I don't own anything.

I'd never given much thought to how I'd spend the rest of my life. What was the point really? Daydreaming about the perfect wedding, flowers and guest lists. How many children I'd have or the side effects of vaccines. Debating what state, what town, what school district to live in. Whether I'd live in a blue or yellow house, the benefits of having either an in-ground or above-ground pool in the backyard. Whether I wanted to be a doctor or a starving artist. Everyone has hopes and ambitions; they have aspirations. Everyone lives their borrowed time trying to fulfill that. Except for me. I have the short straw. Normal people live an average of eighty to ninety years before they meet their reaper.

If luck is on my side, I have two years.

Let me tell you, I've never considered myself lucky.

I was fourteen when I started getting headaches. Something that started out just a bit annoying began to cripple my ability to function during the day. I took days off school, confined to a small dark room and crying at any sound I heard. Everything was heightened; sight, smell, sound. A few months later my symptoms grew worse. My vision started to deteriorate, I was forgetting simple things, like the lesson I'd just learned, what I had for lunch that day, and sometimes even my birth-date or my middle name. Once I started vomiting my parents decided that it wasn't a fourteen year old's attempt at getting out of schoolwork, small spell of allergies, puberty, or too many hours in front of a television and took me to see a doctor.

I wish I could give you some emotional story of what happened when we found out I was diseased and wrong. My parents were devastated, hysterical, ready to battle with everything they had money for. I was just content to know that it had a name, there's power in that, or so I've read. That once you know the name, it can't control you or your destiny or some other lie to keep hope alive.

Pineal tumor.

A golf ball in the center of my brain that wasn't supposed to be there. Normally they'd just crack open my head and snip it out, but of course as I've mentioned, luck didn't like me. It was inoperable. Too much crucial brain mass around it to ensure I'd make it without adverse side effects, like..being brain dead. I guess it was true too, since my parents decided on three different opinions who all said the same thing.

So I started intense chemotherapy, with more intense vomiting. Weeks and weeks of treatment and chicken broth and sterile everything. Face masks, and too much hair in the drain when I'd take showers. Whispers and weeping from my parent's room. I lost sixty pounds and was little more than a bag of bones when they told us that the treatments were no longer working. Renee and Charlie were devastated.

I was thankful. I don't think that I could've continued on with how life was during that time.

For three years I just lived dealing with everything. Some symptoms were easy enough to fix. I have glasses to fix my sight, though, some days I barely see anything, outlines and shadows. Even then, the glasses help me not run into walls, nothing is ever very focused. I've learned to read braille and I have a nifty app on my phone that sets easy reminders for me in case I forget things I need to know. Seems pretty simple. After I stopped treatment, my appetite came back, and I began to gain weight, even though sometimes the painkillers I take for my headaches still make me vomit and I get dizzy. My dark head of hair grew in with more fullness after I stopped the chemo too. I now run my hand through it all the time. You'd never realize how much you miss it till it thins and hangs there like a dead thing.

For three years, my family and myself just dealt with what we couldn't change. The doctors said I could live years, so it wasn't really such an issue. For me anyway. Shortly after I stopped chemo, my parents fought more, the whispers and weeping turning to arguing and screaming. Within six months, my mother filed divorce and my father was living in his hometown of Forks. I figured he'd stay in Phoenix, but I guess he needed the fresh air and new life. I didn't blame him for leaving, my mother went a bit manic after they stopped my treatments.

She kept feeding me organic, non-processed junk when all I wanted was a root beer and cheetos. She didn't think I was processing the situation enough, so she sent me to therapy. I think she wanted me to be as anxious and depressed and down right hysteric as she was. I just couldn't find it in me. What was done was done, right? Why try to fight something you can't change? I mean, I had years left.

I had years.

My mother lives in a two story home in Phoenix, Arizona. There are twelve steps to get from the main level to the bedrooms. Fifteen steps till you step into my room on the second floor. Twenty steps till you bump your shins into the foot of my full sized bed decorated with a quilt my grandma gave me when I was young. I was seventeen when I took the stairs for the last time.

I made it seven of those twelve steps.

When I woke up in the hospital, they'd told me I'd blacked out and had fallen down the steps I'd tried to ascend. They'd taken so many different tests and mom just sat there weeping like I'd already died. Weeping how life was unfair, how she couldn't believe this was happening. How God was cruel and that I was her baby.

I didn't speak, I didn't know how to. The day before I was just enjoying life, listening to my iPod, hanging out with friends, daydreaming over celebrity crushes, and whimpering over those chocolate glazed donuts in the store that my mother would never allow me.

Today, I learn that my tumor had metastasized. The cancer had spread through my blood, and had anchored itself in my lungs, making a lot of baby tumors that will prevent me from breathing well. How funny it is, when you think of it objectively, that I'm so unlucky to have my own body trying to kill itself from the inside out.

I had less than two years to live.

When I laughed, my mother stormed out.

In the end I couldn't take it anymore. Living in Phoenix with my mom was a hardship neither of us could handle. She wanted to shove brussel sprouts and home remedies down my throat, and I wanted to just exist until I didn't anymore. Though, even that became harder now, carting around an oxygen tank to keep myself breathing normally. I never realized everything I took for granted. Breathing, walking upstairs to a bedroom you'd lived in all your life. Taking a shower without help. Just washing my hair made me short of breath, and the heat of Arizona was taking its toll on me. Just to walk outside in the summer heat was similar to putting a pillow over my own face. It kept me inside most days, I couldn't even go to school anymore because of it.

Which is why I am on a plane.

Did you know that trying to get an oxygen tank on a plane is really difficult? You have to go through an x-ray machine and get a pat down like you're some sort of criminal when it is really obvious that you're just dying. You have to have three copies of doctor's orders in your possession for each flight, to prove you're dying. It is a bit hilarious when you think about it. A seventeen year old girl, paler than normal, gasping for breath as she shuffles to her gate, and they think I'll be blowing something up.

.

After that debacle, and a horribly long wait for a connecting flight, I found myself shuffling towards my father. It'd only been about a year and a half since the divorce had been finalized, and he didn't physically look different. Paler maybe, I suppose. There was a different air to him, a way he held himself that seemed more relaxed, the rigidity he'd had when he was married to my mom seemed to have been gone for quite some time after he left her.

Good, he deserves happiness, but no one deserves that mustache.

"Good Sir!" I say in my most regal attempt at a British accent, taking shallow breaths as my body fought for oxygen between my walking and attempts at talking. "I mustache you a question! No no, nevermind" I recant when he rolls his eyes, my hand coming up to shake in time with my head. "I'll shave it for later" He sighs exasperatedly and hooks me into a warm hug. Which was nice. It was nice to know he missed me. He smelled of moth balls and gun cleaner, but that was okay. He'd had that same scent all my life, being a cop with a real bad sense of style. One I unashamedly mimic. Plaid and comfy jeans never go out of style. I'll fight you.

The hug lingered a bit longer than I thought it would, creating an awkward moment between us where we both clear our throats and avert our gazes. We've never been really good at expressing ourselves. Content just to be near each other and exist. He'd also not seen me since I'd been given the ball and chain of oxygen before. I'm sure it was a sight to see, daughter carting around a metal and green tank and huffing about like she'd run a marathon.

The ride from Seattle to Forks takes forever. Nothing but trees and rain to keep you company, but it isn't nearly the same sort of heat as what I endured in Phoenix. It was so chilly even being summer that I wished I had carried my jacket along instead of shipping it with the rest of my stuff a week prior.

When we finally reached the small white two-story house, it was almost a Godsend. Small talk never really worked with Charlie and I. Being introverts, we tended to become pretty awkward after the initial how have you been's and how's the weather's. So when we got into the house, he showed me the back bedroom he'd made off the kitchen and left me to get organized.

The room was small but plenty for what I'd need. He'd had to completely build onto the house to make room. The bedrooms were originally upstairs, and that was pretty out of the question for me. I'd probably pass out before I made the steep flight of stairs. He'd even gotten a desk for my laptop, which I was thankful for. Every introverted teenager couldn't do without one, gaming, music, and other random nerdiness was my extracurricular activities now a days.

After I finished getting everything sorted, I heard Charlie call for me. Moving outside, the oxygen tank in tow, I spot the most ancient vehicle in existence. Seriously, mammoth in size, rust colored, ancient truck, and there my dad was, leaning against it and grinning like he'd just caught the biggest fish in the pond.

He must have been amused by my face because he asked, "So what do you think?"

After collecting my jaw from where it hung at my knees I blinked rapidly. "It..it's fantastic" Moving down the small ramp he'd placed over the three steps in front of the house, I moved right to the rust-mobile and pressed my face against the driver's window to check it out. "It doesn't even have a tape player or anything in it."

"No, but we can work on that if you want one. I'm not sure if the speakers work, it has a radio though."

Looking back to Charlie by eyebrows surely shooting into my hairline I blurt. "You bought this?"

"Yea, I mean, I uh...didn't think you'd want me to take you to school every day in the patrol car." He said, running his fingers awkwardly through the nape of his neck.

And in that moment, he showed how entirely opposite from my mother he was. My mom wasn't bad or malicious, but she showed how much she cared through controlling every aspect of the situation and even those around her. Charlie, he just gave me freedom, choosing to allow me to make those decisions for myself, to be in charge of the small future I had left.

"Thank you, Dad. I love her." I pet the handle of the truck, trying not to get too weirdly choked up about the ancient God of the road.

Clearing his throat, Charlie was already moving back towards the house. "You are all set up at the school. Just head up there before classes and talk to Susie at the front desk, she'll get you squared away." And with that, he was off to watch some game or other.

A smile was still plastered on my own face as I started up the ramp to the house, giddy to drive the behemoth tomorrow when I stop, my feet taking root on the short incline.

Oh right...school.

Fantastic.

A/N- Heyo everyone. Let me know if this fandom has died or not! Lol, I just thought of a particular story while watching the movies over again on the tube. Not saying it'll be great, just saying it'll be new and it'll be something to munch on if there are people alive on this ship still.

Cheers, I'll try to keep updates at a decent rate. One every two weeks or so...*coughs* don't hold me to it, I'll try.

Terrible

xoxo