A/N: This is my first fanfic. I'm big on Team Jake and always wanted to show that support; so, I started a community dedicated to this greatness. This is an AH/AU Jacob/Bella as the main pairing. That pairing will not change under any circumstances and will be the focus of this story. I'll update as soon as possible now that I'm on break, but I really don't care if anyone complains about faster updates. Jake and Bella are the same age of seventeen for the purpose of this story. I guess this is Bella-centric. And there won't be any real Jacob action for a while yet. There's a lot of familiar faces though. Italics are her thoughts or conscience.
Summary: Riverview Psychiatric Facility. Five wards, depending on the severity of the condition with level 5 as the highest and most dangerous. Can love form and grow in such a place? J/B. Canon-pairings. OOC, rated M for dark themes, gory scenes, suicide, adult situations.
Prologue:
She wasn't crazy. Just misunderstood. Just a little tired. That's what she told herself.
But, no one believed her. Not Renee, not Phil (but he doesn't count). So, she locked herself in her own world with no one to judge her. But the pain was still there, and it wouldn't go away.
She needed a reason to stay here, alive, in this world that didn't and refused to understand, to stay with the people that denied her what she's wanted for so long ever since then. It was then that she decided there was only one thing she could do, find proof herself. Proof of her existence, that she was still technically human, that she had a life to survive with (cherishing it was too much to ask of her).
It was by accident, actually. The knife slipped while preparing dinner with her easily-excited mother one summer evening, and the proof came oozing out of her.
Ever since then it was a slice here and there. Another scar to add to the ones already on her heart that just wouldn't heal.
She noticed that she was getting thinner, started eating less, going outside less, retreating further and further into herself. When school started again, they ignored her like they always have, but now they also talked about her. Little whispers behind her back. She's so thin. I bet she throws up to look better. Is she on drugs? Probably has sex with her dealer to pay for them. She's such a little whore.
Sometimes their words hurt, but the result is the same whether she cares for them or not. Slice
It was one day in particular, November 5th, that she slipped up.
After avoiding all the suspicions, her mother's incessant nagging, Phil's barely concerned but more aloof glances, looks from all the potheads and sluts at school thinking they can get a hit from her, and molding into the ignorance of everything going on around her, one slip sealed her fate.
She cut too deep. They found her in the tub an hour later and rushed her to the emergency room. She was on IV for three days afterward. Her parents, if they can really call themselves that, did the only thing they though they could do. Send her away, because they didn't know how to handle her.
It was probably for the best though. They could never handle her right anyways.