"Well, Saint Emily might be into abusive relationships, but I'm not!" Paul, meet Emma. She's your happily ever after – if you can get her there.
("So tell me Emma – is freedom really about having no one stopping you from doing anything? Is it about having no one in the world who cares about you, or who you care about? You can be free in your own little world of one person – but is that what you really want?")
Disclaimer: If you believe I own the concepts underlying this story, you are sadly mistaken. I am but a poor student, and hence do not even own my own copy of the Twilight books. (I have read a lot of fanfiction, however, which I believe was the wisest of all possible decisions I could have made).
By this I mean: I don't own anything that is drawn from or pertains to the Twilight series, and am not making any money out of my writing. My writing is purely for my own entertainment - and hopefully that of others - and I recognise none of the content within may be subject to any form of copyright to me.
In other news, this is my first Twilight fanfic ever, so please be kind and enjoy. :) (Also: first and only disclaimer that will be applied throughout this story.)
Of Freedom
Chapter 1
"I can't believe we're doing this," I grumbled, leaning against the car window and sticking my lower lip out into an unconscious pout.
"I know," my mum snapped back at me, barely even trying to be discrete. "They're my family, you'd think I'd get to choose whether or not we see them-"
"Sarah," Dad sighed. "Do we have to go over this again?"
"Yes, we do," Mum said, a frown stuck on her face. I'd inherited practically nothing of my appearance from her – Mum was very much the stereotypical image of a Native American woman, with long, straight black hair, tan skin, almond eyes and high cheekbones, whereas people thought I was joking when I said I was half Native American. I had my dad's ridiculously unmanageable brown tangles, hacked short (but sexy as anything, in my humble opinion), blue eyes and fair skin; I was, effectively, Dad's female clone – just younger and hotter.
I think Mum was actually glad I didn't look anything like her; it was another strike against her parents. She'd often grumbled about them conspiring against her, trying to turn her into their perfect Native little homemaker even before her birth – along with saddling her with a Native name that I could barely pronounce and rarely bothered trying. Mum had taken a truly unhealthy amount of pleasure in changing her name to one of the most common names she could find as soon as she went to university. Apparently, she'd also sent copies of the name change certificate to her parents; she was fairly gleeful in imagining their reactions.
I realised that I'd tuned out of my mum's rant a while ago, but it didn't really matter. She'd pretty much been on repeat ever since Dad had accepted the invitation to come visit her parents (and my grandparents, not that they'd ever bothered acknowledging my existence before now, thanks very much). My mum and my... grandparents - I suppose I should get used to calling them that now, or Dad'll level a Disappointed Look at me, and I really hate it when he does that – had this massive falling out when Mum was eighteen. They'd expected her to settle down and start producing kids because apparently dearest granddaddy's some kind of huge misogynist, but Mum had gone behind their backs to apply for a scholarship at Yale – and got it. It probably hadn't helped that her older brother had tried applying for universities the year before and had got absolutely no acceptances. Then, to put the cherry on the cake, it turns out Mum has the same amount of tact I have; that is to say, absolutely none. They got into some blow out fight, dearest Granddaddy shouted that if Mum walked out the door she better not come back and Mum promptly decided that she didn't like that shithole of a Rez anyway. So yeah, like I said – Mum's not going to be winning awards for tact.
She always said that she made the right decision, and I'm fairly sure she believed it too; she got a degree in neuroscience, met my Dad in the last year of her course and decided when he went back to Britain she'd go with him. They married, she had me in the middle of a successful career as a neurosurgeon and decided to switch back to academics, managing to pick up a lecturing position at the same university my Dad lectured at. The success Mum had managed meant she expected the exact same thing from me – a career first, and if I decided that I wanted a family, then fair enough, but it should never interfere with my Independence! Some of my friends thought this was "well imposing, what if you wanted to be a stay-at-home mum?" but thankfully for my mother, she'd succeeded in indoctrinating me young, and I was a proud little feminist throughout my youth (I still remembered that time she took me out for ice cream because I kicked Nicky Johnson in the balls for saying girls couldn't play rugby).
I brought myself out of my thoughts to listen to what Mum was saying now – she'd moved onto the further blatant flaws of her parents, apparently.
"If there was a BNP for Native Americans, my parents would have signed right up," Mum was saying. She swivelled in her seat to gesture at Dad. "They tried not to invite you. Did I tell you that they tried not to invite you?"
"Yes dear, you told me that they tried to not invite me," Dad sighed, not looking up from the road.
"Twenty nine years married and they expect me to leave my husband at home. It's ridiculous. And I can't believe you agreed to stay in the same house as them!"
"Sarah, you know you'd regret it if you never made up with them." Dad was trying –and succeeding for the most part – to sound soothing. He was the peacemaker of the family, and considering that it contained both my mum and myself, we sorely needed one.
"No I wouldn't," Mum said mulishly. "They were the ones who disowned me, with their inane ideas of a woman's 'place'. As if I'd stand for that." She turned to look at me. "They might start on you, Emma," she said ominously. "They wanted us to invite you in particular, and I suspect they plan on introducing you to some males" – and she made the word sound like a curse – "so they can get you breeding. At least you look properly English. Maybe they won't want you to spread your inferior foreign genes into the bloodlines."
"Sarah!" Dad said, sounding faintly outraged, but Mum ploughed on.
"Just remember, you're doing Engineering at Oxford, you are a success, and if they don't like that you are free to tell them exactly where they can shove their opinions-"
"Sarah," Dad sighed, sounding faintly anguished, and that promptly set off another round of rants. I grinned and stretched out across the back seat. It was vastly satisfying to know there was someone even unhappier with this trip than I was.