When we first met I was all innocence and naïveté, riding in on the magical horse of a new relationship, flushed cheeks and eyes blind to everything but what I wanted to see. Believing in fairy tales and princes and that Romeo and Juliet was a love story, in love with love itself. Not knowing the taste of bitter or even bittersweet.

I saw him, of course, but I never really SAW him. I just glanced past with those eyes that hid behind a curtain of hair and rose colored glasses. He was there, tired and weary of the world, sticking with something comfortable and constant even though he knew the truth of it. Weathered and scarred he settled for something that he knew was a waste of himself.

He let himself become a tool that was kept in a darkened corner until it was decided that he be taken out and used, or played around with for a little while. Sometimes he would be a Ken doll, all fake smiles and dead eyes, perfect for dressing up and showing off. But he wasn't a Ken doll, and sometimes that would show. Under the pretense of an accident, a slip up, a fall off his pedestal, he would make the subtle protests that his true self demanded.

Whenever he just couldnt take the fake smiles and dead eyes he would jump off his pedestal and make his little protests. Of course, he could never draw them out for what they were. As soon as those precious moments were over he would climb back on his pedestal and under the old pretenses of being the weakest, when in reality he would feel the quiet hum of restless power and be pleased.

As much as I didn't see him, as blinded as I was by masochistic lions and Romeo and diamonds in a sunlit meadow, I noticed him. And through his dead eyes and fake smiles and long sleeves connected to the strings that he handed to his puppet master, I know he noticed me too. We noticed each other, but as blinded and weary as we were, the moments that should have meant the most were forgotten or lost in the dusty attics of our minds.

As much as he had his puppeteer whose only strings were those that he loaned out himself, he noticed my crushing side effects of lack of self esteem coupled with naïveté that some liked to call pretty things. He told me the one combination of letters and spaces that could unlock me and start my change, my metamorphosis, if that is how you'd like to think of it. You are worth it. And later he let me slip through his fingers because you only learn from your mistakes and plastic smiles melt in the heat.

As much as I saw my masochistic lion named Romeo through the flames in the abandoned ruins of my childhood, trying to be my sparkling knight in some twisted fairy tale, I noticed him destroying the real threat. I noticed his lack of weakness. I saw him without his shiny plastic coating and fancy preselected pedestal. To him, it was much too easy. I felt the hum of his power that sang a haunting but beautiful melody infused with hope and desire, and it ran through my veins and gave me peace. But by then my angsty martyr who forever wants what he can't obtain had sucked away the hum and the flames of my Phoenix and had taken some of my lifeblood away with it. While falling into the blackness I knew my first taste of bittersweet.

Wearing my rose colored glasses and distracted by sparkles and dazzlingly crooked grins, I crossed my a's and my b's and mistook my own desires and wishes. I assumed that forever meant happily ever after and that became my new goal, as misguided as I was. He was my first taste of love and even though I didn't even know him much my mind thought I did. Because he was perfect so everything perfect must be him.

I knew not that beauty and love lay in the small imperfections that only you know. That perfection is abstract and worthless and a grand dream that fools kill for.

But I know that now.

I had changed since the not-so-Ken spoke the key to the lock I had somehow managed to place upon myself, and it showed in the details. Old Me didn't like making a fuss out of my birthday, that's true, but she would also have been too shy to put up a fight at all. But I found myself irritated and protesting, however weakly. It was a start.

If I had paid more attention and peeked around the edges of the rose colored lens that was starting to crack in front of my eye, I would have SEEN instead of merely noticing the matching cracks in the perfect, flawless, dazzling facade of Edward Cullen. Instead I arrived at the event that really wasn't for me. I was an easy excuse for all the wrongs in that disturbingly pristine white house.

I had always secretly wanted to splatter paint across those spotless rooms and bring mud and dirt and life to the big house. To roll about on the perfectly ironed sheets and dance about pulling things off the shelves and throwing he untouched apples around just for good measure. To see how many could hit the glass wall before it shattered.

Maybe I would take Charlie's old baseball bat to the polished keys of that wretched piano and relish the dissonant sounds crashing together. Maybe I would hum the beautiful symphony of ugly destruction as I tore the pages out of priceless books and journals and scattered them for plant food. Maybe I would let those snotty flowers have one last meal before I stomped about on them and thrashed, too, for good measure.

Because I already had a mother and a father. And I loved them both. We were dysfunctional at best but they were mine and I was theirs and maybe I had forgotten that amidst pretty words and dazzling smiles, but playing pretend never lasts and that's what reality is for.

So maybe I was irritated because I didn't know I had been playing pretend and maybe I wanted just one drop of life to hit those pristine floors and maybe I forgot that as much as they pretended, they weren't human. Because playing pretend doesn't last forever and my masochistic martyr liked to pretend that he doesn't always want what he can't have.

In a brief moment his true colors showed and the half hearted excuses for all the wrong reasons faded and at once it was a beautiful relief and a horrible scene where I was swallowed whole by hungry pits.

Oddly I felt nothing, none of the fear that usually comes with a missed beat, a wrong note, a turn too many. I looked past the rose tinted shards at my feet and for a brief moment, faster than should have been possible I turned. My eyes met his and I SAW him.

I wanted to keep staring until we locked eyes and something clicked but there would never be enough time and the pits were close to swallowing me up. I released a breath I didn't know I had been holding and I blinked.

Blink and you'll miss it, my mom says.

But I didn't miss it entirely, because he was the key to my lock and I was the heat to his plastic smiles and dead eyes and the hum of power sang a haunting melody, thrumming as it got to come out and play, if only for too little.

But piano boy felt it too, and his instincts told him to defend his prey. Of course it wouldn't have mattered but the breath that I released had been a big mistake. It had startled him just enough to realize how Carlisle Cullen would react to his draining the supposed love of his life in such a way.

And the first thing he saw was someone he thought was weak, much weaker than the great Edward Cullen, and his inflated ego made him jump back onto shore just enough to push everything onto my key.

He was strong and fought it, but he was already feeling everyone else's hunger and I was Edward's singer. It made him pause just long enough to make sure I was alright. Edward took advantage of his concern for me and pushed me backwards. Into a conveniently placed assortment of glass. I instantly knew that the puppeteer had placed it there in a last minute attempt at controlling something that wasn't here to begin with. I knew that with the same certainty that I knew what was happening even though I was still mid blink.

I could almost hear everyone else stop the habit of breathing in preparation and I felt that the world and time and space stopped for just a fraction of a second before I hit the glass. Emmett had come to his senses just enough to misinterpret the scene. The others saw what they wanted to see. Although Rosalie knew that not everything was as it seemed, she went along. Because she knew how everyone but Emmett and my key saw her, and she would have only made it worse.

Then the world unfroze and tiny daggers lodged themselves in my skin. He was restrained by my well meaning pseudo-brother and the others. He only wanted to make sure I was safe and so closed his eyes and forced the bloodlust from the room and my attacker. He forced it inside himself and, eyes never leaving me, allowed himself to be towed out of the room. I could almost hear the mental threats he was most likely shouting at the martyr for all the wrong reasons and the spoiled teenager who always wanted what he could not have.

That left just me and Dr. Fang himself, the best pretender of them all. He patched me up in an attempt at prolonging the play. But I had already thrown away my lines and stomped them into the ground. The pages flew about like white doves looking for freedom and fluttered to be ground like all the pieces of my heart.

Because I knew what would happen next, as much as my mind tried to cover it in a thick blanket of denial.

He left. Which was okay because I had already SEEN, and shattered my rose colored glasses and torn away the gossamer veil of naïveté and I was becoming something else, metaphorically, of course.

But he took away my pseudo brother and the broken ice princess who saw too much and too little all at once and the Major who let himself become a Ken doll because he was weary of the world.

Of course nobody could physically FORCE him away, but although he had noticed me and saved me and unlocked me, he hadn't SEEN me. Not yet.

So he would begrudgingly follow along, all plastic smiles and dead eyes and strings that he loaned to the puppeteer who thought nobody saw.

But I had seen.
And I saw still.

The process isn't instant, it isn't like imprinting. Step one, SEE. Check. Before that, you notice. You can't help it. You just do, no matter how weary or naive or distracted. You feel the all consuming drive to protect, if red flags and danger signs ever go up. But after, you feel something else. A sort of attachment that is but isn't really there. Until you both SEE and acknowledge that something is happening.

Then something else happens and a million titanium reinforcements form something else, a Something that just can't be put out into words, a bond of multicolored pulses and you know. You know without having to print out a shiny label and peel it back and smooth it on. You just Know. True mates. Of course, I didn't know this, not then.

No, because all I knew was that I had just started realizing something vital and beautiful and not at all the boy who wants what he can't have or the greatest pretender of them all or the one forever looking for a replacement for something that needed to be let go. It had a little to do with them all, but not nearly enough and way too much at the same time. And of course the puppet master whose strings were borrowed and leased and signed over temporarily on a limited contract. And all that had shattered like delicate spun glass that hadn't yet had the chance to be something.

Their perfume was addicting, he had all but said as much. Later on after my rise from the ashes was more complete I would realize that he and his so called parents and the one he called sister pixie in some sort of weird twisted form of affection in a grand delusion, they had all used this to their advantage. Dazzling, I had called it, with my reoccurring rosy cheeks and veil over my eyes. And it was addicting. Literally. And he had called ME his heroin.

Like any normal addiction, once the source was taken away abruptly, withdrawal shows its ugly face. I didn't realize what it was and let it manifest, untreated, infecting other parts of my life until Charlie, poor Charlie, just couldn't take it anymore. My mother, the flighty sparrow from everywhere stopped in for a short rest from her epic flight around the world, and brought Phil. Phil was not Charlie but he was important in my life. I finally realized that the ugly cancer was affecting everything else and I realized that I was a recovering addict. I needed help, but I was never normal and couldn't get normal help.

So in comes my childhood friend, mud pies and sunny smiles grown up but not quite. Like the addict I was, I saw him as sunshine when in reality he was just a replacement drug. Methadone. I soaked it all in, though, greedy as I am, and he gladly indulged me because of misleading and confusion and hormones. When it was time for my mother sparrow and her important Phil to leave, they left happy, seeing my progress.

Although in reality it was just a replacement drug, it made everyone happy and okay for a while. I had enough sense, at least, to tell her of my love for her, and him of my affection and value. They hugged me and left in a flurry of smiles and kisses on the cheek and the sparkle in Charlie's eye because he had never moved on, not really. But he accepted the reality, and so gave Phil heartfelt smiles and a warm handshake with a pat on the back. Phil was grateful, and nodded and smiled, no plastic involved. I ignored the pang I felt and the brief memory of my key with his plastic all melted in the heat.

We were happy, Charlie and I, and we shared smiles and basked in the warmth of the glow that didn't need to be spoken, all the way home.

But then tragedy struck, as tragedy does. Because life is full of ups and downs and happy endings only depend on where you stop the story. The giant metal bird had fallen, and my mother sparrow and her Phil had fallen with it. I was in shock and Charlie didn't really comprehend it. The loss of her glow and the world was the same, but ours weren't. She didn't want a funeral, she wanted to be scattered across the desert, because she was flighty, even in death. He was just happy to go wherever she did. She didn't want anyone to be sad, but you can never really...not be.

Charlie and I eventually moved on, leaning mostly on each other. I saw him cry for the very first time and no girl ever wants to see her daddy cry. But we broke down together and cried ourselves out and fell asleep with tears ruining our clothing.

I had some issues with my replacement drug, but they were resolved, and really, I should have known.

Charlie found Sue, and I was happy for him. I had since gotten over my original drug, and was content. The fire haired threat had been eliminated, finally, and so had her companion Laurent. I had a new half sister and half brother, and I had grown and matured. I even weaned myself off my replacement drug. He was now my sunny soon-to-be brother in law, and Leah's personal sun. I happily handed him over, and enjoyed his happiness and her happiness and the pack's happiness. Even Paul, all hotheaded and rash got over his shit and found an imprint and was happy, after all the drama had subsided. I was good friends with everyone and I was finally happy too.

But something was missing.

Something had been missing for roughly three years. Three years full of drama and heartbreak and loss, but also full of happiness and healing and beauty.

My key.

Except the world is a big place with a large population, and they were good at disappearing. I knew somehow that when the time was right we would see each other. This time without the rose colored glasses and veil of naïveté and doe eyes paired with flushed cheeks and the constant star of bedazzlement. Without the weary tiredness of the world and the loaned out strings and quiet rebellions and pedestal, without the Cullens and without their script. Just us.

And he would SEE me, and I would SEE him, and something that we have known all along but never known will snap into place. I would melt any leftover plastic and see the life in his eyes and he would complete my transformation. And I would rise from the flames and we would just BE.

So I said my see you's and I'll call you's and set out for the sunset, hoping to be swallowed by its heat, and be reborn.

Without the cumbersome veil in my eyes I was a lot more street smart, though I hadn't even given a thought to college. I handled myself a lot better and became independent. I let my unique sense of humor come out, instead of suppressing it and BREATHED.

I met Peter and Charlotte and we bonded right away. We met at a supermarket, in the produce section. He was staring at the grapefruits with the strangest expression on his face and slowly picked two up, held them in front of him, and sniffed them cautiously. I let out a snide laugh while still picking out the perfect oranges, and made some sarcastic comment that involved him being a vampire, and he turned to look at me and then wordlessly placed the grapefruits in my cart. We had been as good as family ever since.

Charlotte and I also clicked right away, and frankly, terrorized Peter. She was family to me, too, and they taught me the Whitlock salute, which I thought was hilariously crude.

The second week of knowing them, I got a phone call. All of those deep fried dinners at the local diner had finally gotten to Charlie's heart. I cried my eyes out while Charlotte stroked my hair and cooed in my ear. Peter left and came back with his truck full of my stuff. I didn't ask how he knew where I lived, and he patted my back and offered me small smiles and comforting jokes.

He just knew shit. Like how to help me recover from losing my daddy. Him and Charlotte became something even more family than family. They drove me up to see my daddy be lowered into the ground, and almost everyone in town and a good portion of the Rez came. He was the Chief of Police after all, and a pretty well loved and admired guy. Honorary brother of Billy Black, a constant in everyone's life.

I stayed for a little longer and cried with my family, but I had to get back to Texas. There was something about that state that healed and comforted me, and I missed that.

One year later and I had completed all those textbook stages of grief. I looked back on my memories of my mother sparrow and Phil and Charlie and I could smile, if somewhat sadly. You don't get over these types of things, but I was as close to it as I could be.

I just needed my key.

The week of my twenty third birthday, two years younger than his physical age, he finally came. I had just missed him as he left Peter and Charlotte for a year long sabbatical of sorts and he was surprised to see me. Peter just smiled in that annoying knowing way of his, and Charlotte winked.

Seeing him without his plastic coating was much better and I knew. I KNEW. He finally saw me, the new me, and he SAW ME. And it clicked, and I knew he KNEW, too.

I smiled so hard my cheeks hurt and he swept me off my feet and all those romantic cliches were not far off from the truth. Completeness and relief, and love. The lows of life were less deep and more cushioned because now we had each other. Two halves of a whole and all that.

We belonged to each other and we loved it, we loved EACH OTHER. My brother bear and his now-fixed princess came for a visit and we got to see the better versions of ourselves. Last they heard, the biggest pretender of them all and his followers were still pretending. We were so happy it was stupid and I looked around and loved reality for the first time in a long time.

I rose from my flames and became what I was meant to be and the reality became even better. I felt somehow more alive, even though technically I was dead. My shield had changed and improved and strengthened and given me the ability to sponge. I could absorb and duplicate any enemy's gifts, and I loved that I could effectively protect my family. Because we were family, a real one. Not the kind with scripts and backstabbing and manipulation, not even blood, but family.

And I was finally complete.