Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Here’s the thing. I’m actually quite intelligent. Really, I am. I have an IQ of 168 and am a member of Mensa… Was a member of Mensa (I’ll get back to that). Did I excel in college? No. Because I was extremely lazy (the high school habits of a student who doesn’t need to study to get straight-A’s do not fair well in college). But I’ve always been extremely logical. So I should be forgiven that it took me nearly three days to realize that I was not only in the Twilight universe, but that I’d also body-snatched Bella Swan. Because what logical person would guess that as a first option and actually believe it?

I started out by thinking this was just a strange afterlife (I got stabbed to death- I don’t recommend it). Then I thought someone in the reincarnation division messed up, given that I was shoved into life in what looked to be a teenage body, rather than an infant. Then I snooped around and found mail (bills, mostly) addressed to Renee Dwyer. That name was familiar, but it didn’t set off alarm bells right away. Until I finally found my meat suit’s wallet and dug out an Arizona driver’s license with the name SWAN, ISABELLA (date of birth: September 13th, 1987).

Well, shit.

Here’s the deal. I wasn’t a huge fan of the Twilight series. I started reading the books out of curiosity, and finished them (the four original ones- I didn’t bother with the additional crap meant to ride the wave of the series’ popularity) because I couldn’t pull myself away (much like driving slowly by a fatal car crash site despite already being late for work). I honestly don’t know how I finished them, since the main characters (Bella and Edward, mostly) pissed me off. Not in the love-to-hate-them way, either. Bella’s lack of backbone and absolute obsession with her first boyfriend ever and Edward’s controlling nature just upset me, even when I was a teenager/barely adult. As I got older (I died at 32 years old in 2021- for reference, Breaking Dawn was published in 2008, I think), their dynamic reminded me of several highly co-dependent and abusive relationships that I’d seen. As I worked for a police department for several years (civilian staff, not an officer, and I still got fucking stabbed for it), I had seen a fair few. (And don’t get me started on the imprinting-on-children thing. That had “grooming” written all over it.) I watched the movies when they came out because I was certain they’d be terrible and I felt I could add to my list of B movies for when I needed something awful and mind-numbing to watch. Also, a friend of mine picked them for one of our rare movie nights and everyone else shot down my idea of an MCU marathon. Admittedly, I did read a few Twilight fanfictions in which Bella actually had a backbone (they were recommended by someone with similar tastes as me in the Harry Potter fandom), but I didn’t get through very many before I gave up. Maybe four. A few more crossovers with Harry Potter or The Vampire Diaries, but those focused either on HP characters or the TVD plotline. Not very helpful. (The Author’s Notes on one crossover were both informative and hilarious enough to be memorable, so those would probably actually be the most useful.)

Bottom line, I had a very vague idea of what was going to happen if this world followed the events of the series. I knew the most about the first two books/movies, since the fanfictions I’d read covered at least those and there were events that were similar enough between the stories that I could be relatively certain they came from the actual series (I have a good memory, but I’d only read the books through once, and they didn’t merit more than the bare minimum of brain space). I was pretty sure Bella moved to Forks in January in the books, and it was currently the beginning of June, so I had some time to figure things out before I encountered vampires. If I didn’t mess with shit, that is.

So, anyway, that was what went through my mind over and over again during my two-and-a-half-day freakout. After which, I realized that I hadn’t seen Renee once during that time. Small blessings, really. I could hide my emotions well enough that she might not realize I’d been freaking about something, but I didn’t know Bella’s mannerisms (other than being a doormat when it came to her boyfriend) well enough to imitate her. I was enlightened about Renee’s absence when I finally got around to logging into Bella’s computer. By “logged in,” I mean “moved the mouse,” since she didn’t have any password protection in place. I would want to berate her, but A: she wasn’t around for me to do so, and B: it was extremely useful. Turns out, the lack of security was entirely intentional, given what came up was a word document entitled “Hey, Bodysnatcher.”

Well, this wasn’t in the books.

--

Hey Bodysnatcher,

I wish I could tell you what’s going on, but I don’t have much of a clue other than someone’s going to be taking over my life soon. Fair enough… Sort of… I mean, I’m not really doing anything interesting with it, but it is my life. Or it was? I guess, if someone besides me is reading this, it’s not my life any longer.

Where do I start? I guess at the beginning.

Around Christmas, I started getting terrible migraines. They got so bad that the doctors ran me through an MRI and an EEG and had me see a neurologist. They didn’t find anything unusual other than some heightened brain activity. The dreams started in February. They weren’t nightmares, exactly, but they didn’t really lend themselves to a good night’s sleep, either. Some of them involved reading incredibly detailed police reports that did give me nightmares. Not to mention the whole pandemic thing. I eventually came to the conclusion that they were visions. Luckily, I was smart enough not to tell my mom that, otherwise she might have taken me to a shrink. Anyway, the visions. I’m pretty sure they were about your life, because they certainly weren’t about mine. You’re boring, by the way. Not quite as boring as I am, but boring none the less. Getting stabbed probably sucks, though. Sorry you had to go through that. 

If my visions were right, you woke up in my body the day after my mom left to travel a bit with Phil (her new husband). She’ll be gone until the end of June, so you have some time to get the hang of being me, if you want. If you don’t want to pretend to be me (I understand if you don’t; why would a 30-something-year-old want to be a boring teenager again?), this time gives you an opportunity to come up with a reason for the personality change. At the very least, I suggest you say you studied Math hardcore. From what I saw, you are much better at it than I am. By the way, who on earth pulls out old calculus textbooks and does problem sets to relax? Pull out an old textbook to set it on fire, maybe, but not actually use it. Our reading tastes are different, too. I never got into sci-fi/fantasy, and I never saw you touch a classic, so you might have some explaining to do there. Our music preferences are different, too (hip-hop and club music, really?), so have fun with that.

Mom might take you in to see a neurologist again if you come across as too different. She’s not the most observant person, but she knows her daughter well enough to notice such a large change in personality. If that happens, hopefully there isn’t much of a change in the scans.

I’ve been doing what I can to withdraw a bit from my life. I only have very casual friendships, anyway, so it wasn’t really difficult to cut ties with them. So, you shouldn’t have to deal with too much “hey, remember that time…” The migraines have given me a reason to stay shut up in my room, too, so even Mom hasn’t seen much of me the past few months. I’ve also pretty much been home-schooling this last semester. I paid a classmate to take notes for me, and the teachers pretty much just sent my assignments home when I couldn’t go to class and Mom dropped them off almost every day for me. There wasn’t much of a dip in my grades, so either I chose an excellent note-taker or the American educational system is as deficient as a lot of critics claim. Bottom line, nobody has seen much of me since January.

After mom gets back, you two will start arranging your two weeks in California with Charlie (that’s my dad). That will probably happen in the beginning of August. I used to go visit him in Forks (yes, I know, stupid name) for a month in the summer, but I hate it there and put my foot down when I was 14 and he agreed to a sunny getaway the last couple years, instead.

There are a few documents on my computer that you should read through. Stuff about my life that you should definitely know if you don’t want my mom to start joking about body snatchers, mostly. The top right drawer on my desk has a list of all my passwords, my passport, social security card, birth certificate, and other important documents. I have my social security number memorized, so you might want to do the same just in case you need it. Mom would definitely notice if you start pulling out the card. She’s commented before on how I had mine memorized by the age of twelve when she could never do the same. I got a copy of my school transcript, too, so you have an idea of where you’re supposed to be educationally when school starts up again (sorry about having to go back). There are a few labeled pictures of the people you’re most likely to encounter, so you’ll know their names when you see them, at least.

I guess I’m trying to make this easier on you. I’m not really sure why. I got over being angry that someone was taking over my life, but I’m still not happy about it. (If I were petty, I’d hope that you got stuck with the migraines.) Maybe I just don’t want Charlie and my mom to realize that they technically lost their daughter? I don’t know. Maybe it’ll be a pay-it-forward situation and I’ll take over someone else’s life in turn. I guess I’ll find out.

Take care of my body, will you? From what I saw, you’re bad at that. You have a blank slate now, much less work to do to stay in shape. Eat a vegetable now and then. Sorry about the clumsiness, though. Then again, maybe that was just because I never felt right in my own body. Huh. Maybe I was always meant to leave it for someone else.

Goodbye and good luck.

--

I deleted the note as soon as I read it, then cleaned out the trash. It wasn’t as good as a secure deletion program, but it seemed unlikely that someone would go through a 16-year-old’s computer looking for secrets, anyway. I then repeated the process with the other couple of documents. After perusing the stuff in the drawers, I promptly changed all the passwords and the bank PIN (how the hell did she have $5000 in the bank? She didn’t even have a job! Right, no student loans to pay off yet. Still, it seemed excessive). I set the photos out on the desk so I could look them over several times and hopefully fix the faces in my mind. I’ve always been bad with names and faces. The social security number was easy enough to memorize (I’ve always been good with numbers). I looked back through a few of Bella’s old email exchanges, but they were all very generic. No personal information in them, at all.

After searching the rest of the desk (and setting aside a folder of old essays to look through later- they could be helpful), I sat down with a notebook and started making a plan. Was I going to write it in code? No. Was I going to write it in Arabic? Yes, yes I was. Did I speak Arabic? Sort of. I could read and write it very well, but my listening comprehension wasn’t great (unless I was conversing with someone kind enough to speak slowly), and my pronunciation was terrible. I could have used Spanish (I was actually fluent in that- at least Bella took a couple years worth in high school to sort of explain that away), but I wasn’t sure if Renee knew it at all. The likelihood of her knowing Arabic was minimal.

So, the plan (in no particular order):

1. Convince Renee and Charlie to let me move to Forks for the start of Junior year, rather than in the middle. Charlie would be slightly less likely than Renee to notice any discrepancies in personality and preferences. Or, at least, he would probably be less likely to comment on them. I would encounter the vampires sooner, but I had a plan for staying away from Edward (see #3). The best option would be a boarding school, but Bella’s notes made it apparent that was a financial impossibility for both parents.

1a. Do the convincing before plans are set for the California vacation. It was selfish of Bella to make Charlie take time off of work and spend money on a two-week trip just because she didn’t like his town.

2. Come up with an excuse for “foggy” memories. Current idea: “I had the worst migraine ever! They finally stopped completely, but I just can’t remember some things right.” It would definitely get me a trip to a neurologist to check for brain damage, but it was something I could run with.

3. Convince the parentals to let me skip at least one grade. It would take me out of Junior classes with Edward and get me out of the hell that is high school a little bit faster.

4. Replace Bella’s wardrobe. Bella’s tastes were very simple, which I preferred over frills and revealing stuff, but I definitely would miss my geeky graphic tees. Besides, I would need warmer clothes in Washington. And an umbrella.

5. Buy books and audio primers on Arabic and Spanish to help explain proficiency.

6. Look into getting a car before Charlie can buy The Beast. That $5000 would come in handy. I was back in 2004. I could probably get a secondhand mid-90s SUV for maybe half that. More research required.

7. Invest in Amazon. It was about $50 a share right now, and in my world, it was at nearly $3,400 when I died in 2021. Even if I only bought 40 shares now, if I kept reinvesting the dividends, it would add up.

8. Sign up for a martial arts class. Or two. The activity would help me get used to my new body (I wasn’t as clumsy as Bella had been portrayed as, giving some credence to her theory, but I wasn’t comfortable yet, either), and I would feel more confident if I could somewhat protect myself (unlike my 32-year-old self, I wasn’t going to be allowed to walk around carrying a concealed firearm. I rarely had, hence the getting stabbed, but at least I had the option). Plus, Bella’s body was even weaker than my former overweight-and-lazy body had been. Martial arts were an excellent way to build muscle and endurance. I took a Judo class one semester in college (I had to quit due to an injury that never healed right), and it was one of the most satisfying things I had ever done.

9. Figure out if I was in the book-verse, movie-verse, or a mixture of the two. I was leaning towards book-verse or mixture, since I didn’t look like Kristen Stewart, but I couldn’t be positive.

I could take care of #3-6 (though maybe not the actual “buying the car” part of 6) and maybe #8 & #9 before Renee got back from her trip, but the others would require a non-phone conversation with her. I was probably going to ask for Phil’s help with #7, actually. I figured even if he didn’t already play the stock market, asking for his help with something important would be a good bonding exercise. According to Bella’s notes, they weren’t very close. He might be married to her mom, but he was too young to really be a father figure, and trying to act as friends was just awkward. I would definitely ask for his help with #6. Even if he knew nothing about cars, a man was much less likely to get screwed over on price than a teenage girl.

I would have written down “find out if I have Bella’s mind shield” as #10, but I had literally no way to test that until I came into contact with Edward. I was hoping for the best because I didn’t really have a way to prepare for the worst. If the likely upcoming brain scans didn’t show much difference from Bella’s previous ones, I was going to breathe more easily. I might put down “convince Charlie to teach me to shoot a gun” as #10. I don’t know if Bella has had any sort of lessons in that, but I was a decent marksman in my previous life. Depending on my new hand-eye coordination, I was hoping that hadn’t changed.

--

By the time I had been in this world for a week, I had bought several Arabic and Spanish books and left them placed strategically about the house for Renee to stumble over, replaced most of Bella’s clothes (resale shops for the win!), found a 1998 Ford Explorer for sale by a private party for $1500 (not terrible for a 6 year old car, as long as it ran properly), and researched martial arts classes in both Phoenix and Port Angeles (Forks, as expected, had none- at least that were advertised online). If I bought that car, I would be cutting Bella’s (now my) savings in almost half, but I could get a part-time job either in Phoenix or Forks. That was just the general savings, anyway. I now had a shiny new 529 account for college savings, which had about $10,000 in it. Enough for at least two years at a state school (with residency or WUE), probably. I did a little math. Minimum wage in Washington at the time was $7.16 (beating out Arizona’s $5.15 by a fair bit. Thank you, Google). 16 hours a week for two years would put me at around $9,500 after taxes. I would be out between $25 and $50 a week in gas (no matter how cheap it was right now compared to when and where I came from), depending on whether I could find a job in Forks or had to go to Port Angeles, cutting that $9,500 by up to half. That sucked majorly, but that was still about a year’s worth of tuition. So, I was probably set for about three years of college if I lived cheap, even if I didn’t qualify for scholarships (I didn’t want to dig myself in deep with student loan debt again- I had still been paying it off when I died). And I never really did need much in the way of material things. 

Week two was spent coming up with persuasive arguments to get Charlie and Renee to let me test out of junior year. It was going to be difficult. Bella was about a B average student, according to her transcripts. That wasn’t bad, but it also didn’t exactly scream “I’m not being challenged! Move me up a grade!” If I got them to let me transfer to Forks High, though, I could possibly insist on “placement tests.” After all, there could be vast curriculum differences between schools even in adjacent cities. There was no telling how different the classes might be in completely different states. Yeah, that was probably the best way to phrase it. I would need to study hard to get my History knowledge up to spec (I never did like the subject), and I would definitely be reviewing Bella’s English essays (again, not a subject I was fond of), but I was certainly set for Math, the hard sciences, and Spanish. Thus, the rest of week two was dedicated to reading through extremely boring textbooks and essays (it seemed either Bella or Renee was a bit of a hoarder; I found textbooks and essays going back through Bella’s eighth grade).

I was a little concerned that Forks wouldn’t let me skip junior year. It wasn’t common to skip a grade in high school simply because they required a minimum amount of credits to graduate (plus, high intelligence was usually already apparent in younger kids and the grade-skipping happened then). If I got pushback on just testing out of the credits, I was going to float the idea of moving me into senior year, then using what would have been my senior year to take dual credits at U-Dub. It would keep me away from Edward Cullen and give me a head start on my college courses. Win-win! I made sure to print out informational packets and the paperwork needed to take college courses for high school credit so I could shove it in the principal’s face (politely, of course) if they decided to be difficult.

Week three was more studying, plus a more concerted attempt to get used to my new body. I wasn’t as clumsy as Bella had been, but being three inches shorter (a measly 5’7”!) and about 120 pounds lighter made for an interesting adjustment period. Renee had a few yoga DVDs (at least, I assumed they were Renee’s), and I ran through each of them at least once. Jogging became a thing, too. My new body didn’t have the best endurance, though, so I was usually left gasping for air after just a couple of blocks. Something to work on. I was going to honor Bella’s request to take care of her body. Okay, so it was mostly selfish- I had been overweight to some degree from the age of four in my previous life. I was going to make the most of this.

The last week before Renee returned was spent lazing around a bit, with a little more studying thrown in for good measure. I had spoken with the woman on the phone twice a week since I woke up in this world, and it was easy to tell from those conversations that she was more than happy to be on the road with her hubby. I didn’t anticipate much pushback in convincing her to let me move to Forks so she could have some newlywed time. She made sure I (well, Bella) was safe, secure, and not in need of anything, but she didn’t express much interest in what I was doing with my time. 

The day before Renee was due back, I had a conversation with Charlie, who was rather surprised to hear from his daughter. That kind of made me mad at Bella. There was no reason for her to ignore her dad. He wasn’t a bad man, and the main reason he wasn’t a larger part of her life was because she didn’t really allow it.

“Hey, Dad. I was thinking… Well, I needed to talk to you about it before I bring it up to Mom, because if you don’t agree, then there’s no point, really-”

“Whatever it is Bells, just ask.”

“Well, I was thinking I could finish high school in Forks, actually.”

There was dead silence on the other end for a solid 44 seconds (I counted).

“You want to finish school…”

“In Forks, yeah.”

“What brought this on?” I could tell he was holding back his hope.

“Well, part of it is I realized that Mom would be a lot happier if she could be on the road with Phil. But, mostly I just realized that I haven’t spent much time with you.” I could hear him take a deep breath, probably preparing to say something. “And that’s entirely on me!” I rushed to add. “I can’t turn back time and fix that, but I can try better from now on.”

“Is there any other reason?”

“Well… You know about my migraines, right?”

“Of course. Are they getting worse? Did they find out something?”

“Calm down, Dad. I had a really bad one about a week ago. The worst one yet, actually. I haven’t had another since then, but when it cleared, everything felt off. Like different things matter now. I don’t even like some of the same foods anymore. And I actually like math now. And I think it would be really helpful to be somewhere different while I figure out what all has changed.” I cringed. I definitely didn’t phrase that properly. He was probably going to panic.

“Have you told your mom about that?” Huh, only a mildly panicking tone.

“I’m going to tell her when she gets back. I’m sure she’ll want me to go in for tests again, and I know she’ll want to be with me for those.”

“Okay. Let me know what they say.”

“I will.”

“And I’ll look into what would need to be done to get you transferred to Forks for your junior year.”

“Really?”

“Now, I won’t promise anything, because this is up to your mom, too, but I’d be more than happy to have you here.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

Chapter Text

I was absolutely right about Renee’s reaction to my “I had a horrible migraine and now everything’s different” plan. After I casually dropped that into conversation the day after she got back, I was treated to a torrent of “why didn’t you call me immediately?” and “we need to go to the hospital right away! Where are my keys?”

I managed to convince her to make an appointment with the neurologist, rather than a trip to the ER, on the grounds that I hadn’t hit my head or anything and they’d probably just refer me to my current doctors, anyway.

A week later, I had shiny new brain scans that were identical to Bella’s (there was hope yet for her mind shield still being in place) and a neurologist scratching his head about my apparent personality change and memory “fogginess”. I was so far faking well enough that it didn’t come off as complete memory loss, but I was definitely “forgetting” some key things. 

The day after my scans came back normal, I brought up my plan to move to Forks.

“What? Why?”

“Well, honestly, I think with all the changes, I might need a fresh start. Plus, this way, you can spend some newlywed time with Phil without me getting in the way.”

“Oh, honey, you’re not in the way.”

I just shrugged. I definitely was. She spent hours on the phone with Phil each night, whereas our twice-a-week conversations when she was gone lasted maybe twenty minutes. She was ready to be an empty-nester.

“I’d also like to spend some time with Dad before I go off to college. I haven’t really been fair to him.”

Renee was flabbergasted at that. Absolutely befuddled, really. She apparently didn’t see a problem with Bella only seeing her father a couple of weeks out of the year.

“Dad said it’s okay, as long as you agree.”

“You talked to Charlie about this already?”

“Yeah, he said he’d look into what it would take for me to transfer schools, in case you said ‘yes.’”

“I’m not sure how I feel about you moving away, Bella. I mean, your doctors are here. What if the migraines come back? Or your memory gets worse?”

“They have a hospital there, and Seattle is close enough for a day trip if they need me to see a specialist they don’t have on staff.”

“It sounds like you’ve really thought this through… How long have you been thinking about it?”

“Just a couple of weeks. After that bad migraine, really, once I realized I was… different.”

Renee sighed.

“I’ll think about it.”

“Okay, but I’d like to move at the beginning of August, if this is going to happen.”

“That’s three weeks away!”

“I’ll need the time to settle in,” I pointed out calmly.

She sighed again, nodding her head.

“Is there anything else?”

“Well… does Phil know anything about the stock market? Or cars?”

Renee raised her eyebrows.

--

As it turns out, Phil did not know anything about cars, and wouldn’t be in town before August to be my buying-buffer, anyway. Renee, however, knew enough to suggest (insist on) taking it to a mechanic before even thinking about paying for it, and then was able to beat the seller down on the price a bit. Which is how, by mid-July, I was the happy owner of a decent SUV, only using $1200 of my savings. The car would come in handy when it came to getting around in Forks. Oh, that’s right, Renee agreed to me moving. It had taken some more convincing than I expected (she was mostly reluctant because of my supposed brain issues), but Charlie and I had worn her down.

When I floated the idea of investing some of my savings, she hemmed and hawed before finally setting me up with a stock broker under the condition that I held back half of my savings in the traditional account (she was a risk taker, but she wasn’t stupid enough to let her 16-year-old daughter risk all of her money). That worked for me. I had to be quite assertive with the broker to get him to invest all $1600 in Amazon. (Yes, I realize diversifying is a good idea, and I will definitely do that in the future, but I have a really good feeling about Amazon. It’s going places.) I’m pretty sure he was muttering about kids who thought they knew everything when I was walking out of his office, but he did what I wanted, so I wasn’t going to take him to task for it.

I set out for Forks on August 5th (a Friday). With close to 1600 miles of road in front of me, I would be able to make it by Sunday evening, at the very latest. I had to get a cell phone (no big deal- I wanted one, anyway) and promise to call both Renee and Charlie twice a day. They really were trusting parents with an astounding amount of confidence in their teenage daughter. I was extremely surprised that Renee didn’t insist on driving with me and flying back. She had mentioned the idea, but I gently talked her out of it. I didn’t need to be in such close quarters with Bella’s mother for up to three days. Especially not when I planned to be blaring hip-hop and dance music most of the drive.

After putting down the back seats, Renee helped me load up the Explorer. I left behind almost all my books (excepting the language ones that I fully planned for Charlie to stumble across), which had thrown her off until I reminded her that my reading tastes had changed. Truth be told, almost all of Bella’s possessions were left behind. I did, however, bring all of my new clothes. I would still need to buy some warmer clothes to match Washington’s weather, but I would be able to make do with a few sweatshirts and a winter jacket.

After a tearful (on her side) goodbye with Renee and a quick call to Charlie to let him know I was heading out, I set a reminder on my phone to call the parentals in the evening and popped a newly made mix CD into the player before pulling out of the driveway. With a last wave at Renee, I pulled onto the road. As the house finally disappeared from view after a few blocks and a turn, I let out a sigh of relief. No more constant pretending for Renee’s sake.

I had been in constant communication with Charlie about the move and transferring schools. I luckily talked him out of decorating the room or buying a computer (I wasn’t terribly fond of purple and I had picked up a laptop on clearance), but it took some convincing for him to agree to push the school on having me do placement tests. I made out like I was worried I’d be behind in some subjects due to basically homeschooling for my last semester (“I guess I’m just worried that I passed because of pity grades.), or that the curriculum would be too different from what Phoenix had. I already knew that the order in which they took classes was a little different. Forks, being a smaller school, was much more structured, whereas Phoenix was a little closer to a college, allowing students to mix up their class order as long as they met the prerequisites and final graduation requirements. Not to mention the much smaller selection of electives in Forks. Man, high school was going to be even more boring the second time around. Maybe I should have stuck it out in Phoenix… Nah. Too late now, anyway.

I made a quick stop at a Target in Port Angeles to pick up a comforter for my bed, then Barnes and Noble for the Firefly box set and the first three books of the A Song of Ice and Fire series (if I remembered right, the next wouldn’t be published until sometime in 2005). I was going to ease Charlie into my “new” like of sci-fi and fantasy. I was going to blame a librarian in Phoenix for my interest in the mature subject matter of the book series. Not entirely inaccurate, as she had gushed about it after I mentioned I was looking for gory fantasy. I was probably going to pick up The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings at some point, too. I had never gotten around to reading them in my first life, but they had always been recommended to me. Plus, they could easily be considered classics of the genre. Yeah, I probably should have started with them. Oh well. 

I also stopped by the DMV and set the process in motion for getting my driver’s license changed from Arizona to Washington (I was going to have to come back with proof of residency, which meant a parent and their proof of residency, given that I wouldn’t have any utility bills or residence rental agreements in my name). Yeah, I was going whole-hog with this move. I had already gotten the temporary registration for my car through Washington state, using Charlie’s (now my) address. That had been another argument with Renee, who wasn’t happy to see the indication that I wasn’t planning on moving back to Phoenix any time soon. Truly, I think she was just distressed that I expected to be happy living with Charlie. Not that she wanted me to be unhappy; she just couldn’t understand how I could be happy in such a different environment, especially when it had made her miserable.

The relatively short drive from Port Angeles to Forks was spent trying to come up with a reason that I was learning Arabic. Renee had brushed it off, having eccentricities of her own, but there really wasn’t a logical explanation I could give Charlie. He might not comment on it, but he would wonder, and any lie I told (I thought about saying I had a classmate who spoke it) he might try to confirm with Renee, which was a no-go. No, I was going to have to just shrug and blame it on the migraines. Damn, I was going to have to depend on that excuse for a lot. Which sucked, since it made absolutely no sense.

My arrival in Forks was met with dreaded curiosity. The clerk at the gas station where I stopped to top off my tank had peered at me almost suspiciously. Apparently she didn’t trust newcomers. Too damn bad. I was here to stay. For a year or two, at least, depending on how my plan to skip a grade went.

Charlie came out of the house just a minute after I pulled into the driveway next to his cruiser. Given that I had called him from Port Angeles to let him know I wasn’t too far out, I wasn’t surprised that he had been listening for the car.

“Hi, Bells,” he greeted me awkwardly.

“Hi, Dad,” I replied simply, going in for a short hug (which surprised him… Damn that Bella).

“How was the drive?” He pulled one of my many duffel bags out of the back.

“Relaxing, actually,” I told him, grabbing a couple bags of my own. I managed to follow him up to my new room (I certainly couldn’t admit that I didn’t know where it was without causing worry over my memory problems), though I needn’t have bothered. The smell of fresh paint would have drawn me right to it. Apparently Charlie had repainted the walls white.

“I know you want to decorate yourself, and if you want a different color, we can do that. I just thought you’d like a fresh slate,” Charlie told me, still somewhat awkward.

“No, this is great, Dad. Thanks.” 

He nodded.

“Well, I’ll let you get settled in. I was thinking of ordering pizza for dinner, if that sounds okay.”

I smiled. “Sounds great.” I definitely wasn’t going to be up for cooking tonight, and if the books were right, he wasn’t much of a cook himself (except for fish… which I hate).

I made another couple of trips between my car and the room and then settled in to unpack, only interrupted once by Charlie when he asked me what kind of pizza I wanted. I had gotten most of my clothes unpacked and my few books put on the shelves by the time he called me down for dinner. Which meant I was about to be under something resembling scrutiny.

Showtime.

Chapter Text

Dinner started out awkward. Charlie clearly didn’t know how to interact with his teenage daughter. Which was fine, because I didn’t really remember how to be a teenager. Hell, I hated teenagers even when I actually was one in my first life. I had pretty much decided that I was going to be as independent as possible without undermining Charlie’s authority as a parent.

“Have they set a date for my placement tests?” I asked once we’d each polished off a slice of pizza.

“They agreed to do them Wednesday and Thursday. Maybe Friday, if you need to go over more than the Sophomore classes,” Charlie replied. I just nodded and grabbed another slice.

“Do you know if anywhere is hiring for part-time?” I questioned. He raised his eyebrows at me.

“You’re looking for a job already?”

I shrugged.

“Yeah. Probably just weekends. I’ll need gas money, and I figure I can put some towards my college fund, too.”

He scrutinized me for a solid minute. He had his cop face on, so I didn’t have even a guess as to what he was thinking.

“I don’t think anyone in Forks is hiring right now, but Port Angeles might have something if you’re willing to make the commute.” He continued to study me as he took another bite of his pizza. “You might want to wait until you know where you’re at with your classes, though.”

I conceded his point. I didn’t anticipate too much trouble keeping up with a high school curriculum- not when I’d graduated college in my first life- but it was only good sense to wait until I knew how sadistic the teachers were when it came to homework load. 

By the time we’d almost finished off the pizza, Charlie had adopted an uncomfortable look.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Renee had your medical files transferred to Forks Hospital. She made an appointment for you for Tuesday afternoon,” he reluctantly told me. I could now understand his discomfort. While he worried about my supposed brain issues like any good parent, he was a lot more accepting of my previous neurologist’s determination that I wasn’t in any danger than Renee, who was convinced I was going to drop dead of a sudden aneurism or something. 

I just wrinkled my nose and sighed before nodding. While I was annoyed at Renee’s interfering high-handedness, I wasn’t going to take it out on Charlie.

“What time is it for?”

“2:30,” Charlie answered, the faintest tone of surprise in his voice, probably that I wasn’t arguing about it. I hadn’t exactly let my dislike of the multitude of doctor’s appointments I’d had over the past few weeks go unknown. “It’s not with a neurologist- the closest specialist is in Seattle- but Dr. Cullen is a great doctor, from what I’ve heard,” he continued.

I did my best not to stiffen. Fuck. I really hadn’t anticipated running into vampires even before school started. At least it wasn’t Edward.

“Well, hopefully, after the meet-and-greet, I won’t have much need to see him,” I said as casually as possible.

“I don’t know, Bella, you are pretty disaster-prone,” Charlie said with a small chuckle.

“Hey! I’ve been getting better!” I put on an obviously fake look of offense. “That reminds me, though. I’ve been thinking about starting martial arts.” Charlie looked extremely surprised. “I figured it would help with my balance,” I explained. “I’ve been trying yoga, but, well… it’s really boring,” I admitted, to his amusement.

“Well, you’ll definitely have to go to Port Angeles for that,” he told me. I just nodded. I had figured as much. “Do you know what kind you want to go for?”

“Judo, maybe, or something similar. I’ve read it’s a bit better for going up against larger opponents than something more striking-based.”

“I think one of my officers mentioned going to a dojo. I can ask her, if you’d like.”

“That’d be great, Dad, thanks.” I directed a big smile his way.

--

I’d had to convince Charlie that he didn’t need to take time off to help me “get settled.” It wasn’t overly hard to do, but getting him to not feel guilty about it was a little tricky. I figured he was worried he was neglecting me or something, but I made it clear that I was happy to find my way around town with the very basic map he’d given me. 

“Honestly, I’ll learn where everything is better if I have to find my own way,” I pointed out. “And if I get lost, I’m sure someone will be able to point me in the direction of the station at least, if not home.”

I spent the morning finishing up organizing my room, then the afternoon exploring the tiny town. I managed to not get lost, which was actually an achievement for me (I’ve never had the best sense of direction), but maybe that wasn’t so surprising when almost everything was off of the one street.

I drove by the school to see if it was comprised of multiple small buildings, like in the books, or one larger building, like I thought it was in the movies. So far, all signs pointed to a mixture of book- and movie-verse, given that the high school was exactly two buildings. One was labeled very simply with “Gymnasium”, so I assumed all of the classrooms and the cafeteria were housed in the other, larger building. 

Charlie provided me with the phone number for Port Angeles Dojo after he got off work (I loved the simplicity of the name), along with an offer from the officer to take me with her on Friday evening when she went to her usual class. It was my first real encounter with the fabled small-town-friendliness (or maybe she was just trying to get in good with her boss). I decided to take her up on it. I’d only be able to observe (the beginner’s class was on Tuesday and Saturday evenings, apparently), but it would give me a feel for the place.

I let Charlie “catch” me studying my Arabic books. He didn’t seem terribly surprised, so either he was hiding it well or Renee had mentioned it to him. He didn’t even ask why I was learning it (a good thing, as I still hadn’t come up with a believable story), just asked how I was progressing. After I admitted that my verbal comprehension was pretty awful, but my reading and writing were decent, he didn’t say anything more about it.

--

Tuesday brought the dreaded doctor’s appointment. It went well enough, I suppose. Dr. Cullen was friendly and professional. He had a very calm presence, which I was sure his patients appreciated. I didn’t see the otherworldly beauty that book-Bella went on about, though. Yes, he was handsome, and his gold eyes were actually pretty cool, but he wasn’t even the most attractive person I’d ever seen. (That label was reserved for Gal Gadot, Sebastian Stan, and Anthony Mackie… Yes, I liked superhero movies. Don’t judge me… Damn, those better exist in this universe.)

Anyways, Dr. Cullen didn’t even subject me to more brain scans. He did some basic cognitive tests and asked me some questions based on my medical files (it was a good thing I’d managed to peek at those, or I wouldn’t know how to answer most of them). He agreed with the neurologist that he didn’t think I was in immediate brain-based danger, but said I should make an appointment immediately if my migraines came back or I experienced any sort of disorientation or cognitive difficulties. He seemed a bit stumped by my admitted memory issues, though, and I could only hope he wasn’t curious enough about them to look into it any further than he already had. I didn’t need to be under a vampire’s figurative microscope (well, anyone’s microscope, really, but the whole predator thing took it to another level).

Charlie and Renee were both happy that my appointment went well, though I got the impression that Renee wasn’t too thrilled to not get more answers about my “brain issues.” Too bad. Barring a mind-reading vampire actually being able to read my mind, that particular secret was never getting out.

--

Wednesday and Thursday were boring. I took my placement tests, which was basically taking a pared-down version of every Sophomore-year test (followed up by the Junior-year tests when I aced the first batch). I spent a good three hours with the guidance counselor and principal on Friday morning, talking through my options. They weren’t keen on letting me test out of a full year of credits, but they were somewhat amenable to having me move to Senior year classes and then using my last year for dual credits (I had made sure to bring my very informative folder with me). Why that took three hours? I don’t really know. We went in circles for ages until they realized that I wasn’t, in fact, going to just bend to the administration’s will and hold myself back for their convenience. 

Friday evening was spent in Port Angeles at the dojo with Officer Baum (“you can call me Anna when I’m not in uniform”). It seemed like it’d be a good fit, though I thought I might add Japanese to my language-learning rotation, just for funsies. Even better, the dojo was a not-for-profit and the monthly fee for a high school student was only $20 ($30 for a college student and $40 otherwise), so even if I didn’t get a job right away, I’d easily be able to afford it. I grabbed the paperwork that I’d need Charlie to sign for permission (damn, I hate being a minor again) and put in an order for a gi. If all went as expected, I’d be back on Tuesday for my first class.

Anna consented to stopping at Barnes and Noble before we headed back to Forks, and seemed very amused when I bought a beginner’s Japanese primer. I picked up a job application while I was there, too, just in case, even if it’s be over a month before I actually applied.

I learned a bit more about Anna during the drive back. Specifically, I learned that she adored Charlie. Not in a romantic way, and not quite in a fatherly way, but he’d been the only chief to take a chance on a young female officer of the dozen places she’d applied after she was a fully certified peace officer. Nevermind that she had an associate’s degree in Law Enforcement and had graduated at the top of her class at the police academy, the misogynistic pricks in the state of Washington didn’t want to hire a woman with no practical experience (nevermind the plethora of 18 year old boys with a GED that got hired). She planned on staying in Forks for another few years, at least until she had ten years on the job, then she was thinking about applying to a larger city, like Seattle. Her end goal was to be a detective, though she wasn’t sure yet if she wanted to go for homicide or sex crimes. Possibly a stint in each, since the burnout for both (particularly sex crimes) was pretty high.

Honestly, Anna was kind of badass. Not just her physical fighting skills (and I learned she had black belts in three disciplines- judo, tae kwon do, and Krav Maga), but her mental fortitude was astonishing. She had encountered roadblocks at just about every stage of her education and career, but she either found a way around them or just smashed on through.

I managed to wrangle marksmanship lessons out of her (pending Chief Swan’s approval), which was a major win in my book. I thought if I had met her in my previous life, we probably could have been great friends. As it was, I was a 16 year old with no perceived life experience and she was a 24 year old cop, so the best I could probably hope for was a mentor relationship.

It was nearly 10:30 by the time Anna dropped me off at home. Luckily, Charlie trusted his officer enough that he hadn’t really given me a curfew. (I had been informed I would have a 9:00 curfew on school nights and 10:00 otherwise. A bit galling for my 32-year-old self, but probably understandable for the teenage daughter of a police chief. My parents in my previous life had just been thrilled when I was actually invited to do stuff, so I never actually had a curfew then… Just a “call us if you can’t drive” requirement.)

Chapter Text

Charlie brought me down to the reservation with him on Saturday to “re”-meet Billy and Jacob Black. It was awkward. They had obviously been told about my memory issues, and Billy seemed pretty understanding when I admitted that I didn’t really remember him, but Jacob was dejected. And, hoo boy, I was going to have to nip that crush in the bud quickly. The kid (and he was a kid- at most 14 years old) was already following me around like a puppy begging for scraps. Seriously? This boy hadn’t seen Bella in so long that she barely remembered him even without “brain issues” in the books. When did he find time to gain a crush? Good news was, unlike Bella, I had absolutely no problems shutting him down. Nope, none of that soft letdown bullshit is going to be heading his way. There is a time and a place for it, and he definitely comes across as a kid that won’t take even a direct hint if it’s even slightly vague or lending towards hope. There would be nothing approaching ambiguity in how I handled this. Not to mention, I definitely wouldn’t be flirting with him for information on the Cullens.

However, since his interest so far was only shown in the form of puppy eyes, a dopey grin, and telling body language, I couldn’t really justify crushing his dreams just yet without coming across as a total bitch to his dad (not that I really cared what Billy thought of me, but I didn’t want to be the reason for any sort of strain on Charlie’s friendship with him). By Charlie’s and Billy’s badly hidden grins at Jacob’s behavior, though, they’d noticed it. Guess I’d start off my obvious disinterest by explaining that the kid made me uncomfortable if Charlie ever brought it up.

We ended up at a cookout on the beach that evening, which is where I was introduced in passing to the wolves and future wolves. And, boy, the ones who were probably already shifters were tall. 

Sigh. I missed being tall. I mean, I was never upwards of six feet (or 6’5” like I was sure Sam Uley was), but even just being 5’10” as a woman had had its advantages. Being a perfectly average 5’7” was annoying. It was a hangup I’d have to get over eventually, but I could allow myself to be petty about it for a little while longer.

“Sighing over Uley?” Jacob asked, disgruntled, though he tried to come across as teasing. “Hate to break it to you, but he’s got a girlfriend.”

I shook my head, though I privately wondered if Sam was still with Leah or if he was already with Emily. I was almost certain he had shifted by this point, but I didn’t know if he’d already imprinted yet.

“Just wishing I was taller,” I told Jacob honestly. He snorted and shook his head.

To Jacob’s dismay, I spent more time with Leah than with him. Leah was closer to my own perceived age (about a year older) and a hilarious kind of bitchy. Judging by her slightly sad- but not yet angry and bitter- demeanor, either she and Sam were still together but having problems, or they’d split but he wasn’t yet obviously with her cousin. I wished I could warn her about what was coming, but 1: I didn’t have any explanation for my foreknowledge, and 2: she almost certainly wouldn’t believe me anyway. I settled for exchanging phone numbers with her and telling her to call me if she ever wanted a break from all the testosterone, an offer that was met with a smirk.

Charlie did, in fact, try to tease me about Jacob on our drive back, which greatly surprised me. It was a big difference from his usual quiet self.

“Honestly, he made me uncomfortable,” I told Charlie, going so far as to shift awkwardly in my seat to really get my point across. Just like that, he went from teasing dad to protective dad.

“What did he do?”

“Nothing overt. He just followed me around and sort of attached himself to me. Acted jealous when I was spending time with Leah. Even if he wasn’t a lot younger than me, it’s not really the kind of behavior that I would tolerate in a partner. Or even a friend, really.” I felt kind of bad about that. I knew Charlie wanted me to get along with his best friend’s kid, but it was true. Jacob had no right to be possessive of my time. No one did, really, but he and I weren’t friends, and certainly weren’t romantically attached, so he had absolutely no claim on my attention whatsoever. If he continued acting like I owed him something for his interest, I was going to ask Charlie for pepper spray.

The rest of the drive home was spent in contemplative silence on Charlie’s part and peaceful quiet on mine.

--

The next few weeks were pretty low-key. Charlie worked quite a bit, which I had expected. (The chief at the station where I worked in my previous life had been known to do 12-hour shifts five days a week. While I knew Charlie only supervised a handful of officers, and not hundreds, I also knew that he usually also worked as a beat cop in addition to his chiefly duties, as was the way in small towns. As it was, he tried to limit himself to 10-hour shifts.) Despite his heavy schedule, he still tried to make time to get to know his daughter again. I happily convinced him to watch Firefly with me. As depressingly short as the series was, it only took a week and a half. He seemed to enjoy it. I couldn’t wait until Serenity was released.

Renee was more attentive now that I had supervision than she had been when she’d left her daughter alone for a month, requiring thrice-weekly calls and making the occasional surprise call between. Not that I ever said much. I didn’t even have school yet to comment on, so I mostly just told her how judo and my language studies were going. She always got a kick out of me saying random words in Japanese, so I tried to throw a few into each conversation.

I bought heavy curtains and a lock for my bedroom window. And an alarm. Just one of those basic ones where if you disturb the magnetic sensor by opening the window an audible alarm goes off. Not connected to emergency dispatch or a monitoring company or anything, just something that would wake me up and make it obvious someone uninvited had been in my room while I was sleeping, in case Creeper Cullen decided to make an appearance. Charlie gave me a bit of a look for that one, but ultimately decided to let it slide without comment. 

He came to watch one of my Saturday judo classes, and was very surprised that I was actually doing pretty well (for a beginner). Once I’d gotten used to my new center of gravity, I didn’t suffer from Bella’s clumsiness at all, and I was only getting better the more I practiced. Once he saw that my coordination was no longer a disaster, he finally consented to letting Anna teach me how to shoot. It was something he’d been dithering on since I brought it up shortly after she had offered. He insisted on teaching me basic gun safety himself, though he admitted he had already planned on that since he didn’t lock his service weapon up at home anymore. 

A firearm would do jack shit against a vampire, of course, and probably wouldn’t be much good against a shifter, either (or whatever other supernatural beings existed in this world), but it still made me feel better to be certain I could shoot properly if I ever needed to. 

Remembering Bella’s attack in Port Angeles in canon, I made sure to always have my pepper spray, a decent 3.5”-blade folding knife (small enough to not be legally classified as a dangerous weapon, but large enough to do damage if I could get a hit in), and a serious self-defense key chain whenever I went for my judo classes or to pick something up at one of the shops. I also never went more than a block from my car when it was dark. Luckily, the dojo and most of the shops were on well-lit streets, and with parking so close, I never had to worry about my bad sense of direction getting me horribly lost.

Anna met me in Port Angeles twice a week for marksmanship lessons since Forks didn’t really have a shooting range. I’m pretty sure she or Charlie had to pull some strings to get me in, because I don’t think they were supposed to let a minor into the range. I didn’t really ask. After a couple of weeks and we determined that I was a consistently good shot (not quite bullseyes every time, but almost always within the lethal damage zone), she let me try out her rifle. Man, maybe I was a sniper in some previous life I don’t remember, because that thing felt even more natural than a handgun, despite the extra recoil. She proudly presented my target with five bullseyes to Charlie, who just raised his eyebrows at me. I shrugged with a smile and hung it in my room like a band poster, grinning at his chuckles.

I stuck to my 10:00 curfew, even on judo and shooting nights, which made Charlie happy. He was a little worried I hadn’t made any friends in town yet, but I reminded him that I’d surely meet people once school started up. (I didn’t exactly plan on befriending any teenagers, as I remembered them to being prone to pettiness, but I was trying to keep an open mind since I’d at least be in classes with the seniors, who were slightly more bearable once they got over their superiority complexes.)

Between judo, my daily jogs, and some of the conditioning exercises I had learned in judo classes, my stamina greatly improved after even just a few weeks, as did my strength. I was very pleased.

I chatted with Leah once or twice a week on the phone, and I’d taken her into Port Angeles with me the Tuesday after she informed me that Sam had broken up with her. She was intrigued by judo, and I thought she might eventually join me in the classes once she slid solidly into the anger stage of grief. Or just the anger that would come about when Sam and Emily officially got together. Because, really, that was an absolute dick move on both of their parts.

By the time September rolled around, bringing the start of the school year, I was cautiously optimistic about my new life. Bella’s notes to her body snatcher had helped me blend in enough that my “parents” weren’t overly suspicious, which was nice. Charlie was a great mostly hands-off dad (which again made me mad at the way book-Bella had treated him), I had an almost-friend in Leah, a casual mentor in Officer Anna Baum, and I was going to get a leg up on my college studies in a year.

Of course, now I was going to have to deal with the vampires. As small as the school was, I was almost guaranteed to have classes with one or more of the seniors, but at least I wouldn’t likely have any with Edward. As long as I kept my distance, he continued to pride himself on his control, and Bella’s mental shield was securely in place to protect my secrets, I could get by with not having the life literally drained out of me. 

Probably.

Chapter Text

My first day of junior/senior year gave me the impression that the next nine and a half months were going to be a pain. The few students I interacted with outside of class came across as incredibly shallow, just as I feared. The even fewer that I interacted with in class reminded me that most teenagers have no concept of preparing for the future. I mean, this semester was the last one to really make an impression for college admissions, and they were all more concerned with catching up with each other than with actually learning. Which was absolutely ridiculous, since from what I overheard, most of them spent the summer hanging out together, anyway. Granted, most of the classes were in the syllabus stage, but even that was usually at least a little informative. 

I was taking three AP courses: English, Physics, and Calculus. I also had US History, Spanish 4, Gym, and a study hall. I was surprised that such a small school even offered AP classes, but I was grateful for it. That was nine to twelve college credits that I wouldn’t have to take, assuming I passed the standardized tests at the end of the year, which I certainly would for Calculus and Physics, and English was probably going to be fine, too. US History was going to be a bitch. I really didn’t like history classes, since they generally required almost no critical thinking and were based very heavily on memorization of names and dates (not to mention, they almost always only told one side of the story, so it was basically propaganda). English was just going to be boring, and Gym was a drag (although I at least had it as my last class of the day). Calc and Physics should be fun, though, and Spanish would be a breeze.

I was right that I’d have classes with the senior vampires. Jasper was in my Spanish class, Emmett in Calc, and Rosalie in English. I was really only worried about Jasper. Not the bloodlust issue- honestly, I was of the opinion that most of his problems with that were from feeling the bloodlust of the others- but the being able to read my emotions. Being around predators just made me nervous. Hopefully, he would brush my nerves off as typical teenager crap, like “oh my god, he’s so handsome, I hope I don’t make a fool of myself in front of him” or some such nonsense. (Okay, I could admit, Jasper was the most attractive of all the Cullen/Hale clan- even being physically more than ten years younger than my original self, which made me feel like a creep- except for maybe Esme, whom I hadn’t seen. He even beat out Rosalie, in my opinion. She tended to have her nose in the air, and nostrils just weren’t a turn-on for me.)

None of the three tried to make conversation with me, which I was just fine with.

The Calculus teacher tried to make me introduce myself, and was quite put off with my raised eyebrows and simple “Hi, I’m Bella.” Probably I made a minor enemy there, but since he didn’t grade the AP test, I didn’t really care.

Lunch was a whole lot of me ignoring the gossipy hounds that invaded the initially empty table I had claimed. One kid that I vaguely recognized from my Physics class, Zack, was fairly decent. He did the obligatory introductions (not that I remembered most of their names), but otherwise seemed to make an effort to redirect any attention aimed my way after my first few short answers. I supposed he could be a potential friend. The jury was still out on that, though.

The table grew quiet when the Cullens made their appearance in the cafeteria. For vampires supposedly trying to stay under the radar, they really sucked at blending in. One of the harpies across from me tried to download me on the mysterious and hot family, but I brushed her off so well that she was almost offended by my disinterest.

--

The rest of the school week went by slowly. If the homework load stayed about the same, I would have no problem with a weekend job. The Calculus teacher seemed to think he was the only one assigning homework in the entire school, but since I had always been good at math, it was more than manageable. All my other teachers were much more reasonable. I was going to give it another week to be sure, but I planned on putting in my application with Barnes and Noble when I was in Port Angeles for judo the following Saturday.

Zack ended up being the only person I had real conversations with outside of class. He never pressed for anything personal, unlike most of the girls, who seemed to just want gossip fodder, and he could hold an intelligent discussion. Charlie was a little concerned that my only tentative friend was a boy, but he eased up a bit once I made it clear that I had no intention of dating while in high school. I didn’t bother telling him that I was only really attracted to older people. That would have just increased his worry.

Jasper and I ended up paired together in Spanish when the teacher wanted to assess the students’ verbal skills. Our conversations were fluent, if extremely shallow, which was honestly fine with me on both counts. I still didn’t interact with Rosalie and Emmett, even in our shared classes. No group projects there, as of yet.

--

The first Saturday after school started brought the small surprise of Leah joining me again for judo class. This time, however, she planned to participate. She had apparently stopped in earlier in the week to sign up and order her gi. Even though I had a month of lessons on her, we still partnered together. My skills were slightly better due to my head start (both in this time and the brief period I’d done judo in my first life), but she was already more physically fit and a fast learner, so we were pretty well-matched.

Sunday brought about a birthday dinner for me at the Lodge, which was the closest Forks had to a fancy restaurant. I would have been fine with just the diner (anything to get me out of cooking or doing dishes), but Charlie wanted to “mark the occasion.” My pointing out that turning 17 isn’t exactly a milestone didn’t dissuade him any. Oh well, at least the food was good, even if I did have to dress up a bit. 

I had taken over most of the cooking in the past month, even though I could only manage simple things without messing it up. Charlie really could cook only breakfast foods (which get old) and fish (which makes me sick just by the smell), and occasionally manned the grill, so it was easy enough for me to suggest I take over. Charlie still did his fish on the few nights that I stayed out until near curfew, thus missing dinner, but he was nice enough to air out the kitchen before I got back. I picked up a couple of basic cookbooks, since my preferred recipe websites in the future didn’t exist yet, but I hadn’t made the time to thoroughly go through them yet.

I thought I had talked Charlie out of getting me any actual presents, but then he sneakily filled up the gas tank on the Explorer when I wasn’t paying attention. Given that it was a practical gift, and something I would definitely use, I didn’t protest and just thanked him instead. 

Renee called and informed me that my present was on the way, she had just forgotten to mail it off in time for it to arrive by my birthday. She at least promised it wasn’t expensive, and it’s not like I could ask her to return it when she’d (supposedly) sent it off the day before. Besides, it was rather rude to refuse a gift from family, or even close friends (unless said gift was wildly inappropriate or something). I made a mental note to call and thank her when whatever it was arrived.

Charlie chuckled when I unwrapped the gift Anna had given him to pass on to me. It was a box of 9mm ammo. I laughed myself and sent her a thank you text.

Celebrating Bella’s birthday made me realize I couldn’t remember my own. I knew it was early enough in the year to still be winter, and there was always snow on the ground (something I always grumbled about), so January maybe? But the actual date? I had no idea. 

I ended up in a contemplative mood for the rest of the evening, eventually going to bed early to escape Charlie’s concerned looks.

What else was I going to forget about my life before? As I thought things over, I realized that I only vaguely remembered my first family. I still knew their names, but their faces were a blank. Not too surprising, actually, with my bad track record of recognizing people, but I honestly thought it would take more than just a couple of months for that to happen. I could remember things we did together, and even a few specific conversations, but their personalities were a mystery. Was my past eventually going to fade completely, and I would just be Bella? That was a frightening thought. I didn’t want to turn into book-Bella. And having a teenager’s brain chemistry again was bad enough. Without my experiences as an adult to inform my choices, I would probably turn into a typical teenager, and I didn’t want to go through that again.

At least I still remembered my own name. I would be beyond depressed if I had forgotten that.

--

The second week of school passed normally, and I ended up submitting my application at Barnes and Noble on Saturday when the homework load remained manageable. I was glad I’d worn something like a business casual outfit when I dropped it off, since one of the hiring managers happened to be filling in for the weekend assistant manager and offered to give me an interview straight away. Apparently they were hard up for part-time workers. I left the interview feeling optimistic. The manager (Albert) said he wanted to look over my application (as lacking in experience and references as it was) in more detail, but he’d give me a call by Wednesday. Even Leah’s grumpy mood in our shared class didn’t bring me down.

--

The rest of September up until late November was pleasantly dull. I had gotten the job at Barnes and Noble and was working six-hour shifts on the weekend. I didn’t work during the week because by the time I factored in the commute and my curfew, I’d only have a two-hour shift, and that wouldn’t even cover gas money. Between work and judo (I was almost ready to test for a yellow belt, with Leah not far behind me), I spent more of my out-of-school time in Port Angeles than at home. I had so far managed to mostly avoid Jacob Black, which was a major bonus to always being busy.

Zack and I partnered in Physics whenever we had group projects, which we did at least twice a month, though they were usually taken care of during class time. If it required more than two people, he would drag in a couple of his more bearable friends, usually Lucinda (a delightfully snarky girl with as little interest in high school drama as I had) and/or Alex (a mostly quiet boy who really only came to life when discussing the schoolwork- a total nerd, but the adorable kind who somehow managed to escape bullying).

The first small upset came in October, when there was a group essay in English and Rosalie pulled my name out of a hat. Luckily, we both knew the material perfectly well and were able to knock the essay out in two sessions in the school library. She was a bit haughty, but tolerable enough. Probably because I didn’t make an effort to ingratiate myself with one of the elusive Cullen family.

I had taken to studying Japanese at the end of classes after I soared through the homework. I had moved on to the next book in the series I had gotten my beginner’s book from (the book being half of Renee’s rather thoughtful birthday present for me, the other half being a set of audio lessons so I could work on my listening comprehension and pronunciation). Emmett gave me a bit of a weird look on one of the few days I managed to get a few minutes in at the end of Calc, but stayed true to their “avoid the humans as much as possible despite repeating high school like a bunch of masochists” philosophy and didn’t comment on it.

I only ever saw Edward and Alice at lunch, not even running into them in the hallway, which was a blessing. Hopefully the combined smells of students and food in the cafeteria masked my own supposedly extra-appealing scent.

That luck ran out one Sunday near the end of November, when I ran into Esme and Edward at the Thriftway, of all places. They were keeping up appearances by buying a mountain of food for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday (I swear to whatever higher powers exist, if they just throw all of that away instead of donating it, I’m going to light someone on fire), and I was picking up a few things for the small turkey dinner I’d planned for me and Charlie.

I rounded an aisle and ran smack dab into the two of them. Not literally, our carts didn’t quite crash, but they were right there. And Edward had definitely already smelled me, because he was very tense and obviously not breathing and Esme had a hold on his arm that would probably come across as motherly comfort to anyone else, but I recognized as a way to try to hold him back in case he lunged at the poor, unsuspecting human.

I just nodded with a polite smile and soft “sorry”, trying to ignore Edward’s furious black eyes, and backed my cart out of the aisle in what hopefully came across as simply me getting out of their way and not an attempt to flee. I finished my shopping as quick as I could, since abandoning my cart and running like the hounds of hell were after me would be very suspicious, and tried not to hyperventilate once I was back in my car. I was moderately successful.

--

Edward wasn’t at lunch the next day- or Tuesday or Wednesday- so I assumed he was out of school. I didn’t know why he bothered, when we didn’t cross paths there, but I appreciated the reprieve. I was guessing by my lack of sudden death that Edward hadn’t been able to read my mind when we bumped into each other, thus keeping the fact that I knew about them a secret. I had no doubt that Jasper and Rosalie would make a case for disposing of a risky human, and without Edward’s fascination with Bella, there wasn’t any reason aside from Carlisle’s ingrained compassion (and maybe Esme’s) for anyone to argue against it.

Chapter Text

“What are we going to do about the human?” Rosalie demanded after Edward took off for Alaska.

“What do you mean, Rosalie?” Carlisle asked calmly, despite knowing perfectly well where Rosalie was going with her question. 

Esme fretted off to the side, not particularly happy that her “youngest son” was gone for an undetermined amount of time and one of her daughters was potentially advocating for murder. Keeping the family safe was important, yes, but killing a human just because she had the bad luck to be a vampire’s singer? It was hardly Bella Swan’s fault. Even Edward didn’t see killing the girl as the best option, otherwise he would have found a way to drain her and cover up her death from her family (which included the chief of police), rather than flee the town for the time being.

“She’s a threat,” Rosalie insisted. To her surprise, Jasper remained silent. Her “twin” was usually on her side when it came to evaluating any potential risk. But he just stood there, thoughtful. Emmett sat off to the side, also quiet, but she knew he’d back her up, if only because he didn’t care much one way or the other about the girl and he’d want to make Rosalie happy. But even with Emmett, without Jasper, she definitely wouldn’t have the numbers to turn any potential vote her way. Maybe she’d feel differently if Alice could get a clear picture of Bella Swan, confirm that she wasn’t a threat to them in any way, but the girl’s future was usually fuzzy, like TV static. 

The psychic was currently up in her room, temporarily removing herself from the conversation while she made a concerted effort to see what would happen. She was already kicking herself that she hadn’t foreseen that Bella was Edward’s singer. It wasn’t until she got a sudden flash of Edward attacking the girl in the middle of the grocery store, of all places, that she realized what was going on. Luckily, Edward changed his mind before blood could be spilled.

“We don’t know that, dear,” Esme cut in.

“Oh, really? And how did she react at the store?”

Esme spent a full second thinking about it.

“A brief flash of fear, then she retreated,” she informed them.

“Why would she do that if she didn’t know we were dangerous?” Rosalie pressed.

“Fear is an instinctive human response to one of our kind, as you well know,” Carlisle pointed out.

“She doesn’t act the same way around us as other humans at school, either,” Rosalie insisted.

“What do you mean?” Carlisle asked.

“When we got here last year, everyone else tried to get to know us, make inroads to the family. When Bella got here, she couldn’t care less about us. Even shut down Dana Jones when she tried to tell her about us.”

“She’s not really curious about anyone, Rosalie,” Jasper offered. Rosalie sent him a look of minor betrayal.

“Jasper?” Carlisle encourage him to continue. 

“She doesn’t really have friends- just a couple of classmates she occasionally chats with, and I don’t think they ever meet outside of school.”

“Social anxiety?” Carlisle suggested, momentarily falling back into his professional persona. Jasper shook his head.

“No, I don’t think she’s even interested in making friends. Whenever someone tries to approach her, which they’ve mostly given up on, she gets annoyed, not anxious.”

“Well, at least your ability works on her, unlike Edward’s,” Rosalie commented with a huff. And hadn’t that been a curious discovery? Edward had never bothered trying to read her thoughts at school, mostly because he’d never come across her, but he’d made an effort when he ran into her at the Thriftway, trying to use her thoughts to distract himself from her blood. The rest of the family was equal parts jealous of and worried by her immunity to his gift.

Rosalie glared when Jasper hesitated.

“Jasper?” She practically growled.

“I don’t think she’s blocking me the same way she does Edward. I think she just doesn’t feel very strongly most of the time. It’s almost like she’s perpetually in shock.”

Rosalie threw up her hands.

“So we’re pretty much flying blind!”

“No need to rub it in!” Alice called down from her room.

“Jasper, has she ever felt fear around you at school?” Emmett asked, speaking for the first time since the discussion started.

“No. Slightly nervous on the first day, but she calmed down quickly,” Jasper responded, easily able to remember such an insignificant event from months before. “Nothing like suspicion, either,” he added with a pointed look at Rosalie, who scowled.

Alice danced down the stairs.

“Anything?” Carlisle asked her.

“Not really. I still can’t see Bella clearly, but I don’t see any problems for the family if we stay here for a couple more years as planned, even with a fuzzy spot still on the periphery that far out.”

“And what about Edward? Is he just going to stay away for years? That’s not fair to him,” Rosalie said, though her tone was slipping into resignation. Esme let out a small whimper. She didn’t want her son gone for that long, despite how short it was when compared to a potential eternity.

Alice shook her head.

“He rarely goes into town, so he shouldn’t come across her there, and their schedules don’t cross at school- which is why we didn’t know about this sooner- so he should be fine to come back.”

That was still a risk, in Rosalie’s opinion. Vampiric memory wouldn’t allow Edward to forget his singer’s scent, and there was no guarantee he wouldn’t give in to the temptation and seek the girl out.

“It’s settled, then,” Carlisle said, leaving no room for further debate. “Bella Swan will not come to harm by our hand,” he added, just so there was no miscommunication.

Rosalie sighed, but nodded. When Carlisle used that tone of voice, he was speaking as their coven leader, and there was no disobeying.

“I only have the one class with her, but I’ll try to keep a closer eye out,” Jasper offered, to everyone’s shock. Jasper offering to be in any way close to a human was unheard of.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Esme questioned carefully. She didn’t like doubting anyone in her family, but Jasper’s control wasn’t exactly considered the best.

“She doesn’t smell much better to me than any other human,” Jasper replied. “She’s at no more risk from me than anyone else is. And I’m not suggesting I try to make friends with her. But it would be easy enough to interact a bit more with her in class.”

“I’ll inform Edward of what’s been decided,” Carlisle announced, pulling out his phone. “He can return once he feels he’s ready. I’ve already told the school that he’s being held out of school until we can determine what he’s sick with.” At the curious eyes directed at him, he added “an unclassified illness gives us more leeway if he feels the need to stay away for a prolonged period of time than if we put an exact name on it. They’re sending his homework by email so he doesn’t have to risk repeating the year.”

“Yeah, that would suck,” Emmett said with a grin.

Chapter Text

Edward was back the Monday after Thanksgiving. Alex was surprisingly the one to speak up at lunch and quietly point out to me that Edward was glaring at me. I took a brief look at the Cullen’s table to confirm that, no, Alex wasn’t delusional, then shrugged.

“If he has a problem with me, he can either bring it up or deal on his own. I’m not going to inconvenience myself to make peace with someone who thinks glaring across a high school cafeteria is an acceptable way to air one’s grievances.”

That, of course, made Lucinda snark about my odd phrasing, but that was pretty par for the course for the two of us by that point. I said something in a weird manner (for a teenager), Lucinda said something slightly rude about it, and I directed a delighted grin her way. As long as I didn’t call her “Lucy,” she was perfectly happy with our dynamic. (Oddly enough, she was fine with being called “Lucifer.” At least, she was that one time I hissed it at her during a particularly intense Physics lab she was intentionally fucking up. Zack usually called her “Cin,” so I guess she had a theme going on.)

--

It was another week before any of the vampires spoke to me (a streak I hadn’t been intending on breaking), though Rosalie had become fond of sending me icy glares in class ever since Edward’s mini sabbatical (right, because smelling nummy is my fault). She came across as such a typical affronted, privileged teenager that I had trouble remembering she was actually dangerous and very nearly laughed at her disdain. Yeah, that wouldn’t have helped my case if my continued existence ever came to a vote.

Back to the breaking of the streak: In Spanish, Senora Goff announced we needed to get into pairs and discuss a short story and write a small analysis. As usual, she reminded us that by this point in our Spanish education, there should be no need to speak in English. Not as usual, she didn’t assign the pairs. Typically she matched the students up so they were with someone of a similar skill (landing me and Jasper together more often than not, though since we never talked about anything of substance, I couldn’t say I actually knew him, and we certainly weren’t friends).

So, when Jasper made a point to cross the room and slide into the empty desk next to me while I looked around to see who hadn’t partnered off yet (which was almost everyone, as high school students almost invariably dragged their feet when it came to schoolwork), I was absolutely sure he could feel incredulity rolling off me. Wouldn’t the vampires want to spend less time with the sweet-smelling human? Especially if there was a risk my scent could cling to them or something and tempt Eddie Boy? I didn’t know if that was how it worked, but I didn’t like even the thought of it.

I knew my expression was even enough that his raised eyebrow and quirked lips were probably in response to whatever he was getting from my emotional climate. Gods, they sucked at pretending to be normal. I didn’t know why they bothered.

“Did you need something?” I asked him as he opened up his notebook, just to be contrary.

“I assume you’ve already read this through?” He tapped the print-off of the short story (which was really just a few paragraphs). I sent him a look that I hoped conveyed “I’m not like these fucking procrastinating morons.” It had been assigned the Friday before. Plenty of time to read it over the weekend, even without the convenient vampire reading speed. It took less than three minutes. Maybe ten, if you included the time it took to handwrite the English translation that we’d had to turn in at the beginning of class. I’d done it in between work and judo class on Saturday.

We spent a scant ten minutes talking about the story, then another ten writing down each other’s opinions and our rebuttals. It would have been a perfectly pleasant class, if I hadn’t felt I was under a magnifying glass the whole time. I was about to pull out my Japanese book to avoid his intent gaze when he spoke up.

“Why are you a senior?”

Was he seriously digging for information? Was this a fact-finding mission after they learned I was Edward’s singer? Was he assessing a threat?

“I finished the junior curriculum.” I answered simply, if a bit numbly. I did not want to converse about anything approaching personal. In fact, I made a point of not asking him anything about himself or his family, and until now, he’d repaid the courtesy in kind.

I felt a sudden burst of trust and a desire to continue. The complete dick! He was messing with my emotions! Nope, not giving in. I gritted my teeth and pulled out my book, pointedly ignoring him for the last twenty minutes or so of class.

Probably not the best idea, since his eyebrows raised in surprise. It probably would have been better to go along with it like any other human, but manipulating my emotions so that he could get answers was going too far. It was a violation, plain and simple.

I handed in my paper when the bell rang and swept out of the room without giving him another look. I was sure he could tell I was pissed, by my demeanor if not by my emotions, but I wasn’t going to stick around to see his reaction. If they hadn’t thought I was a risk before, they probably would now.

I fucked up.

--

Jasper definitely told his family that he had managed to piss me off when he tried to affect my emotions.

Rosalie’s glares got impossibly icier. Edward continued to direct brief angry glances in the lunch room (Lucinda was cheerfully monitoring that situation and inflicting me with updates). Even Emmett was scrutinizing me in class. They weren’t subtle about it, at all. Only Alice seemed indifferent towards me. I could only assume a lack of visions of me screaming “vampires!” to the town was the reason.

Lucinda even cracked a joke about it, asking who in their family I’d murdered.

“Their prized goldfish,” I deadpanned.

It was definitely stupid of me, but I didn’t really feel any increased fear of them. My general wariness remained, of course, because they would always be a threat to me, but I feared dying less than I feared someone finding out I had bodysnatched the real Bella. And with my mind safe from nosy vampires with no sense of privacy (looking at you, Edward), the likelihood of that getting out was microscopic. I didn’t want to die, of course. Partially because I was finally getting used to the idea of getting a second chance at life, and partially because I didn’t want to risk bodysnatching yet another fictional character (though, if I ever got reincarnated as Hermione, I was going to hex blood-prejudiced gits so badly they’d never be able to procreate).

Truth was, I kind of liked my life now. I still felt guilty that I had hijacked Bella’s body, especially since I would probably never know what happened to her own conciousness or soul or whatever, but I was in great physical shape and my education was on track to get me through college with hopefully an interesting (and useful) degree with a minimum of debt.

That being said, having already been brutally murdered once before made me sort of apathetic to my eventual demise, even if it turned out to be sooner than I’d like. Kind of counterintuitive, when I really thought about it.

--

A bigger problem than the angry vampires, in my opinion, was some dickhead who got the idea that the aloof daughter of the chief of police was a good conquest.

His name was Ryan, and he was a complete tool.

He started asking me out daily. I declined daily. I wasn’t even polite about it. By the day before Christmas break, I was downright vicious in my denials. That’s when he grabbed my ass.

I made good use of my judo yellow belt and maneuvered his arm behind his back, twisting his wrist in a way that I knew from experience (thanks, Leah) to be extremely painful. If he’d been expecting it, the relatively simple move might not have worked. Being underestimated is useful.

“Listen to me, you complete piece of shit. If you ever touch my person again, I will remove your offending appendage with extreme prejudice and a rusty spork. If you ever so much as talk to me again, I will find a way to ruin your life so thoroughly you will regret ever learning my name,” I hissed in his ear. I rotated his shoulder just a bit more so that he landed on his knees and his eyes started watering. It was very satisfying.

“You’re a psycho!” He shouted when I finally let go of him.

“Then you should probably stop pissing me off,” I advised coldly. I turned to see Rosalie glaring at the asshat with the same fury she usually reserved for me.

“You’ll get expelled for this!” He called after me. 

“Good luck with that,” I tossed over my shoulder. “There’s a camera right there,” I turned back to him and pointed at it, very glad that the moron had confronted me in front of one of the three cameras that the tiny school surprisingly had. “Footage will clearly show you assaulting me before I defended myself. And I have multiple witnesses to you harassing me for weeks. If anyone’s getting disciplined, it won’t be me.” It probably wouldn’t be him, either, since this was 2004 and sexual harassment in school was still seen as “boys will be boys”… Not that it was much better in 2021, but it was far worse now.

I never got called to the principal’s office, so I assumed either no one ever reported it or the principal didn’t want to have to give Golden Boy Ryan detention (or suspension) and therefore ignored the whole incident.

I did tell Charlie about it that night. He was proud of me for sticking up for myself, if a little upset that I had resorted to violence, but annoyed that I hadn’t told him of my problems with “that Ryan kid” in the first place.

“Not much to be done about it, Chief. He didn’t physically touch me until today, and I know that other girls have reported similar behavior to teachers and nothing was done. As long as it’s just words, they don’t really care. And you know better than I how little the law can do in these situations.” Ryan hadn’t quite met the legal definition of harassment. I checked. “If he keeps up with it, I’ll tell you, and we can raise a stink about it, but I think he’ll leave me alone after that.” Or he’d get violent after being humiliated. A thought which Charlie obviously also had, going by his expression.

--

Charlie must have mentioned the incident to Anna, because she dragged me out the day after Christmas and drilled me on a few select Krav Maga moves. It was too bad they didn’t have a place closer than Seattle for that, because it was really fun. And effective. 

Leah was equal parts furious and amused when I told her about it later that week. Furious, obviously, that it was even an issue. Very amused when I told her about literally bringing the dipshit to his knees and making him cry. Her vindictive streak spoke to my soul.

Chapter Text

“What’cha got there, Jasper?” Emmett asked, pausing his video game and nodding at the thick folder in Jasper’s hands.

“You had Jenks run a background check on Bella Swan?” Edward asked, having picked it from his thoughts. 

Jasper sent him a ‘why can’t you stay out of my mind?’ look that went ignored, as usual.

“What happened to ‘she’s not a threat’?” Rosalie asked with raised eyebrows. She had not been even remotely pleased when Jasper informed the family that Bella had brushed off (and been angered by) his attempts to manipulate her emotions. The more they learned, the bigger the threat the human seemed to be. Sure, she couldn’t physically harm them (even the idea was laughable), but whispering about vampires- or even just people with special abilities- to even one person who wouldn’t think her a nutcase could put them on the Volturi’s radar. And that was not a place they wanted to be.

Jasper tilted his head at her. Okay, maybe Bella was a potential threat. Given how little interest she seemed to have in the family, though, he didn’t think it was bad enough that they should risk having to move again so soon by killing her.

“So? What does it say?” Emmett asked impatiently. Jasper flipped open the folder and skimmed each page at vampire speed before handing the packet off to Rosalie.
“Pretty average childhood, if you discount all the injuries.”

“Injuries?” Rosalie asked, looking up from what she was reading at human speed out of habit. “Abuse?”

Jasper shook his head.

“Arizona DCS didn’t think so. They got involved twice: Once when Bella’s third grade teacher noticed that she had more scrapes and bruises than is typical for a child, and once when Bella turned up at the ER with a spiral fracture when she was eleven.”

“And they didn’t find abuse?” That was Emmett.

“It doesn’t say how the first complaint was dismissed, but there was video evidence that the fracture was the result of her mom preventing her from falling over a railing on a bridge. Apparently Miss Swan was quite the klutz as a child.”

“And the rest of her childhood?” Rosalie pressed. She set the folder aside for the moment, apparently content to trust Jasper to fill her in on the pertinent details. 
“Parents divorced, which we already knew. Her mom took her to California when she was one and a half, then they relocated to Arizona when she was six after her maternal grandmother died. Her parents’ finances are both stable. Borderline lower-middle class due to their professions- police officer in a small town and elementary school teacher-, but no big debts that would put them in trouble. The mom remarried a few months before Bella moved here.”

“Is that why she moved?” Emmett asked. Jasper shrugged. The exact reason wasn’t documented anywhere that Jenks could find, and Jenks was the best there was.

“She had a bad run of migraines starting in December of 2003. Appointments with specialists almost every two weeks until April. She was homeschooling the rest of sophomore year. Maintained slightly above-average grades. I’m not sure why she was moved up a year here. All Jenks got was that she insisted on placement tests, which she did very well on… She had a few more neurology appointments in early and mid-July of this year, then nothing until she had her check-in with Carlisle after she moved here. I didn’t ask Jenks to get her full medical records since that would have taken a few weeks longer and Carlisle can access them if they become necessary, but I can only guess that whatever was causing the migraines was resolved.”

“That’s a pretty thick folder for such little information,” Emmett commented, picking it up and flipping through it.

“It’s more detailed, of course, but those are the highlights,” Jasper told him.

“How is she fluent in Spanish if she was a B student?” Edward wondered as he read Bella’s transcript over Emmett’s shoulder.

“She writes herself notes in Arabic, too,” Alice said as she walked in, just returning from a hunt. “I’ve walked past her in the library a few times,” she added at the questioning looks being sent her way. “Mostly just to-do lists and random reminders, from what I could see… Her writing is excellent.”

“She’s learning Japanese, too,” Rosalie put in, having noticed Bella’s occasional extra-curricular studies in their shared English class. Emmett and Jasper nodded their agreement. They had both seen her with the same book.

“Curious,” Edward murmured. The background check hadn’t mentioned either language. Not to mention, Bella had gone from being a B-average student to skipping a grade and being at the top of her class. Very curious.

“We’ll leave this for Esme and Carlisle to look over when they get home,” Jasper told the others. “Carlisle might have more insight when considering her medical records.”

Chapter Text

Forks High School got all of December 23rd through New Years Day off for winter break (which was probably why the year ended in June instead of May), which meant school didn’t resume until January 3rd. The teachers had piled on the homework, of course, even with the new semester just having started, but at least I wouldn’t have to sit at a desk surrounded by teenagers (and vampires) for a week and a a half.

It was fast approaching the day book-Bella would have come to Forks, but I obviously blew that plot line out of the water. All I had to do now was avoid getting squished by an out of control van in a couple of weeks, and continue to avoid Edward (which was surprisingly easy since we weren’t in the same year), and I was home free. Okay, and continue to be cautious in Port Angeles and avoid vampire baseball, but both of those were givens.

I was spending a good deal of time with the high school guidance counselor going over the class catalog for the University of Washington to figure out my schedule in anticipation of my acceptance to U-Dub (I wouldn’t find out for sure until early March, but we were optimistic). We had to find classes that were mostly (if not entirely) by correspondence but would still meet the high school’s requirements (which I was pretty sure she was pulling out of her ass since I was apparently the first Forks student to pursue this educational avenue). She also found a scholarship for me that could cover up to half of the tuition, which would be a nice reprieve for my 529 account. It of course required an essay, which I was a little worried about, but it was worth the effort to apply to maybe save a couple grand. It was specifically for students still in high school, so at least the competition wouldn’t be as fierce as it usually would.

Jasper continued to ask probing questions in Spanish when he had the chance, though he stopped trying to manipulate my emotions after the third time, finally realizing that I wouldn’t speak to him at all for the rest of the class if he did. I continued to rebuff said questions.

Until I realized that he was probably going to get that Jenks dude to run a stupidly invasive background check on me (if he hadn’t already) if I didn’t give him something. I didn’t need the Cullens knowing more about Bella than I did.

The next time he asked me why I was a senior (his favorite starting question), I sighed.

“I asked for placement tests when I moved here. I was basically homeschooling for the last half of my sophomore year and I was worried I’d be behind. It turned out I’d studied more than I thought, because I passed even the junior year tests without many problems.” At least Senora Goff couldn’t get pissed about speaking English. Thank you, Spanish fluency.

“Why were you homeschooling?” If he was surprised that I had finally given in, he didn’t show it.

“Medical reasons. I’m not going into it.” Because I really wasn’t going to try to describe Bella’s migraines. HIPAA already existed, right? Wasn’t that in the 90s? Or would Carlisle tell them? Nevermind. Edward surely picked it out of Carlisle’s brain and would have no problem spilling the beans if he thought it even the slightest bit relevant.

“So they let you test out of junior classes?”

I wrinkled my nose. That would have been the second- or third-best scenario (after testing out of high school altogether or going away to a boarding school).

“Not really. They moved me into senior classes for my junior year, and I’ll take dual credits at U-Dub next year. If I’m accepted. Similar outcome, different paperwork.”

Jasper was quiet for a solid thirty seconds. I doubted it took him that long to process, so I figured he was contemplating how much more he could get away with asking. He apparently decided he’d pushed his luck on the personal front for the day.

“Do you know yet which classes you’ll be taking?”

I shook my head.

“Still working that out. I want to do things mostly by correspondence so I’m not driving to Seattle every day, but that narrows the available class list by quite a bit.” Also, I’d have to upgrade our internet connection. At the moment, I was looking at Composition 2 (if I passed my AP English test to count for Comp-1 credits), Calculus 2 or 3 (depending on how I did on the AP Calc test), Chemistry (I’d have to either commute once a week for the lab or take the lab later), and a wellness course to act as a gym credit. For the first semester, of course. Second semester would be trickier. And that was only if I got everything I wanted. Even if I was accepted, I wouldn’t be able to register for classes until late June.

To my relief, the bell rang just as I finished speaking. I shot out of the classroom like a .380.

Please let that be the end of it.

--

That wasn’t the end of it.

Jasper found a few minutes at the end of each Spanish class to interrogate me. He must have been working his mojo on Senora Goff, because she never said anything about it. Or maybe it was just because we stuck to Spanish.

“Why are you learning Japanese?”

Seriously?

“It makes following judo commands easier if I can associate actual words with the moves instead of a series of memorized sounds.”

That got me a lifted eyebrow.

“Is that what you did to Kowalski?” 

I scowled. I didn’t like thinking about Ryan. He was still a dipshit. Just a dipshit that now avoided me like a plague carrier. I was a little disappointed I hadn’t gotten to try any of Anna’s Krav Maga moves. Plus, he totally ruined a perfectly good character’s last name from Stargate SG-1. Yes, that mattered.

“I’m pretty sure he’d have understood Japanese even less than plain English.” So, yeah, I could be a bit of a dipshit, too. 

Jasper tossed me a look that confirmed my opinion of myself.

“How long have you been doing judo?”

“A few months.”

“Belt?”

“Yellow.”

“Why judo?”

“It’s good for taking down a larger opponent. And there’s actually a dojo within acceptable driving distance.”

“What else do you do for fun?”

“I frequent the gun range.” I deadpanned that one. Bullets wouldn’t do any damage to a vampire (unless maybe if they were some sort of incendiary rounds… hmm… something to look into), but it was still fun to say. The bell fortuitously rang at that moment, so I got to leave on a note that would have left most human high school boys scrambling for some sort of response.

So far, Jasper had learned that I like Sci-Fi and Fantasy, hated fish, and used to be a klutz. I wasn’t quite sure how that last one had come up, and it made me a little worried that he had looked into Bella’s medical history, but as long as I didn’t have to pretend to be a klutz now, I didn’t see it as dangerous information.

Speaking of Sci-Fi and Fantasy, I was super stoked that both Doctor Who and Supernatural would start airing this year. Only a couple of months for Doctor Who, though I had no idea how I was going to get access to BBC America- we only had basic cable- but I wasn’t entirely opposed to pirating the episodes if it came down to it (once I got around to upgrading our internet, at least).

I got around to asking him basic “what’s your favorite ______?” questions, just because giving up information- however trivial- about myself wasn’t going to continue to happen without a little quid pro quo. Not the best idea, in hindsight. Some questions, such as favorite color and season, were fine. But when I asked his favorite food (because, yes, I really can be a little shit), I couldn’t hide my amusement from the empath when he responded with “venison” and a smirk.

Well, I was just making myself look even more suspicious to the vampires, wasn’t I?

--

The car crash in the school parking lot still happened. 

They really needed to salt their lot.

I was safely inside, chatting with the guidance counselor (again. This time about my scholarship essay- she was very invested) at the moment of impact. The driver (Tyler Something) had some scrapes and bruises, and a few cars were pretty smashed up, but no one was seriously injured. Even so, it was all anyone would talk about for the rest of the day. Even the teachers got pulled into it, to their obvious frustration.

I had sent Charlie a text right after I heard about the crash, letting him know I wasn’t involved and was perfectly fine (even the Explorer was undamaged, thankfully. I didn’t want to have to replace it). I figured he could use the reassurance to help him keep his calm when he responded to the scene. That way he could maintain his professionalism instead of worrying about his daughter. A panicking cop makes for even more panicking civilians. 

--

The rest of January and February were more of the same. School, work, judo, Jasper’s mild interrogations in Spanish… 

Rosalie had lessened the glaring a bit- particularly after my confrontation with Ryan- at least enough that I no longer had to hold myself back from laughing at the typical high school drama coming from a several-decades-old woman. 

Emmett had stopped scrutinizing me in Calculus, which was nice. Having a large, burly vampire keeping me under a microscope had been unnerving, I could admit.

Edward even gave up on the angry looks across the cafeteria, instead paying me as much mind as any of the other students (probably even less, since he definitely wasn’t reading my thoughts). I approved.

I ran across Alice occasionally, usually in the library during study hall. I caught a small, confused frown on her face when she was looking at me once, but she never seemed angry with me, so I didn’t care all that much what caused it.

I could only guess that Jasper’s fact-finding mission was providing them with satisfactory answers and they were starting to consider me a non-threat. Well, I could hope, anyway. Jasper certainly wasn’t letting up on the questions, so maybe the mission was still ongoing.

Chapter Text

March brought about some minor drama. 

On the personal side of things, Lucinda had asked Alex to accompany her to the girls’ choice dance, and he accepted (just as friends, they both insisted), so now some uppity junior who’d been planning on asking him was trying to take Lucinda down a peg. It wasn’t going well for the junior. No one had angled for me to ask them, which I was more than happy about. Being generally nonsocial, if not outright unfriendly, had its perks.

On the educational side of things, I received an acceptance letter from U-Dub right at the start of March (hooray!), followed shortly after by a summons for an interview for the scholarship I’d applied for (boo!). Apparently they’d had a few more promising applicants than they’d expected, and they needed to weed through them in person instead of just by the essays. I had to take a Thursday and Friday off from school to make a trip to Seattle, but as my attendance was so far exemplary, it was easily doable. I’d even be back in time for work on Saturday afternoon.

--

March brought about some major drama.

I drove out to Seattle on Thursday the 10th with no problems. I’d convinced Charlie that he didn’t need to come with me, reminding him that I’d traveled from Phoenix to Forks all by myself with no issues, so he’d just booked me a decent motel for Thursday night and told me to call him upon arrival and before bed so he knew everything was okay. Thursday was absolutely fine. The drive starting in the early morning, then the interview just after a McDonald’s lunch, then some subpar diner food for dinner. All totally normal.

Friday, shit sort of hit the fan.

First, I got a flat tire. Fucking screws on the road. Which would have been fine. I knew how to change it. But, no, the spare tire was also flat. How that happened? I didn’t know. It was perfectly fine when I bought the car. I had checked, as had Renee.

So, while my car was at a shop for the tires to be patched, I decided to go shopping. Nothing major. There was a small bookstore about a half block away from the tire place. And, apparently, Bella visiting a small bookstore in the beginning/middle of March was all it took to trigger an attack, because a couple of assholes cornered me on my way back to the shop.

I didn’t know enough judo for this. 

Even the awesome bits of Krav Maga I knew weren’t much good against multiple assailants.

I managed to clip one of them with my self-defense keychain (and by “clipped” I mean “jammed it into his palm”). Unfortunately, while that one was shouting about the new holes in his hand, his buddy yanked my keys out of my grip and tossed them to the ground several feet away from me.

“Give us your money!”

Oh, just a mugging, then.

Wait, no, this is still bad. I bemoaned the loss of my main weapon (even as I gleefully thought about the damage it had inflicted) and the fact that I probably wouldn’t be able to reach my knife without them getting their hands on me first.

Which was why I was initially supremely relieved when someone darted in and threw the assholes into a fucking wall.

Until I saw the crimson eyes of my savior.

“Fucking hell,” I couldn’t help but mutter.

Her red eyes widened before she called over her shoulder.

“Peter! Peter, come here!”

I could only hope I’d still make it home in time for work.

--

I was pretty sure this was Charlotte. Didn’t Peter and Charlotte go to visit Jasper sometime in early March? What were they doing in Seattle? Right. Stupid question. They needed to eat outside of the Cullens’ territory. Not to mention the wolves.

But why was Charlotte calling for Peter? She was more than capable of taking me out on her own. Was it because I realized she was a vampire? But how would she know that? I could’ve just as easily been commenting on her extreme strength as on her inhuman eye color.

“Cool contacts,” I tried. No response. "Do you do CrossFit?"

She rolled her eyes.

Damn.

“Peter!” This time she was actually shouting. It was followed by a whoosh and a man suddenly standing in front of me.

“Well, what do we have here?” He questioned. I couldn’t help but start to shake. Despite my efforts to avoid the Cullens- particularly Edward- I was certain that I was going to end up a vampire’s meal.

“Stop that. You’re scaring her,” Charlotte chided.

“Well, yeah,” Peter replied with a small grin, looking me over. “So, what was so urgent, Char?” He turned back to his… girlfriend? Wife? Mate? Were vampire mates actually a thing, or was that just fanon? “Oh! I see you found lunch!” He added as he glanced at the two now unconscious would’ve-been-muggers.

I shook harder. If they were being this cavalier about their nature, there was no way they were planning on letting me go. 

Sorry, Hermione, but I’m wishing for your life on the next go around.

Charlotte just waved him off with a small huff.

“How do you know what we are, sugar?” She asked me as Peter went to inspect his future happy meal.

“Umm…” Deny, deny, DENY! “Cannibals?” Gods, I was failing at being a genius. “Can you do me a solid and be, like, altruistic cannibals? I mean, I’m barely a snack, and those guys were total assholes, so…” Way to stop failing, self. Not.

Peter’s deep chuckle rolled underneath Charlotte’s trill of laughter. It was actually a very pleasant combination.

“Oh, sugar,” she let out a happy sigh. I felt my eyes widen when I saw Peter sink his teeth into the neck of the dude whose hand I’d stabbed. He was… He was really just going for it, wasn’t he? “Come on, now,” Charlotte continued. “Let’s chat.” She herded me towards a nearby coffee shop.

Fuck.

--

I once again found myself under the scrutiny of a vampire. At least this time I had a mocha to take the edge off.

“So, Isabella-” I knew my eyes were wide once again, this time because I was certain I hadn’t told her my name. “-how is it you knew what I am at a glance?”

I wanted to hightail it out of there, but there was no way I, a mere human, could outrun a vampire. With their enhanced senses, even hiding was a no-go. Instead, I kept quiet while I ran through the options of what to say. And also wondered how she knew that I knew. Because, really, ‘fucking hell’ was a perfectly rational response to seeing a petite blonde throw two grown men into a wall. There was no reason that it had to have been about vampirism.

Apparently vampires don’t like to sit in silence for too long (or maybe that’s just Charlotte), because she snapped her fingers in front of my face after just a couple of minutes. I frowned at her. Rude.

“Your coffee is getting cold,” she told me drily. I looked down and confirmed that my mocha was no longer steaming. Oh. Maybe it had been more than just a couple of minutes. I took a sip and wrinkled my nose at the temperature. Lukewarm coffee wasn’t all that delicious, in my opinion.

“How do you know my name?” I asked in a transparent attempt to put off having to be the one to give answers. Charlotte hummed briefly and drummed her nails against the table lightly. Then a small smirk made its way onto her face.

“Peter and I were visiting our brother in Forks.” I tried to pretend like that was news to me. “His family had a picture of you.” That was news to me.

“The Cullens have a picture of me?” I asked dully. Her smirk widened. What? What did I say?

“Now, I never said anything about the Cullens,” she pointed out, her voice slightly smug. Well, shit. My genius really was broken today.

But, seriously, why did the Cullens have a picture of me? Unless-

“Did they run a background check on me?” I asked, somewhere between outraged and resigned. Damn invasive vampires. Can’t mind their own business. I was worried they would do that. 

Charlotte confirmed my suspicion with an amused nod.

“And apparently, some of what they know about you doesn’t match up with what was found.”

Double damn. So that’s what was with all of Jasper’s questions. The ones I thought were mostly harmless because they were so trivial.

“Just how extensive was this background check?” 

She just shrugged, that amused look still on her face.

“They seemed to think you knew about them. Were worried you were a threat to their secret.” She tilted her head and studied me for a few seconds. “I think they were half right. Weren’t they?”

I sighed. I didn’t see a way out of answering her questions. Hopefully she didn’t tell the Cullens, because I knew a couple of them would want me dead. Or maybe she’d just do it herself? I bet she would make it quick if I asked nicely.

“Yes, I know about them. No, I don’t plan on telling anyone. Ever.”

“And just how do you know about them?” She pressed. I mulled over my options. Looked like she was getting as much of the truth as anyone ever would. Still sprinkled with lies, of course.

“Long version, or short version?”

“Let’s start with the short version.”

“Last June, after some brain issues, I suddenly knew of a possible future. One which included vampires.”

Charlotte sat there for a solid minute digesting that.

“Okay, I think I’m going to need the long version,” she finally said.

“December before last, I started getting really bad migraines. No cause for them, as far as the doctors could see, but they were bad enough to keep me out of school for an entire semester.” I took another sip of my rapidly chilling mocha. At least cold was better than lukewarm. “In June, I got a really bad one, before they just stopped. After that, I forgot some things about my own life, but it was like I had other information downloaded to my brain. At lot of that pertained to vampires- the Cullens, in particular- but some of it was a possible future. I’ve done a lot to subvert that future-” because hell would freeze over before I hooked up with Edward or went through a hell pregnancy to birth a hybrid baby. I didn’t even want human kids. “-but some things couldn’t be avoided so easily. If they could, I wouldn’t have ever moved to Forks, at all.”

“Just what kind of things have you avoided?” Charlotte asked.

“A relationship with Edward, for starters,” I responded sardonically. 

“A relationship with-” Her eyebrows raised.

“You can see why I would want to change things,” I said. The corners of my mouth twitched upwards.

She laughed along with me, nodding a bit.

“Other than that… I’ve really just prevented a near miss with a probably otherwise fatal car accident. I’m hoping to avoid a vampire tracker, but I don’t think that was supposed to happen quite yet.” Though, going by the animal attacks Charlie had been called out to over the last while, James’ coven was already in the area. “Avoiding the tracker causes a domino effect that gets rid of a few other problems. And, of course, not being involved with Eddie solves a lot of problems before they start, too.”

“I gotta admit, I don’t see Edward getting involved with a girl who would stab someone,” Charlotte commented, eyeing me critically.

I shrugged.

“When I say I forgot some of my life, I don’t just mean memories. I had to sort of relearn myself. From what I saw of the future that I won’t let happen, that Bella was a doormat and Edward was overbearing. I very much doubt he’d be interested in me the way that I am now. And the way that I am now has no interest in him. It works out well.”

She waited for me to finish my coffee before she spoke again.

“You know I’ll have to tell Jasper about this, right?” She almost sounded regretful. I didn’t know why. It’s not like she owed me anything.

I looked into my empty mug.

“Any chance you could leave out the bit about Edward?” I hoped.

“But that’s the best part!” She said with a grin. Great.

Chapter Text

Charlotte- after officially confirming that she was, in fact, Charlotte- led me past a dumpster fire.

No, really. It was literally a dumpster on fire.

“You couldn’t have saved me one?” She pouted as she sidled up next to Peter about a block away from the arson. We were only about half a block from the tire place now. That was mildly suspicious.

“You were taking too long,” he told her, slinging his arms around her shoulders. “Besides, you already ate. And they were too sour for dessert.”

Now I wanted Warheads. Were those a thing in this time? They’d been discontinued and then brought back at least once by the time I died the first go around. At least in the stores I frequented. I had no idea if production ever actually stopped… I was getting sidetracked.

“Does a dumpster fire even burn hot enough to hide the fact they’re drained of blood?” I wondered aloud.

Peter’s eyes cut to me.

“Well enough that only conspiracy nuts would point to vampires,” he said with a slight curiosity in his gaze.

“What?” I asked him after he’d spent an uncomfortable amount of time staring at me.

“You’re asking about hiding the evidence and not why I killed them?”

Jeez, it’s not like I was a saint. I wasn’t even all that compassionate to the general populace. People sucked. Reading detailed police reports would have convinced me of that, even if I hadn’t been cynical before. Hell, if I’d known Peter and Charlotte were around, I might’ve rung a dinner bell. I shrugged.

“They attacked me and I’m a vindictive bitch,” I said. That seemed to be all the explanation he required, because he didn’t press me on it.

“Your car should be ready soon,” he told me. I studied him through narrowed eyes. Suspicious. Especially given my mysteriously flat spare tire. Very suspicious, indeed.

He grinned.

I scowled.

“You have… sauce… on your collar, by the way,” I informed him before flouncing off towards the tire shop. I could hear Charlotte’s giggles ringing out behind me.

--

Peter paid for my patched tires, lending credence to my private theory that he’d been the one to mess them up in the first place. I was positive the whole “Peter just knows shit” schtick was entirely fanon (it was mentioned in a hilarious rant of an Author’s Note of one of the few fics I’d read), so I didn’t know how he’d known that I’d be in Seattle in the first place, but apparently he’d schemed to slow down my departure.

“So, Isabella, how do you know about us?” Peter asked lowly as I accepted my keys from the clerk. I sighed.

“Can’t Charlotte fill you in? I’m already running behind on getting home.” Charlie hadn’t been too worried when I called to tell him about my tire problems- such things happened, after all, and I was perfectly capable of handling it on my own- but he wasn’t pleased that I’d be driving part of the way back to Forks in the dark.

“I’d rather hear it from you,” he told me as he followed me out of the shop. “C’mon, we’ll take you for a late lunch and you can tell me all about it.” I sighed. At least I was getting a free meal out of it.

“Let me call Charlie, first.” I pulled out my phone before he could respond.

“Hey, Bella. Are you heading back now?” Charlie asked in lieu of a greeting.

“Hi, Dad. It’s probably going to be another hour or so,” I said.

“The tires taking longer than expected?”

I could use that excuse, but A: it had already been three hours, which was really pushing it for a patch job, and B: if I said that I was meeting someone, Charlie would have even more reason to go digging if I went missing. I didn’t particularly want him to stumble across vampires, but the possibility that he would might give Peter and Charlotte some incentive to let me go with minimal fuss.

“I ran into a friend from Phoenix- she’s in town for a wedding- so we’re going to get a late lunch and catch up. Shouldn’t take too long.”

Both Peter and Charlotte raised their eyebrows at me. I was pretty sure they knew what I was doing. If nothing else, they definitely heard Charlie providing a mostly legitimate excuse that I blatantly dismissed.

“Oh, well, that’s okay, then. Just give me a call before you head out, all right?”

“Will do, Chief.”

--

Peter knew I was at least partially bullshitting with my explanation. I could tell by his expression. He thankfully didn’t call me out on it. 

“We’ll have to tell Jasper about this,” he warned without the regret that Charlotte had had when she told me the same.

“Yeah, Charlotte said as much.” I picked at my steak a bit more. “How did you know I was in Seattle?” I eventually asked. Peter grinned. If he said ‘I just know shit,’ I was going to scream.

“Jasper mentioned it,” he told me instead. Thank god. Wait…

“How did he know?” And why did it even come up?

“He overheard you telling a classmate about it, apparently,” Charlotte said. “We weren’t looking for you or anything- we just stopped in town for some dinner before heading back home- but when we saw you yesterday, we couldn’t resist the opportunity to dig a little,” she continued.

“Well, you did a good job. In less than two hours, you’ve found out more about me than Jasper has in months.” I thought about that for a second, then added in a grumble, “unless you count the background check, but that was just cheating.” It also wasn’t exactly accurate for anything before June of 2004.

They let me get to the point of finishing half my meal (well done steak with a side of broccoli), mostly just chatting with each other at a low enough volume that I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying.

“So, what are we going to do with you?” Peter finally mused. I couldn’t help but tense up.

“Let me go home and inconvenience the Cullens with my existence while I hope that they don’t decide to kill me for knowing things they’d rather I didn’t?” I suggested.

Charlotte laughed.

“There is a certain appeal to that,” she agreed. I hoped she meant the ‘inconveniencing the Cullens’ bit and not the part where I’d be fearing for my life.

--

I was on my way back to Forks exactly an hour after I’d called Charlie about my second delay. 

My phone now had two new numbers stored. I had no idea why I’d ever need them, but Peter just winked at me after he entered them. Please, do not let that ‘just knows shit’ be a thing.

As I drove, I contemplated joining a more intensive self-defense class. One that taught you how to fight dirty. Because I was pretty sure I’d gotten Bella’s bad luck- even if not her bad balance- and I wasn’t certain I wouldn’t be cornered again. And I certainly couldn’t count on altruistic cannibals coming to my rescue for a second time. I was such an idiot.

Chapter Text

Isabella knows.

Jasper had no trouble comprehending the very short message displayed on his phone screen. At least, in theory. In practice, however…

He’d hit the speed-dial for Peter before he even realized it.

“What do you mean she knows?” Jasper demanded before Peter could so much as give one of his smartass greetings.

In the background, Rosalie ripped the book she was reading in half.

“Well, Char and I happened to run across Miss Swan when we stopped in Seattle,” Peter started, an amusement that Jasper didn’t appreciate clear in his tone. “She didn’t seemed too shocked to see a vampire save her from a couple of muggers. Well, shocked she was saved, maybe, but not about the vampire part.”

“So she knows about vampires, does that mean she knows about us?” Jasper tried to calm himself- and Rosalie- down. It didn’t really work.

“She knew who Char was talking about when she mentioned visiting our brother, even without any names being mentioned,” Peter confirmed.

This was not good.

Rosalie gritted her teeth so tightly that Jasper could hear it. She zoomed over and snatched the phone out of Jasper’s hand.

“How?” She bit out.

“Turns out the girl got a bit of an information overload when those migraines of hers cleared up. She knows quite a bit about vampires in general, but your family in particular.” Peter’s voice grew even more amused. “And a future she’s been trying to avoid.” Charlotte was practically cackling in the background.

“She’s a seer?” Jasper tried to clarify.

“Nah, she just saw one future, and she’s mostly been changing it. She said she couldn’t see a way out of moving to Forks- something about pride and her mom not letting her drop out of high school to get her GED, I don’t really know how that relates- or she would’ve avoided you all entirely.”

“So she’s not planning on telling anyone about us?” Rosalie asked skeptically.

“Not at all. She doesn’t seem to have a problem with vampires. Didn’t even really blink about me draining the muggers. She’s a little worried you’ll kill her for knowing, though.”

That was a valid concern on Bella’s part. Rosalie was emitting a great deal of worry and rage. Jasper grabbed the phone back from her before she could crush it.

“Any chance you found out why her background check doesn’t match up with what she’s been giving me when I talk to her?” Jasper hadn’t picked up any sign of deception from her emotions, but a lot of her answers didn’t jive with what Jenks had found out.

“Now what would be the fun in telling you that?” Charlotte called out playfully from the background..

“This isn’t about fun. It’s about survival,” Rosalie ground out.

“No, it’s a little about fun,” Peter insisted. “Listen, she’s really not a threat to you. If you leave her alone, she’ll repay the favor.” He disconnected the call without further conversation.

“We need to reevaluate,” Jasper said.

“You can say that again,” Rosalie grumbled. She had insisted from the beginning that Bella Swan was a threat. But no, everyone but Emmett (who had really just been indifferent)- even Jasper- had to go against her. This would have been so much easier to take care of at the start. Sure, Bella hadn’t really endeared herself to many people, but she was still integrated enough into the town that her disappearance would be noted by quite a few. She even had a job at a major retailer! And, okay, no-call no-shows weren’t exactly uncommon in minimum-wage retail, but it was unlike Bella, who was known for being dependable.

Jasper glanced at Rosalie and nodded. Bella was firmly on his threat list, even if he still didn’t want to risk killing her at the moment. If Peter said she wasn’t going to tell anyone, he mostly trusted that, but he also couldn’t risk his entire family. He was going to have to have a sit-down with Bella Swan, and that wasn’t something he really wanted to do. She would undoubtedly have questions for him that he didn’t want to answer, if only so she wasn’t the only one giving out information. He had noticed that about her. She didn’t seem actually curious about the stuff she asked him, but she wasn’t willing to dole out personal info if she wasn’t getting it in return. 

--

“We have a problem,” Rosalie announced when the rest of the family came in later that evening.

“What do you mean, dear?” Esme asked, setting her purse on a side table.

“Bella Swan knows about us,” Jasper put in. Rosalie was still seething too much to speak clearly about the issue.

“What?” Alice’s eyes snapped to him. “What do you mean, she knows about us?”

“Exactly what I said,” Jasper responded, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice. It wasn’t fair to take it out on Alice just because she didn’t see this coming. Bella confounded them all.

“That’s a problem,” Edward said.

“Obviously,” Rosalie drawled.

“How does she know about us?” Carlisle asked, putting a hand on Rosalie’s shoulder in both a comforting and restraining manner.

Jasper shrugged.

“Peter didn’t really know. She apparently got an ‘information overload’ after her migraines stopped. It included vampires, particularly us.”

“That’s-” Emmett stood there for a good fifteen seconds, just processing.

“What do you think we should do?” Esme asked of the room at large.

“I want to sit down with her and discuss this,” Jasper said. Esme relaxed a little. She wasn’t very comfortable with just killing the girl, but she was now a definite threat to the family.

“Do you really think that’s wise?” Edward commented. Probably not, but Jasper didn’t see a way around it, short of killing her outright, and even Rosalie could see the problems with doing that now. 

“Peter doesn’t think she’ll ever say anything, and I’m inclined to believe him, but I’m still not willing to risk the entire family on that assumption,” Jasper told him.

“What do you mean she got an ‘information overload’?” Emmett asked.

“Just that, after her migraines stopped, she knew a lot more than she should.” Jasper frowned. “Including a possible future that she’s been trying to avoid.”

Alice perked up.

“She’s psychic?”

“Peter says no. Just one future, and she’s been changing it,” Jasper told her.

“Do we have any clue why Edward can’t read her, and Alice can’t see her?” Carlisle asked. Jasper and Rosalie both shook their heads. 

“Not that Peter and Charlotte found out,” Jasper said. 

“How about how she can brush off your mojo?” Emmett asked with a grin.

“That’s actually not that hard to do,” Jasper admitted reluctantly. “As long as you can recognize it, if you’re stubborn enough, you can ignore the manufactured emotions,” he clarified. Of course, most people- human or vampire- weren’t in tune enough with their emotions to even recognize what they were feeling beyond the very surface, much less when they were being tampered with. Teenagers were particularly dense about it. With all the hormones flying around, they were prone to snap mood changes even without interference.

It wasn’t something Jasper had shared with the family before, not wanting to give up that advantage even to people he mostly trusted, but it was relevant to this situation.

Edward muttered something under his breath so quietly that even the other vampires couldn’t understand him. 

“Emmett, why don’t you and Rosalie go for a hunt?” Carlisle suggested after a few beats of silence. Rosalie had only been getting tenser throughout the short conversation. Emmett agreed after a quick glance at his wife. Neither of them really needed the blood, but the chase might do her some good. Maybe destroy some trees or something. Rosalie whooshed up the stairs to change into clothes she liked a little less and was back down in seconds.

“Let’s go, babe,” Emmett said cheerfully, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and guiding her out the back door. Silence descended once again until the two were out of earshot. Carlisle excused himself to stop in at the hospital, stating he was going to go over Bella Swan’s neurology file again. Esme decided to remove herself as well, going to her workroom to look over the architectural plans for their next house just in case they were needed sooner than expected.

“So you want to talk with Bella?” Alice asked Jasper, flitting over to an overstuffed chair and gracefully throwing herself into it. “I’m surprised you and Rosalie aren’t arguing for making her disappear, now that she’s confirmed as a threat.”

“Even Rose agrees that it would be more complicated to take her off the board now. Given who her father is, it would have to inarguably be an accident to keep him from digging into it. Which would likely mean spilled blood, which is risky for all of us but Carlisle.” It went without saying that Carlisle would have a problem participating in murder, no matter the reason. “We’d almost certainly have to move sooner than planned.”

“If we let her live knowing about vampires, even if we weren’t the ones to tell her, and the Volturi find out we broke that law, all of our lives are forfeit,” Edward pointed out.

“You want to kill her?” Alice asked with raised eyebrows. This was the vampire who’d denied himself his singer’s blood- even leaving his family for a (short) time just to ensure it- because he didn’t want to kill an innocent. That Edward and Jasper were switching their normal stances on the subject was… not quite concerning, but it was definitely something she was going to have to give more thought to.

“There’s no statute of limitations on the Volturi’s laws,” Edward reminded her. “Even if Bella dies a natural death and they don’t find out for another two hundred years, we’ll still be subject to punishment.”

“Probably not death, though,” Alice mused. “Aro still considers Carlisle a friend, and wouldn’t want to kill him or upset him by killing his family. We’d probably be let off with a stint in the Guard.”

“For you, me, and Edward, probably,” Jasper put in. “Carlisle- and Esme by extension- would probably be safe, but Rosalie and Emmett don’t have the same advantages we do.”

“Changing your mind already?” Alice asked. He shook his head.

“No, but it bore saying.” He studied Alice for a moment. She didn’t have any strong emotions on the topic, unless she’d somehow found a way to block him, which even Bella didn’t seem able to do. “What about you, Alice? You haven’t said what you think yet.”

“I’m going to hold off until you speak with her,” she replied. “Actually, can I be there for that? I have a few questions for her.”

“About the future she saw?” Jasper guessed. She nodded.

“It doesn’t sound like what I do, at all. I’m curious.”

He considered that for a minute. Bella had already proven hesitant to answer questions. But, then, Alice was the one she’d had the least interaction with. Neither had shown the other any hostility, at least. Alice was probably the best choice for backup aside from Carlisle, even if she didn’t have the advantage of foresight when it came to Bella.

“I would have to agree,” Edward said in response to Jasper’s thought process. Jasper threw him an aggravated look, but just turned towards Alice and nodded once.

“I’ll talk to her in school on Monday and set something up. I’m sure she’ll be expecting it after running into Peter and Charlotte.”

Chapter Text

 I spent the weekend on edge, certain the Cullens would come after me at any moment. When someone accidentally slammed the staffroom door at work, I dropped a box of hardcovers I was getting ready to shelve directly on my foot. At least I wasn’t wearing sandals.

“Sorry!” Elise called out. I just scowled at her before picking the box back up.

“Why so jumpy?” Steven (always Steven, never Steve) asked me from just a few feet over. I jumped again, though I managed to hold onto the box this time. Even with my recent hypervigilance, I hadn’t noticed him approach. He was always freakishly quiet. He raised his eyebrows with a concerned expression.

“Had a bit of a run-in with some assholes in Seattle. I’m still a little on edge, I guess,” I told a half truth.

His eyebrows rose even higher.

“Did you tell your dad about that?” 

I snorted.

“Are you kidding? He’d never let me out of town again. Besides, everyone came out of it all right,” I told him. Yes, I was counting the muggers being made a meal as ‘all right.’ “I mean, I’m never going anywhere without my pepper spray again-” I had stupidly left it in my car while the tires were being patched. “-and I’ll probably buy a stungun, but I’ll be okay.”

“If you’re sure…” Steven replied dubiously. I nodded.

“Speaking of… Do you know where I can buy a stungun?”

--

“What do you mean, a stungun?” Leah asked while we waited for our judo class to start. We were in a later block now that we both had yellow belts. It meant a longer wait in between work and class, but Leah usually came early, and spending time with her was no hardship.

“You know, a hand-held taser? Little boxy thing you hold and zap people with when they get too close?” I tried to keep a straight face.

“I know what a stungun is, Swan.” She rolled her eyes. “Why do you want one? Did something happen?”

“Is that concern I hear, Clearwater?” I faked astonishment, then laughed when she tried to push me over from her seated position. “There was a little bit of a dust-up when I was in Seattle,” I had decided on going with what I had told Steven. “I’m all right, obviously, but I’d like one more thing in my little arsenal.”

“And you can’t ask your dad about it because he’d flip. And Officer Baum would probably feel obligated to tell him,” Leah surmised with a nod.

“Exactly. So, know anywhere I could get one?”

“Nope. I’m not all that familiar with this city, even with coming out twice a week,” she reminded me. I sighed. “Why don’t you just look in the phonebook?”

Oh, right. Those existed.

“Good idea!” I enthused. She rolled her eyes again.

“You’re an idiot. Come on, class must be about to start.”

--

I didn’t have time to look up a place to get my new weaponry after class. Charlie had extended my curfew to 10:00 on school nights and 11:00 otherwise after I handled my trip to Seattle so well (hah! If only he knew), but I was due at the range for another lesson with Anna before I had to head back. Our lessons had greatly diminished since I was in school and had limited free time due to my job, not to mention I had felt a little guilty taking up so much of her free time, but we still met up every couple of weeks as she took me through guns of various sizes. We were up to a .45 now. It was a little much for me to handle, I could admit- I was much better with a 9mm or .380... plus whatever caliber her rifle was- but I was steadily improving. Once I got the hang of this one, our lessons would probably be at an end.

I nearly facepalmed when I remembered the shooting range we went to was attached to a gun store, which is why we’d been able to go through so many different weapons during my lessons- they rented out guns to use on their range. The urge to hit myself was doubled when I walked right by a display of stunguns on my way to the range in the back. I would definitely be stopping by to take a gander on my way out. Even if Anna stuck around for a bit once we were done, I could probably write off my sudden interest as irrational paranoia rather than a fully justified anxiety. She would worry a bit, but as long as she didn’t rat me out to Charlie, it would be fine.

It turned out she had to leave right after returning the Glock we’d rented (okay, she had rented- as I wasn’t 18 yet, I couldn’t legally do so), so I was able to take my time at the display. 

“Did you have any questions?” A salesperson came up to me after I’d been deliberating for about five minutes.

“Oh, yeah. I don’t really know what I’m looking at here,” I admitted. He gave a small laugh.

“Okay, we’ll start with the basic question. Do you plan on carrying it in your pocket, a purse, other bag, car, or some other way?”

“Pocket or purse, definitely.”

“Okay, we’ll stick with the smaller models, then. For some of the older ones, that means a little less voltage, but the newer ones still pack a pretty mean punch.”

“Do they require batteries, or are they rechargeable?”

“That depends on the model. We have two pocket-sized ones that are rechargeable, another three that need you to change out the batteries. Both have their pros and cons.”

I tilted my head in confusion and made a questioning noise. I didn’t really see how having to change out the batteries was a pro.

“Rechargeable obviously means you don’t have to spend more money on batteries or carry them with you, but it also means you have to find an outlet to use if you run out of juice. Not usually a problem, since you can get quite a few uses out of the smaller ones before they need charging- depending on how long you hold the stun for- but they take a few hours to charge fully, so if you’re in a rush, it’s easier to hit up a gas station for batteries you can change out in a few seconds.”

That made sense.

“The rechargeable ones are also generally more expensive.”

That I could see. I had enough cash with me to afford it, though.

“While you think that over, let’s talk voltage.”

--

I ended up getting one of the rechargeable ones. Since they were newer, they had a higher voltage than the others. It had a three hour charge time, but I was really hoping I never ran out of juice fast enough that that became a problem. If I needed to use it more than a dozen times in between charges, I’d have so many more issues to deal with.

I couldn’t wait until I could apply for a concealed weapons permit and could start carrying a firearm with me. Unless I moved to a different state, though, that would have to wait until I was 21. Not even Chief Swan pulling strings could get around that one.

Moving to a different state after high school did have it’s own appeal, though. I wasn’t fond of the amount of cloud cover here, for obvious reasons. Somewhere sunny sounded nice.

I’d have to research states with WUE reciprocity to keep my college tuition down, of course. Paying the in-state resident tuition rate was the main reason I was currently pursuing the University of Washington. Then again, if I got good grades in my first year’s worth of college classes, maybe I could score at least a partial merit scholarship. Now that I thought about it, I probably would qualify for need-based scholarships, too. Neither Charlie nor Renee raked in the cash, after all. It looked like I had more research in my immediate future.

I wouldn’t even find out if I got the scholarship for my dual-credit year for at least another week. My interview had gone well enough, despite my extreme anxiety going in, but I’ve never interviewed all that well, so I was sure there were other applicants that had been much more eloquent than I was.

--

"Hey, Bells," Charlie called from the living room when I walked into the house.

"Hi, Dad."

"How was work and class?" He asked.

"Work was actually pretty slow. Class was good. Leah and I are both almost ready to test for our next belts." I plopped myself down on the couch across from his recliner and dropped my duffle bag at my feet.

"Which one's that, again?"

"Orange. And Anna said I'm about as good with a .45 as I'm likely to get, so my marksmanship lessons are at an end."

He cleared his throat uncomfortably.

"You know, I'm real proud of you, Bells."

Oh. Oh, dear. I was about as good with emotion as he was. Which was to say, this was uncomfortable as hell for both of us.

"Thanks, Dad."

Luckily, he didn't elaborate on the ways in which he was proud of me- just gave me a gruff nod and turned back to the TV- because that would have been a whole other level of awkward. It was moments like these (few as they were) that really drove it home that I had taken over his daughter's life.

Chapter Text

My anxiety (and paranoia) were ramped up to the extreme by the time I got to school on Monday. I was holding it together well enough that I wasn’t visibly twitching at every unexpected loud noise, but my heart was about to jump out of my chest, it was pounding so hard.

Lucinda was absolutely giddy ten minutes into lunch. That could only mean one thing.

“Did you kill another one of their goldfish?” She asked me. I didn’t need to ask for clarification. I could feel the glares boring into the back of my head. I was a little surprised my hair wasn’t burning. They seriously sucked at being inconspicuous.

“It was a betta this time,” I said dryly. “You know, for someone who doesn’t like typical high school drama all that much, you’re getting way too much enjoyment out of this.”

“It’s just so ironic! The family that doesn’t interact with anyone having beef with the girl who also interacts with almost no one.”

I just shrugged. There was no way I could explain to Lucinda the real reason for the Cullens’ distaste for me. Both because she probably wouldn’t believe me, and I didn’t want to put her on their hit list, as well.

“It is a little weird,” Zack admitted, to my surprise. He usually tried to divert such conversation. “You can be a bit of a bitch-” I preened “-but the only person you’ve ever actually done anything to was Kowalski, and he definitely had that coming.”

“Damn right, he did,” I muttered, preening officially over. “What can I say? They really loved their fishies,” I tried to joke.

Quiet Alex studied me for a moment. He must have found whatever he was looking for, because he just nodded and went back to his gross school pizza.

I took a giant bite out of my apple- the only thing that looked even remotely appealing in the cafeteria line today- and everyone seemed to take the hint that I was done with the conversation. Zack redirected the conversation to Lucinda’s minor feud with the junior who’d wanted to ask Alex to the dance. Lucinda gleefully regaled us with tales of the many failed ways in which said junior had tried to humiliate her. (The joke was on the junior, whose name I couldn’t be bothered to remember. Lucinda was shameless.)

--

"We need to talk to you after school,” Jasper murmured to me near the end of Spanish.

“I figured,” I replied, despite my heart once again pounding out of my chest. Wait. “Who’s ‘we’?”

“Me and Alice,” he told me. 

At least it wasn’t Rosalie. Or the entire coven.

“Where do you want to do this?” I asked. There weren’t many places for a quiet, unnoticed sit down. No way in hell was I going to their house- and I doubted it’d even be suggested- and I wasn’t inviting them back to mine. The diner and lone coffee shop were both going to be full of nosy students (and even nosier adults). I was not going for a walk to any sort of abandoned place with them. Semi-public would be lovely.

“Library?” he suggested.

“School or public?” I countered. The school library wasn’t a great option. There would be at least a few students working after school on group projects.

“Public,” he answered. That was a better option. It was tiny and poorly stocked, so it was usually empty aside from the library staff (probably not the actual librarian- she only came from Port Angeles once a week to check in). They had a room that, while private, was full of windows and in view of the front desk. We’d be seen by the worker but unable to be heard. Granted, adding one person to the casualty list if they decided to take me out wasn’t outside the realm of possibility, but I did have an ace up my sleeve for if they decided murder was the way to go.

“That’s acceptable,” I replied. “4:00?” The library closed at 6:00, so that put a natural time limit on our conversation.

He nodded.

Guess I had plans after school.

--

After calling to let Charlie know where I’d be after school- despite being a pretty hands-off dad, he always appreciated being kept in the loop as to his daughter’s whereabouts- I stopped by the house to log into my computer to set up my backup plan, grab a quick bite to eat, and pick up a couple of folders before heading to the library. 

I checked in at the desk and signed out the key for the private room, making sure to be extra friendly to the clerk. Customer service sucked and was monotonous, and it took being either exceptionally rude or really pleasant to be remembered. Everyone else blended together. I needed to be remembered, just in case this went badly.

I set one of the folders- a dossier on the Cullen coven that I’d put together the day before in petty (and pointless) retaliation for their background check on me- on one side of the table and took a seat on the other. After checking my watch for the fourth time and seeing I still had ten minutes, I pulled out my Japanese book (I was now on the third of five in the series) in a pitiful attempt to settle my nerves a bit. I didn’t want to settle them completely- I would need the ‘I might die today’ nerves to cover up the ‘I’m not telling the whole truth’ nerves- but I needed to be able to keep my head. That way I could, you know, maybe not literally lose my head.

I set my book aside when the door creaked open. At least they hadn’t snuck up on me.

“So…” I started awkwardly after we’d all been sitting in silence for a good three minutes. They hadn’t even looked in the folder, to my disappointment.

“You know about us,” Jasper stated, finally flipping it open and glancing at the first page. He either read it at vampire speed or didn’t understand Arabic, because he passed it over to Alice, who started to devour it.

“Yes.” No use trying to deny it.

“How?” He demanded.

“How much did Peter tell you?” I countered.

“Just assume he told us everything.”

I was watching him closely. He began to look a little irritated at the mention of Peter. A small smile slowly made its way across my face. I sat back in my chair, relaxing a bit in my amusement.

“No. He didn’t.”

Jasper’s irritation grew. Hah! I was right.

“You’re going to tell us,” he demanded again. I felt fear flood me, which only served to make me angry. Didn’t he know better than to try to mess with my moods by now?

Alice cut in with a gasp.

“How do you know this?”

I slid my gaze from Jasper over to her, then down to see where she was in the file. Ah, she’d gotten to the page about her. 

“My brain got a data dump when the migraines stopped,” I said simply. Whether through Carlisle’s easy access to Bella’s medical records or by the background check, they certainly knew about the migraines Bella had suffered.

“Alice?” Jasper asked stiffly. I looked at him quickly to see that he hadn’t stopped staring at me. What did he think I’d do? Pull out a flame thrower?

“My name was Mary Alice Brandon. I was born in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1901. I was- electroshock therapy?” Those last words were directed at me. I just nodded. When I was writing everything out, I realized I remembered much more about the Cullens than I’d first assumed, given how invested I hadn’t been in the books in my first life. The bit about Alice was mentioned in three of the four fics I could remember reading, though, so I guess it just stuck. As consistent as it had been across the three, I was sure it came from canon.

I wasn’t entirely sure why she was so mystified. She must have been watching my future since they confirmed that I knew about them. She should have seen me put the folder (and the other I was holding in reserve) together. Now that I thought about it, I had no idea why they’d let me live long enough to make the second set of documents.

“And that came from your… data dump?” Jasper asked skeptically. I nodded again.

“A lot of information about the Cullens. A little about other specific vampires and vampirism in general. A possible future that I’ve been trying to change.”

“What do you mean, a possible future? Peter said, but he didn’t explain,” Alice told me, sliding the folder back over to Jasper. Apparently he did read Arabic, because he started skimming the pages.

“I knew a future that would have come to pass if I left Phoenix without knowing anything about vampires.” It was the simplest way I could explain it without skirting an outright lie.

“And you’ve been changing it?” Alice tried to confirm.

“Even though I didn’t particularly want anything to do with your family, I couldn’t avoid moving to Forks. So I tried my best to avoid you here,” I said. “Lot of good that did,” I grumbled.

“Why didn’t you want anything to do with our family?” Jasper asked. I glanced back at him and saw that he was spending far more time on the section about him than he had on the rest.

I was sure that both my expression and my emotions were displaying my disbelief.

“Fragile human who apparently smells tastier than most.” I pointed to myself. “Nearly indestructible vampires.” I gestured between the two of them.

“So you know you’re Edward’s singer?” Alice asked, disbelief of her own in her voice. “Why would you put yourself- or him- in that position?”

“Hey, I did everything I could short of running away from home to avoid him. Running into him in that store was entirely unanticipated,” I protested.

“Why would you even come to Forks, knowing that?” She pressed.

“I couldn’t stay in Phoenix. Living with Renee was… impossibly difficult. I wanted to graduate high school and start college early, but Renee was worried I’d be held back after sophomore year was so wonky and wouldn’t let me try to test out. I considered a GED, but that would have messed with my future and she wouldn’t allow it, anyway. Boarding school was too expensive for both of my parents, and Charlie probably would have been against it. Moving to Forks and insisting on placement tests was the only option I could find. Moving up a grade took me out of classes with Edward, and taking college credits next year gets me out of the school entirely. I spend as little time in Forks as possible outside of school- mostly I’m in Port Angeles or visiting a friend on the res. Do not think I made that decision lightly,” I ranted.

“What do you mean, ‘impossibly difficult’?” Jasper asked sharply.

I took a deep breath.

“After the data dump-” and yes, I was going to keep calling it that, “-I forgot almost everything. Charlie and Renee know I have memory issues, but they don’t know how bad it is. I had to scrounge through old pictures and journals just to make sense of things. Not to mention, just about everything about me changed. Likes, dislikes, even skills. All different. With that check you ran on me, you undoubtedly know more about the Bella Swan of pre-June 2004 than I do.”

I could see they didn’t think that was a good enough reason for me to become such an inconvenience to them.

“Look, you all have effectively endless resources and an eternity to get shit done. Achieve things. Make something of yourself. Live well. I have one life. One opportunity.” Not exactly true for the one life bit, but I was gearing up for another rant. It definitely wasn’t the best idea, because admitting that I didn’t give a shit if they had to start over elsewhere wouldn’t endear me to them at all, but I couldn’t really stop myself. Luckily, Alice did that for me. 

“You might have less than that,” she said somewhat softly. I just raised my eyebrows at her. Was this the part where they threatened to kill me? And why was she being soft about it?

“You knowing about us is a problem,” Jasper said matter-of-factly. “Even if you don’t tell anyone, if we let you live with that knowledge, the Volturi will eventually find out.” Then why the fuck did they all leave Bella in New Moon? Was this yet another difference between this world and the series I remembered? A far more important difference than how the school was laid out? 

Not the time.

“You know you made that problem for yourselves, right?”

“What do you mean?” Alice asked, coming across as almost offended.

“Your problem isn’t me having that knowledge. It’s you knowing I do. Which you wouldn’t know if Peter and Charlotte hadn’t told you. They wouldn’t have found out if they hadn’t been curious about me in Seattle. They wouldn’t have been curious about me in Seattle if they hadn’t seen your background check on me. I never tried to expose you. Never tried to get to know you. Never even approached you. I may have moved to Forks, but I fully planned on keeping my head down until I graduated and could go somewhere completely out of your orbit. But no, you had to dig into things that, as far as you knew, didn’t concern you. What about me screamed ‘threat!’ so loud that you had to do that?”

--

“You didn’t react normally,” Jasper said after a beat. I couldn’t quite read his expression. It was almost… abashed?

“What, I didn’t run away fast enough when Edward was growling at me in the Thriftway?” Because I was pretty damn sure any person with even a modicum of self-preservation would have beat a hasty retreat in that situation.

“No… It was more about how you acted at school,” Alice sounded like she really didn’t want to admit that.

I wasn’t sure how crickets got in the building, but I was sure I could hear them while I processed that statement. Particularly the stupidity of it. Because my ‘reaction’ to them in school was a nonreaction.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I finally snarled. “So, what, because I didn’t fawn over you all, I must have been hiding something? Because, I gotta tell ya, you all come off as rich kids who don’t give a rat’s ass about the rest of the population. Whether you put out that aura on purpose to drive away students or not, that’s what you seem like. Did it ever occur to you that I’ve just had enough of teenage entitlement in my life and have no need to subject myself to more?” I shook my head. “Of all the conceited-” I muttered, fully aware that they could still hear me clearly. “You know, I understand being self-absorbed- I fully admit to it, myself- but this just takes the cake. Do you really all think you’re somehow due attention? For fuck’s sake!” I threw my hands up, fully exasperated.

“Be that as it may, you knowing-” Jasper actually cut himself off at my glare. “Us knowing that you know,” he corrected, probably just not wanting to have to listen to another rant, “is still a problem.”

“And what do you suggest we do about that?” I asked somewhat coldly. Really, what was the point of this? “I’m certainly not going to consent to dying just to ease your conscience. And, while I’d rather be a vampire than dead-dead, I’m not into the idea of being stuck with a 17-year-old’s brain chemistry for the rest of my existence.”

“What would you suggest?” Alice asked.

I hesitated before pulling my second folder out of my bag. I really hadn’t wanted to do this. I almost felt bad about it. But, mostly, I knew they’d eventually find a way around it. All they needed was a decent hacker, which they could certainly afford.

“Did you know that the Volturi have a disturbing pattern?” I commented, faux-casually.

“The Volturi have many disturbing patterns,” Jasper drawled.

I tapped my finger against the folder, their attention drawn to the absent motion, as I continued deliberating.

“When a coven with a gifted vampire comes to their attention, that coven is somehow found to be in violation of the laws. After Aro reads everyone, the gifted vampire is either cleared of wrongdoing or found to be ‘genuinely remorseful’ and offered a place in the guard.”

Two sets of darkening eyes snapped to mine.

I made my decision and set the folder down on the table, sliding it across to rest in between them. They could decide who would be the bearer of bad news. 

Alice slid it over to Jasper without looking away from me. Good idea, give it to the strategist.

“What is this?” Jasper asked with a dead tone after he must have read through the single page a couple of times- even if he was going at human speed.

“A draft of an email set to be sent out automatically if I don’t reset the timer every twelve hours.”

He handed the page to Alice. She only read it once before she looked back at me, a little bit of surprise on her face. Probably at my ruthlessness.

“And who does this get sent to?” I sent him my best ‘you’re not an idiot’ look.

“Did you know that the Volturi have an email address? I had to dig to find it, of course.” It had taken me three hours.

“You would doom our family?” Alice’s voice was somehow both small and cold. Honestly, it was more chilling than the rage on Jasper’s face.

“I’d rather not,” I admitted. “So long as you leave me be. But there is very little I wouldn’t do to survive. And I'm a vengeful creature. If I end up dead at your hands, I’m taking you with me.”

They both looked back at the paper, and I wondered what more they were getting from the three lines, considering they had perfect recall.

Edward Cullen (FKA Edward Masen) - telepath - at a distance, surface thoughts only

Alice Cullen (FKA Mary Alice Brandon) - psychic - sees possible futures based on the decisions of others

Jasper Hale (FKA Jasper Whitlock) - empath/pathokinetic - knows and can manipulate the emotions of others

“This is extortion,” Jasper finally said. Really? That’s all he had? Here I was, prepared to deal with overt threats. I could only think of one reply.

“I’m pretty sure it’s blackmail, actually.”

Chapter Text

We sat in silence, staring at each other (well, they were more glaring at me), for a good long while, until the library clerk came to inform us that she would be closing up for the day in fifteen minutes. 

“It seems we’re at an impasse,” Jasper said after the clerk shut the door.

“It would seem so,” I agreed. As they stood to leave I remembered something important. “You might want to avoid playing baseball for a while.”

“Why?” Alice asked.

“James’ coven is in the area. If you play a baseball game during the next thunderstorm, they’ll be attracted to the sound.” I was pretty sure that was meant to happen soon. “There are three of them. James, Victoria, and Laurent. Laurent would probably run at being outnumbered, but James would think it a fun challenge to fight you all and Victoria would follow his lead.”

“James? As in…” Alice gripped the dossier tighter to her chest. I had included that he had been after her when she was human. I nodded.

“He’s a very skilled tracker. Victoria has some sort of gift for evasion, I think.”

“But you’re not sure?” Jasper clarified, eyes sharp.

“Just because I got a data dump doesn’t mean I remember all of it.” And I remembered the evasion thing from fanfiction, so I wasn’t sure if it was canon. It wouldn’t hurt them to assume she had it, though.

He just gave me a brief nod and ushered Alice out of the room. I waited until I saw them leave the library entirely before taking a deep breath.

That was nerve-wracking.

They were definitely going to figure out a way to kill me.

--

“She knows too much!” Rosalie was back to fuming as she glared at Bella Swan’s dossier on the family as though she’d somehow suddenly be able to read a language she’d never bothered learning. Alice had had to give her the details.

“Yes, she does. And the best case scenario would be to take her out. But she has a failsafe,” Jasper admitted. He didn’t particularly like that they had been out-maneuvered.

“What kind of failsafe?” Carlisle asked. Alice handed over the email draft. 

“Where does she plan to send this?” Esme wondered, reading over his shoulder.

“The Volturi,” Alice said quietly. “She said they have a pattern of taking out covens with gifted members, then recruiting the gifted members for the guard.” 

Carlisle wanted to protest, to say that Aro wouldn’t do such a thing, but he knew his old friend well enough to know that it wasn’t completely out of character.

“If they come for us, they’ll find out about her, too,” Emmett pointed out. As much as he liked a good fight, he wasn’t reckless enough to put his family up against the whole of the Volturi.

“She only intends for it to be sent if something happens to her,” Edward said. For once, Jasper didn’t react badly to Edward reading his thoughts. “It’s on an automatic timer that she needs to reset every twelve hours.”

“We can find someone to hack into her computer or email to take care of that,” Emmett dismissed.

Carlisle shook his head.

“It’s not as easy as just hiring someone, Emmett. A human can’t get a hold of this information. And a vampire can’t know that she found out about us. Not to mention it would just give them the same leverage. We can’t guarantee that whoever we get to disable the message wouldn’t read it first.”

“So she has us over a barrel,” Edward gave a bitter laugh. Seven vampires, the youngest being nine decades old, outwitted by a 17-year-old human.

“Unless…” Jasper started. Edward glanced at him and shook his head.

“Telling the Volturi about her ourselves just exposes our gifts to them faster,” he shot down. Esme gasped.

“But if we contact them now, they can’t go so far as to kill or recruit us for breaking the law. Not without bringing a whole lot of scrutiny down on themselves.”

Alice searched for that future- relatively easy to see for something undecided since Jasper was almost ready to make the call himself- before joining Edward in his opinion.

“They’d leave us alone for at least few years, but I can’t see anything past 2010 if you do that.” That was disconcerting. Visions going completely blank meant death. Or maybe Bella’s involvement.

“So, short of convincing her to be turned so she actually disables that message before starting the burn instead of still letting it go out as revenge on us for damning her to this life, our only option is to avoid the Volturi for the rest of our existences.” Rosalie shook her head. “Or find a very trustworthy hacker.” Which was a bit of an oxymoron. And they’d still have to avoid the Volturi finding out why they’d left the girl alone for even that short time. 

“Bella’s gifted even as a human. And ruthless,” Emmett pointed out. When everyone looked at him to see where he was going with those very obvious statements, he rolled his eyes. “If the Volturi find out about her, they won’t kill her. They’ll change her.”

“She said she’d rather be a vampire than dead, but she doesn’t want to be stuck with a teenage brain,” Jasper informed them. “Turning her over to the Volturi now might get us enough goodwill for us to escape their grasp, but she’d probably seek revenge in the future.” His lips twitched. “She described herself as ‘a vengeful creature.’ I don’t doubt it.” He turned to Alice. “That’s probably why your visions end in that scenario. She’d come for us.”

“She’d be one vampire. Against seven. What kind of damage could she do?” Emmett asked, flexing his muscles to make his point.

“I’m not comfortable handing someone over to the Volturi’s mercy,” Carlisle said. Then he sighed. “But if it’s her or our family…” He looked around at his ‘children’ before settling his gaze back on Jasper. “What were her emotions like, Jasper?”

“A little regretful when she put forth the threat. But mostly resolved. She wasn’t bluffing.”

“How long could we get away with letting her stay human before the Volturi definitely take us to task?” Edward asked Carlisle.

“You’re thinking about changing her?” Rosalie asked sharply. “You?” Aside from her, Edward was probably the one who hated their existence the most.

“Like Carlisle said; it’s her or our family,” he shot back. “And she apparently doesn’t hate the idea of becoming a vampire, she just doesn’t want it now. If we can put it off a few years without bringing the Volturi down on us, that might be the best option.”

“We could hand her over to the Volturi and let her negotiate a timeline with them,” Emmett suggested.

“Whoever just made a decision, don’t do it.” Alice snapped suddenly. She looked around to see five confused expressions, and then Esme, whose face was hard.

“It’s necessary, Alice.” The matriarch had to protect her family.

“What is it?” Carlisle asked his wife. When she didn’t answer, he turned to Alice. “Alice?”

“I don’t know what Esme is going to do, but I saw Chief Swan talking to Billy Black at a funeral.” Oh, right, they had to think about the wolves, too. “I don’t know what happened, but not long after, only four of us were still alive. And the Volturi came for us shortly after that.” Alice glared at Esme. “We all die if you do whatever you’re planning, Esme.”

Esme turned away and gripped the back of a chair so hard it broke. Then she nodded. Alice let out a sigh of relief after another brief vision.

“Thank you, Esme.”

They all stood as still as statues for nearly an hour, running through ideas at a breakneck pace and discarding them just as quickly. Edward sifted through all their thoughts, trying to cobble together a plan from the pieces, while Alice let visions flit through her mind as tentative plans were made and broken.

Emmett finally broke the silence.

“What are we going to do?”

--

I pulled into the driveway just as one of the town’s two pizza delivery guys was leaving. Looked like I was off the hook for dinner.

“Hi, Dad,” I called as I walked through the door.

“Hey, Bells. How was your study group?”

“It was fine.” Lie.

“Who’d you meet up with? You didn’t say earlier.” Charlie handed me a plate with two pieces of pepperoni pizza on it, which I took gratefully. My ‘quick bite to eat’ earlier hadn’t been much more than a snack.

“Jasper Hale and Alice Cullen,” I told him. The library clerk had seen us all, so there was no point in lying about it.

“Dr. Cullen’s kids?” He raised his eyebrows. I nodded.

“Yeah, Jasper and I usually work together in Spanish for group things. I think Alice was just along because she didn’t have anything better to do.” Partially true. I wasn’t really sure why Alice had come along. She hadn’t exactly asked me all that much after I’d distracted her with that first folder.

We descended into silence as we ate our pizza.

As we were washing the dishes (well, I washed- it was my night for that particular chore), Charlie cleared his throat. I looked back at him in question.

“Dad?” I prodded when he just awkwardly looked at me, obviously at a loss for something. 

“I’m going down to Billy’s for dinner on Wednesday,” he started.

“Okay, I hope you’ll have fun,” I told him, fully meaning it, when he didn’t continue.

“Actually, I was hoping you’d come with,” he finished. Ah, that explained the awkwardness.

Jacob had not taken it well when I started spending time with Leah. Particularly since I didn’t really give him the time of day beyond vague pleasantries. When he made an actual move and I told him in no uncertain terms that absolutely nothing romantic would ever be happening between us, he threw a tantrum. An outright fit, really. As though he was five, rather than fifteen (and it was absolutely not my fault this happened two days after his birthday). He didn’t even care that Billy and Charlie were in the next room to hear everything. I just calmly walked away from the tirading child and informed the dads that I would be going home early, really just thankful that Charlie and I had driven separately.

Billy had looked resigned. Whether due to Jacob’s childish behavior or my refusal of his son, I didn’t know. Didn’t care, either.

Charlie had been alarmed. He must not have expected Jacob to be holding so tightly to the idea of us together, even after I told him about the boy’s possessive behavior months before.

Both had just nodded, but Charlie presented me with a new pepper spray key chain after school the next day (with the warning that it wasn’t actually allowed in school).

He must have hoped that two months was enough for us teenagers to move past that incident. It was plenty of time for me- I hadn’t really expected anything better from Jacob, and had pretty much dismissed the whole thing entirely other than making a point of outright ignoring him- but I wasn’t so sure about Jacob. He still tried to get my attention whenever I was on the res to hang out with Leah.

“If Jacob doesn’t back off, I’m going to hit him with the pepper spray,” I warned Charlie. I was bringing my stungun, too. It would be a hell of a way for Charlie to find out about it, but it might finally get my point across to Jacob.

“That’s fair,” Charlie allowed. “I’ll ask Billy to talk to him.”

I just shook my head.

“If Jacob still has it in his head that he and I are somehow meant for each other, his dad talking to him about it won’t change a thing. No need to stress your friendship on my account.” 

Charlie actually snorted.

“Because my daughter pepper spraying his son won’t put stress on our friendship.”

I shrugged. If it got to the point that I had to do physical damage to Jacob to fend him off and Billy still defended him, I didn’t really care if our dads ended up cutting ties.

--

My phone dinged with a text message just as I was getting ready for bed.

That was a ballsy move.

Fucking Peter. Jasper better have ratted me out. It was bad enough having yet another vampire’s attention, let alone one with an intuitive gift.

It was necessary.

Hopefully he wasn’t too pissed that I’d threatened his ‘brother.’ 

If you say so.

I was about to shoot back that it wouldn’t have been necessary if he hadn’t tattled on me to Jasper when my phone dinged again.

They can’t find a way around it, you know.  

Talking via text was so inconvenient. No way to assess tone of voice or body language.

What do you mean?

They can’t hire a hacker because they might read your message. They can’t kill you because the message would go out. They don’t want to contact the Volturi themselves in case you’re right about how they fill their guard.

My blood ran cold. I hadn’t actually thought of them turning me over to the Volturi themselves. Would they really risk that? It would probably actually be their smartest move. I mean, I’d definitely be telling the Volturi about the Cullens’ gifted members if they did that, just because I’m a vindictive bitch, but it might take them off of the immediate “to collect” list. Could buy them a few decades, at least.

Great, now I had to think of ways to get the Volturi to hold off on changing me. And I had no doubt that they’d want to change me. In canon, Aro had been interested in Bella because of her shield. If the Cullens mentioned my “data dump,” they would only be more interested. Not that I could remember much about the Volturi. Marcus was perpetually depressed and could read bonds or relationships or some such shit. Caius was a perpetually angry, bloodthirsty asshole. Aro was a power hungry asshole who could read minds with a touch. Aro probably killed Didyme, not that I could share that information and expect to survive. Chelsea could break apart or build bonds. Corin manufactured contentment or something like that. Demetri was a mind-based tracker. Alec could mute the senses. Jane could cause pain. Heidi was a lure (was she gifted? Or just extra beautiful?). Nothing that they didn’t already know.

After a few minutes of contemplation, I realized I hadn’t responded to Peter.

Good to know. Thanks.

I didn’t know why he was keeping me updated, but I did appreciate it. Even if I now had to make up Plans C through at least M. (Blackmailing the Cullens was already Plan B. Granted, it was a plan I’d expected to need, but my first choice would have just been them leaving me alone the way I’d done for them.)

Looked like sleep wasn’t on the menu for tonight.

Chapter Text

The Cullens weren’t in school the next day. Small graces, really. I wasn’t up to dealing with the glaring. I had only gotten about an hour of sleep, which didn’t do much good.
For once, I was not looking forward to having judo that night. I would have to see if Leah could drive us. Me on the road would probably be a hazard.

Lucinda didn’t comment on the lack of glares, probably because she’s far more likely to notice the negative than the positive. Probably not the healthiest outlook on life, but it wasn’t my responsibility to change that. Besides, she was still a relatively upbeat person with high self-confidence (though not arrogance).

Zack was out sick, so it was just Lucinda, Alex, and me in Physics for a group lab. Not having Zack around to play peacemaker was a bit of a detriment. Lucinda and I sniped at each other (good-naturedly, I swear) so much that Alex was trying (and mostly failing) to hide cringes. We had barely finished by the time the bell rang.

Alex scrutinized me during lunch, glancing between me and the empty Cullen table. I didn’t know what he was thinking about- he was rather good at keeping a straight face- but I was, for once, curious. Particularly when he commented idly that there was supposed to be a thunderstorm that night, still watching me.

I hoped the vampires took my advice and forewent the baseball game.

--

Leah thankfully agreed to doing the driving on the way to Port Angeles, as long as I still picked her up. She didn’t have easy access to a car of her own, and her parents rarely loaned out theirs unless she asked several days in advance. It had been hard enough to get their permission to take it for class every Saturday, since I worked and she didn’t want to hang around doing nothing for six or more hours. Not to mention the nights I’d had post-judo shooting practice with Anna.

I spent the short drive to her place wondering if I could use the shifters as part of one of my plans. I decided they’d have to be a last resort. The only connection I had to the pack was through Leah, who wasn’t yet a wolf. And she was treated like an inconvenience even after she shifted.

I wished I had a way to warn her about that, or maybe even find a way to trigger her shift early so it wasn’t in front of Harry and might spare him that literal heart attack, but I had no idea how to go about it. She seemed to have a better hold on her temper though- the martial arts really helped with that, and maybe I did, too- so it was possible she would shift later. That would be nice.

I was already circling around the car to get to the passenger side when Leah shot out of her house and practically dove into the driver’s seat.

“Get in, Swan!”

She gunned it as soon as I shut my door. I hurriedly buckled my seatbelt.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, worried.

“Family stuff,” she said shortly.

“Want to talk about it?” I offered.

“No.”

“Okay.”

She shot me a surprised look that lasted long enough that I had to point ahead to the road to remind her that she was the one behind the wheel.

“It’s your family stuff, Leah. If you want to vent, I’m here to listen. If you want advice, I’ll… probably just make things worse, actually, but I can try that too. But if you’d rather keep it to yourself, that’s entirely up to you.”

After ten minutes of not quite silence (we had a CD in), she broke.

“Sam and Emily are engaged,” she said. It was obvious she was trying to keep calm.

“Your cousin Emily?” I asked as if unsure. Leah had only mentioned Emily once before, when she was coming for a visit not long after Leah and Sam had broken up.

She nodded.

“I didn’t know they were dating.”

“That’s the thing! Well, part of it. Sam was following her around like a lost puppy ever since she came to visit that time, but she put him off until just a month ago. Then, this Sunday, she announced that they’re getting married!”

“That… That really sucks, Leah.” 

She nodded emphatically.

“And what’s worse is…” Here, she had to start blinking back tears. “What’s worse is, my parents see no problem with it. At all. Not that my cousin got together with my ex, who broke my heart, by the way. Not that they got engaged after a month. None of it!”

“Pull over,” I told her. She was starting to cry in earnest, now. “Leah, pull over,” I repeated when she didn’t obey immediately.

“We don’t have time,” she muttered, though she maneuvered the car onto the narrow shoulder of the road. I glanced at the clock. Our Tuesday class started an hour earlier now that we had our orange belts, then the white and yellow belts joined in for the last hour.

“We can spare twenty minutes.” Hell, we could skip the whole class, as far as I was concerned. I considered Leah a friend, and she was in distress, to the point of being uncharacteristically emotional. But I also had the feeling she was down for a little violence right now. The very rough way she was wiping away her tears kind of spoke to that. “Is there more?” I asked as gently as I could without pissing her off.

“The council is treating Sam like he has some sort of authority over them,” she admitted. “It doesn’t have anything to do with Emily, but it’s just… He broke me, and it’s like he’s getting rewarded for it.” 

I must have hesitated a second too long, because she cut a sharp look at me. At least she’d stopped crying. I wasn’t good with crying.

“You know something.”

“Yeah, but it’s pretty unbelievable,” I admitted.

“Just spit it out, Swan.”

I took a second or five to run through my options. I could try to come up with a lie. I didn’t have one on standby, though, so it being anything remotely resembling believable wasn’t likely. I could tell her the truth and she might think I was nuts. I could tell her the truth and she might believe me, but then question how I knew, which I wasn’t planning on telling anyone under any circumstances.

I had no good choices. I finally asked her a question before I could second guess myself.

“Do you remember the legends of the spirit warriors?”

--

“You’re shitting me,” Leah said flatly. I shook my head slowly.

“Sam, Paul, and… whoever that third one is that hangs out with them. Jason?”

“Jared?” Leah suggested, a little amusement coming through the disbelief.

“Sure.”

“You’re telling me they’re werewolves?” Less amusement, more (understandable) disbelief.

“Shape-shifters, actually. Werewolves are completely different,” I answered flippantly. 

“You weren’t lying about that being unbelievable,” she commented. 

I shrugged. 

“No, really, Bella. I don’t believe it.”

I sighed.

“I know. And you probably won’t for another year.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Clearwaters carry the shifter gene.”

“So, Seth…?”

“Not just Seth.”

“There’s never been a female spirit warrior.”

“That they tell stories about,” I pointed out. “Could be they didn’t want the women in the stories. Or maybe there just weren’t any women with the gene in the area when the enemy was around.”

“Enemy…? The Cold Ones?” Leah clarified. I nodded. “There are Cold Ones around?!”

“I can’t tell you who, Leah, I’m sorry,” I cut off her obvious curiosity before she could ask. “Just knowing about them might get me killed. If I tell anyone else about them, I’m definitely going to be made a meal of.”

“Are you in trouble, Bella?” Her genuine concern was touching. I shrugged again.

“I’m handling it,” I tried to project confidence.

“So you think I’m going to turn into a giant wolf, huh?” Leah asked as she started the car back up.

“Yep. If you start to get really angry, try not to be around people. Anger can cause you to shift, and some people’s hearts literally can’t take that.”

“What else do you know, Swan?” Her casual tone was as fake as mine had been.

“Quite a bit.” She cut another look at me, though at least she didn’t take her eyes off the road for more than half a second this time.

“And how do you know? You shouldn’t even know the legends, even as close as your dad is to Billy Black.”

“That’s something else I can’t tell you,” I said regretfully. Her face went stony. “It’s not just a very long, even more unbelievable story, but it’s something I haven’t quite accepted myself. If I ever tell anyone, you’ll probably be the first, but for now, I want to keep it to myself.” Her expression softened just a bit, but she nodded.

“I still don’t believe you about the wolf thing,” she said a few minutes later.

“That’s fine. I didn’t really expect you to,” I admitted. “But you deserve a heads-up.”

We didn’t discuss anything more about spirit warriors- or Sam and Emily- for the rest of the drive, and I knew Leah was serious about not believing me, but at least she wasn’t freaking out about me being crazy or something.

I could admit to myself that I was a little relieved. If she’d pressed the subject, I probably would have spilled about imprinting. And, since I was of the belief (due to it being stated multiple times in the books) that an imprint didn’t have to be romantic, I would probably end up enabling and/or contributing to a rant about how some bullshit soulmate crap doesn’t excuse betrayal. Or the way that her parents so easily dismissed her very valid feelings on the topic of her ex and cousin getting together. I was pretty sure the way her parents were handling the situation was causing at least half of Leah’s upset at the moment.

--

Leah kicked my ass in judo. I really should have paired off with someone else for the night. She had that built-up rage, and I was just so damn tired.

“You all right, Swan?” She asked as we were leaving the dojo. “That wasn’t at all up to your usual standard.” I nodded.

“Just tired. And sore now,” I directed a mock glare her way. She gave me a brief grin before going back to being worried. “I didn’t sleep well last night, is all,” I reminded her. I’d told her the same when I asked her to do the driving.

I slid into the passenger seat after throwing my duffle in the back and started sifting through my collection of mix CDs, trying to remember what was on each. I probably should have taken the time to label them with more than just numbers when I made them- a thought I had just about every time I did this- but I was far too lazy to go back and listen to each one and do it now.

“This one,” Leah grabbed a CD at random, rolling her eyes. She ejected the one we’d listened to on the way there and slid in the new one. “Swan… This is the same damn thing,” she said after hearing the first few notes of the first song.

“It is not!” I protested. “It’s probably at least half different,” I added sheepishly. She sighed.

“At least it’s not that damn club music you like so much,” she grumbled. She had lucked out with her choice, then. The CD we’d listened to on the way out and the one in now were probably the only two I had of classic rock. I’d have to make a new mix. It was about the only genre we agreed on. Many a drive had been spent snarking at each other about our respective tastes in music.

She cranked the volume before pulling out of the parking lot. I took the not so subtle hint and didn’t try to start a conversation until we were halfway back, when something urgent hit me. I ignored her scowl when I turned down the music.

“Did I tell you that my dad wants me to go to dinner at the Blacks’ tomorrow?”

Leah snorted, then laughed.

“With Jacob? Yeah, let me know how that works out.”

She had found Jacob’s persistence equally hilarious and annoying. Hilarious because, as she put it, he was consistently making a fool of himself. Annoying because he was always trying to tag along whenever she and I hung out in La Push.

“I threatened to pepper spray him if he doesn’t back off,” I admitted.

“I’m sure your dad loved that,” she replied wryly.

“He hasn’t been too happy about the Jacob situation, either,” I told her. “He offered to have Billy talk to him, but I honestly don’t think that would do much good.”

“Probably not,” Leah agreed. “He’s a fifteen year old kid with an impossible crush and he doesn’t know how to handle rejection, so he either acts out or just doesn’t pay attention to it.”

“Planning on going for a psychology degree, are you?” I joked.

“Shut up.” She reached over the center console to shove me lightly.

Chapter Text

The Cullens were back in school on Wednesday. No one was missing a limb, so if they encountered James’ coven, the Cullens came out on top.

They, thankfully, ignored me as much as they could. Rosalie didn’t even glare! Which felt like a good thing, but they could also have just been biding their time until they could off me without suspicion.

Okay, yes, I was kind of paranoid. But since I was a bit of an idiot and blackmailed a coven of vampires, I thought I had a right to be. I didn’t particularly regret it; I hadn’t seen another option, and I still couldn’t think of a way to stay alive that didn’t involve pissing them off somehow. Besides! I had warned them about Aro’s collection practice. I was a good Samaritan, really.

I felt a little bad about the fact that Peter and Charlotte were also now on the chopping block, since the Cullens knew that they had also let me live with the knowledge, but at the same time, no one told them they had to go ratting me out to Jasper. It’s not like they were as likely to come into contact with the Volturi themselves, since they didn’t have the same connection to them that Carlisle did.

Zack was still out with… whatever he got sick with. Luckily for Alex’s nerves, Physics was a pure lecture day and therefore Lucinda and I couldn’t use the class period to argue (seriously, it was all in good fun).

Jasper couldn’t get out of talking to me in Spanish since it was a conversational day, but we were back to inane topics without any probing questions at the end.

--

Jacob apologized at dinner. I couldn’t believe it. Apparently his sister Rachel had had a chat with him on the phone (I wondered if Billy had passed off the responsibility to her or if Jacob had just been complaining to her about my refusals and she caught on) and explained that “no” does not mean “try harder” and that he was skirting a very dangerous line. The phrase “borderline predatory behavior” was apparently used, which seemed to distress him a great deal after it was fully explained to him.

So, he apologized for making me uncomfortable and continuing to pursue me even after I’d made it beyond clear I wasn’t interested.

He was a lot less eloquent about it, but I appreciated it, nonetheless.

Charlie was just happy that I hadn’t had to pepper spray the kid.

Jacob and I would probably never be friends, unless we were for some reason still in contact a decade down the line and he’d had a chance to grow up, but we could at least be civil going forward.

--

Charlotte texted me asking my opinion on date outfit ideas.

I gave her my approval on one of the many she described to me, and then spent about eleven minutes hyperventilating and whispering “what the fuck?” over and over again.

--

Thursday and Friday went much the same at school, though Zack was back (to Alex’s relief).

To my extreme surprise, Lucinda called me right after school on Friday and asked me to help her with her outfit for the dance the next night.

“I’m sorry, Lucinda. I work tomorrow and won’t be back in Forks until well after the dance has started.” And I actually did feel a little bad about it.

“Oh,” was Lucinda’s very short reply. The next ten seconds of silence were awkward.

“If you have time, I can help tonight?” I offered.

“Oh! Yeah, that would be great. I actually have a few options already. I don’t need to go shopping or anything-” I could only imagine she was rolling her eyes. We had both gone on anti-shopping rants at some point. “-I just need help deciding.” She sounded a little unsure of herself, which was quite the change from her usual almost overly confident demeanor.

“Sounds good. What’s your address and how do I get there?”

After getting detailed directions and promising to be there by 6:30, I got to work on dinner. Nothing fancy, just a very basic chili that even I couldn’t screw up. Bonus: it would make about a dozen servings and froze well enough, so we’d have leftovers for when we didn’t want to cook (which was pretty much always, though I often forced myself to, anyway) but were sick of pizza.

By the time Charlie got home a little after 5:00, the chili had been simmering for a good 45 minutes and was almost ready to go.

“Woah, you feeding an army there, Bells?”

I followed his gaze to the pot on the stove. Okay, I had probably gone overboard. Before I had died, I was more likely to cook for large groups than just one or two on the rare occasions I actually made food. It came from secluding myself in the kitchen at forced family gatherings. I still occasionally fell back into that habit without thinking about it. There were way more than a dozen servings in the pot. Probably at least twice that. I looked back at him and shrugged.

“It’ll freeze well,” was all I said. “We can let it chill overnight in the fridge and I’ll scoop most of it into bags in the morning.”

Charlie nodded, though he still looked a little unsure. Probably at my ‘freezing liquids in bags’ thing, despite the fact that I had done so many times by now and even he had to admit it took up less space than freezing portions in Tupperware.

He pulled out a couple of bowls while I turned the stove off and moved the pot to a cool burner.

“I shredded some cheddar, too,” I told him as he handed me the bowls to fill. “It’s in the fridge.”

Once he’d put the cheese and a tub of sour cream on the table, he grabbed the full bowls from me and moved them to our usual spots.

“So, how was school today?” He asked, digging into his chili. “Anything interesting happen?”

“No, but I’m going to Lucinda’s tonight to help her pick out her outfit for the dance tomorrow.” 

His eyebrows shot up, almost certainly because this was the first time I’d socialized with any of my classmates outside of school.

“Will you be spending the night?”

“No, I don’t think so. I should be back by curfew.”

He looked a little disappointed at that. Sorry, Charlie, I’m still not big into socializing. And I’ve never been big on sleepovers.

“All right. Just let me know if that changes.”

“Of course.” I doubted it would, but might as well let him hope. “How was work? Anything interesting happen?” I smirked a little at mirroring his phrasing.

He narrowed his eyes at me in faux suspicion, but I could see his mustache twitching a little, so the effect was totally ruined.

“Nothing I can tell you about,” he said.

“Fair enough,” I replied. I was well used to active cases being kept confidential from my first life. I was pretty sure the only active cases Charlie had were the “animal attacks,” anyways. Small town gossip meant that news of any human-committed crimes would have trickled down to me. Hopefully the nomads had moved on after the thunderstorm, just like they supposedly were going to in the first book.

We finished our meal in companionable silence, like we did most evenings.

“I should get going,” I called to Charlie after drying the last dish. “I told Lucinda I’d be there by 6:30.”

“Have fun,” he replied from the living room. “Just, you know, not too much fun.” I laughed.

After sliding the chili pot into the fridge (on top of a pot holder to protect the plastic shelf), I headed out.

I managed to not get lost on the way to Lucinda’s house, despite needing to take more than three turns. I was reasonably sure I’d be able to find my way back, too.

I knocked on their door at 6:15 and was let in by Lucinda’s mother, a very pretty woman with a big smile.

“You must be Bella!” She greeted. “It’s lovely to meet you. Lucinda’s in her room. Up the stairs, second door on the left.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Smith,” I said politely.

“Oh, call me Mandy, please. Mrs. Smith is my mother-in-law.” From the brief look of distaste on Mandy’s face, she wasn’t a fan of her in-law.

“Okay, Mandy,” I agreed, holding in a chuckle.

“Let me know if you girls want snacks or anything,” Mandy called up the stairs after me.

“Thanks, Mom!” I heard Lucinda’s muffled yell from behind the second door on the left. The door was wrenched open just after I knocked.

“Just in time,” Lucinda got out in a rush. Then she pulled me into her room so forcefully I almost stumbled. I whistled long and low after looking around. Not only did it look like a clothing store had exploded in her room, but her closet door was open, letting me see that her closet was far larger than a standard walk-in and was almost overflowing, besides.

“Wow,” I dumbly commented.

“Yeah, my sister is a buyer for a boutique in Los Angeles,” she told me. “She’s always sending me things to help me ‘find my style’.” That certainly explained Lucinda’s complete lack of one particular style. She’s go goth one day and bubblegum pink the next.

“Okay, are we going through everything, or do you already have it narrowed down a bit?” I was hoping for the latter. Going through everything would take days.

“Oh, I’ve whittled it down to four dresses and two blouse-skirt combos.”

“I thought you were going with a jumpsuit,” I commented as she brought out the first dress for inspection. I shook my head at it. The dance was semi-formal, and the ballgown was definitely firmly in the ‘formal’ category. 

“I was, but then my mom said she’d put $500 towards my car fund if I wore something with a skirt.” I felt my eyes widen. That was a ridiculous chunk of change for just picking a different outfit. “Yeah, hence the frantic re-costuming,” Lucinda said. “I mean, I’m pretty sure she just wants pictures for future blackmail, but that will put me over the edge for what I need to buy a decent car.”

“Hey, I totally understand. I’d wear scuba gear for $500,” I replied. Lucinda actually laughed at that. “That one’s a maybe,” I said when she showed me the second dress. She nodded and set it carefully on her bed, the only place not already covered in clothes.

“Are you and Alex matching colors?” I wondered. The first dress had been a dark blue and the second was emerald green. 

“No, he’s just going with black and white, so anything I pick should be fine,” she answered from inside her closet. The next dress she pulled out was a deep red with a flowing skirt that would hit just below her knee. The bodice was covered in black lace.

“That one!” I exclaimed as soon as I saw it.

“You haven’t seen the others yet!” She protested.

“Okay, but I really don’t think you can beat that one.”

She looked it over with a critical eye, then set it on top of the green one on the bed.

The fourth she brought out was a simple black thing. I wrinkled my nose and shook my head. That was more appropriate for a funeral.

She brought out the two shirt-and-skirt outfits at the same time. One was a lilac crop top with long sleeves and a light pink layered tulle skirt that would hit mid-calf. It was cute, but she would risk not being allowed entry to the dance due to showing her midriff. The other reminded me a bit of a poodle skirt, with a plain button up silky shirt. It was a little too casual for the occasion.

“Try on the green and red dresses,” I suggested.

After Lucinda had tried on both of the dresses and carefully analyzed herself in the mirror, I spoke up again.

“I still think the red one is the way to go, but which one are you more comfortable with?” As nice as the red one looked on her, she seemed pretty hesitant to wear it. It was definitely a bit flashier than she usually went with.

“Neither,” Lucinda admitted. “I don’t really like skirts.”

I nodded. I could understand that.

“Let’s take a look at your shoes. Maybe if we put the whole outfit together, it will help you decide. Now, heels or flats?”

“Either is fine, just not too high of a heel.” I managed not to laugh when she dragged out an unorganized bin of shoes.

“How high is too high?”

“No more than two inches.”

We both dug through the bin, tossing aside most of them and letting them thunk on the floor. Something caught my attention from the corner of my eye.

“Hold up. What about those?” I pointed to a pair of black boots with a low stiletto heel that were still sitting in the closet. They were covered in straps and buckles, though they still had a zipper on the side. They were badass.

“Those… don’t really match,” Lucinda said, looking at me like I was crazy.

“No, trust me on this. Try those.” 

I was totally right. They went reasonably well with the green dress, but they absolutely rocked with the red. She looked like a fancier version of Alice from the first Resident Evil movie. Her eyes brightened when I pointed that out.

“You win,” she conceded.

--

“Have you heard back about that scholarship yet?” Lucinda asked as we started putting her clothes back in the already full closet. It required quite a bit of strategy. Like Tetris.

“I’m expecting a call on Monday,” I replied. I’d gotten less and less optimistic about it over the week since the interview. Despite knowing I wouldn’t hear anything right away, every day that went by without a call made me more sure I hadn’t gotten it.

After we got the closet door closed (it required Lucinda pushing against it with her entire body until it latched), she clapped her hands once.

“I’m suddenly in the mood for zombies,” she announced. I grinned. “Are you game for a movie?”

I couldn’t help the raised eyebrows I gave her, but nodded.

“Sure, I’ve got a few hours yet before my curfew,” I agreed.

“Great!”

We went back to snarking at each other while we watched Resident Evil, though it was even more good-natured than it was at school.