Disclaimer: I own none of these characters. I just enjoy messing around with them.
--
I sat and waited, taking in the view around me. The cliffs over LaPush beach, and indeed, the view they presented, were both breathtakingly beautiful. The clouds rolled lazily across the sky, casting a gray pallor to anything underneath them, which was, in this case, absolutely everything. When I had first seen the dismal days that prevailed in Forks, Washington, my sun drenched eyes had recoiled. It had been what seemed like ages since then. My sensibilities had changed. I still didn't think of gray as beautiful, per say, but it echoed well the emptiness left in my heart. I don't know that I could've stomached the sun anymore. It was too bright, too happy. The clouds let me be sad. Let me wallow in the pain. I suppose it is a selfish sentiment, to want that, but I was quite beyond caring.
Happiness felt unnatural anywhere but here, on the reservation. And even the happiness I felt here was stilted, different. It was a gray happiness. It pulled me out of my endless waking night, the never ending nightmares, if only for a time. It was my compromise. I knew that had I given myself completely over to the darkness that was left in the awful wake of his departure, I would have ceased to exist. A part of me wanted that. A part of me wanted to stop feeling everything. Happiness, pain, desire, love... none of it really mattered in the end. All it ever left on anyone was scars. And yet the other part of me wanted to live. A silly desire, when I thought about it, but it was voracious. The two parts of me warred against each other constantly. But while the battle raged, I humored the part of me that longed to see the view from these cliffs, to enjoy company, if even slightly.
I slipped my shoes off my feet and set them to the side, curling my toes around the end of the rocks, peering cautiously over the edge to the drop below. I wondered what it would be like to fall so far. The thought occurred to me idly that I would not have to wait long to find out. As soon as Jacob joined me, that was exactly what we would be doing: cliff diving.
I chuckled absently to myself. I could barely dive off the side of a pool, much less a diving board. No, leave it to me these days to take something I could hardly do at all and make myself do it at a ridiculous difficulty level. It should've frightened me. I should have been scared silly. Yet as I sat on the edge of the cliffs, watching the water so far below me crash wildly against the rocks, I realized I hardly felt anything. I suppose that's why I was willing to do this in the first place. I would force myself to feel an emotion that didn't lead to sobbing.
I let go of my knees, that I had unconsciously been hugging, and scooted back from the edge slightly. Dusting my hands off, I pushed myself off the ground and scanned the area around me, searching for any sign of Jacob. I had completely lost track of time while I was lost in thought, but now that I had managed to pull myself back to reality, my impatience began to build. The idea of flying off the cliffs, of being free from the ground, from myself, from everything but the laws of gravity, even if only for a few seconds was so intoxicating that waiting for him was becoming much more difficult.
I shrugged out of my jacket and let it fall to the ground, pooling around my feet while I discarded my socks on top of my shoes and dug my toes into the rock and dirt. My eyes closed themselves as the wind kicked up around me, bearing on it the smell of water and earth and rain. A small smile that I couldn't help pulled at the corners of my mouth. The scent was so clean, so inviting, that when the wind swirled around me, tugging me forward, I felt myself take a tiny step towards the edge.
This movement stopped me a moment. I opened my eyes and looked around me again. Jacob was nowhere to be found. I sighed inwardly and took another small step forward. The eagerness I had been entertaining before had reared again, tugging me forward, enticing me over, promising me freedom.
My toes had reached the edge of the cliff again, digging impatiently over the rock, gripping it. I glanced over the edge one last time before I lifted my chin and pushed myself away from the rock that held me to the earth.
For less than a moment I hung, what seemed motionless in the air, gazing down with wide eyes at the water below before my stomach lurched angrily to my throat. Suddenly the cliffs were rushing faster and faster past my eyes, and I was flying... I tucked my head down and pulled my arms around it as I flew. The wind that had been so enticing before was whistling excitedly in my ears, urging me on. God, I wanted to go faster, and yet never wanted to reach the bottom. The water below was rushing up to swallow me, envelop me. I attempted to streamline myself as much as possible. Pending my survival of this jump, I could concievably jump again. Driven by that thought, I tried to make my entry as easy as possible.
My hands parted the water before me like a knife as I torpedoed through the dark depths. It was cold. The water closed heavily around me, still rushing, like the air had been, but much more angry. It pulled at me viciously, tugging at my clothes, my hair, my skin. I peeled my eyes open to see only darkness, and quailed inwardly as the cold seeped through my body. It was hateful, that cold.
I thought of Jacob, my personal sun. How I wanted his warmth... I opened my mouth to call for him, but water flowed bitterly through my teeth and down into my lungs. I couldn't speak, couldn't breath... I scrambled vainly for the surface until I realized with a sinking feeling that I had no idea where the surface actually was. I was drowning... dieing... A part of me was hardly surprised but the errant thought flashed through my mind that I would never be able to fly again...
My body went limp with that realization, the cold seeping further into my chest, the water pushing me violently back and forth. The pain in my lungs was growing more and more unbearable by the moment. I wanted to scream, wanted to cry, wanted for it to be over and not to feel anything anymore, when suddenly a sharp pain in my arm pulled me back into focus.
I must have hit something. I must have hit it hard... My right arm felt broken. My first thought was that the waves had finally carried me back towards the cliffs and were now dashing me against rocks and beach and who knew what else. But I hit nothing more. The waves were still swirling past me, but they seemed to be resisting me. I was moving... against the water? I cracked my eyes as my sight began to fade away from me and glanced at my arm.
Fingers... pale white, slender, and perfect, were clutching my broken arm, splinters of bone showing between them. That was all I knew before the darkness took me.
