I do not own anything. Thank you to forthelongestday for FINALLY getting this all pretty and beta'd. This was one of my first fics so please be nice, it's just cleaned up.

Chapter 1: Introductions

I walked to the tattoo parlor with a stack of papers in my hand. I had it all planned out. I was going to get a full back piece to memorialize the loss of my parents. This was going to be the final step in letting go and moving on.

I was born in Forks, Washington to Charlie and Renee Swan. When I was two, my parents divorced and my mom moved me to Phoenix, Arizona. My mother was a spastic woman. She loved to try everything once. When I was 13, she decided to try out sky diving and came home with a new boyfriend, Phil Dwyer. They fell in love quickly, but I was happy for her. You could tell just by looking at them, that it was real. When I was just about to turn 17, I decided to move back to Washington, to give my mother and new step-father some alone time.

It was a hard decision and my mother tried to talk me out of it multiple times, claiming she and Phil loved having me there, but to no avail. My mind was made up, and two weeks before school started, I packed up my meager 'winter' wardrobe and caught a flight to Seattle.

My father was a quiet man; soft spoken unless he felt passionate about something. He had trouble showing affection but I always knew he loved me more than life itself. We got along fine, mostly in silence, but we discovered a routine quite quickly. Charlie was the police chief and an avid fisherman, which meant I rarely saw him in the morning, whether it be to get to work on time or to be out before the fish started biting. I would go to school, clean the house, and have dinner on the table before he made it home for the evening. The arrangement worked well for us, Charlie got a clean house and home cooked meals again and I got to use my stellar cooking skills without having to be the grown up.

It was six months after I moved to Washington that everything changed. I was walking up the sidewalk to the house when I heard the phone ringing. Tripping over my own feet, I ran into the table the phone sat on and panted out a 'hello' into the receiver. I felt my legs fall out from under me as I listened to the Phoenix police officer tell me that a drunk driver blew a red light and t-boned Renee and Phil's vehicle. It had hit the passenger side door, crushing it in, killing my mother instantly. Phil, on the other hand, held on for the ride to the hospital. They worked on him for hours trying to save him but the whiplash had severed his spine, and they were unable to save him.

When my father got home an hour later, he found me curled up on the floor, sobbing to the point of hysteria. He had to call the town doctor, who happened to be a family friend, to come and sedate me. When I managed to choke out the brief phone conversation to my father, he immediately got on the phone to book us both a flight. We took care of everything quickly. We sold the house along with most of their possession, only boxing up and sending to Forks what I wanted to keep. Between both Renee and Phil's financial holdings I was a rather wealthy woman, but I would have traded everything to have them back just long enough to say goodbye.

Life went on. I stayed in my depressed funk through the end of the school year, only coming out of it when I made a new friend in Alice Masen, after she and her family moved to town in June. Alice and her twin brother, Edward, became my lights in the darkness. They became my best friends, my confidantes, my moral and sometimes physical support—and they remain to be to this day.

Senior year started and I turned 18. My life was going back to as normal as possible. I hung out with Alice and Edward all the time. Edward and I briefly tried dating but quickly nixed the idea after the first kiss, both of us feeling as if we had been kissing a sibling. So the three of us were best friends. Alice and I went to Edward's football games and shopped together. Edward and I listened to music and watched movies together.

We graduated that year with plans to go to the University of Wisconsin. Alice was going for her generals then planning to move to New York to study fashion; Edward planned for a medical degree. I pursued a literature degree with plans to become an editor. Life was going as planned. I was having fun in college, doing well in classes, and then my life was upended again with another phone call.

I was sitting at my desk, junior year, typing out my closing statement of my final term paper of the year. I just had to hit send and my junior year would be over; I could pack up my remaining things load it into my old Chevy truck and head back to Forks for the summer. Alice, Edward, and I were planning to go out to celebrate that night; so I hit the send button, shut down my laptop, and headed off to get ready.

When I got back to the dorm room, Alice was already there, dressed and finishing her make-up. I got dressed just as Edward came and knocked on the door. We headed at out for dinner at a nice restaurant before heading out to a club meeting up with Alice's boyfriend, Jasper. The bass pounded as we walked in the door, and my cell phone rang.

I stood there in the doorway listening to my father's deputy tell me that my father had been shot to death in a robbery attempt. The room started spinning as the phone fell from my hand. I could feel the tears streaming down my face until finally the world went dark.

I woke up in the emergency room with Edward sitting by my side. I looked over at him and the tears started up again. He looked up as he heard the sniffles and ran to wrap his arms around me. He held me as I told him about the phone call, about being an orphan at 21. When I cried myself out, he went to get the doctor so we could go home. Alice came in and sat on the bed with me, Edward had told her what happened, and she told me she was there for me always. We got back to the dorms and they stayed with me all night. In the morning, they helped me pack up and drive home.

I decided to keep dad's house, as it was already payed off, and rent it out after I went back to school. I packed up most of the personal stuff I wanted to keep and put it in a storage unit. I rented a two-bedroom apartment just off campus for my senior year, sold my truck, and bought a newer vehicle. When I went back for my senior year, it was with a new perspective on life: live each moment as if it is your last and love unconditionally because you never know how long you will get with that person.

I made senior editor in under 3 years, and that brought me to Inked. At 25 I was going to do something big, huge, and all for my parents. I was going to have their memories immortalized on my back.

I pushed through the door of the tattoo parlor and walked up the to the counter. There was a tall tattoo covered woman with multi-colored hair working on a ditzy blonde girl who wouldn't shut up.

"Emmett!" the tattooist yelled and looked over at me with a small smile. "He'll be right with you." I nodded, as she looked me over with a curious look before turning back to the ditz on the table.

I turned away from her to look at the artwork on the walls. There was a beautiful painting of a pin-up styled fairy standing in a meadow staring me in the face. I had always had an obsession with fairies and a fascination with pin-up girls, but no one ever knew. I was staring at the painting, fascinated, when I felt someone walk up behind me.

"Do you like it?" I heard a deep male voice ask.

"It's gorgeous. She's beautiful." I replied before turning to look at the man.

I froze as I looked into the chest of a huge, hulking man, nearly 6 and a half feet tall. He appeared to have muscles on top of muscles and his shoulders were absolutely huge. He looked as if he could bench press a car. I slowly took in the muscle tee he had on, showing off his fully sleeved arms, and the spattering of tattoos on his legs as well. I looked up into his face and saw the most beautiful blue eyes I had ever seen, along with perfect, kissable lips and a set of dimples to die for. He face was boyish in a way that you would have thought it wouldn't go with the sheer size of his body, but on him it worked.

"Thank you, it's mine."

I shook my head slightly and looked back at the painting.

"You painted this? It's…there are no words…" I looked back at him and saw a sheepish, embarrassed look on his face that made him look even more adorable than before.

"Well, thank you again. So, what can I do for you?" He looked down at the stack of papers I held in my hand before leading me to the counter.

"I want to get a memorial piece, for my parents. I have a lot of pictures and rough sketches. It's big, and it'll definitely take some time." I said, my nerves coming back to me making my voice shake a bit towards the end.

"Okay, well let's see what you got."

I spread out all the pictures I had, the fish and the police badge for my father, a jade colored fairy for my mother, along with the baseball for Phil and a few other little things to piece it together. Emmett, as I learned his name was, was looking over the photos trying to piece it together as I explained the meaning of each piece.

"You said you had rough sketches? Do you have them with you?

"Oh, yeah." I pulled out the other papers out of my purse and handed them over. I wasn't much of a drawer, but I was able to get the ideas in my head out on paper.

"Do you mind if I keep these? I will take a look and put something together for you. When did you want to do this?"

"Whenever you can. I can work around your schedule. How many visits do you think it'll take?"

"Well, I won't know for sure until I see how I get it pieced together, but I'd say two maybe three, depending on how your skin takes the ink. You have some detailed pictures and some things that don't exactly complement each other. Give me a few days, you can either stop back or I can email you what I've sketched up and then we can make your first appointment." He was looking at the pictures with a questioning face before looking up at me with a smile, popping the dimples out.

I nodded and thanked him, giving him my email and phone numbers, as well as telling him I'd come back later that week. I walked out of the shop with confidence that Emmett was going to create something perfect for me.