A/N: WARNING: This chapter gets a T rating for angst and other dark stuff. Just so you're prepared.

Tamora Jean was a beautiful child. When she was born, everyone wouldn't stop talking about how adorable she was. Her hair was soft, long, and a remarkable blonde. She had the cutest freckles across her nose, and she had this...glow to her. She never failed to make everyone smile. She would light up a room with just a single smile or laugh. Her eyes were a perfect mix of blue and silver-her mother said it was like looking into an ocean. She loved butterflies, and wanted to be a doctor.

She was born into a very well-off family. Her mother, Sarah, was a typical southern belle her father had met on a business trip. She had silky, buttermilk hair and sparkly green eyes that were brighter than emeralds. She was the sweetest person you could ever meet, always having friends over for dinner parties and get-togethers. She and Tamora loved to dance. She would pick Tamora up and spin her around the room while soothing jazz and swing played over their old-fashioned radio. And for those few moments, Tamora would feel like she was flying.

Her father worked for this large company where he made thousands and thousands of dollars per year. They lived in a big house in a nice neighborhood. Her favorite memory of her childhood was laying outside at night, watching the stars with her father. He would point out all the constellations and name them to her. One night, he even gave her her own star. "That one's yours." He whispered into her ear. "Make a wish on it, and it's sure to come true."

Tamora wished on that star, every night. She would wish for things that children wished for, like new bikes and dolls, but she also wished that she'd always have her family, that they'd stay together forever, and be happy.

Another night, her father lay with her and showed her how to find the north star. "See that?" He'd said. "That's the north star. And what's so wonderful about it is that it's always there, the same star. So no matter where we are, together or apart, we'll be seeing the same one. And no matter where you are, you'll always be able to find me."

Life was perfect.

Until that horrible day. That horrible, awful day when the stars went out, and Tamora stopped smiling.

Tamora was walking home from school when she heard sirens. She looked behind her as she saw police cars rushing by. They turned the corner and went down her street. Curious, she ran ahead, and was surprised to see they were at her house.

She saw two police men get out of the car and walk up to her front door. They rang the doorbell and Tamora's mother walked out to greet them. She couldn't hear what they were saying, but it didn't look good.

Suddenly, her mother put her hand over her mouth. She let out a wail and shook her head. "No!" She screamed. "No! Not him!" She fell to the ground, sobbing and sobbing. "No!" she kept screaming. "No!"

Tamora ran up. "Mommy?" She exclaimed, looking terrified. "Mommy, what's wrong?"

Her mother hadn't answered. She just cried and cried.

That's when the two police men had taken her aside and told her.

Her father was dead.

It was all over the news. A big commercial airliner had gone down, right in the middle of the ocean. They'd found the bodies floating in the water. No survivors.

He had just been going to a business meeting. Just for three days. He said he'd be back. But now he never would. Tamora didn't understand. How could someone be here one minute, and then gone the next? It didn't make any sense.

After the press died down, Sarah and Tamora fell to hard times. Without her father working, they had no income. They soon had to give up their nice, fancy house and move to a smaller house, a much smaller one. It was a tiny apartment with only two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a tiny kitchen. They had to sell off all their nice things, all the things Tamora had grown up with, that she loved. She still didn't understand.

She was only six.

Years passed like that, with the two of them living off of welfare, struggling to get by in that tiny little apartment.

Then Sarah met Ron.

When Sarah first brought Ron over to dinner, Tamora didn't like him. Why should her mother be hanging around with other men? All she needed was her. They were perfectly fine on their own. Just Sarah and Tamora. They didn't need anyone else.

But then Ron started coming over more and more. And then Sarah said they were getting married. Tamora had cried. She'd screamed. "Don't you love Dad anymore?" She'd sobbed.

"Of course I do!" Her mother had said, holding her even as she tried to run away. "But don't you think your father would want me to be happy?"

"We are happy!" She'd replied. "We were perfectly happy without Ron! We don't need him!"

But her mother didn't listen.

They married the following spring.

She was only eleven.

Once they were married, Ron moved them out that small apartment and into a bigger one. It wasn't nearly as big as their old house, but it was a step up.

Tamora still didn't like it, but her mother was happier, which made her happier.

But things didn't stay perfect forever. One night Ron came in, stumbling and shouting. Tamora was in her room working on homework. She heard her mother go out to yell at him. Suddenly, it escalated, and they were both screaming and shouting. She heard things breaking, and smashing.

It went on like this for days. Then days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months. They would fight constantly. There was barely a night when Tamora didn't fall asleep to the sounds of fighting, beating, and cursing. Her mother started wearing long sleeved shirts all the time. One night, her mother came into her room with a black eye.

"Mom?" Tamora had said, running over to her. Her mother had sat in front of her closet, crying into her knees. "Mom, you can't let him do this to you!" She had exclaimed, sitting down beside her. "We have to get away!"

"I can't!" Her mother had said, shaking. "If I do we'll have no where else to go! He has all the money! If I leave him we'll be on the streets!"

So they stayed. More nights passed. More screaming, crying, and pain. Sometimes neighbors would call the police, but Ron would always make up some story and they would leave. Nothing changed.

Until one day, when Tamora came home from school. "Mom?" She called. The house was silent. "Mom, where are you?" She searched over the whole house.

Finally she found her.

Sarah was in her room lying in bed, her hair spread out around her like an angel. She was wearing the clothes from the night before, her body covered in bruises and marks. Lying beside her was an empty bottle of pills, and her eyes stared open, unblinking, straight ahead, looking at the ceiling that she could not see.

She was only fourteen.

That day was the day Tamora shut down. She chopped off her beautiful long hair and painted her eyelids with black. She threw away her bright sunny dresses and replaced them with dark pants and shirts. She stopped wishing on stars. She never danced again.

Even with her mother gone, Ron didn't get any better. In fact, he just got worse. All the previous aggression he had with her mother, he began to take out on Tamora. Except Tamora wasn't like her mother. She fought back. She wasn't going to go out the same way.

So every night they'd fight. He'd always win, but that never stopped Tamora from trying.

Finally one night, the police came. They'd heard the screaming and shouting and walked in to find Ron pinning Tamora against the wall, his hand on her throat.

They handcuffed him, and Tamora never saw him again.

She was nineteen.

Now all of her family was gone. She never had met her grandparents, and she didn't have any aunts or uncles. She got a job working at the local gas station, and moved into another small apartment.

She worked there for a while, and after a long period of time, things started looking up.

Then she met Brad.

He walked into the station one day, placing a doughnut and a coffee on the counter in front of her.

It was love at first sight-if those kinds of things even existed. Tamora pushed it down. She wasn't going to let another person in, just to leave again. But then Brad kept coming back. He would come visit her every day, even if he didn't need gas, even if he wasn't going to buy anything.

And eventually, she couldn't help it-she fell for him. Soon he was asking her to dinner Friday night, and then Friday night became Sunday, and Monday, and Thursday.

They were inseparable.

Brad made Tamora smile again. He made he laugh. He made her see that she could be loved again.

When he put his hand in hers, it was a perfect fit. When he kissed her, it was like she was being made alive again. They dated for 6 months before Brad proposed. She said yes.

It was at a concert of one of their favorite bands, and he'd brought her up onstage in front of everyone and asked her. The whole stadium had roared as he slipped the ring on her finger. And even though Tamora knew there were hundreds of people watching, in that moment she felt like they were the only two people in the world.

They rode home from that night giddy, laughing like the sappy pair of lovebirds that they were. Tamora had sat in the front seat of his car, staring at the ring. It sparkled and twinkled up at her happily.

"You do like it?" Brad had asked from the seat next to her.

"Of course I do!" Tamora had exclaimed. "How could I not? It's perfect!"

Brad let out a sigh of relief. "Good, 'cause I spent a whole hour in that dang jewelry store. But when I saw that one, I knew right away-that was the one for you." He smiled at her and took her hand in his, stroking his thumb over the back of her hand.

Tamora had sighed. She hadn't been this content in ages. "You're perfect, you know that?" She said, turning to look at him.

"Well, you'll always be my dynamite gal." He said back, smiling at her with pure love.

She'd rolled her eyes at his compliment. "Stop it." She'd said. "You're making me-"

The next seconds went by as if Tamora was watching it from a screen. A bright light suddenly came on Brad's side of the car. It was so blinding, so white, so bright, that she couldn't see a thing. A loud roar of a car engine mixed with the blaring honk of cars filled her ears. She went to cover them as she heard a loud scream. A sudden impact hit the side of the car with the greatest force she'd ever felt in her life. It felt like someone was taking a wrecking ball and slamming it into her side. There was the shattering of glass, and she cried out as it flew against her face. She heard a loud explosion and the taste of blood filled her mouth.

And then, the world went black.

Beep, beep, beep.

She heard soft sounds flying in and out of her ears that she assumed were some sort of language. She couldn't understand it though, it was like she was sitting in the bottom of the pool trying to hear what the people were saying from above.

Beep, beep, beep.

Her head felt so heavy. She tired to lift it but couldn't. Starting to feel frightened, she tried to open her eyes.

But her eyelids wouldn't move. It was as if someone had glued them together. She tried to scream, but her lips wouldn't move either. Her arms and legs felt as heavy as her head. With nothing else to do, she slowly fell back into sedation.

Beep, beep, beep.

Her eyes opened. She was in a hospital room, lying in a bed. Wires were attached to her head and a heart monitor was running next to her. There was a needle sticking in her arm that was injecting some sort of clear liquid into her.

"Good, you're awake." A nurse said, leaning over her.

"Wh-where am I?" She'd asked, her voice sounding as dry as a desert.

"You're at the St. Matthews Hospital miss." The nurse said, sitting her up and giving her a glass of water.

She took it and drank it. "Where's Brad?" She asked. "I need to see him."

The nurse had looked away uncomfortably. "I'll send the doctor in." She said, walking out.

Tamora sighed in frustration.

She saw the nurse talking with a man in a white coat out in the hallway. After a few minutes, the doctor walked in, sitting in a chair beside her bed. "I'm glad to see you're doing so well, Tamora." He said, folding his hands together in his lap.

"Where is Brad?" Tamora had said roughly, not wanting to beat around the bush. "I need to see my fiancé ."

The doctor had sighed. "Tamora, there's something you must understand. The accident you were in was very serious, you're lucky you didn't die."

Tamora started to shut down. This couldn't be where this was going. She knew what was coming. "No." She'd whispered. "No."

"And you've made an excellent recovery, unfortunately, the fact of the matter is..." He trailed off, obviously dreading telling her what he was about to say.

"You were the only one to survive."

She was twenty-four.

She wanted to die. She wanted to close her eyes and never wake up. Why was she alive? Why didn't that crash take her life too, not just his? She had nothing to live for. So why was she still here ? She would have tried. She thought about it. There were plenty of bridges, ropes, lakes...

But then she thought back to her mother. Did she really want to die like she had? To just give up because she felt like she had no other option?

No.

So she she kept fighting. She obviously was meant to stay on this earth, even if she was alone, even if she felt hopeless. And that's what kept her going.

She left town and spent the next years changing jobs, never staying in one place for too long. She took some therapy here and there. She took every emotion she kept bottled up inside and shoved them deep into the smallest corners of her heart, then covered it with barbed wire, until she was sure that no one would get in.

Then she'd seen an add at a school. They were hiring a temporary teacher for PE classes. At fist she'd just passed it by-she didn't want to work with kids.

But soon, she realized it was that, or nothing. She'd called them up and applied, and by some great miracle, she was accepted.

"You start on Tuesday!" The principal said over the phone. "I'll have someone meet you the the lobby at 7:00."

So she'd gone. She got ready Tuesday morning, made herself look presentable, got lost, but finally got there.

When she walked in, it was empty except for a this short guy sitting on a bench. He was wearing a blue baseball hat and a light blue-buttoned up shirt.

"Sorry I'm late." She'd said, hoping he wasn't upset. "I'm still not used to getting around this place."

"That's quite alright m'am." He said, looking up at her. "All the different streets can be a little-" Then he'd paused, not saying anything.

Tamora was puzzled. What, did he run out of batteries or something? "Um, you okay there short stack?" She asked, waving her hand in front of him. She didn't have time for games.

His faced turned red and he blushed. "Yes, of course m'am."

She noted that he spoke with a southern accent and had a sort of baby face. Not in a bad way, it was just something she wasn't used to. It was the m'am that threw her off. "You don't have to call me m'am." She'd said. "The name's Tamora, Tamora Calhoun."

She noticed that he kept looking at her all weird-like. Like he was happy to see her. He had this weird grin on his face and he seemed to be glowing. She swore she heard him give off a tiny sigh.

Okay then.

"So…ah, aren't you supposed to show me around or something?" She said, looking around the lobby.

"Ah, yes!" the man said, "Right this way, just follow me!"

She nodded. "What did you say your name was?" She asked as he lead her down the hallway.

"Felix." He said, sounding all dopey again. "Felix Parcell."

And even though she still felt dead inside, even though she hadn't smiled in 8 years, little did she know that little Felix Parcell was going to save her.

Because in time, she would learn that he was the reason she hadn't died that day. He was her new reason for living

She was thirty-two.