"Doesn't Claire get a choice here?"

"Of course. But why wouldn't she choose him, in the end? He'll be her perfect match. Like he was designed for her alone."

-Eclipse, Chapter 8: Temper

Imprint: a mark made by pressure

She always knew he was different. She always knew there was something utterly strange in the way he acted towards her, all protective and loving and kind, though not her brother or cousin or anything family, and never a tad too much, just right. Just like the way she would want him to. There wasn't a single false note when he talked to her, or touched her, all honest truth and so very infatuated, it seemed, so very focused on her and no one else that she thought maybe he'd been made for her, like a bee was made for flowers. He was nothing short of a little girl's dream come true; perfect play buddy, perfect tea guest, perfect anything she wanted. And he was always there to be all that.

She always knew he was different, in that very way, and, after a certain while and a bit of growing up putting her to test with her environment, she started to wonder. Not all by herself, no, since she'd taken him for granted for years, as he'd always been there, and just for her, too, and she'd thought nothing of it, of course. After all, wasn't he supposed to be her protector, as they'd told her, wasn't his whole being revolving around her, as he'd told her, wasn't she content with all that, as she'd told herself? No, the wondering started when her new school mates pointed their fingers at her and said, "Look, Claire has a boyfriend, she will marry him!" They would tease and tug and laugh and pull her hair, and make her wear a ring made up of stinging nettle, so she would cry and wail – and she would want revenge.

She was just a child, then, and having grown up practically leading him by the nose she thought he would do anything for her, especially since she believed it was his fault, anyway. So she told him to make them pay, childish stubbornness and a sense of black and white morality making the order seem right and justified, and when he refused, albeit reluctantly, she put her foot down and screamed and told him she hated him and never wanted to see him again if he didn't. And that did the trick. He wouldn't beat them up, of course, but, as she understood it, he scared them senseless, whatever that meant, so the teasing stopped and she was happy again and they were best friends forever, she vowed.

She didn't think too much of it at first. The way he would always comply in the end, seeing as he did anything but, or the confusing references to boyfriends and marriage and such, or the manipulative streak in their relationship that she couldn't yet know about but felt all right anyway. Only as she saw the looks on the other children's faces, on the teacher's faces, on her parent's faces, even – fear and suspicion and worry, and somehow forlorn – did she take a break to stand still for a moment and observe and think about it. It seemed trivial enough, at first, to haughtily ignore, but soon she could no longer hide behind the child she was and the carelessness that came with it, as there was no such child anymore.

Over the years she faced many of these moments, where suddenly the world would tilt, just a bit, but enough so to make the distortion visible, and she would have to take a second or two to understand what was wrong. However, the more all the little wrong things cumulated, the more they all seemed to revolve around him, wrapping him in a thin cloud of mystery and delusion that was almost tangible, almost real. And there she was, knowing he was different, now more than ever, and that there was something not quite right about him, about them, even if she could barely put her finger on what it exactly was, or what it meant.

Her mother had always told her about how he was special, special only for her, and her only duty was to accept it, accept him – and all that with an expression in her eyes that practically screamed 'no'. But Claire did not see that, at the time, of course, so she did as she was told as any good daughter would. To her, it wasn't even much of a concept to accept then, or a man to accept, especially since she didn't quite understand it anyways and felt there wasn't anything out of the ordinary. She knew he wasn't like everyone else, but what did it matter much, which child wouldn't want someone to see to all their little troubles, exclusively? She didn't see anything wrong with that. Until it was too late.

The realisation that 'Imprinting' wasn't some kind of game or word play, meaning nothing more than having a brother that wasn't one, may have taken longer than it should have, but come it did. And how. Even though he wasn't family in the strictest sense, she never saw him as anything else; a brother is a brother, regardless of blood, she'd thought. It wasn't his fault, or hers, that everything was suddenly different, that suddenly they weren't what they appeared or wanted to be, but what they were supposed to be. They certainly hadn't meant to change, neither he nor she, but it seemed inevitable, in the end, like an arranged force of nature spiralling downwards into a catastrophe.

With each coming year, each step of maturing, growing from a girl into a young woman, she felt the pressure from around, growing with her, onto her, and trying to shape her. Trying to shape him, too, she believed, while obviously neither had given their consent. Suddenly it wasn't enough to be best friends anymore – one taking care of the other, like actual siblings, vowing to always be there for each other – people expected them to go out. Her friends started asking embarrassing questions about their 'relationship', if she'd kissed him, if they'd been intimate. Had he already asked her to marry him? How many kids would she want to have? What was it like to be destined for someone else? And it wasn't just her friends, it was his friends, too, his parents, the elders – and soon enough everyone else had joined in.

It took some time to adjust to their unexpected views, confusion and annoyance and a sense of despair fighting for her attention, while she wondered if she'd ever really understood what Imprinting was all about. She knew of Emily and Sam, of Jacob and the other werewolves, and of course she'd joked as a child that she might marry her brother, maybe even meant it, but it was just that, wasn't it, a childish perception of how the world worked; wounds healing with a simple blow, wishes granted by fallen stars and girls loving their family members so much they'd never want to separate. But why should she ever actually marry her childhood friend, her brother? It seemed such an extraordinary idea, now, as if they'd always told her that she was her parents' daughter and suddenly denied it, demanding her to move and live with her real parents in Alaska. She couldn't understand, couldn't really accept it, though in the end, even if they didn't quite force her, the general demand, like an unseen collective authority, was always in her back, always pushing her forward and right into him. She couldn't escape, either, because they wouldn't let her.

It was around tenth grade when she relented. Utterly, completely, not quite in her right mind, probably, but ever since they'd started asking her, the questions had become tangled up in her head like a fly in a spider's net, twisting deeper yet with every day. There was the possibility, there was if and how and could. There were whispers all around that she just could not ignore, guiding her, beckoning her, waiting for repulsion to turn into temptation, somehow. The trap had been laid out carefully, years ago, and she wasn't walking into it, she was already caught, only dimly aware of the fact.

At that time she fell for a class mate, right out of the blue, but as everyone expected differently from her she couldn't built up the courage to ask him out and soon some other girl had taken that place at his side that she'd wanted so much, and so there she was, crying into Quil's sleeve as if the world had swallowed her whole and spit her out. He soothed her, then, like he always did, telling her it wasn't worth the effort, that she'd find someone else, someone who'd love her like she deserved it. She didn't think he meant himself, he never did. There wasn't ever anything remotely forward in the way he spoke to her or acted around her – and it probably wouldn't have felt right, anyway – he was just being kind, being her brother, and she was grateful for that. Yet as she sat there, eyes red and swollen, sniffing on a tissue, and drying her tears on his sleeve, she wondered idly if the whispers might be right after all, if the people knew better. If she shouldn't just accept what they all seemed to think that being an Imprintee entailed. And before she knew it, she was kissing him.

She hadn't meant to be so bold. It was as if her brain decided to just try something on a whim, conveniently forgetting such things as consequences. But she didn't even have time to really comprehend what she was doing, because he quickly withdrew, holding her at an arm's length and, after a certain while of awkward silence, telling her that he didn't think this was what she really wanted. When she asked why, knowing the obvious answer somewhere in the back of her mind but somehow not able to get past that sudden nagging feeling of unexpected rejection, he said that he only wanted what was best for her, and before she could respond to that, about to tell him that maybe this was what was best for her without really agreeing herself, he said that she shouldn't listen to anyone else, it didn't matter what other people said as long as she made her own decisions. Her own choices.

She frowned and stopped there, if only for a second, trying and failing miserably to process what he was telling her, somehow not able to wrap her tangled up and confused mind around his considerably different opinions, so much lovelier though they were. She wanted to believe, wanted to take that thought and make it her own, but something else occurred to her right then and, following a suspicion she never quite realised she'd been carrying for a long time, she outright asked him if he even wanted her, truly wanted her, and when he said nothing, eyes full of sorrow and unwilling to meet her gaze, and something like desperation visible on his face for just a fraction of a second, she felt so bitterly disappointed, so awfully deceived she wanted to punch him.

Somewhere in there, between all the confusing feelings and thoughts she wondered, sanely enough, why it was so important all of a sudden to know if he cared about her, hadn't he already made that clear in all these years? But sanity didn't wait long enough for her to hold onto that thought, crippling down rapidly to reveal a layer of something far more sinister and darkly intimate beneath. She didn't quite feel like herself anymore, felt only them, their words, their reasoning, pressing her forward, squeezing her into some ultimate form she didn't belong in, because of tradition, or fate, or whatever it was they'd sworn she would have to submit to, sooner or later. She was just a plaything in a world of twisted destinies, and she would have cried for her lost identity if only she'd known then that she was about to abandon it. But the truth was that she cried for much more selfish reasons, and not one tear was for him, not one for their friendship, and she realised this, too, though any remorse she could have felt was ultimately overshadowed by repressed anger and hurt, the idea of Imprinting, forcing unrealistic love unto her a betrayal to her vey heart.

So she told him, in all honesty, and in a tone so bitter she thought it would actually leave a gash across his heart, that it didn't matter what she thought, that it wasn't her decision anymore, and it had never been. It wasn't his either, she added, it was theirs, only ever theirs. The words came jittering out of her mouth like a swarm of bees intent on causing pain, easy as the wind yet dangerous as a tornado, even though she wasn't quite sure who was the target, but it didn't matter much, anyway, she felt she'd been stung a hundred times already, what was one more wound to do? She tried to look at him, see for herself the damage she knew she'd caused, and feeling with a growing sense of fear an unhealthy satisfaction creeping into her features like a spider, a black widow practically murdering any compassion or sympathy she held for him.

He seemed unable to respond, shaking his head at her, stuttering 'no, no' again and again, more to himself she thought, his hand inching forward and back when she gave him a determined look, locking her teeth together and demanding that he do as she said, like he always did, like he was supposed to, like it had been promised to her. And she said to kiss her, eyes hard and bright red and never more resolved, trying desperately to hide the truth, the broken will that lay beaten down behind it all, and subtly telling him that she meant for the choice to be taken away, locked in a cage with the key thrown into a river, to make it easier, for both of them. Let the people have what they wanted. Maybe they were right, after all. Maybe soul mates were soul mates. Maybe friends were lovers. Maybe she didn't care anymore. Maybe he shouldn't, either. She pressed her lips onto his, grabbed his hair with her hands much too forcefully, and when she didn't feel him respond, she made him.

...

Later that night, as she lay awake, listening to the hurried sound of footsteps making their way out of her room through the window, she was finally able to have those tears that she hadn't been thinking of shedding earlier, if only through quiet sobbing. Tears for him and tears for them, tears for all the other Imprinted out there, even, full of compassion and sorrow and, with every minute, growing worse, while she clutched the old quilt to her naked body, feeling hollow and lost, and very guilty. She understood it all, now, she felt she saw it clear as crystal when before there'd only been obscuring mist and unsettling questions. What her mother had said about Imprinting, that it meant to just accept and nothing else, what her friends had teased her with, boyfriends and marriage and an unavoidable destiny, what he'd told her when she tried to kiss him, what she'd done when she didn't comprehend, and she too understood what that expression in her mother's eyes had meant as she'd told her own daughter to stop fighting. It was all that Imprinting entailed, and she finally understood. She wouldn't fight it, anymore; she wouldn't try to change what could not be changed, what was already moulded as it should be. Fate, whatever that was, whatever that meant, could not be revoked, could not be ignored. It wasn't her choice, after all, and neither his, not even theirs; she knew now that they'd been wrong, so very wrong, that there wasn't any choice to begin with. So she'd have to try and be what she was supposed to be, and he would have to, too. And there was nothing else, either, nothing at all.

Somewhere in the distance a haunting howl, low and languid and strangely cut off at the end, tore through the night, as the tears were still rolling down her cheeks and she turned around to bury her face into the pillow.

END

A/N: I haven't been writing and/or posting anything since the last two years, so any review, positive or negative, is welcome. ConCrit even more so. (Grammar suggestions, too.) Thanks muchly for reading.