AN: I really don't know where this is going, or if I'm going to see it through. If you like it, review. Give me your opinions. Some OC behavior is to be expected, I think. This is just a little peak. Not everything is explained. not everything is set in stone. I hope at least one person enjoys it.

Isabella Swan

Some people like to use traumas in their past as excuses for unreasonable behavior. They give the people who are truly and utterly fucked up by their pasts a bad name.

I've got problems. I've seen my therapists once a week since I was seventeen. I struggle with eating disorders (binging) because after I left my mothers house and started staying with Charlie, I had food at my disposal and had never been taught how to eat in moderation. It is often difficult to show affection. I find it a little confusing, and sometimes pointless. I have drinking problems, intimacy problems, all sorts of problems.

I blame my mother, because it really is her fault if you get right down to it. She took me from my fathers house in Forks, Washington when I was just a little girl, to live in Phoenix. She was a teenage mother, and didn't know how to properly raise a child, but I think it went deeper than that. She wasn't a loving person, even Charlie told me that after I had been sent to stay with him.

She didn't know how to show her child affection. I don't think she liked me much, either. She didn't have any hatred towards me, merely distaste. I was neglected, most likely from the day we left my dad's driveway until the day I was back.

I received the letter that my mother was dying on a Tuesday afternoon. It was in that same stack as a power bill, a birthday card for my longtime boyfriend Edward who had just celebrated his twentieth, and a postcard from his parents who were celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary in the Bahamas.

When I saw the letter from the hospital there in the middle, I ignored it. My mother found out she had lung cancer the year I turned sixteen. She had gotten it years earlier, by how far it had progressed. When she went into the hospital long-term, I was shipped back to my father in Forks (something I had been longing for in secret, for years).

I hated my mother, and I am not exaggerating. I hated her for the fights she caused between me and Edward, for the money I had to spend on a therapist, and for the weight I could never keep off. I hated her for exposing me to alcohol and cigarettes at a young age, and getting me addicted to them. I hated her for the dark cloud I always felt was hanging over my head.

You should be able to tell that I hated her by the fact that when I received the hospital letter telling me my mother was slowly slipping away, and would most likely pass in the next few weeks, I chose to read the postcard from my boyfriend's parents first. I even admired the picture on the back (a beautiful beach with white sand and clear water).

I sat the card for Edward on the counter so he would be able to open that when he got home himself. I left the power bill where it was (scowling).

I took dinner off of the stove, being sure to watch the clock for when Edward would be home, before bothering to open the letter, and look at what was inside.

When Edward came home ten minutes later, he found me lying on top of the counter, with an unopened bottle of alcohol beside my head.

"Baby, would you open this? I just can't get a grip." I was crying. He dropped his briefcase, and without questioning me, opened the bottle. He snagged two glasses out of the cupboard, ignored the dinner I had made, and sat up on the counter with me.

"What's wrong?" He asked me quietly after a while. I think he already knew it was about my mother. Most of my moods were about my mother. I handed him the letter that I had left under the bottle as if Jack Daniels was a paperweight. He skimmed it, and then laid it aside.

We were quiet for a long time after that, both of us drinking (him only pouring after I dumped a quarter of the bottle all over the floor). I wasn't thinking of my mother much, but more of how Edward was seeing me now. Crying, half drunk (okay, more than half drunk), covering in stinking alcohol, and eating from a cold plate of spaghetti. Finally, I got the nerve to ask him what he was thinking.

"Are you going to go see her?"

"I don't think that would be good for me," I said, unsure.

"No?"

I shook my head.

"I think you should ask Gail." Gail was my therapist.

I stared at him bewildered. "Why would I go see her after all these years, just when she's dying? What? To make up with her? To cause a scene? To say something to hurt her enough that she will see what a terrible mother she was to me all along and be sorry?"

"Yes," he answered simply. "We've spend thousands of dollars on Gail. I think that maybe... maybe trying to get some peace with your mother would be the most therapeutic thing of all, don't you?"

He took the bottle, poured just a little bit more into my glass, and dumped the rest down the sink.

"Me trying to make peace would end with me taking a swing at her face, Edward."

"Quite therapeutic. Like I said." He smiled at me crookedly.

Alice Brandon

I was a little girl, and I was drowning. My eyes and mouth were wide open, and I was gasping for air. Spiders crawled over my feet, up the legs of the chair I was strapped in, up my thighs. They scaled my stomach and my ribs like men scaled canyons. They crawled up my neck, over my cheeks into my mouth and over my eyes, little legs tickling me.

I gagged and vomited, but they kept coming. They covered the floor and the walls. And the man who was letting them loose was cocking his head at me from behind the glass.

"No more progress, Mary Alice? Well that's perfectly fine. There's always tomorrow."

I cried and screamed, begging for help from the kinder women who sometimes were there with the man, but they never seemed to be there when I needed them most.

The bindings on my legs and arms tightened more and more. They broke my bones. They cut into my flesh. The man behind the glass was still there, watching my reaction. He was not smiling, like he sometimes did. He was very serious. In his hand was a needle, and he was holding it up to the cheap light to see if it had enough of whatever was inside.

I screamed louder.

When I woke up, I had been crying, most likely silently, since Jasper was still asleep next to me. I rolled away from him to dry my eyes, and tried to breath through my mouth so my stuffy nose wouldn't alert him that anything was wrong.

Jasper, who had been so sweet to me. Who had listened to me when I cried. Who had been so nice when I accidentally punched him in my sleep that one time. Who had swept me off my feet with that charming southern twang and windswept blond hair. He had become a crutch I could lean on, but more than that. He was the only person I could rely on anymore.

I laid in the dark, rubbing my hands absentmindedly over my arms and face, just to be sure I was still rid of the spiders. I had been out of the asylum for seven years, but I still hadn't found the bravery to kill little spiders that I found in the darkest corners of the house.

My doctor. Dr. Frederick Becker, haunted me. He was like a bad dream that you couldn't shake after you woke up, only sneakier. He could affect me at the worst of time. He could jump out from around corners. He fell from ceilings like... like a spider. No matter what I did, the horrors I suffered at his hands for the six years I was a patient at his mental health facility weighed me down as though a wet sheet had been thrown over me.

I didn't realize I was crying again (though I may just have never stopped) until Jasper spoke from his side of the bed.

"You aren't getting any better."

I flinched, but didn't answer. His voice was directed towards the ceiling. It was so dark that neither of us would be able to see each other if we looked, but I think it was easier for him not to be looking at me when he said this. Even if he wouldn't be able to see by reaction.

"Nightmares every night. Hallucinations. Paranoia. Do you need extra help?"

"Like what?" I said blankly.

"I'm not saying go to any more doctors-" he spat the word like a venom. "-but maybe we should try to get you some closure."

"Closure?"

"Yeah."

I paused, staring into the darkness of our bedroom.

"Closure sounds good," my voice broke, and Jasper rolled over, pulling me to him. He kept me there until I fell asleep again, and when I awoke again, sunlight had filled our bedroom, and I was still wrapped up in his arms, the only place I felt safe and whole.

Rosalie Hale

"Over five hundred channels, and not a damn thing on TV. It's a disgrace," I said, disgustedly.

"Just because there aren't any soap operas on doesn't mean the television deserves being called a disgrace, Rose," Emmett said back. He took the control from my manicured hand, and I gladly gave it up. The sooner he had gone through all five hundred channels, the sooner he would agree with me.

"It's a waste of money, Em. All that money we pay every month- we don't need anything more than the standard channels-"

"You just say that because all of the soap operas," he stressed this word comically, "are on those standard channels. There are pay-per-view fights I want to see-"

Something flashed across the screen. Adrenalin kicked in, and I hit the control out of his hand just before he could turn the channel again. It made a loud crack on the floor, and the batteries went flying out. My eyes were glued to the screen.

"Rose? Rosalie? What-?"

I didn't answer. It was a news channel, and there on the screen was a picture of Royce King. He had grown a beard, and his hair was lighter, but he had the same birthmark on his forehead, and the same smile on his face. He looked... good. This knowledge hurt her in a deep place that she wouldn't admit to Emmett ever.

"That's him!" I said quietly. "Royce, Royce, my God!"

"That's him?" Emmett looked at the screen for a long moment. There was a dark look on his face that I'd never seen before on him. I had seen it plenty of times on my ex-fiance Royce's face when he was displeased. It had always been able to make me shiver. Instead of frightening me now, it only made me feel safe. Emmett would take care of me.

I listened to the news reporter speaking, trying to catch up on the story. The picture of Royce was gone now.

"-outstanding bravery during the line of duty. Officer King really went above and beyond, didn't he Kelly?"

"Oh yes, Maria. He's going to be honored in a week from now at the city hall in Rochester, and given special recognition by the Governor of New York. I think it's well deserved."

"That it is. The parents of the girls who were saved also are showing their appreciation to Officer King-" here, a picture came across the screen of two teenage girls, battered and blue, but smiling at the camera, beaming parents standing behind them.

"He really is a hero."

Emmett had picked up the remote and was struggling frantically to put the batteries back into it. He was muttering angrily to himself. He gave up on repairing the remote and settled for diving for the TV and turning it off manually.

Both of us sat there for a while in the silence, panting.

"A hero," I said flatly. "He's a hero, Emmett."

Emmett didn't say anything back.

"How... how," I sputtered through stained red lips. "How can he be... a hero?"

I turned to stared at Emmett, confused and hurt. Tears were blurring my vision, but I was too ashamed to let them fall. I squeezed my eyelids shut and put my face in my hands.

"He's not a hero," I muttered.

"No," Emmett agreed. He put his arm around my shoulders, and pulled me to him. "No, he's not."

"He is not a hero!"

"I know, Rose."

"You don't know!" I pulled away from him. My whole body was shaking, and I felt faint. "You don't know, you don't, you don't!"

Against my proud nature, I cried, and even though I was kicking and punching, Emmett held me through it, until my cries had diminished into nothing.

My blond hair was mussed, I was nearly positive that my mascara and eyeliner had run, and my eyes were sure to be red and blotchy for a few hours. Despite how I most likely looked, Emmett didn't look at me any differently. I couldn't understand how someone could stand to be near me when I looked like that.

"I hate him," I sighed shakily.

"I do too."