Chapter Text
Bella still isn’t entirely sure how she finds herself sitting in a circle with the Cullen family singing happy birthday in a range of enthusiasms to her. It has something to do with Edward insisting and Alice’s pout, but promises of a homemade meal by Esme may have also been thrown in.
It doesn’t really matter how, but now gifts are being shoved at Bella from all angles. Reaching haplessly into the fray, she pulls out a gift. It is fairly small, a perfectly wrapped box with a perfect little bow atop it. Bella examines it carefully, shaking the box a couple of times while being incredibly aware of each and every one of the Cullens focusing on her.
“Jeez, you’d think I’m getting a nuclear weight or something,” Bella jokes carefully, trying to dispel their attention. She really does not want to be the sole receiver of their scrutiny. It is already enough with just Alice’s overbearing personality or Edward’s smothering presence. She doesn’t need Jasper or Rosalie’s laser focus, or Esme’s motherly affection all at once. In fact, she really doesn’t want it. She’s a one vampire at a time kind of gal.
Alice frowns, “Did you want one? I could…” she trails off sheepishly at Edward’s glare, shaking her head, “Never mind. Open it, Bella! It’s your gift!”
"Right.” Bella fumbles with her gift, trying to figure out the most graceful way to open it. She doesn’t think reckless tearing will be appreciated, especially if Rosalie is the gift-giver. She gets the bow off, but that leaves the rest of the box’s wrappings.
Looking up, Bella’s eyes catch Rosalie’s. The blonde seems to be glaring furiously at Bella. Maybe it is her gift that Bella is mauling, and suddenly she feels incredibly self-conscious.
Bella eventually frees her gift from the wrapping paper, opening the box to reveal...a toy truck? She picks the truck up and examines it closely for far too long before eventually looking up, “What?”
Emmett begins laughing boisterously and even Rosalie cracks a smile. “I fixed your car,” she explains, “So that it’s not a death trap and I also installed a stereo while you were eating.”
“Oh,” Bella stares at the toy, “Thanks. You didn’t have to do so much, though.”
Rosalie shrugs, tossing her head, “It’s in everyone’s best interest to make sure you don’t die from something as stupid as your antique—and not in a good way—truck.”
“Well, still.” Bella leaves off awkwardly, pocketing the toy quickly. She doesn’t know why, but Rosalie’s gift is strangely touching. Rosalie might make it seem like it’s nothing, but Bella has always had a weakness for actually useful gifts given with the intention of improving her life. Nothing like the beautiful and probably useless gifts Alice and Edward are going to shove onto her.
An uncomfortable silence settles briefly over the gathering before Alice breaks it, bounding over to Bella with all the enthusiasm of a corgi in a sunlit meadow, “Open mine next!” Her gift is eagerly shoved into Bella’s hands.
“Uh, okay.” Bella begins opening the next gift, focusing attentively on removing the wrapping until she notices Rosalie turning away. Trying not to let it affect her, Bella continues her ministrations, but her attention has shifted.
Suddenly a growl sounds from beside her and Bella stares inquiringly at Edward before looking down at the gift in her lap. Drops of red begin to well up from her finger and almost as if in a trance, Bella raises her finger up to examine it.
Her movements are halted by another growl, and Bella looks up to meet six pairs of pitch-black eyes trained on the blood welling from her fingertip. “Oops.”
Before she has time to react, Bella is thrown backwards, and her world goes black.
-§-§-§-§-§-§-§-
Bella comes to slowly, her mind muddled and senses gradually realigning themselves. She isn’t sure where she is, or how she came to be in her current situation. Hopefully, Bella tries opening her eyes, but the moment light floods her senses, she decides against it. Instead she chooses to focus on the low murmur of sounds that steadily become clearer until she can begin to make out traces of words.
“...not fine...doctor..."
“...explain...vampire...bloodlust..."
“...monsters..."
“...hurt...injured...idiot..."
The more Bella hears, the more her heart begins to race. Who are these people and what do they mean? What do vampires have to do with anything?
“Wait!”
Bella has no clear way of telling, but she somehow knows when all attention shifts to her.
“She’s up!”
The perky, if slightly worried voice grates on her ears, but just about everything grates on Bella at this point. She figures it’s a side effect of the vicious pounding in her head, but she can’t be entirely sure.
“What’s going on?” Bella mumbles as she tries to sit up before a presence rushes to her side and gently helps her. The world is still spinning slightly, getting steadily clearer as Bella blinks her eyes rapidly.
Someone suddenly appears in Bella’s vision, a physically flawless face framed by a cute pixie cut that gazes worriedly into her eyes, “Hey, hey, it’s okay. There was a bit of an accident-”
Harshly, a beautifully enraged voice cuts in, “It wasn’t an accident. Edward couldn’t control himself. Reckless endangerment is never an accident.”
“Okay,” Pixie-Cut corrects herself, “Maybe not entirely an accident, but you hit your head and you have some cuts, but nothing major! I think.”
Bella looks down at her arms, finally noticing the bandages wrapped around her arms. She winces, as if her body has abruptly realized that it is supposed to be in pain. Dimly, she looks around herself, noticing the shards of glass to her right and a room that seems just on the edge of completely destroyed. “Oh.”
A blonde man, looking vaguely like Captain America, approaches Bella slowly and crouches beside her, “I’d like to check you out a bit more thoroughly for any more lasting damage, however, if that’s okay with you?”
“Uh, sure,” Bella agrees.
Captain America begins a series of procedures, which Bella assumes are to assess her brain function. She goes through the motions, and he seems to be ultimately satisfied with the results.
“Well, I think you’ve sustained some light head trauma, but I don’t think anything extremely dangerous occurred. I would recommend observation for the next 24 hours at the very least.”
“She should go to a hospital, Carlisle,” Harsh-But-Beautiful cuts in and a blonde head appears at the edge of Bella’s vision, “A rushed checkup is nothing considering Edward just threw her into the wall through a vase like a rag-doll.”
In the background, someone, presumably the aforementioned Edward, hisses.
Bella assumes that the Steve Rogers look-alike is Carlisle, who nods his head in agreement, “I would normally agree with you Rosalie, but I’m not sure if bringing Bella to the hospital is the safest thing right now.”
Presumably, Rosalie is the one with the hostilely angelic voice. And a brain.
“Right,” Rosalie snaps sarcastically, “Can’t forget to protect our secret vampiric identities after Edward tosses her around like a dog with a toy.”
The hissing gets louder. It must be a really touchy subject for Edward.
Carlisle admonishes Rosalie, “Don’t attack your brother like that.”
“What?” Rosalie returns, “For telling the truth? He almost got Bella killed because of his irrepressible urge to suck her dry.”
“He did what his instincts were telling him to do, to protect Bella from immediate danger. It’s not his fault that he tried to get Bella away from harm,” Carlisle reasons calmly.
Rosalie snorts derisively in response, “Not his fault? He threw her across the room out of some imagined threat when absolutely none of us were about to hurt Bella.”
Yeah, Bella agrees. She doesn’t know what is going on, but Rosalie sounds like she knows what she’s talking about. All of a sudden, Bella tenses, processing Rosalie and Carlisle’s words. Secret vampiric identities? Thrown across the room? Was that what happened to her? Are vampires real?
Bella shrugs internally, body still unwilling to follow her thoughts. She must have gotten where she is somehow. Why not vampires. Next thing she knows, they will be telling her werewolves are real, too.
Turning her head towards the origin of Rosalie’s voice, Bella gasps. Her voice had barely done Rosalie justice because she is absolutely gorgeous. Bella’s breath literally escapes her because she forgets to breathe in the face of such perfection.
At her gasp, Pixie-Cut quickly reappears at Bella’s side, a barrage of questions following, “Are you okay? Did something happen? Are you in pain?”
“She would be fine if Edward hadn’t given her blunt head trauma,” Rosalie cuts in bitingly.
Petulantly, a voice joins the conversation. Bella assumes it’s Edward based on the childlike sullenness in his tone. Edward is a bronze-haired boy whose hair looks like it had fought with a wild cat and lost. It is his most noticeable trait, although Bella notes that he is fairly attractive, if not for the eternal look of constipation on his face, “I was protecting her. You were all looking at Bella like she was a particularly appetizing blood bag. I had to get her away!”
“Edward!” Rosalie shouts, turning furiously towards Edward, “We can control ourselves! She’s your singer, you were the one looking at her like a blood bag! Sure, we might have had some temporary bloodlust, but we have been doing this for a long time. We know how to deal with it. You are the only one who wants to suck her dry every moment of every day!”
The longer Rosalie continues her rant, the wider Bella’s eyes become. If what she said is true, what is Bella doing in a den full of bloodsucking vampires? No matter how or why she is in this mess, Bella wants out.
In reaction to Rosalie’s words, Edward starts growling before leaping at Rosalie. Bella yelps and Rosalie forcefully shoves Edward to the side as if he weighs nothing. A loud crash is heard and Bella blinks rapidly before deciding that yes, the tall blonde goddess did in fact toss Edward through the wall to her left.
Edward stumbles out of the hole his body had made in the wall, dusting grains of literal stone from his body. He doesn’t look phased at all. Physically, at least. The pout on his face is one for the ages.
If anything could have convinced Bella about the presence of actual vampires, she figures that was probably as good as she is ever going to get barring literal fangs shoved in her throat.
“Um..." Bella speaks up before trailing off, staring at Rosalie, “Did that really happen or am I just really feeling that concussion?”
Edward snarls, bending over into a crouch and mouth baring open. Bella squints, and oh, yep, those are definitely fangs.
Opening her mouth, Bella pauses before answering herself, “That really happened. Good to know.”
Straightening himself out, Edward plasters a placid smile onto his face and approaches Bella, “Forgive me for that. Some of us,” he shoots a meaningful look at Rosalie, who glares back at him, “Haven’t learned to control our more vicious impulses.”
Bella stares at Edward. Who is this guy? Unless she is suffering from delusional memory alongside her memory loss and migraine, Bella is quite certain that he was the one who had lept at Rosalie. “Right.”
Rosalie snorts before stalking closer towards Bella. Bella should probably feel some measure of fear, coiled energy basically rolling off Rosalie in waves, but she knows somewhere deep in her mind that Rosalie would never hurt her.
Immediately, Bella shakes herself out of that thought. Rosalie had just minutes earlier thrown her brother into the wall. Sure, he is probably a vampire and could certainly take it, but if that is what Rosalie would do to her brother, Bella should definitely be concerned for her safety. (She isn’t.)
“Are you disoriented?” Rosalie demands.
“What?” Bella gazes confusedly back at her.
“Are you disoriented? Do you feel dizzy? Trouble focusing on anything?”
“I, don’t think so?”
“Is that a question or an answer?”
“An answer?”
Rosalie’s eyes bore into Bella’s, straight into her soul like they are looking for something. She doesn’t seem satisfied with what she finds, but she breaks the stare-off with a sigh.
“I think she’s fine,” Pixie-Cut pipes up, six pairs of eyes snapping towards her the moment she opens her mouth, “I could never be completely certain, but I don’t see anything bad happening to Bella because of her head injury today.”
Bella can’t be entirely sure, but Pixie-Cut seems awfully sure of herself. Like she knows what would happen, even before it happens. But that’s crazy. No one can predict the future. But then again, Bella reasons, vampires aren’t supposed to exist either. She’s not secure in any of her knowledge about the supernatural, and Bella is becoming more and more concerned with what Past-Bella had gotten herself caught up in.
Shaking her head, Rosalie mutters to herself, “Well-worded.”
“So she’s perfectly fine?” Edward asks, “Nothing happened to Bella?”
Rosalie whirls immediately back at Edward, “She has a head injury because of you!”
“But nothing permanent, right?”
“Eh,” Pixie-Cut shakes her head sheepishly, “I wouldn’t really say nothing..."
Edward’s face, although not noticeably affected, seems to take on an ashy pallor.
“What does she mean, Eddie?” Rosalie’s voice takes on a dangerous edge, “What. Does. Alice. Mean.”
Bella can’t keep it in anymore. Rosalie, Carlisle, Edward, Alice, all these people and Bella has no idea how she found herself in her current situation. “Who are you people?”
Before she knows it, fourteen golden eyes train themselves on Bella.