Disclaimer: Not Mine.
AN: This story is dedicated to my Twilight authors. Hint: Please take the time to read Forks in the Road. I guarantee it is an enjoyable and ensnaring fic that you'll all love dearly. This is my first actual Twilight fic...and the only reason I actually like Twilight is Team Jacob, so here is the product of a male Team Jacob shipper who laughs uproariously every time he sees a picture making fun of Twilight.
Which is dearer, fame or your life?
Which is greater, your life or possessions?
Which is more painful, gain or loss?
Therefore we always pay a great price for excessive love
And suffer deep loss for great accumulation.
Knowing what is enough, you will not be humiliated.
Knowing where to stop, you will not be imperilled
And can be long-lasting.
-The Tao Te Ching
Bella watched with mournful eyes as Edward peeled out of her driveway like someone desperate to get away. Considering the debacle that her birthday party had been, it wasn't very unreasonable to assume that he was desperate to get away. Bella started inside, expecting Charlie to wish her a happy birthday and reminding herself that she needed to e-mail Renee about her birthday as well.
However, as Bella stepped through the door, she was met with her mother enveloping her in a huge hug.
'Mom!' Bella exclaimed as she started to wrap her own arms around her mother. She didn't know Renee was visiting. Why hadn't Charlie told her?
Bella knew that the purpose for the visit wasn't entirely celebratory, however, when she felt Renee begin to shake slightly in her arms and felt warm wetness spread along her clothes where Renee had her face planted into Bella's shoulders.
'Mom? Mom, what's wrong?' Bella asked quietly, stroking her mother's back.
As Bella tried to calm her mother down, she looked up at Charlie to find him giving her mother a hard look before he turned his eyes to his daughter and gave her a small, tight, pained smile.
'Sit down, honey,' Charlie said through Renee's now increasingly loud sobs, 'your mother and I have something we need to talk to you about.'
Charlie had his arm wrapped around a still sniffling Renee, looking acutely uncomfortable in the position. Whatever it was that Charlie and Renee had to tell Bella, she knew it wasn't good. Renee wouldn't have flown over all the way from Florida and left Phil hanging without a good reason, after all.
'Bella...' Renee finally managed through the sniffs and hicks, 'I'm so sorry,' she managed before breaking out crying again. Bella felt a wave of both annoyance and affection for her mother. This was a side of her mother that she had rarely seen, but Bella supposed her own cry baby tendencies made slightly more sense now.
'Bella,' this time it was Charlie who spoke up. At his words, Renee began to cling almost viciously to his hands, sobbing all the while, 'I'm not your father,' Charlie managed to breathe out. Bella just stared at him for a few moments, doing her best to process the line that sounded so much like Darth Vader that she wanted to break out crying. She wasn't sure if she would be crying from laughter or from shock or from the sheer incredulity of it all. Bella took a moment to compose her dog-chasing-its-tail thoughts before responding.
'Come again?' was all Bella could manage. OK. Charlie wasn't her Dad. That didn't mean, at least in Bella's mind, that the man wasn't her father. Bella had, and always would, consider Charlie her father. Genetics and blood had nothing to do with it. After all, if she could consider Carlisle, who wasn't even human, a father it wasn't that big of a stretch to consider Charlie her father.
'Your father is Joshua Ulley,' Renee said, her sniffles far less pronounced now, 'When I lived in Forks I...I made some mistakes. Charlie still took care of me, even though we both knew the child wasn't his. When you were born, and you looked so much like us we...we couldn't...we just...' Renee shook her head, unable to continue.
'This doesn't change anything for me, Bella, you're still my little girl,' Charlie said quietly, looking Bella in the eye.
Bella just shook her head, 'I...I can't say it changes anything for me either, but why? Why couldn't you have told me earlier? Why say this now?' Bella said. She wasn't upset that her father wasn't her dad. That didn't really matter. What mattered was that her father and her mother had lied to her. They had lied to her for seventeen years. They had always known. Why not tell her? What would have changed? Why?
'We just...I didn't want Charlie to tell you. We thought it would be best if it was left this way. But since you'd come to Forks...I was just so scared that Joshua would start looking for you himself, and...I just couldn't stand the thought of him telling you and not us...please understand, baby, I just wanted us to be a family,' Rene babbled, obviously sensing the acceptance, shock, and anger in Bella's posture and face.
Bella got up and walked towards her room, saying, 'I need to be alone for a little while,' before walking up the stairs going into her room and closing the door behind her, shutting away Charlie's sad look, Renee's guilty tears and a life she was never sure she had deserved in the first place.
Bella stood waiting in the woods, there at Edward's request. She wanted nothing more than to just fall into that cold embrace and just forget everything stressful that had happened. Her pain, the confusion, the lies, the revelations, she wanted to just fall into that cold place that she knew was hers and slip quietly into the darkness.
'Bella...' Edward's voice, cold and smooth rippled across her senses, 'There's something we need to talk about...'
Bella's life had officially lost all possible meaning. All of her families had abandoned her. Charlie and Renee had lied to her her entire life about her parentage. Bella wouldn't have cared. Bella didn't care. All Bella knew, however, was that they had lied. What was more, her other family, her beautiful glistening family of immortals, had left. Gone without a word of goodbye or regret or even love. Edward had said, in no uncertain terms, he thought little to nothing of her, and would have nothing to do with her. They were gone. They were all gone. And so, Bella wandered the woods, drifting from tree to tree from rock to rock from hill to hill, lost amidst the great evergreens as she felt her soul was lost amidst the unending span of existence, alone with but her sorrow for company.
Sam Ulley trotted through the woods looking for a lost girl. Correction, he trotted through the woods looking for his lost sister. At a loping pace that would have seemed fast to any but the pack, Sam weaved between trees and brush, testing the air for a scent that he didn't know, but by all rights, should know as well as his own.
Sam paused momentarily and tuned his nose up to better evaluate the scent he had just caught. There it was. Like a field of flowers in the otherwise musky forest, Bella's scent stood out amidst the greenery. Sam quickly phased into his human form and slipped on his cutoffs before walking into a small clearing where Bella was simply leaning against a tree, her face blank.
Sam rushed over and found she was still breathing and that she was, for all technical purposes, alive. Except her eyes. Ever since he had phased and learned about his duty to his people, he thought that nothing could come as a shock to him any more. Sam had been very very wrong. Bella just stared out into the distance, her eyes cold, lonely, sightless and broken. She made no noise when he had moved into the clearing or next to her.
'Bella...it's Sam Ulley.........your brother,' Sam sad the last quietly.
Apparently it was still loud enough for Bella to hear, at the word 'brother' her eyes snapped around to Sam.
'Brother? I have a brother?' Bella asked quietly, seeming to stare at, into and through Sam all at the same time. Sam could only nod his head. They were siblings. They were blood. No one could deny that, and for some inexplicable reason, he loved the girl lying broken on the forest floor like she was his blood. Though he barely knew of her existence up until Chief Swan had informed him that the girl was not in fact the Chief's daughter, he loved her.
'It's OK, Bella. I'm here to help you...little sister,' Sam said with a smile. Bella got up slowly, her eyes wide with shock as she just stared at Sam's face. Then she fell into his arms and wailed. And though Sam couldn't do anything but stroke the broken girl's back and then carry her to safety after she had fallen asleep from emotional exhaustion, he knew things would turn out the way they were meant to.
Bella woke up screaming. It took her a moment to realize that she was in fact in her own room, surrounded by the familiar sights and smells of her own home. Except for the marble figure that was always there. That had always been there. That should have always been there.
It all came back to her in a flood of memories and pain.
Charlie and Renee telling her she'd been lied to. Edward leaving...Edward...Edward. The name repeated itself in an unbroken litany of pain in her mind. Every time she repeated the name it clawed at her from the inside out, but at the same time, she couldn't bring herself not to think his name. She couldn't bring herself not to remember that velvety smooth voice. She couldn't bring herself to think of her truck as anything other than a sign of her father's love and affection.
She couldn't will the world to pause in its stately march, for though her life had shattered and was strewn about her feet like so many sharply beautiful pieces of memory and happiness, Bella's world spun madly on without her.