One: Homecoming

Charlie Swan picked his daughter up from the airport on a Thursday, which was of course a work day. Bella did not overlook this and her awkward and distant affection for her mostly absent father ratcheted up a notch. Whatever progress they'd made however, did not carry over into conversational topics. The two spent most of the drive in silence.

He took her two suitcases from the trunk while she grabbed her lucky pack, which was really just a threadbare backpack that saw her through both high school and college. It was, or used to be, dark purple. Charlie eyed it before unlocking the front door. "Home sweet home," he said.

The door stuck a little because of the constant rain in the small town of Forks; it had swollen years ago and stayed that way. Charlie gave it a well practiced shove and it swung open. He let Bella in first, rolling her bags in behind him after.

Bella wanted to say it was just like she remembered, but she didn't – remember, that is. Her mother, Renee, left Charlie when Bella was a few months old, too much rain, she sometimes joked. Bella thought it was because she was strapped with a kid and a husband that liked his job and his cheap beer more than he liked her. Since then, Bella's communication with her father had been mostly done via Hallmark. Still, after the accident, when she needed somewhere quiet to escape to, he was there in a heartbeat. That had to mean something, she hoped.

"Care to take the nickel tour?" He asked, still standing in the foyer with her.

She said sure and he thought about it for a second, and then decided to drag her suitcases along behind him. There was a living room on the left, a small butter cream colored kitchen on the right, and stairs in between. He showed her the pantry/laundry room off the kitchen, fumbling with her bags. When she offered to help, he refused, saying it was the least he could do. It opened the seam of what could have been an angry conversation, but Bella left it alone.

Upstairs, his room was on the left, next to it was a room that mostly housed "miscellaneous crap", next to that was a good sized bathroom, and on the other end was her room.

"The purple was a guess." He looked chuffed by the statement and it wasn't until he blatantly looked at her backpack that she understood why. The bedspread matched her lucky pack.

She smiled.

He fiddled with her suitcases, pushing in the handles and lining them up parallel to each other. "We can exchange it if you want, but unless you like flowers I don't know if you'll find much else. Forks isn't -,"

"Purple's cool." She nodded and then because she felt a pull to do so, she said, "Thanks, Dad."

He grinned and Bella wasn't sure if it was because she said she liked the purple or because she called him dad. "Okay I'll just – leave you to it then." He knocked on her wooden doorframe once and walked out.

She pulled her hair back and then got to the task of unpacking, which didn't take long. Clothes in the dresser, toiletries in the bathroom, the hardest thing were the books. She had many. In fact, her second suitcase was more than half full of them. If Charlie noticed the extra heft, he hadn't complained. There were only two small shelves attached to the wall, which were soon filled to capacity. Her favorites, the three she was currently reading plus a couple more on her "to be read" list, went on the nightstand. The rest went on top of the dresser and the small table acting as her computer desk. She unpacked her laptop and added that as well.

When the bags were empty, she stuffed them in her small closet. After that, there was only one more thing. Bella passed the little orange bottle back and forth between her hands. Lorazepam, for the treatment of anxiety and panic attacks. It was still half full and the little pills made a muffled rattling as they rolled in her hands. She decided to put it in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, but at the last minute she dropped the bottle into her nightstand. Close enough, just in case. And besides, there was only one bathroom in the house and she didn't want Charlie to see them. He knew she had them, but knowing and having it sitting there next to your deodorant were two different things.

After she was unpacked, Bella changed into her favorite sweat pants and stood at the side of her bed. She was hesitant to leave her room, and she wanted to set up her laptop, but she doubted her father had WIFI. And by the look of the neighborhood, she guessed she was just slightly out of range to pick up someone else's. After deliberation, she went downstairs.

Charlie was sitting in the kitchen, Bella's other safe haven. "Oh," he said. "Get everything situated already?" He set his paper down and Bella saw that he was drinking a Coke.

"Yep, not much to it."

He shot her a little smile. "Sure felt like a lot."

"Yeah, my books…," she moved to the fridge. Her dinner options were sorely lacking, but after a quick rummage through the pantry, she saw enough ingredients for spaghetti. When Charlie said she didn't have to, she only shrugged, telling him she liked it.

In truth, she found cooking soothing. Normally, she'd turn on some music, but she knew that would be rude with her dad in the room trying very hard to be present. She liked the steps that went into making a meal - gather ingredients, mix this with that, heat, sear, fry, stir, bake. It left her calm and she was good at it. Tonight, however, she was anxious with her father at her back the way he was. She felt compelled to make conversation when what she really wanted to do was be quiet. Briefly, she thought of the pills in her nightstand, but not enough that she actually wanted one.

"So, I talked to Charlotte at the library yesterday and she said they could use a part-timer, if you're interested. If you want a little extra money for the summer…you don't have to, but I figured you'd get bored hanging around the house all day…,"

Bella looked over her shoulder and a smile perked the corner of her mouth. "The library?"

"Yeah, stacking books, stuff like that. It didn't sound that exciting to me, but…I know you like to read."

She nodded, her back to him again. "That sounds good…thanks, Dad," she said for the second time that day. She lowered the heat on the stove and pulled the strainer out of a lower cabinet.

Once dinner was ready, Charlie stacked his papers out of the way and got up to serve himself. Bella sat down while he ladled sauce over his spaghetti, moving to the chair on the opposite end from his. As she lifted her fork, she couldn't help but notice the massive stack of newspapers between her spot and Charlie's. She looked at the titles and frowned. They weren't newspapers after all, not really. He noticed her reaching for one and pushed them off the table so they fell with a heavy plop on a nearby chair.

"Oh…yeah," he laughed with some obvious discomfort.

She raised an eyebrow at him. "The Lone Gunmen?"

Charlie took a very long time spinning noodles onto his fork. Finally, he shrugged. "It's my thing."

Bella nodded, taking a bite of her food. She'd added a tiny bit of cayenne pepper to the sauce to give it a little kick. It was good.

"They're interesting is all, not like I believe everything they write." Charlie continued to explain. "It's just another point of view."

Bella nodded again, biting the inside of her cheek.

"Have you ever read one? You might like it."

This time she smiled. "Maybe I'll check 'em out."

He hmm'd at her. "This is good," he said, taking a large bite.

"Thanks."

…

After the dishes were cleaned and put away, Charlie retired to the living room to watch one game or another. Bella stayed in the kitchen, her gaze on the large stack of Lone Gunmens still half hidden on the chair. She grinned, picturing Charlie's flush.

Idly, she lifted the top one from the stack. Below the masthead it read: What They Don't Want You to Know. The front page article wasn't about the president adopting alien babies or certain government officials that may or may not be human, as Bella expected. Instead, and perhaps equally as ludicrous, it was about vampires and the government's attempt at controlling them. Bella's eyes skimmed over it anyway.

Sources revealed the vampires are secluded deep underground in a bunker. There they are reportedly tortured, experimented on, and starved. "It's just like Mengele in there," one witness said.

Vampires are not the only things being captured. Sources say that humans are taken as well, to be changed. "They keep the people in there and then they let the vamps bite them. It takes a while, you can hear the screaming for days, and then when they wake up, it's like – robot. A crazy, blood-thirsty robot."

"See, told ya," Charlie said, startling the paper right out of Bella's hands. "Once you pick it up, you can't put it down." He tossed his Coke can into a blue bin.

Bella laughed, breathing carefully to slow her heart. "Yeah."

"Well, I'm headed up. I'm going in to work tomorrow…unless I should stay."

"No, no I'll be fine…I've got The Lone Gunmen to keep me company," she smiled.

"All right, g'night, kiddo."

…

Bella always had trouble sleeping, even as a child. Her mother did too, and they would sometimes spend the late nights together, sitting on the deck outside their Arizona home, and then later, Florida. She found herself already missing the warm nights and the sounds that came from living so close to the water. Washington was so much colder even now that spring was beginning to melt into summer. Still, a little after midnight, Bella crept out to the porch.

She closed the door until it started to stick, then left it, afraid to wake up her father. After a minute of sitting, she ran back inside and grabbed the blanket off the back of the couch. She wrapped it around herself and sat on the little white bench that was the only thing on the porch, her legs curled under herself.

It was just starting to rain, so light that she couldn't quite hear it yet. She watched it darken the pavement and wet the grass. By the time it was steady enough to be white noise, Bella was dozing off.

She dreamed, as she so often did, of Ethan. She dreamed of the first time he talked to her, touched her hand, the first time he kissed her. Before the memories became too happy though, it changed. Now it was what she could do, her curse that had started out harmless until it grew. She dreamed of hurting Ethan. She remembered it going too far, telling him to stop, trying to push him. There's screaming. What did you do?

Bella jumped, her heart pounding. There was a noise, she was sure of it, but on the edge of consciousness she couldn't tell what it was or where it came from. Her hands shook. She looked out at the yard, the street, and the forest beyond it. In the dark, she could only make out the shadows of trees, but she knew something was out there. Am I watching it, or is it watching me?

With the blanket around her body, she went inside without answering the question.

Author's Note: Hi everyone, thanks for reading! Pictures are going up on my homepage today, took me a few to find the right ones. I'll be adding more as the story progresses.

Also, I forgot to mention it before, MK-ULTRA (referenced in the prologue) was a real thing, though not what I made it. And unfortunately, I don't own or make any profit from The Lone Gunmen.