Waking up, a twilight fanfic

I woke up on January 1, 2006. That's it. That's your answer. You asked me how I got here, how my life turned out the way it did, and I've answered you. I don't owe you anymore than that. So, if I choose to tell you more, you should know that I'm doing so only because I want you to know. If I want you to know, it's only because in the end only one side of the story will remain.

He and his side of the story will live, cold, glittering and false like iron pyrite. I will pass away from this earth and with me my story, but in telling you I can make my story be felt more in its limited time than his will be in all its centuries. I don't have to tell you anything, but you did ask, and that's important. So here goes nothing. Here goes everything.

You know how the story started. I was a girl moving, stumbling, through life. I was empty and vague, like a room in an abandoned house, shaped by the life lived before and marked by the absence of the things that make a room like home. I had my responsibilities and I had my hobbies; I was decidedly unremarkable. Then I moved to Forks, went to the parent who might still have use for me now that Renée had Phil to take care of her.

I saw Edward, beautiful and confusing with his instant hatred for me, but fascinating as he gave in to his desire know me. I was the quiet spot in his world of constant thought, his eternity of sound and static. He was drawn to me and I… well, I lost my mind utterly. No, it's fine, watch me sleep when I don't know that you're there. Climb through my window at night. Tell me that you want my heart, that you'll love me always, then tell me that my blood tempts enough that you may someday forget that vow. Drag me to places against my will because you can't bear to let me miss out. Do it because you know best. You, who tell me so often that you are a monster, and that you are not alive, you know better than I do what my life needs to be full and complete.

I loved him before I knew him and filled myself up so much by loving him, his world, and his family, that everything of me became secondary. Mind you, part of me will always love his family, and I do still speak with several of the Cullens often, but loving them now and loving them then are two entirely different concepts. I wanted to be one of them, wanted to be beautiful and perfect. I'd recognized, I think, some of my own emptiness and seeing Alice and Esme so full of life and personality made me desire the change that could make me as whole as they were. I clung to Edward, and to the life that loving him could bring me, with all that I had. I stretched my heart and mind and soul like ropes and chains around his form. So is it any wonder that I nearly died when he broke away?

It seemed so easy. He took all that I was, my love for him which had defined me for those months that had felt like a lifetime, and called it a grain of sand - a temporary thing so small as to slip through the sieve that he called my memories. We were nothing, and over. I was nothing and I was over. It will be as though I'd never existed, he said. He was right. For the rest of that year there was nothing of him left to prove he'd been any more than a dream. He had existed though, and because I was defined by him, when he ceased to exist in my life, so did I.

For three months I was nothing. Then on New Year's Eve I wandered downstairs. It was late, and Charlie had fallen asleep on the couch, leaving the TV on. He'd leaned over onto the remote and channels were flickering erratically on the screen as he shifted in his sleep. I walked over and pulled the remote out from under him and the screen rested on one of those late night talk shows.

"Oh My God," the shrill scandalized voice of a young woman met her ears, "she's been an absolute wreck for like ever! A whole month, she's cried over that fool! I mean like good lord! Get some ice-cream and a copy of Casablanca and mope for a night then get the heck up and get on with your life. God! What is her damage! So what if they were engaged! He wasn't her whole life!"

Wait, I thought, doesn't she have the right to feel bad? It hurts. It hurts like Hell. He left me.

"Well, what I think…Do you want to know what I think? Of course you do. You're on my show. I think that she should be angry. Telling her that she was too young to know what love is; how dare he!"

Wait. angry? Why angry? If she was too young to know love, wasn't that his call? Wait. Why was it his judgment? Shouldn't she know her own heart? Shouldn't I know mine?

I flicked off the TV and ran upstairs to look at myself in the mirror. I looked dead. I was more pale than usual there were dark circles under my eyes. I took a deep breath and held it till I could feel my heart beat. As I exhaled I felt the stirrings of anger. Shouldn't I know my heart? Shouldn't I know what was good for me? What have I been doing? I had a thousand questions and one answer. As the clock struck midnight and kept ticking in ignorance of the new year, I spoke that answer.

"Yes," I said. There would be no more of what I'd been these past months, maybe no more of who I'd been before that. Hidden behind each of the questions I'd asked before was the only question that really mattered. Am I ready to start living?

"Yes," I whispered like a prayer, " I'm ready now."

It was the first day of the first month of the year 2006. I'd woken up and now, I'd have to take what was left of my life after those months of pain and less-than-living, and I would have to make it into something good. Edward was still gone, my heart was a void, and now I had my budding anger to deal with, too. The sun was rising in my heart though, after the longest and coldest night it had ever known, and slowly I was beginning to see the truth. Edward had done something wrong by leaving me. I could hardly believe that. Perfect and beautiful Edward had been wrong.

I went to bed. When I woke, the world would be different. For the first time in a long while, I had hope.

Hey guys, this is the first chapter of my AU of the series after the beginning of New Moon. Props go to my suitemate for inspiring me to write this. I appreciate reviews and do a mildly embarrassing happy dance when I get them so please tell me what you think or if you'd like tell me what you think is going to or should happen next, because that would be interesting to know. See you soon! P_M