Chapter Text
Chapter 1
"Our Story begins"
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A piece of Bella died when Edward left.
Like he and all the Cullens, whom she had begun to think of as family, were never even there. Nothing remained but an empty house, a hastily told cover story, and the void they left behind. The love of her life had disappeared, and he took her happiness with him. She had nothing left now.
The part of her body where her heart would be if he hadn't ripped it out of her ached every time she allowed herself to think, to exist, to breathe. She missed Edward. She missed all of them. She missed Alice. Especially Alice.
Constant emails sent to her address returned with no hope of delivery. For months she sat in her room, lifeless and still, unable to move without him. Unable to live without the brush of his skin against hers, the sound of his piano keys playing a melancholic melody, the weight of his hand on her body grounding her to this torturous mortal existence.
Without him, she was lost.
Plagued by constant night terrors, she wasted away. Charlie could do nothing but watch as his daughter got thinner and thinner, as he awoke every night to her tormented screams. He thought of that-bastard-named-Edward-Cullen in moments like these.
The moments where he held his trembling little girl in his arms and realized she was far too little. She wasn't supposed to be little anymore. He wasn't supposed to be able to count her bones during every hug, every rocking of her frail body against his as he held her tight and ran his fingers through her hair and told her everything was going to be alright. He didn't know if he believed himself anymore. Not after everything that had happened. Not after Edward left.
For everything that had happened to his precious baby girl when the bastard was around, Charlie resented him. But for the way he disappeared? For the way he refused to take responsibility for the things he had done? The danger he had put her in? The way he treated his girl like she meant nothing to him?
He spent all that time gluing her to his side, only to tear her off and dump her at Charlie's feet, expecting that her father would be able to pick up the pieces and put her back together. Resentment wasn't the right word for what Charlie felt. He didn't care that he was only seventeen. He hated that boy. For all the pain that Bella had endured and for the pain that persisted even after he left. “Despise” may begin to cover it. Maybe.
He was like a festering wound that just kept growing bigger and bigger with each incident he caused. How many had it been now? A near-death car accident, running away from home, falling down two flights of stairs and getting a broken leg, the in-house stitches the Cullens had gifted her for her birthday after they claim she fell through a glass table, it was all too much for Charlie.
It was too much for Bella.
Worst of all was the final incident, in the woods when the bastard took his leave. When Bella had gone missing. When he found out the Cullens had left town without a word. When he had almost lost his daughter for the fourth or fifth time. He had lost count by now.
Charlie had forgotten how to breathe until Sam Uley came carrying her from the darkness, unresponsive in his arms.
He was convinced that Edward was either cursed or was actively causing her harm. When she was with him, she had stopped talking to her friends, disappeared constantly, and stopped acting like herself. Now that he was gone, it wasn't just her leg that was left broken, and for the life of him, he couldn't figure out how to fix it. How to make her feel better, how to feel like herself again.
He missed the bad jokes that she always explained, pizza nights on the couch where they fought over movies, her smile, her laugh, when she told him she loved him on her way to school, the jacket she always left behind at the kitchen table that made it look like she'd always be back soon, the way the door rattled when she came home and called out for him, even the thud of her beat up Converse hitting the floor and the little clinking sound her keys made when they were thrown into the dish.
He hardly ever heard that sound anymore. She hardly ever left. She hardly ever ate. She hardly ever moved. It was several months before he finally convinced her to go out shopping with Jessica. He knew she was doing it to placate him, and that she wanted nothing to do with it, but he was so happy to see her do something besides wasting for the first time in months.
It didn't matter that he had to admit she was scaring the shit out of him to make her go. It mattered that she went.
When Bella came back home that night, she looked more alive than she had since Edward had fucked off and left her in shambles. Charlie slept easier that night. Maybe, just maybe, this would be the turning point to Bella being Bella again. Maybe, Charlie hoped. Maybe.