A Ray of Sunshine

A/N It's been nearly 4 years since I've touched this fic, but after reading it over I want to crawl into a cave and spend the rest of eternity there.

Still do. But I've decided to postpone those plans and rewrite this.

Hope you enjoy~

Prologue

"Life isn't everything, sweetheart."

Those had been the last words her grandfather had ever uttered, before he finally succumbed to his three-year battle with lung cancer.

Back then, Nichole had been too overwhelmed by his death to even try to understand what his last words meant. But now, as she stood just a foot away from death's sweet embrace, she finally understood what he had meant.

Life… as she had found, became so much greyer when you didn't have much to live for. She tried, oh how she tried, to find something, anything to latch onto… but in the end, nothing worked.

Her first attempt had been with a razor.

Jamie still had the scar from when she managed to wrestle the blade from her shaking hands.

Her second had been at the beach.

Breathing became a lot harder after that.

Her third, a handful of pills on the floor of a back alley.

Found by a off duty officer, who managed to drag her to the nearest hospital just in time.

Her one before this had been with a rope.

The bruises on her neck still hurt to the touch.

Nothing had worked. So, in the end, she had climbed up the stairs… entered the roof… took off her shoes and…

Jumped.

.

.

.

.

When the police arrived at the scene, and saw her mangled body, they could only grimace as her corpse greeted them with a far too wide smile.


Nichole Taylors had wanted to die. She had practically thrown herself at death and greeted him with open arms. But, as Nichole found out, death was not so welcoming.

She remembers the gloved hand of death clasping down on her skull and blinding her vision before it all became a dark black void.

She remembers a large, soft feeling grasped in the palm of her hand and a low gruff voice chuckling at her. Both were comforting and, for some reason, Nichole never wanted that feeling to fade.


Amnesia and partial blindness were what Nichole had been diagnosed with when she woke to find her surroundings all but a blurred mess of colours.

Her name was Phoebe Marie. She was born 7 years ago, in a small town in Washington called Forks. She had been in a plane crash with her 'parents' while going on a trip to Hawaii. She had been saved by sheer dumb luck as one of the surviving passengers had rushed out with her only moments before the aircraft exploded.

This was not true.

Her name was Nichole Taylors. She had been born 28 years ago, in a small country house in the English countryside. Her parents had died years ago, leaving her in the care of her elderly grandfather who also passed soon after. She had been a suicidal librarian who'd died by jumping off a 40th store building.

She was not Phoebe, but in a sense she also was.

Nichole could not bear to tell Phoebe's remaining relatives that she was not their niece. She could not tell them that she was not their darling Pheo. Instead she claimed amnesia and watched the years go by with her loving aunt and uncle. She was happy with her new life...so happy until they also left her.

She was alone again but this time there was no light. There was no colour...there was nothing but darkness and the slight hope that someone...anyone would come and save her…

That's when she met him.

The man of skin colder than any winter breeze, but a heart warmer than her own. She knew what he was. What he tried to hide from her. And still she loved him more than anything in the world.