Hey all, I'm on my bullshit so have this self indulgence. Got lost in the sauce when it came to the humour that could come from this kind of situation and then I just straight up got absorbed in the changes that would occur down the line so why the hell not. Apologies for how often the OC's name changes, she jumps from nickname to nickname until she gets to Clara, and hur hur yes name with "bel" in it oh wow Bella clone. Incorrect! This bitch is way dumber!

Anyway pairings are undecided so I'll just say now that any Cullen-Hale relationship dynamic is on the table. I'm gonna leave it to a vote that'll be refreshed on my profile every so often since opinions change ofc, but aside from a potential Edward pairing, all other pairings are gonna be canon/canon/oc because I said so. So I part with a cringe anime pose and a wink and apologise also for the skips in this chapter, I just wanted to get right to the meat of it rather than go too deep into Clara's childhood.

She never actually remembered her last life until the damage had been done. One moment she was blissfully unaware, fighting with her sister in the backseat of the car, and the next she was in a hospital bed—20 years worth of memories flooding into her mind all at once and realisation of where she was, who she was, setting in. The changes that were made and could never be fixed without a miracle at work.

The sheer act of being born, something she had no control over, was more than enough for nine-year-old Claribel Swan to ruin everything.

She'd read the novels way back when. Was a massive Twihard if she ever saw one. It was essentially her "cringe" phrase before liking the series came back into fashion while she was in college. Merchandise, theories, midnight showings to new movies, endless unsent fan mail to Robert Pattenson hoping that she'd be that lucky in love fan who captured his heart. Juvenile things. She knew all there was to know, even if some things got foggy and she had to reread one of the books again. Claribel knew just how bad her situation was. She knew just how badly she'd messed up as she stared at her sister in the bed beside her, hooked up on life support and swallowed whole by machines. She did this. She took that future from Bella, both with its ups and downs, by virtue of being born a brat of an older sister.

It was obvious that Bella was the daughter their parents liked more. No, fussed over more. If she thought hard enough, she could recall vague reasons for the divorce when Bella was a few months old. She could recall her grandmother scolding her for being too rough with her delicate sister. Her mother coming home early from classes and even taking days off to make sure Phil wasn't overwhelmed with both Bella and Claribel. It was all Bella, and before the accident, Claribel had hated it. Was the original Bella even born with health issues? Claribel was certain she wasn't. No heart defects or allergies or anything; Bella was just weird with blood.

Just existing had caused Bella to become weaker, closer to death than she was to life already, and the guilt actually ate at Claribel. She never did identify with Bella as a reader, as a fan, but Bella still had her own struggles to go through and wanted a place to belong. Now the only place Bella belonged was in a private hospital room. It was too cruel, being hooked up to life support at the age of eight and still not waking up during adolescence.

The coping Renée tried to use never helped. It was obvious that Renée and Charlie had given them "matching" names, and that had come back to bite Claribel after Bella was left in hospital. It started small, little mistakes like calling for Bella instead of her. The full names were mixed up, and it never helped that both sisters had the same middle name. Despite a whole year between them, creativity was never in the Swans' genes. After mistakes like that, Renée resorted to embracing the mistakes rather than correcting them. Rather than trying to move on and separate her two daughters from each other, she became Bella Swan in Renée's eyes.

Charlie would slip sometimes, on the visits. But at least he noticed when she flinched and went quiet for the rest of the visit. At least he came up with Clare as a compromise.

Clare never wanted to be Bella. Clare wanted to do everything she could to be anyone but Bella. Clare, from the moment she turned twelve and decided to throw a fit over Renée forcing Bella's name onto her, made the decision to run as far away from this family as possible once she stopped being classified as a runaway teen.

Having a whole year over Bella gave her some advantages. Not a lot, but definitely points of reference to prepare with, she reasoned. Bella might not have been with her at the moment—it was hard to do anything when you were stuck in a coma in Arizona—but vague details she could recall helped somewhat.

It was 2003 when the Olympic coven were due to move back to Forks. Bella came in January of 2005. If Clare timed it right, she would already be in high school by the time that happened. At age thirteen she threw herself into all manner of studies; anything that she could excel at and get a scholarship for out of state, she would latch onto as much as possible. Bella wasn't innately talented in anything, as far as she recalled, and as she finished moving in with Charlie in 1999, she had a full schedule for the new year.

Hockey never stuck. She did try to do figure skating, but that was too similar to ballet for her tastes. Too similar to what Bella would've taken up as a hobby as a child. Clare debated being a mathlete, but she was shaky with her math on the timeline already. She went through a piano, a trumpet, and a violin before Charlie vetoed music for his own sanity—understandable, she thought. Cheerleading would have to wait until high school, since she doubted Forks had a middle school with a functioning football team that warranted cheers to begin with. She had a bit more confidence with the cheerleading, and she kept to a strict routine to keep her limbs nimble and flexible.

Finally, right before her final year of middle school, she found her niche: Baseball. Having a lot of aggression to let out by hitting things and an uncanny aim to boot was more than she needed to get ahead. Sports scholarships in places like Texas, regardless of whether or not they'd let her play in official matches or put her on a coed team, were just what the doctor ordered to get away from the mess that would go down after Bella turned eighteen.

She'd slammed the printout onto the dinner table one night after Charlie came home. "Texas Tech," she'd told him, determined and unyielding. "I'm gonna make it happen."

His only response had been a bewildered, but nonetheless supportive, "Aren't you a little young to be looking at college right now? Focus on high school first, Clare Bear."

That was all there was to it for Clare.

Without Bella in the picture or the Cullens providing a plot to follow, everything was just a footnote in Forks, Washington's local news. She made plenty of friends and stuck to certain ones as she entered high school, even got permission to dye her hair after one tumultuous visit to Renée brought up the projection again. It was easy enough for her to forget that she was a Swan, that she was in a precarious position in this world, that she needed to make a run for it as soon as Bella woke up and the Cullens arrived. She had a good year on one of those, at least, and nothing had happened when the "older" members of the family graduated before Edward.

Clare was confident. Clare started high school with high spirits. Clare worked her ass off and carefully plotted each and every escape route, possibility, scenarios, the whole day and the consequential week that would come of it.

Clare fucked up.

A few things had caught her off guard due to the vagueness of when they'd happened. Following the birth of a prominent character's niece—also named Claire, which she took mild amusement in—it soon became apparent that, shortly after, the Cullens would be arriving. Claire was born in 2003, September at the earliest, and that vague timeline was given a date when Charlie shared the news and invited her out to celebrate with the family. Charlie knew the Blacks more than the Youngs, but that was enough to put him in their good books apparently. Enough to invite him and Clare, who had pointedly avoided the tribe in favour of her various hobbies and escape routes from Forks, to have a small gathering in La Push. Just a little barbeque and some drinks for the older folks, Charlie had called it, and on September 5th, Clare had no other choice but to attend.

It had never actually occurred to her how late the Cullens had appeared in Forks until that week. She'd already started her second year of high school in late-August and there had been no sign of them, and it had admittedly been far from her mind. It had never occurred to her until she'd seen the others her own age at the celebration, who commented on the similar names and made jokes about calling her Bell instead of Clare, that things were about to be set in motion. Emily Young introduced herself without Sam by her side, latching on to Clare with that friendliness she remembered from her appearances in the franchise, and compromises were made. One little change to her name, and then all of a sudden the Quileute kids were joining Emily in befriending her.

She went from Clare, who desperately tried to avoid being Bella, to Clara, whose attempts at avoiding those same major characters Bella would befriend crashed and burned in one night.

Aside from the new nickname, it left a sour taste in her mouth.

"You doing okay, kiddo?" Charlie asked the next morning. She'd been up all night revising her plans and double checking the prices for plane tickets, the options for jobs, and the bags under her eyes showed it.

"I'm fine," she told him. "Think I might get a part time job, if I have the time."

"Thought you were trying out for cheerleading soon?" He sat up in his seat. "What about baseball, too?"

"Hobbies cost money," Clara replied. He couldn't argue with it. "I can't stay on a high school team forever for both of them. I might not even make the squad, either."

That made Charlie laugh. Into his mug of coffee, all he could do was mutter how incomprehensible it was for a hard worker like his Clara to not succeed in sports.

The Cullens moved to Forks that Sunday, the 7th. They started attending school in swift order from the 8th.

The attention had shifted from Claire Young to the Cullens real fast among the elders of the Reservation. Though she had her friends at high school, carried over from middle school, her "new friends" from the gathering at La Push made themselves at home after school on Monday at the Swan residence. Charlie was talking with Billy Black, discussing the new doctor applying for work at the hospital and how young yet qualified he was, and even if the man couldn't feel the undercurrent of suspicion coming from the elder, Clara did.

"Everyone's really causing a fuss over these new guys," Emily noted once they'd gone to Clara's room for privacy. She'd settled on the bed with one of the textbooks Clara had borrowed from the library, a poor attempt at studying and getting a headstart on her assignments. "I think it's great we're getting someone like Dr. Cullen here. I heard he's super talented, and that's rare to have in a small town."

Leah was propped against the closet door, arms crossed over her chest. Unlike Emily, Leah wasn't as warm with Clara and had yet to properly become a "friend" following Claire's welcome party. Clara already knew Leah didn't like that she shared a name with her new cousin, opting to call her things like Blondie or Swan rather than anything remotely close to Clara or Clare.

"Oh yeah?" Clara said idly. She was packing away some clothes while Leah watched. Downstairs, it was only the men involved in the conversation about the town's new additions. Clara wasn't too fond of being ushered into a corner just for that reason, especially when Charlie didn't know as much as the tribe did. It almost felt a little unfair to Charlie, in her mind—he may not have been the most energetic or passionate person in the world, but he did his best as Chief of Police. He was no slouch, maybe a little awkward, and if he knew about the supernatural happenings that would come to this town, there was no doubt Charlie would start looking at all angles to protect the human populace.

Hell, she thought, if Charlie had known from the beginning that the Cullens were vampires, then working together to prevent outsiders from killing civilians would make Charlie's life somewhat easier. No less stressful, but easier with some help and advice.

"Have you met their kids yet? They started today, right?"

"Nope." Clara shut the closet door and stretched her arms above her head. This room was too damn small for three people to comfortably chill out in. "I don't have classes with any of them."

"Prolly for the best," Leah finally chimed in. "Sam said he got a glimpse of them yesterday. Rubbed him the wrong way."

Emily was silent at the mention of Sam. Clara could venture a guess as to why. When the Cullens showed up, the shape-shifters would begin to experience changes and form packs in kind. And with Sam, that meant realising that Emily was the one he imprinted on rather than Leah, his current girlfriend. Clara always hated that backstory reveal; even with the brief information she had in the books, Emily really didn't deserve to be worn down like that by animal instincts after Sam lost control and hurt her. A lot of people were romanticising their relationship, calling it goals because of how sweet they were, but Emily was still uncomfortable with her scars. Sam had, in some people's eyes, hurt Emily so bad that she felt no one else would want her—or perhaps that Sam would hurt anyone she wanted to be close to.

Clara didn't hate Sam. She didn't. She just felt he was done so dirty with that tragic love story tacked on, when a less unhealthy implication could've been something else. Perhaps Sam could've imprinted on Emily like usual, but instead of harming her himself, it was someone else who lost control. Sam could've been her hero, could've shown how much he cared genuinely for her even after all the rejection she threw his way and the strife it caused between the cousins, but instead they were shackled to each other by a cruel fate.

The reason why Emily was so quiet was because Sam had already started to hover around her more than Leah. Leah just wasn't aware yet, and there was no doubt it would escalate soon to be a problem. Emily's scars were fully healed by the time Bella had met her, so it made sense that it would happen the first year the Cullens arrived.

This room was too small for all this drama waiting to unfold. Clara picked up a worn leather mitt from her desk and chucked it to Leah.

"To hell with staying up here all night. I need some fresh air." She handed another to Emily, followed by one of the many baseballs scattered around the room, and led the way out.

Playing catch was the simplest way to clear her mind in the backyard while the men talked. Sam came out to join them after a while, and for the most part his infatuation with Emily wasn't obvious yet. He offered to help her out, gave her pointers, and Leah laughed along at how terrible and uncoordinated Emily was at throwing a ball. Clara could ignore that particular problem for the time being, her mind wandering between muscle movements to her current situation.

Bella hadn't woken up yet. When—or perhaps if—she woke up, she was going to have the mentality of a child instead of a teen. Clara tried not to think about it too often, but it was hard to ignore how much her fuckup in her childhood had affected things. Bella was supposed to be doing all sorts of things with Renée and Phil for the time being in Arizona, up until her move to Forks so Phil could pursue his career with Renée supporting him. But it was almost a decade now since the accident. Most people would've woken up by now or been unplugged from life support. When—if—if Bella woke up, who knew how bad the psychological damage would be in the long run? Who was to say she wouldn't be a vegetable, confined to her room and taken care of by Renée at all hours?

Bella should've been here. Clara shouldn't have existed.

This was all so wrong.

It was a miracle none of the Cullen-Hale family were in her classes, and she hoped it stayed that way. Clara needed to look for work ASAP, she decided, and she needed some money to support herself once she got into college. Shit wouldn't hit the fan until she'd graduated, and she wanted to get the hell out of dodge by then.

Texas Tech, she told herself with a nod. Texas Tech was perfect. Just focus on Texas Tech.

A shout caused her to look up, unaware she'd even dipped her head somewhat. It was all the warning she got before the baseball smacked the side of her face, clipping her brow before ricocheting towards Leah. Clara dropped to the ground, too stunned to cry out in pain or even react, and instead held her head in place to stop the sky from spinning.

She shouldn't think about Bella too much. If Bella wasn't already awake, then the show would just have to go on without her.

Clara should thank Emily later for knocking some sense into her with that throw.

"Look at that shiner."

"I know, right? No way they'll let you pass cheer auditions before that heals."

"Did you know she got it from a Res girl?"

"It was an accident," Clara sighed.

With a big bruise on her face and only a small bandaid to cover the scab that had formed over her brow, it was hard to miss Clara from a distance on Tuesday. It didn't help that she'd come in late, sleeping in without meaning to thanks to taking some painkillers in the middle of the night for a headache, but Charlie had at least called ahead to give a heads up for that. No tardiness for this would-be model student, even when she was battered and bruised.

"Clare wouldn't fit in with the cheerleading squad anyway," D.J. decided. Beside him, Whitney nodded in agreement. She'd joined the year before as a freshman, though didn't hang out with the majority in their clique after being accepted.

"Too much of a muscle head," she decided. Clara gave her a look, trying to raise her brow and failing as a spike of pain throbbed through her head. "Plus, it's more fun cheering for you during games. I still remember how angry those guys from Port Angeles were every time you'd strike them out."

She'd take that as an acceptable answer. Even Charlie had been having a blast during that game.

"That's it!" Another of the group, Nicole, slammed her hands on the table and shut the rest of them up. Clara was alarmed, to say the least. Nicole was someone mentioned in passing during the first book, and it had never occurred to her how different she'd be to the assumption she'd made in her head. Nicole was lively, gossipy, and all around nosy. It was way more than Bella's observation of almost getting into a car accident with her had provided. "I can't take it anymore! Have any of you met the new kids yet?"

Clara's face fell. She tuned out the conversation immediately.

Cullen this, Cullen that; she knew people were like this when strangers appeared on their turf, having been one of the locals in her past life who'd ogled newcomers, but this wasn't going to fade away after a month or so. The Cullens weren't going to be a novelty who quickly integrated into society—they were going to be an attraction for the locals to stare at whenever they entered a room, and it was dawning on Clara just how annoying it was going to be, listening to that kind of chatter almost every day, for the next three years.

"The Cullens? I think I saw a couple of them at the front office working out their schedules yesterday. Blonde? Tall?"

"The one I saw was more of a redhead. He was kind of weird."

"I saw a weird one, but it was a girl. Real tiny thing. Think her name was Alice or something?"

Nicole's eyes darted to Clara. Clara chewed some fries with a thousand-yard stare.

"Clare? Anything to add?" she demanded.

"Nope."

"God, you're useless for a jock."

Clara casually flipped her off, a round of giggles passing through the group, and Nicole blew her a kiss in return.

"I don't see the big deal. So they're a little weird, whatever." Clara sipped at her soda. "It's none of my business. I don't even have classes with them."

"Oh," D.J. reminded her, "that was what I saw the blondes doing yesterday. It was just a tour of the school and selecting classes for them. They started today."

Balls. It was already lunch, which meant Clara still had half a day to hope for the best. As long as none of them were with her, she'd sleep peacefully at night.

"Still none of my business."

"Okay, but you're not hearing the weirdest part," Nicole went on, ignoring her. "So were the Cullens you saw all, like, super hot and stuff?"

A round of agreement. Austin insisted he was straight, but that he'd take twenty dollars if it was one of the Cullen-Hale guys. It was the quickest Clara had seen someone kill a conversation in her combined lifetimes. It was also, in the back of her mind, the act of mercy her tired brain needed right now. The less she had to hear about the Cullens today, the more at ease she would be planning for the future. The headaches would make it too tedious to focus.

There was another throb of pain along her brow. Clara sighed heavily. She'd kept a small sheet of painkillers in her jeans pocket just in case, but she'd been hoping she wouldn't need them yet.

"You gotta get some ice for that thing," D.J. told her. She waved him off dismissively. "No, seriously, you should've stayed home and let it settle some more."

"It's not like my depth perception was compromised," Clara replied. He jabbed at Whitney pointedly.

"Yeah, but I still bet Whitney would tell the coach and make you sit out of practice."

"Whitney wouldn't snitch."

"Whitney is absolutely gonna snitch," Whitney said.

Clara popped out a couple of pills and chugged the rest of her soda with them. As soon as the fizzing in her throat died down, she told them both, "Traitors, the lot of you."

"Yeah, love you too, Clare. Now go see the nurse before classes start—"

"Oh my God, D.J., shut up, they're actually coming into the cafeteria."

Nicole's interruption was met with mild protests, mostly from D.J. for being told to shut up. But when the doors opened and the people she'd focused on entered the cafeteria, Clara let out a long, tired breath and decided to at least spare the Cullens one glance.

It wasn't that she hated the characters or the whole plot surrounding them—she just wanted no part of it, and being overly interested in them would lead to either getting involved, or feeling bitter over being left out.

Naturally, in the presence of the Cullen-Hale family, all the students were every shade of enamoured and envious. People wanted to be with them, and others wanted to be them. The third group, who still admired the beauty of the uncanny family, instead resented them for it and immediately made up their minds on their opinions. Clara pursed her lips as she looked them all up and down, putting names to faces as she did so. They didn't look anything like their actor counterparts, closer to their book descriptions than anything. Emmett was a giant of a man, well over six feet, and his wife Rosalie was hands down the most gorgeous of them all. Jasper was covered in the scars from past battles that never showed in the films until he got his proper focus, though they weren't visible for the most part. Unless you knew to look for them like Clara did, ordinary people wouldn't see them. Alice was by his side, and the term "pixie" definitely applied like the books had said. Tiny and nimble, almost light on her feet as she skipped next to him, and a brief moment passed by where Clara wondered if Alice's history mentioned any dancing.

After the asylum, obviously, she told herself, but before joining the Olympic coven, surely she and Jasper had done some dancing? If not, she'd be a little surprised.

One thing similar to the film was the arrival of Edward, tailing behind his family and playing the part of the loner while the couples sat together at the table. Bella hadn't been too biassed with his description in the books, she found—he really was a tween's walking wet dream, and Clara wanted to scoff at the fact that vampirism had enhanced that for him. It was always so odd that beautiful people were picked to be vampires, but at least they had the reasoning of being a predatory trait. It was hard to ignore something alluring if you didn't know it could kill you.

Clara huffed through her nose and turned back to her food once Edward sat with his family. Surprise, surprise, the gorgeous vampires from out of town were gorgeous. Forks may have been a small town, but it was almost funny how starstruck everyone was over seemingly normal people.

"You guys need hobbies," Clara told her friends. D.J. scoffed and tried to agree, but his voice cracked as he did so.

"Hey, twenty bucks is twenty bucks," Austin repeated. "They won the genetic lottery, though."

"I heard they're adopted," Nicole hissed excitedly. "Like, their dad is super young so it makes sense they're his fosters!"

Come to think of it, how old was Carlisle when he was turned? Early twenties, right? How in the world they managed to pass five teenagers off as his adopted kids when he was no older than a college graduate was beyond her.

Clara finished off the rest of her fries and picked up her tray. After the Cullens arrived, there was about… two years before the shifters started coming into their own? She'd have to give Emily a heads up about Sam. Ah, but how would she explain knowing that to them? Outsiders weren't supposed to know about that. Wing it, maybe? No, Billy would just jump down her throat as soon as he caught wind of it. And then that was involvement with Jacob she didn't want.

Male leads were a pain in the ass. If not for the things she knew, she could just coast through high school with high grades and honours thanks to having done it all before. Why couldn't she be from someone else's family? This blew.

"You good, Clare?"

"Nurse," she sighed. "Maybe I should go home."

D.J. gave her a thumbs up. As he looked away from her, back to the Cullen-Hales, he furrowed his brows and tugged at her sleeve to stop her. "Hey, you know the Cullens or something?"

"I'm gonna be so goddamn mad if you kept that from me," Nicole said.

"I don't," Clara insisted.

"Then why are they looking at you like you just disrespected their existence?"

What in the—

Clara scrunched up her face, ignoring the pain, and looked back over at the Cullens. Sure enough, five sets of eyes were on her and already-pale faces had blanched even more. She kept the scrunched up expression, shrugging at them like she wanted an answer, but the reality of it all dawned on her when she looked at Edward again.

Surely he hadn't heard all of that over everyone else. It wasn't like he could turn the ability off, so surely he'd muted most of the cafeteria—herself included—to ignore them. Yeah, maybe it was a fuck up on her part to forget that Edward Cullen was the mind reader, but it wasn't like he actively sought out thoughts or anything, right?

He turned in his seat, still watching her.

Her expression dropped. She pulled her arm from D.J.'s grip.

"Yeah, no, I gotta—" She ran out of the cafeteria before even finishing the sentence. The Cullens, without missing a beat, were in hot pursuit.

Kudos to those who read all of that and many thanks to those that stick around. Update will be whenever I can get to it. Cheers lads