N/A: I don't own Twilight. All rights go to Stephenie Meyer. I only own Eleanor and her story.

FROM THE DAY SHE WAS BORN, ELEANOR KNEW THERE WAS SOMETHING ABOUT HER THAT WASN'T COMPLETELY NORMAL.

The atmosphere charged with tension and worry, the looks of shock from the few people who knew her, or her aunt hiding her in the basement every time someone knocked on the door. For all those things and more, she knew, indeed, that she wasn't normal.

Still, it was hard for her to understand what part of her wasn't normal. Especially when she looked like every other kid she saw in magazines or on TV... Or at least she did. For a while.

And she also liked normal things. She liked playing with dolls, for example. Or at least she had liked them until she was two months old. When she turned three months old, she became more interested in reading. She had first started with magazines she found around the house when her aunt let her upstairs. The pictures were pretty. And then she continued with books, mostly math textbooks, which belonged to her aunt who was a teacher at the local school. And even though those didn't have such pretty pictures, they made her kill time with the different exercises and problems to solve.

That's pretty much how her education went. Seeing her interest in books, her aunt introduced her to a different one each week. History, Biology, Geography, Art. The latter used to be her favorites. And when the weekend came, Eleanor, still with sloppy handwriting, would write a reflection on what she had read.

For a long time, all those books had been her company. But just like the dolls, there came a time when the books also bored her. She wanted to talk. Mostly, she wanted to talk to kids her age, the ones she saw on shows, who were her height and always seemed to have a lot of fun.

"You can't, Eleanor," her aunt had told her sharply when she had expressed her desire to go outside

"Why not?" Eleanor had asked, her lower lip quivering slightly, as it always did when she talked to her aunt.

Lucy wasn't bad, Eleanor always thought. She brought her books and complimented her writing with a smile. But sometimes, sometimes Lucy looked at her differently, with a frown on her face and a worried expression, like there was something wrong with her.

Eleanor never asked her what was exactly that, though. She was afraid to ask and upset her more. That's why she avoided having those kinds of conversations.

But then again sometimes, in her need for answers, it became impossible.

"Because they can't see you, Eleanor," Lucy had replied, her face already annoyed as it always was when Eleanor asked too much. "We've been through this. No one can know you exist, do you understand?"

And Eleanor had nodded, her head drooping. But in truth, she didn't really understand.

After that kind of conversations, her aunt became a bit paranoid, she noticed. She was already a somewhat obsessive woman, always worried, always nervous. But it was after each episode in which Eleanor insisted on going outside that her paranoia intensified. She would leave her in the basement for weeks, double-locked, only opening the door to pass her food or more books.

Thus, with difficulty, Eleanor had finally learned that she shouldn't ask anything related to her confinement condition. Instead, she had chosen to absorb as much information as possible about the outside world. The one she could only appreciate in magazine pictures, television and sometimes, with a lot of luck, from the living room window.

Those were the best days, she considered. When her aunt seemed to be in a particularly good mood and let her go upstairs. Sitting with her on the living room couch, playing cards or some board game while some quiet music played in the background.

"I won!" Eleanor exclaimed, raising her arms victoriously. For as long as she could spin thoughts, she knew she liked to win anything that was a competition.

Her aunt laughed softly, but suddenly her expression changed completely. "My goodness," she whispered, startled. Eleanor followed her gaze, confused. She quickly lowered her arms as she realized that her t-shirt had ridden all the way up, exposing almost her entire belly to the air. "I gave you that shirt a week ago and it doesn't fit you anymore."

"I'm sorry," Eleanor replied, embarrassed, though she didn't know exactly what for.

Lucy kept watching her, in a mixture of surprise and thought. "I guess I'll have to buy you new clothes," she finally said, letting out a sigh.

The mood had already returned to its usual atmosphere of tension and worry. And Eleanor hated herself for it. Why couldn't she stop growing? Why couldn't she stay the same size for a while as the biology books explained?

"Aunt Lucy..." she began to elaborate, voice doubtful. "Why am I growing so much?"

To her surprise, her aunt didn't give her a dirty look or frown. She just closed her eyes throwing her head back on the couch, looking tired. "Everyone grows up Eleanor, that's how a child becomes an adult."

"But...I'm seven months old. I shouldn't look like...?"

"Seven months? You look seven to me," Lucy laughed, even without opening her eyes. There was a certain bitterness in her tone that prevented Eleanor from laughing with her. Then, opening her eyes and looking at her niece's big green ones, she said "I'm sorry, El. I know you're seven months old. And yes, you should look different. But you're not normal, remember?" Eleanor nodded, still not getting to the answer she was looking for. "That's why no one should ever see you, okay?"

"Okay."

It wasn't a difficult task, not to be seen. The house where they lived was a few miles out of town. At the time, Eleanor had done the math by taking Lucy's work check-in time and the exact time she left the house. So if her aunt was punctual as she claimed to be, they were exactly 25 minutes from town. So they were pretty far away.

And though Lucy also claimed to have many friends, she never really brought anyone to the house. For as long as Eleanor could remember, it had always been the two of them.

Or at least it was, until Eleanor met Wanda.

Wanda was a friend of Lucy's, she had been told. And she was the third person Eleanor had met in her life. And the second she had spoken to. And although her visit had been brief and at a very, very bad time, Eleanor had recognized in Wanda the same expression of disgust and concern that she saw daily in her aunt.

"Eleanor," Wanda had said. Her voice was deeper than Lucy's and, for some reason, exuded more authority. "Can you tell me where it hurts, Eleanor?"

Eleanor had watched her with narrowed eyes. Even when she felt like she was about to throw out all her organs, Eleanor made an effort to look at Wanda. To appreciate Wanda, really. To see every detail of her face because even when she was sick, she couldn't help but fall for the fact that Wanda was the first person from the outside world that she saw, not counting her aunt.

"Here," Eleanor replied, pointing to her belly. Her body, which still looked like a seven-year-old's, felt awful. Since the day had started, all Eleanor had done was vomit, shiver, and sweat. Even the lights on now were hurting her.

Wanda lifted her shirt slightly and touched her belly. As she did so, she continued to ask "What did you throw up, Eleanor?"

Eleanor looked alarmed at Lucy, who had been standing behind Wanda all this time, with her usual worried expression. With a positive nod from her, she knew she could tell Wanda the truth.

"Blood."

Wanda said nothing, but Eleanor felt a slight shaking in her movements.

"Even though it may sound simple, I think she just got poisoned," the woman said, standing up. "You said it was the first time she drank blood. Probably after a long time eating normal food her... Organism isn't used to it, that's all."

Lucy shook her head. "I'm an idiot... It just seemed like the right thing to do. She didn't want to..."

Wanda put a hand on her shoulder with a sympathetic expression. "It's okay, you thought you should give it a chance, don't blame yourself. No one understands how her body works."

Eleanor watched the woman, who returned the gesture with a frown. She closed her eyes, again feeling the guilt creeping up her body. A feeling that basically boiled down to her mere existence.

But this time, she knew it wasn't her fault entirely. Or at least she wanted to convince herself of that.

The day before, Lucy had shown up at the house with a bag of blood. Even when it was well hidden in her purse, Eleanor could smell it. She didn't know how, but she could do it. And it smelled delicious. Almost as delicious as her favorite food.

But of course, she didn't say anything. How could she tell Lucy that the blood she hid in her purse smelled good? Her behavior was going too well to ruin it that way. So as strong as her desire to take the bag was, she didn't manifest it.

But the surprise came when Lucy took the bag out of her things and told her to drink it. Eleanor opened her mouth in disbelief. Was Lucy crazy? How could she ask such a thing? Besides, where was the blood from? Who was the blood from?

"It's just to test a theory," she explained, transferring the bright red liquid to a glass. Eleanor swallowed hard. Now the scent hit more intensely. Her throat burned. "Drink."

Eleanor cleared her throat. "I... I don't want to."

Lucy raised an eyebrow confused. "But... It's blood. You're supposed to like it."

"Why?"

"I don't know... Can't you even smell it?"

Eleanor swallowed hard, debating whether to tell the truth or not. Would Lucy lock her in the basement if she confessed that the blood currently smelled good? "I can smell it but..."

"But? Come on! Drink it."

Eleanor approached the glass extended to her by the older woman. She sniffed a little closely. She could definitely drink it right there. But it felt terribly wrong. Why did she want to drink blood? Why was she smelling it in the first place? What the hell was wrong with her?

"I don't want to," she denied, setting the glass down on the table. Eleanor noticed the change in Lucy's expression, from impatient to angry.

"Eleanor, drink this. Now."

"But..."

"Eleanor!" Lucy screamed, her brown eyes wide open. "I lied and stole to get this. I was a bad person. So now drink the damn blood, okay?"

With her lip quivering, Eleanor nodded and letting her instincts take over, she took the first sip. And then another, and another, and another. And before she could realize it, she had finished down the entire glass, without even stopping to take a breath. It was almost... Addictive.

"So?" Lucy's voice snapped her out of a trance she didn't even know she'd gotten herself in. "What does it taste like?"

"Tastes... Good," Eleanor said after a moment, wiping the corner of her lips. "I don't want to do it again."

Lucy looked defeated. "But you said it tastes good!"

"It does... But it feels... bad."

"Oh great, now I have a vampire with morals. You got it from your mom, for sure, because there's no way your stupid dad had any."

A number of things were mentioned at that moment. First there was that word, vampire, Eleanor didn't remember ever reading or hearing it. But for some reason, Lucy considered her to be a vampire. Eleanor made a mental note to look it up in the dictionary later.

Then her mother. Eleanor knew she had a mother. Lucy's sister, to be more exact. And actually, she knew her mother quite well. She had heard her talk, when she was still in her belly. It was strange, and Eleanor had never told Lucy about it. But she remembered being there, in her mother's belly, remembered the woman's sweet voice speaking to her. And she didn't speak to her with disgust or concern, she spoke to her with peace and tranquility, as if she was delighted to welcome her into the world.

It felt good to remember that feeling, to feel wanted.

Unfortunately, it had been brief. Eleanor couldn't remember the exact moment when she had stopped hearing her mother's voice, or when exactly she had stopped being connected to her. One day it was simply Lucy's face that appeared in her field of vision and while she wanted to ask what had happened to the woman with the sweet voice, the words still wouldn't come out of her mouth.

It wasn't until a few months later that Eleanor learned that her mother had died bringing her into the world.

And she once again hated every second of her existence.

But Lucy had mentioned someone else today. She knew her mother from her brief memories, from pictures and anecdotes her aunt had told her. And yet she knew nothing about her father.

"I don't know him," Lucy had said, visibly annoyed at the question. "He and your mom kept their relationship a secret. I didn't know anything about him until your mom showed up asking for help for a pregnancy that was apparently two weeks old, but looked like five months. And then another few weeks and boom... You."

Eleanor hadn't understood much. But she didn't want to bother her aunt with questions anymore. It was clear that she held a special grudge against her father. Still, Eleanor wondered what he would look like. Would he have the same black hair as she did? From pictures, she knew that her mother had been a very beautiful, blonde woman. So the only explanation she could find for her dark hair was in her father's genes.

Wandering in ideas related to her father, Eleanor didn't notice until the next day the discomfort that had settled in her stomach. As soon as she opened her eyes in the morning, she instinctively knew she had to run to the bathroom immediately. And before she knew what was going to happen, her body was already expelling all the bright red liquid that hours before had been so appetizing.

Now, Eleanor could only look at it with disgust as her hands trembled around the toilet.

And that's pretty much how they found themselves in the current situation. With Wanda, Lucy's friend and advanced medical student, crouched down checking out her body that appeared to be any seven-year-old's body. But it wasn't.

"These pills will be fine for her indigestion," Wanda said, passing a small box to her aunt. "But honestly... I don't know how her body will react. Maybe they won't even have an effect."

"Okay," Lucy replied, her lips forming a thin line. "We'll try."

Wanda nodded and taking one last nervous glance at the girl, left the room.

Though grateful, Eleanor decided right then and there that she didn't like Wanda.

"I'm sorry I caused trouble," Eleanor mused quietly. Her aunt had returned to her side after walking Wanda to the door.

"Don't worry," Lucy said, handing her a glass of water along with a small pill she took from the box Wanda previously gave her. "Take this."

Her aunt didn't seem in the mood for questions, so without asking Eleanor nodded and drank. Even the water felt terrible in her stomach.

"Wanda went to high school with me," Lucy said after a moment. "She's a good friend. I trust her..."

Eleanor watched her expectantly. From the way Lucy's mouth opened and closed hesitantly, it looked like she wanted to elaborate on something else.

"Wanda is helping me look for more information about... Your kind."

"My kind?"

Lucy sighed. "Yes, your kind," While she had planned to have that conversation, it was more difficult with the girl with the big, expressive eyes in front of her. "You know you're not fully human, Ellie - haven't the biology books you read already confirmed that?"

Eleanor pursed her lips, lowering her gaze, "Yes."

"That's why I've been... Your mother," she paused, swallowing dryly. "She gave me little information... About her relationship with your father and him, in general. Sometimes I think she didn't have much of a clue about it either. Just that you were on the way, faster than any other baby."

"So ever since you were born I've been searching. There are some myths, legends about children like you. Though it's hard to tell which ones might be real and which ones might not. And sometimes it gets to be too much to process... That's why Wanda is helping me."

Eleanor watched her again, feeling helpless at her aunt's defeated expression.

"She knows someone," Lucy continued. "A patient, actually. He... Uhm... He's on the psychiatric wing," she grimaced. "But he claims to know someone else. One with skin as cold as snow and hard as steel, who doesn't age... Like a vampire."

Her stomach ached again, this time not from her indigestion. She didn't like anything she had read about vampires. The books, though fantasy, always painted them as evil beings, ruthless killers. And she was sure she was nothing of the sort. Mostly, she fervently hated the idea that her aunt, or even Wanda, would believe that she could be any of those things.

"The doctors of course don't believe him, you know... Psychiatric, " she pointed to her head, smiling a little. "And Wanda didn't, until she found out about you. Now, we're pretty sure he actually knows something."

"I'm not a vampire," Eleanor denied, her childlike features hardened by the seriousness of the statement.

"You don't know, Ellie," her aunt replied softly. "You might. Or you might not. What's for sure is that you are... Something. And we need to find out what."

"I have a heartbeat," she insisted, emphasizing the word. "Vampires have no heart. They're dead! I'm alive, I- I don't hurt anyone..."

She swallowed hard. The knot in her stomach had spread to her throat. She couldn't be. She couldn't be that kind of monster.

I never meant to hurt mom.

"We'll have to find out," Lucy concluded, rising from her place. Eleanor wanted to protest, but the words wouldn't come out of her mouth. "For now, rest. Let me know when you feel better to get something to eat."

Without a second glance, Lucy turned off the lights and went upstairs. Eleanor contemplated the darkness for a moment, feeling a kind of pain she had never felt before. A mixture of guilt, anguish and loneliness. Feelings that had haunted her since the day she was born and that now collapsed inside her, crushing deep in her chest.

She took a long deep breath to calm herself and closed her eyes, trying to find sleep and stave off further thoughts. A single tear rolled down her cheek.

Hi reader! Welcome to "Heartbeat". Here you'll follow Eleanor story. It is set in the middle of Breaking Dawn and then jumps a few years after it.

Hope you like it!