In Another Life
Revised
Summery: The Cullen Family left Bella in the forest, alone and terrified. This time they never return to Forks. Bella ended up a vampire anyway, and now she is a feared member of the Volturi. She has a daughter, and she has had no contact with the Cullens for almost a century. Revised version of In Another Life.
Rating: Mature - Some violence, sexual situations, and occasional coarse language
Genre: Drama, Suspense, Action, Romance, Family
Relationships: Bella/Alice
Canon Status: Divergent Alternate Universe (Split off from the moment Edward left Bella in New Moon)
We do not own Twilight or most of the characters depicted in this Fan Fiction. No Copyright Infringement is intended… so there! Buffy the Vampire Slayer is owned by Mutant Enemy and 20th Century Fox, the quote is used with proper attribution. We are using this quote as a reference to the show, not to any particular artist or creator. This story is a revision of In Another Life written by Kathryn_518 and is posted here with her full permission and co-operation.
Forward: A New Life
I promise we'll have the first chapter up shortly, but I wanted to start off by thanking Kathryn for bringing me on for one hell of a ride. I cannot remember exactly when, but I joined on to co-write In Another Life about two months after she originally starting posting, with Chapter 28: A Short Sad Life. I had began as just a beta writer, helping out with editing and such. But soon I was taking on entire sections of chapters, and turned into the best project I ever had the honor of working on.
We posted our last chapter in 2015 as life got in the way for both of us. I attempted to resurrect this story a few times over the years, even posting a revision of chapters 1 & 2, but ultimately I found that tackling a revision of something this large was outside my abilities at the time. A few years ago I finished my first original novel, and that changed things for me. I am a much faster and more competent writer now, and last year during lockdown I began the long journey to complete a major editing pass on the entire story.
This version isn't just a minor revision or a repost, this is a major edit and partial re-write. Everything was checked for tonal and story consistency, and while the story will remain mostly intact, almost every detail and event has been touched, (expanded or revised). Every single chapter is different to some extent, especially the first two dozen chapters that I had no part in writing originally. Kathryn has done some editing on the early chapters of my revisions, so this is not just me writing a new version of the story. We ended up having some arguments (as always) with dialogue and character motivations, but she was thrilled with the idea that some elements of the story that showed up much later were blended into the story earlier (so that they are more organic to the story).
Additionally, while the story was set ninety years after the events of Twilight and the start of New Moon (up until Edward left), there was only a token consideration given to the time period the story takes place in. Kathryn did not feel up to the task of writing Science Fiction on top of doing a fan fiction challenge. However, I am a Science Fiction writer, and took the liberty of adding some minor world details to bring things closer to what would make sense for a story taking place roughly in 2096. There was also a debate about whether to post this separately (like we ended up doing) or just replace the original version. I lobbied to keep the original, because I wanted to make sure it was preserved for those who love that version, and also keep all those wonderful comments collected over ten years.
Lastly, there are some entirely new chapters and sections of the story that fill in some details that were skipped over in the original narrative. Also the Cullens are slightly different, both in characterization (not as dense about things) and how they interact with Isabella and Eliza (at least initially). We are also only going to update this version because the new content that will be posted ties directly with this continuity and may be incompatible with the original. This means that the original IAL will likely remain incomplete until this version is completed.
That being said, when all is said and done we can review the story and see how much (if anything) needs to be done to get those chapters in line to match the original (if feasible we may cap off the original so it doesn't remain incomplete). Starting this edit we understand that we had a reputation for very long pauses in release, while the writing process for this story has been long and somewhat arduous, we will continue forward until it is completed.
Those years writing with her half a decade ago were formative, and greatly helped me develop both my writing style but also my ability to work with someone else on a project that spanned years. This helped me both personally and professionally and I couldn't heap greater praise on Kathryn and her sense of humor and story ideas.
A few details and disclaimers
(Re-formatted in 3rd person from the original written by Kathryn_518)
Kathryn originally started this story as a combination of two challenges. A friend of hers explained that if she didn't have an epic tale of her own to tell yet, start one based on someone else's idea; preferably something she didn't care all that much for. She was told that sometimes the best way to hone your writing and ideas is to write about something you hate. Sounds crazy, but apparently if you try and write about something you love, you tend to repeat what's already there, because there is a reason you love it after all. Whereas something you dislike, it's like getting behind the wheel of a car you don't care about. If you end up driving that car over a cliff, well you don't really mind (provided you jump out first, and if you don't jump out it'll be one hell of a ride down).
Twilight. This was the second challenge mentioned. Kat was having a conversation when she called the books/movies stupid. The person she was speaking with agreed with her, but asked if she had ever read them, or watched the movies, which she hadn't. Her response was simple; VAMPIRES DO NOT SPARKLE! Her friend told her that she should read them before forming an opinion, rather than relying on others to form said opinion. So, she read them and watched the movies. Now when she has an opinion on them now, she is actually basing it on personal experience.
The idea for this story originated when Kathryn read a fic called Reach for Me by Black-Rose-of-Night. She loved the concept of an angry and spurned Bella, and a confrontation years later where she is not a helpless human. She loved the idea of Bella having someone else in her life at that point, as a family member. She was also a huge fan of the Bellice pairing. Yet she also felt that Reach for Me while it had great ideas was left abandoned with far too much on the table when it came to possibilities and writing. So she took a crack at it utilizing similar ideas. Please do not waste your time, and ours pointing similarities to that work, she fully admits that there are similarities and gives due credit to that author's work.
Formatting Note on chapters - In the original version all internal telepathic conversations were bolded, this doesn't look very good and draws the reader out of the flow. So any conversation that is telepathic in nature (Isabella and Eliza's link and the wolves speaking to each other while in animal form) will be in Italics.
You may not like some of the things that happen or the changes that have been made and we're totally okay with that. We do invite constructive criticism, but cannot promise to listen to it. We hope you enjoy the Revised edition of In Another Life.
