A/N: Warning: This story will contain graphic depictions of violence, mature language, abuse and lemons in later chapters.

Chapter One

-Red-

My Dad was always my number one supporter. Attended every soccer game, bought me my first car…even held a small party for me at Ruby's when I got my acceptance letter to WSU. He always stepped up to the plate when it came to me, and seemed to enjoy fatherhood as much as he enjoyed his lifelong and well-deserved career as Fork's Chief of Police. He knew everyone by name and most of the permanent residents in town had my childhood home's landline on speed dial.

So when the news came down the pipes that my concussion and fractured vertebrae had caused a traumatic brain injury, when the doctors sat him down to tell me I'd likely never walk again, he was just the same. Or at least, so I've been told. I wouldn't know. I was too drugged up for those first few weeks to even open my eyes let alone hear much of the conversations taking place around me. All that came through the fog were slices of moments. Brief flashes of clarity before exhaustion muddled my vision.

But he stayed by me. He stayed through the DNR conversations, the endless surgeries and somehow managed the accident with the care and tactfulness of a well trained officer. But when all the doctors, nurses and well wishing friends and family left…he became Charlie again, my Dad. For weeks he would stay the night beside me, reading from fishing magazines, playing crossword puzzles and stroking my hand.

He would speak to me too. Sometimes just a quick peck on the cheek and a murmur in my ear urging me to be brave as they wheeled me back into the OR after being forced to make a decision on my behalf. Most of the time I was too far gone to nod or make out what he was saying, but in the moments I did, it was the only lifeline I had. The only proof I was still alive.

Now, three months out from the accident, he was back to work, but made a point to visit me every night. He would bring takeout from Port Angeles and would personally deliver my meal tray so we could enjoy dinner together. It had become a routine, similar to my childhood of eating together in front of the TV on our worn plaid couch.

It had always been just me and him; until I left for college two years ago.

"Hey baby, you ready for me today?"

My dim room was cloaked in ever present darkness, and with a long focused effort I turned my jaw towards the now open wooden door frame. The rotation of staff at Olympic Medical Center had become accustomed to my silence, my neck brace restricting my movement as the pain was still too sharp and the damage still too new for more than small gestures. But while some chose the path of awkward sighs and mumbled apologies as they took to my care, a few had taken the approach of filling the silence themselves.

I wasn't sure if I had a preference. I rarely had any preferences these days.

Rhonda winked at my bland stare and shuffled inside with her cart. "You can glare all you want sweet thing but you know I'm too stubborn for my own good." A strand of her braided black hair fell free from behind her ear as she leaned forward to remove her boxes from the cart. "And you know you feel better after I've been through with you, hm?"

I think if I had met Rhonda a year ago, I would've loved her. I could recognize that now at least, even if all that currently swirled in my chest was yawning nothingness. She was funny and sweet, and seemed to have a sixth sense to my body's needs and limits. I saw her every day, Monday through Thursday, and then I had to suffer through the other PT Nurse Jessica over the weekend. Her hands were different then Rhonda's. Cool, sharp with manicured nails that dug into my lifeless limbs..

I watched Rhonda as she washed her hands in the small sink and reached for her massaging supplies. She smelled of shea butter, soft, warm and homey. She always took the time to apply cinnamon lotion before she started my exercises, massaging the useless tendons and ligaments before moving on to the more intensive and laborious stretches.

She turned back to me, a twinkle of mischief and warmth present in her eye as she reached for the remote hanging on my cot. Pressing a button, my back began to rise up with the mattress and my legs shifted down.

"Oooh you're in one of your famous moods today ain't you? Well that's alright with me. I tell you that 206 damn near blew my back out yesterday?" Her milk chocolate eyes crinkled with feigned irritation and she tossed that rogue braid over her shoulder. "Mmmhm. She did, yes ma'am. I was reaching over to adjust her form during a rise and fall, you know how I do, and that bird kicked the air out of my chest. She's lucky I didn't tell dinner service to feed her thickened water for the next two weeks, aggravating woman." She smiled, all in good humor as she began to remove my blankets from my torso.

"They can't all be like you, 'ya know. Stoic and hard working. Mm-mm." My pale, too thin legs were now exposed to the air and I couldn't be bothered to feel anything other than ambivalence as she arranged each leg with expert gentleness on top of her triangle shaped cushions. "No, most of the day I hear complainin', moanin' and sometimes even a bribe will be thrown my way to sweeten the deal. Can you believe? Bribing Ms. Rhonda Adams." She tsked and my eyes followed her palms as she adjusted my hips to the new contour of the folding mattress.

"And that new doctor they hired, what's his name, Newton I think? Hmph." Her coffee colored cheeks folded with a derisive snort as her full lips let out a breath. "You know what he told me, swaggerin' down the hallway? He sees me, pushing my cart from 206 after being drop-kicked like a bag of flour, and the man has the nerve to ask me if I could go change somebody up in level eight. As if he can't see me with my cart and equipment, thinks I'm a CNA I'm sure." She shook her head. "Honey, if I wanted to wipe asses I'd be home taking care of Carl." She shot me another wink as she grabbed the lotion, applying it liberally to her own hands and forearms.

Carl, as I had learned, was her six pound ancient chihuahua that she had nursed from the edge of death more times then I'm sure even God was comfortable with. He was senile, she had told me, barking at walls and frequently wandering the house at all hours of the night.

"Don't look at me like that. You ain't met Carl, he's filled with piss and vinegar these days but he's still my baby. Just like you. Even when you test me like you're tryin' too with these cold toes." Her hands fell to my feet as she began the massage.

For all the energy this took, I knew she was right. The exercises, they did help. Bed sores, cramping muscles, all that took me out of the clouds I sought shelter in and forced me to acknowledge the present state of myself.

Charlie had noticed, of course he did. How could he not? My empty brown eyes staring back at him every evening, my refusal to speak more than a word or two… He knew something had happened. Something dark and twisted and unknown to him. He tried to ask a couple of times, sitting beside me, holding my hand through the rats nest of monitor wiring and fluid tubes.

But…I couldn't. I couldn't admit to him what his happy little daughter had become. What I had let him do to me…and then…what I had done to him. He was the reason Jessica's cold fingers made me reel, made me nauseous. Why the red hues of the morning sunrise made me shiver from cold sweats, and even now… made me watch the shadows for unnaturally still superhuman beings.

Rhonda must've seen something shift in me, and she fell into an easy quiet as her hands moved up my thigh, paying particular attention to my knees.

The worst part of all this, the worst part of enduring the well wishes and the hugs and the sweet smiles of those I had known all my life coming with warm cups of tea and muffins… was the look in their eyes. That sad, pitying look you gave to the sad cripple who lay motionless in white hospital gowns.

I had been whisked from the water off of La Push beach in one of the worst storms of the season. Even that had been a miracle. A tardy fisherman had been boarding up his boat in the harbor when he saw me, and risked life and limb to pull me on deck. I had been broken, bloody and bloated with sea water when Charlie had gotten the call. Speeding through the rain in the one and only ambulance not currently in use during the storm, as medics pushed drugs into me, and pulled water out.

I knew that my silence only anchored the thread of wariness floating in their minds.

Suicide.

They weren't entirely wrong. Just… not the way they all imagined. I didn't ache for the release of death even now, in this condition. The aids they sent to watch me were unnecessary, if not a little baffling. I could barely lift my wrist. How they thought I could slit one with their back turned was beyond me.

And so I was usually treated with kid gloves. Gentle, hesitant touches and irritatingly empathetic croons. Because they didn't know. How could they? I certainly couldn't tell them.

What? Put them at risk? Put myself at risk? No. Let them craft the narrative that fit their needs. I was a sad, lonely college student who tried to off herself twenty miles away from her childhood home.

But deep inside, deep, deep inside…where only I knew to look… the truth. The horrible horrific, embarrassing and heartbreaking truth that I was…what? Mourning? Reeling from the last six months of my life where paranormal had become normal? Where sacrifice for a love that never existed seemed appropriate? Where my body had been touched and tasted without consent and now lay broken in clear cause and effect?

That I had offered up my insignificant mortal life-

"Baby, you're going somewhere I can't follow." I looked up, my eyes focusing again as her warm hand tilted my chin towards her searching gaze.

How she could read so thoroughly a lifeless husk was beyond me. I blinked and let out a breath, then another.

"There you are. Breathe for me okay? We can take a minute." I hadn't noticed, but both my legs were now coated in a thin sheen of lotion, and warmed into a malleable and slightly more flexible state. How long had she been finished, waiting for me to come back to earth? Had she been talking to me long?

She pulled up one of the gray fold out chairs and sat next to me as I breathed, reeled myself in. Taking my hand in hers, she twisted my palm face up and smiled, tracing my fingers with hers as she again massaged tired muscle.

"You know I'm here for you. If you ever need anything or anybody. You know that don't you?" Her usually playful cadence softened slightly. "I know you got your Daddy. And I know you got 'erry body else tryin' to pull whatever is in there out of you."

I arched my neck, succeeding in turning my eyes to stare at the ceiling.

"But I hope you know anything you say in here, that's our business. You and me got an arrangement. You let me bitch and wail about my day, I do the same for you. Right?" Her lips curved upwards again.

I felt a flicker inside me, something too small yet to count as a real emotion. But it was something.

Losing my body to this…it had been the price for what I had done, endured. What had happened. And I had accepted that. Well, mostly. Mostly, I tried not to think too much about it. Tried to live in that space before silence.

But my life wasn't quiet. It was loud, and exposing. How was I supposed to grieve the loss of someone I had truly thought I'd loved, when this was how I was to do it? No privacy. No say in my own body. Honestly, the sensation had become familiar.

Vampires were not real. At least to Rhonda, Dr. Newton and everyone else in this little sleepy town. They didn't understand, couldn't understand the monsters lurking in the darkness.

Knowing that they existed, seeing behind the veil them and others had constructed, hadn't done me any good. Nowhere was safe among those that could will others to affection, turn bones to dust and if inclined, could make you forget what they wished you had never known.

That's why Forks. I had traded one monster for another. A secret, a way out slipped from the mouth of Edward's sister unknowingly. They of course must know where I was, but if I lived…if I remembered… she wouldn't be able to see.

I had been a fighter in my last few moments, fighting for freedom and independence. Fighting for the young woman I had once been, a lover of all things handmade and bound in leather. Someone who loved to sing and dance around a firepit and laugh with her head thrown back. Someone who truly deeply loved her life and was excited to fill each moment with memories and friendships. Who sipped spiced wine while opening presents with her family every holiday and who had swam in that very beach on rare humid summer nights.

The dull beep of my heart rate monitor lured me back to the present.

When I didn't respond to Rhonda she reached for the old CD player Dad had brought by and turned on some music. Filling the silence in a way that neither of us had to work for, and I closed my eyes as she reached for my left leg, pulling and pushing.

X

The night came with usual ease and I took slow mouthfuls of mushroom soup from Dad as we watched the taped ballgame. I hated being fed like a child. Hated eating only blended mush day-to-day and being forced to watch as others used their able bodies to walk and move away and towards conversations of their choosing. But being angry took energy I couldn't summon. So as always, I opted for silence.

"Billy was thinking of coming by Saturday. Said something about bringing by Jake, too. If you're feeling up for it." Dad's matching brown eyes crinkled as he worked up a smile. "Might be good for you to see him, Bells. I know he's missed you something awful."

I didn't respond, just continued counting the soft click of the clock mounted on the wall.

"And I know, I know, how you are feeling with visitors lately. But give the kid a chance. He hasn't seen you since September."

Another flicker of something passed through my heart, but it soon faded away.

Setting the bowl and spoon down, he gently wiped my lips with a folded paper napkin. I tried my hardest to keep looking at the ceiling, avoid his eyeline and the swimming thoughts and worries collecting in them. I knew I was scaring him, knew every moment of dullness I waded through made him wonder if I was even still in there. If a combination of words or visitors would be enough to unlock me. I knew…I knew he missed his daughter, wanted her safe and healing and happy.

I just… couldn't care.

He sighed, collecting our dishes and mess back onto the tray. "We can talk about it more tomorrow. Tell you what? How about a walk?" He walked to the reclining wheelchair and placed a hand on one of it's back handles.

After a pause he continued, "What do you say? Let's try some fresh air before we get you to bed." Reaching for me in my cot and gently arranging me in his arms, he then carefully settled me onto the padded seat, strapping me in with buckles and velcro straps. At almost eighty pounds, I weighed almost nothing now and blinked slowly to the stale air as he arranged a quilt he had brought from home over my lap. Kissing my cold cheek, he got to work moving over the catheter bag, fluid pump and monitors with practiced skill to the chair.

I had heard the doctor last week, speaking low in murmured hushed tones and gesturing to me as I lay quietly only feet away. Telling my Dad it was for my own good that he started pushing me harder. Push me out of this hole I had fallen deeper and deeper into. That my mind needed exercise and that this depression I was wallowing in was going to hold my recovery back. Convincing him that I needed to learn to try, needed to want to see improvement in my body function before it would start building. And that once I saw gains, maybe it would help my declining 'mental status'.

So lately he had taken to his nudges, as I thought of them. A nudge forward, a nudge outside, a nudge to see visitors I had completely stopped acknowledging.

He moved in front of me, careful of my neck brace and kneeled, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. "Comfortable?"

I gave a short nod and he beamed, kissing my forehead before taking his place behind me, pushing me forward. It might be comical if it wasn't so sad. Seeing his eyes light up with even the smallest hint of life or effort from me.

He pushed me out onto the nursing floor, and Dad greeted each nurse by name, pausing to catch up with his favorites. Occasionally, he would gesture to me, say my name and a nurse would smile my way or pat my knee. I felt like a doll in a child's carriage. Immobile and simply a vessel to push forward a conversation. My eyes hurt from the strong lights and loud corridors, and when he took me to the elevator I almost sighed in relief.

Feeling the brush of his hand on my hair as the lights clicked downwards, I watched the floors fall from twelve to one, before with a small jingle the doors reopened to the busy lobby. Without the use of my neck I simply watched as people filtered by. A couple outside the elevators arguing over a hospital map, a child kicking the floorboards under a desk as his mother checked them in, doctors pointedly ignoring the music softly billowing from the speakers, phone glued to their ear and barking orders at whatever orderly had gained the courage to call.

These people had lives. Were a hum of vibrancy and comforting chaos, and I watched with a detached sort of surrealism as their distracted gazes stuttered over me briefly, then moved on with forced politeness.

I'm sure I looked awful. I saw my mirrored image frequently enough in the reflective framed stock art posted in my room and new enough of what they saw. They saw a ghost. A sickly pale thing held up with medical devices and support beams, cloyingly empty eyes and hollow cheeks. I was the thing most people feared. The loss of what they couldn't name. The whisper behind closing doors of sickness and the fragility of human life.

We walked for a while, up and down ramps, through the gift shop and past the pediatric wing. Dad stopped to coo at a few newborn babies in bassinets, tended to by overtired nurses through a large glass viewing window. As we explored I watched with a detached sort of ambivalence, almost as if underwater, floating between rooms and corridors and only occasionally lifting my eyeline to graze across a painting or two in the hallway that caught my eye.

We were wheeling back from the main floor, taking a moment to pause outside and blink up at the stars when a cacophony of chaos exploded to our right. Beside us, the residents of each specialty department's waiting room strained neck and ear, whispering excitedly as a large black mustang screeched into the outloading zone mere yards from us. The car was beautifully sleek, spinning black rims with a tinted windshield beholding nothing inside as one door was flung open and with a resounding thud a large mass of man fell cheek first onto the cold asphalt.

Gasps and shouts rang out behind us, and Dad backed us away as the man on the ground twitched and attempted to lift his head.

His wild molten amber eyes swam with hatred as his lips peeled back from long white canines and his copper skin gleamed with sweat. A flash of long ebony hair had fallen across his proud arched brows as he trembled with rage and pain.

I felt my chair being pulled backwards as Dad's voice cut through the noise. "Bells, we should-"

The man let out a low, deadly snarl as staff ran to him. Medics holding a gurney and a few security officers keeping the gawking crowd at bay. He pushed himself up to shaking forearms, revealing his massive frame corded with thickly woven lean muscle. He wore only a buffed brown leather jacket, exposed to his tanned bleeding chest and torn jeans, feet bare against the earth.

He was huge. Terrifyingly big even, as his glare burned into the crowd. The irises of his eyes undulated with burnished copper waves and flickered with unruly and untamed fierceness.

I knew without words. Knew without explanation what the other mortals around me could not.

This was no man. As his wounds became apparent, severe lacerations spanning his torso and legs, bloody gouges on his cheeks, a swollen lower lip leading to a jaw glinting with the white of exposed bone… no ordinary creature could have survived so much pain and stayed conscious. Blood pooled around him and his body trembled as nurses came closer, attempting to bring him inside.

A muscle in his back seized as a hand was pressed against his shoulder. The touch seemed painful against his rigid and shaking back and he let out a deep husky growl.

"Don't…touch…me…" His chest heaved with effort and one large hand pushed the nurse away with significant force, knocking her back a few feet.

I knew that kind of pain. The kind of hot white heat that crunches between splintering bones and bruised organs. The kind that a gentle touch could instantly create a wave of nausea so severe that it flopped inside of you like a dead fish.

"Stop…" I whispered. My voice hoarse from disuse.

The nurse's hand flinched back as he growled at her, his body too weak to rise but unquestionably powerful.

"Bells!" Dad whirled to my front, the current fiasco now forgotten at any utterance of life from my lips. "Are you alright? Where does-"

Another medic reached out with his palms up, talking slowly as he approached. The golden eyed man hunched as best he could into a predatory arch, eyes glinting as he sprayed saliva, fighting against his useless legs splayed behind him. More blood saturated the torn jeans pulled tight against his muscular thighs, his vibrating knuckles holding up his weight as the crowd gawked and pointed.

They didn't know. They couldn't know. They were going to get themselves hurt. Were going to-

"Stop!" I croaked again, my heart racing. My voice was lost in the crowd as cries of shock rippled behind us as an officer uncapped his weapon, and aimed the barrel down at the wounded man, barking orders.

My pounding heart barreled into my ears, blood rushing upwards. My weak fingers slipped forward and pushed against my dad's chest hovering at my knees. "H-Help! Gun!"

Charlie looked at me confused and worried, then his eyes darted back to the scene. I saw the gears click into place, the concerned father retreating and the sheriff pulling himself forward. He stepped a pace away, as if fighting himself, not wanting to leave me alone in a crowded and frantic environment but the rise of adrenaline kicking him to move, to serve. I nodded as best I could through the brace, praying my eyes could convey what I couldn't. Go! Go!

He nodded slowly, understanding my plea and the urgency of the situation around us. "I'll be right back, okay Bells?" He touched my cheek and turned heel, heading right back into the scene and into the shouting and snapping of jaws.

I became one in the crowd. Useless to move, to see over someone's head or ask a question, and the mob of nursing and security staff now inching closer blocked my view.

I had come to Forks seeking asylum from the undead lurking in Seattle. Hearing tell of whole families susceptible to the change of a wolf, and the communities they had built. Of the rage and power they battled, the genetic markings passed father to son in only select tribes. That those who overcame the change survived and even thrived after beginning a never ending battle of wills between man and beast. Eventually building families and homes, keeping their communities and their secrets safe, while maintaining their humanities.

I knew more than I ought, but it had been my only door out.

Edward's arm had been wrapped around me when Alice had let it slip, his fingers idly brushing the nape of my neck as we sat on the taupe leather couch of her office. The scarf I wore most days pushed askew just a hair above the layered purple bruise on my neck, exposing healed puncture wounds. I had seen Alice's eyes widen at the brazenly made and displayed marks on my body, then quickly collect herself under the force of Edward's gaze.

"I'm not risking it. Risking us, Alice."

Alice had shifted slightly, her eyes flickering to the floor then back up to him.

"And I'm not asking you to. But the Quilettes adhere to the treaty just as the others have. They will take our absence as an insult and a possible threat to the perimeters we've set up."

Edward's pale pink lips drifted over my earlobe as I fought a wave of repulsion and maintained my mask of calm indifference. My attention solely on their conversation, my palms sweaty and eyes far away.

Was she going to say anything? Let on she knew what I had done, had caught me doing last night?

Alice sighed and adjusted her purse as she stood. "Everything inside those treaty lines, you know, is a dead zone. I can't see, you can't hear. This is our chance. We only get one a year, Edward."

His sickly sweet scent, that had once reminded me of flowers and fresh fruit, now stank of rot and decay in my nostrils as his breathy sigh fanned across my cheek. He turned to face Alice now, eyes bloodshot and crimson. I wondered if it was my blood staining his irises now, or if mine only supplemented his own.

That small conversation, that wisp of information had been enough. I had found a way through the haze of the thrall, taken my own mind back after months of confusion and fear. And that one shred of hope, had led me to read every article, book, myth and legend I could find on the shifters. I had held that hope to me tightly, my imprisoned heart aching and daring to dream for a world filled with freedom and fresh air. Not blood and pain.

Something, someone, touched my shoulder.

"Swan? Where is your-" Tyler Crowley's voice shouted above the raised voices around us, turning my chair to face him and cupping my cheek gently. "Are you alright?"

My heart still thundered inside me, and I felt the flush of blood stain my cheeks in the frigid night air. I blinked up at him, lips parted in small breaths as I fought for purchase to stabilize myself. The emptiness inside of me hadn't been filled by any means, but had been rattled and shaken badly. Where I had cultivated and protected the cool numbness I so craved, it was now growing raised and irritated, inflamed and hot with nothing to hold onto but open air.

Every myth, every story I had consumed in my hunt for assurance that this life altering risk would free me from his grasp, was whirling in my mind. I couldn't explain how I knew he was a shifter, how I knew the animalistic wildness in his eyes belonged to one of the tribes I had been seeking shelter with.

But I knew what it was to be utterly alone in a room full of people. I knew what it was to be broken and hurting and I… I knew that pain in his eyes.

Tyler said something else to me, and I felt my body being pulled away, back into the warmth of the lobby and to safety. As we neared the elevator, I noticed my hands were shaking against my lap.

Clenched in fists.

A/N:

Question - Longer chapters, longer wait? Or, would you prefer shorter chapters and shorter wait?

Please let me know if you liked chapter one. I've really spent some time planning this story and hope it resonates.

Inspirations:

"Be Like Water" By Taoist Elf

"The Devil You Know" by Unseelie Sidhe

The Choice by Nicholas Sparks

"Hit By Destiny" ocdmess

Stephanie Meyer is the sole owner of the Twilight Franchise, and she owns all related characters you may see here. This is merely a fanfiction of her work.