This is a song-fic loosely based on "Blown Away" by Carrie Underwood. I say loosely because I have a bad habit of twisting lyrics to meet my needs :) Thanks to Bob for reading over this with me. Sorry if I got the song stuck in your head now, too!
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"Dark bruises strung across her side. Grim resolve flashes in her eyes. Her daddy was a mean ol' mister, her mother was an angel in the ground."
Edward tilted his head as the soft, hauntingly beautiful voice reached his ears. If not for his enhanced senses, he would never have heard it. His eyes subtly searched the classroom, finally landing upon a thin girl who was wearing ear buds. Isabella Swan, Chief Swan's only daughter.
She was a pale, waspy girl, who was notably skittish and very shy. Searching his vast memory, Edward could not recall ever hearing her speak more than a few words here and there, and what she did say always pertained to school work.
"Shatter every window until it's all burnt away. Every brick, every board, every slamming door, burnt away. Until there's nothing left standing, nothing left of yesterday. Every tear-soaked whiskey memory burnt away."
From the few stray thoughts about her that his mind had registered, he knew that she had lived in Forks her whole life with her father. Her mother had died giving birth to her, and Isabella almost didn't make it as well. He knew this because on the one occasion that Jessica Stanley's poisonous thoughts had turned to Isabella, she seemed to think the girl was mentally incompetent because of it.
"She saw her chance to get out. Her daddy laid there passed out on the couch."
As he studied her face and listened to her soft voice once again, he found it decidedly odd that he had never paid any attention to the girl before...that no one at the school seemed to. In fact, in the two years that he had attended Forks High School, he could not recall Isabella ever being called upon by a teacher in class.
It was more than odd, he decided after running through his thoughts and actions towards the girl. It was almost as if she had thrown shields up around herself to the point of her being practically invisible to those around her. Edward sat up straighter as he realized that he could hear no thoughts emitting from the girl.
"She grabbed a match off the counter, bent down and struck it with a grin. Some might call it cold-blood murder; she called it sweet revenge."
Eyes wide, Edward gasped loudly. As impossible as it should have been for Isabella to have heard him over her music, her head lifted and suddenly Edward found himself staring into big, brown doe eyes that seemed to express so much, yet so little at the same time.
It was at that moment that Mr. Banner slammed the classroom door closed, drawing Edward's attention, and his eyes, to him as he started to lecture. As Edward listened to the older man rant, he couldn't help but feel that he was forgetting something important.
Later that night, Edward was playing the piano when Carlisle came home from his shift at the hospital. Glancing at the clock, Edward was surprised to see that he had been three hours late.
"Long Night?" he asked as his fingers once again started playing a haunting melody that he couldn't quite remember where he'd heard before.
"Very. Charlie Swan was killed tonight when his house exploded. They're saying it was a gas leak. Such a shame."
"It is," Edward murmured absentmindedly, as the feeling that he had forgotten something important grew stronger. Lost once again to his thoughts, Edward never noticed as Carlisle silently swept from the room. He also didn't seem to notice as he started quietly humming lyrics as his fingers danced across the keys.
"Every brick, every board, every slamming door, burnt away. Until there's nothing left standing, nothing left of yesterday. Every tear-soaked whiskey memory... burnt away."
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I've had this song stuck in my head for weeks and I finally got my new computer in the mail today so I decided to try to write something for it and maybe (hopefully) stop singing the darn thing all day long now. I haven't written in a very long time, so please take a second to review and let me know what you thought about this. I also am going to be posting a poll to see which of my stories you all want me to finish next since I finally have a computer again (my son broke my last laptop almost 4 months ago). So yeah, drop me a review if you like, and don't forget to vote for your favorite story in the poll. ~~Kit