The Special Two

Shadows danced across the walls where the dirt clung to chipped woodwork, as if to find safety from the ash covered floor. My heart pounded when I heard someone moving in the hallway. I stayed still and attempted to keep my breathing normal, so it would look like I was asleep.

There it was again. It sounded like someone was dragging flower sacks. This time it was closer and louder. It felt more dangerous. I shifted my eyes under their covered lids and pushed sweaty palms to the bed. Through the sheets and the mattress I could feel the vibrations in the floor. Someone was in the house. Their footsteps were uneven, leaving me with an erratic rhythm to pick up on. It felt like they had a limp. As soon as I figured this out everything went dead silent. I didn't dare open my eyes. Every muscle in my body was wired tight like a rubber band that was rigged to fire.

My heart leapt into my throat as the door opened, and then I heard it.

"What the hell!" I screeched as I shot up from bed, several fire balls froze the small distance between my cot and the door. The flames danced and spun as if they were smirking at me, the golds and oranges mixed together and shot apart. He stood in the door with a cocky grin on his face. He closed his palm and the flames were extinguished, their dance was over. At least for now anyway.

I swung my feet and used the momentum to stand. All the adrenalin that had built up in the last few minutes burned from fear into anger, and it was apparent in every move I made. The ashy floor didn't bother my feet; they were already completely covered in the black substance. "Is no place sacred Dan?"

He laughed and shot another at me, which I dodged. "Nope."

I huffed and stared after his retreating figure, I waited until his victory walk to him to the perfect place.

"Shit!" He cursed as his head collided with the large oak door. Dan stared back at me with a furious look on his face; he was also sporting a lovely cut and bruise.

"Clara," He growled.

I didn't turn around but instead I crawled back into my bed, "Sorry, no place is sacred."

I emerged several hours later in a tight fitting gray v-neck with holes and cuts paired with a pair of long kaki shorts. My hair was messy and thrown into a curly loose pony tail, which now had various parts hanging across my ash covered face.

Ah, burning objects. You gotta love them.

I strolled into the familiar kitchen and levitated Dan's strawberry pop tart off his plate and into mine. This was becoming a normal morning routine at the Bragg's home.

"Hey!"

I ignored his protests and took a large bite, "That's for this morning's wake up call."

Joshua raised an eyebrow from his place at the head of the table. His plate was full of crumbs from devoured toast and he had grown a scruff over the last week. Joshua's blueish eyes didn't hold a hint of surprise, but he did try to hide the small amount of anger that rose in them. "Wake up call?"

"Yeah. Fire Balls over here decided to try to kill me this morning." I nudged a lazy arm over in Dan's direction, where he was still pissed that I was eating his pop tart.

Josh's eyes got hard and angry looking, I just laughed. "But he's kind of an epic fail, so he just got that nice bruise above his eye."

For the second time this morning Daniel growled and threw a few fire balls at me, which I deflected to the side and took another large bite of his pop-tart, just for his benefit.

"You're going to make me another one." He stated in reference to the strawberry flavored toaster pastry. Dan's fingers made dents in the table he was squeezing it so hard.

I laughed and pushed away from the table, which was cluttered with books, "Right." I dragged out the 'i' for emphasis.

"Clara, go the living room. Dan go get another pop-tart and stop trying to piss Clara off. You're going to loose." Joshua said in a commanding manner so neither of us could continue our argument.

I grabbed the last two books I hadn't read from the table that held nearly fifty, and walked into the next room with half of Daniel's pop tart in my mouth.

Dan grumbled as I walked into the next room, "Bitch."

I smirked and flipped him off.

***

"Mhm." I mumbled when Joshua rambled from one of the youngest texts that had correctly described what I was.

He scratched his chin, "You're not paying attention again."

I sighed and crossed my legs on the couch so I was facing him. The nice sofa felt strangely out of place in their dirty, simple, trashed house. The leather was new and shiny; I looked up and met Joshua's questioning blue orbs. "I've learned our entire culture in the past seven days. I learned how to fight, I got at least forty burns,"

"That I healed."

"That you healed," I rolled my eyes playfully. "Point is I worked my ass off, okay? I did everything on your schedule. I put up with Daniel and his random attacks. Given, he never actually stood a chance because the element of surprise tends to repel him, but it was still annoying. I want to do something else!" I threw my hands up to further prove my point.

The dust went flying off the couch and into the air. In that same second Dan must have gotten pissed because a kitchen appliance went flying and smacked into the wall. The silver pieces of the poor innocent toaster were scattered across the kitchen floor, ending with a clang where ever an object stopped their movement. Daniel started to yell incoherent things and soon smaller tools followed in the toaster's abusive path. Forks and knives made loud thuds as they pierced the wall unexpectedly; they hummed loudly when they were forced to stay in the wall.

I groaned and grabbed my head. "See? We're sick of each other." My toned arm pointed to the kitchen where Daniel's massacre continued.

I knew I was acting like a little kid who was trying to learn how to read. Frustration was coming to me in heavy thick waves and I couldn't help myself. I needed out. Joshua himself said that my emotions were going to get a lot stronger the closer to my birthday. My birthday's tomorrow and I'm pretty sure this is as strong as it gets. If I've learned one thing in the past seven days it's to stay away from a pissed off shape shifter.

We, like most people, are a lot stronger when we're angry. We tend to make rash decisions, like when I decided it was a good idea to smack Dan into a tree. I was able to stop all the flying objects and still hold him up too. I shouldn't have been able to do that when I hadn't been practicing. Maybe I could have lifted one or two objects, but not with Dan's massive jerky body. In addition to being a shape shifter, I was an Infinitus. We're stronger to begin with, so when we get pissed off...

Just don't piss us off. Okay?

"You're right." Josh said when he faced me again, he decided he better just leave Dan alone. Then weren't as poor as they seemed, they could afford a new house.

I leapt giddily from the couch, "I can leave?" Excitement dripped from every word.

"We never kept you here captive, Clara." But again he sighed, I was practically pouncing off the wall, it was no use trying to correct me now. "Yeah just go."

I did a little happy dance back to my room. "I'm leavin'. I'm leavin'. Oh, you checkin' in? Too bad. Because I'm gone."

I sang happily as I went into my room. It had four walls and a bed. That's about it. I grabbed the black v-neck, short shorts, and converse I had worn here a week ago and ran back to the front of the house.

"Bye!" I shouted and ran to my car, happy to have escaped the boring and dusty atmosphere.

***

The sun burst through my car windows as I escaped the Bragg's shaded home. There were no clouds that I could see, and the breeze blew just enough that I could roll my windows down and not feel like I'm suffocating.

I breathed in deeply; my lungs greedily accepted the clean air. I was surprised at how my headache went away and my mood lifted significantly as soon as I got out. It was almost like the weather was trying to make me happier. If that was its goal for the day, to make little ole me happy, it was doing an excellent job.

My car crawled into the familiar driveway and I headed straight upstairs into the bathroom. I turned the shower on and turned it so the water was burning hot. The steam filled the room, fogging up the mirror and making my body damp. I peeled the grimy close from my body; there was a dirt line on my thigh from where my shorts stopped covering them. Greedily I jumped into the shower and let the scorching water soothe my aching muscles.

When I got out of the shower I was bright red. I had to literally scrub my skin off to get rid of the dirt. I looked like a big, red, lobster that smelt like wild cherry. My hair smelt like a dessert treat and I decided I would go make something delicious downstairs as soon as I got this raw skin covered.

My day was a lazy one. I decided to wait until dinner to make my treat, so I spent the entire day in gigantic sweats watching re-runs of Project Runway.

At six I got my lazy butt up and made the apple pie I had been salivating over by just thinking about it. My family had a recipe that I swear made it taste ten times better, but I hold a slightly bias opinion.

I turned around to grab some whipped cream, when I heard erratic footsteps from nearly a mile away. When I turned back around, there was a vampire in my kitchen.

"There's a vampire in my kitchen." I stated my thoughts angrily, but it came out as more of a pout.

He smiled, "God, I hate it when that happens." He walked up gracefully to the counter and reached for the pie.

"Emmett McCarty Cullen. If you dare lay an icy finger on my apple pie I will call Daniel over," His hand pushed further over and he was almost touching the crust, "and I will have him burn your favorite appendage off."

Emmett's hand shot back and I smiled sweetly at my victory while he took a seat on by the island. "That's harsh Clara."

"I've been looking forward to this pie all day. You don't even eat."

He smiled a wild grin, "Yeah, but Alice told me to touch it."

I just shook my head, "Why are you here anyway?"

"Alice wants you to come over so you can talk about your birthday and trust me, you'd be doing all of us a favor. She hasn't stopped talking about it all week. If it was possible for me to get a headache, my head would be split open."

"So why didn't she come over and ask me?"

"She needed to hunt. For safety reasons, you know how it is."

I laughed, "Alice hunted because I'm coming over? Don't I smell bad to you guys anyway?"

"Like week old boiled eggs."

"Thanks." I smirked. "I can't come though; she's more than welcome to come over here."

Emmett groaned. I laughed and started to cut into my pie and served myself a large piece. The steam shot up from the new opening. It smelt so good. I could practically taste it on my tongue. I reached for a fork and shoveled a large bite into my mouth. I sighed with contempt.

"Why can't you come?"

I swallowed and jabbed at another piece, "Because I'll kill your sister-in-law." I stated simply.

Emmett's laughter boomed from his spot against the island, I'm pretty sure the walls started to shake. I grabbed the table to steady myself in a mocking manner, my straightened hair falling over my flushed cheeks. Emmett soon contained himself, and I let go of the table. I pretended not to notice the dents I had made in the granite because it started to scare me. All of the sudden I needed to watch how I touched things and how I felt, I wasn't use to sheltering my feelings from myself. I can't even scream into a pillow anymore without shifting into someone else or levitating a lamp into the wall.

"Come on, Alice's party planning really isn't that bad. There are no cars or sports involved. But I guess you could see past that."

I let out a short, heartless laugh at his answer. "I wasn't talking about Alice."

"Why would you want to kill Bella?"

My fingers drummed across the deformed table and I placed a long finger to my chin, pretending to be in deep thought. I scrunched my eyebrows up and crushed my lips into an uncomfortable form, "It could be," I started slowly. "Aha! Yes!"

"What?" He played along enthusiastically.

I threw my hands up around me and bounced in an excited manner, "it’s because she thinks her undead hands have claim over my imprint!' I clapped and bounced.

His face grew uncomfortable and suddenly I felt bad for having brought it up. I know Emmett went through a lot because of Bella, and for some reason he still likes her. My bet was because he had always been so close to Edward and he was just happy to see him happy. I understood why it didn't bother him to see her with Jacob, because it made Bella happy, which made Edward happy...within reason. He was willing to protect Bella and any extra protection for his soul mate was awesome. Edward didn't care what happened to anyone else, as long as Bella was okay.

My emotions were flying left and right, I was caught in-between being pissed at myself hurting Emmett, crying because I haven't seen Jacob in what felt like a lifetime, and maniacal rage for Bella.

I decided to levitate the pie into the fridge and the dishes into the sink as well as shift some makeup on my face. For some reason, using my 'gifts' seemed to calm me down. I knew that it had consequences so I tried not to do it often. If I knew anything about myself, I knew I wanted to be in control of myself. I mean, who wouldn't?

"Alright." I said after a few minutes of silence, "Am I driving or are you going to give me a piggy back ride?"

Emmett gave me a broad grin.

***

When I finally arrived at the Cullen's house I groaned, "Bella's inside."

Emmett had gone inside nearly five minutes ago. Me, being the stubborn person I am, decided to stay here because the immortal night crawler was inside and I knew it would be ugly as soon as I walked in. I didn't want to be mean to Bella, for some reason I just did. Apparently she used to whine about growing older, she lead Jacob on and then pushed him away as soon as Eddy boy came back, she nearly killed herself by the Volturi and put the entire pack in danger. She thought she deserved everything.

At least my everything.

And she didn't. Bella didn't deserve Jacob. Destiny, fate, whatever you want to call it, proved that by making him imprint on me. So why should she get to spend time with him when I can't? Why does he feel the need to make her happy?

I groaned loudly on the doorstep and mentally kicked myself. It's going to be so much worse now. So I pushed myself off the steps and turned the door knob, I knew Alice would have seen me coming so there wasn't a need to knock.

Unfortunately for me, Bella was waiting by the staircase. "I thought we got that out of the way already." She said in a frustrated tone.

I clenched my fists, which were practically burning, "What do you mean?" I said slowly.

"I thought we decided that I could still see Jacob."

Out of habit, I levitated the nearest thing and threw it into the wall. Whatever it was it shattered instantly and I couldn't make myself feel bad about it. I was fuming. "Yeah? Well I think you’re still a little confused on the terms."

I walked up to her spot at the staircase, becoming very aware that everyone in the house could here me. "You don't get to play the I'm stuck here for eternity, poor me card. You chose this life. You knew exactly what would come with it. Of course people are going to be pissed that you were changed, or that the Volturi take an interest in you. Hell, when you were human you had pissed off leeches coming after you! You do not get to pull the sympathy card on Jacob. It's not his fault you became pulse-challenged."

Bella stood tall, completely stunned at my outburst. She couldn't come up with any words to say. In that moment I didn't know if I was being fair to her, I didn't know if I had crossed the line without reason, and quite frankly I didn't care.

I walked up the steps at a normal pace, there was no need to rush it would look the same to them anyway. Alice would find me and take me somewhere, that's just how she was. This is why it surprised me when she came up instead.

"You're Rosalie, right?" I said after a moment of silence. The Hale twins were the only members that I wasn't comfortable with. I had heard enough about them from the pack and I could say I wouldn't be disappointed if I never had the pleasure of meeting either of them.

The beautiful blonde just nodded at me, and I shrugged. "Are you pissed that I went off on Bella?"

"No." She smiled slightly looking down at the annoying vampire at the bottom of the stairs, "She needed to hear it from someone."

Rosalie started walking through the long hallway and stopped when she came to a door near the middle.

"Come in." Alice's voice was like a bell through the wall and Rosalie opened the door. Alice was sitting in a room with dark wood flooring and white walls covered in charcoal. There was a desk with various drawing utensils and an old fashion record player. I noticed bookshelves that were stacked with fashion magazines, and finally my eyes fell on the pixie girl in front of me.

Alice was in the middle of the room with photos, fabric, and various decorations spread in every which way. There was light piano music in the background but Alice was popping her head to a different tune. She looked up and me and grinned broadly, I felt Rosalie shift behind me and soon she was next to Alice. They both smiled with such excitement it made me frightened.

“We have a lot to do.”

Several hours passed and I was bored. Alice had given up on me making any sort of decision about the party. It wasn't her fault that I didn't want a party; I hadn't had a birthday party in years. Things just weren't how they should have been.

"Alice?" I popped my head up from its resting place on the hard floor, "You can't see the future when the wolves are involved, right?"

She was cutting ribbon in an expert fashion, making it curl and bend in just the right places. "Yes."

"Because they're your natural enemy, and vampires don't affect your vision at all?"

She smiled at her finished product, which I didn't get a chance to take in because she quickly hid it, "I can still see when there are vampires involved."

I nodded and changed my position so I was sitting with my legs crossed beneath me. "If my people-" I started and shook my head. "If my Dad was a werewolf and I am...what I am, why can you still see me?"

Alice looked up from her work and I met her bright gold eyes, proof that she had just hunted. "And why do you still have to hunt for me to be around?"

I had so many questions that I wanted answered about my relationship with other species. Alice just looked at me with a small smile, "I can't see you the way I see everyone else."

It caught me off guard, "Then how do you see me?"

Alice's eyes got a little glazed over, but not so much that I didn't think she could hear me. "It's like I'm looking at you through a foggy window. I can make out shapes and figures but I can't see faces." This seemed to frustrate her, "There's no sound. It's like someone put it on mute."

Her eyes got sharp again, "It's been getting worse. The closer it is to your birthday the more I loose. I use to be able to hear little things or see important things clearly. It's so frustrating!"

"I'm sorry." I stated awkwardly, Alice was the last person I wanted to frustrate right now. She was doing so much for me.

She shook her head, making her bob-cut shake wildly. “The scent of your blood is sickening.” She wrinkled her nose, “For some reason I still want to be near it. Not necessarily taste it but something just pulls me in.” Alice shook to clear her head.

"You're not what I expected you to be."

Rosalie's voice caught me off guard; I forgot she was in the room. I smirked, "I'm going to take that as a compliment."

"Maybe it wasn't one."

"I don't care." I stared at her golden eyes and I knew she was testing me. Her features looked like they were carved out of stone more so than any of the other Cullen's. I could see how a lot of people were intimidated by her. "I'm trying to think positive."

"Because your mutt didn't want you?" She pushed.

I laughed once without humor, "Because your bipolar leech in-law can't come to terms with her choice."

Rosalie realized that she wasn't going to mess with my feelings on 'the Jake subject' and started filing through streamers again. After a few hours I was both bored and exhausted. The charcoal drawings seemed to blend together on the wall making a rather sickening smoothie effect.

"You need to sleep; we've got a big day planned for you tomorrow." Alice said in her typical perky voice, though it never annoyed me until now. No sleep equals constant perkiness. Perkiness and I don't get along very well when I'm tired.

I leaned against the wall with my shoulders slouched. A yawn escaped my mouth before I got a chance to stop it. "Unless one of you wants to carry me home I'm staying." Another yawn. "Emmett gave me a piggy back ride here." I laughed softly at the memory.

Rosalie got up and handed me clothes, "You can sleep in Edward's old room." She caught my blank stare. "Edward bought a bed for Bella when they were dating."

"And she was," I yawned. "Human."

Rosalie nodded. "No offense to you all, but she's an idiot for doing that to herself."

They both stayed silent in agreement. I knew that neither of them chose this life for themselves and while it did bring them happiness both of them felt extreme loss. I can't even imagine. But while Alice pulled me through the hallways I thought about what I would loose as of right now. My Mom and I were talking but it was clear she wasn't changing. She let me go back and she's still trying to fight my rightful inheritance in court. I didn't have any other family, no siblings, aunts or uncles. My grandparents passed before I was born. Jacob wasn't talking to me and he clearly chose Bella, it broke my soul into irreplaceable shatters. Relationships are like glass. Sometimes it's better to leave them broken than to hurt yourself putting it back together.

For once in my life, I want to hurt myself by trying.