Full Summary: Being a Cullen isn't easy when you're the expectantly perfect half vampire child. What happens when Nessie runs away and falls in love with a human? One with a connection to her family that goes back decades. Will the Cullens ever be the same?
AN: This idea has been stuck in my head for about a year now. I couldn't stand Renesmee when BD first came out and never saw any character potential in her, until I came across a one-shot call The Andromeda Affect. This first chapter is inspired by it but the rest of the story is all my own. Please review. It only takes a second.
Disclaimer: I own nothing at all about Twilight.
Staring up into the stars that night, it was almost easy to pretend I had a happy life. The life of a story book. Not those childish ones my aunts used to force upon me as an infant. Not the silly romances my mom had trying to get me to read like Romeo and Juliet or Wuthering Heights.
No, I identified with the hopelessness of Great Expectations and To Kill A Mockingbird. Books that didn't give you imaginary hope of a supremely perfect life. Or existence. Whatever it was I was living. I'm not human nor vampire. My life has been a routine of walking a fine line of 'being normal' and 'being exceptional'. Vampires weren't meant to be normal and they definitely not meant to fit in. They were meant to ruthless murders who didn't give a crap about who they hurt. Sometimes I felt like I'd better belong in a family like the ones in novels. Even Claudia in The Vampire Chronicles had a more suitable family than I did. My own family had no idea that I was up here right now, staring off into the night sky.
They think I'm with Jacob or Seth or Paul or someone else in the pack. Funny though, no one has ever asked how the pack made me feel. Not even my mind-reading dad, though I suppose I can't place too much blame on him. They can all read my mind if I allow them. No one even bothers to question the uncomfortable, awkward edge to my thoughts as I think of the pack. The pack was not my friends, like everyone seemed to think. They were Jacob and my parents' friends. My friends only existed in books.
No one in my family ever really got me. My mother tried to talk to me about pointless things, things she's interested in. My father watches me like he's going to need to save me at any given moment. Rosalie smothers me worse than my mother. Grandma and my aunts act like I'm their child. In fact, the entire family acts like I am their surrogate baby, ready-made and manufactured just for them. And then there's Jacob.
Jacob, who is in a completely identifiable category of his own. He's been with me through most of my life. And I'm not idiot. I feel the pull towards him. It was there from the time I was a baby. It's grown and developed but not the way everyone else seems to have expected it to. It was innocent at first, just a protector. Then it grew, to big brother like relationship and miraculously turned into friends which have now turned into. . . .
I don't know.
I don't know but it seems everyone else does. They push us together as if it weren't obvious what they were doing. As if I should want to spend every waking moment being tossed around between a vampire family and a werewolf. As if every physically fifteen year old girl would die for the chance to hang out with a bunch of supernatural freaks all day long. As if I should feel special.
I don't want to feel special. I wanted to feel normal. I wanted those groups of friends you can spend all day with and who understand you perfectly. I wanted to be able to choose who I was friends with. I wanted to go to school and be in a real classroom. But I would probably never see the inside of a school building. And even if I did, I'd be followed around by my entire family, all the time. There was no escaping them.
At the moment, I wasn't even allowed off my own property without someone else with me. Alice still dictated what I wear. My mom tells me what to read, what to eat and what to watch. My father tells me who to talk to. Jacob never tells me anything. It never makes sense, no matter if I'm mentally eight or fourteen.
I'm going to be seven soon. My growth will be complete and I'll finally stop growing. No more measurements, no more nightly check-ups, no more of Grandma saying, 'You're a growing girl!' And yet I feel like nothing is ever going to change. I'll always live the life I'm leading as of now.
Unless I get out now.
I quickly banished the thought. My dad was somewhere around here and I didn't need him to have his guard up. It's hard enough as it is to have a mind reading over protective father, let alone when he thinks I'm doing something wrong. Not that I've ever been left alone long enough to do basically anything at all.
When I was little Jacob used to take me places, like beaches and empty playgrounds. He used to be my escape. Now he's just another trap that I can't get rid of.
"Nessie?" A disgustingly beautiful voice called to me. "Sweetheart, are you alright?" My mom asked as she joined me up here. "We didn't know where you were."
They didn't have to know everything, the little nagging voice inside my head told me. They already control my entire life, why do they need to know where I am every five seconds.
"We probably should have known you'd be here," Mom laughed quietly to herself. I could tell she was smiling, gazing up into the midnight sky. Of course, she was smiling. She had lived in terminal oblivion since I turned six last year. "You've been up here so much lately."
Yes, I'd been coming up here so much more lately as the feelings of imprisonment and claustrophobia grew larger. Sometimes I felt like I couldn't even breathe anymore and I didn't even know if that mattered for me or not.
"Angel?" Mom's hand ran through my hair as I automatically laid my head on her shoulder, snuggling there. And for that split second I felt like I belonged somewhere, like something was holding me here, to this moment, to this world, to this life. "What's wrong?" She asked, gently.
"Nothing." I mumbled, scooting away from her immediately.
"Talk to me, Ness." She scooted closer to me again. When I said nothing she reached for my hand. I knew what she was doing. When I was younger physically, my mom or grandparents would grab my hand and read my mind when I was in trouble. I quickly jumped away from my mother. In fact, I debated jumping off the roof but decided against it. If I did, this conversation would more than likely become a family affair.
"Nothing is wrong, mom!" I exclaimed, not meeting eye contact.
"Then why are you up here on the roof alone?" She asked, her gold eyes open wide and oh so damn sincere.
"I just wanted to get away. . . .I just. . . ." I stumbled to find the words. "I want a vacation." I confided.
Mom looked at me the way Grandma does sometimes. It was tender and awed and made me want to puke. "Of course, Nessie. Why didn't you just say something sooner, love?" She asked, gently.
I shrugged. "I was scared." I didn't feel the relief I should have. I didn't feel it because I knew my mom and I knew my family. This wasn't them. They weren't the kind to allow too much space for anyone to breathe, especially the perfect hybrid child that everyone shared.
Perfect. I nearly sneered as the word entered my mind. I wanted to burn every page of every dictionary with perfect on it, just to rid the world of that word. All my life, everyone I've ever met has used to the word perfect to describe me. It made me sick.
"Why would you be scared, sweetheart?" And for the first time, I caught sight of my mother's eyes. I had an infinite vampire memory of my mother's ruby red eyes, fresh from the change. Jacob calls them her 'Freaky Eyes'. Sometimes I missed them. To me, they were nice, comforting. When they turned gold, they became just like everyone else's eyes and it became harder to tell which set were my mom's.
I had been so relieved for that short year that my mom's eyes were red because it made her different, like me. When they dimmed to gold I became the only freak. The only person who was different, even in the house of the most different immortals.
Gold was my least favorite color. It was just another symbol that my family was plagued with and if I ever had the chance, I'd make gold disappear from every single color wheel, forever.
"Nessie, honey, why would you be scared to tell me that you wanted to go on a vacation?" Mom asked again, her tone growing a little more impatient. "You know how much your father loves planning trips and he'd love to take-" Mom stopped talking when she saw my expression.
It was exactly what I feared. They thought they were coming with me. Before I could stop myself-or maybe I just no longer cared-I spoke my irritation. "You want to come with me? It's not a vacation if the thing I'm trying to escape from is coming too!" I yelled.
Mom's eyes grew cold. "Renesmee, did you honestly think you could go without us?"
"Yes, I did!" I threw my hands up. "This family so co-dependent as it is! Why can't you understand I want to be alone for a little while!" Why didn't she see that? Why didn't she see that I wasn't her. That I didn't love this life I'd be thrown into. Why didn't everyone see I didn't belong in this family? Why hadn't my dad seen my unhappiness and done something about it. Why didn't anybody care how I felt?
"Renesmee, don't speak to me like that!" But it had been a long time since that tone worked on me.
"Stop treating me like a little kid! I'm almost physically your age, mom!" I argued.
She stopped yelling and rolled her eyes. "You're only six years old." She corrected, the way everyone did whenever I pointed out my physical age, as if no one could accept that fact I wasn't a baby doll that you buy in the store. I wouldn't be a little kid forever.
"I'm physically fifteen." I fought hard. Now that my volcano had erupt, there was no turning back.
"I'm biologically your mother, so knock it off." She ordered as if being my mother gave her every right to control me.
"I want to get away from you, mom." I stated so bluntly, the way only a mentally fifteen year old girl could manage.
"Why?" There was no anger in her voice anymore, no hurt, no confusion, just pressing curiosity.
". . . It's not just you, it's the whole family." I began explaining, looking up at her. I looked up into the eyes of the woman who had given birth to me and suddenly I saw the past six years in which she promised to love and take care of me but instead, it felt like she had abandoned me.
And in that moment, I wanted to tell her everything but nothing would come out. This was my moment to tell her what I'd been dying to say for over a year. That I felt alone. That I was scared of my life and my future that lie ahead of me. That I wasn't sure who I was supposed to be. That I wished more than anything someone could hear me when I spoke, beyond my sarcastic comments and my angry sneers. That I wasn't perfect and I was scared to try, that if I did I might fail. That I wasn't ready to be with Jacob and I don't know if I'll ever be. That for once I would like to be normal, that I'd kill to be anything but special and different. That I've been crying myself to sleep every night for the last three months and no one notices because they're too caught up in themselves, even my mind reading father. That I was sick of getting knots in my stomach because everyone around me was trying to force me to grow closer with Jake and no one could see that I wasn't happy with him anymore. That Jacob, himself, seemed to be growing impatient with me and soon I don't know what's going to happen between us. And that more than anything in the world, I want to be free of the cage I've been trapped in my entire life because a cage wrapped in bows and ribbons was still a cage and all I wanted was just to be able to be happy and be me and have that just be enough.
There are so many things I wanted to say and ironically I couldn't form any of the words to say them.
"Why don't we talk about this tomorrow?" My mom said after a moment, patting my hair. "You should be going to bed about now anyway."
I said nothing, just shut my mouth and stoically sat there. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched my mom, eternally eighteen, disappear from my sight. And I finally realize that my mother, Bella Cullen, who threw away her humanity, her normality would never understand my choices and my feelings. The life I dread is her dream and she'll never support me wanting to change her dream.
I don't know how much longer I stayed up there but when I finally moved and climbed off the roof, sliding down the pipe on the side of the house, someone caught me around the waist and picked me up.
"Careful there, sweetheart. You might get hurt." Dad's voice rang out as he sat me down.
"I was fine." I pointed out, stubbornly. I worked to cover my thoughts from my dad the way I'd learned and perfected years ago.
The only response my dad gives me is a small chuckle. I let him walk me back to our small house, thinking if I played nice, he may leave me alone sooner.
Even after Dad left me to go back to the main house, my mind didn't overwhlem me the way I had expected. The tears of anger and frusteration came alright but nothing more. I was almost resigned to this life.
That's what scared me the most.
I knew one thing for sure though. The only way I'll ever get the life I want is if I do it on my own. A life that maybe won't involve my family or Jacob.
I knew I wanted it. But I also didn't know how to get it. I didn't know what I was going to do, but I was going to find out soon.
