Chapter Text
Talia Rambert had spent quite a bit of time contemplating the concept of death. Probably more than the average person in their mid-twenties, but when you grow up in what is essentially a retirement community, watching your neighbors go one by one and have an early diagnosis of treatment-resistant depression purely due to shitty genetics, you start contemplating the realities of the afterlife a little sooner than your peers. All and all, she was proud of having made it to the ripe old age of twenty-six. It hadn't been easy and hadn't been fun, but she'd scraped her way through school and higher education by nothing but sheer will. Being the first of her family to graduate from college, which she still considered an achievement even if by the time she was done the job market was so terrible she was fighting for a barely above minimum wage job not even in her field. A lot of blood, sweat, and especially tears, had gone into it. Suicidal ideation aside, she'd never really planned on killing herself. She figured she'd die of heart disease or kidney failure, maybe one of the miscellaneous cancers that ran through her genetics. What she hadn't expected—never even considered as an option until watching the event in slow motion—was to have a simi flip over onto her compact sedan, squishing her into a Talia-Honda pancake. What she expected even less was to wake up what seemed like the next morning in a floppy, infantile body, listening to the shrill voice of a woman scream at her husband about "dead-end, backwater towns" and "this is the last straw". And then, again, even less than that, she had certainly never expected to reincarnate/transmigrate/isekai into the YA fantasy romance series she was shamefully obsessed with through middle and high school.
She hadn't even realized it until she had a cognizant moment while lying in her car seat in the waiting room of a doctor's office, and she heard her full name for the first time. Isabella Marie Swan. What a mind fuck. A mind fuck that she would promptly forget for about seventeen-ish years until she found herself fleeing her newlywed mom and stepdad to her biological dad's home in rainy Forks, Washington.
The beginning was strange, she had scattered moments of clarity where fully formed thoughts far too comprehensive for her age ran through her brain. Just flashes of consciousness here and there. Fleating. Not like how it had been in the webcomics and anime she'd watched in her previous life, where someone wakes up as an infant in their next life and is completely aware 100% of the time, and is able to start plotting and planning their future. Nope. For Talia-cum-Bella it was ill-timed intrusive thoughts and out-of-character phrases that popped up sporadically until she was about 12. Then she took a tumble down the stairs at school, and ended up in the hospital because it knocked her out cold. She went out as mostly Bella and came to as mostly Talia, masquerading as Bella. Quite honestly, she was thankful for the head injury because it gave her an excuse in the years to come whenever she would do or say something so out of character (or time) for Bella Swan. Bella Swan wouldn't say "cash' me outside how bou'dah" or "throw it in reverse Terry" or made any of the other myriad of pop-culture references that Talia would have.
Bella was also thankful for her newly adult consciousness when she realized that Renee kinda sucked. Not like, intentionally, but she'd never been able to decide if that made it better or worse. Renee was a much worse adult than Talia had been despite having outlived her by several years at this point, at least a decade. It was not uncommon for bills to go unpaid or meals to be forgotten simply because Renee was too preoccupied or it had slipped her mind. Groceries ran low, school forms went unsigned, and laundry unwashed. Renee liked to blame it all on how hard being a single mom was, but even pre-Talia-Bella had known that was a crummy excuse. Bella had built in discreet systems to manage Renee to the best of her ability, and it broke adult-minded Talia's heart that little Bella had taken on that responsibility so young.
Renee was not abusive, to clarify. Just flighty, easily distracted, and a dopamine chaser to the worst degree. Talia's memories allowed Bella to recognize the signs of ADHD, and she really wished that it wasn't currently the year 2000 so that she could find a way to get Renee on some Adderall or something. It would have greatly improved their quality of life. But unfortunately ADHD was still just for rambunctious little boys and not just anyone who happened to own a brain. That view would not change for many, many years to come, so mini-mom Bella Swan it was.
The years simultaneously crawled and sprinted past until suddenly Bella was in high school. In high school, and she was currently sitting across from one Phillip Dwyer, in a sticky booth at a local cafe, sipping milkshakes that he had taken her out for. He was sweaty and twitchy and clearly had an ulterior motive for the excursion. It wouldn't have taken memories of being a twenty-six-year-old to deduce that.
Bella decided to put the poor man out of his misery after about three-fourths of a milkshake's worth of small talk.
"If you want to marry her or whatever, it's fine. Just don't expect me to, like, call you Dad or something weird like that."
Phil blinked at her owlishly for a moment and then laughed, startled.
"That obvious, huh?" He asked, taking his ball cap off to rub a hand through his hair.
"Well Phil, when a generally laid-back guy looks like he's about to vomit, pass out, and slash or shit himself. Possibly all at once. On an out-of-character trip for ice cream with his girlfriend's kid, there's only so many things he's about to ask. Also, the ring was in your pocket while I was doing laundry last week. You're lucky I like you well enough; otherwise it would be sitting on the shelf in a pawn shop right now, and I'd be a couple hundred richer."
"You have a good head on your shoulders, Bella; I hope you'd do better than just a few hundred dollars."
She laughed, they finished their milkshakes, and then he dropped her off at home to be greeted by an overenthusiastic Renee. She couldn't have been happier that Bella was seemingly bonding with her (unknown to Renee) soon-to-be stepdad. The proposal happened later that weekend; Renee came home from their fancy dinner date, wine drunk and all but screaming in her excitement. Bella was happy for her. Really. She was. Phil balanced Renee in a way that she desperately needed. Bella just didn't want to live with newlyweds; she also didn't want to keep Renee pinned down to Phoenix while Phil was off traveling for games and training camps. So, born was the plan to move in with Charlie.
Charlie Swan was a whole other adult-shaped problem in Bella Swan's life. Not a problem in the way Renee was: loud, front, and center. And that was kind of the problem in it of its self. Talia Rambert didn't have a dad. She had the last name of a man her mother had been in a long-distance relationship with who fucked off to lord knows where after gifting her mother three children and deciding that was all he was willing to contribute. Bella couldn't find him in Talia's memories at least, despite the fact that she had to have met him at some point. She had two younger siblings who shared the same sperm donor. Or maybe she hadn't; maybe when he visited he never came to the house. She didn't know, and at this point it was past irrelevant. She wasn't Talia anymore. (RIP daddy issues, forever in our hearts but never in our lives... like our daddies.)
Anyways, back to Charlie. After Bella took a knock to the noggin and came back as Mostly Talia, she'd had to fight the urge to throw herself at the male figure in her life and beg for attention. For the previous twelve years Bella had been distant from Charlie, enough that even at that age she thought of him as "Charlie" and not "Dad". Though largely that was due to Renee's influence. Bella was thankful that Talia's memories entered the picture when they did, because it was right as Renee started a brainwashing campaign to convince Bella that, actually, she hated Forks just like Renee, and she never wanted to go there ever again. She'd tried to get Bella to convince Charlie that they should spend two weeks at some kind of resort in Cali instead of going to visit Charlie for a month of her summer vacation like she had every year previously. Bella threw the breaks on that one pretty quickly. Charlie was a good, solid, dude who deserved to have his kid in his life and deserved to have her in his space for a minimum of a month of the summer and alternating school holidays.
He was the kind of guy who would only take up the amount of space he felt was left for him, and he wasn't going to try and push boundaries to do it. Especially not when Renee had a history of holding Bella over his head. The influence from Talia made Bella take it upon herself to bridge the gap, and she had slowly worked in more phone calls and emails to Charlie until they were talking every couple of days and not a maximum of once a week. It clearly bothered Renee, but as far as Bella was concerned, if she didn't want to actually share a kid with the guy, she shouldn't have procreated with him. It was also fucked that Renee had used Charlie's dying parents as scapegoats for fleeing, but that was a whole other thing that she wasn't willing to think about until she wasn't around Renee every day and didn't have to resist punching her in the face. (That was definitely a Talia's influence thing)
So anyways, Bella slowly convinced Renee that she absolutely deserved to travel the country with her hot young new husband, and booting Bella to the PNW was an A-okay plan. It took strategy and patience, because for a harebrained as Renee was, she could recognize manipulation lickity-split. Game recognizes game.
Bella made it all about Renee's sacrifices as a mother for so many years and how she deserved to do something for herself. (as if 87% of the things Renee did weren't for herself)
Now, here she sat on a plane headed to Seattle a week before the spring semester of her junior year. The lady in the seat next to her had spent the whole flight so far smacking gum aggressively and scowling at everything and everyone. Perhaps she was not a morning person. Bella also was not a morning person, but she tried not to make it anyone else's problem. She had resolved to ask the woman what her problem was the next time she cut a glare at her. The moment it happened, the plane hit turbulence, and in a feat of luck that only belonged to Isabella Marie Swan, the overhead compartment popped open, and someone's carry-on was jolted out of the compartment and whacked Bella in the head. Hard. There were lights dancing in front of her eyes, and her ears were ringing. The woman beside her let out a god-awful, ear-piercing shriek and lunged for the bag, generously elbowing Bella in the temple; her stomach swooped, and for a moment she thought she was going to vomit.
Pandemonium ensued as flight attendants rushed over to console the screaming woman, thinking she was the injured party, until an EMT from across the aisle—who Bella later learned was named Jerry—set the record straight and low-key reamed the woman for her lack of concern. Jerry and Bella got moved to first class. At first they had tried to just move Bella, likely to try and smooth over the situation so she didn't sue. Jerry mentioned that she needed someone to keep a close eye on her, and Bella insisted that he be moved as well. In all honesty, it was probably a solid idea. Especially because this was for sure going to trigger a migraine, and if it was a hemiplegic one and not a regular one, she would absolutely need his EMT knowledge, if for nothing else, then to make sure the crew knew she wasn't having a stroke. Jerry assured her that he would keep an eye on her and make sure she got to Charlie safely—and he did.
Jerry checked on her several times throughout the flight, and made sure she ate some crackers and took some prescription-strength ibuprofen. He stuck to her side when they disembarked until Bella found Charlie. Upon seeing his daughter escorted over to him by a strange man, first Charlie clearly thought Jerry was some kind of creep following Bella through the airport. Then the man introduced himself, gave Charlie a firm hand shake, and explained the events that took place. Charlie was emphatically thankful to Jerry; he even gave the man his business card with his personal phone number scrawled on the back and told him to let him know if he ever needed anything. Under the surface Bella could tell Charlie was fuming, and she emphasized how ready she was to be home so that he wouldn't try and drag her to a customer service desk and make a fuss.
"How ya feeling kid?" Charlie asked once they were both in the cruiser and buckled in.
"Seasick. Head hurts. Glad to see you," Bella shot him a grimace of a smile and then closed her eyes as quickly as she'd opened them.
"Here," Charlie handed her a pair of sunglasses, and Talia gratefully slid them on to her face.
"Glad you're here too, kid. Wish you'd gotten here without hurting yourself, but I suppose I'd have to wonder if you were actually Bella," he huffed a laugh.
The ride to Forks was uneventful up until the exact moment that Bella had The Realization. Caps required to denote significance. The event went as follows: Bella was dozing off in the passenger seat when it felt like she was walloped upside the head all over again. It felt like someone else was shoved into her body with her, or had been there the whole time and suddenly awoke. There were sparks in her eyes, her ears were fuzzy like TV static, and she was choking and gagging. Charlie had to pull over as she fought her seatbelt, and she got the door open just in time to puke into the ditch. She blamed it on the concussion and had to argue Charlie down from taking her to the ER. In reality, the vomiting was a stress response to realizing that she was in a fucking YA URBAN FANTASY ROMANCE NOVEL. LIKE WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL.
All of a sudden Bella (or Talia? She couldn't actually tell who she was at the moment, and it was one of the most horrendous things she'd—they'd((?))—ever experienced) remembered her favorite book series from her tweenagehood. Twilight. Twi-mother-flipping-light. Vampires, werewolves, "This is the skin of a killer, Bella," Twilight. She hadn't been reincarnated, or at least not in the traditional sense. She'd been frickity-fracking isekai'ed. Truck-nim. Why??
She fought the urge to blow chunks again, wiped her mouth with the handful of leftover fast-food napkins that Charlie pulled out of the console, and buckled back up. Charlie pulled into a gas station and got her a water bottle, and she dug her toiletry bag out of her suitcase so she could brush her teeth.
She leaned heavily on the sink as she did so, her balance still wonky and, quite frankly, just reeling from the absolute mind fuck that just took place. The door cracked open just as she rinsed her mouth.
"Sweetie, are you Bella?" The woman was wearing a velour tracksuit and had a sharp blonde bob.
It took all of Bella's minuscule remaining self-control not to say, "maybe". That would inspire a whole new level of panic in Charlie, but she still had the very distinct feeling that something, or someone, was in her thoughts with her.
"Sweetie?" The woman prompted as Bella stared at her blankly in the mirror.
For just a flash of a moment the image staring back at her didn't compute. She expected shoulder-length blonde hair and skin much more tan than she currently had. It almost felt like it was superimposed over her normal self. Brown hair, brown eyes.
"Oh, uh, sorry. Yeah. I'm B-Bella. Sorry, I have a migraine; I'm a little out of it." Bella busied herself drying off her toothbrush and wiping water off the cabinet.
"There's a man outside the door who asked me to check on you."
"Oh, uh, thanks. I'm headed out now," Bella grimaced at the awkward response and slipped out the door before Bob Cut Brenda could say anything else.
Charlie was standing opposite the door bathroom door looking as awkward as a man could, waiting for her.
"Sorry, didn't realize I was taking so long."
They headed back out to the cruiser to start on their journey again; not even four steps out the door, Charlie had to grab her arm to steady her as she listed to the side, almost walking into the propane case. The drive was full of Bella pretending to sleep while she freaked the fuck out internally and Charlie shooting her concerned looks from the driver's seat. She fell into a restless sleep somewhere around the two-hour mark of the drive and didn't wake back up until the car came to a stop in the driveway.
"Bells, we're home," Charlie said as he gently nudged her shoulder.
Talia—no, Bella—jerked awake and then winced as the pounding in her head intensified. She saw sparks for a moment; everything looked like it had an afterimage.
"I'll get your bags in. Why don't you go on in and take something for your head? Jerry said you could take more about now."
Usually one to insist on doing things for herself, Bella for a split second contemplated arguing but decided against it just as quickly.
"Thanks, Dad. 'Preciate it," she murmured as she climbed out of the car.
Inside looked exactly like she remembered it. She almost wished it didn't. The house still looked the same as the day Renee had walked out on him. Same paint, same pictures, same furniture arrangement. As she made her way to the kitchen to hunt for a snack and some ibuprofen, Bella resolved to make changes. Not all at once, but she could at least remove the non-Charlie bits slowly. She preocupied herself thinking about changes to make, furniture arrangements, maybe a couch cover or new rug, but the distraction didn't last nearly long enough. She was broken out of her spiraling thoughts by Charlie's voice.
"Bags are in your room, I'll let you get settled and then I can order in for dinner. I thought we could go to the diner, but you're still looking a bit green around the gills."
Charlie cracked the fridge open and pulled out a beer, then paused, looking between the can and Bella, then put it back and grabbed a can of soda before heading back to the living room to assume his position in his recliner. She could almost hear the thought process. She was touched that he cared enough, was concerned enough, to forgo his usual beer just in case he had to come to her aid. It's not that Renee didn't care, but she didn't tend to consider things like that. There had been numerous times in the past that Bella had been stuck on her own with a migraine or sick, and Renee wasn't there to help because she just didn't consider that Bella might need it.
"Thanks," Bella called after him, blinking back the tears that were beginning to cloud her eyes.
"Getting settled" consisted of flopping onto the bed in her room and holding a pillow over her face as she contemplated smothering herself or jumping off a cliff. Which in turn reminded her of cliff diving, which reminded her of La Push, which reminded her of werewolves, which reminded her of vampires, and so on and so forth. A list. That's what she needed. She needed to write down everything she could remember about the series and plot. With any luck, she won't accidentally include something from the excessive amount of fanfiction she'd read as a teen. She rummaged around the desk that she'd never properly used before and found a grocery list pad and a dull pencil. Good enough.
It didn't take her long to write out all of the major plot points. Then she went back and added smaller details. On a separate sheet she listed out characters, main and side, and their profiles. Staring down at her stack of scribbled on paper blankly, she decided another list was needed, but this one would be what she needed to avoid. Like vans, and icy parking lots, and bloodthirsty red-eyed vampires. By the time she was done, she'd gone through at least a fourth of the pad of paper, and her hands were shaking from how badly her head hurt. She'd have to get a new notebook and organize her lists, and probably have to completely rewrite everything. She didn't doubt that her scribbles were only half legible. There were several other things she needed to get for her start of school as well; she just had to figure out when Charlie could take her.
Charlie hollering up the stairs to her that food was there made her jump. Her stomach rolled with nausea from her migraine, but she knew Charlie would freak if she didn't eat something. Bella made her way downstairs carefully, death gripping the banister the whole way.
"Made you a plate, kiddo. It's on the counter," Charlie called from his recliner.
Talia thanked him as she collected the food and settled onto the couch. To the shock and awe of absolutely no one, Charlie had the sports channel on, but the volume down lower than he'd usually have it. She had to fight not to tear up again at the thoughtfulness. Bella had no clue what game was on, or sport for that matter, everything was still a bit blurry, and she wasn't going to waist the energy squinting and straining.
"Hope it's okay, thought you usually got the orange chicken?" Charlie said after a pregnant pause and clearing his throat.
The hesitancy and desire to do the right thing was almost cute. Bashful old man. A thought echoed through her head that forty wasn't that old. Bella supposed that was true.
"It's great, thanks, Dad," Bella replied, shooting him a small smile and taking a big bite to appease him.
She chewed slowly, trying not to gag. To his credit, her go-to order was in fact orange chicken. Because she was a stereotype, and that was okay. The rice was a bit easier to choke down, thankfully. The two ate in silence, Charlie periodically grumbling under his breath at whatever was happening in Sportball Land.
"I'm gonna head to bed a bit early; I'm pretty worn out from today." She stood slowly, hoping not to get too dizzy and fall over.
"Okay, Bells. Let me know if you need anything. Oh, Billy and Jake are coming over tomorrow for dinner. I have to work, but I'll pick something up on the way home. Let me know if you want something specific or if you're not feeling up to it yet. I'll probably do to-go from the diner if they do come."
"Okay. 'Night dad."
After settling in bed for the night, Bella read over the papers until her eyes hurt. Which admittedly didn't take long, migraine and all. But she tried. Anxiety curled in her stomach at the thought of forgetting any plot points or the story deviating because of any decisions she'd made as Bella under the influence of Talia over the last few years. For one, she'd changed how her relationship with Charlie was supposed to be; she was probably more resentful of Renee than original Bella would have been. She was more outspoken for sure. Talia refused to be a doormat in her last life or any other life she might live, and that definitely rubbed off on Bella. She didn't think she'd done anything of significant consequence. The main plot hadn't even started yet; she had a week before that. For a moment she contemplated changing her class schedule but couldn't think of a good enough reason to justify it to Charlie or the school so close to the start of the semester.
Eventually, Bella did fall asleep, the familiar sound of rain bouncing off the roof lulling her into slumber.