the outtakes
necessity
Necessity, who is the mother of invention.
- Plato
o.o.o
"Do you think that's it, then?" he asks, peering over her shoulder at the microscope they've been studying for weeks.
She nods, tapping fingers against the written, re-written, modified, and finalized version of the formula that had drained so much time and energy from their lives, an undertaking so vast that even reaching a stage where they could sit back and contemplate testing was cause for sighs of relief. "It looks stable enough."
Stable, as in doesn't appear to be acidic or harmful in anyway, so it could probably be ingested. She doesn't have to say that, though. After working so long together and after being her mentor - and now her equal partner - she and Carlisle have a short-hand of sorts, a close enough relationship that pontificating isn't all that necessary more often than not.
"Then we'll start testing it immediately."
o.o.o
o.o.o
Bella listens closely as Carlisle dictates his observations. She adds in her own, fetches him another bottle, and settles in for the wait.
All good so far.
o.o.o
o.o.o
"An unanticipated side effect," Carlisle decides calmly, watching from the other side of the lab as Bella mops up the synthetic formula that she had promptly spilled all over herself after catching a glimpse of the Cullen patriarch as he returned to their shared workspace after a night away.
She still can't tear her eyes away, even as Carlisle continues in debriefing her of all the other reactions he'd had to the formula - just as they'd hoped, their ten-year long production in isolating the properties of blood that was needed to slake vampiric thirst and reproduce them in a laboratory setting resulted in a formula that was much tastier than they could have possibly imagined. For the past week, even though his eyes had begun to darken from bright gold to muddy brown, Carlisle had reported decreased thirst, but no decrease in vampiric ability. She hadn't been thrilled that he'd volunteered to be their test subject, but he wouldn't be talked out of the decision - and it had to be a full-fledged vampire, not a hybrid like herself, that tested the formula.
It was all going great…until this morning.
The eye thing was really weird.
Bella didn't even think there was a word to describe that particular shade of blue. Electric, maybe? Certainly no color was that bright on the human spectrum.
The celebration in their success is somewhat dulled by this unanticipated side effect. Further testing was obviously required, and so they tapped the shoulders of their family, monitoring the way golden eyes dulled to an icky, slate-brown shade after a week and then - quite suddenly - changed to a startlingly bright, iridescent hue of whatever shade the eyes had been as a human.
Edward's eyes are bottle-green, flecked with the faintest gold, so much brighter and clearer than her own.
The changes don't seem to be harmful and they are quick to discover that another alteration of diet - switching from synthetic to animal - results in a return of the vampire-golden hue of vegetarians. Bella and Carlisle can only conclude that this is some quirk pertaining to the exact molecular composition that defines blood; they had discovered very early on that animal and human blood had different properties, after all, and had employed those properties with their formula. They'd never imagined that the synthetic blend would do anything other than sustain life - but it was clear that even with as bright as vampire eyes became on a diet of synthetic blood, it would be that much easier to pass as human.
The part of Bella's mind that has dedicated itself to attaining world rule for the Volturi is just itching to tell Aro; another part of her mind was making plans to discretely purchase factories to manufacture the formula on a large scale and figure out a way to enforce its use. She hadn't gone to so many universities or obtained degrees in medicine, chemistry, or molecular biology, to just sit idly on a discovery this big - and it had always been her intention, along with Carlisle, to necessitate this kind of invention.
It had been a very long ten years in this lab - and unanticipated side effects notwithstanding, their victory is immutable.
A/N: Another outtake request!
As always, be brutally honest. I can take it.
~cupcakeriot