AN: Ok, I love crossovers (as you may have noticed) but just like with my Highlander story this isn't a crossover with the show Dead Like Me, I only use the concept of the show. That's why it won't be in the crossover section.
As you also may notice the timelines and ages pf people do not match with the books but it is an AU so… I hope it won't be too confusing.
Please tell me what you think as I live for reviews. No pun indented.
Disclaimer: I do not owe the Twilight series or the show Dead Like Me. I make no profit what so ever from this.
It was my fault. I don't blame Mr. Bines as I should have looked both ways before crossing the street. "Look both ways and make sure if there's a car approaching that it can stop before you walk," I always told my kids. I should have followed my own advice, but I was in such a hurry and the white Toyota wasn't even close so I took a chance… and lost. It was the blue Sedan I should have watched out for.
I don't remember being hit. Actually, I don't even remember walking across the street. Suddenly I was on the sidewalk, feeling confused, watching a broken body, looking suspiciously like my own, and the hurried activity of people around it. Mr. Bines stepped out of the Sedan, bellowing that "she came out of nowhere", his shocked face crumbling at the sight of the body.
I walked closer. The curiosity was running through me. Perhaps I should have felt horrified, the body looked very much dead, but I didn't. A gap opened up between two people and my own slack face looked back at me.
"That's me!" I said out loud. No one noticed. "Am I dead?" Still no one answered. "Hello!" I called out louder. No one even twitched.
"They can't hear you," a young voice said behind me. I turned and to my surprise saw the Police Chief's daughter looking straight at me. "You are dead," she confirmed with a side glance to the body… my body.
"Miss Swan? What…?" I was so confused. If I'm dead how come she could see me? And why was no one looking at her like she was losing her mind if they couldn't see me? Wouldn't they see her talking to herself? Then a thought hit me.
"Are you Death?"
Isabella shook her head and with a sympathetic smile said, "Let's say I'm an employee for death."
It was weird, I just died and found out Isabella was… a grim reaper?... and all I could think to say was 'Does Charlie know?' He's an old friend of mine even if we don't spend a lot of time together.
Isabella's eyes caught something behind me and once again I turned. Two police cars had come to a halt and the Police Chief himself stepped out of the first and started ordering his officers to process the scene. He spoke quietly to the paramedics that were handling my body. He nodded to whatever they said and turned to his daughter. Quickly, and unnoticed I saw, he walked up to her. He gave me a quick look, which surprised me, and asked her if she could handle everything. Isabella nodded and he turned back to the scene. I guess that answers my question.
"Come," she said and walked away from the accident site. I followed too numb to do anything else. "You have questions."
"How did you know?" I asked surprised.
She smiled sadly. "Everyone does." She has done this before? Whatever this is.
"What are you?" I asked. She sat down on a bench outside the grocery store and I sat down next to her.
"I guess the closest definition would be a Reaper. I meet the souls of recently dead and help them along to the afterlife."
It sounded like a standard answer she had repeated one too many times.
"And Charlie?" I wondered. He had seen me.
"He is one too."
"… Renee?"
She just nodded.
"So what happens now?"
She looked at me and then around. "Do you see a bright light?"
I looked around and just as I was about to say no music reached my ear. Live music I haven't heard for over forty years. I looked to my right and right in the middle of the street I saw part of the jazz club where I met my husband. I rose and hurried over. Maybe Steven was there. As I entered everything disappeared, all thoughts of my death, Isabella and the life I had lived. It was just the light and the feeling of being home.
The music and the lights disappeared along with Mrs. Huntington. Bella sighedand looked at her clock. Great she was late for Trig. She glanced at the accident site, caught the eyes of her father and did a thumb up to let him know that the soul had moved on. He was still a little weary about her doing this on her own.
Bella rose and made her way back to school. The Pull had come during lunch break and it was best for her to finish as much of the school day as she could. The Pull was what allowed her to know when someone was about to die and a soul would be in need for a 'meet and greet' and to be helped along to the afterlife. It was literally what it sounded like and the longer it took for her to follow the feeling wherever it wanted her to go the greater the pull would be until it was impossible to ignore any more. The Pull had come several times during school days and she had become better and better at lying to her friends and teachers. Her father helped her as much as he could and gave her excuses whenever possible.
Both her father and mother were Reapers. How to become one no one really knows. Just that once you died instead of moving along to the afterlife the soul was stuck on earth forced to pretend to be alive and juggling the new job of helping other souls and whatever normal job they had. Her parents had met on a reap job, fallen in love and had her years later.
Now you could ask, she certainly had, if both her parents were dead when she was born did that mean she was born dead? Probably not as Reapers didn't age and she had grown normally as any other child until her death on her seventeenth birthday. That's when a klutz attack had taken her life through a broken neck. Of course no one knew about it besides her parents. Her mother had even sent her a gift card from Phoenix saying 'Congratulations on your death, Bella'. Renee was a little weird like that.
Bella had been a Reaper for three months now. With reaps at least twice a week that made her quota of souls over twenty. Of course that was nothing next to her father who had been a Reaper a lot longer and had a quota over five hundred. Most of the souls came from elderly, their time was up and they died naturally, but a few like Mrs. Huntington were from accidents, one even from a bear mauling. Bella didn't like what she had to do. She felt that she didn't have the strength to watch people die all the time. And children were the worst. Unfortunately she didn't have a choice and there was no way to get out of it.
She was approaching the school and another look at the clock showed her that Trig would almost be over. She headed for her locker to get the books for the next class when the bell rang and students came swarming from the classrooms. A few moments later her friends came up to her.
"Hey, Bells. Where have you been?" Mike Newton asked and she winced at the nickname. He was looking at her eagerly and a thought went through her head (not for the first time) that if he would be anymore obsessed he would border on being a stalker. For some reason, probably the crush he had on her, he needed to know everything she did.
"I was feeling sick and went out for fresh air," Bella said stiffly.
"The whole hour?" Jessica wondered. Jessica wasn't really Bella's friend but she would pretend to be whenever there might be gossip to spread around. It was thanks to the bottle blonde that most people in Forks High thought Bella was a weird outcast and possible freak.
"Are you feeling better now?" Angela asked interrupting the cutting remark Jessica was preparing.
Bella smiled at the Hispanic girl. "Yes, I am."
Jessica started talking about a rumor of new students coming and the rest of the day went uneventful.
Dinner in the Swan household was a quiet affair. Charlie had asked her about her day and had gotten a brief twenty second summary that excluded the reap as he had been there and seen it. Bella had asked him the same question and gotten the standard answer, nothing special (besides Mrs. Huntingtons unfortunate accident) and just like every other day Bella got the feeling that Charlie was bored nowadays.
He hadn't gotten the Pull since her death and they theorized that this was Bella's training period and she had to handle every death in Forks, leaving Charlie with a normal boring workday. Inwardly Bella wondered if Charlie liked being a Reaper. He had been one for so long that it seemed three month without it he was climbing the walls in boredom.
With dinner done Bella started with the dishes while her dad went to the living room to watch a game on the TV. Balancing the plates in one hand and the glass's in the other she turned from the table and only to have her foot catch the leg. Unfortunately her clumsiness hadn't gone away with her life and she found herself on all four on the floor with broken kitchen china and glass scattered around her.
Letting out an irritating sigh she began to pick it up. Only to have her hand cut by a jagged piece. Swallowing a curse at the sharp and sudden pain, she watched the cut on her palm close from edge to edge meeting in the middle only leaving the blood behind. Now she had to clean that up too.
A half hour later she was done in the kitchen and went to her room to do her homework. Angela had been kind enough to lend her the notes from the class she had missed, not that it would really help her that much; she sucked at Trig. She gave up after ten minutes.
Instead she walked over to her bed table and opened the drawer and took out a notebook. Sitting on her bed with her back against the wall she turned the pages until she had a clean unwritten one. Renee had given her the advice to write down every reap she did. Bella did so and used it as a coping mechanism, pouring her thoughts and feeling about it on the pages. She didn't think that was what Renee had meant, her mother did it so she could remember every reap she did. Reapers did quirky things like that (one took pictures of every soul and put them in plastic sacks and shoe boxes depending on how they had died).
On top of the page she wrote the date and the name of the departed.
January 20th 2005 – Mrs. Helena Huntington – Reap 31.
She was 68 years old had three children and ten grandchildren. Her husband Steven (my tenth reap) died of a heart attack a little over two month ago. She was hit by a car driven by Mr. Bines, the plumber. I managed to get to her before the accident so she didn't feel a thing.
She found the light without problems, it was a jazz club. One of those that played live music and stuff like that, I wonder about the story behind it. I didn't think to ask.
I remember Mrs. Huntington as a kind lady who always had a smile on her face and gave me cookies as a child. And now when I think of her those memories will be accompanied with the sound of screeching tires, bones snapping and the thud of a body hitting the ground.
Bella reread what she had written and slammed the notebook shut. She took a moment to let the dark and depressing feelings go away.
When she felt a little calmer she put the notebook away and began to prepare for the next day.
A rumor that had been going around town that the hospital had hired a new surgeon turned out to be true. The next day Jessica was in the center of attention during lunch hour in Forks High because she could confirm that rumor and had most insight in it.
"My mom told me that he is young, is married and has five foster kids that will start here next week," Jessica said basking in the attention she was getting. "I don't know their names but the doctor's last name is Cullen."
Bella stopped listening after that. She was more concerned about how she would avoid suspicion from the new doctor. Getting into the hospital rooms of dying people wasn't the easiest thing to do as both doctors and nurses in a town this small knew exactly who visited their patients and why.
She had managed the few times she had to get souls from the hospital because she had the help of the last doctor, the one being replaced, because he had been a Reaper too. But having three Reapers in a town the size of Forks, when one was enough, had made the doctor Reaper decide to move away.
Bella had a feeling it would be a lot trickier for her now. She had no idea just how right she was.
To Be Continued
