.
To allow Carlisle to return without admitting that he'd given up.
Or perhaps he'd come back with his family and—
Well, Caius would kill him were Aro to suggest supporting so many vampires in Volterra. Vampires who would presumably bring next to nothing to the table. Carlisle, at the very least, was clever and could navigate the library but his coven was—a lot of people they had no need for.
Even on the animal diet—it would have helped things but the arguments with Caius would have been fierce.
But they were all idle daydreams anyway, daydreams that didn't have to contend with the reality of Carlisle being off in America as a doctor in the human world, having his own life, his own coven, and his own responsibilities that he couldn't just throw to the wind as if they were nothing.
Even if, surely, he could take a week here and there to visit.
Or just write a letter or two, anything more than those damned Christmas cards he kept sending (except, of course, when he forgot to send even those).
However, Carlisle was also one of those unpredictable sorts, someone who you could never could quite take the measure of even when you knew every thought he'd ever had.
Aro had thought he'd fail in that diet, that he'd relent and eventually see reason. Carlisle had proved quite flexible in his theology when push came to shove, and he didn't vehemently condemn Aro or his brethren for their diet. Surely, eventually, Carlisle would see that it was the natural order of things, that it was not his God's intent that he should suffer for all eternity. Carlisle's control needed only falter once, then he would surely move past it, leaving the animal diet behind as nothing more than youthful fancy.
But Carlisle had never slipped. Not only had he not slipped, he hadn't succumbed even when Aro had started dropping dead bodies in front of him. Carlisle had been only a few decades old; he'd had decent control for his age, but nothing to write home about and not any more than Aro had had when he'd turned Didyme.
And he'd resisted.
And presumably still resisted even after turning others and seeing what he was missing.
He'd thought Carlisle would have returned sooner rather than later.
Carlisle had been desperately lonely, when he'd first come to Volterra for all he hadn't realized as much himself. He hadn't a friend in the world, not even one he'd had to leave behind from his human life. His father had been an important figure in his life, but their relationship had been bitter, complicated, and cast a dark shadow of Carlisle's existence even into his new life as a vampire.
Carlisle would go into the world and surely discover what vampires were truly like.
Vampires who lived without the arts, without libraries, with nothing more than the clothes on their back and nothing more on their minds than where to pick up the next meal without incurring the Volturi's wrath.
Carlisle could search the world over and he would not find what he was looking for. Then, when he realized as much, he would return to Volterra.
But he hadn't come back.
And as much as Aro simply didn't know, too many gaps in the rumor mill, it seemed Carlisle was perfectly content out there in the wide world after all.
His point was that Aro—for all that he believed he understood Carlisle, it didn't help him predict the man in the least.
It was now the 21st century, over three centuries since he'd seen Carlisle last, and Aro had not predicted that he'd see him again, sitting in front of his desk in his study, and with him a girl who was—not his wife.
And smelled awful.
Truly, horrendously, awful.
Beyond all reason.
Whose mind, beyond all comprehension, was silent to Aro's. Except, of course, Carlisle had seemed to shrug this off and told him that his son, who read minds apparently, and his psychic daughter, who saw the future apparently, were blocked by the girl as well.
Oh, and a vampire was coming to murder her because Carlisle had invited her to baseball.
And she was also an alien.
And now, after having given up and touched Carlisle's hand because that was the only way to make any sense of any of this, he just stared at the pair of them.
At Carlisle sitting nervously in front of him, looking as if he'd be called upon to give a lecture on some topic he was utterly unprepared for at a moment's notice, while Bella Swan sat there—probably wishing she was eating pizza if Carlisle's memories were anything to go by.
Carlisle had insisted she not bring food to this meeting on the off chance it made a terrible impression on Aro and tempted him into killing her.
As Bella Plus One, apparently, had made a god awful impression on his family that had had them throwing her to the wolves.
And Aro now realized that he was actually supposed to make some sort of decision here.
"Bella can stay," he finally said, watching as Carlisle sighed in relief, nearly collapsing onto the floor, "I mean, that is, she will stay at this point as we will have to observe her and see that—she has the control not to partake in any more cats."
Or people.
Though Carlisle seemed to believe that Bella had not yet descended to cannibalism.
Aro honestly wasn't sure. On the one hand, he imagined Bella would have confessed to that easily, as she did not view the vampire's diet as in any way offensive. On the other hand, she might view the fact of her having eaten a few neighbors as so unworthy of notice that she failed to mention it.
And to imagine, Carlisle had found her in a backwater town in the middle of nowhere.
"Cool," Bella said, for the need to say something.
Yes, he was going to have fun with this one.
"You can stay as well," Aro noted to Carlisle, "As long as you like, as long as you think you need to, certainly I'd recommend staying until we can take care of this James problem."
Oh, poor Heidi.
Victoria had been the only surviving member of her coven, the one who'd gotten away when the Volturi had come for them. Heidi had spared her a few thoughts over the years, wondered if she was still alive and how she was doing. She'd always had a soft spot for Victoria, who'd felt much like a younger sister to her as she'd been Anne's fiery little sister.
She'd always been pleased that Victoria had never crossed paths with the Volturi again.
Now, here she was, so many years later crossing paths not with the Volturi but with Carlisle's horribly unappetizing half-alien friend.
"Take care of it?" Carlisle asked, sounding shocked.
Carlisle had imagined that, when James realized where they had taken Bella, that he'd immediately give up like a rational man and wash his hands of this business.
Aro had never met this James person, but he wasn't so optimistic, he knew the type.
"I'm afraid I don't trust James not to make a nuisance of himself," Aro said, "If not to me then certainly to you and your family. Then I don't trust Victoria not to take revenge. Laurent—him, I suppose I can allow to live. I don't expect trouble from him."
And what a way for Laurent's tale to interweave with Aro's once again. Aro hadn't expected to ever hear of him again, had expected him to be ashes in a gutter somewhere, but he supposed he wasn't surprised that the likes of James were those he ended up surrounding himself with.
And he'd had such ambitions too.
He'd make a glorious tragicomedy, now that Aro thought about it.
Carlisle looked at first stunned then tragically resigned—evidently, he had had enough run ins with vampires now to know that Aro was right. He'd grown, then, and Aro was almost sorry for it.
His naivete and optimism, his hope even for vampires, refreshing was a word that didn't do it justice.
Carlisle's faith in all of them had made Aro wish to believe in them as well, and that was a precious thing even now.
Bella, however, looked as if she couldn't care less—
But then, judging by how easily she'd decided to eliminate Carlisle, she didn't take these kinds of things personally. Bella Plus One, apparently, still resided in that animalistic world in which it was kill or be killed.
And she made no bones about it.
"Thank you," Carlisle said quietly, "For taking her in when I—"
"Oh nonsense," Aro said, "You're right in that I'm very curious, and this isn't just for my benefit, the more the Volturi knows about the world the better we can execute our laws. I'd much rather she be here than out there unattended in the wide world."
And he was glad that Carlisle had come back.
Even if it was in this strange circumstance, even if he looked so very tired and worn, even if he hadn't smiled at the sight of Aro in exactly the way Aro had imagined—
He was still so very glad.
Glad and—
Carlisle intended to call his family shortly, to speak to his wife or if not her than to Edward. He wished to clear the air, to explain what had happened to Bella and that they'd made it here safely, even that James, Victoria, and Laurent would be taken care of.
His family wouldn't care.
Carlisle knew that in his heart of hearts, he intended to call and tell them anyway.
They would demand he return home immediately, they'd admonish him for the baseball game, for having taken her to Italy rather than sending her on a flight by herself and giving her directions to Volterra.
Edward would accuse him of having risked his family, his wife, over Bella Swan's safety.
And Carlisle knew all of this was coming, he knew exactly what they'd say to him and how the fight would end, but he'd call anyway.
He'd call then he'd linger a few days, catch up with Aro and the library, help Bella get on and wait for James to be dealt with. Then he feared that he'd linger a few more days, unable to abandon Bella to a den of strangers, and unwilling to face his family quite yet.
He saw himself growing complacent, letting his friendship with Aro rekindle, and that a few days would stretch into a few weeks then perhaps even into a few years.
And in the very depths of his mind, deeper perhaps than even Carlisle was aware of, he wondered if he'd unconsciously made a decision already or if his family would see it that way.
A part of Carlisle wanted to ask Aro if Marcus couldn't take a look at him now, to see exactly how the threads tying him to his family were faring but—
A larger part of Carlisle was glad that Marcus barely spoke and would never take the initiative to tell Carlisle exactly the status of his relationships and exactly what he had sacrificed in coming here.
That he had sacrificed anything at all when all he'd wanted was to make a friend and to give the poor girl some help.
And perhaps Aro was terrible but—he sincerely hoped Carlisle would stay.
And he thought that he would.
Because it would be so terribly easy to slide back into that role now, to use Bella as an excuse, and tell his family to join him in Italy now that he too had disappeared from Forks at the same time as Bella and was either considered a homicide victim or Bella's murderer.
And that, that was just what he'd tell himself, what he'd allow himself to think in the relative privacy of his own thoughts.
The truth of the matter was that Carlisle had searched for something. He'd searched for it for three-hundred years, and when he'd found it he hadn't found it in his creations, his wife, or even his family.
He hadn't found it in Tanya and her sisters either, nor Eleazar and Carmen, even when they'd taken the same path he had and done so on their own terms for their own reasons.
He'd found a glimpse of it, instead, in teenage Bella Swan, a girl who was not quite human, was not quite his friend, and who made little pretense to be anything other than a predator: kinship.
He'd seen himself in her, his struggles, the way he lived his life, and the way those closest to him had seen her as an oddity, a nuisance, and even a threat. And in seeing that, especially among those who he'd desperately told himself understood everything he did, who wanted what he wanted–it dimmed the faith he'd desperately had in them.
When Jasper stood by her side only so that he might borrow her laundry.
When Edward despised her solely for a scent, Rosalie for how the world treated Bella and not Bella herself, Alice for disrupting the frankly invasive gift she so heavily relied upon, and all Emmett could think of was fighting and all Esme could do was look at him miserably.
And then each one of them had plainly stated, clear as day, that they were not simply alright with her dying, but that they'd prefer it because at least, then, they wouldn't be involved and she wouldn't darken their doorstep in the future.
In that short plane ride from Seattle, Carlisle had come to realize that he had finally done it. He had searched the world over, had crossed the Atlantic ocean even, and he had found nothing just as Aro had promised him years ago.
Perhaps, in the centuries that have passed, there would be new vampires out in the world who had discovered his diet or at least shared his ideals, but–
He had lost the will to look and because of that, the idea of returning to Volterra for Bella's protection, had been a terribly obvious one to come to.
And Carlisle staying—it was far from the worst outcome in the world.
Certainly, it was far from the worst.
With that, Aro smiled his best smile, "In the meantime, would you care to see the library? As you can imagine, I've added quite a bit to it since you left us.
Author's Note: Thanks to Vinelle for betaing the chapter. Thanks to readers and reviewers, reviews are much appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight