Allison Illuminated

6/13/22

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MOTHER OF VAMPIRES

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By the time school ended, Bella was so exhausted that she could barely even find the energy to gently chide Edward on his brooding technique ("No, sweetie, we have to sit on the curb so they can see us looking forlorn."). Students streamed out the front doors of Forks High and stared at Bella and Edward as they passed, any excitement and intrigue for the new student firmly replaced by the legend of the girl who had joined the Cullen's fold and gotten a suspension on her very first day! Bella, underneath her sleepiness, was so happy about everything she'd managed to accomplish today. It had taken her a whole month to alienate the entire student body at her high school in Phoenix – a new personal best!

"You're smiling creepily again, Mother," Edward hissed through his teeth, glaring viciously at Lauren Mallory when she tried to approach Bella with a sneer. Lauren paled and darted away. "What could you possibly be thinking about with that expression?"

Bella's dreamy smile deepened. "They think I'm weird."

"You are weird," Edward deadpanned. "You're incredibly weird. Alice's visions didn't even begin to do justice to how weird you are. I have spent nearly a century listening to people's thoughts and I do not have the slightest clue what's going through your head right now."

"I know," Bella sighed. "Isn't it wonderful?"

"No?"

It was high time for some important mother-son life lesson bonding. "You see," Bella began, puffing herself up so Edward could bask in her wisdom. "When I first heard the news of my suspension, I was upset because my entire life has been completely torn down and rebuilt in the last twenty four hours, and I saw my suspension as a culmination of all the inescapable circumstances in my life-"

"You mean the nervous breakdown you had less than an hour ago," Edward deadpanned.

"See?" Bella gave Edward an encouraging smile. "You remembered!"

"You were sobbing into my chest and babbling about 'stupid perfect sexy teeth men' next to the cafeteria dumpsters less than an hour ago. My shirt is still damp!"

Bella nodded sagely. "It was a terribly trying time in my life."

Edward let out a noise halfway between a whimper and a groan.

"That's when I knew," Bella declared, rising to her feet, her hands falling to her slender hips and her determination faced outward to the gloomy gray sky, the thick dark pines which bunched up around them, "that secretly my suspension, just like my five children and my adoring prospective husband-to-be-"

"My father," Edward corrected. "Who you've still only met once."

"-was a blessing in disguise! Now I know that, in fact, all of these fine children here at our esteemed Forks High School will be so busy gossiping about how I got suspended on the first day and hang out with the weird family and how my socks are inside out-"

"Your socks are inside out?" Edward asked, disturbed.

"Yes, sweetheart, try to keep up."

From the throng of seniors, Alice skipped over and did a pirouette off the curb, dropping down to sit next Edward as Bella delivered her passionate and inspiration monologue of newfound parental wisdom. "What are we talking about?" she chirped.

"Bella's having a nervous breakdown," Edward told Alice.

"Ooh!" Alice exclaimed. "I love nervous breakdowns! There's so much potential for FASHION and wardrobe reinvention!"

"That's the spirit!" Bella cheered. "Anyway, like I was saying, now that everyone thinks I'm weird, they won't notice anything that I'm doing cause they'll all be like, 'oh, that's Bella, she's just the weird vampire groupie doing her weird vampire groupie things,' and then everyone will be like 'oh yeah, that's so Bella' and they won't ever question why I'm getting slowly indoctrinated into a coven of immortal cuddle bugs who want to eat me!"

A low keening emitted from Edward. "Why."

Before there was a chance to answer, Rosalie, Emmett, and Jasper emerged from the crowd as the normal humans parted around them, Rosalie and Jasper flanking Emmett like guards. Bella spun around and beamed at them, an unnatural and completely wonderful happiness blossoming in her heart at the sight of the other half of her family. "Emmett!" Bella shouted in delight, and flung herself into her son's arms.

"Bella!" Emmett cried jovially. He caught her and spun her around. Rather than letting go, Bella threw her arms around his neck, burrowed her nose against his frigid, sterile veins, and closed her eyes.

"Aaaand she's asleep," Alice said cheerfully. "Told you guys we would tire her out today."

"M'not tired," Bella mumbled, hugging Emmett closer. She loved him, she didn't know him, like a slow pulsing in her chest stretched in seven different directions. Emmett bundled Bella up into his arms and walked out across the parking lot toward a silver jeep, and Bella had never felt so weightless or secure in her entire life.

A loose strand of hair was tucked behind her ear. "Course you're not, Bella Bear."

The jeep was soft. Then it was warm.

"What are we supposed to do with her now?" Rosalie asked faintly from somewhere behind them, sounding somewhat irritated but not unkind.

"We keep her, obviously."

"That's kidnapping, Alice."

"I know a man who can get us out of American airspace untraced and into international waters in seven hours," Jasper said quietly, the sound of a door shutting following him into the car. "Her father could be dealt with."

"Jazz, no murder today."

Jasper made a disappointed noise.

Emmett smelled so good. Her nose liked his skin. When he laughed for some reason Bella didn't quite understand (she loved necks now, like a rooting baby), the deep vibrations thrummed in her own chest, suffusing her slight frame. "Wanna go home," Bella mumbled.

"We can do that," Edward said kindly. "Alice, can you figure out where Chief Swan's house is?"

"No." The ferocity of her rejection shocked all of them. Bella made a pathetic noise at the sudden attention, slipping deeper into unconsciousness against her vampire pillow. "S'not home," she whispered. "Take me home."

"Oh, Bella," Alice murmured.

A key turned in the ignition. Engines thrumming, the Jeep came to life.

"Yeah, Ma," Emmett said. He began to purr, rubbing his hands soothingly up and down her back, and in her own feeble human way, Bella tried to respond in kind with a low hum, a gentle vibration that began somewhere in her chest. Cold lips brushed her scalp. "Let's get you home."

Sleep took her away

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"Bella?"

"Hey, Daddy."

"What's up?"

Bella yawned, her head lying in Emmett's lap in the back seat of the Jeep. They had parked in the Cullen's driveway, but Bella was entirely too comfy to stand up, and it hadn't seemed to make much of a difference to the vampires whether they lounged around inside or on the seats and hood of their car. Her phone was cool against her cheek.

"Let's say-" Bella yawned again. "Let's say I'm sitting in the driveway of my evil lair with my adorable bloodthirsty children, far enough away from human civilization that if they decided they don't like me after all, they could dispose of me and nobody would ever be able to hear my scream. Is it okay if I sleep over at their house tonight?"

"You made friends?" Charlie asked, and he could have been thrilled or constipated.

"Mm. Even better." Bella did her best to purr for Emmett again, and Emmett fondly tweaked her ear. Rosalie rolled her eyes at her feeble mimicry of the vampiric ideal. "Family."

"You… made family."

Bella smiled to herself. "Yes, Daddy."

"Well." Charlie sounded stumped. "That's… good."

"I'm sure we'll be the best of friends too before long!"

"Can't argue with that."

"So I can sleep over?"

"Sure."

"Awesome! Thank you, Daddy! Oh, and by the way, I got suspended from school today!"

"YOU GOT-"

"Bye, Daddy!" Bella said happily, and hung up her phone.

The Jeep was silent for a long moment. Then, all at once, the Cullens burst out into uproarious laughter, Emmett dislodging a petulant Bella from his lap by the sheer force of his mirth. Even Edward managed a few thin chuckles and a smile. Bella laughed too, wondering whether her voice would tinkle like Alice's when she was ChANgEd, and beamed at Rosalie.

"I can't decide if you're infuriating or terrifying," Rosalie drawled, draping her impossibly beautiful body over the hood of her Jeep. "I'm beginning to think you're a little bit of both."

"I require sustenance," Bella informed Rosalie cheerfully.

"We have fifteen different types of blood and a single jar of mayonnaise in our fridge."

She wrinkled her nose. "I'll take the blood."

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"So, how is it?"

Four pairs of golden eyes stared expectantly at Bella. Bella nodded eagerly and made a noise through her mouth, wiping the back of her hand across her lips. Red dribbled down the side of her face. With effort, she swallowed. Gasped. "It's rusty!"

"WE DO NOT FEED THE HUMAN BLOOD!" Edward bellowed.

Emmett chortled and dodged. The jar of mayonnaise collided directly with the side of Jasper's head. Jasper hissed.

Rosalie sighed, lounging deeper into the couch as her brothers went flying at each other. She picked at her flawlessly gorgeous nails. "Boys," she commiserated, and Alice and Bella exchanged sympathetic looks.

"They'll get over themselves, Mother," Alice reassured Bella.

Bella nodded absently – holding up her empty glass to the light, she considered the red bloodstains around the rim, shaking the dregs. "Could I get some more of this stuff?"

:

Esme Cullen loved her family.

Even though she was biologically older than the rest of them, and felt neither the paternal bond that seemed to draw the other to Carlisle nor the eternal devotion that Carlisle deserved in his mate, Esme had always felt comfortable in her role in the coven: maternal, but never a mother; directive, but never a leader; not a true sister to Carlisle, not even in the vampiric sense, yet a firm part of their family nontheless. So it was no wonder that Esme had been absolutely overjoyed when Alice had breathlessly announced to the family that Isabella, Carlisle's long-predestined mate, was about to join their lives for good. Esme owed Carlisle the world – if she could have been his mate, she would have married him in a heartbeat, and it simply filled her with elation to see the way Carlisle had finally come alive the closer Bella Swan drew to Forks. Oh, it made her smile, it made her want to rip the throats out of innocent children and drain their bodies dry for blood. She settled for the first desire, of course, but Esme always allowed herself a little indulgence in her thoughts when good things came her family's way.

She had gone out to shop for Bella and pick up her latest tile samples when Alice had texted her that Bella had come home after school with the family. Thrilled, Esme had changed course immediately for the supermarket: finally, a chance to try out her decade-long hobby of cooking!

Laden with more food than a single human could possibly eat, Esme hitched up her bags and stepped through the front door to her home.

Six guilty faces swung toward her. Jasper stopped throttling Edward, and Emmett stopped rolling on the floor in uproarious laughter. Alice and Rosalie both froze like statues. And in the center of it all sat Isabella Swan, her best friend and brother's intended – sister, her instincts pulsed, my sister – innocently holding a glass half-full of viscous liquid, her mouth stained red with blood.

"Auntie Esme!" Alice called cheerfully. "Look! We found Mother!"

Bella offered Esme an innocent smile, waving her crimson-crusted hand.

Unsure of how to respond, Esme set her bags down on the counter and gave Bella a hesitant wave in return. She lifted up the vegetables. "It's lovely to meet you, Bella. I… I brought rutabegas?"

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"Mmm, these are good too!"

"DON'T EAT RAW RUTABEGAS EITHER!"

Esme laughed nervously as Bella glared at her son. "What did we say about using our indoor voices, Edward?"

"Um," Edward said. "Sorry?"

Bella smiled sweetly at Edward; positive reinforcement was, of course, the most important factor in enforcing good behavior in children and adolescent vampires. She turned to Esme and laid a reassuring hand on her arm. "Don't worry, Esme," she said. "The rutabegas are lovely."

There was no response which Esme could muster, not from all her decades of life experience or her PhD in psychology. Hesitantly she offered Bella a handkerchief.

Bella took it and blinked at Esme.

"It's, um…" Esme gestured vaguely at Bella's face. "It's for the blood, darling."

:

There were moments in Bella Swan's life where it seemed her actions and day-to-day ennui had taken on the quality of an overcooked noodle, soggy, and plain without salt or sauce. Bella would have placed a great deal of her childhood, be it in the monotonous heat of Arizona or the monotonous gloom of Washington, into that category. But there too where moments where Bella, like a flower that only bloomed on the vernal equinox under the light of a full moon, came alive. And even though to all the world it would appear that she might be aptly named Isabella 'Wet Noodle' Swan, in her heart, even when she allowed herself to blandish away into the world around her, Bella carried those moments of life in the core of her being, the place that made her who she was.

That place was now shared with the image of another.

She felt it when he got to the house. Somehow, she knew. It might have been the slight tensing as the others heard the car driving down the way, or the fact that Carlisle had claimed he would return at 7:30 and it was precisely 7:29 and thirty seven seconds (not that Bella had been obsessively watching the clock, or had snarled at Emmett when he stood between her and her view of it), but Bella liked to imagine that it had been the bond tugging in her chest, calling to her, like fate (Bella liked to consider herself a realistic, down-to-earth sort of girl). Called to the door, the very voices of angels echoing down from above (no, that was Alice chattering on her phone), Bella drifted to the door, the rest of her new vampire family falling into place behind her. And like a vision, he was there.

Carlisle stepped out of his Bugatti and adjusted his doctor's coat, and Bella caught her breath at the sight of her mate, her mate (her mate?). She swooned over the way the blood stains fell against his abs. She went toward him, catching her breath when he gave her a sharp smile. Histeeth were red too. I knew he would be glad I drank his blood, Bella sighed happily. Now we match. Wow. Four hundred years of immortality and oh wow Bella had not fully comprehended how much older he was than her, she had not thought this through, was this a good ideeeeaaaand he smelled divine. She wanted to bite him.

Bite him bite him bite him bite him.

"Hello, Isabella," Carlisle soothed.

Bella was in Carlisle's arms. A strange noise hung in the air, a low rumble, and it took her a second to realize it was coming from her. She was humming again. Carlisle purred a welcome back. "Hey there," Bella breathed, breathed deeply on the crook of his neck. Her tongue raked a satisfying tilt up his inanimate vein. He tasted like nothing; she loved the scent of him on her tongue better than anything she'd ever tasted before.

Cold lips fell into her hair, pressing a long kiss against her scalp. Bella shuddered in pleasure. "Easy, darling," Carlisle whispered. He held her close. "Just breathe. We will both get used to this in time, I promise you. The instincts will ease once you are no longer human, then ease again after twenty years or so."

"Oh, God," Bella whispered in slowly dawning mortification. "I licked you. I've had one conversation with you and I licked you."

"It was a very nice lick," Carlisle said.

"Really?" Bella said hopefully. She stared up at Carlisle in awe, blushing something fierce. "You liked my lick?"

"Oh yes."

Bella hummed, overwhelmed by her sheer happiness. If there was sunlight, she would be sparkling, humanity be damned. "I'm in love with you," she informed Carlisle.

"I love you too, my darling Isabella."

"Why am I in love with you? I'm pretty sure I wasn't in love with you last Tuesday."

"Why Tuesday?"

She shrugged. "It seemed like a day where I would have been incredibly in love with you, if I had loved you back then. You know. On Tuesday."

"Makes sense," Carlisle said. "Shall we discuss over dinner?"

Bella gave her future husband an earnest smile and took his hand in hers. "We shall," she declared. "Although I have to say, our family loves to feed me, Carlisle. I've already had two cups of blood and a rutabega!"

Carlisle's eyebrow lifted slightly. Inside the house, where six eager vampires were watching through the front window, Edward froze in horror and quickly began to plot his fastest escape route to Alaska. At his side, Alice managed a nervous laugh.

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"Mm," Bella said effusively, shoving her mashed potatoes into her mouth. She took a dulcet bite of venison. "This is absolutely exquisite, Esme, you've outdone yourself."

Carlisle pulled back from the whole deer carcass on his side of the table for long enough to smile at Esme; he dabbed politely at his mouth with a crimson napkin. Esme beamed at them both. "I have to concur with Isabella," he said. "You've made a wonderful selection, darling."

"Oh, I'm glad," Esme said.

"Could you pass me the gravy, Carlisle?"

"Of course." In a flash, Carlisle was at her side. "Shall I pour?"

Bella batted her eyelashes at him. "Why, you do know how to flatter a girl."

From the couch, five vampires watched as their father poured fresh deer blood over their human mother's mashed potatoes, which Bella eagerly mixed into her meal like ketchup and began devouring once more. Edward looked queasy.

"Does she actually want it?" he whispered to Jasper.

"No," Jasper whispered back.

"Then why?"

"She's still having a mental breakdown," Jasper said. "But it'll be worse if we don't let her have it – you must have seen Alice's vision. Carlisle is indulging her."

Edward swallowed. "This is sick," he whispered.

"Yes," Rosalie agreed in a low tone. "But so are we. Her soul is already doomed, if you could call it that. There's nothing there to fight for. We at least can muster the decency to love what's left."

Alice rolled her eyes. "She'll be fine. All the problems will be fixed soon enough, and in five years, none of this will even matter! Mother will be happy as a clam. That's, like, less than a decade! It'll be at least twenty more years before Edward gets over his anal fixation!"

Edward shuddered. "I hate teenage girls," he whispered.

"Problems like her humanity?" Rosalie snapped.

"Exactly!" Alice said.

This entire conversation had been carried out subvocally, which had earned the kids a viciously concealed glare from Carlisle, worry from Esme, and utter obliviousness from Bella, who had begun to happily chatter to Carlisle about how terribly depressing her life in Arizona had been. They shifted on the couch, a low guilt emanating through them all from Jasper's aura, until Emmett tossed his arms back over the couch and shrugged.

"Is it bad if I can't bring myself to feel all that bad about it?" Emmett asked. "I mean, she's our Ma. She's meant to be here. Even if Bella Bear suffers a little during the transition, doesn't that still make up for how miserable her life is and would be without us? An eternity of mated bliss sounds pretty good to me if Renee Dwyer and Charlie Swan are the alternative."

Everyone groaned, even Esme in the kitchen.

"We should never have let you get a degree in philosophy in the seventies," Rosalie muttered.

:

It was late at night when Bella finally managed to escape from Alice's clutches, fully showered, made-over, and dolled up in a pair of designer pajamas so expensive that she suspected they cost more than everything else she owned combined. She sighed in relief, slumping against the hallway wall, sinking in the dark ambiance of the Cullen home. Over dinner, Bella had learned that vampires never slept, and that, most likely, they all could hear her from anywhere in the house, no matter how quiet she attempted to be. The privacy was an illusion, but Bella luxuriated in the moment of peace all the same.

Drawn by an invisible tether, Bella wandered down the hall and knocked on a door where the light shone from underneath.

"Come in!" Carlisle called.

Sighing once more, Bella slipped into the room.

Carlisle stood behind his desk, looking unbelievably delicious in his well-fitted shirt and his slacks, his coiffed blonde hair shimmering in the nighttime incandescence. He held his hands carefully arrayed before him, his stiff frame perfectly courteous – designed, Bella suspected, to keep humans at ease. At his side, Esme sat on the edge of his desk, smiling warmly at Bella.

"Hi," Bella said to them both, pulling the door behind her and coming to an awkward stop in the middle of the room. "I mean, um- Hi. Shit. I keep saying hello and forgetting that you don't even know me, but I…" She gave them a hopeful smile, her face heating up. "I'd like to. Know you, and live here, and join your coven and all that. I know I'm being hasty, but…"

"Not hasty at all," Carlisle said softly. "To us, we've all been waiting…"

He glanced at Esme.

"Alice came to us in the fifties," Esme murmured. "She had her first vision of you in 1962, Bella, dear. I don't think it's much of an exaggeration to say that we've all been waiting for you for half a century. Carlisle, I'm sure, has been waiting far longer."

Bella blushed. "How am I supposed to compete with that?"

"You don't have to," Carlisle said

He opened his arms to her. Bella didn't wait a second before she was across the room. From her new vantage, she could see that Esme was even lovelier than before, her gentle features appearing soft even though she knew that they were hard as marble, smiling through her brown locks as she played with a paperweight on Carlisle's desk.

"I may be older than this country," Carlisle continued, "but biologically, I am twenty-three, and I always will be twenty-three. Esme is twenty-one. I know that right now, both of those gaps are, well, simply put, they're atrocious. I had hoped to wait a few more years before encountering you, but Alice is always the authority on where our family has to go. By the standards of the time of my birth, our current age gap would not be prohibitive, but…" He gave a helpless shrug. "Times change. I apologize, darling, but I am as helpless against my nature as you are. I can only ask that you try your best not to romanticize this, and to allow your body and mind time to mature."

"We're very sorry, Bella," Esme whispered. "But you will be allowed here in Carlisle's study every night during our private time, us adults. We will never treat you as anything less than an equal."

"Um…" Bella slipped out of Carlisle's embrace, and immediately felt the loss. She stared between them. "This is a lot."

"You're free to leave at any time," Carlisle said in a pained voice. "You're not a slave to fate. If you wish to walk away and lead a mortal life, I will not stop you."

"I don't think I can do that," Bella whispered.

Carlisle closed his eyes in acceptance. "Neither could I, darling. We will approach this together."

"Oh, God." A crazed giggle escaped from Bella's lips. She drew away from Esme and Carlisle, clutching her head. "I'm a teenage mom. Charlie is going to kill me."

"Well," Carlisle began teasingly, "I have heard that there are certain perks to being dead."

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[A/N] Twilight is a horror novel, change my mind.

No, seriously, there are so many problems in the original books and even more in the plethora of fanfiction that likes to lean into them. Honestly, half of the inspiration for this story was wanting to make sense of how both disgusting and absurd both the Twilight fandom, Twilight, and Fantasy and Sci-Fi more broadly can get. So many genres fall into the same awful tropes – massive unexplored age gaps, instant romance between people who probably wouldn't be compatible otherwise, the hamfisting of female protagonists and characters into weird and uncomfortable roles and stereotypes.

I mean, good god, Bella Swan is enough of a wet towel of a girlfriend in the books. Who's to say she couldn't have been shoved into the role of a wet towel tradwife just as easily?

And if the idea is too funny not to write, then… heh. I've had an intensely awful month, might as well get my shits and giggles in where I can find them.

But seriously, think about it for a few seconds. BellaxCarlisle is only a few steps to the left from BellaxEdward. There's something worth chewing on there.

Cheers, Allie