I do not own any characters from twilight or charmed.
"Dad?" Bella croaks out, her voice thick with emotion, "What are you doing here?'
"We must talk..." Michael stares over her shoulder to see a very human Edward staring back at him, "Privately."
Edward takes that as his cue to leave, "I'm going to go check on my siblings," he stands and rests a hand on Bella's shoulder, "I hope that everything goes okay with Chris."
"Thanks." She offers him a small smile.
As soon as Edward leaves the room Michael steps forward, frustration laced on the lines of his face and Bella realizes that in this moment she has never seen her father look so tired. She wants to ask him what's wrong and help him with whatever is bothering him but she can't shake the heartbroken look on Chris's face out of her mind.
"Dad, listen, I will gladly help you with whatever is bothering you but right now I have to find Chris and explain myself. It won't take long, I promise." She beings to walk towards him and tiptoes upwards to give him a kiss on the cheek but Michael grabs her forearms and gently pushes her away.
"We must talk. This is more important than your infatuation with the half-ling."
"Half-ling?" She scoffed, "Since when did we start referring to Chris as half-ling? And since when did we start using infatuation as a synonym for love?"
"Bella..."
"Because I seem to remember you telling me that -"
"Isabella!" Bella is taken aback by the frustration in her fathers voice but stands her ground, "For heavens sake, just listen to me. There is something I should have told you, something that you deserve to know."
"What?" She stares at him waiting for a response but he says nothing, he only opens his mouth to close it again and sigh in resignation, "I can't believe you. You're still keeping secrets from me? After all this time? Have I not earned your trust or have you decided that it would be best to only share things with me that will work to your advantage?"
Michael composure is tense. He would love to ramble on and on about how much he trusts his daughter, how she is the only pure thing in his life; she is the only person he has ever completely trusted but he remembers the prophecy and realizes he might trust his daughter but he has never trusted himself.
"Bella. I am begging you, please sit." The resignation in his voice strikes a chord in Bella's heart and she slowly makes her way to the windowsill and rests her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands before raising an eyebrow urging her father to continue.
"You are right, I haven't been completely honest with you but it is not because I don't trust you, my dear. I kept something from you because I, incorrectly, believed that it was not a possibility. When I first met you and saw into your heart, your soul, I knew that you could never..."
He trails off and Bella has now found herself sitting as straight as a pole for a moment she forgets about Chris and the Cullen's and the secrets her father is still keeping and simply listens.
"When you were cursed, by James, do you remember?" Bella resists rolling her eyes and instead nods solemnly, "Do you remember what you told me when you finally woke up?"
"Kind of..." She sighs deeply, "From what I remember I told you that I was afraid to wake up because I was ashamed of what I did, butchering James and Victoria, I was afraid I was becoming a monster."
"And I told you that everything you did was out of fear. I told you that the only way you could become evil was because you would choose to or if you were forced to. I know my daughter, I know you would never willing choose evil, and I believed that you were strong enough to not be forced."
"Dad? What are you trying to say?" Bella felt her heart beating in her throat.
Michael looked straight into her eyes, "What I'm trying to say is that I was wrong."
Before Bella can even formulate another thought Michael is walking towards her, trying to remain calm but hopelessly failing, "You are the creation of an unbreakable vow, you are not supposed to exist, nothing like you has ever existed and never will again. Bella you are an immortal who lives among the mortal, a witch with the powers of a God, you are vulnerable but also the strongest being to walk this world.
"It makes you a contradiction, a flaw, a mistake." Bella's breath catches in her throat and tears being to form in her eyes, Michael realizes the sting of his words and reaches out to his daughter only to have her recoil away from him, "I am sorry, dear. I only mean to explain. Your existence is peculiar, in the world Chris comes from there is no Supreme One, which explains why Wyatt is evil."
Michael takes a turn around the room and Bella stares a hole into the floor of the attic, "Perhaps, in Chris's time you succeed in your attempt off the cliff in La Push or perhaps you are reunited with Edward and transformed. Whatever the reason be it keeps you from realizing your full potential."
"Why does that matter?" Bella's voice breaks Michael ramblings.
"Because you are here now and you are a threat."
"How? Why? I don't understand."
"You are not supposed to be here and the fact that you are has made you vulnerable."
"To what?"
"Yourself."
The answer takes Bella by surprise, she doesn't understand what her father is trying to tell her, she just needs an answer. Did he know about everything that had been happening to her for the past few weeks? The dreams, the glowing, the pain. And if he did why didn't he try to help her, why didn't he want to save her?
"Could you please, for once in your life, just be straightforward with me? No lies, no sugar coating, I just want the truth. No, I demand that you tell me the truth! Now!" Her voice trembles and a part of her doesn't want to hear the truth, she just wants to disappear into the earth to forget about all of the crap that is going on in her life.
"You are the product of love but also of sin. The moment you were born your soul has been split in half, you are fighting a battle, in your heart and mind, a battle of good and evil."
"I'm not evil."
"I know but there is fear within you, I think you've always known, you've always been different. Fear made it possible for you to do what you did to those vampires and that fear, if you do not control it, will lead to hate and that will lead to evil."
"You've known, haven't you?" She asked him but she doesn't need him to answer the already knows the truth, "When did you find out or have you always know? Were you going to help me? Tell me?"
"We planned a trip back to the heavens, I told you it would be for a few months to train but the truth is I was to take you and never let you return to mortal world again. You were to remain in the heavens, choose immortality, choose the right path. I believed you could do it alone, without my help, but it was taking you too long and we were afraid that it was happening that your fear was taking over your life so we, my brothers and sisters-"
"Decided to trick me?" Bella finished his sentence for him.
"Protect you." Michael ran a large hand down his face, "We wanted to protect you."
"No, because if you wanted to protect me dad, you should have told me I was mistake the moment you met me. My whole was lie, you chose my parents, you chose my destiny, and you keep making decisions for me. That is not protection that is control"
"Darling, we can continue to fight over this but there is still much discuss, I understand-"
Bella laughed bitterly, how dare he say he understands, no one could possibly understand what she was feeling. She was getting all of this new information and she couldn't even sit down to process them. All of the secrets that had been kept from her, all of the decisions that had been forced upon her; she never had a choice, her destiny had already been mapped out.
"You understand nothing. If you actually cared about me you would have been honest. You would have tried to help me."
Michael walked to her resting his hands on her shoulders his eyes meeting hers, "Isabella, you are my daughter, all I have ever wanted to do was help you."
"You really want to help me? You can start by leaving me the hell alone."
And with that Bella was gone and there was a storm brewing, Michael could feel it in his bones.
Bella teleported herself out of the attic and found herself sitting an empty room, she looked around and found that she remembered the place, it was familiar but too different.
She walked around, her fingertips lightly gliding across the dust covered walls that were stripped of their paint, her bare feet padded softly on the floor and from a distant memory she picked out the sound of the floorboards, the familiar creaking. She stood upright as soon as she realized where she was.
Forks. She was back in Forks.
Bella wondered if Charlie still lived here, she knew that as soon as she came into her powers every trace of Bella Swan was removed from the memories of non-magical beings (which is why the wolves and the Cullen's remember her) but maybe if Charlie saw her face he would remember, maybe she could forget about witches and vampires and Gods, maybe everything in her life could be normal again.
With what little energy she had left Bella bolted out of the room, "Charlie?" She called out, she couldn't contain the smile on her face, "Charlie? It's me, Bella, I'm home!"
She ran down the stairs and turned into the kitchen finding that the only thing that remained was the small table that she and Charlie sometimes ate breakfast at and some scattered silverware. She made her way into the living room but the only thing that remained was a tattered old couch and some empty picture frames.
Bella found herself holding her breath and she walked upstairs, one arm wrapped around her torso as if she was keeping herself upright. She slowly makes her way towards Charlie's room she lets her hand rest on the door knob and takes a deep breath before pushing the door open.
Nothing.
There is nothing but Charlie's old furniture and an empty bed stripped bare, no bed sheets and no pillows. Bella growls and proceeds to rip open the wardrobe, the dresser, the closet, but still nothing. No trace that Charlie even existed. She lets out an anguished scream and flips the bed over, the mattress and bed stand collide with the wall fall back down to the ground with a loud thud that shakes the entire house.
Bella collapses to the ground and falls on her hands and knees, her breathing hard and ragged, the floor is cold underneath her palms but her pinky finger brushes against something soft. She lifts her head and finds one of Charlie's plaid flannels that must have been forgotten under the bed.
She hesitantly picks it up and brings to her face to inhale the scent but smell that lingers, while warm and inviting, is one she doesn't remember.
Bella wraps the shirt around her body and the tears that she kept from her father in the attic finally fall from her eyes.
I hope you enjoy this new chapter. Please review if you liked it. Constructive criticism and ideas are welcomed.