Disclaimer: Not mine.

AN: The first actual chapter of the story. Oh, and here starts the game. These quotes will be throughout the story. True to the form of Twilight, and of most Twilight fanfics, I choose to incorporate dreams into my fic. If you can say why the quote is relevant to the chapter (and the previous quote) I will write a dream in the perspective of any character in Twilight you want me to that will be incorporated first thing next chapter. It doesn't matter the character. Even the vamps (I know they don't sleep. I have my ways) So, I challenge all of my readers. First person to interpret the following passage in accordance to the game, and you will get the prize. Thank You for Reading and Reviewing and Playing!

I have no life but this,

To lead it here;

Nor any death, but lest

Dispelled from there;

Nor tie to earths to come,

Nor action new,

Except through this extent,

The realm of you.

-Emily Dickinson

Bella walked into La Push High as confidently as she were capable. Her father, and the person who claimed he was her brother, had insisted that Bella needed a change of scenery after Bella had told them why she was wandering out in the woods for hours. They were both convinced that Finding out the truth about her parentage as well as being dumped had been the emotional equivalent of dropping the H-Bombs on Japan. They weren't far from the truth.

That and the fact that Bella had refused to leave her room for three days, even to eat or drink. Sam had finally had to break down her door and had dragged an emaciated dehydrated Bella downstairs to get her food, at which point he and her father had both agreed that she needed a change of pace. Neither of them wanted to see the site of Bella's lightless eyes again as she clawed at food and water in a scene eerily reminiscent of a very bad B-Rated Horror Zombie movie.

The truth was Bella wanted nothing more than to just curl up in a ball and slowly die away. It would be what was best for everyone. No one would have to worry about her and she wouldn't have to worry about anyone else. Problem solved. Instead, her brother and father had told her that she was going to live with her brother and his girlfriend, that she was going to be going to a new high school, and that she was going to at least pretend to be human or else they were going to send her to a mental institution.

Bella's desires, at that point, had changed from a desire to curl up into a ball to a desire to get through the rest of high school. She had been knocked so far into depression she'd come right out the other end. She was still Bella, quiet as a church mouse and as humble and depreciating as a monk, but her father noticed something was different about her.

Whenever thought of the fact he had left – it didn't just hurt to think or hear his name, it felt like someone was burning her from the inside out, steadily cooking her heart – or of the whole debacle with her family she felt like she had been abandoned. At first, she had thought there was no one else to live for, not Charlie and not Edward. But, after a bit of thought, she realized that she had to live for herself. Charlie wasn't to blame for the fact he wasn't her father, she had to acknowledge that one singular fact. True, it didn't change the fact he had known and had lied. But he couldn't have done anything to change the fact that Charlie was her father, not her dad.

But he – Edward, Bella's heart seized up briefly at the thought of him, and she stumbled a bit as she headed towards the administrator's office with the sheer emotion behind it – had left her because he hadn't wanted her any more. She hadn't been good enough for him. She had never been. She had always realized that, somewhere. That was why her romance with him had seemed so surreal.

That thought had broken her, in a way. She had given all of her love to him and had embraced him with every fibre of her being.

But he hadn't.

He had broken her, like he had so often said he was afraid of doing. He had left her broken and incomplete. And she was just that, broken and incomplete. She might never be whole again. But Edward had made himself clear. Charlie had made himself clear. Even Sam had made himself clear. She was to live. She couldn't do anything to change that. So, out of her now shattered love for Edward, she had vowed to live. Out of her love and filial respect for the man who was her father, if not her dad, she had vowed to live. Out of her new found respect and admiration of her brother, who had found her and saved her even as her life had shattered about her, she had vowed to live.

She couldn't be fixed. She hadn't been broken. She had been shattered into pieces as innumerable as the stars in the heavens. All she could do was live a new life. No one and nothing was going to prevent her from living it.

Not even herself.

Bella slumped onto her bed in her room. Her new room. Her new room in Sam's house. It was odd, living in the guest bedroom while Sam and his girlfriend, a lovely girl named Emily, lived there too. She highly doubted either her father or her new found brother would allow her to leave Sam's house to find an abode of her own. They had both made very clear that they were worried for her mental health.

Bella wondered absently why they were forcing her into a new environment that was hostile to her skin colour if they were concerned for her mental health. She supposed they had a right to be. Bella had felt broken. Bella had felt absolutely annihilated. Bella had felt as if her world had ended with all the splendour of a quiet whimper in the dead of night.

But that was the old Bella. Bella was new Bella now. She wasn't going to let herself be a victim any more, and running away or fading quietly into the night wouldn't solve anything. She had to live. Not for Edward, not for Charlie, and not for Sam. For herself.

While she was wandering aimlessly through the woods she had considered just letting it all go. Just letting herself drift away. It would be so much easier than dealing with all of this. With Charlie. With Renee. With Edward.

It had hurt to think his name then. Now, it just made her feel empty. It wasn't a type of pain she was used to dealing with, emptiness. It was new. Different.

Just like everything else in her life at the moment.

School had most certainly been different. The moment she had walked through the double doors leading into campus, she had felt the eyes of every single student on her. And then that was when Jacob had come running up to her, all smiles and warmth. Seeing Jacob smile, hearing Jacob talk, and feeling Jacob's almost too warm arm slung about her shoulders had made her feel right at home there amongst the glares and glances. It was then that Bella had known her day would be fine.

Jacob had taken her to see his friends, Quil and Embry, who had flirted shamelessly with her and received a sound thumping from an embarrassed Jacob as a result. She had been ostracised, along with her "puny freshman" friends by a girl named Leah as a result of Bella's brother being the man that had just recently dumped Leah for her cousin. She had been taunted and jeered by someone in Jake's year named "Paul" who had quickly shut up after he found out Sam was her brother. He had given her a smile and had said that he would be seeing her again "real soon". The statement both creped her out and piqued her curiosity in equal measure.

The rest of the day after her introduction, with the exception of Lunch where she had found her money stolen and had had to allow Jacob to buy for her, it had been relatively uneventful. She was in the advanced classes, which meant she was with the Reservation kids who only cared about leaving their reservation. Most of the kids there were ecstatic about having a girl who had had AP classes with them, and she had shortly been inundated in questions about College acceptance rates and her AP scores. It had been refreshing to find a few normal friends. If you could call bibliophiles normal, Bella supposed. They weren't vampires, that was for certain.

And they weren't werewolves either...

After Bella had gotten home, to be greeted by an anxious Sam and a smiling Emily, she had related her day to them – as she would for any other parental surrogate – and had expected that she'd be given leave to return to her room to work on homework and then...well and then they had revealed to Bella that Sam and his "gang" that she had heard so much about in her one day at the school were, in point of fact, werewolves.

WEREWOLVES!

He had even known that she had dated a vampire, something he had said he was very disappointed in her for, at which point Emily had given him a little slap upside the head for being too much of a man for his own good.

But they had told Bella everything. They had told her about the phasing, about the legends, about the duties of the pack. Everything.

There were no more lies. There were no more secrets. Sam had made that very clear to his new little sister. She was a part of his family, and he and Emily would do everything they could to make her feel like a part of it.

And there, sitting on her bed in her room listening as the other two members of the pack, Paul and Jared, came home and raised a storm of howls and testostrone, Bella felt like she might find a new place to belong. A new place for a new Bella. So, getting up out of bed, Bella descended the stairs and offered to cook a huge heaping cake to finish of the dinner that Emil had just made for the boys.