la belle dame sans merci | carlisle cullen

44

In the following days, the Cullen house was in an absolute uproar. Carlisle would have been more relieved it wasn't his fault if the circumstances weren't so dire. It was a misty Monday evening, it had every opportunity of being a perfectly normal day. If it weren't for Edward it would have been.

When Carlisle got home from work at 5:30, he found four of his five children sitting stiffly in the livingroom. Alice was curled into Jasper's side in the recliner, each of their face's a mask of feeling Carlisle couldn't read. Rosalie sat on the couch with a look on her face that was all too familiar to him, Emmet sat with his arm around her and his eyes on the black television. Carlisle could guess that he wished it was on. "What's going on?" He asked, brows furrowing. It was normal for everyone to gather but not with this sort of atmosphere.

Alice and Rosalie exchanged looks before Alice sighed deeply, "Bella knows."

Carlisle, who didn't need to blink, did so several times. He felt like his feet had just been kicked out from under him. "What?" His voice dropped as he took the remaining steps into the living room, letting his briefcase fall at the threshold.

"I had a vision. Edward's not back yet." She added glancing up at him. "What does this mean for us, Carlisle?"

"We'll have to wait and see." He murmured,  sitting on the arm of the couch. "I suppose that will depend on them."

"Where's next if we have to go?" Emmet asked, his face looked like he was sitting next to a ticking time bomb. Evidently, he was.

"Far, far away from here," Rosalie said with a scowl, "where nobody will have any twisted desire to tell anyone about us." The silence that fell was incredibly awkward as he slowly moved his eyes down to her. "Sorry." She muttered reluctantly, "He never would have gotten this idea if it weren't for you, Carlisle."

It was a long time before he'd formulated his response and collected himself enough not to lose his mind. "I find that incredibly unfair." He said decidedly, "I think I've set a good example as far as not revealing us goes."

"No, you just insist on keeping bad company." She said with vile dripping from her tone. Realistically, Carlisle knew it wasn't him she was angry at but Edward wasn't home. Naturally, he was the next best thing. "Why else would he think it was okay to get so attatched?"

"That's in no way the same, Rose." Jasper said with a frown.

"How is it different?"

Carlisle didn't have a good response. It wasn't really. Not as far as consequences went. "Minerva isn't a regular human." He tried, lis drawing tight together. "She's got just as much at stake as we do."

"The volturi wouldn't agree with that." Emmet commented quietly, turning his eyes away from his father's.

"It's not Carlisle's fault." Alice spoke up, "He's managed to keep the secret. Minerva doesn't have an inkling that we're anything other than human."

"So I'm supposed to applaud you because she's stupid?"

Carlisle stood up then with a sharp breath. He had to remind himself Rosalie had never met Minerva, she was speaking only out of anger and getting defensive wouldn't make things better. "You don't need to be rude." He paced over to the window and glanced out, hoping to God he'd been right in thinking he heard Edward and finding himself wrong. "If you'll dare recall, Edward was on your side at the start of all this. The situations are entirely different and I hardly think he would have handled this any better if I'd never met Minerva."

"I think he would have."

"We can agree to disagree then."

He remained leaning against the window, staring out impatiently for Edward's return. He'd hardly been able to process the real problem at hand with how quickly the blame fell to him. There was nothing to do but wait but his mind was like a rolodex of worst case scenarios. Nothing was certain and until they had Edward's story. Either way, they were revealed. The volturi had a zero tolerance policy, if they caught wind that a human knew they'd all be dead. It was a capital offense. At least with Minerva, they'd probably just drain her and let them off with a warning. Perhaps he was being too optimistic in that respect.