Chapter Text
“I’ll be fine, Mom,” Bella tells her, dressed in too thin clothes for Forks weather and clutching a small cactus to her chest that won’t make it past the airport control.
From the moment Bella is old enough to reach the stove top on her tippy toes she’d been taking care of her scatter-brained mother, making sure the bills got paid, that there was enough for food in the fridge and shaking her mother awake in the morning with breakfast prepared and waiting.
Renée’s sudden marriage to Phil had left Bella without a place in her life, becoming an obstacle for her mother’s happiness instead of the being the sole reason they had a place to live at all, and she finds herself wrong-footed and at loss in the reality of it.
“Are you sure?” Renée presses. “You know you’ll always have a home with me.”
But Bella can see the sacrifice behind the promise in her eyes and there’s a responding coldness in her chest as she smiles and lies:
“I’m sure.”
-
Her father is a stranger – awkward and distant but trying in a way that Bella is unfamiliar with.
It’s the reality of having a red truck parked beside his cruiser, already paid for, and a new computer on the small desk in her childhood bedroom for all that little else had been changed since the last time she visited.
He tries to stop at a diner but she suggests ordering home some pizza and watch some football and for all that he looks surprised it’s soon traded for something pleased.
Bella listens idly to the commentators, seated criss-cross with the box in her lap and relieved to have dodged the potential awkward talk as her father gets himself sucked into the game, keeping half an ear on the rain smattering against the window outside and the rise of excited cheers from the television.
-
Bella finds her rhythm in Forks the same way she finds her rhythm in her old school: she doesn’t.
New people doesn’t make her feel anymore connected and her smile feels strained on her face before lunch, ducking and grabbing for her book and earbuds whenever someone tried to open conversation with her and bluntly refusing when the teachers try to lure her up to do introductions.
“I’m fine here,” she tells the English teacher and lets the refusal stretch until it becomes awkward, refusing to budge an inch to a cough and the lesson slowly picking up.
Being the new commodity will die down and she will fade into the background.
It’s just a matter of time.
-
“You should pick up a hobby,” Charlie suggests one Saturday morning when Bella is spending yet another weekend at home despite his best attempt to pressure her into having a social life. “You kids still have hobbies, don’t they?”
Kids.
Bella is seventeen, almost eighteen, and she doesn’t know how to function without someone to look after because her entire life has been a single circular goal in making sure she and her mother had food and a roof over their head by any means necessary.
She’d been moonlighting since she was fourteen – juggling various jobs at odd hours for minimal pay to make things due.
She hadn’t had time for hobbies.
“I guess,” Bella says, shoving some cereal into her mouth.
“Look.” Charlie folds the paper together and puts it down onto the table. “I never thought I’d be saying this to my teenage daughter but you need to get out.”
Bella stares at him, chewing.
“I can do the shopping?” she offers finally.
Charlie’s face makes a mildly complicated thing before he shoves his hand into his pocket and pulls out his wallet, counting out a number of bills and slamming them down, shoving them across to her without removing his hand.
“You do the shopping,” Charlie says slowly. “And you bake something for us to eat after dinner.”
“Bake?” she repeats. “I’m not… really one for baking.”
“Then learn,” Charlie presses. “Do some – cupcakes or brownies, I don’t care what you settle on. But you’ll pick out the ingredients and you’ll make it from scratch.”
Bella looks between the pile of bills and her father’s hopeful eyes and gives a short sigh as she reaches out for them, trying not to feel guilty about the relieved smile on his face as she folds them up and shoves them down the pocket of her jeans.
-
Bella stares blankly at the numerous products in bright packages – trying not to feel too intimidated by the sheer number of different flour that existed, her eyes darting from one package to the next, the recipe she’d printed out at home crumpled in her fist.
It hadn’t specified which flour and while she might have just picked out anything the relief in her father’s eyes at such a simple task makes her want to do it well.
“Excuse me.” The voice is gentle, low and soothing for all that it startles her, shoulders going up as Bella turns her head to seek it out and she blinks at the impossible pale woman, her eyes a curious shade of amber with deep purple bags beneath them that did little to distract from her eerie beauty. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you, dear-“ she says as Bella stares at her. “But I couldn’t help but notice you’ve been starting rather intensely at the flour section for several minutes now.”
She’s got shopping basket at the crook of her arm and if Bella was to choose a word to describe her it would be kind. She is also, quite possibly, one of the most beautiful people Bella has seen in her life.
“It’s fine,” she adds a bit belatedly, realising that she’d been staring for longer than was strictly polite. “I’m-“ But Bella remembers her father and makes a decision between one breath and the other, slowly releasing the crinkled paper and making an attempt to flatten it out. “Actually – I’m trying to make this but I’ve never baked before and I’m a bit lost,” she admits.
The woman holds out her hand in a silent offer of help and Bella slowly hands it over, waiting quietly as the stranger scans over the list.
“Ah,” she says quietly. “You’ll want this then,” she says and Bella watches as she reaches for one of the white flours on the lower shelves and offer it up with a quirk of her lip. “And you’ll want granulated sugar for the batter,” she adds. “Are you planning on doing frosting as well? Maybe with a bit of colour?”
Bella’s mouth turns down a bit doubtfully for the batter felt daunting enough.
“It’s easy,” the woman coaxes. “And if they turn out a bit burnt or wobbly you can cover it right up,” she adds with a wink.
“I- wouldn’t want to inconvenience you,” Bella says a bit haltingly even if the idea was tempting.
“And you wouldn’t be,” the woman says with a firmness that made it impossible to question the surety of it. “Why don’t I help you pick out the ingredients and I’ll walk you through the recipe afterwards?” she suggests.
Bella hadn’t made it as far as she had by denying help when offered and she sticks out her hand to a blink of surprised amber. “Bella Swan,” she offers with a tick of her mouth.
The other smiles and then a surprisingly cold hand grasps hers with gentle firmness. “Esme Cullen.”
-
“I thought you weren’t one for baking,” Charlie says that night, on his fifth cupcake with frosting clinging to the strands of his moustache. “But this is really good.”
Bella stares down at her own, aware of the slight burnt surface of the otherwise golden muffin hidden beneath the off-colour green frosting which made it look rather like oddly fluffy slime.
Esme hadn’t been wrong about it and compared to the rest of the recipe the frosting had been easy, swirled on top as a finishing touch after removing them from the fridge after dinner.
She can’t say she enjoyed it, exactly – it was far too much work for such a small thing– but it made Charlie happy, the air around him content, and there is satisfaction in that for all that it felt unfamiliar and strange where it settles in her chest.
“You should do this again,” Charlie hums and Bella grasps for that sense of purpose, slotting it into the empty space after her mother as she buries deeper into the couch and takes a large bite of her own.
-
Bella breaks her arm two months into the semester and she has no-one to blame but herself, wincing and cradling the limb to her chest as she pushes up with the other, slumping back against her truck beside the totalled car that had narrowly avoided squishing her.
There’s shouts – the driver’s name ringing out – and Bella doubts anyone had seen her dive out of the way and she can’t even feel upset about it as she huffs out a breath, head hitting the metal with a dull thunk.
Only to blink as a small pale hand appears abruptly in her vision, an artful mess of dark spikes and that peculiar shade of amber that Bella had run into only two weeks ago.
“You need a hand?” the girl asks with a little quirk of her lips.
“It’s still attached so that’d be a no,” Bella offers a bit drily and the girl laughs – a light airy sound that suits her well.
“Come on you silly girl.” The hand wiggles its fingers invitingly and Bella sighs but reaches out, blinking as she was hauled to her feet with surprising strength. “This way,” the other urges and Bella obligingly goes low beneath the back of her car’s bed, inching out and away from the people gathered around the hurt driver.
“You looked like you didn’t want to deal with that whole circus,” the girl says with a knowing grin as Bella breathes out. “But you do need a doctor to look at that arm of yours.”
“I do,” she agrees because she’d broken enough bones to be sure her wrist needed a good cast.
Bella glances towards her car, knowing there was little to be done about it but not quite willing to have her father rush over to take her to the hospital for something small like this.
“Well,” the other says, drawing the word out, and Bella slants her gaze back. “It just so happens that my dad is a doctor here in Forks and I have a fully functional car.” She bounces a bit, excited for reasons entirely beyond Bella. “Why don’t I take you?”
“You- are you sure?” Bella asks, caught off-guard.
The other bobs her head, smile growing. “Yes!” she says, warm and bright.
“I don’t even know your na-“
A hand is proffered before she’d finished speaking. “Alice Cullen,” the other girl says and Bella slowly grasps a hand nearly as cold as her mother’s.
“Bella Swan,” she says with a sense of déjà vu, and Alice’s smile only grows.
-
“I met your Mom,” Bella hears herself saying, awkwardly seated in the far too fancy red car with the lingering daggers of Alice’s blond haired sister prickling at the back of her neck. “She’s – really nice.”
“She is,” Alice agrees with a warm hum, the world whooshing past them, air tugging at their hair, a single hand resting on the wheel with comfortable ease. “None of us is really interested in baking, or cooking, for that matter, so you made her really happy when she got to give you a bit of a crash course.”
Bella hums a bit doubtfully.
“You did,” Alice says, oddly persistent as she turns her head to look at her. “Knowing Esme she was dying to know how it turned out.”
“It was just cupcakes,” Bella says, a bit uncomfortable but then she thinks of her father’s smile and she sighs. “They turned out fine- you can tell her that,” she says awkwardly, rubbing absently at the back of her neck.
Alice’s fingers drums against the wheel. “No. I think you’ll find the time to tell her yourself,” she says confidently.
Before Bella can open her mouth and question that dubious surety they come to a halt and Alice is fast, seatbelt unmade and half-way around the car before Bella has much time to realize that they’d made it before the ambulance.
“Jasper called Dad,” Alice assures her as she tugs Bella out of the car and gives the door a nudge shut before pulling her along towards the entrance instead of letting go. “He’ll meet us on the way,” she says confidently as Bella lets her injured arm fall loose at her side to avoid drawing attention to it.
When she was younger she’d learnt to cast her broken bones herself, claiming it’d been done at school to draw any unnecessary attention to it.
Her mother’s cash had been sparse and they didn’t have insurance and by the time Bella had managed to save enough from her odd jobs to get them one she’d been fifteen.
She'd hated seeing her mother fret and the reminder of having to call her father makrs the phone in her pocket feel cold. But she doesn’t have the supplies here like she’d had back in Phoenix and her car is still stuck in the parking lot so there was really little she can do about it.
And Charlie did have insurance – Bella had checked.
“Carlisle!” Alice exclaims brightly and Bella turns her head instinctively to catch sight of Esme Cullen’s husband, nearly tripping as that peculiar shade of amber registered to her in a third pair of eyes.
Blond haired with angular features, the purple shadows nearly more prominent than on his wife and daughter and, just like them, paler than even Bella who had been called a ghost on more than one occasion.
But where her veins stood out under her skin there was a low glow to theirs that made for a very attractive combination.
“Alice,” the man greets warmly and something inside of Bella wants to relax at the smooth roll of his voice, swallowing as Alice tugs her up beside her.
“There was an accident at school,” Alice says as Carlisle’s eyes turn to Bella who tucks her arm further into her jacket at the intensity of his eyes.
“I heard,” Carlisle murmurs, eyes lingering for a moment before he turns to beckon them along and Bella feverishly prays he’ll take them to his office. “Can I ask why you didn’t wait for the ambulance to arrive?”
“It’s just a broken arm,” Bella says a bit mulishly and Alice’s mouth twitches up as Carlisle raises a brow.
“I see,” he murmurs and something about his tone makes Bella very much doubt that he does.
“Bella-“ she realises, belatedly, that she hadn’t bothered to tell Alice her full-name and the nickname falls smoothly out of her mouth. “Why don’t you borrow me your phone and I’ll call your father for you while Carlisle looks over your arm?”
“Oh.” Bella reaches for it, brow creasing. “Are you sure? You’ve already done more than enough-“
But the phone is practically snatched out of her hand and she blinks a bit bemusedly at the pixie-like girl. “It’s fine,” Alice says, making a shooing motion. “Now hurry up and get that wrapped up!”
She does a little wave, skipping down the corridor as Bella stares after her.
“Oh, erm – Bella Swan,” she introduces herself as she barely catches herself from tripping into the open office door, a firm hand landing on her shoulder to steady her. “Sorry about bargaining in on you like this,” she gets out when he releases her and she turns to give him an awkward smile.
“It is quite fine,” Carlisle says warmly, closing the door shut behind him. “I am quite aware that my daughter is a bit of a force of nature once she puts her mind to it.”
He leads her to the examining table and she gets herself up with a bit of a fumble with only one hand to press down with, her left still half-tucked into her jacket where it pounds dully, already swollen and aching.
Carlisle rolls close on his chair as Bella pulls down the hem of her jacket, wincing at the sight of her red fingers.
“Do you mind removing your jacket?”
“I might need some help,” Bella admits and Carlisle rises to mindfully and professionally guide her out of it, unbuttoning the jacket near her wrist to get it off her swollen hand and he even steps away to hang it up before retaking his seat in front of her.
“May I?” he asks and she nods, twitching at the brush of his cold fingers as he rolls up her sleeve of her hoodie with a sympathetic twist of his lips as his fingers gently glides down her wrist.
He squeezes down on her hand and arm while asking questions and Bella enjoys the chill of his hands against the warm and swollen skin where he cradles her wrist between his palms.
“It seems like a clean break,” Carlisle murmurs. “We’ll do an x-ray to make sure but it looks like you’ll be walking home with a cast.”
“Joy,” Bella sighs, moving to draw her hand back, but he tightens his grip, a little dip in his brow that she felt the inane need to smooth out but whatever he’s thinking about he ultimately decides not to pursue and he releases her just as Alice practically waltzes through the door.
“The Chief is working late,” she says breezily as both Bella and her father turns to her. “He didn’t want you to be on your own but I told him you could stay with us for tonight.”
Bella does try to argue but between the x-ray, the adrenaline from nearly being hit running out of her system, and a telephone conversation with Charlie who sounded genuinely worried and apologetic about being out of Forks to deal with a crime near Port Angeles, Bella finds herself without the energy to argue it and sets her mind to a bit of food and then a bed, promising to make up for it in the future.
From the way Alice practically skips down the corridor it’s hard to feel like a bother.
On her arm is her new cast, signed carefully by an owlish-looking Alice who’d looked adorably surprised when Bella had proffered her the pen a spur of a moment decision, and beside her Carlisle is smiling a bit indulgently at his daughter.
Bella got the feeling Alice is the sort of get her way in most situations and she can't really fault him for it – there is something about Alice that is warm and genuine in her enthusiasm.
-
The Cullen’s house is beautiful and Bella tells Carlisle this since she’d been shooed into his car, Alice pressing up on her toes to give her father a kiss on the cheek and murmur something low before gliding for the red convertible with a wave to Bella who echoes it a bit bemusedly.
Thankfully Carlisle wasn’t the sort for empty small talk and Bella accepts his hand, allowing him to pull her out of the car and onto her feet after parking.
“It’s all Esme,” he tells her as he lets go of her, gazing towards the white house with the large broad windows looking out towards the endless stretch of forest hidden so well that she’d been half-convinced Carlisle had gone mad turning as he turned into a near invincible road. “She’s always had an eye for detail and she’s the one who makes each and every house we move into feel like a home.”
For someone so young he sounded old and Bella’s mouth twitches at the helpless warmth in his voice.
Bella is barely through the door before Esme’s gentle hand touches against her cheek, drawing and tucking brown hair behind her ear as Bella blinks at her sudden appearance.
“Alice called,” she says in that gentle voice of hers as Bella struggles against the urge to lean into the palm of her cool hand, inexplicitly drawn to this strange woman she has only met once before. “I am glad you’re alright, Bella.”
She flushes at the sound of her name, averting her gaze away from concerned amber and missing the way the two exchange glances over her head as Esme gently withdraws her hand.
“Are you hungry, dear?” she asks kindly, already drawing back, and Bella nods mutely, moving to bend down and undo the strings of her old well-born boots when Carlisle sinks down smoothly, something in her chest catching as she stills, watching as his hands carefully helped her out of them, one foot at the time.
“No use overexerting yourself,” he tells her, giving her knee a gentle squeeze before he rose tall once again.
“Thank you-“ Bella gets out, swallowing roughly and just catching herself from tripping as she turned hurriedly to follow after the woman.
-
Bella doesn’t last long.
She’s yawning half-way through the dinner after swallowing her pain-meds down with a nudge from Carlisle and she only gets through one of the offered cookies before a thumb brushes some crumbs from the corner of her lip and she finds herself steered up the steps, hushed and gently nudged along when she tries to offer some sort of protest.
“You are not a bother,” a voice murmurs as she’s tugged out of her shirt and rough jeans into something far softer before she’s lifted up and settled in the middle of a far too large bed.
The last thing she registers is the ghostly press of cool lips to her forehead.