'Hearing Damage'

Disclaimer: In its use of intellectual property and characters belonging to Stephenie Meyer, David Slayde, Wyck Godfrey, Greg Mooridian, Mark Morgan, Melissa Rosenberg, Summit Entertainment, Imprint Entertainment, Temple Hill Productions, Goldcrest Films, Maverick Films, Twilight Productions et cetera, this work is intended to be transformative commentary on the original. No profit is being made from this work. Any similarities to other fanfiction stories are completely coincidental.

A/N: This is my first shot at writing a Twilight story, and despite all the bad rep they get I feel very motivated! I tried to make the time line as similar to the movie as I could, and while the dates are all shifted in terms of years I have made Tehya's starting age 16 and the year 2007. Seth is also newly 16, meaning he has already phased after Harry's death (caused by Leah's shifting) and we are starting just before the events of Eclipse.

Your speakers are blowing,

Your ears are wrecking,

Your hearing damage,

You wish you felt better,

You wish you felt better.

-Thom Yorke, 'Hearing Damage'

March 15th, 2007

My mother was dead.

My beautiful, strong, shining beam of light had been snuffed out and taken from the earth at the age of 56, courtesy of an inoperable tumor in her brain. It had tortured her for years, mercilessly infecting her with its rapidly reproducing cancerous cells until it had finally extinguished her completely. My rock, my everything - was gone, and without her I felt truly alone. The only memory I had left of her was in my father, who she had divorced from many years ago and who I wasn't sure if I was ready to involve myself in fully again. There seemed to be no one left to guide me in my life. No replacement, no worthy comparable advice – nothing. No amount of counselors or therapists or legal assistants trying to help me organize the paperwork for her funeral arrangements and the house plans could unfreeze the numbness that had settled inside of me.

Cancer didn't just affect the victim. Cancer affected the entire family – or in this case, me – everyone who cared about the victim and their long, beautiful life. Cancer was a cruel, unbeatable bitch, and I hated it more than anything else in the whole world.

The after effects of my mother's death were swift and ruthless, in my opinion. Almost immediately after the doctor declared the time of death in the hospital room she was whisked away from me, off to unknown parts that I did not ask nor want to be informed of. I had held her hand right to the very end, having refused to leave her side for the previous three months that she had been in the terminal ward. The doctors were not strangers to this sort of behavior, and had given me plenty of helpful 'resources' for accepting a loss in the family. I had left the hospital with at least ten 'dealing with grief' pamphlets in my shaking hands, each one titled similarly and making me all the angrier.

I dumped them in the first garbage can I spotted, and nearly ran back to my house.

I couldn't accept this. I couldn't accept her death.

My mother had left plans for me to live with my father in her stead, and originally when I heard the plan I had felt as though it was impossible to ever live Vancouver. It had become my home, but now I wasn't so sure. Moving back to La Push seemed more realistic than ever; there was nothing left for me here except for painful memories.

I still couldn't accept her death when the appointed psychologist showed up at my door, ready to speak to me about whatever I desired even though we both knew that the conversation would lead to one topic no matter what. I couldn't accept it when my father started calling trying to get a hold of me, no doubt having recently heard the information that his ex-wife had passed. I couldn't accept it when I finally got a call from some funeral office in the West end of Vancouver – our ever so rainy weather now seemed more than appropriate – that was attempting to begin making funeral arrangements.

I nearly gagged before hanging up the phone, nausea rising in my stomach at the prospect of seeing my mother's lifeless body again. I didn't want to accept it.

But they kept calling. And I knew that I couldn't just leave my mother without a proper funeral.

About a week later I decided that I wanted a private service, and ended up responding to my father's many calls only to shakily let him know that if he wanted to reach my hometown of Vancouver and attend the funeral, then he was obviously welcome. My father, a tall and thin Aboriginal man who held the position of one of the council leaders in the Quileute tribe down in Forks, Washington, had immediately agreed. We were Quileute by blood and had lived on the reserve at La Push many years ago, but as the years went by and my mother had divorced my father, she and I had moved out to British Columbia in Canada and hadn't looked back.

We had lived a wonderful life, with my mother supporting me through high schooling with her job as a psychologist. We had been ready to start planning for Christmas – even began looking at ticket prices to go to the Bahamas. But everything had been lost, and now the only thing I could cling to was a father who I hadn't seen in years and who I imagined had very little in common with besides the death of my mother.

The worst part was that she had divorced him. He had tried to keep in contact with me through phone calls and Christmas gifts, but had always felt that he didn't want to bother the family who seemingly didn't want anything to do with him anymore. I had been too young to understand at the time of the divorce – at the ripe age of six I didn't understand anything – so when my mom wont the custody battle we all but physically vanished from my father's life and he was forced to deal with it.

I was too numb to confront any of my own emotions in this matter, but I recognized the unfairness of it all.

Several days before the funeral – I had left most of the arrangements to the funeral parlor as I knew that the only ones there would be myself and my father – I went to pick my father up at Vancouver National Airport. His flight had departed at night and lasted only a mere two hour, so it was still nighttime when I took a cab to meet him.

"Dad!" I immediately recognized Harold Bryant as soon as he stepped out of the baggage check area and signaled to him, noticing how well he had aged. I wasn't exactly sure how to react to a man that I hadn't seen in ten years, so I remained calm and stoic. "Hey Dad."

He still wore his classic tie that his mother had made him, and the all too familiar itchy blazer that smelt of dirt and brush. Although the circles under his eyes gave away his stress and lack of rest, his eyes still managed to light up when they saw me. He had a small suitcase in tow, obviously not having planned to stay in Vancouver for long.

"Tehya," He rumbled in the familiar low baritone of the elders before enveloping me in a large hug. "I'm so sorry, my love."

I wasn't sure if he was apologizing for all the years he had stayed away – he had been too afraid to approach my mother after the divorce partially because he hadn't wanted to be shooed away and partially because he didn't want to cause any turmoil in our lives – or if he was simply empathizing over my mother's sudden death, but either way I accepted the hug and tried not to over think the gesture.

When I was six and had left La Push to move to Vancouver with my mother, it hadn't occurred to me the type of pain that the move had put my father through. The custody battle would have been difficult enough for him to deal with, but to rip away his only daughter force him to phone her once a month at six years old was rather...cruel. I briefly began to wonder if my mother had told him to stay away, in which case I grew frustrated with the both of them – my mother because she had taken me away from my father, and my father because he hadn't even tried to come and watch me grow up.

It had been ten years since I had seen this man. Ten years with a vacant father figure, filled in only temporarily with monthly phone calls and Christmas presents. I had received many phone calls over the years and relied on them heavily, dealing with the fact that perhaps I would see him when I was much older. That date had come sooner than expected.

All of this internal thinking and debate, of course, had been sparked by the tragic course of events that had now placed my father right in front of me.

"You have your mother's eyes, Tehya." My father suddenly pulled back from our long hug and held my cheeks in between his hands, causing me to freeze up in momentary shock. I hadn't expected this type of behavior in the first several minutes of our meeting, and didn't know how to react besides stare up at him wide-eyed.

Upon noticing my discomfort, my father withdrew his hands and apologized, grabbing at his luggage so that we could move away from the terminal and into a cab. No words were exchanged as I hailed the vehicle and we slipped inside, creating a sort of awkward silent vacuum of negative noise.

"Destination?" The cab driver questioned after we had cleared the terminal departures parking area.

"45 North Hampton Street, please." I directed him, watching him punch the address into his GPS and take off at a faster pace now that he knew where he was going.

The silence in the cab grew even more annoying as I realized I didn't even really have the nerve to look at my father.

I felt...partially numb.

My father's presence had made me feel a little less alone, but talking to a father on the phone for ten years didn't make up for the absence of that figure in real life. All I could think about was that with all those years on the phone I hadn't even bothered to ask the questions that had really mattered. They were all coming up now, jamming my already jammed-up brain with shouts and concerns about how this relationship with my father was going to proceed now that he was the sole parental figure in my life.

I didn't know what to say...I didn't know how to react.

"What happened with school?" My father broke the awkward silence boldly, and I finally met his green eyes as they connected with my dark brown ones. I mentally thanked him for being courteous enough to not bring up my mother as his first subject of conversation.

Breathe, Tehya. I reminded myself. You've talked to him on the phone for ten years – this is just an in-person version. Come on.

"Istoppedgoing." I breathed out all at once, not having realized that I was holding in a breath for a good thirty seconds before I had spoken. Perhaps I had been a bit more anxious to see my father after so long than I had originally presumed.

"I'm sorry?" My father kindly asked me to repeat myself, and I took a shaky breath before doing so.

"I stopped going," I explained, and upon spotting his understanding expression decided that although he may have pretended to understand, I wanted to explain myself further. "for her. I stayed in the terminal ward from her check-in until..."

We both knew that trailing off was the only way these conversations were going to go from now on.

My father did not reply, but after a quick glance his way I could see that his mouth was twisted into a sad grimace. If I hadn't known any better I would have thought that he was about to cry. Surprisingly enough the expression disappeared seconds later, and my father turned to me one more time to ask about the weather in Vancouver.

"Rainy." I deadpanned, knowing fully well that he had known this fact.

British Columbia ranked as Canada's fourth 'rainiest province', and we were constantly wet here. I was glad I didn't live in Terrace, at the very least – there they received two hundred and three days of rain out of the whole three hundred and sixty five. My father was trying to make meaningless conversation, and I didn't appreciate conversation unless there was good reason for it.

"I can see that," My father gazed out the window of the taxi cab, staring up at the dark clouds gathering above us. "lucky I brought my raincoat."

I didn't respond to that, and the rest of the ride to the house was silent. I was surprised that even at the age of sixteen the house had not been taken from my hands yet, although I had received several letters from the Federal Government that I had briefly skimmed stating something about being a minor and that it was not legally permissible to be living on my own in a house that I couldn't pay for. They had provided a call back number, but I hadn't phoned it. I had resolved to simply wait until the police came and tore me from this house themselves.

It was torture knowing that I was living in the house where the lights still worked and the faucet still ran because my mother had made sure her insurance would cover the bills until I had my living plan organized. I hated it. The working facilities were just another reminder of the loss I had suffered.

"Do you still have your citizenship to the United States?" My father asked suddenly, just as we were pulling into the street and dragging me out of my thoughts.

"Of course," I frowned, surprised that that had even been a question of his. "I would never get rid of that..."

Something in his expression calmed then, and the storm in his eyes faded slightly. I supposed that he had sported the same logic I had all these years; that eventually we were going to see each other again and that all the possible resources to complete said task would have to be upheld until that point. This included my citizenship, which I supposed was a symbol of my faithfulness to the idea that I had always known I was going to reunite myself with my father.

I just hadn't imagined it would be this way. I didn't think he had, either.

"Forty three, seventy five." The cab driver stopped the meter and held out a hand, in which I placed fifty dollars. He returned the change to me, and within a minute was speeding away from my street leaving my father and I standing on the side of the road with only his small luggage in tow.

"Beautiful house," My father remarked quietly, and I nodded sullenly in thanks. It was a beautiful home, but I knew that I was going to have to sell it. I couldn't stay here; I knew that in the back of my mind. "Did anyone come by yet?"

"No." I responded quietly, frowning slightly as I realized how strange that actually was.

"No?" My father turned back to me, puzzled. "They let you live here for a week on your own?"

"I guess," I shrugged, finding myself again uncaring of how the law or the doctors treated me. I didn't want anything to do with them. "I didn't really tell the hospital if there was anyone at home. They've been calling, though...so. There's that."

My father didn't say anything to that, merely gazing at me oddly. Perhaps it was my monotone drawl or the dark circles under my eyes, but he knew that I was suffering something much deeper than grief.

We made our way inside the house, each step feeling like I was walking through molasses. The more I was forced to accept my mother's death the more upset I got with everything around me; I didn't want to stay here where we had gone through such happy years and made plans for the future. I didn't like this – I didn't want to remember what we had and how everything had become so ruined. We had even made plans for her to return to the house for Christmas.

I tore myself from these thoughts with a wince and a grimace, trying to avoid my father's eyes once more as we awkwardly stood in the foyer of the house.

"The service is tomorrow at three." I mumbled, hoping that he had heard me because I was less than willing to repeat what I had said.

"Alright," I heard him quietly shuffle and begin to unbutton his coat. The house still had heating. "Do you need groceries, anything?"

"I'm not hungry," I admitted, hoping that he understood that he was free to shop, but I wasn't going to eat. He did.

"Okay," I watched him slowly take several more steps into the house, clenching and un-clenching his fists. I had nearly forgotten that while I had lost a mother, he had also lost an ex-wife that he clearly hadn't lost feelings for. "Okay..."

"Dad?"

My father whirled around in his spot, eyes wide and to my surprise – brimming with slight tears. He was tense and clearly upset, the reality of the situation not smacking him in the face until he took those first few steps into the house. He was now feeling something similar to the feeling I had felt in the terminal ward a mere week ago; total and utter devastation and loss. There was no way we were going to get her back; no chance that we were going to patch up our family; nothing left to do with this situation besides acceptance and moving on.

It was brutal, and I knew I had to say something.

"I'm sorry too."

Harold Bryant tried to smile, but it came out more as a grimace.

"You can sleep...wherever," I breathed out the last part of my sentence, not even knowing where I was supposed to put him. He clearly felt as though he was violating this house and trespassing in it, and it was then that I realized my father and I had more in common than I had originally believed. We were uncomfortable in our own skin in the moment. "the bathroom is upstairs and everything still works."

He just nodded, and that was when I decided it was a good time to give him some breathing room.

I went up to my room and sat on my bed, unable to break the numbness sitting inside of me like a lead weight. It felt like my arms and legs were made of stone, and it took twice the effort to do any normal task. I had been hit with an emotional smack that had left me so dumbfounded I literally couldn't function normally.

For the next hour and a half, I simply sat on my bed in my jacket with my feet dangling off the side. My shoes were still on, but I couldn't find the energy to remove them. All I could do was sit in silence and contemplation, thinking about why the hell cancer had chosen to kick my family's ass instead of anyone else's. It just wasn't fair.

At around eleven o'clock, I heard my father's footsteps slowly making their way up the stairs. I could imagine him tracing his fingers over each and every crevice in this house, trying to imagine her walking through it and grasping any part of her that he had left. One of his hitched breaths told me that he had finally reached the portrait of her and I at the top of the stairs, and I could see from the angle which I was sitting that he traced both of our faces lightly. My heart faintly clenched at the gesture, but it felt as if it was clenching in someone else's body and I could feel it.

"Is she being cremated?" My father shakily asked me once he reached my doorway, and I nodded slowly. I could tell he was trying to remain strong, but this situation was hitting him hard. For ten years he had held on to his heartache, and now he was to face one more tragedy in his life.

He let out a long breath as he stared towards his feet, but I interrupted before he could say anything else.

"I want to get out of this place." I declared quietly, causing my father's attention to zero in on me.

"What do you mean?" He tried to clarify, eyes shining hopefully. He was kind enough not to make any assumptions or even voice them, for that matter.

"I mean I can't stay here," I admitted, jaw clenched and eyes shifting anywhere else around the room. I didn't really want to elaborate on this, and we both knew that as a minor I couldn't legally stay here on my own. "I don't want to."

It took him awhile to respond to the message I was trying to send him out of something that looked like relief. The decision was final. I needed to head back home to La Push, where I would be surrounded by my tribe and safe from any memories. I couldn't stay here.

Her funeral service seemed to never end.

I was as stoic-faced as ever, unable to omit any emotion and only comforting my father slightly when he shed a few tears at the Priest's words. I had let the chapel take care of the entire ceremony, knowing that since my father and I were the only ones attending the service there was less to be concerned about. The priest droned on and on about how God had taken my mother early, how she had accomplished so much in her life and how much she had meant to our family; the standard speech for the families who opted not to arrange their own funerals.

It seemed like it was truly going to go on forever, but eventually the Priest concluded his word, and offered us a moment alone with the urn.

My father and I both approached warily.

I merely laid a kiss on my hand and put it on the smooth polished metal, not wanting to extend this moment any longer than I had to. Even when I touched the container my mother's lifeless body was contained in, I still couldn't feel anything. I was all blocked up.

My father did the same, but his had dwindled on her urn longer than mine had.

"I want to scatter her ashes at La Push beach." I stated calmly one morning several days after the service.

The crematorium was still working on sending us her urn; apparently we had not been allowed to pick up the urn from the funeral service until we received permission to do so from the government.

My mother had been born on the Quileute reserve, and I only saw it fit to return her there, so this was a non-debatable request. My father thought about this for a brief several seconds before nodding in understanding, and we resumed staring at the television with our uneaten meals sitting before us. We had gone grocery shopping and cleaned the house in silence, even played a game of cards before understanding that nothing we did could make the time pass easier.

It was a month before we were finally able to begin packing our things for departure.

My father had brilliantly launched into action as soon as the first psychologist had shown up at the door, followed by the insurance representative, the collections agency representative and finally, the social services agent. We denied any service we could, stated that our business was to turn over the property to the province and move back to my home town together. This was no longer a home.

Magically enough, with another adult in the picture, they all backed off.

Paperwork stacked as high as my hip sat on the coffee table in the living room for weeks after that point, which I helped my father go through as we both signed what was necessary to get out of this place. Every single night grew worse; I could barely sleep, and whenever I did manage to catch some shut eye my dreams would tease me and place me back in time where my mother was still with me and teaching me how to cook, or dance, or sing. It was hellish.

Still, I denied any therapy services my father tried to push on me.

The month of March passed at a tortuously slow rate, and a flight was booked for April the 17th.

Before I knew it there were movers in the house taking all of the furniture day by day; I had been clear that I only wanted to take a couple things back to Forks, Washington. One of those things was a small box full of my mother's precious things, including necklaces and small gifts she had received from our family. I knew she would have wanted to keep them, so I made sure to pack them as well as my clothing.

"They'll sell the house, and the money will remain with me until you're old enough to take it," My father explained as we watched the truck drive down the street with the majority of our house in it. He had briefly spoken to me about a will, but I hadn't wanted to read it quite yet. "You're sure you didn't want anything else?"

I shook my head.

In the next day I made sure that I had packed everything I could and officially dropped out of my public school, asking for my transcript so that I could apply to attend the school on the Quileute reserve upon my arrival at La Push. Clothing and whatever special objects I could think of were crammed into my suitcase that I had recently purchased, courtesy of my father who knew that I wouldn't be able to fit all that I wanted to bring in my smaller bag.

We were getting on the plane tomorrow.

I couldn't think, couldn't breathe, as I locked my mother's house for the final time and was carted away from it. I couldn't react as we cleared check-in and left our bags with the kind ladies who bode us a safe flight. I made it through security with equally unforgiving emotions stuck inside of me, unable to process the fact that I was actually leaving Vancouver. It made sense because this was no longer my home and this province no longer brought me happiness, but it still tore my heart in two to leave Canada. I had always loved Canada.

"We'll come visit," My father assured, but I wasn't so sure that that was going to be the case. What was there to visit?

I appreciated everything my dad had done for me; he had been my rock this whole month and had shown no sign of letting up. He was ever so organized and strong that I was surprised to admit that the loneliness I had felt had been greatly diminished by the end of his visit. I still felt like half of my family was missing, because to be quite frank it was, but it was more bearable with my father to cling to. I needed him, and he needed me. We were a team now; there was no going back.

The plane ride was long and tedious despite it only being two hours, with myself being unable to sleep at all which was rather upsetting since we had left at eight in the morning. I still couldn't eat properly; I had lost at least fifteen pounds since mid-March and was afraid that I was breaching twenty. I felt weak and foolish, but I couldn't bring myself to place some cardboard tasting meal in my mouth.

I got through the last several minutes of the journey by sleeping, thankful that when I woke up all I could hear was the Pilot notifying everyone on board that we had begun our descent into Forks, Washington. We were landing in the city's airport in Clallum county, and would then take a taxi to the reserve. My father had been absent from his duties for a month and a half now, having taken leave until he had sorted his 'family business' out.

I still wasn't sure if my tribe was expecting me back.

I could clearly remember all of the kids faces, as my excellent memory had served me well over the years. Sam, Paul, Jacob, Jared and Embry's faces all passed through my mind first before I briefly thought of all of the other children I had been acquainted with prior to my moving away. They wouldn't be kids anymore, and I hoped that they remembered me. The last thing I wanted was to go back to a home where I would have to re-introduce myself to old friends.

"I told Billy about you a week or two ago," My father admitted when we finally clambered into a cab and began our voyage away from the airport. "wanted you to be properly welcomed."

"Oh..." I made a face, hoping that a 'proper welcome' did not include a meet and greet of a bunch of people all at the same time. "Dad, I -"

"It'll just be him, Tehya," My father sensed my anxiousness and placed his large hand on mine, locking me in with his forest green eyes. "I know this is hard. I know."

I inhaled shakily, gazing back out of the cab window where the familiar land of Forks, Washington stared back at me. At least I had begun to feel something.

A/N: If you liked the first chapter, feel free to leave me a review! I will be updating fairly regularly.