Spitefic: Requiem for Charlie Swan
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twispiteficTitle: Requiem for Charlie Swan
Author: Das Mervin
Fandom(s): New Moon
Rating: PG-13 for thematic elements
Word Count: 2,885
Inspiration: The New Moon epilogue.
Warnings: It’s depressing.
Summary: “I’ve tried, Bella. I’ve had to sit back and watch you completely destroy yourself because you don’t think there’s anything wrong and you refuse to let anyone help you. I’ve tried to live with the idea that this is…this is just how things are going to be, but I can’t.”
Author’s Note: I have no idea how this happened. I just set out to write the typical “Charlie grows a backbone” spitefics as a final parting shot to New Moon, but before I knew it, I had…this. *flaps* Uh…enjoy?
Charlie Swan was no longer angry. He had been angry when Jacob Black had first told him that the red motorcycle now parked out front belonged to Bella. But that motorcycle had spurred him forward to ask questions, and the answered he’d gotten had only resulted in more questions. He’d dug deep for an answer to each and every one of them, finally discovering the full extent of just what his daughter had been up to for the past three months, and now he’d shot far, far past angry and was now utterly enraged. He jerked the curtains back from the window again, two seconds away from charging out there and finding wherever she was hiding in the woods. He saw red when he spotted her finally walking up the drive.
She was holding hands with Cullen, and judging by his expression, he was clearly under the impression that he was going to be part of this conversation.
Charlie yanked open the front door, his rage coalescing into a focused ball in his gut.
Bella immediately jerked to a halt, and his eyes narrowed when she cringed back behind Cullen. Charlie folded his arms across his chest, staring hard at him. “I am only going to say this once,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “You,” he spat, pointing at Cullen, “go home.”
Charlie didn’t miss how Cullen’s nose went up a little as his back straightened, and he hated him for it. Bella finally took a breath and pushed forward again, her chin jutting. “Dad—” she began, that familiar whine creeping into her voice.
“He’s not setting foot in this house, Isabella Marie Swan.”
“We’ve talked about this already,” Bella said, her voice patronizingly firm.
Charlie dropped his arms, his hand brushing the badge he’d deliberately placed on his belt earlier. “Isabella,” Charlie growled, “this is no longer an issue of you trying to pull the ‘I’m an adult’ card anymore. This is about the law.”
Bella’s jaw dropped briefly, and I saw Edward glance down at her worriedly. “What are you talking about?” Bella asked incredulously. “Are you—you’re not going all ‘Police Chief’ on me, are you—”
“That is exactly what I am doing, Bella.” Charlie stepped forward, and pointed at Cullen again. “Get the hell off my property. Now. And if I catch you on it again, I will arrest you for trespassing.”
“You can’t—” Bella spluttered.
“I can, and I will,” Charlie hissed.
“Charlie—please—” Cullen began placatingly.
“You have five seconds, Cullen. Get out of here or I give you a free ride to jail.”
“Dad!” Bella screeched. “Stop it!”
“You have absolutely no authority to tell me what I can and can’t do—I am well within my rights right now. Now, get away from that son of a bitch and get in this house. And you,” Charlie snarled one last time, “get off my lawn!”
Charlie could tell that Edward finally realized that he was serious. He reluctantly stepped away from Bella, who stared at him in a complete panic as he pried her fingers off of his arm and made his way to his car. Charlie leveled a steely glare at his daughter, who looked like she was actually contemplating bolting after Edward rather than face him. Bella seemed to wither as he glared, and then finally shuffled into the house, shying away from him as she passed him.
He slammed the door and locked it, making Bella jump as she turned to face him.
“Sit,” he barked. Bella timidly made her way to the couch, sitting on one end as if she expected him to sit down beside her; he instead stood right in front of her, almost unable to believe that he was having to play the interrogating cop with his own daughter. Bella kept her eyes on his knees, and he recognized that look—she’d perfected it just as she had her tantrums. She was being meek and mild in the hopes that he would think she was contrite and wouldn’t punish her.
That act had always worked on Charlie Swan, Bella’s father. But it was not working on Chief Swan the cop.
“I think I’ll start by asking if you are aware of just how many laws you’ve been violating every single time you decided to go for a ride on that motorcycle of yours,” Charlie said without preamble.
Bella glanced up at him, and the blank look that warred with her carefully-constructed martyr expression clearly said that she didn’t.
“No helmet, no eye protection, no daytime headlights, no registration, no license—”
“I have a license!” Bella protested, interrupting him.
“You have a Class A license. You don’t have a Class D license with a motorcycle endorsement. You are looking at some serious fines and impoundment of your motorcycle.”
Charlie saw Bella’s jaw jutting again, and he knew exactly what she was thinking. “And I’m not really sure how you’re going to pay for that,” he said, his voice raising a little, “because your bank account has been pretty much drained on said motorcycle.”
Bella’s head jerked up. “You went through my bank account?!” she shrieked accusingly.
“That was your college fund,” Charlie snarled, “which I am a cosigner to and was contributing to regularly. I have a right to see where my money was going. And what do I find but that it was paying for your law-breaking, self-destructive habits! You had no right to do that, by both Washington State Law and my rules!”
Bella’s jaw worked furiously, and she eventually spluttered, “I—I’m an adult, Dad, I’m eighteen—”
“I don’t care if you’re thirty-eight, Bella, you broke the law! You used money I gave you to violate about six different Washington State laws—and to repeatedly try and kill yourself!” he thundered.
“I was not trying to kill myself!” Bella yelled back.
“Then how do you explain all those crashes?! All those hospital visits, all the times you smashed your skull open?! It wasn’t too hard to get the truth out of Jacob—and believe me, he’s in trouble, too—even he thought it was weird how often you crashed trying to learn how to ride that death machine! Do you realize if he hadn’t been there with you, you probably would’ve died?!” Charlie loomed over Bella, who still didn’t seem to grasp how serious this situation was.
“Well, I didn’t!” Bella protested. “I’m fine!”
“No, you aren’t,” Charlie growled. “Between this and the cliff-diving, it’s more than clear that you are about as far from fine as a person can possibly get.”
Bella’s eyes flashed. “I told you that was—”
“Recreational purposes only,” Charlie quipped back. “Yeah, I know. But you also told me that you just tripped on a hammer in Jacob’s garage, and fell down while hiking, and all those other excuses you gave to me even though each and every one of them was an automotive accident.” Charlie ground his teeth together. “Dammit, Bella—not only is it clear that I need to put you on some kind of Suicide Watch—”
“I wasn’t trying to kill myself—!”
“—but you also just committed repeated insurance fraud, lying about how you got those injuries and not reporting any of your accidents on your illegal motorcycle!” Charlie ran his hands through his hair, his frustration only mounting when he saw that Bella still affecting that martyred expression, still looking indignant over his accusations—that she still didn’t seem to grasp just how much trouble she was in.
“Bella, this is going far, far beyond just you being irresponsible—you are outright breaking the law now, and it’s all because of that stupid boyfriend of yours! He’s turning you into a delinquent, and it’s only a matter of time before I’m going to have to arrest you for God knows what!” he bellowed.
Bella was obviously about to get to her feet, her face turning an ugly shade of red when Charlie finally brought that bastard into the conversation. He bared his teeth in anger. “You sit right back down, Isabella, don’t you dare try and get up in my face!” he barked.
Remarkably, she did seem to grasp that he was deadly serious, and flumped back down in a huff, but spoke before he could again. “Edward didn’t make me do any of that! He had nothing to do with what I was doing!” she hissed.
“Then why did you do it?!” Charlie demanded. “Why did you do that, if not to kill yourself because you refused to move on from a ridiculous six-month high school romance—”
“Don’t you talk about it that way!” Bella screamed.
“Why shouldn’t I?!” Charlie shouted back. “That’s all it was! You were seventeen when you met him, you were barely with him for six months, and then he broke up with you! You never even had a boyfriend before him, and you act like it was the end of the goddamn world when he left—”
“That’s because it was!” she shrilled, slamming her fists down on the couch cushions. “I loved Edward! What else was I supposed to do?!”
“I don’t know, try and live your life?! You’re not the first person in the world to suffer a bad break-up, Bella! In case you didn’t know, your mother left me in the middle of the night and stole my daughter from me at the same time! I was heartbroken and devastated, but I didn’t let it completely control my life! I still love Renee, dammit!” Charlie couldn’t help it. He grabbed Bella’s shoulders, holding her tightly. “But it’s not love if it destroys you!”
Bella twisted out of his grip, her gaze full of hate. “Don’t you dare try to lecture me on love, Charlie! What do you even know about it?! I prove my love and devotion to Edward daily! When have you ever shown you love me?! Edward’s willing to die for me, and all you’ve ever done for me is try to send me off to live with Renee!” she spat.
Charlie recoiled, his heart squeezing painfully in his chest. He just stared at Bella while her eyes glittering balefully, her face triumphantly.
They regarded each other in silence until Charlie finally managed to unlock his throat. “Well, it’s nice to see you’re finally being honest with me,” he said quietly, his voice only hitching a little.
Bella’s cruel stare seemed to falter. She licked her lips. “Dad, I—”
“No,” Charlie said, still quiet. “I don’t want to hear another word from you. I don’t want any apologies, I don’t want any explanations, I don’t want any excuses.” He took a step back, away from her. “I’m going to write up your tickets and give you your fines. I’m impounding your motorcycle.” He continued to speak over Bella’s attempts to protest. “I’m doing this because I’m the Chief of Police and that is the law. You aren’t above it, regardless of what you seem to believe.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’m not going to help you pay your fines, but I have a feeling I know exactly who you’ll go running to to pay them. And…” He closed his eyes and took a breath. “…and I really don’t care if you do. I don’t care what you do anymore.”
He squeezed his eyes shut even tighter. “You’ve blown your college fund. You’ve killed your insurance. You’ve broken the law. You’ve tried to kill yourself. You’re failing at least two of your classes. You’ve run away from home. You’ve pushed everyone who ever cared about you, including your whole family, out of your life.” He finally opened his eyes, staring at her, and finally couldn’t help the tears that blurred his vision as he saw her face, still defiant, still closed, still hateful. “It’s all because of Edward Cullen. He’s…he’s turned you into a complete monster, and you don’t even care.”
Charlie turned away from her as he saw her open her mouth. “No, Bella. Don’t. Don’t try and pretend like that boy hasn’t made you hate your own parents. Children who love their parents don’t…don’t say and do the things you’ve done to me and Renee.”
He rubbed a hand across his face, feeling tired, feeling old—feeling defeated. “I’ve tried, Bella. I’ve had to sit back and watch you completely destroy yourself because you don’t think there’s anything wrong and you refuse to let anyone help you. I’ve tried to live with the idea that this is…this is just how things are going to be, but I can’t.” He stared at the far wall. “You say you and Edward are a package deal? Well, that just isn’t a deal that I can accept.”
There was a silence, and some small part of him was hoping—hoping that maybe she’d just been bluffing, hoping she’d just been trying to emotionally blackmail him into doing whatever she wanted. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all. That same small part of him hoped that maybe, just maybe, his words had meant something, and would have made a difference…
His shoulders sagged when he heard her get up from the couch. “Well…fine. I guess that’s it, then.” He knew that tone—and he knew that there was no hope. “I’ll—I’ll just go pack my stuff,” she said huffily.
Charlie was amazed at how quickly he managed to get a firm voice back. “Only pack what’s yours,” he said without turning to look at her. “Meaning only the stuff you bought with your money. And you won’t be driving to the Cullens’ house in that truck, because it belongs to me.”
She didn’t answer, but he didn’t hear her moving, either. He could feel her staring at his back, and he knew what she was doing—she was waiting for him to change his mind and take it back, like he did every time she threw a tantrum, like he did every time she turned on the waterworks, like he did every time she threatened extreme measures. After almost a full minute of silence, she began slowly climbing the stairs; she had finally realized that he wasn’t going to take it back this time.
Only after Charlie heard her door snick shut did he allow himself to sink into the nearest chair, shaking, covering his face with his hands, and finally let his own realization sink in—that his daughter, his only daughter, his baby girl…was gone.
Bella was gone within an hour. Charlie did not walk her to the door—in fact, he locked himself in his room and refused to answer any of her entreaties to say goodbye or offers to talk it over. He knew Edward was the one to come pick her up; who else would’ve done it, after all? The sun was setting when he finally emerged, shuffling through the house like an old man, making his way to Bella’s childhood room, the room she lived in only a few hours ago.
He flicked on the light, squinting a little against the harsh incandescent glare.
He blinked, dully surprised to see just how little the room had changed. Very little was actually missing—very little she had actually cared to take. He slowly reached over and opened one of her dresser drawers; still mostly full of shirts. He turned and looked at the closet, seeing only a couple of empty hangers amid the rest of her clothes. He could spot a few places where there had originally been a knickknack, but for the most part, everything was largely untouched. He turned almost unwillingly to her nightstand, and his stomach clenched horribly when he saw it.
When Bella had been twelve, Charlie had taken Bella on a three-day road trip across Washington. It had just been the two of them, hitting all kinds of silly little landmarks and out-of-the-way museums and historical sites and stopping at every novelty gas station they could find. They hadn’t had any real destination in mind; they’d just been traveling, driving aimlessly, stopping whenever they felt like it and seeing whatever they wanted. Bella was rarely happy when she came to visit him, but that time, she’d been laughing and excited and Renee had told him she hadn’t stopped talking about it for weeks after she’d gotten back to Phoenix.
One of the gas stations they’d stopped at had had a display case full of blown glass ornaments and figurines. Charlie knew they were nothing but an overpriced tourist trap, but Bella had been absolutely over the moon for one of the figurines on the second shelf—a glass angel with frosted wings and a golden halo. Charlie had been bemused by her fascination with the thing, considering she’d never shown any interest in religion or angels before, but had decided that this was their little adventure, and so he’d gotten it for her. She’d laughed and squealed and hugged him and told him he was the best daddy in the whole world and that she loved him.
Charlie sat heavily on the purple bedspread, reaching out and briefly touching the bowed head of the glass angel.
Only then did Charlie let himself cry.
Author’s Note: Yeah, like I said. I didn’t intend it to go in that direction. I will say that some of this was painful to write—I drew on personal experience on certain parts.
That is my farewell to Charlie Swan before we have to meet the asshole version of him that lives in Eclipse and Breaking Dawn. Bye bye, Charlie. You will be missed.
Author: Das Mervin
Fandom(s): New Moon
Rating: PG-13 for thematic elements
Word Count: 2,885
Inspiration: The New Moon epilogue.
Warnings: It’s depressing.
Summary: “I’ve tried, Bella. I’ve had to sit back and watch you completely destroy yourself because you don’t think there’s anything wrong and you refuse to let anyone help you. I’ve tried to live with the idea that this is…this is just how things are going to be, but I can’t.”
Author’s Note: I have no idea how this happened. I just set out to write the typical “Charlie grows a backbone” spitefics as a final parting shot to New Moon, but before I knew it, I had…this. *flaps* Uh…enjoy?
Charlie Swan was no longer angry. He had been angry when Jacob Black had first told him that the red motorcycle now parked out front belonged to Bella. But that motorcycle had spurred him forward to ask questions, and the answered he’d gotten had only resulted in more questions. He’d dug deep for an answer to each and every one of them, finally discovering the full extent of just what his daughter had been up to for the past three months, and now he’d shot far, far past angry and was now utterly enraged. He jerked the curtains back from the window again, two seconds away from charging out there and finding wherever she was hiding in the woods. He saw red when he spotted her finally walking up the drive.
She was holding hands with Cullen, and judging by his expression, he was clearly under the impression that he was going to be part of this conversation.
Charlie yanked open the front door, his rage coalescing into a focused ball in his gut.
Bella immediately jerked to a halt, and his eyes narrowed when she cringed back behind Cullen. Charlie folded his arms across his chest, staring hard at him. “I am only going to say this once,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “You,” he spat, pointing at Cullen, “go home.”
Charlie didn’t miss how Cullen’s nose went up a little as his back straightened, and he hated him for it. Bella finally took a breath and pushed forward again, her chin jutting. “Dad—” she began, that familiar whine creeping into her voice.
“He’s not setting foot in this house, Isabella Marie Swan.”
“We’ve talked about this already,” Bella said, her voice patronizingly firm.
Charlie dropped his arms, his hand brushing the badge he’d deliberately placed on his belt earlier. “Isabella,” Charlie growled, “this is no longer an issue of you trying to pull the ‘I’m an adult’ card anymore. This is about the law.”
Bella’s jaw dropped briefly, and I saw Edward glance down at her worriedly. “What are you talking about?” Bella asked incredulously. “Are you—you’re not going all ‘Police Chief’ on me, are you—”
“That is exactly what I am doing, Bella.” Charlie stepped forward, and pointed at Cullen again. “Get the hell off my property. Now. And if I catch you on it again, I will arrest you for trespassing.”
“You can’t—” Bella spluttered.
“I can, and I will,” Charlie hissed.
“Charlie—please—” Cullen began placatingly.
“You have five seconds, Cullen. Get out of here or I give you a free ride to jail.”
“Dad!” Bella screeched. “Stop it!”
“You have absolutely no authority to tell me what I can and can’t do—I am well within my rights right now. Now, get away from that son of a bitch and get in this house. And you,” Charlie snarled one last time, “get off my lawn!”
Charlie could tell that Edward finally realized that he was serious. He reluctantly stepped away from Bella, who stared at him in a complete panic as he pried her fingers off of his arm and made his way to his car. Charlie leveled a steely glare at his daughter, who looked like she was actually contemplating bolting after Edward rather than face him. Bella seemed to wither as he glared, and then finally shuffled into the house, shying away from him as she passed him.
He slammed the door and locked it, making Bella jump as she turned to face him.
“Sit,” he barked. Bella timidly made her way to the couch, sitting on one end as if she expected him to sit down beside her; he instead stood right in front of her, almost unable to believe that he was having to play the interrogating cop with his own daughter. Bella kept her eyes on his knees, and he recognized that look—she’d perfected it just as she had her tantrums. She was being meek and mild in the hopes that he would think she was contrite and wouldn’t punish her.
That act had always worked on Charlie Swan, Bella’s father. But it was not working on Chief Swan the cop.
“I think I’ll start by asking if you are aware of just how many laws you’ve been violating every single time you decided to go for a ride on that motorcycle of yours,” Charlie said without preamble.
Bella glanced up at him, and the blank look that warred with her carefully-constructed martyr expression clearly said that she didn’t.
“No helmet, no eye protection, no daytime headlights, no registration, no license—”
“I have a license!” Bella protested, interrupting him.
“You have a Class A license. You don’t have a Class D license with a motorcycle endorsement. You are looking at some serious fines and impoundment of your motorcycle.”
Charlie saw Bella’s jaw jutting again, and he knew exactly what she was thinking. “And I’m not really sure how you’re going to pay for that,” he said, his voice raising a little, “because your bank account has been pretty much drained on said motorcycle.”
Bella’s head jerked up. “You went through my bank account?!” she shrieked accusingly.
“That was your college fund,” Charlie snarled, “which I am a cosigner to and was contributing to regularly. I have a right to see where my money was going. And what do I find but that it was paying for your law-breaking, self-destructive habits! You had no right to do that, by both Washington State Law and my rules!”
Bella’s jaw worked furiously, and she eventually spluttered, “I—I’m an adult, Dad, I’m eighteen—”
“I don’t care if you’re thirty-eight, Bella, you broke the law! You used money I gave you to violate about six different Washington State laws—and to repeatedly try and kill yourself!” he thundered.
“I was not trying to kill myself!” Bella yelled back.
“Then how do you explain all those crashes?! All those hospital visits, all the times you smashed your skull open?! It wasn’t too hard to get the truth out of Jacob—and believe me, he’s in trouble, too—even he thought it was weird how often you crashed trying to learn how to ride that death machine! Do you realize if he hadn’t been there with you, you probably would’ve died?!” Charlie loomed over Bella, who still didn’t seem to grasp how serious this situation was.
“Well, I didn’t!” Bella protested. “I’m fine!”
“No, you aren’t,” Charlie growled. “Between this and the cliff-diving, it’s more than clear that you are about as far from fine as a person can possibly get.”
Bella’s eyes flashed. “I told you that was—”
“Recreational purposes only,” Charlie quipped back. “Yeah, I know. But you also told me that you just tripped on a hammer in Jacob’s garage, and fell down while hiking, and all those other excuses you gave to me even though each and every one of them was an automotive accident.” Charlie ground his teeth together. “Dammit, Bella—not only is it clear that I need to put you on some kind of Suicide Watch—”
“I wasn’t trying to kill myself—!”
“—but you also just committed repeated insurance fraud, lying about how you got those injuries and not reporting any of your accidents on your illegal motorcycle!” Charlie ran his hands through his hair, his frustration only mounting when he saw that Bella still affecting that martyred expression, still looking indignant over his accusations—that she still didn’t seem to grasp just how much trouble she was in.
“Bella, this is going far, far beyond just you being irresponsible—you are outright breaking the law now, and it’s all because of that stupid boyfriend of yours! He’s turning you into a delinquent, and it’s only a matter of time before I’m going to have to arrest you for God knows what!” he bellowed.
Bella was obviously about to get to her feet, her face turning an ugly shade of red when Charlie finally brought that bastard into the conversation. He bared his teeth in anger. “You sit right back down, Isabella, don’t you dare try and get up in my face!” he barked.
Remarkably, she did seem to grasp that he was deadly serious, and flumped back down in a huff, but spoke before he could again. “Edward didn’t make me do any of that! He had nothing to do with what I was doing!” she hissed.
“Then why did you do it?!” Charlie demanded. “Why did you do that, if not to kill yourself because you refused to move on from a ridiculous six-month high school romance—”
“Don’t you talk about it that way!” Bella screamed.
“Why shouldn’t I?!” Charlie shouted back. “That’s all it was! You were seventeen when you met him, you were barely with him for six months, and then he broke up with you! You never even had a boyfriend before him, and you act like it was the end of the goddamn world when he left—”
“That’s because it was!” she shrilled, slamming her fists down on the couch cushions. “I loved Edward! What else was I supposed to do?!”
“I don’t know, try and live your life?! You’re not the first person in the world to suffer a bad break-up, Bella! In case you didn’t know, your mother left me in the middle of the night and stole my daughter from me at the same time! I was heartbroken and devastated, but I didn’t let it completely control my life! I still love Renee, dammit!” Charlie couldn’t help it. He grabbed Bella’s shoulders, holding her tightly. “But it’s not love if it destroys you!”
Bella twisted out of his grip, her gaze full of hate. “Don’t you dare try to lecture me on love, Charlie! What do you even know about it?! I prove my love and devotion to Edward daily! When have you ever shown you love me?! Edward’s willing to die for me, and all you’ve ever done for me is try to send me off to live with Renee!” she spat.
Charlie recoiled, his heart squeezing painfully in his chest. He just stared at Bella while her eyes glittering balefully, her face triumphantly.
They regarded each other in silence until Charlie finally managed to unlock his throat. “Well, it’s nice to see you’re finally being honest with me,” he said quietly, his voice only hitching a little.
Bella’s cruel stare seemed to falter. She licked her lips. “Dad, I—”
“No,” Charlie said, still quiet. “I don’t want to hear another word from you. I don’t want any apologies, I don’t want any explanations, I don’t want any excuses.” He took a step back, away from her. “I’m going to write up your tickets and give you your fines. I’m impounding your motorcycle.” He continued to speak over Bella’s attempts to protest. “I’m doing this because I’m the Chief of Police and that is the law. You aren’t above it, regardless of what you seem to believe.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’m not going to help you pay your fines, but I have a feeling I know exactly who you’ll go running to to pay them. And…” He closed his eyes and took a breath. “…and I really don’t care if you do. I don’t care what you do anymore.”
He squeezed his eyes shut even tighter. “You’ve blown your college fund. You’ve killed your insurance. You’ve broken the law. You’ve tried to kill yourself. You’re failing at least two of your classes. You’ve run away from home. You’ve pushed everyone who ever cared about you, including your whole family, out of your life.” He finally opened his eyes, staring at her, and finally couldn’t help the tears that blurred his vision as he saw her face, still defiant, still closed, still hateful. “It’s all because of Edward Cullen. He’s…he’s turned you into a complete monster, and you don’t even care.”
Charlie turned away from her as he saw her open her mouth. “No, Bella. Don’t. Don’t try and pretend like that boy hasn’t made you hate your own parents. Children who love their parents don’t…don’t say and do the things you’ve done to me and Renee.”
He rubbed a hand across his face, feeling tired, feeling old—feeling defeated. “I’ve tried, Bella. I’ve had to sit back and watch you completely destroy yourself because you don’t think there’s anything wrong and you refuse to let anyone help you. I’ve tried to live with the idea that this is…this is just how things are going to be, but I can’t.” He stared at the far wall. “You say you and Edward are a package deal? Well, that just isn’t a deal that I can accept.”
There was a silence, and some small part of him was hoping—hoping that maybe she’d just been bluffing, hoping she’d just been trying to emotionally blackmail him into doing whatever she wanted. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all. That same small part of him hoped that maybe, just maybe, his words had meant something, and would have made a difference…
His shoulders sagged when he heard her get up from the couch. “Well…fine. I guess that’s it, then.” He knew that tone—and he knew that there was no hope. “I’ll—I’ll just go pack my stuff,” she said huffily.
Charlie was amazed at how quickly he managed to get a firm voice back. “Only pack what’s yours,” he said without turning to look at her. “Meaning only the stuff you bought with your money. And you won’t be driving to the Cullens’ house in that truck, because it belongs to me.”
She didn’t answer, but he didn’t hear her moving, either. He could feel her staring at his back, and he knew what she was doing—she was waiting for him to change his mind and take it back, like he did every time she threw a tantrum, like he did every time she turned on the waterworks, like he did every time she threatened extreme measures. After almost a full minute of silence, she began slowly climbing the stairs; she had finally realized that he wasn’t going to take it back this time.
Only after Charlie heard her door snick shut did he allow himself to sink into the nearest chair, shaking, covering his face with his hands, and finally let his own realization sink in—that his daughter, his only daughter, his baby girl…was gone.
Bella was gone within an hour. Charlie did not walk her to the door—in fact, he locked himself in his room and refused to answer any of her entreaties to say goodbye or offers to talk it over. He knew Edward was the one to come pick her up; who else would’ve done it, after all? The sun was setting when he finally emerged, shuffling through the house like an old man, making his way to Bella’s childhood room, the room she lived in only a few hours ago.
He flicked on the light, squinting a little against the harsh incandescent glare.
He blinked, dully surprised to see just how little the room had changed. Very little was actually missing—very little she had actually cared to take. He slowly reached over and opened one of her dresser drawers; still mostly full of shirts. He turned and looked at the closet, seeing only a couple of empty hangers amid the rest of her clothes. He could spot a few places where there had originally been a knickknack, but for the most part, everything was largely untouched. He turned almost unwillingly to her nightstand, and his stomach clenched horribly when he saw it.
When Bella had been twelve, Charlie had taken Bella on a three-day road trip across Washington. It had just been the two of them, hitting all kinds of silly little landmarks and out-of-the-way museums and historical sites and stopping at every novelty gas station they could find. They hadn’t had any real destination in mind; they’d just been traveling, driving aimlessly, stopping whenever they felt like it and seeing whatever they wanted. Bella was rarely happy when she came to visit him, but that time, she’d been laughing and excited and Renee had told him she hadn’t stopped talking about it for weeks after she’d gotten back to Phoenix.
One of the gas stations they’d stopped at had had a display case full of blown glass ornaments and figurines. Charlie knew they were nothing but an overpriced tourist trap, but Bella had been absolutely over the moon for one of the figurines on the second shelf—a glass angel with frosted wings and a golden halo. Charlie had been bemused by her fascination with the thing, considering she’d never shown any interest in religion or angels before, but had decided that this was their little adventure, and so he’d gotten it for her. She’d laughed and squealed and hugged him and told him he was the best daddy in the whole world and that she loved him.
Charlie sat heavily on the purple bedspread, reaching out and briefly touching the bowed head of the glass angel.
Only then did Charlie let himself cry.
Author’s Note: Yeah, like I said. I didn’t intend it to go in that direction. I will say that some of this was painful to write—I drew on personal experience on certain parts.
That is my farewell to Charlie Swan before we have to meet the asshole version of him that lives in Eclipse and Breaking Dawn. Bye bye, Charlie. You will be missed.
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