Author's Note: Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight, not me. I would live in a bigger house if I did.
Chapter 2: You Don't Need to Be a Hero to Be a Great Dad
My teeth chattered violently. Whatever I was lying on was cold and hard, creating pressure points where my shoulder blades dug in. I opened my eyes and looked down. I was lying on a stainless-steel table. Not strapped down, a small blessing. I rolled on my side to relieve the pain in my back, but the movement reminded me that I had recently been on fire. The skin on my neck and shoulders tore with the movement, but the pain was fuzzy and dull. Strange, since pain killers don't affect me. I took in the room. It was stark white but also had a misty quality to it.
The pain and the cold were markers of what my life would become now that I had been captured. They wouldn't let me warm up until they were sure they'd indoctrinated me again. Until they could exploit my power, they wouldn't let me have it.
How had they drained what I had?
I had absorbed so much thermal energy from the fire my blood should have boiled. Now I had almost nothing, just enough to keep me breathing. Not even enough to start healing. Well fuck them. I would be cold for an eternity before I gave in. For all I knew it would be an eternity, I had no idea how long I would live.
I could hear a soft rumbling hum from far away and looked around. I saw movement in the far corner of the room. A small boy was crouched in the corner, shivering and surrounded by the mist. He stood up and walked towards me. He looked like a cherub, with round cheeks and messy red hair. He stood next to the table, emerald green eyes staring deeply into mine.
"Bella! Bella! Come back!" he urged.
Come back from where? What does he mean?
"Please, wake up kid!" the boy whispered
Why is he calling me kid? I'm at least a decade older than he is.
The boy reached out and gently wrapped me in a warm hug. He was so little, but I felt enveloped by the warmth of his embrace. The tension of my muscles started to relax and the well of power within my chest began to slowly fill.
"Bells, please. I can't lose you" he whispered, but this time his voice was deep. A man's voice, not a child.
The change startled me, and I woke up with a gasp to see Charlie's worried face over me.
It had been a dream. I should have known when I saw the boy, he was in all my dreams. I'm pretty sure he was supposed to be Peter Pan. Probably an attempt by my subconscious mind to tell me something about my lost childhood.
I get it brain, my childhood sucked. What do you want me to do about it?
I looked around to see that I was fully clothed in a rust-pocked bathtub quickly filling with hot water. The fluorescent lighting and stained wallpaper were familiar, though I'd never been there before. It was just like all the other cheap roadside motel rooms Charlie and I stayed in.
Charlie!
My head snapped up to look at him, my hands reaching out to touch his arms, chest and face. Checking that the sole member of my family was truly alive. My eyes searched the room. If this was a dream, the boy would be here. He wasn't, I was awake.
"You aren't dead." I croaked out.
"No, I'm not. Thanks to you" he replied.
"How?" That blast was so close, it should have killed him.
"Bells, I think...at least it seemed like...you shielded me" he said, rubbing the back of his neck.
"Charlie, I was shielding you, but it's not possible. You know my shield only blocks psychic attacks"
"All I know is that everything around us exploded. Blew a hole through the damn wall, but it didn't touch us. It was like we were in a bubble. I even saw a piece of shrapnel headed right toward me suddenly stop midair and bounce in the other direction." He shook his head as he finished.
I stared at him in disbelief. What he was describing was impossible. I just didn't have the ability to do that. No one did.
"There has to be some other explanation" I said.
"Bells, the amount of energy you absorbed from the fire should have killed you, but here you are. I think that you channeled all of it into the shield and channeled it off before it could do any real damage. You leveled up kid" he said with a chuckle. I had to smile at his nerdy vernacular, but I doubted his explanation.
"Well, let's take the win even if we can't explain it, I guess" I said as I sank deeper into the bath. My eyes drooped and I sighed with contentment. This bath was almost as comforting as the dream hug. The burns on my shoulder, neck and chest started to itch as new skin pushed up from underneath the charred exterior. I would need to sleep in the bath for at least eight hours to heal completely and recharge my energy stores. We would leave the drain open and the hot tap on to make sure it didn't cool as I slept.
"How long do you think we have before getting back on the road?" I asked, my eyes closed.
"Probably only four hours, I couldn't take you as far as I would have liked. Demetri is with them, we need to get as far away as possible" he replied, remorse in his voice.
"That's okay, wake me in three. I need to change my hair." I said as I let my head slip under the water and quickly fell asleep.
When Charlie woke me, I was groggy but climbed out of the tub to assess myself in the mirror.
Good god! How bad was it before I healed?
The skin on my face and neck was angry and red. My shoulder was blistered, and the left side of my shirt was little more than ash. My long blond hair was charred on one side up to my chin.
I went to my suitcase and rifled through my hair supplies, pulling out scissors, a comb and a few silver duck bill clips. Then I looked through my boxes of dye. Jane and Aro had seen me with blond hair, which meant that I would need to change color and style. Charlie would need to change his appearance as well. I pulled out brown dye for myself, it would be nice to return to my natural color for a while. Unfortunately, Charlie would need to cut his shoulder length hair. He would be sad to see it go. I think it made him feel cool and rebellious. Funny, given that we were fugitives. I would give him a nondescript crew cut.
Maybe I should suggest facial hair, he would look good with a mustache.
I walked out of the bathroom with our supplies and tossed them onto the bed next to Charlie. I pulled the desk chair into the middle of the room and sat down.
"I think a straight bob, it will have to be about chin length to cut off all of the burned hair." I said to Charlie. He picked up the supplies and started working. We had both learned to cut hair online. It turns out that having a terrible haircut makes you stand out. Since we wanted to fit in, and we needed to change our appearance at a moment's notice, it became a necessity. Charlie was remarkably good at it. He may have missed his calling.
An hour later, we were on the road with new haircuts and in a new to us RV Charlie had bought with cash while I slept.
"Where to?" Charlie asked.
"What do you mean?" I asked, confused. Weren't we going to Forks? I noticed that Charlie was pulling onto the south bound I-5.
"I was thinking Cabo might be fun for a while" he said. "Maybe we just keep going south until we hit Patagonia." He took a swig of water and wiped the sweat from his forehead. The heater was on full blast, and even though all the vents were pointed at me, it was still hot inside the RV. I reached over and touched my cold hand to the back of his neck. I was always cool to the touch since I was pulling heat from my surroundings. In fact, the air surrounding me was several degrees cooler than the rest of the cab, but I was too far away for that to help Charlie much. He would have to cope with the heater until I was healed. It would go a lot faster if I had been able to stay in the bath with the specific heat of water four times higher than air, but this would have to do.
"What about Forks?" I questioned.
Charlie sighed. "Listen Bells, I almost lost you. I can't do that again. Just because the message was right about the melta gun doesn't mean that Forks is safe. I might just be another trap. We can't risk that" he reasoned.
He was right. It might still be a trap, but I couldn't just let the promise of safety go that easily. What if it wasn't a trap? What if he was giving up his last chance for a normal life? I couldn't let him do that.
"So South America?" he asked.
I sighed and he smiled, assuming I had acquiesced.
I was quiet while we drove. Looking out the window and deciding the best course of action.
"What did you want out of life before all of this?" I asked.
We frequently had deep conversations about everything from our hopes and dreams to the meaning of life. Sometimes the conversations weren't as deep and involved the physics surrounding various sci-fi fandoms and plot holes we had noticed but chose to ignore. Either way, it was a safe place to start and wouldn't put him on the defensive right away.
"Oh, I always wanted to be a small-town cop" he chuckled, "You know, breaking up house parties and pretending to arrest teenagers committing minor crimes only to take them home to their parents." He sighed. "I just wanted to be a member of a close-knit community, helping to guide and shape the young people and protecting growing families. Pretty stupid, huh?" He finished, a blush blooming across his cheeks.
I knew that Charlie was a cop in Chicago before he was recruited by the Agency, a covert branch of Volterra Advancements in Defense and Genetics. I hadn't known about his desire to be a small-town cop, I was a little surprised, but this worked in my favor.
"You know...Forks is a small-town. Plus, they expect us to go to a warm climate, going north would really throw them off" I hinted.
"Bella, we talked about this. It might be a trap" he responded, with a gentle tone.
"But it might not be, it seems like it's Esme" I said
"You're right, it does seem like the messages are from Esme, but that doesn't mean it isn't a ploy. She was my friend at the Agency, but so were Aro and Caius." he said, sadness lacing his tone. He had lost everything when he took me. He couldn't even contact his family.
I shook my head. "It isn't fair! All you want is a normal peaceful life fixing cars and fishing but you can't have it because you are so focused on protecting me. I won't let you waste your life because you impulsively saved me from them!" I shouted.
He laughed gently, "You think I acted impulsively? I had been trying to figure out a way to get you out for a year before I finally did. I don't regret what I did, I just wish I could have gotten the others out too." he finished.
He meant the five other children housed at the Albuquerque branch of the Agency with me. I only had vague memories of them. They were like me and Jane. Apparently, there were groups of us housed in branches of the Agency all over the world. Charlie said that I was really close to one of the little boys in our branch, but I couldn't remember. It didn't matter. He was probably hunting me with the rest of them.
I tried another tactic, "We can't stay on the road forever. This was our third close call this year. They are figuring out our patterns, it is only a matter of time before they catch us. We should try something different."
"Like walking straight into an ambush?" he said
I leaned my head against the window. There wasn't a point in arguing further. He wouldn't ever put his needs before my safety. His mind was made up, we would continue this half existence forever. I hadn't realized how much hope I had placed on the idea of Forks until the tears started to prick my eyes. I stood up and pretended to use the cramped restroom. It smelled like old fiberglass and the weird blue stuff in RV toilets. I focused on the smell to calm down. There wasn't a point in moping. This was my life and at least I had Charlie.
We traveled in tense silence for an hour before Charlie cleared his throat. I looked up to see that his eyes were rimmed in red.
"What's wrong?" I asked, startled.
"It's not fair" he replied.
"That's what I have been saying, you have given up too much for me. You deserve a normal life Charlie" I said with fervor.
Finally, he was getting it.
"That's not what I mean. It's not fair to you. I chose this life when I took you. You never had a choice. The Agency just took your childhood from you, and I did my best, but let's be honest, you had to grow up fast." He finished.
I felt something drip off my chin. I touched my cheek and felt the wetness of tears. He was right, I never had a choice. I had never really allowed myself to think about that though. I wasn't normal. I had ruined Charlie's life. I didn't deserve a normal life, but for the first time, I realized that I wanted it.
"We can't do anything about that. You are right, Forks might be a trap" I said, my voice cracking with emotion.
"But it might not be" he repeated my own words back to me as he exited the freeway.
"What should we do? We can't just go in there blind." I said.
"I really do think it is Esme. She will recognize me, but she hasn't seen you since you were four. We haven't given any indication that we are listening to the messages or have even seen them. In fact, we pretty much confirmed that we weren't receiving the messages when they found us staking out the melta gun. On top of that, the explosion should have killed me, and the fire should have killed you. They probably think we are dead and buried under a pile of rubble. Even if it is an ambush, they won't be expecting us now. We will just pose as father and daughter new to town. I will stay hidden away at home, you will enroll in high school. We will investigate Esme at night, try to figure out what she is up to and if she can be trusted before we reveal ourselves. Sound good?" He finished.
I nodded, "Yeah, that sounds like as good a plan as any."
I was stunned. We were really going to try. I couldn't help the smile pulling at the corners of my mouth. I looked over at Charlie to see that he was smiling too. Hope was a powerful thing.
"What average teenage girl activities do you think you would like to partake in? Maybe the mall? Become a cheerleader? Pick up rollerblading?" he said slyly.
"This isn't 1993. I am pretty sure teenagers don't do any of those things anymore. Well, maybe cheerleading, but could you really see me doing that?" I scoffed and shook my head, "I think I will just try to finish my 40k army and maybe try to find some friends that want to play." I had always wanted to play an Imperial Guard Army, but since Charlie wasn't interested, I was out of luck.
"You know...a lot of boys play that game. Would you...maybe...want to find a... boyfriend?" he stammered the question out.
Hah! Yeah right!
"Oh yeah! I am definitely going to look for a boyfriend" I deadpanned. " I can just see it. Our eyes lock from across the gaming table, I can't help but notice his greasy hair and pasty skin. I smile coyly, he asks me out. We go on a few dates, fall madly in love. Then he finds out I'm an alien that sleeps in our bathtub and runs screaming in the other direction. Sounds like the romance of the century." I looked at him and rolled my eyes dramatically.
He laughed. "You never know, there's a key for every lock."
"I think those sayings only apply to humans" I said laughing. I wouldn't ever find love, but that was okay. I was getting a chance to live in safety and maybe make friends. Who knows, maybe Charlie would find the key for his lock? Or I guess she would be the lock and he would be the key? Yuck, I shuttered at the image.
"You should go get some sleep. I will take over driving" I suggested.
"That sounds great" he said, yawning loudly.
We switched at the next rest stop, and Charlie went to the back of the RV to get ready for bed while I got us back onto the northbound I-5. After a few minutes, he poked his head into the cab.
"Night Charlie" I said without looking away from the road.
"Um...Bella?" he started
"What's up?" I asked.
"Listen, I know this might be weird for you, but while we are in Forks you should probably call me dad instead of Charlie." he said carefully.
I smiled and looked up at him. "Charlie, you are my dad."
He looked back at me with such tenderness my heart broke.
Did Charlie really not know what he meant to me?
"I feel the same way kid" he replied, voice breaking. He turned and faced away from me, "Night" he creaked and hurried away to bed. I shook my head. How could he not know I thought of him that way? He may not have been my biological father, but there was no doubt that Charlie was my dad.
An idea started to percolate in the back of my mind. It was February now, but maybe if everything worked out, we would still be in Forks this June. I started scheming while I settled in for the long drive. We would be in Forks by tomorrow. I hoped that it would become our home.