Chapter 1 – Who's Tina?
"She's waking up."
"Tina? Can you hear me? Squeeze my hand if you can hear me?"
"I need everyone to take a step back. Give us some space. Now!"
"Tina? Sweetie? Can you open your eyes?"
Groaning as her muddled consciousness began to coalesce and take note of the fact that her body was horizontal on a hard surface and also in quite a lot of pain, most of it in her head and right arm and shoulder, the girl slurred, "Who's Tina?"
"Open your eyes for me, honey."
When she didn't, said eyes were peeled open and scorched one after the other with a quick back and forth sweep of blazing light that made her whine and cringe away in protest.
"Both pupils reactive but sluggish."
The next detail she noticed was the coppery scent of blood. And there was something stiff around her neck, a broad collar keeping her skull from lolling side to side. Weakly, she tried to claw at the contraption. It wasn't obstructing her breathing, but she wanted whatever it was off.
However, someone grabbed her less injured arm and gently pressed it down.
"Lie still. You had an accident, but we're taking good care of you. Can you open your eyes for me?"
"Tina, squeeze my hand if you can hear me."
"Did somebody call the chief?"
"Tina. Honey. Try to concentrate, ok?"
She made another move to free herself from the contraption, but her pathetic attempt was stopped even sooner than the last one and followed up with restraints, soft but snug straps around her wrists and torso.
And that was where she drew the line.
"Whu?!" the girl demanded, doing her best to thrash even as her aching body barely cooperated and her thighs and ankles were seized and pinned and similarly strapped down. Another strap went across her forehead, right over the swathe of bandages and the obvious wound beneath that she hadn't previously noticed. "No! NO!"
"Tina, honey-"
She screamed, a wordless shriek of terror that elicited flinches from the innumerable bodies hovering around her own. Still doing her best to squirm free and failing miserably, the girl missed almost everything that was being said to and near her, the conversations becoming muddled and muted until they sounded like they were very far away and possibly in an unknown language. The one word she did catch was "sedative," which was quickly followed by an artificial calm that burned through her veins.
And then, darkness.
xxXxx
The next awakening that she managed to store in her long-term memory occurred in a hospital. The steady beep… beep… beep… of her own secondhand heartbeat and the unpleasant but reassuring odor of industrial-strength cleaning products were dead giveaways, as were the various needles and tubes that the girl could feel shoved inside her. Her mouth and throat were raw and dry, and she struggled to force her heavy eyes to open even a sliver.
That sliver revealed a dim room with some darker blobs that probably indicated furniture and equipment.
Her right hand and the arm attached to it were encased in something heavy and rigid that kept her wrist straight and her elbow at a ninety-degree angle—an awkward sort of chicken-wing aesthetic, she was sure. In her other hand… there was another hand, a warm, broad, calloused palm and a curl of long fingers, a thumb rubbing gently over her knuckles.
"Tina?" a deep male voice croaked, seemingly attached to the extra hand and at least two days past exhausted. "Baby girl?
Again, she managed to slur, "Who's Tina?"
The long fingers tensed and squeezed and then very deliberately relaxed but remained a steady presence. "That's you, sweetheart," said the man at her bedside, getting progressively choked up with every word. "You don't remember? It's ok if you don't! Just… You're safe, ok? You were hurt, but all the docs say you'll recover."
Her sliver of vision tracked the man's vague blob. She thought he might be White with dark hair, but that was the extent of the detail available to her limited senses. Eventually, she managed to swallow thickly and wonder, "You?"
After a brief flinch, the man answered, "I'm your dad. And your mom and sister are flying in soon to be with you, too. You got a family that loves you, and you're gonna be just fine."
The response screamed of overkill but was honestly very endearing. And the girl blinked a few more times before letting her eyes close. She relaxed and sighed, "Mmmkay."
Then, she returned to the land of Nod.
xxXxx
Her next several awakenings were fairly similar. Each time, she managed to gather a bit more information.
The man claiming to be her father was Charlie. He was indeed White with dark hair, which was cut short and juxtaposed a boyish curl against distinguished streaks of silver at the temples. He was a police chief, which of course necessitated a pronounced moustache and a lean yet muscular physique. He had a steady, calming presence, and although he wasn't much for idle chatter, he was quick to offer comfort when he thought it was needed and rarely left her bedside.
Her supposed mother was Renee, a slim brunette who seemed incapable of dressing her age or sitting still for more than a minute at a time. She was a whirlwind and, honestly, exhausting. She meant well and clearly loved both her daughters, but the woman alternated between being completely overbearing (repeatedly fluffing pillows that did not need to be fluffed and nearly knocking Tina off the bed in the process as well as hounding the increasingly annoyed nurses over various irrelevant inanities, for example) and forgetting about anything but her own wants and whims (whining about all the hardships that she was experiencing as a result of her younger daughter's hospital stay as well as wandering off for hours with an interesting stranger, for example).
Bella, the girl's older sister, was sixteen (soon to be seventeen), tall and willowy with flawless pale skin and long dark hair. She read a lot and was just kind of… there. Perhaps being raised in the presence of Hurricane Renee had eroded poor Bella's own personality. Well, she seemed nice enough, when she actually bothered to speak. And a boring sister was better than a bitchy one, right?
The girl in the bed—Tina, apparently, though she really hated the name—was thirteen years old and lived with her dad in Forks, Washington. Her parents had gone the Parent Trap route of joint custody (without the insanity of ignoring the existence of one of their children). Tina eventually got Bella to spill the tea during a rare moment they had alone (while Charlie was checking in at work and Renee was trying to find a local "spiritualist" who'd be willing to visit the hospital for a much-needed "aura cleansing").
Charlie and Renee had split about a year after Bella was born. And for some unfathomable reason, when ditzy Renee flounced off with his kid (no job, no plans for the future other than to mooch off her elderly mother, no court order allowing the removal of a minor across state lines), Charlie didn't demand said kid back. Still, their divorce was pretty amicable, to the point that the pair hooked up during one of Charlie's visits to see his ex and daughter in California. Said hook-up resulted in a second daughter, Tina—full name Valentina Louise Swan. Her birthday was Valentine's Day.
At the time, Renee had been studying for her degree and certifications in elementary education (which was admirable, really). She hadn't had the time to attend to a newborn; just taking care of Bella (who honestly mostly took care of herself even at such a young age and was otherwise handled by the elderly mother, who definitely didn't have the energy for an additional infant) had barely been manageable for Renee. So, she agreed to let baby Tina go home with her daddy. The girl got to enjoy a normal, stable childhood; she had shown herself to be quiet but kind, decent at school but not a genius by any measure, not particularly talented or outstanding in any academic or athletic or artistic pursuit.
Normal. Average. Basic. Practically an NPC.
For many years, Bella and Tina spent half of each summer in Forks and the other half wherever their mother happened to be. She'd bounced around California for a while before heading over to Arizona. At some point, Bella had decided that she hated Forks and wouldn't tolerate even a few weeks there for her father's sake (though Tina suspected that there was a lot more to the situation). So, the arrangement had turned into spending half the summer wherever Renee was and the other half on a vacation with Charlie. It seemed like a pretty shitty and selfish thing to do to the man, but as long as all the players were in agreement, there was no harm in it. Dragging the overworked police chief to Disneyland or some other frivolous attraction once a year probably kept his blood pressure from reaching critical levels.
Val—not Tina, not anymore—appreciated her sister's willingness to outline their family history and drama as well as her willingness to actually set foot in Forks to visit Val while she convalesced. Amnesia was strange, and the girl struggled to even know what questions to ask to begin filling in the blank canvas that had replaced the first thirteen years of her own life. She felt like a stranger in her body, like she wasn't supposed to be there, like she wasn't supposed to exist, like everything around her was… not quite real.
The one subject that Bella refused to talk about was how the hell Val had ended up in the hospital with her arm, collarbone, and skull broken. (Apparently, the doctors had warned that informing her would be too traumatic for the time being.) The fractured skull and resulting brain injury had required emergency surgery, which had required a shaved head and enough stitches to start a sweat shop.
So, there she was, Humpty Dumpty meets Frankenstein's monster, slightly brain damaged and very bruised both inside and out, muddling her way through an identity crisis mixed with a reality crisis—which, yeah, was about as fun as it sounded, in case anyone was wondering.
And that was when the vampire showed up.
Val had absolutely no clue how she knew that the disturbingly attractive blond doctor in her doorway was a vampire, but the certainty hit her like a mackerel to the face. And between the brain injury and the pain meds, her verbal filter was MIA (along with her memories and her inhibitions and a decent chunk of her fine motor skills and all of the fucks she might've once had to give). So, of course, the girl immediately grinned and greeted, "Sup, Count Chocula? How's it fangin?"
Instead of responding with uncomfortable laughter or an indulgent eye roll or even rightful confusion over the absolutely absurd statement, the doctor froze in the doorway. Not like a startled deer. Like the thing that had startled the deer and was carefully deciding whether to move in for the kill or give up the hunt.
Yikes.
"Whoa, take it down a notch, Vlad," Val warned him. "I'm pretty sure malpractice insurance doesn't cover whatever completely unnecessary thing you're thinking of doing."
He stayed frozen but seemed marginally less homicidal, as though he'd been reminded that his white coat was a costume in more ways than one.
And maybe the brain damage had robbed her of self-preservation as well, but she wasn't afraid. The creature was dangerous, but Val wasn't in danger. Or at least she didn't think she was. Perhaps she'd have to start soliciting second opinions when such situations arose, as she clearly could not trust her own judgment.
Anyways, the pretty doctor-monster slowly backed out into and then disappeared down the busy hallway, and his exit was rather perfectly timed with Bella's emergence from the en suite bathroom. She blinked around the small space and dried her hands on a length of stiff paper towel as she wondered, "Who were you talking to?"
"I have no idea!" Val reported cheerfully, grinning despite the painful stretch of the bruising on her face. "But he didn't drink me like a juice box, so it's all good!"
Bella stared back at her in a way that clearly screamed, What the actual fuck?
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