A/N: Happy belated Thanksgiving.
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"I want to be just like you," Bella tells Renee, back when she was seven and simple and full of glittering dreams that held the same easy acceptance as everything does when you're a kid: it'll happen if you make it happen.
"Maybe," her mother whispers, turning off the light and kissing her daughter to sleep. "Or maybe not."
..
i. Beginning
This is how it will happen:
She will pretend not to care that her mother is happy. It's something new, and it's not exactly the happiness she minds, anyway. It's that there's this strange boy in the house and he doesn't belong in their world. Seven-year-old wishes seem futile when you can't even remember the last time she kissed you goodnight.
Moving to Forks will be her idea, not Renee's. And not because she doesn't like Phil, not even because of all the reasons she would repeat later on to her own strange boy, the one that does belong to her.
It's because she can't wish any longer. It's because she needs to be herself, and not her mother. It's because, after all, she's sick of fucking sunshine.
It probably isn't the best idea, but the one thing Bella isn't is careful.
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It starts not with a bang, but with a crash. The sound of her microscope dropping to the linoleum, making her wince and her classmates look around for the klutz. Normally, it wouldn't bother her, but today is a different day.
Today, Edward Cullen is sitting next to her.
Bella isn't used to being hated. Even in Phoenix where she was too pale and out of style, people liked her despite herself. Maybe that's what makes it so appealing.
(Maybe it's the excuse she should have used all along)
..
ii. Ghost Stories
It probably shouldn't surprise her much that there's something unusual going on.
She's attracted the anti-normalcy of this suburban world: in the dusk, the sky turns purple and Bella counts the number of meteors heading towards Earth.
Maybe it's because Jacob told her.
The weirdest part is that she didn't actually expect anything to come of it. The harmless flirting, batting her eyelashes and speaking in that low voice she pretends she has no control over. Later she will say that she's been dazzled, but in reality she knows that it's not such a hard thing to do.
Part of the attraction of danger is the fact that there's no way out.
Funny how Forks used to feel the same exact way.
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Jasper's scars are probably the most beautiful things Bella has ever seen.
She knows it's contradictory when she's whispering the same about Edward, about his skin and his hair and his eyes (about Jacob and his dark coloring that sticks out in this family of paper-white), but in truth she sees them as something so much more stunning than anything else she knows.
She lies when Edward tells her about them, using the same astonished tone she did about the vampire thing, or the extra powers, or the blood. The problem is that Bella is so good at lying that sometimes she forgets which thoughts belong to her anymore.
The scars symbolize fight and power – and it isn't something so distant that Bella can't dream of having the same ones plastered over her smooth arms one day.
For once, she isn't lying when she tells the Cullens that she wants to be one of them. It just isn't for the reasons they all seem to believe.
Forever doesn't seem so far away anymore.
..
iii. Choices
This Bella is the one that rips out hearts like the rubber bands she keeps tied around her wrists: she could say she didn't know what she was doing if she couldn't feel the hurt every time she saw his face.
Broken Jacob is almost as bad as This Bella, with his hard smiles and rough words, the pleading noises that come out sometimes when they're both asleep, falling into somewhere that's not so tempting and real – because, to be honest, the problem isn't having a choice – it's making it.
Sparkling skin and golden eyes seem very far away. These two separate universes are so completely disconnected that it makes it hard to imagine that she is still one person. Like she is being ripped apart at the seam the same way she does to those she loves, like the motorcycles and beating hearts don't hold the same appeal as the scars and power.
Because the only drawback This Bella has is that they do.
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What's real:
The sound of church bells as she walks down the aisle, the white dress that washes out her skin, the crowds of people she never really cared about, a quiet "I do" that chokes through her over-used voice, a forever where power is everywhere but happiness is still caught in her childhood murmurs.
What's not:
Running away with the wind in her hair, forgetting what it feels like to have your tongue tied in knots from lying (always lying), scars that aren't from power but fingernails sliding down her back as they make love, russet-brown against pale pink, like the sunset over the desert she has started to miss.
--
She could have so easily turned them around. She hums to herself in the dark hours of the nights that she used to spend dreaming.
..
iv. Ending
Edward looks at her dark red eyes in disgust when she says goodbye.
"I guess you really were made for this life," he says, and his voice doesn't quite make her shiver like it used to.
She cocks her head to the side in a sort of acknowledgement, and it should probably mean something to her that she doesn't bother to take her clothes or money, instead twirling her charm bracelet as she picks up a crinkled photo.
There are some things that don't get lost when humanity ends.
One of them is love.
Bella never bothers to find out what the other is.
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END