Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Bella felt a rush of nerves being in such a pristine and immaculate living room. It felt almost forbidden to be here, and Bella got the distinct feeling that perhaps she was the only living person that ever had. Unfortunately, this sensation felt very similar to finding the perfect hiding spot during hide-and-seek, and prompted within her a similar response.

She glances nervously at Edward, who was sitting at the piano bench without a care in the world, looking perfectly content just to be there. The rest of the house seemed empty, which bodes well for her.

“Edward, I just need to …” a sudden thought strikes her and she’s overcome with the sudden fear that the Cullen house doesn’t have a toilet. Edward looks over at her, his warm gold eyes smiling at her more than his lips were, but he still looks so perfectly pleased with her, that Bella can’t form the words to ask him. It’s too humiliating, having a full bladder

“I think I have to go home,” she admits softly. Edward’s smile dims, but he nods, slowly closing the lid on the keys. The front door clicks open, and Alice skips inside, looking over at them with a smile.

“The toilet’s upstairs to the right, Bella,” she informs her, and Bella flushes a deep scarlet. Defeated, she nods and goes towards the landing of the stairs.

“Um, could you …” Bella keeps her gaze focused on Alice’s face, stoutly too coward to look anywhere near Edward. “I mean, it’s not that-”

“The house is wired,” Alice beams, holding up her own phone. “I’ll play calming rain sounds,”

“Or just, you know, any music,” Bella mutters, fleeing upstairs to the equally pristine bathroom. Blindingly white, with wide, giant tub, double sinks, and a toilet in its own little house in the corner.

‘ Oo-ooh, sweet child of mine! ’

Bella swallows nervously, and, resigned, walks into the toilet room and closes the door.

As Bella washed her hands after peeing, she can hear the light chatter of conversation, and she’s painfully grateful that they want to overtly distract themselves, doubtlessly for her benefit. She washes her hands three times, and uses the bottle of hand sanitiser that was also on the bench, hoping that any perceivable smell of any kind would be eradicated.

When she’s satisfied, she leaves the bathroom, but pauses in front of the moldering wooden cross on the wall. Thick, heavy and rough in such otherwise light and airy decor.

“I carved it myself,” Carlisle explains, and pauses as Bella jolts in surprise to have him suddenly at her shoulder. “I had one similar made by my father's hand, you see, but it broke.”

Bella hums, remembering what Edward had told her about Carlisle’s human past. She personally did not believe that Carlisle could have no record of his own birth - she knew that sometimes church records were the only records a town would have a few hundred years ago. She wondered why he wouldn’t reveal such seemingly mundane information to his family now.

“A splintering piece of wood does not survive hundreds of years. Not in the life I led anyway.” His voice is calm, his eyes serene.  Edward had also told her of the life Carlisle referred to, old Europe and a shadowy organization. Carlisle read something in her face that made him chuckle. “Nothing terrible. A scuffle that took out most of a wall. And my cross. So I made another, for I missed the predecessor more than I realized,” Carlisle muses, his white hand reaching up, reaching out and gently guiding his fingertips over one edge of it. Roughly made, Bella realises, from one solid piece of wood. Carved by the man's own fingers, as his fingertips followed the specific grooves perfectly. She could see now the wood had been polished over numerous fingermarks, and the sight put a shiver up her spine.

“My father was a good man,” Carlisle says, before he purses his lips. A moment passes, before he says, “Well he was a man obsessed with the idea of Good, and following a Good path. That was what Good was at the time. So I will always call him good, perhaps even if … but you should leave the dead to lie.”

He smiles then, his eyes crinkling up around the edges. Bella manages a nod in response, and she’s grateful he seems to expect nothing else from her as he escorts her back to Edward.

Chapter Text

Emmett stood, curly head bowed slightly, in front of that sturdy wooden cross that hung on the wall. Bella watched Emmett in his moment of prayer, and respectfully inclined her head as well.

They stand there, and Bella isn't sure how long, until Emmett finally spoke.

"... What is it?"

Bella glanced up, seeing Emmett's open, curious face, looking down at the skirting board in front of them. "What are you looking at?"

Bella blinked. "Nothing. I was just … I didn't want to interrupt you." She stammered at Emmett’s confused frown.

"Interrupt what?"

Bella mentioned to the cross and himself, and pressed her palms together in mimic of his own hands. Emmett followed her actions until the last, then he grinned.

"Oh, I don't know about that,” he said and there's teasing in his voice, glancing down at her hands with something close to derision.

Bella felt a flicker of embarrassed annoyance, but can't fight her own smile. "Then what? Huh?"

Emmett lifted his still-met palms to her, and peeled them apart just a touch. There was something papery and yellow inside.

"I'm pressing flowers for my honey. I put ‘em in her books for her to find later. A rose for Rosie." Emmett whispered with a wink. "Made her a whole bouquet by now. Today I woke up to the face of an angel."

Bella frowned; there was no way Emmett woke up at all. But the curly haired man raised his eyebrows and by his cheeky grin, Bella could tell he was teasing her, and waiting. As though he had given her a riddle.

Bella gave herself a moment. He woke up … he woke up! "Oh! Congratulations!" She gave him a few short claps. “Or, um, happy anniversary!”

Emmett let out his warm, rumbly laugh, and thanked her kindly.

Chapter Text

Alice leads Bella gently through the first few bars of the wedding march. Bella rests her hands on the woman’s stony fingers as she paces her steps carefully in her heels.

Jasper sits at Edward’s piano, straddling it sideways as he taps out the basic tune with one hand, his eyes tracking Alice’s progress as she skips Bella across the floor and back again, pausing every time the girl stumbles or steps too soon to the beat.

Alice hums along to the tune, her lilting voice interrupted only by her reminders of when Bella was supposed to place her feet. Bella swallowed the irritation down.

She didn’t want to wear heels, she didn’t want a big wedding, she didn’t want everyone’s eyes on her as she meandered down the aisle. She doesn’t take her next step, and feels Alice’s fingers curl over her hands, cold and impersonal.

“Don’t throw in the towel, Bella,” Alice advises her, her warm gold eyes glinting with humor. “Think of how pleased Renee and Charlie will be if you do it the right way.”

Bella softens, knowing her parent’s divorce struck the three of them some type of way.

She remembered going to the courthouse with Phil and Renee. Bella in black trousers and a white button-up to mimic being Phil’s best man, Renee in her long hippie lace dress that was almost certainly a fancy beach-cover with a few pins to close it at the front. They lined up to submit the marriage application and go before the judge on a Wednesday morning. Renee had written Bella a sick-note for school and they had gone to Olive Garden for lunch to toast the union. Renee had skipped into the house first when they had gotten home, so Phil had scooped Bella into his arms to carry over the threshold. Bella had protested and Renee had cackled like a witch, making them wait at the door so she could get the camera. She’d framed the picture; blurry, with Phil grinning while Bella hid her red face in her hands.

Later on, Renee and Bella had a moment in the kitchen while making dinner. Bella prepped the salad while her mother hummed and spun around her in the kitchen, setting the table with their mix-and-match thrift store finds.

“You look really happy, mom.” Bella had told her softly.

“I am really happy - I needed the long, white dress one this time.” She plucked the fabric of her dress at her hip and whipped it triumphantly. Bella grinned at her overt joy. “With your dad, it was such a hassle — I had my fun red strapless number, but we had to sign his parents out of the nursing home, and wait for the big minivan taxi, because Forks is so small there’s only one, and both his parents were in chairs by then, and it was so cold my fingers were going blue!” Renee counted off each disaster on her fingers, and Bella felt a stirring of guilt in her stomach, like the horrible wedding was her fault.

Then Renee grabbed her arm and beamed. “And your dad wore his fancy jacket and new shiny shoes, and your grandma got me these pretty daisies, she was such a dear, the nicest mother I ever had!” Bella shrugged her mother off, muttering about the space needed to cut a cucumber, and embarrassed that her mood was so easy for her mother to glean.

Alice’s knowing little smirk, as Bella nods and begins the dance again, causes a flicker of irritation in her belly. Charlie must have told her, or hinted at something, and for once she wishes Alice didn’t know everything. When Bella managed one straight line across the living room undisturbed, Alice stopped the exercise to applaud her efforts smartly. Bella flushes, and gives a little embarrassed wave at Jasper, who had also clapped a few times after Alice had glanced at him.

Bella’s stomach gives an audible gurgle, and she jumped a little in surprise at the flash of silver from a mixing bowl suddenly under her chin, held by Jasper.

“No, she’s not going to vomit, she’s hungry,” Alice explains, and Jasper and the bowl disappears. Bella flushes redder in embarrassment, but Alice is already floating out the room, towards the kitchen. “Esme made sandwiches!”

Bella toes out of the heels and carries them with her as she follows Alice. Alice was nowhere in sight, having not bothered to take human steps. “Um, when did she make them?” Bella asks carefully, knowing she didn’t have to raise her voice as she makes it to the kitchen at her own pace. She acutely remembered a chicken salad wrap that had left her prone on her bathroom floor the next day. 

“Four and a half hours ago.” Alice informs her dutifully, sitting on the kitchen island counter, with a wrapped plate of sandwiches next to her. Bella had been mortified to learn every member of the Cullens had taken an online food safety course afterwards, and printed out the certificates for safekeeping in the fridge. When you didn’t eat, strange things accumulated in a fridge.

Bella didn’t particularly enjoy the idea of eating next to Alice’s ass, and takes the plate with a thanks, as Alice takes her heels from her. She walks to the dining room table to sit there, knowing the Cullens found it very amusing when she took meals at the table. Unfortunately, that was also why Bella didn’t enjoy eating at the Cullen house; they had a habit of sitting with her to keep her company, but it involved a lot of watching her eat, though they usually performed a mundane activity at the table.

“We kept them in the icebox,” Jasper adds, taking a seat across from Bella. He had, of all things, a pair of knitting needles and a half-done scarf in his hand. “Plugged in this time,” he adds. An Alice-and-Bella sleepover had ended up needing a mop after they had tried to stock up on ice cream for her.

“Thanks, guys.” Bella says, always touched at their thoughtfulness. It felt like much too much just for her, but it also made her feel very welcome. She unwraps the sandwiches, and pauses at the feel of the dewey gladwrap. “Um, when you said ‘icebox’ … was that the fridge or freezer?” she checks.

Jasper meets her gaze calmly as he says; “I’m sure I don’t know.”

“Fridge!” Alice’s voice calls out, and Bella laughs. It was a little fun, being the little human oddity.

She chews on her sandwiches, and in due time Alice floats in with a tea-tray. Ever since they had trialed steeping flower petals in hot water for her, Alice had been fascinated by novelty teapots. So far she had procured a red English double decker bus, a mushroom, and a watermelon, all with corresponding cups, sauces, sugar and milk receptacles and teaspoons.

She brought out the watermelon this time, with three little wedge-shaped cups.

“This is elderberry,” Alice explains to her, setting down the tray and placing out their cups. Bella hums in curiousity, and watches Alice pour the top from a ridiculous height with the audacity of not spilling a drop. The teacups in front of Jasper were left untouched. But weren’t empty; Esme had filled them with scented wax. This meant that occasionally whoever was sitting with her would mime sipping from the teacup, and smell it instead. Rosalie was most guilty of this, though she rarely sat with Bella. Either because Emmett wasn’t allowed to play tea-party anymore (he had made Alice angry with the amount of snapped handles she had to glue), or because she still didn’t like Bella.

Jasper and Alice largely ignore the cups, and thankfully Bella, as Alice set out a few sketches of floral arrangements and mulls them over.

“... Lilacs set your skin off-colour ….” Alice muses aloud, glancing over at Bella for an answer, though Bella wasn’t even sure if that was a good or bad thing.

Bella, as always, shrugs her shoulders a little. “Alice I already told you I don’t really care; whatever you want.”

Alice gives a very put-upon sigh. “It’s a bit more fun to plan for Rosalie,” she says, almost accusatory.

Bella was not particularly concerned with hurting Alice’s feelings, since she was already assenting to performing a whole ceremony to the little woman’s satisfaction.  “Why do you always plan them?” she asks, having seen Alice’s efforts in numerous photo albums of Emmett and Rosalie’s numerous weddings - a new one for each decade anniversary. They had been married in a forest, in a chapel, on a boat, in a courthouse, in one of their houses to the east, and somewhere in Europe so far. “Why not be the bride?”

Alice takes a moment to look up from her sketches to glance at her reproachfully. “Because I can’t see my beautiful gown floating down the aisle if I’m in it,” she says, making Bella feel like some sort of idiot toddler. “Rosalie is like my own life-size Barbie!”

At that, Alice beams and Bella glances over at Jasper, whose scarf had gotten noticeably longer. “I guess I’m Raggedy Ann, then,” she says to him, and he offers her a polite, if blank, smile.

But Alice was quick to correct her. “No you’re Skipper.”

Chapter Text

Bella was so over-stimulated she was going to scream. Alice polished and plucked her, her mother soothed and combed her, her father artlessly coveted her. She had a husband waiting for her down the aisle, and it almost felt like when she got there it might not even be Edward waiting for her anyway. Alice was lacquering her with another coat of hair spray, and Bella was about to toss herself down the stairs to make it all stop.

"Alice," Rosalie's pretty voice floated towards them, "there's a shipment come in, Emmett is about to tell them to leave it in the living room."

Alice zips off to investigate, and Bella finds Rosalie smirking at her in the mirror.

"Edward thought you'd want a diversion."

Bella sits for a moment, letting the moment sink in. That Edward knew her so well, that he could doubt that she'd ever want anything else.

"And Alice has been his sister for longer than you've been alive," Rosalie added airily. So have I, for all that matters.

Rosalie surprises Bella by deigned to actually walk inside the bridal set-up room, formally Alice’s bedroom. She inspects Bella's dress, her scrutiny all the more piercing from her bright gold eyes.

“It’s very becoming,” she tells Bella, who beams at her.

“Thank you,” Bella replies, delighted at the civility. “You look stunning.”

Alice skips back over to them both to inspect both of their scalps for a single hair out of place, before she darts off at Rosalie's suggestion of the necessity of advising Emmett on how to direct the stream of cars coming up the driveway.

“Alice has really enjoyed the preparation this time.” Rosalie says, watching the window that had been vaulted out of by the impish woman.

Bella laughs nervously. “It’s probably taken twice as long as any of yours,” she says, swallowing hard. The moment she would be tripping in front of all her so-called friends and family was nigh approaching. “My clumsy human things; food, guest list ….”

Plus, this time she gets to boss around the bride as much as she likes. Bella kept that thought very, deeply private. It must have just been the stress of the process, making her suspicious that despite having voted in her favour, Alice might very well like a weak little human at her whims, instead of a peer, or a sister.

Rosalie’s eyes flickered with a familiar acid expression as they met Bella’s in the mirror. By now, Bella knew that the look was envy. Her teeth click together with the speed that she shut her mouth.

Rosalie leans over her to touch a finger to her own brow, examining her reflection as if there could ever be a problem on that flawless face. Bella leans away from her long white neck until Rosalie straightens up again.

“How lucky.”

Bella bobs her head obediently, and Rosalie reaches over to touch her lightly on the shoulder before she glides out of the room. Bella blows out an exhale as she watches Rosalie from the open door. She reaches the stairs, and consciously puts a sway in her hips, and Bella can now hear each click-clack of her heels on each step. A very human walk.

Chapter Text

Emmett was pressing another flower for his anniversary. Bella had come across him sitting on the porch steps. He’d been sitting there a while, Bella could see the dew on his elbows, the way the dust had settled around him.

“Happy birthday,” she says, smiling and taking a seat next to him as he winks at her. She feels a flicker in the back of her mind, something she was forgetting. She lets her mind settle a moment, ignores all her senses of the outside world. It comes to her slowly, foggily. “... This is actually pretty close to Charlie’s birthday, too.”

Emmett hums a little, looking at her with something soft in his eyes. "Strange not to miss him much, isn’t it?” he asks her. "Rose and I are the only ones that had family to properly miss." Bella realized with some shock that not only was Emmett correct, Bella hadn’t thought much about missing him until Emmett had said so. Like trying to remember a funny dream.

Bella nodded, remembering Emmett's peers as the jerky sepia-tone films she'd watched in school; men in long, long lines, always wearing a hat. The great depression never really seemed real - she hadn't had grandparents that spoke to her about that time ... she had to concentrate quite hard to remember that Charlie's own parents would have been old enough to be about Emmett's human age, but they had died when she was so young, probably a baby .... She glances over at Emmett, his broad frame, his curly hair, a relic of Americana that had long since passed. Bella was regrettably very nearly eighteen, and Emmett was something like nineteen, or twenty, for the last decade.

“I was a momma's boy,” Emmett looks out to the wet morning. One of the thousands he had seen, or will see. “I'd never admit it, but I kept to home for her, instead of leaving town for work."

"But I saw the face of an angel and I stopped missing her at all. And she went nearly too quick. I was standing at her grave and it was covered in weeds. Not that she weren't loved. But she weren't loved by me anymore, and none that loved her when I did lasted much longer. I got a few grand-nieces, y’know, and nephews. I have it they get a scholarship if’n they want one. Some’m don’t, we always worked hard for our money."

Bella hums a little, and Emmett laughs when she calls this life they had his retirement. Even for them, Jasper moves almost silently. Bella only notices him lollop up on the porch fence from the flicker of movement in the corner of her eye. He did it quite often, taking a moment to see and be seen, like an old guard dog doing his rounds. Perhaps this was some type of retirement for him too.

He meets Bella's expectant, curious gaze with a mild shrug. "I don't remember barely a thing," he glances between the two of them, the two of them that had learnt how to be human again the second they stopped, while he had honed his skills for hundreds of years as what they truly are. "If you don't hold onto it, you loose it."

Bella nods slowly, and glances out at the slowly rising sun. “We should head inside soon, before we scare a jogger,” she says, resolving to go for a run and take pictures of Charlie's tombstone back in Washington later today. Jasper flits off, a good-bye as unnecessary to them as a greeting.

As Emmett stands and follows Bella inside, he unclasps his hands, smiling with satisfaction at the nicely pressed flower.