Okay, so this is my first shot at fanfic. I've had this in my head for a bit and just wanted to see where it could possibly lead. ...

Well here's Chapter One, again. I went back and did some rewriting, hopefully it will be to your liking. I hope there will be some interest in Bella being the soldier instead of Edward/Jasper etc. It really is different for a woman to be in this type of situation and causes different issues for them mentally, emotionally and physically. If people enjoy, I'll be able to continue telling her story.

We all know who these characters belong to. Thanks to you S.M.!

Somewhere in Hell... the desert

We had just finished up with our chow which almost always seems to be unchanged and began our journey to our inconsequential abode. I'm not sure why the Army thinks they are saving money by contracting out our food services to local civilians. The only thing it does to us is upset our already jaded stomachs. It's hard enough to not always second guess what they actually put into your food. I always tried to teach my son to not judge people based on where they're from or what they look like but I find myself doing this while I'm here. We're fighting what could be called an unseen enemy since they've never once tried to come close enough for us to actually put faces to their often flimsy attacks. They wait until we're asleep and most of the time our concern is for nothing. Although, when we cross the threshold over to their side of the wire, we are in immediate danger from them. I have to continually remind myself that these people aren't all the same. No matter who they are they are all human and should be treated as such. They aren't all sick and sadistic fucks who would rather kill us than let us help them. Anyway, if they wanted to take us out we were obviously waiting and willing since every one of us in the camp frequented the dining hall multiple times daily. All they had to do was slip something into chow and none of us would survive. So every morning and every night I not only pray for some sort of reprieve from blood and death but I also pray that I can go through my day without judging someone so harshly just because they are one of them. Some days my earnest prayers are answered and some days they're not. Today was one of those days where my prayers were worth more than just my faltering breath falling on deaf ears.

It was an odd day today to say the least. One of those that you just know was too good for there not to be the existence of something bad lurking around the corner. It had been silent today. Too silent. No attacks here or on any of our personnel outside of the perimeter. I was actually able to just hang out on my bunk most of the day answering letters to my family that I hadn't been able to get to recently. My side of the bunk was nothing compared to my bed at home but at least I had a few comforts around. Jacob had sent my quilt that my grandmother had made for me before she passed while I was still in high school. It was ratty and had holes throughout it but it brought a peace to me that is so hard to find during the night while I've been here. It was quite beautiful when it had first been made with all of the blues, violets and yellows. It spoke volumes of who I was during those years. Just a girl who was trying to get through everyday life unseen. To say that I was not the popular kid would be a dire understatement. I understood it, though, I mean who would want to be friends with someone who fumbled her way through the school day and couldn't keep the unsightly blush off of her pale cheeks, let alone remain standing on her own two feet for less than fifty percent of the entire day? I certainly wouldn't, but that didn't mean that it hurt me any less. I guess all of that was why I wanted a change while I was in college. I wanted to be someone new, someone who could hold her head high and keep her skin color in check. I just didn't know I would find my inner strength by joing the Army. I was at least able to earn a degree before I was sent here to hopefully not die. I figure once my time is up I'll be able to put that English Literature degree to good use by maybe writing about my time here at war. Who knows? People probably don't want to hear the truth about this place anyway. It's always easier to hide and think that what our journalistic outlets are saying is truth. It's easier to think that when the President said he was pulling out the troops from overseas that it would be truth. Unfortunately, even the President isn't as truthful as we would all like to believe.

I still couldn't shake that feeling of dread and unease. It had actually settled quite ladenly into my stomach or that could have just been that shit they call chow. I slowly made my way back not realizing that I had stood in the same spot for who knows how long just staring up at the night sky. Once I got outside of our door I realized that Captain Pentley was crouched down to the right of the building. I didn't know if I should bother her or not as she seemed genuinely lost in thought. I decided to check on her to make sure she was coping okay.

"Whatcha' doing out here all by yourself at this time of the night, missy? You know it's not safe out here for a beautiful lady like yourself with all of those blood suckers who are slinking around here just waiting to pounce." I asked her in my most inhuman voice as possible just trying to get some sort of rise out of her.

As I continued waiting for her to talk or to move or something, I could tell that what I had said hadn't worked. It was a long running joke about vampires and werewolves prowling our perimeter and how lucky we'd be if they were actually on our side in all of this. I crouched down beside her and gave her a half arm hug and realized that she had been crying. Now this isn't out of the ordinary for us. We all cry, it just depends on when the loneliness and seriousness of our situations strike us. Even the men have been known to let a few tears be shed but of course they'd never admit to it in public, especially not in front of their 'manly man' friends.

After a few minutes she answered, "It's just, don't you feel it? Something's off, I don't know what it is, something is going to happen. I just can't deal with the thought of losing anyone else."

I drank in her admission and knew she was right. I picked her up off of the ground and told her that we had to be strong. Not only for ourselves but for the other two women who were already on their bunks awaiting our late arrival.

"You and I will talk about it later. We just need to go in here and act as if everything is fine. We can't let them know what we're feeling." I said before we took off walking.

In my head I knew that we were no where close to fine. I don't think we would ever be that close again. We climbed into our bunks with no one knowing any better about the conversation we had just had outside.

"Okay, who's up for the question this time?" I asked as the four of us girls sat around on our dusty, mildewed bunks for our evening chat.

There were only four of us women here with our Company and they stuck us in a tiny concrete building of sorts. It looked like the buildings had been here since Jesus had graced the earth. We all had our own bunks with one bed on the bottom and one above. When we first arrived we actually drew straws to see who would have to climb the death trap to go to sleep at night. That's before we realized that we wouldn't be getting much sleep at all. The "ladder" to the top bunk actually was being held together by PVC pipe and duct tape. Before I got here I had no idea and all the things that you could fix up with just duct tape. It's truly amazing, really. I had actually won a bottom bunk which of course was strange knowing how bad my luck was. If only they had known how clumsy I was to begin with, they never would have made me draw a straw. I would have automatically gotten a bottom bunk. Strewn in between our beds were the ominous green foot lockers that housed all of our worldly goods that we were allowed to bring over with us. Or if you were like Captain Pentley, it held everything that your family could fit in a care box that they sent twice a month.

Thank God for little miracles. Her kids kept us stocked up in tampons, pads, lotion, baby wipes and hard candy. Oh, and you can't forget the magazines. Her teenage daughter, Tess, knew exactly the kind we liked. The one's that made you feel like you were still a woman even though some weeks you may not see a shower and your hair is so greasy you could probably fry an egg on it out in the heat of day. There sure was never a comfortable way of having that time of the month in a place where sand was sure to find its way into your body in whatever way that it could, hence the baby wipes. It's not like we had the option of having an enclosed shitter. It was just a hole in the ground with plywood haphazardly placed around it. Those wipes also worked for a shower of sorts when we were unable to get one the right way from the nearby Quartermaster Company.

We'd been doing this talk before we went to sleep for so long that it just seemed to make it feel more like home, somewhat like we were all naturally friends before we had been thrown together in this sandy, desolate location. We all came from different Army Reserve Units back home. I was the only one from Washington State and Schoonover loved to give me hell for it. Of course she was blessed from being from a sunny state. After calling me Powder for the first two months of being here, since I was so damn pale, they all decided to ask for sunscreen in their letters home for their poor bunk mate who couldn't go through one day in this hot as hell climate without burning one part of her body. So inside my foot locker laid 15 bottles of sunscreen that I hadn't touched yet. All the while my other girls were sporting lovely farmer's tans but at least they looked sun kissed and not beet red like me. As hard as we all were on one another, it's really troublesome to imagine a time in my life where these girls, my sisters, weren't in it.

"Well it sure as hell isn't me!" Sergeant Schoonover yelled continuing our first fight of the night.

It was always like this. Nobody wanted to take the helm of the ship when it came to asking the dreaded question but as soon as it was put out there, they were all over it. We always tried to stay away from the serious stuff. It was depressing enough to not be able to walk out of our "cottage" as we called it without being harassed or scared to death. Hell, you couldn't even go to the bathroom without having to carry your weapon with you. That makes for a difficult balancing act around the hole.

We all glanced over to Private Shannon. She was the quiet one in the group of female soldiers. Recently recruited and hastily married pretty much summed her up. Private Shannon reminded me of myself when I was in high school, long before I broke out of my shell. She barely opened her mouth ever to speak to anyone but she was one hell of a medic and she also rotated in as an emergency room tech when she was needed. That's what had brought her to us initially. Being cherry picked for a certain unit is sometimes a good thing because that means that your work speaks for itself, but being cherry picked to work in a unit of all men had to be the worst odds ever.

Trying to break through the barriers of working with the opposite sex here was hard. Back home the unit was split pretty evenly between men and women. Of course there were some who thought they were gods because they had a dick but there were some women who thought they owned the world just because they could bat their eyelashes and make boys melt. Take those few out of the equation and you have a fairly melded, quite cohesive team on your hands. The men who were used to working only with other men truly didn't want to give you a chance unless you were naked while working. These guys belonged to an Infantry Unit and someone up at Big Army decided that they needed some sort of medical staff available to them. All four of us women were brilliant in our work. That's how we got where we were. Three of us being medics and one nurse, we had our work cut out for us. It took us four months into our tour before the others let us take lead on things. One guy even decided he would rather die than let me work on his wound. Being that he was shot in the shoulder while out on patrol he really had no choice in the matter. A tampon stuck in a gunshot wound actually works in stopping or slowing the rate of blood flow. We finally taught some of the male medics that tampons do save lives. Not that we ever doubted that idea.

Every night someone different would pose a question for our topic of our chat. Now that I think about how we came about doing this together I realize the question/answer session was probably just being used as a coping mechanism of some sort. We'd seen too much here by this point that would be forever burnt and embedded into our brains and memories. But hey, we're doing something that most mothers and women in general can't say they've ever done. My son even had his very own shirt that said "My Mom Wears Combat Boots". It was too cute I couldn't help getting it for him.

Even though we were surrounded by men, it was really easy to slip back into the joys of being female when you were engulfed by these three other amazingly strong women. I'd say their strongest suits were their mouths but couldn't that be said about most women in general no matter where they were? We could have easily slipped into the dream world that had us still in college in our dorms, at a bar with strong drinks or in sand where the scent of death and destruction wafted through our senses.

Taking in our surroundings at the moment was kind of stupid. It always seemed to lead to a sort of depression that blanketed and draped over everything and everyone I was near. That's why I never really liked to dwell on where we were and what the hell we were doing, but looking at us tonight was definitely heartbreaking. I always tried to stay positive about what we were getting accomplished just by being here in this foreign land. We were beyond the shadow of a doubt doing great things. Schools were being built where not only boys could go but also little girls. To see the joy in their unaware eyes was something that I will always remember. The hugs and well wishes from these children when we visited their schools were worth more than anything I could imagine outside of the joy from seeing my child. We were able to supply them with every thing that they need to keep the school running smoothly. Townspeople were actually becoming more healthy because of teams of medical staff were able to give them inoculations and medication if they were sick. Again though, I knew that logically I didn't want to be here but who the hell did. That feeling just didn't reside within the people with ovaries here. None of the men truly wanted to be here either. Most of them, even as pig headed and sexist as they were, had families at home that they wanted to see again. I also knew that so many soldiers would have died if it weren't for me, Isabella Marie Black. Who would have thought I would have come this far from the Bella Swan of ten years ago? The silly little girl who passed out by the sight of blood in Biology class, the one who tripped over the half court line in gym class, which I still believe that it jumped up and tripped me. It's amazing how things truly change.

All three women sitting with me had such large, vicious, bluish purple looking circles under their eyes. I knew that I didn't physically sleep well at night due to the nightmares that plagued my short bouts of sleep but you could see the way that everything around us tormented them in their dreams, too. They say that as women we aren't allowed to be in combat. Whether it was because of health and sanitation issues that they worried about or some other stupid ass, 1940's idea of what women were supposed to be doing. Really though, what the hell do they think we are doing now as medics? We are front line! In the thick of all this bullshit, cleaning up the wounded and the dead for what? Did no one ever realize this? If it was really that big of a concern they should have just kept us on the home front doing administrative duties, but I guess that would never have worked out perfectly either.

I think our real sleeping issues stemmed from fear of what could happen to us when it was dark and the sky was only lit by the vast array of stars that surrounded us on all sides. As much as I hated this place, it in fact was beautiful on a clear night. The angels couldn't have painted a more beautiful picture than the desert sky painted with millions of white, twinkling stars. Of course we were scared of the veiled attacks on our camp, the yelling and screaming in different languages floating out of the wind from far off and the predators that lurked just beyond our bunks. Even though most of the time the rockets never made it within our area, the constant sounds of explosions seemed to make your heart beat in a different rhythm. It was never something I wanted to be used to. The predators that remained just beyond our bunks would haunt me until the day I die. The men that we served with didn't and couldn't understand why we were there. I know that I was not the only one that had something happen to them but it was something that we never discussed. I could handle the verbal lashing that they threw at us on a daily basis, but the physical part of the threats and the actions that arose from those threats were something that no woman should ever have to deal with. Some of these men only viewed us for one specific thing and that was a too recent memory for me to delve into right now.

It was then that these thoughts came full circle when Private Shannon's question pulled me from my self induced funk and onto my knees in laughter. I truly believe I haven't laughed this hard since I left my little man back home. Maybe months before that even. It wasn't necessarily the question itself that made me laugh the most. It was the little Private it came from who shied away whenever the dirty word "sex" was mentioned. Unfortunately we are all red blooded, American females who honestly were probably hornier than most seventeen year old, gangly high school boys with pimples. Sex generally was mentioned on a nightly basis. It's a damn shame that we couldn't bring anything with us to help us calm down on that front. BOB probably would have been through about ten sets of batteries by now.

"Do you all ever have to fake an orgasm during sex?" Private Shannon looked down at the ground as the question practically had to be dragged off of her tongue.

It almost looked as if the question had left a bad taste in her mouth by the way her face scrunched up into something I had never seen before on her porcelain like features. She absolutely was beautiful. Private Shannon had that look about her. She was like a child at times being naive about the world and other times she was the strongest woman I had ever met. She could take control of an operating room like no other.

We were all dazed and no one could seem to move a muscle. I couldn't believe that just came out of her mouth! It seemed the longer we were all around one another the more comfortable and open we became. That's what happens in war, I guess. As long as we didn't start having to take a buddy to the bathroom I'd be just fine. It was hard enough with the facilities we had, but having a conversation while doing that would be a tad too much buddy-buddy for me. I could feel myself blushing at the thought. I tried to calm my face down so Sergeant Schoonover wouldn't think it was about the damn question still hanging in the thickening air. She'd never leave me alone after that one. I slipped up one time and blushed in front of her before and I've barely lived it down. As a kid and even in college I couldn't help when it occurred. It just always seemed to happen but now after everything I've been through with marrying Jake and giving birth to Jack, even with the Army, it doesn't occur as often. Thank God for that!

She tried to backtrack her question then, "I, I, I, mean do you, oh, I don't know, forget I ever asked. It was a stupid topic anyway."

It was if this was the first time I had ever truthfully seen her in all of her deer caught in the headlights glory. She was physically trembling and I don't know if it was fear or embarrassment. With her it could have been both. If I had asked that question to the group, I definitely would have been afraid of their answers, too.

"No, no, no! You can't take it back, Shannon!" Captain Pentley said barely containing her full on, from the stomach, guffaw.

We all sat around staring a bit when she finally broke down and told us the dirty but hilariously funny details about her sex life or lack there of. She had never had an orgasm during the act of sex itself and had never even had one with her new husband. That shocked the hell out of me. The least he could do was give her a little finger action or something. Who the hell did she marry and why? Even if they had nothing else in common, they could have at least been sexually compatible.

The girls all laughed until we about cried and then Sergeant Schoonover, my brilliant, Hawaiian and sexuality queen gave her the low down on what she had to do to get herself off during sex with her husband. Schoonover had a way with descriptive words and actions while explaining anything pertaining to sex.

"You see Private Shannon, if you place your ass like this, over top of him and try fucking him this way, it gives you a great opening to either put his digits on your clit or if he is too stupid to take the hint, you can take care of it yourself." Schoonover bent over Pentley to show her the exact placement while the rest of us just looked at her in horror.

"Seriously, a little rub the nub action and you'll be coming so hard he won't know what hit him. You'll be milking the hell out of his cock and he'll think he struck fucking gold!" Schoonover said as she moved off of Pentley's lap and back onto her own bunk.

I'll never know how she does it. Even that was a little too much description for me. Thank heavens the one great thing about being married to my best friend is all the years of perfecting the act of sex. That's one thing Jacob and I had down to an art. He always made sure I came at least once before even concentrating on his release. Thank fucking God.

Private Shannon looked absolutely stark white after Schoonover finished speaking. We all just carried on laughing like a bunch of school girls, which we clearly were not with our M-16s and 9 Millimeters lying around our feet.

That's when we heard it, long before we knew what hit us. The alarm was blaring its sound deep into the night. I jumped up and hit the side of my head on that damned wall locker behind me while we were trying to don the rest of our equipment so that we were all in full battle rattle. I grabbed my extra med kit and threw Captain Pentley hers because I had a feeling we would need it tonight. We all continued and jerked our weapons off of the sandy ground. I glanced at Pentley to see her reaction to the alarms. Thinking about our conversation earlier had me teetering over the edge. She gave me a swift head nod agreeing to how I was feeling.

If this was seriously happening, we were completely screwed. Half of our Company was out in the bordering town helping another Medical Company conduct civilian related health missions and they were not due back inside the boundary walls until the following morning. What the fuck were we going to do, I silently asked myself. I started panicking. I've never panicked. I couldn't catch a breath and started violently shaking. The guys couldn't see this. They already thought we were the sand and dirt they knocked off their boots nightly. What the hell would they think if they saw the female NCOIC of the combat medics freaking out in her doorway?

I slowly pulled it together and we all slipped out of our sleeping area and that's when it hit. All around us, explosion after explosion rang into the air. One hit our makeshift hospital which was so close to where I was standing that I went flying back towards a building and landed too hard against it for my already war riddled body and mind to handle.

"Oh Fuck!" I heard Captain Pentley scream as she took in our surroundings. People were everywhere and it was total chaos. The men were running out in their boxers wiping sleep from their eyes. Hell most of them didn't have boots on there feet let alone be lucky enough to have a weapon on them. Bright lights and loud screaming brought my rambling brain to a screeching halt and reminded me of where we were.

I tried to stand up but the fall from the blast made my already weary legs unsteady. I looked around to make sure that all my girls were alright and I saw Captain Pentley crawling slowly towards me to make sure that I was coherent. I couldn't hear what she was saying through all the ringing behind my ears, but I knew she was trying to talk to me. I just started shaking my head at her not knowing what question I was answering and trying to get that fucking ringing to cease.

It was all happening in slow motion, but before I could get any words out Captain Pentley was being grabbed from behind by what looked to be a civilian and he was dragging her away by her freshly washed hair. She hadn't even had time to put it back into the customary bun that we all wore. I was trying to budge to get up to help her, to do anything for her, but they were already gone before I could even stand on my own two feet.

I felt so disoriented. I really couldn't make out left or right or even if someone was saying my name. It felt like little specks of bright, white light were being directed to my brain as I was discerning one blood curdling scream from another.

Where did they take Captain Pentley? I couldn't figure out where the rest of my girls were. I was alone and I was frozen. Shit. We were in fact being beaten by the monsters who finally struck gold with their ongoing explosions tonight. Pentley and I were right to be feeling anxious, but I would never have expected something this ghastly.

"We're being seriously attacked," that's all that would come out of my mouth and it was in such a low whisper that I don't think anyone could have heard me even if they wanted to. The only thought that came with it was that these assholes were killing and slaughtering everyone around and they were in our camp.

Our home.

Our refuge.

Fuck.

Okay. I can do this. What was I taught? This isn't the first time I've seen this type of carnage. I'm a medic for Christ's sake! I deal with blood, death and everything in between on a daily basis. Why the hell can't I begin to make my feet move now? I felt like my brain and my head were no longer connected to my body. Nothing was working.

I was trying and concentrating so intently on getting my left boot in front of my right boot, but realized too late that someone or something was standing by my building. They were right by my hiding place watching every move I made. I jumped around and he didn't dare move a muscle. He just stared at my eyes. It was really becoming unnerving and I didn't know whether or not to shoot him or just to look away from the intensity of being under his stare. I didn't want to be dragged off like Captain Pentley had been. If he was going to try and make me go with him I would unload my rounds on his body and hopefully into him first.

I could feel my hands quivering and my breathing was becoming erratic. I tried to hold my weapon up, but the weight of it was unbearable on my arms. I couldn't feel my feet again because they were deadened and I couldn't make them move. I was frozen in the same spot again and the crazy looking man just continued to stare straight through me. I tasted a salty tear as they began dripping down my face with such force that my gear was becoming drenched rapidly. I hadn't even realized I had begun crying until they were hitting my mouth in hurried succession.

I was going to die. I would never see my husband or my beautiful child again. I was sincerely going to die because I had signed another contract just to fucking piss my husband off since he was being such a dip shit about the whole ordeal. As I continued with my dying tirade in my head, my world began to disappear and complete and empty darkness clouded my sight.

Let me know what you think whether you hate it or love it! Maybe even just like it. Give it a chance because Bella has to go through some changes before Edward enters the picture. I plan on the whole group of Cullens to make appearances throughout the story but everyone will remain human! I just like the thought of them all being human and dealing with those emotions. Leave me something and please don't make me beg! I will if I have to but really it's not very pretty.

Jen