His Bella

[maeve-issyra.livejournal.com]

Title: His Bella
Author: maeve_issyra
Fandom(s): Twilight
Rating: PG
Word Count: 911
Inspiration: Charlie’s ridiculous reaction to seeing newly-vampired Bella in Breaking Dawn Chapter 25.
Warnings: Mild language
Summary: What Charlie said that day and what he thought were two very different things.


His Bella

Bella was their lifeline.

Charlie and Renee were already falling apart when Renee discovered she was pregnant. Charlie had wondered whether it was a good idea to have a child when their relationship seemed to be on its last legs, but Renee convinced him their baby would bring them back together.
She was going to save them. Make it all better.

And now she was dead.

Oh, she walked and talked, sure. But Chief Swan had seen enough dead bodies in his life to know one when he saw one.

He’d told Jacob he didn’t want to know anything about it. He was wrong. As soon as he saw her – this frozen woman, this pathetic excuse for his daughter – all he wanted to do was scream ‘What did you do to her?’ at Edward and then arrest him and lock him up for all eternity.
She was like him now. A copy. A clone. He’d known it would all go wrong if she stayed with Edward Cullen.

He’d always thought Bella was rather smart. Surely she would never put up with an abusive boyfriend. She’d tell him where to stick it and then call the cops – or her father – on him. She wouldn’t smile and say: ‘Yes, Edward,’ when he stopped her from seeing her friends. She wouldn’t nod and agree when he dismantled her car. She wouldn’t take him right back after he left her and made her spiral into a life-threatening depression. She wouldn’t feel flattered when he crept into her room at night and watched her sleep.

She wouldn’t believe for a second that her father didn’t know about all of that.

She was too damn smart to get knocked up – she’d told him that herself. She used to be in an Advanced Placement Biology class, for god’s sake! Surely she knew all about contraception!
But Edward said it wasn’t necessary, and Bella wouldn’t dare to question him. After all, Edward led, and she followed. And where did Edward lead her?

To marriage at eighteen.

To teen pregnancy.

To a premature death.

Yes, Edward was surely a leader worth following.

He’d asked Jacob to tell him what Bella was when she wouldn’t, despite his repeated insistance that she give him some answers. Jacob had looked straight ahead when he spoke the single word.

‘Vampire.’

Charlie’s head spun.

‘Vampire?’

Jacob nodded.

‘As in, bloodsucking demon of the night who sleeps in coffins?’

‘Yes. Though the Cullens don’t ever sleep at all.’

‘And Bella...’

‘Yes.’

Why? How? Did she choose this fate? Did she want to die and live a half-life forever?

No. Not his Bella. His Bella wanted to live. She wanted to go to college, study a subject she loved and find a sweet, human boyfriend. She wanted to start a career and a family and she wanted to grow old.

And most of all she wanted to draw. The only things she ever asked Father Christmas for were sketch pads and pencils. Charlie still had all of the drawings Bella or Renee didn’t keep. His favourite was one Bella had made of Renee when she was ten. It showed her en profil, her hair hiding part of her face, smiling. Bella had even sketched the shirt Renee was wearing well enough for Charlie to recognise it as the one he had bought her for their first and only wedding anniversary. She’d added a few touches of colour with the pencils Charlie had given her for her birthday.

She had talent, his girl. Maybe not enough to make a living out of it, but she could have probably earned a bit of money now and again illustrating posters or books.

He couldn’t remember her drawing anything since she moved to Forks. Could she still draw, as a vampire? Maybe she could. Jacob had said a human’s talents were intensified upon being changed. There was a chance his Bella could still draw.

But surely Edward wouldn’t allow something so blasphemous. What if Bella drew her mother again? Or her father? Jacob? Her old friends? What if Bella drew anything other than Edward?
No, he wouldn’t approve of that. Of course he wouldn’t. And it didn’t look like he would ever leave Bella alone long enough to allow her to grab a piece of paper.

He saw her again as she had looked today. White. Ice-cold. Eyes that burned red through the fake brown contacts – he could have sworn he saw the brown disappear in a flash of red before she darted off to the bathroom. The bathroom Jacob had told him Bella would never need again.
She hadn’t looked anything like herself.

And her daughter – the daughter she could not possibly have conceived. They told him she was born on September tenth. Even if that was true – and how could it be? The girl looked like she was three months old! She was supposed to have been born four days ago! – it still didn’t make sense. In order to have been born in September, Renesmee would have to have been conceived in January.

Edward Cullen wasn’t even in the country in January. The coward had run, leaving his daughter to die. Bella had not slept with Edward in January 2006. Charlie wasn’t taking Jacob off his ‘Potential fathers’ list, and the timing did fit, but the little girl was so obviously Edward’s that he just couldn’t make himself understand any of this.
He’d have to ask Jacob about that.