Note: All of this takes place about 2 years after the whole issue with Bella being turned into a vampire. There are two primary pairings (though they may be a bit too complicated to be really romantic pairings): Seth x Sam and Jacob x OOC (Seth's twin). For those of you who are too lazy to read... Seth has an identical twin, Dominic, from whom he has been separated since birth. Dominic finds his way back to La Push and changes just like Seth did (they are twins after all). Though their bodies are the same, their souls are different and so are their fates.
Chapter 1
15 years before Bella even came to Forks, Sue Clearwater faced a dilemma. Young and poor, Sue and her husband Harry had barely enough money to feed their daughter and themselves. With another baby on the way, they knew that they would have to make some tough decisions and cut back on just about everything to have enough money to go around, but they were still very much in love with the unborn baby, despite the poverty that was so common in La Push.
The pregnancy was relatively normal, though Sue grew far larger than she had with Leah—surely a sign of a healthy baby. Her due date got closer and closer, her belly got bigger and bigger, and Harry began skipping meals to save money for diapers and food for the rest of his soon-to-grow family.
Finally, the day came when Sue went into labor and everyone prepared to meet the new member of the family. Leah hoped for a baby sister, Harry wanted a son, and Sue just wanted her baby to be healthy and strong. In the end, everyone was surprised. Late at night, after hours of labor, Sue Clearwater gave birth to the son that Harry had so wanted, as well as his twin brother.
The Clearwaters were shocked, they had never anticipated twins, and they had no money for two brand new babies in the family. No one new what to do. Finally, with no other choice, they realized that they could only keep one baby. With no money and no options, Sue and Harry took the one child (Seth) that they could afford to raise and tearfully left the other boy in the hands of the Department of Child Protection (who were certainly not surprised to see another "abandoned indian baby").
The Clearwaters returned to La Push with their baby, Seth, agreeing to never tell Seth or Leah of what had happened. At least not until they were old enough to understand. The other baby boy, named Dominic by the agent put in charge of his case, was then shuffled between agencies and foster-families for a decade before he was finally dumped in an austere group home where he stayed among the not-so-friendly boys for 7 years (two years after Bella came to Forks) until everything began to change...
Dominic's POV:
Not everyone knows how hard life can be. Most people don't know what it's like to have no place to call home for most of their life, and even fewer know what it's like for the place that they finally call "home" to be the bed of an older boy just to have some protection.
In the group home, everyone did their chores, everyone was home before dark, and no one broke anything. As long as everyone followed these three basic rules, they could do whatever they liked (and they did). Drugs, alcohol, guns, knives, anything was fine just as long as they stayed out of sight when the agency people came to check in on everyone. For someone like me, the smallest boy in the home, the name of the game was always to stay out of sight and out of mind, but that was never quite good enough. When the bigger guys came looking for an easy target like me, all I could do was find the biggest, toughest guy around and make myself whatever he wanted to be (buddy, brother, servant, bitch). In my case, I provided all kinds of "services" for my present protector and, though he had never made me have actual sex with him, I knew that it wouldn't be long before I would be forced to trade my virtue for his protection (something with which I would never be comfortable).
A few days before my seventeenth birthday, my case officer came for a birthday visit, checking in on me and even giving me a special birthday present: a tiny birthday cupcake from the corner mini-mart. Her name was Elizabeth (she insisted that I call her by her first name so that we could be more like friends), and she had an affect so sweet that it would give you diabetes to talk to her for too long. That day she wished me a very happy birthday, passing me my cupcake with her characteristic smile that showed off all of her overly-large, nicotine-yellowed teeth. Kind of cranky (the aforementioned big guy had insisted on an ultra-deep blowjob just ten minutes earlier), I informed Elizabeth that my birthday wasn't for almost a week.
"Oh, silly, don't try and kid with me!" She giggled, quickly flipping through my file to prove my own birthdate to me, stopping suddenly as she came to the page that proved her wrong. "Oh, my! Your old friend Elizabeth has made an itty-bitty mistake!" She chuckled a few times and shifted awkwardly from foot to foot, clicking her heels against the worn floor of the group home. "Well, to make it up to you, there's actually a second part to your birthday present (even though it isn't really your birthday)!" Elizabeth placed my file on a worn armchair nearby and reached into the pocket of her jacket, pulling out an envelope stained with coffee and handing it to me.
I gave it a little shake, and smiled at her (more out of courtesy than anything else) and ripped it open slowly. I slipped out her present to me, three $20 bills. I grinned genuinely at her, this would buy me cigs for at least three weeks (assuming that I could keep it out of the other boys' hands). Seeing my grin she chuckled again, "Well it's not every day that you turn sixteen!" I frowned again at her misinformation and she noticed, "That's not right is it..." I stared blankly at her as she squirmed awkwardly again, embarrassed not to know that I was almost seventeen.
"Well, I'm gonna use the toilet before I head out." Elizabeth said, trying to diffuse the awkward energy in the room. She shuffled quickly toward the bathroom, probably just to run her hands under the filthy water for a few minutes. In her absence, I stuffed the sixty dollars in my pocket and started flipping through my file absentmindedly (always eager to get into someone else's business, even though it was my file).
As it turned out, the whole file was rather dull, and I ended up just scanning a few documents of things I'd done, places I'd been housed, and other boring papers. Finally, I ended up reading through my birth certificate and found something of interest: the names of my parents, Harry and Sue Clearwater. I read the next few pages and found some other interesting things: their address (some place called La Push) and that I had been born with an identical twin brother (someone named Seth).
I realized with a very noticeable ache that they must have chosen Seth over me. While he had gotten the joy of a loving family, I had been abandoned and forced into the miserable shuffle from home to home, "family" to "family", and nightmare to nightmare. I wished that I could get out of this horrible situation, that I could meet Seth and my family, and that I could find my way to a real home. Still, I knew that I never could. I would never even know if they wanted me or not just because I had absolutely no way of getting to them. Suddenly I remembered the sixty dollars in my pocket, enough for a bus ticket, and realized that I could see them if I wanted to (and maybe get away from the hell of the group home for a while).
I hastily memorized the address in La Push and closed the file, just in time for my old friend Elizabeth to come out of the bathroom, reeking of cigarette smoke (so that was what she had been taking so long doing). We both said our goodbyes, Elizabeth smiling her yellow smile, and me smiling at the new address and the sixty dollars in my pocket: just enough for two packs of Marlboros and a bus ticket to wherever the heck this La Push was.
I got off the bus, not quite in La Push (which was turning out to be much harder to get to than I had first anticipated). Apparently it was an indian reservation, and rather small. There were no buses to it out of Seattle, no buses to it at all in fact. The closest I could get was a quiet little town called Forks, still a fair ways away from La Push, but it was the best I could do. I stepped off of the bus and out into a rather gray-looking bus stop and breathed in the foggy air. I shivered in the cold and pulled my jacket closer around myself, though the cheap coat didn't offer much insulation.
I shouldered my backpack full of supplies (all I really had to my name were a few pairs of jeans, t-shirts, and what remained of the sixty dollars that Elizabeth had given me for my "birthday") and pulled out a cigarette, lighting up and trying to point myself toward La Push. Using the large map pasted onto the side of the bus station sign, I pointed myself toward La Push and started walking, breathing out a cloud of smoke and smiling when I realized that this was the first really independent thing that I had ever managed. Though I knew that I had a very long walk ahead of me, it felt good to be accomplishing something on my own and working under my own power rather than someone else's.
At first I had been glad to be walking all by myself and even a little thrilled to not know where I was, but now all I wanted to do was get there. Less than a half hour into my trek, it had begun to rain. At first, I had just flipped my cigarette around so that the burning tip was protected from the raindrops by my hand and continued on my way, but now the drizzle had turned into a deluge. My cigarette was as wet as I was and the rain had long since soaked through my thin jacket. There was no sidewalk on this street and each of the few cars whizzing by splashed me and soaked me even further.
I must have gotten turned around, or underestimated the distance, because it had already grown dark. There was practically no light, the moon hidden behind the weeping clouds, and I had begun to regret ever attempting to find my family and this La Push. I shuddered to myself and shuffled under the trees lining the road, seeking cover from the rain in the dense forest. I pulled a dry cigarette out of the box and started to light up, but something stopped me when I looked around.
The rain filtered through the trees, the endless water pouring down deflected off of the leaves, changing the dull roar of the deluge into a delicate pattering of droplets falling on the soft moss and ferns of the forest floor. Though it was darker still under the trees, just enough moonlight had finally broken through the clouds to dimly illuminate the features of the trees. Wonderstruck, I heard the pattering of raindrops slow and then stop, and gasped as the clouds cleared to let the nearly full moon gleam down through the thick canopy. Each droplet suspended on the leaves and ferns and pine needles were like diamonds, and everything was aglow, reflecting the white light of the bright moon. I forgot the numbness of my toes and my frosty skin, totally absorbed in the beauty of the forest.
Suddenly, my focus was drawn away from the forest's glowing and a shadow passed over my mind. The clouds covered the moon again and everything went dark. The rain had stopped, but in its place remained a thick fog. I shivered and hurried out of the trees, something about the darkness under the trees making my skin crawl.
I heard something behind me, thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I looked around but there was nothing there. At first I thought I was just imagining things, and just kept walking (though markedly faster than before). I stopped suddenly, convinced that I had heard something over the sloshing of my feet within my soaked shoes. I spun around again and this time I did see something.
Standing no more than twenty yards away from me was a beautiful couple. Both the man and the woman were exceptionally pale and they each shared a peculiar shade of amber eyes that seemed oddly inhuman. The woman had a kind face and dark hair, while the man had a more distinguished and powerful look to his strong jaw and copper hair. They both looked rather confused to see me and I was more than a little uncomfortable at the way that they were moving slowly closer.
"Seth? Is that you?" The woman asked slowly before looking to her husband (judging by the matching rings on their left hands).
"Bella, this isn't Seth. This is... Dominic?" The man answered her.
That was enough for me, the way that they were edging closer to me and the way that he had known my name was the last straw. I didn't pause to respond or even to think, I just turned on my heel and ran as fast as I could away. I had always been pretty fast, and I was confident that, despite my soaked clothes, I would be able to get away (even if I didn't know where I was escaping to).
"Wait! Dominic! Don't run away, we're friends!" The woman called out, "Edward, what do we do?" I didn't turn to look, and I couldn't hear them over the sound of my own panting and heartbeat. My cold skin was starting to turn hot, and I felt tremors inside of me flowing from my spine outward. My body was tingling, and suddenly I was on fire. Everything was red and angry and odd around me. It felt like a fever, I felt like I was dying, but I also felt more alive than ever before. I felt my breaths getting deeper, my legs moving faster, my body pushing itself past any limits. I laughed, not sure what was going on, but knowing that I would definitely leave the strange man and woman in my dust.
All of a sudden I felt an icy hand on my wrist pulling me to a stop and I knew that I was wrong. I looked around wildly and saw that the pale man had a hold of me and a very odd expression on his face. Then I felt a wrenching in my abdomen and the feverish heat was redoubled. I fell to the ground, writhing in pain and heat despite the chill of the rain around me.
"Edward, what's going on?" The woman asked her husband (Edward, I guess) in panic, "Why is he acting so strangely?"
"He's changing, just like everyone in the pack does when they're about to phase for the first time." Edward responded, "I guess being so close to two vampires has made it happen more suddenly than when the others changed... His body is growing—fast—and his inner wolf is developing... We should bring him to the rest of the pack."
Vampires? Inner wolf? Pack? I was confused, utterly confused. I tried to pull myself free, finding my arm stronger than it had been before, and almost managed to escape. Suddenly Edward twisted me around and wrapped his arm around my throat, putting firm pressure on my neck.
"Sorry, Dominic, but you might not want to be awake for this anyway..." Edward said. I could feel myself blacking out, everything growing dark around me, the only sensation the painful feeling that my very bones were stretching and twisting. Just before everything turned black I thought I saw another pale girl run up to the other two and a beautiful (and giant) russet wolf lope up behind them. Then, everything went black and I was sure that I was dead.
Alrightie, guys, I'd love it if you could review this! Let me know what you think, let me know what needs work! I'm still writing the rest of it, and it's still all very fluid and changeable, so let me know if there's something that could use some work and I could very easily tweak the direction of the whole thing (; Also, just to be clear, there will probably be some pretty steamy portions (: