Disclaimer-Yes! I own them all! I'm getting paid lots and lots and lots of money to write this fic! Sue me!

Disclaimer 2- Jaci ate a mysterious looking mushroom at lunch today.

Authors Note - Its my first attempt at writing in the first person, and my beta says it turned out good. Her comments were I surpassed what she expected, and so unless she expected total horse shit I think this turned out okay. I have realized that the only story I have writen (minus Crash and Burn because I never finished that) that I havent written a sequel to is The Ressurected. I need to learn to leave these fics alone. I can't just let them rest in peace. (A-hehehe. Oh-a-heehehehehe.) Okay, i want lots and lots of reviews, god damn it! Okay now, on with the fic....

Thanks to Karen of all the help with the story last night, putting up with all my griping and such. Wait! You were a bitch to me! Screw you!



Forever Young

"I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of golden sand-

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep-while I weep.

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?"

~Edgar Alan Poe



Chapter One:

Early mornings, that time between light and darkness where the pearly light spills through my bedroom window, that is the time I like best. I never sleep, unless I really want to, and I rarely do. I guess I got that from my mom. They don't like it when I wander around at night, especially Dad; he doesn't like being reminded that I am what I ever so kindly refer to as a Manticore half breed. He likes to think that I am just an average seventeen- year-old girl, so I humor him and pretend to be normal. They think I don't know why they don't let me play sports, why they don't let me take the class trips out of Seattle, why they don't let me visit my aunts and uncles. But I know why Mom always looks over her shoulder, and I know why she paces the floor at night when she is particularly worried that her past is going to catch up with her.

It makes me sad to think about such things, but sometimes the darkness just creeps up on you, like now, at four AM when I don't have anything to keep busy with.

The Mozart concerto I have on my walk-man would lull most teenagers to sleep, but its just comforts me in those eight hours of endless time that I have every night. I have to keep it on low, because Mom might hear, even though I am wearing headphones. "Madelyn Elizabeth," She would say in a stern voice, though I knew she felt my pain on this matter. "Why aren't you asleep. How are you going do well in school if you are to busy listening to your music and writing in that journal of yours when you should be sleeping."

I guess you could say I am lucky. I'm spoiled, and I'm the first to admit it. Dad can't say no to anything, and that is why I have a brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee (Luxury edition of course) in the garage under Fogle Towers parked next to his SUV. A present for my sixteenth birthday, and it only took a week of subtle hints to get it through to him. I always have wondered if he gives me everything I want to make up for those four years that he didn't know about me. Mom was always very honest about that, how she ran away after she found out she was pregnant with me. Its not like he has to be guilty or anything, I have to think really hard to remember a time when he wasn't in my life. But if he thinks he has something to make up for, and it gets me a new car, then its not like I'm going to fight him on it.

Very few people have cars anymore, sometimes the kids who's family's can afford private school tuition cant afford to keep more than one member of their family on wheels. Gas is just too expensive, and I know for a fact that my Jeep was on the upper end of the hundred thousand dollar mark. Sometimes, rich parents spoil their kids with lavish gifts just so they'll keep out of their way while they for-close on orphans and kick puppies, but my parents aren't like that. I'm closer to Mom than most of my friends. Like I said, I'm lucky. My parents love me, and they'd go through hell for me. I'd do the same for Mom, Dad, or Leo in the blink of an eye. That is what family really means to me.

I smile into the darkness as the first rays of light peek over the distant horizon. Leo is just a joy to me. You know, I don't even remember when we stopped calling him Ben and switched to Leo. I think Mom was the first to start calling him Leo, since he was born on August 17th. I think she realized that it was a bad idea to name your son of your crazy brother, it has a might just mess a kid up. Again, they think I don't know about Uncle Ben, but if your nice enough to Uncle Zack, who I might see twice a year if I'm lucky, he'll tell you just about anything.

Anyways, back to Leo. I'm nine years older than him, and we don't look anything alike. He looks just like Mom with his curly mop of brown hair that is always a mess no matter what I try. I guess its funny that I take after dad, being the daughter, and he's the son and looks like Mom. I can't tell you the amount of times that Uncle Bling has made a bad joke about that. We don't see Uncle Bling very often anymore, since he married Aunt Jace and adopted little Maxims. Uncle Zack made them move away from us, saying that it was too much of a tactical risk to have two Manticore's and a handful of half-breeds in the same city. I guess he's right, but it doesn't mean I don't miss them.

It's March now, and in a couple of months, I'm going to graduate from high school. I guess you could say I am a pretty decent student. Considering the fact that I don't even try and I have a B average, I'm pretty happy. Of course, Dad knows I'm barely putting in an effort, and that is the only thing he ever gets on my case about. He wants me to be a star student; I think he wanted me to follow in his footsteps to Yale. But I think that he has accepted that that isn't what I want to do. I'm more than happy to go to the University of Washington and get my education degree. I want to be a teacher, but more specifically, I want to teach young deaf children and their family's how to use sign language. That is what I have wanted to do since Leo lost his hearing. I'll always remember the lady who taught me how to sign, Miss Annabelle. She taught Leo how to sign, and me at the same time so he didn't feel as isolated as he might have felt. I am proud to say that I helped Dad learn, because he struggled with it for a while. Of course, Mom had it faster than all of us. All she did was read a book one night, and the next morning she was completely fluent in ASL. I don't know how she even explained that to people, but that's beside the point.

I want to be able to help the little kids who lose there hearing, I know it would scare me to death if I woke up one morning and just couldn't hear, as was pretty much the case with Leo. I'll always remember the morning, I was about 13, I went into say goodbye to him before Dad drove me to school, and he could barely hear me. After weeks and weeks of tests, it was determined that he had a latent neurological condition called Usher's Syndrome*. He would have gone blind, but with the new retina implant technology, we only had to go to Japan to keep him seeing. The cochlear implant is a lot harder to get your hands on, even in the black market. Leo is on every waiting list known to man, but I'm not really worried about it. He's really happy, and you don't need to hear to get spoiled, just like I do. It's easy to say that he does better in school do than I do. He's always reading some book or studying some random specimen on the microscope Mom and Dad gave him last Christmas. Mom threatened to send him to military school next time he brought home a hurt, abandoned animal. He wants to be a doctor, whether it be for his own species or not is as yet undecided.

As the concerto changes over to Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata', I grin. Yeah, these are the times I like best. Just my thoughts, my CD player, and me. That was enough for me. My smile dimmed a moment when I heard the fall of feet against the floor in the next room, Mom and Dad's room. Mom was doing that a lot more lately, pacing at night. I just hoped it wasn't anything that she couldn't handle.

I glanced at the clock on the nightstand, next to the glass of water and my bottle of Tryptophan that I have to take because of mom's seizures. I don't have them like Mom; they want me to take it just as a precaution. It was a little after five thirty now, I could get away with getting out of bed in about fifteen minuets. I curled up under between the warm sheets, closing my eyes for the moment. Knowing Mom, if she was worried, than she'd be checking on me. I spent that last fifteen minuets before I officially 'woke-up' pretending to be asleep, and as usual, pretending to be normal.