A/N: Hello, fellow readers! Welcome to an entirely brand new creation! I have to admit, the rough concept of this story wasn't exactly my doing, but what story comes about without a little outside inspiration? I'm excited to start this new, topsy-turvy alternate Twilight universe with you all. Please enjoy, and let me know what you think! Much love. xo.

Song Inspiration: Somewhere a Clock is Ticking by Snow Patrol

Charlie was waiting for me when I got off the plane. Sighing heavily-because, really, what the hell was the point of all this?-I hiked my bag over my shoulder and made my way through the slight, but packed throng of people, waiting for their luggage around the carousal.

"Hey, Bells," Charlie said, automatically catching and steadying me as a man in a suit, obviously in a rush, slammed his shoulder into mine, nearly bowling me over. He didn't pause to apologize.

Well, screw you, too.

"How're you doing?" His words, too gentle, too sincere, stirred a sickening churn of fire and charcoal in my gut.

"Just dandy," I quipped, side-stepping his awkward, one-armed hug almost as soon as he'd extended the gesture.

Charlie didn't know what to say to that. Awkwardly, he cleared his throat, and turned toward the alarm that announced my coming luggage.

I hung back as he lunged forward for my bags, the crowd separating seamlessly for him, a man in uniform. Inwardly, I rolled my eyes. I was dreading driving in the patrol car-nothing slows down traffic like a cop-but did he have to wear the uniform, too?

"'That all of them?" he huffed, dropping the last duffel at my feet. He was red in the face, and winded. I supposed that was what being a small-town cop would do to you. Lack of exercise, too much donuts and coffee...

"Think so."

I took the two smaller bags, leaving Charlie to gather the remaining-heavier-three, and headed toward the doors.

It was pissing rain outside, which I was expecting, but it was still depressing.

And I didn't need anymore depressing things in my life. I think I'd had a fair share in the last short while.

Charlie and I had never been close, and so many would wonder why I was coming to live with him, now.

The answer to that question was as easy as it was difficult to answer.

My mother, my most cherished friend in the entire world, had died in a fire that had brought down our house four weeks ago. I nearly had, too, trying to save her, and the aftermath of it-the scarring and damage caused by the toxic smoke inhalation would bring me down with her, in due time. The doctors had told me I would never fully recover from the extent of the damage. I wasn't supposed to expect to live an exceptionally long life.

It was something I was counting on; looking forward to. A salvation, a reprieve from the fiery pits of hell my life had become. I could only hope the end would come soon.

Maybe the lung damage would turn into cancer, maybe the very thing was festering away in my cells right this minute, killing me slowly.

Every morning, before I'd been discharged from the hospital, and afterwards, back at home with my step-father, Phil, settling matters before I came to live with Charlie, I had found myself disappointed that I'd lived to see another day-secretly hoping death would have taken me in my sleep.

I found myself hoping I'd be hit by a car, or that the airplane would have crashed ont he flight over.

But now, as Charlie and I stepped out of the terminal, ducking through the rain to find the cruiser in the parking garage across the street, it was clear that I wasn't going anywhere soon-much to my disappointment.

Charlie still lived in the tiny, two-bedroom house my parents had bought in the early days of their marriage. The only kind of days their marriage had possessed.

My conception had been the result of a drunken, one-night stand, their short, stitched-together marriage a result of the summer fling that followed.

The story went that she had been driving up the Pacific Coast with her friends, celebrating their newfound, young-adult freedom, having just graduated from high school. They stopped to camp at First Beach, down in La Push, where my dad and his buddies were having a bonfire party. They met on the beach, and the rest was history.

Charlie proposed at the end of that summer, my mother found herself in way more trouble, with the deteriorating health of my paternal grandparents, than she had planned for. She'd been used to the happy nature of Downey, California, and missed the heat, the sunshine. She fell into a "rut" she'd always called it, and as I'd grown older, it had become clear to me that it had been much more than a rut. It was a depression she'd found herself in, feeling trapped in this dingy little logger's town, with the omnipresent cover of cloud and rain, and the pressure of Charlie's parents' illnesses-his mother's Alzheimer's, and his father's severe arthritis.

She begged Charlie to leave town with her, to start a new life somewhere else, but he couldn't do it. He couldn't leave his parents like that.

A few months later, I was born, my mother's depression compounded by the post-partum hormones, and a few months after that, she and I left, went back home to live with my Grandma Marie for awhile, so that my mother could get her education degree, and earn enough money to get us a place of our own.

Four years later, my grandparents died within months of each other, and my father was left with this tiny house, and the small-town police job he'd undoubtedly settled for.

We spent every summer together in Forks up until I was fourteen, until I insisted we spend our two weeks in California instead.

Despite the annual get-togethers, and despite all the ways I knew we were similar, I had never developed a close relationship with my dad. We had the same slight curl to our hair, and the same, dark brown eyes. Even our mannerisms, our awkward, clumsy ways, the way neither of us liked to talk much... And yet, there had never been much there. It felt like an eternal wall of awkwardness existed between my slightly-estranged father and I. My mother always insisted, forever coming to his defense, that he just didn't know how to talk to me, how to love me.

I thought that maybe he resented me, just a little, for maybe worsening my mother's depression, for being the reason she left.

I didn't take his back-burner approach personally. I didn't blame him, in fact.

Now, as Charlie parked the cruiser in the slim, cobblestone driveway, the bulbous, rusty-red colored truck, parked against the curb by the mailbox, caught my attention.

"Nice truck," I mused aloud, pulling my earbuds from my ears, which I'd jammed deep into my ear canals the minute we'd gotten in the cruiser. I hadn't been up for small talk. Plus, music was an effective way to block the world out.

"Well," Charlie said, clearing his throat as he drew the keys from the ignition, "I kind of bought that off my pal, Billy Black. He lives on the reservation, down at La Push. I figured you'd need a vehicle while you're living here, and it seemed like a nice enough homecoming gift."

"Are you kidding?" I was surprised, as I nearly vaulted myself from the cruiser, that my voice held more enthusiasm than I was used to.

Charlie's face brightened at the excitement in my voice.

"It's all yours," he said, pushing his hand into his pockets.

"Oh my god, Dad. It's... It's awesome. I love it... Thanks."

Our eyes met for a split second before we both looked away, embarrassed.

"Well, now, you're welcome," he said gruffly, clearing his throat again. "I want you to be happy here, Bella."

I hauled a couple of bags from the trunk and started toward the house, pretending I hadn't heard that last part.

I didn't feel like explaining to him that my being happy here was a complete impossibility.

After I'd ditched the bags in my room-the room that had barely changed since I was a baby, only the crib having been switched out for a bed, and a desk added as I grew-I took the keys to the truck, pulled a thicker sweater on over my head, and headed out to the truck.

I climbed inside, welcoming the dry warmth it offered. The leather seats smelled faintly of peppermint, and tobacco. Someone had cleaned the dash well, and the ashtray held a single quarter.

When I twisted the key in the ignition, it revved to life loudly, and then idled at top volume. It surprised me, and a sharp, humorless laugh escaped me, lingering in the empty space of the small cab around me. That surprised me more.

I cruised the neighborhood, taking in the place where I was to call home from now, until... Well-not for long, I hoped.

Everything was too green-it was an alien-planet, foreign and unfamiliar. But I had to admit, it was sort of beautiful. The moss crawling up the tree trunks, and draped from their branches like a canopy. Even the muted light filtered down through the branches greenly.

When the self-doubt and hysterical panic began to mount as I began to think about my first day of school tomorrow, I turned around and headed home, needing something to do, something to distract.

But unfortunately, as I headed upstairs to unpack, I realized putting the clothes in the pine dresser, and hanging my other things in the little closet, was only keeping my hands busy, and not my mind.

Forks High School had a frightening total of less than four hundred students. Students who had known each other since birth, had grown up together, who's grandparents had gone to preschool together... They'd formed their groups long ago, and in a town this small, everyone had to know everything about everybody.

Oh god? I panicked, What if everyone knows about me tomorrow?

I sunk onto the threadbare, violet rug in the middle of my room and pressed my forehead into my kneecaps.

I couldn't handle it if people knew about why I was here. I had never been good at making friends, and though it wasn't my priority now, I'd be damned if people thought poorly of me, or judged me... But then, what was there not to judge?

I was the daughter of the police chief's flighty daughter, returned at last. That in itself was a juicy gossip story.

My breathing gradually crept toward hyperventilation as my mind began to spun with the horrible possibilities of the day to come. People staring at me, which would have happened anyway, I'd admit. The whispers, the pointing, maybe even laughing... But worse, the pity.

There was a knock on my bedroom door then.

"Hey, Bells? I was gonna see if you were hungry? I could make some fried eggs or something?"

My head jerked up, and I realized I was holding his breath, as I listened to him shift his weight in the hallway.

"Bella? You okay?"

"I'm fine," I blurted, pushing my hair behind my ears. "Eggs sound great-I'll be right down."

I held my breath again as I listened, until finally, his footsteps retreated, and headed back down the stairs.

I ground my fists into my eyes to get rid of the panicked tears, braced myself, and stood.