Twilight: The Lion Eats The Lamb

September 6, 2025

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With Twilight coming back into theatres, I thought it was the perfect time to finally write a Twilight fanfic of sorts. I've always thought that Charlie's perspective would be way more interesting than Bella's. Imagine it as a horror, the daughter being abducted by a random dude, the helpless father watching, helpless.

Anyways, here's a chapter in Charlie's perspective.

I wasn't much of anything to Bella, especially not once she passed the age of eight, although I tried my best. No one can say I didn't try.

My solitude only grew when Renee decided to uproot her life and move away. Then I saw Bella less and less.

She carried the same softness that Renee did, my Bells. The same kind of light in her eyes that made the world seem a little less cold. When I close my eyes, on the sofa, baseball game on in the background —when all of the world feels like a little too much— I can still hear the pattering of her feet upstairs. The soft hum of her voice as she played with her toys, her gentle squeal of delight.

It's not often I allow myself to think of my life before. It wasn't healthy, what Renee and I were, but it was fulfilling. To me, at least. Familiar. Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like had I said yes to her. Had I packed up and flown with her, away to the places she escaped to in her mind.

"If I don't get out now, I'll just be stuck here like Mom," Bella's voice clatters in my head.

I scrunch my eyes. The TV blares loudly. I shouldn't have let her go. I shouldn't have given her space. I should have said something. Anything.

The beer in my hand drips with condensation. I hold onto the coolness, allow it to drag me out of my head. That stupid boy she was with. This was his fault. The creepy one, the one with the swoosh of reddish hair and brooding face... I should have told her that he was a creep. I should have kept her from seeing him.

Now she's gone.

Renee's number sits still on my phone. I could call her. I should call her, in fact. Bella is a ghost. Bella is gone. Bella left the door. Panic bubbles into rage. How dare you tell her what happened like that? How did she know what you said to me? She said it to me, Renee. She said it to me.

No, I'm too angry to face her just yet. We'd just argue. Bella will call me when she reaches her. That's what she said she'd do. Bella will call.

Pride keeps my thumb from dialling. I take a swig of the beer. Another one. It tastes like nothing. It tastes like the click of the front door when she left. Renee. Bella. It tastes like my silence.

What could she have possibly seen in that boy? Edmund. Edward? Who cares. He was lanky and gaunt. With his bloodless complexion, he almost looked dead. He stared at my Bella with those piercing eyes, like he wanted to consume her, like he already owned her. I should've used the gun. Bella might've hated me, but at least she'd be... here.

The house feels scarily empty now that she's gone. A panicked twist of my stomach has me curling over. I slam the can against the living room table. My silence sticks to me like punishment. I deserve it. A thought settles strangely, illogically, inside of my chest. What if he's with her?

Silence sticks to my fingers like beer.

I think back to when she introduced me to him. She was already slipping away.

"Hey, Dad," she twisted her lips in that awkward smile of her. A mirror copy of me. A shame. I wanted her to be nothing like me. Hands digging into her pockets, she continued, "I have a date with Edward Cullen."

My heart nearly stopped. The Cullens? The creepy family with the pale white faces? Don't even get me started on the doctor; he was so pretentious and eerie. There was something weird about them all, although I could never pinpoint what. It was more of a feeling, an innate urge to run.

"He's a little old for ya, isn't he?" I tried to play it cool.

"No, uh, he's a junior. I'm a junior. I thought you liked the Cullens," her voice sounded nervous. I could feel her disappearing into her thoughts. Spiralling. Like me.

I don't, I thought to myself, but kept it locked in my head. She would've shut down if I said anything different.

Open lines of communication, that's what Renee wanted. "Talk to me, Charlie," she snapped all those years ago, "Just say what you need to say."

I never knew how to find the right words like her. I could never keep up.

"I thought you didn't like any of the boys in town," I countered instead.

Bella was quick with her response, "Edward doesn't live in town, technically. He's right outside."

What was that look in her eyes? I couldn't read it. There was so much of her that felt unfamiliar to me. So much of her that I couldn't quite recognize. I should've seen it. I should've told her to run. She was too much like her mother. There was too much of her that could be taken away.

"He is?"

"Yeah, he wanted to meet you, officially." She was picking at her nails, a habit she'd taken up from her mother. It made her look so flighty. So... fleeting.

"Alright," I cocked my gun. She cringed at the sound, as though I'd already embarrassed her. I wondered about all the years I missed. There was a gap that I didn't know how to reach over; she always felt a canyon away. I tried to stay calm, "bring him in."

She didn't look like she was excited. She looked stressed.

"Could you be nice? He is - he's important."

There wasn't really much to say. He was already here.

God, was he creepy. He came inside like he'd been in the house all of his life.

"Chief Swan? I wanted to formally introduce myself. I'm Edward Cullen." Who talked like that? I looked at Bells, but her eyes were glittering, and I knew that look. I had the same one when Renee crossed my path.

Shit.

The epiphany hit me hard and painful: my daughter had horrible taste in men.

She was already disappearing into him. I could see it. Edward continued with his strangely smooth voice to tell me that he was going to take her to play baseball, and I should've known it then that Bella wouldn't be the same. She fell into his shadow. He was eclipsing her merely with his presence. I felt that twist of panic, same as now, the pattering of my heartbeat, the strange knowingness that I felt when Renee glanced up at me that night.

"I'm not coming back," hung in the air between us, unspoken but undeniable.

And, she didn't.

The phone rings. It's Renee.

Dread weighs my arms down. I pick up on the third ring. I already know what I'm going to hear.

"Hello," I can barely muster up sound. It all comes out breathless, a half-whisper. Some part of me tears and rips away. My daughter is gone.

On the other end, Renee is sobbing hysterically.

"S-she's hurt, Charlie! The ambulance called me! Sh-she fell out of a window... W-Where were you? Huh? Wh-why'd you let her go?"

"Is she alive?" Renee's panic calms me down. I clutch the phone with both hands. It hurts that she didn't call me first. My Bella. My Bella who chose to stay with me.

"Yes, she's alive," Renee sounds enraged, as if she can't believe I dared ask her that. Mumbling in the background distracts her. Someone mentions broken leg. Renee asks about when we can see her. Maybe it's okay, I think desperately. Maybe now she's actually free from the clutches of her toxic new obsession. Renee comes back after a second, "The Cullens are with her in the hospital. They're the ones that found her."

The phone drops from my hands.

"Charlie," her voice buzzes loudly through the speaker, but I can barely hear her, "I think she's waking up. Get down here, okay? She's waking up so I'm going to go..."

I couldn't move even if I tried. The walls close in on me.

"Charlie, can you hear me? She's okay! She's awake!" Renee yells.

All I can see are Bella's blank eyes, and his flashing onyx ones, watching over her, biding his time. She's gone, I try to say the words aloud but no sound comes out. Why can't Renee see it? Devastation hits me like a wave. I slump over, suddenly exhausted.

"Charlie?"

"She's gone," I say bleakly into the room, knowing she won't hear me anyways. Renee is chattering animatedly with someone. I whisper, "We lost her. I lost her."

The line clicks shut and the buzz of the dial tone fills the air. My eyes water. The sofa swallows me up. If I'd just put my foot down and told her no, she would be here in the house. Fuming, but unharmed. If I'd just said something. Anything.

"I'm sorry," my voice cracks, but it's too late anyways.