Chapter Text
We could hear their footsteps slow as they approached the porch. Bella - now barefoot, she must have ditched the heels Alice put her in - hesitated as they reached the door. “Are you sure it’s safe?” she asked Edward.
As if the same thought had occurred to the rest of us at the same time, we all formed a loose circle around the space where Rosalie was holding Carlie. “Of course it’s safe, love. You’re doing so well. Now, come meet our daughter.”
Edward opened the door for her, and she stepped through cautiously. She took in all our faces for just a second before meeting eyes with Carlie.
The recognition was instant; Carlie let out a piercing wail and began squirming in Rose’s arms, patting her face frantically.
“What does she want?” Bella asked, more uncertainty than ever in her face.
“You, of course,” Rosalie told her, smiling. Bella smiled back, glad to see that their budding friendship remained intact. Rosalie walked over to Bella, all of us keeping a watchful eye. Bella opened her arms, ready for Carlie to be cradled in them. “Hi, baby,” she whispered, holding Carlie close to her.
Carlie lifted her palm to Bella’s face, and we all tensed, not knowing how Bella would react to Carlie’s gift. As with most of us, she startled and gasped. “How did she do that?” she asked.
“How does Alice see the future? How does Edward read minds?” Carlisle mused. “She’s got a talent.”
Bella nodded, as if it made complete sense to her. “I can see what you meant by communicate,” she murmured to Edward. Carlie squealed, quickly taking Bella’s focus away from the rest of us. Carlie tried again, and Bella reassured her this time. “I remember you, too,” she told her.
Seeing that everything was well in hand, Esme motioned for the rest of us to follow her outdoors. “Now’s a perfect time to put the finishing touches on their house,” she told us.
Alice nodded enthusiastically, clapping her hands. “Yes! Just in time for her birthday. Come on, everyone!”
There wasn’t much to do to finish the house. Emmett and Jasper hung up some paintings taken from the house – Bella’s favourites, Rose told me – and I stacked an enormous collection of Bella’s books on the towering case in their living rom.
After a while, Esme was satisfied that everything was just perfect. “They’re going to love it!” she declared.
Diego and I walked back to the main house hand-in-hand. “It’s nice to see them get their happy ending,” he said. “So few people ever do.”
“We almost didn’t,” I agreed. “If Riley and Victoria had had their way, we’d be toast right now, right along with the rest of them.”
He squeezed my hand, and I squeezed back. “Well, let’s just be glad they didn’t get their way.”
Bella was cradling Carlie, looking out the window at us as we all crossed the river back to the house.
Alice was first to get back inside, and she and Rosalie wasted no time.
“Happy birthday!” Alice told her, handing her the key to their home, decorated in a gaudy bow.
Bella looked horrified. “No, no way! I stopped ageing two days ago. This doesn’t count.”
“Suck it up! We’re celebrating anyways. Come on! Give the baby to Rose, I want to take you to your present.”
With a few more objections about not again anymore, Bella handed Carlie off as requested, and the two followed Alice back outside to their house. She returned alone, grinning from ear to ear. “She absolutely loves it.”
Emmett laughed loudly. “Of course she does. Now let's see if it's still left standing in the morning!”
Esme swatted him on the back of the head, playfully scolding him. “Oh, Emmett, come on now! Not everyone is as…destructive…as you and Rose!”
With Edward and Bella gone, the excitement of the day soon started to peter out around the house. Jasper and Emmett settled in to play some extra-complicated game of chess, while Alice set to work on designing some more clothes. Carlisle and Esme disappeared to their office, leaving just a few of us left in the living room.
“Will you hold her for me?” Rosalie asked, bringing the baby over to Diego and I. She was sound asleep, not disturbed at all by Rose moving around. “I wanted to look up a few things on the computer.
“Yeah, of course,” Diego said, taking the baby before I got a chance. He smiled down at her. Rose sat on the couch – Esme had already replaced the one that Bella had spilled blood all over – and opened her laptop, rapidly typing away as soon as the screen flicked to life.
“What are you doing?” I asked, peeking over Rosalie’s shoulder. She had several tabs open, and she was flipping through them rapidly.
“Looking at medical schools,” she told me, turning away from the screen that had stopped at a Harvard page. “I’ve been before, as a favour to Carlisle, and I’m thinking about going again.”
“Really? That would be cool.” Rosalie was super smart, and I couldn’t help but admire it. I’d never even completed high school, and here she was with multiple medical degrees. “But if you’ve already been, why do you want to go again?”
Rosalie chewed her lip, as if debating whether she wanted to tell me. “Well its kind of a selfish reason, if truth be told. A long time ago, I was hell bent on discovering any way that could possibly lead to Emmett and myself having a child. It just wasn’t possible, despite my best efforts. But Carlie got me thinking. What if I could find another way? Medical technology has come so far, there might be something there.”
“What, like a vampire test tube baby?”
She allowed herself a small smile. “Exactly like a vampire test tube baby. If I could find some way to replicate a human environment, there’s no reason artificial insemination or something like it shouldn’t work. If I could make a fake womb, no human would have to get involved.” Her eyes sparkled as she spoke, and I could tell she was absolutely dead set on the idea.
“Is that even possible?” I couldn’t help but wonder.
“That’s what I want to find out,” Rose replied. “I’ll have to finance and build my own lab to do the actual work, of course – there’s no way I’d be able to explain any of it to anyone outside our family. But having access to everything at a med school would be useful for finding a starting point, I think. If I could do a residency in reproductive medicine…”
Rosalie seemed determined, but I wasn’t so sure it would work. Hell, I wasn’t sure if it would even be allowed. I’m sure the Volturi wouldn’t want a bunch of vampire babies running around, even if they weren’t exactly immortal children as the vampire world currently knew them.
“Of course, it's just a thought for now,” Rose continued. “Everyone around Forks thinks I’m still technically doing my undergrad - Carlisle can’t brag about me going to med school quite yet. It’ll probably wait until the next time we move.”
We laughed, but her comment actually raised a new question for me. “So, do you guys always restart at high school when you move?”
“Usually, yes. We get to stay longer that way. Sometimes Esme pretends to homeschool us, but we usually attend school.”
Ugh, going to high school over and over again for the rest of eternity? No, thank you. I’d have to find a way to get myself out of that one.
Rosalie laughed. “It doesn’t exactly sound appealing, does it?”
“Not really,” I admitted. “I’d like to finish it at least once – I moved around so much that my father didn’t even bother enrolling me in school half the time.”
“It’ll probably be some time before you’re ready to be around that many humans, in any case. Too many variables – paper cuts, scrapes from playing sports, that kind of thing. One of our biology teachers in high school liked to do blood-typing in his lab every year – it was a good thing we had Alice to forewarn us about those days.”
“I’d never even thought of that,” I admitted.
“When we move on from here, you’ll start getting used to humans. It won’t be so bad.”
I wasn’t so sure of that - Jasper had been at this whole only drinking animal blood thing for decades, and I knew that he still struggled. What if I was the same way, always just one tiny drop away from exposing our secret to the whole entire town?
I tried to put it out of my mind. We wouldn’t be moving anywhere soon, so I’d have plenty of time to practise my self-control.