Author's Note: This is my first-ever Twilight fanfiction, as well as the first story I've posted under this penname. It will most likely be pretty long. It mainly concerns the relationship between Renesmee and Jacob, as well as examining Renesmee's feelings about being the only living person in a coven of vampires. I loved Jacob when I read the books, and I thought that Renesmee would have an interesting journey growing up with him and the Cullens.

A note about the timeline: I know the canon states that Renesmee will be fully grown by age seven, but since that hypothesis was based on only one other person who happened to grow up in such a fashion, I thought it was safe to mess around with that timeline a bit. Call me closed-minded, but I still get squeamish over the idea of Jacob canoodling with a seven-year-old, even if that seven-year-old looks much older. In this story, Renesmee has been alive for seventeen and a half normal human years. I personally think it adds nicely to the tension =)

I am anxious to know your thoughts about this story. Please let me know what you think!

-Crit.

Chapter 1: Being Human

It was silent in the car. Neither the driver nor any of the three passengers were making even the slightest sound. In the front seat, a pale, dark-haired woman was sitting rigidly beside the driver, who was staring stonily at the road ahead. He didn't move, not even to breath, except to turn the wheel along with the bends in the road. In the back seat rode an impossibly large Native American man, the top of his dark head pressed uncomfortably to the roof of the small car. He looked about ready to crawl out of his skin. Beside him was a comparatively small teenage girl, who wore a very similar expression. The car continued to speed along at a breakneck pace.

The man in the back seat turned to his teenaged companion and took in her sullen expression. He looked at her with an undeniable fondness, and as she raised her eyes to meet his, he quirked a tiny sympathetic smile in her direction. Her only response was to widen her eyes and grimace, a look that clearly read get me out of this car. A low, rumbling sound broke the silence in the car, and then the large man burst out laughing.

Twin glares, one direct and one in the rearview mirror, were leveled at the back seat. "Jacob Black," the woman in the passenger seat hissed through closed teeth, "What is so funny?"

Jacob was still chuckling. "I'm sorry, Bels, it's just… have you seen the look on your daughter's face?"

The fair skinned woman just raised an eyebrow and nodded her head in the direction of the teenager. When Jacob turned to her, he saw that she was now wearing an almost identical scowl.

"Wow," he said with considerably less amusement, "Like mother, like daughter."

"And just what is wrong with my face?" The young girl had her arms crossed, and her chin was jutted out in Jacob's direction. The effect was rather childish, and Jacob had to fight off another bout of laugher.

"Absolutely nothing is wrong with your face, Ness, except for the fact that you're twisting it all up like that. It's creepy… you look like you're about to lunge at my jugular."

"Maybe I am." A small smirk was emerging on her sullen face.

"Maybe you oughta bring it, small fry." He leaned towards her and, with a wide grin, lifted his chin to one side, exposing his bare neck.

There was a low hiss from the front seat, and then a warning voice said, "Jacob, Renesmee. Enough." In the driver's seat, Edward Cullen barely made any physical indication that he was paying attention to the altercation behind him, eyes back on the road. But his warning was firm enough to stop the squabbling pair. Jacob and Renesmee returned to forward-facing positions, Renesmee crossing her arms again and sinking low in her seat.

"We were just having fun, dad," She said in a way that clearly indicated whatever enjoyment they were having had just been squashed by him. "Remember fun?"

"No," Edward deadpanned, "I do not."

Another chuckle came from Jacob. "Jake!" hissed Renesmee. "He's not funny." Then, to her father, "You're not, you know."

"I would never dream of suggesting it."

Renesmee huffed indignantly and turned to Jacob. "Traitor," she said menacingly. "You're supposed to be on MY side."

"I am," Jacob replied quickly, patting her arm, which she yanked away peevishly, "It's just… it's so rare that good Ol' No-Fun and I agree on anything. I just had to laugh."

Despite her best efforts, a tiny smirk began to crawl onto Renesmee's lips. "Fine. But don't make a habit of laughing at me, Jacob Black… I know where you live."

"That's very true," Jacob said, fondness creeping into his voice. In the front seat, Bella let out a brief, almost inaudible sigh that no normal human would have been able to hear. Of course, all of the other three passengers in the car heard it perfectly well.

Renesmee equated her mother's sigh to the fact that her only child was leaving home. It was inevitable, and of course her mother had expected that she would eventually have to go off on her own, but Renesmee knew it was still very difficult for her. When Renesmee had stopped growing four years ago, she'd seen the fear on her mother's face, and she'd known then that her parents would not make it easy for her to have a normal life, ever. She understood, but that didn't stop her from feeling smothered. It also didn't stop her from feeling like she was robbing them of their greatest happiness.

It had been Carlisle's suggestion. NYU would not have been her father's choice, but the Cullen patriarch had convinced his son to listen to the things he heard in his daughter's mind and think of her happiness, not his own. When he did, Edward had immediately given into the yearning desire his daughter had to go away, go out into the world, to be free, just for a little while. And her mother had followed soon after, when Edward explained it to her in a way the Renesmee had been unable to, without going into her mind herself.

She didn't go into her family's minds very often these days. It was fine when she was a child, but now, at seventeen (almost eighteen) years old, she felt a need for more privacy. It was always precarious, her hold over her gift, and she was never sure if certain things would slip out until she felt them leaving her mind and going into someone else's. Out of principle, she decided not to take that chance unless it was absolutely necessary. And in the past year or so, her parents were absolutely off limits where her gift was concerned. She would only use her power with Carlisle, Esme and Jasper now, and that was simply because they were the only ones with the mental will power to sidestep her father's gift. Like a journal, some things needed to be kept private from one's parents, and Renesmee's parents were respectful of her need for that privacy.

Not that it was easy for them. Renesmee had always been such a unique child, and when she was younger, her gift was the only way her family could understand the complicated changes that, with her, seemed to happen so rapidly. She hadn't grown as quickly as they had all expected, thankfully allowing the Cullen family to stay in one place for a little bit longer than anticipated. When she was two years old (and looked to be about five), they had said their farewells to Forks, moving to another town nearby in Washington. After that her development had slowed enough for her family to explain her rapid growth away with stories of growth spurts for four or five years at a time. This was a shorter amount of time than they were usually able to stay in one place, but not by much, and nobody was left feeling too inconvenienced. Each time they moved, Renesmee publicly gained a couple years: at three, she passed for six, at eight she passed for twelve, and by thirteen people had no trouble buying her as a seventeen-year-old, which was when her growth stopped completely.

Now that she was physically and chronologically an adult, Renesmee felt a little less out of place than she always had. Finally she had caught up with her family; finally she would no longer be the only one constantly changing while everyone around her stayed the same.

Her mind had always been far ahead of her body, and her body far ahead of her age, but there were certain other things that happened on a perfectly normal chronological timeline. She was nine years old when she first entered high school, and while other girls were interested in wearing make-up and going out with boys, Renesmee still had a childlike desire to learn, to gather information and develop her mind, like any curious and intelligent child. By the time she began to take any notice of boys or, for that matter, the way she looked and acted around them, she had graduated high school. In the years since then, which she spent getting her Bachelor degree, she realized that she wasn't particularly interested in them anyhow. She'd dated a few guys in her last couple years of college, but none of them were as charming as her father, as wise as Carlisle, as empathetic as Jasper, as entertaining as Emmett or as dependable and open-hearted as Jacob. How could any human man possibly measure up to the people who raised her? Renesmee felt no passion for any of them, not like one would expect from a teenaged girl. That, coupled with the fact that she flat-out refused to do anything beyond kissing, was enough to destroy her few fledgling relationships before they really had a chance to take off. Bella and Edward were never quite as disappointed as their daughter was when these flings ended.

NYU was chosen for the freedom it represented. New York City was far away, and glamorous, and Renesmee had fallen in love with it when she'd gone there on a High School trip. When she imagined strolling through the distinguished campus on a bright and sunny fall afternoon her heart gave a little flutter, and she felt a tiny coil of desire twist itself inside of her stomach. In the summer after finishing her degree, the coil had barely stopped twisting itself, and she suffered it in silence until one day, unable to bear it anymore, she exploded in a fit of tears to Jasper.

"I just want a chance, Jasper," Renesmee said, hot, angry tears splashing onto her cheeks. "I just want to GO."

Jasper stared at her, shocked. "Renesmee," he said with a strange sort of awe, "Hold on a moment…"

"No!" Renesmee made a swiping motion with her hands as she felt a wave of calm start to creep over her. "Don't do that! I need you to understand… I need SOMEONE to understand how I feel."

Jasper nodded slowly, and then hissed as if in pain as he was assailed by a wave of desperation and hopelessness. "Renesmee," he whispered, "Do you hate it here, with us, that much?"

Renesmee was suddenly and thoroughly cowed. "No!" She said quickly, mustering up every ounce of affection that she possibly could for her uncle. His eyelids fluttered with the intensity of it. "You know that isn't how I feel at all. I just… I've been living as a vampire my whole life, Jasper. But I'm not a vampire. I'm half human. Half of me is missing, and I just want to KNOW…"

"You want to know what it means to be human," Jasper finished. "And you can't do that here." It wasn't a question. He was getting up from his seat as he said it. Renesmee watched him with skeptical eyes as he shook off the fog of her feelings and turned in the direction of Carlisle's study. "Carlisle!" he yelled, even though his adoptive father's study was in the garret room on the third floor, two whole stories away from where they were sitting. Moments later, far too quickly, the head of the Cullen family appeared in front of his son, looking frazzled and worried by Jasper's urgent summons.

"Renesmee and I need your help with Edward."

After that point, it hadn't been so hard. Her father had taken some convincing, but between Herself, Jasper and Carlisle, they'd managed to get him to approve of that idea, and he in turn convinced her mother to agree. Of course, there were terms. She was only seventeen years old, and a sheltered seventeen, at that. Her parents were highly unlikely to let her go joyriding in New York City on her grandfather's dime, with no reason or purpose but to "find herself". And she was highly unlikely to ask for or want such a thing. Whatever wild streak Renesmee had was confined solely to hunting and sparring, and did not extend to a need for partying or wild night life. She would always prefer, given the choice, to engage in artistic or educational pursuits, and so the stipulation that she attend New York University in pursuit of a graduate degree was hardly a point of contention. In fact, Renesmee accepted the opportunity with vigor.

Then, of course, there was the question of safety. Her family was always overly concerned about the half-human, half-vampire girl, constantly fretting over her "fragility". Silly, of course, since she was still stronger, faster and more vicious than any normal human. But, as Emmett pointed out, these were New Yorkers she was about to be dealing with, and "They're an entirely different sort of monster." It was decided, after many long debates and fierce arguments from all involved parties, that Jacob would accompany her to New York. He would live with her in the spacious apartment Esme had somehow managed to find, and he would make sure that she remained in one piece.

And now here they were, two vampires, a shapeshifting human and Renesmee, all together in a tiny car driving in from Binghamton, the ninth cloudiest city in the country, and the Cullen family's new home. When Renesmee heard her mother, who didn't even need to breathe, utter a tiny sigh, she immediately assumed it was due to the situation at hand: Her mother was literally driving her away from her family for the first time ever.

The next few chapters are complete, so I should be able to continue very soon. Please give me your feedback… I'd love to hear what you think!