A/N: Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed. And again, I want to thanks my beta's, Taybee and xxTunstall Chickxx
This chapter takes place about eight years later, if you can't figure that out. Enjoy, and as always, please review :)
Chapter I—Hate, or Something Like That
Renesmee
Sparrow, my lady's pet,
with whom she often plays whilst she holds you in her lap,
or gives you her finger-tip to peck and
provokes you to bite sharply,
whenever she, the bright-shining lady of my love,
has a mind for some sweet pretty play,
in hope, as I think, that when the sharper smart of love abates,
she may find some small relief from her pain--
ah, might I but play with you as she does,
and lighten the gloomy cares of my heart!
This is as welcome to me as (they say)
to the swift maiden was the golden apple,
which loosed her girdle too long tied.
I read through the new book my mother had just purchased me for my eighth birthday, The Poems of Catullus, complete with the original Latin text and the English translation. I had a pair of head phones jammed deeply into my ears, screamo music blaring. It was Emmett's contribution to my ipod, as a joke, but I tended to listen to it more often than not. I liked to say it was to peeve my father, who refused to like any music more recent than the fifties. But really, it was because the loud, incomprehensible lyrics toned out all the other noises from around the rest of the house that I could hear all too well with my sensitive ears.
I snapped the book shut, sick of reading about love, especially unrequited love, which was a touchy topic these days. It made my head hurt to think about it. I turned my music up a notch higher, knowing that either my father or my mother would be up soon to tell me to turn it down. No doubt they could probably hear it just as well as I could.
I sighed, falling back against the pile of pillows and blankets that lay scattered across my bed. My room was the smallest in the house, partially due to the fact that I was the only one who didn't share a room and didn't need a queen (or king) sized bed. But I didn't mind at all. In fact, my small, dark room suited me just fine, and I would've chosen it over any of the other rooms even it I had the choice. I had covered my windows with thick, black curtains that blocked out most light, even in the middle of the day, making it always feel dim and cozy. My walls were painted dark purple with a black ceiling, which I had covered in glow in the dark stick-on stars. I knew they were a childish endeavor, but I loved to watch them glow as I fell asleep at night, especially from the perch of my top bunk. I loved my bunk bed more than anything; it was like a little nook in the corner of my room, covered in pillows and blankets and scattered with all my favorite books.
We had moved from Forks to an unpopulated area north of the La Push Reservation area when I had been about four years old (physically, about eight or nine), when it became too risky for my never changing family plus rapidly changing me to stay in Forks any longer. A few months ago, after I was completely grown, we had moved further south to Portland, Oregon where Carlisle could begin to work in a new position, and the rest of us could begin to interact with humans again. It had been especially hard to leave my grandpa, Charlie, behind and the Quileute pack was especially displeased about the distance, particularly Jacob, though he did come to visit regularly.
I shuddered at the thought of Jacob now, willing my mind to think of something else. I turned up my music even louder, only to have my door swing open a moment later.
It was my mother.
"Don't you ever knock?" I mumbled irritably. I turned up the music as loud as it went, ignoring the sharp pain in my ears.
My mother glared from the door way. Physically, she appeared to be no older than me, maybe even younger because she rarely ever wore makeup. She showed no sign of leaving anytime soon.
"Fine," I muttered after a moment, yanking the head phones from my ears and turning my ipod off. "Are you happy now?"
"Actually, that wasn't what I came up here for, though it was getting annoying," she answered. "I just wanted to let you know that Jacob's here."
"Shit," I muttered, making a move to shove the headphone in my ears once again.
"Don't, Renesmee," my mother warned. My mother was the only one who still called me Renesmee, and I hated it. It sounded like a name of some fatal disease. At least Nessie was somewhat normal.
"But, Bella," I whined, which got me another glare because she hated it when I called her by her first name, though it was the way I referred to her at school. The fact that my mother looked my age was slightly unsettling, not to mention the fact my grandparents appeared only a few years older. It didn't seem like the same rules of calling your parents "mom" and "dad" or your grandparents "grandma" and "grandpa" should apply to my family.
"Renesmee, I know this doesn't thrill you, but I want you to come down and at least pretend to be friendly," she told me, then added. "And that means now."
I cursed a bit more under my breath as I jumped down from my bunk. "I'll be down in a minute, Mom," I stressed the last word.
She left after that, slamming the door, but not before I could hear her mumble something about rebellious teenage daughters. I smiled.
Before heading downstairs, I combed my fingers through my hair. It fell just past my breasts in thick ringlets. Just recently, I had dyed it a shade of deep umber, much to my mother's displeasure. I applied another coat of black liquid eyeliner to my lids and a layer of mascara to my thick lashes. I wasn't what you would call goth, but my appearance had become somewhat darker over the years.
I should've expected a visit from Jacob; it had been nearly two weeks since he had last come, a blessing on my behalf. It wasn't that I didn't like Jacob, or at least it hadn't started out that way.
Jacob had been part of my life since I was born (Even before, Rosalie had told me stories about my mother's pregnancy.) In those first few years of my life, I simply adored him. He was like an older sibling to me, even more so than Emmett, Jasper, Alice, and Rosalie, simply because the fact that he always there. He was everything a little girl could've wanted, a constant playmate, an older brother, a shoulder to cry on when there was no where else to turn.
But as I grew older and began to understand more about they way the world worked, I had to wonder why. I knew for a fact the not everyone had their own personal Jacob. It just wasn't reasonable to have someone at your beck and call, the way I had Jacob. I knew for a fact (mostly from Rosalie) that vampires and werewolves were natural enemies. So why did Jacob bother to spend so much time in such close proximity to all these vampires?
There was only one reasonable person to ask, and that was Claire. Claire lived on the La Push reservation, and was (literally) three years older than I was, though now, I appeared almost ten years older than she did. I had played with her a fair amount of times over the years, especially when I had been much younger. At a point in time, we both appeared to be about the same age. Claire was a sweet girl, but sometimes frustrating to play with because her mental capacity was so much lower than my own. But my parents encouraged me to play with her because there were no other children around my age that I would have the opportunity to interact with. So I grudgingly complied and played her silly little princess and fairy games. Though we were very different and barely had a thing in common, there was one similarity.
Claire had Quil. Quil was to her as Jacob was to me. And it fascinated me to have found another person who shared this "older brother" figure in her life. So at one of our play dates, I asked her how much she knew.
"Quil has been my big brother for as long as I can remember," she had told me. She was about seven at the time. "I don't really know why, but I think it might be about our stories. We tell them around the campfire," she explained.
"And what are these stories about?" I prodded, trying to hide my excitement.
"About the wolf tribe and stories about them." She was tiring of the topic quickly. We were down by the tide pools at the beach, and she had begun to pull clumps of seaweed and shells from the water. She held up a coral colored shell. "Look, Nessie!"
"Do they say anything about people like Quil and Jacob?" I was losing my patience.
"Uh," she jumped clumsily from rock to rock. I agilely followed. "I can't really remember. Only something about imprints."
And that was the most I could get out of her, but it turned out to be all I needed. When I got home that evening, I seized my father's laptop and began to search for Quileute Legends and imprinting. I was horrified at what I found. Of course, not all of it was true, but I got the gist.
I ran up to my room, locked the door, and refused to speak to anyone, especially Jacob. Finally, my father unhinged my door from the frame to see what could've upset me so much. I didn't need to tell him much. He could read minds.
"Oh, Nessie, love, I'm so sorry," he whispered, cradling me in his arms. "We didn't mean for you to find out this way."
"When did you plan to tell me?" I snapped, shocking my father with my vehement reaction.
He didn't speak and I knew that they had never planned how they would tell me. They only hoped things would fall into place.
"So Jacob doesn't really love me?" Tears threatened at the corners of my eyes as I said the words. "He only loves me because he has to?"
"No, no, Nessie!" My father exclaimed. "It's not like that. He would've loved you anyway."
Though he hid it well, I could hear him falter slightly words. But I didn't question him further because I knew he would only feed me more lies.
Instead, I went to the person I knew wouldn't hesitate to tell me the truth. Rosalie.
It was no secret that Rosalie hated Jacob, which was not surprising with my knowledge of vampires and werewolves. But I always suspected it went deeper than that.
"Rosie? Can I ask you something?" I remembered crawling into her arms (though I was nearly the size of a ten-year-old) and using my sweetest voice.
"You can ask me anything you want, Nessie, darling," she crooned, flipping me around in her lap so she could braid my hair. Sometimes I wished she were my mother instead of Bella. With her, I could get away with practically anything.
"Will you tell me about my mother's pregnancy?"
I was never quite the same after that conversation. I had begged and pleaded for every last detail until I finally understood the whole picture. And it was much, much worse than I had imagined.
Ultimately, it all came down to this. Jacob had been in love with my mother. During her pregnancy, he wanted nothing more than to see me dead, and my entire family, besides Rosalie and my mother, agreed with him to a certain extent.
Of course, after my successful birth, everyone loved me. Especially Jacob, because of the power of this "imprinting". But I can you assure he would've hated me with a passion otherwise.
Jacob pleaded with me, but no matter what he said, I could never make myself look at him the same way. If someone were going to love me, I wanted it to be for who I truly was, not because of some strange, manipulative imprinting shit.
I sighed as I opened the door and trudged down the steps as slowly as I could manage. Before I reached the living room, I could smell Jacob. His scent never used to bother me, probably because I had been born with him practically under my nose. But since I saw him only intermittently nowadays, I was beginning to understand why Rosalie complained so much about the stench. It wasn't an unpleasant odor, but it wasn't very pleasant either. I supposed my human senses neutralized it a bit. I wondered how I smelled to him.
"Hey, Ness," Jacob said as soon as I entered the room, his eyes lighting up.
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. "Hey, Jacob."
I sat down on the couch opposite of him, pulling my knees tightly to my chest. In front of me, the coffee table was laden with almost every kind of snack imaginable. Esme had been busy.
I reached for a chip and dunked it in the chili dip. I chewed on it slowly, wondering what it was that humans liked so much about this crap.
"You dyed your hair," Jacob stated, grabbing and tugging on a small strand.
Duh, I thought, but only nodded and pulled my head away. Where was the rest of my family? Where they trying to make this awkward?
I began to think of all the ways I could escape when Emmett entered the room dressed in Seahawks jersey, and his face painted white and blue to match. "Who's up for some football?"
Oh, darling, darling Emmett! I mouthed him a "thank you" as he sat down on the couch and reached for the remote. He flashed me a grin.
The rest of the family joined us shortly. My mother picked up a conversation with Jacob, and my father sat beside her, absentmindedly stroking her hair. Alice would comment before every play began, effectively ruining the game for Emmett, who liked to watch football the proper way, Carlisle and Jasper were talking with each other, and Rosalie soon joined them after it was apparent to her that I was not in a good mood and therefore would not speak to anyone. Esme was busy fretting over everyone and making sure Jacob had enough food.
I counted the minutes until I would be free.
As evening settled in, the orange glow of the sun seeping through the windows, Seattle scored the winning touchdown. My family broke into applause and unnecessary commotion, and I seized the moment to escape unnoticed.