Edited: June 20, 2014
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Hey, hey, my lovelies!
Those of you who are new, welcome :)
Those of you how are reading this for the umpteenth time, as I know some of you visit regularly, welcome back!
I'm just letting you all know that I will be going through all the chapters and editing them, removing any grammatical errors and such :) There will be nothing drastic so don't worry :)
Newcomers please note that this story can get very dark at times, especially this first chapter as it mentions rape, cutting, abuse, death and a few other things as well. If you are sensitive to any of these subjects, read with caution.
ADULT THEMES! Including explicit sex, specifically between two men! This is a SLASH story! If it isn't your thing, please click the x in the top right corner.
18+ years only! I'm not your mother or father, I cannot tell you what to do, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't get this story removed because you are under-age or offended by its content. I have warned you.
This is a Seth imprint story, wherein he imprints on one of my own Original Male Characters. Don't like, don't read.
Thanks for reading this and I hope you enjoy the prologue to Clouded Joy!
Disclaimer for the whole story:
I do not own Twilight, its associated characters or places mentioned within the saga. All belongs to Stephenie Meyer. All characters who are clearly made up are of my creation and thus, belong to me. No copyright infringement is intended!
Without further ado...Enjoy!
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Prologue
A Dark Past
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I've never known where life would take me. Predicting Fate's relentless and cruel plans had never been a skill of mine as I've had to face plenty of unpredictability, inconsistencies, heartbreak after bitter heartbreak and even more inevitable sorrow since the very first moment I came into this work.
Nothing could have prepared me for what Fate felt was justifiably dumped upon my shoulders.
Fate, the little fucker, was cruel and malicious. It cut me down until I was bleeding and begging on my knees. It took no prisoners. It was merciless. It seemed that stabbing me in the back was its most enjoyable pastime. I'd often wondered if I was an insufferable asshole to everybody in a past life, or whether it was pissed at me for something I haven't even done yet.
What had I done to piss it off so badly?
Oh yeah – that … and that … and of course, the unforgettable, unforgivable that. It seems like every insignificant thing I did equalled a massive personal blow towards Fate and thus, it retaliated with a crippling blow to my life.
Perhaps I was cursed? I was running out of excuses to explain Fate's actions. Maybe I was being punished for a former life of crime or debauchery or drug abuse? All were far-fetched ideas, but I really didn't know what I'd done to deserve the utter bullshit that had been thrust upon life, my childhood in particular.
The only miniscule light that entered my childhood was my grandmother Aurora. It was seven when even she was torn from my side.
Nothing made sense after she died. Actions and words meant nothing, registered as nothing in my mind as I was forcibly left to fight the evils of the world I never even knew existed. I doubt she even thought to warn me against them, thinking she'd live longer than even her stretched 82 years.
She had been fit and healthy. She didn't smoke. Very rarely drank alcohol. Her only exception on that was a small glass of sherry near Christmas. She did however, like to try new things, sometimes dangerous things. Quad biking and skiing had been her favourites before she'd passed.
She was strong.
She was happy.
She was healthy.
And yet … she just slipped off in her sleep.
Just like that.
Eyes closed.
Gone.
As easily as exhaling.
My life wasn't mine anymore.
I was Fate's puppet, a stuffed toy for it to chew and maul as it so wished.
I didn't care. Whatever.
I began to resent the life I led so blindly, utterly unemotionally. I began to resent the unmanageable depression that took a hold of my heart and the mind-numbing pain that plagued my entire body whenever I thought about all the poison in my life – which was more often than not.
One of my fiercest burning resentments was the fuck-up I was forced to call a father. I resented everything about that poor excuse of a man, mostly his cowardice and his abandonment of my mother and I whilst she was still pregnant with me.
I resented the doctors who couldn't save my mother after giving birth to me. I resented them, despite doing everything they could to save her. The simple fact that she didn't survive, that she was dead, made me resent them until I was sick.
Above all else, I resented myself.
I was the disgusting monster who drained my mother of so much vital energy. I was the one who had taken from her a little too much than she was able to truly give. She didn't have enough to hang on after I'd separated from her body. I resented myself for paving my own motherless life.
I never got to feel her loving embrace, or her sweet voice telling me she loved me more than her own life. I never knew the love of a true mother.
My Grandmother loved me … but it just wasn't the same.
I never got to feel her unconditional love.
I never got to experience things like baking or going to the park with her, things that would have cemented our bond beyond anything I would have ever experienced in my whole life. Nothing even measured up to such an unbreakable, unconditional bond than between a mother and her child.
I never got to see her warm, brilliant smile in person, only through pictures that taunted my heart and soul. They teased me with alternate futures for myself, where she was the centre of my world and I was a total momma's boy who thought that the beauty of sunshine and diamonds had nothing on her.
Not one single ray or glisten.
Her pictures, as I grew older and learned what I'd had done, sent me into deeper and deeper depression. The resentment towards myself and the world around me grew into its own entity.
I was a murderer.
Plain and simple.
There was no sugar-coating it.
There was no denying it, or hiding it.
Her proverbial blood was on my trembling hands and there wasn't a single day that dragged on by in this wretched life of mine when I would forget, when I could forget. Forgiveness for such a crime would never exist.
I tortured myself with horrific scenes and scenarios of her simply slipping away, sweaty and utterly exhausted after my birth, her heart giving it's last beat as my first cry penetrated the air. I dreamt the doctors only realised she was lost when they turned to hand me to her for the first time.
Other scenes included her bleeding to death; others, some totally out of this world even, included me tearing out of her from the inside, or my father tearing through the delivery room, ending her life with one quick slash … sometimes, it wouldn't even be him …
It would be me … since I was responsible, a murderer.
Life didn't get any better as time crept on. My grandmother, bless her soul, she tried to teach me right from wrong, not to talk to strangers and all that other bullshit parents taught their kids on a daily basis. I've often found the best company is that of a stranger - they didn't judge you, having not known you from Adam or Eve. They didn't see what I really was, unlike those people who have watched my spiralling life swirl deeper and darker into despair and heartache.
Strangers – they offered unbiased advice that, at times, had done more good for me than even my own grandmother's words.
I was forced into a crumbling, rat-infected orphanage after my grandmother had died. I was a ward of the State and just like Fate, they could do as they wished with me. It was a kid-eat-kid environment in that God forsaken place. The owners who managed the run down building weren't the best but they'd do; they go the job done even when standards were extremely below average.
Poor really.
I spoke to none of them, carer or child alike, keeping to myself and my own terrorising thoughts. I thought it best not to form any sort of attachment that could potentially break me, strip me of my barest necessities that kept me barely hanging on in this world.
One more heartbreak, that is all that it would take.
I'd snap.
The first foster home I went to seemed nice and friendly from the outside but looks can be deceiving, as can first impressions.
The woman – Carol Leon was her name – she was a gem. She was kind and loving, everything that I would have thought a mother to be. Of course ... she wasn't mine, no one could replace her. She smiled at me every morning, cooked me food and placed a roof over my head, but there was always something in her eyes.
It got worse as the time I spent there drew on and on, when she realised that I wasn't a case she ought to have meddled with. I didn't speak or sleep well. I hardly ate her food, not that there was anything wrong with it.
She had no idea that it was her own husband who was making me that way.
Turns out Jonathan Leon was also a murderer, the same natured as mine. His mother died during childbirth too. He was searching for someone, for anyone to impose his hurt and suffering on. So he could blame someone other than himself.
He found me.
Just a little boy who just so happened to be dealing with everything that he was. He was a cold, cruel bastard that had a façade whenever face-to-face with his precious wife but behind closed doors, away from her sweet, hazel eyes, he was a monster.
He hit me, kicked me, punched me, screamed at me, told me that I was as worthless as the gum on the bottom of his shoe, if not even that.
He made sure every day that I knew just how worthless I was, degrading me in such ways that I begged once or twice for him to kill me. It would have been ideal. Death. It would have ended everything I was feeling, all the hurt and suffering. Even if the place I was heading was filled with fire and brimstone, it would have been a better hell than the one I was living.
Especially when that started …
It started when he'd drank that little too much. Carol was out of town visiting her sister, Jasmine, in California and was obviously missing her – both emotionally … and physically.
I'd come home from school, tired from the monotony and boredom of the whole trial. I'd barely made it through the door before he was on me, breath stinking of stale beer and cigarette smoke whilst his bloodshot eyes bore into mine menacingly. I could hardly see the whites of them.
He almost looked like some sort of demon. Possessed.
I'd never been so scared of him in the short time that I'd stayed with the couple but I knew, in that moment, that encounter was different …
Oh, how right I was.
It hurt. A lot.
It was forever going to be burned inside my mind, and every other encounter like it after that first time. Never was I going to be able to his face out of my mind, the way his lips twisted into that wicked, sick smirk or how his sweaty body towered over mine as he …
No, I couldn't go there.
I felt so … vulnerable and violated and from that day forward, I vowed to be stronger, more steeled to the woes of the world …
Ha, it didn't work.
He came for me night after night after night, even sometimes after he'd pounded his wife into exhaustion and pleasure. I could have only prayed that it would all end soon …
And it did, four years after the first punch and inappropriate caress of my young backside was given.
Jonathan was caught in the deplorable act by my social worker coming through the front door on an unscheduled visit to see how I was coping and being treated at the foster house. To say she was horrified would be an understatement. Not only had she caught him hitting me, but during that as well, over the kitchen table.
He was thrown in jail, the dirty scum bag. I, now eleven years of age, was thrown back into the overcrowded orphanage. The social worker quit, too traumatised to continue working in such a troubling area of expertise. Just one more person to have abandoned me. Even after the seven years that she'd seen me through life, she'd abandoned me so easily and it hurt more than I was willing to admit.
I stayed at the orphanage for a year, families unwilling to adopt me whilst CPS was having trouble finding me another foster home. Who would want to take in a troubled eleven, nearly twelve year old?
My stay was lonely and quiet, once again keeping to myself. Some of the kids tried to make conversation, but really, I was unapproachable. I was so buried inside my own head that I ignored everything outside of it. Eventually, even those kids gave up on me.
Story of my life.
A year later, just after I'd turned thirteen, a genuinely nice family of four took me in. I was with them for the next two years.
Scott and Makenna Marvin were the most genuine couple I'd ever met, not that I'd met many, but I knew what I was talking about. They cared, and I felt more comfortable with them than anywhere else I'd been shipped off to. What's more, I even got on well enough with their two children.
Hayley, who was two years younger than me at eleven years old, was sweet and excited to be gaining a new brother. She'd always wanted an older brother. I'd soon grown attached to her.
Really stupid mistake on my part.
Their youngest was their son, Greg. He was only eight and super annoying, though mostly in the affectionate way. He'd often made my day harder than it had to be in the sense of being everywhere I was, following me with a vengeance, even if I was simply moping around the house. He might as well have been my third arm or leg. I certainly couldn't get rid of him.
I actually thrived in school with the Marvins. Suddenly, out of my entire thirteen years on this earth, school came to me naturally. I excelled. Of course, it was thanks to Scott's undying devotion to bettering myself. He helped me with my homework religiously, every single night. During my stay with them though, my grades shot up.
I actually enjoyed school. Could you believe it? I certainly couldn't.
I was enjoying life as a whole better and I thought that nothing could go wrong.
Even found myself sort of a girlfriend.
Molly Evans.
She was a beautiful, pale-skinned, brunette gem with sparkling blue eyes that shone when she smiled or laughed, which was every second of the day. She was practically the opposite of myself, cheerful and optimistic and she was beginning to rub off on me, the longer we stayed together. Her father hated me, but her mother adored me. Her little sister had insisted that she marry me. Bless her, she was three and the epitome of her big sister.
Three years at the Marvins. I'd just turned sixteen; she was fourteen years old. It was our second year anniversary …
Two years – I had managed to keep someone with me, close to me for two years without problems. With everything that had happened in my life up until that point, I would have expected the total opposite. She knew everything that I'd been through, cried with me over it and she'd stayed by my side.
I loved her. I knew I did. Some people would have argued that I was too young, too young to know what love was. And Molly, she was even younger. Naive. But we knew how we felt. Even her father begrudgingly acknowledged how close and in love we were.
We'd lost our virginities to each other only recently. It was awkward. It was fumbly. It was perfect, because it was with her. Out of my dreary, short life, sleeping with her had to be the best decision that I'd ever made.
Being able to feel the love she had for me had to be the only thing that got me through the devastation I felt when I got a phone call from her father, the night she and her mom were driving back from Beverly Hills, having spent the whole day shopping together for our night together.
Our second anniversary. It was going to be perfect.
We were going to have dinner, watch the sunset and then I would have made love to her all night. Not that her parents knew that tidbit.
I should have known that two years was pushing it, even by my standard.
He was cold in the way he broke the news, blaming me via the tone of his voice for the death of his wife and daughter. I was crushed, crumpling in on myself with pure grief and horror.
That night, I tried to take my own life. Two slashes, one up each forearm, wrist to elbow…
My sister found me, my fourteen year old sister – still as innocent as she was when she was eleven – found me, who had been her hero at the time, lying limp on the bathroom floor as I bled to death against the cold tile. At the very least I'd scarred her for life; just like I scarred everyone I come into contact with for life.
I was saved. Unfortunately.
Moved back into the orphanage. Again.
A year later I'd had enough.
I emancipated myself from the orphanage at the age of seventeen. Becoming my own self, responsible for myself and no one else.
All I needed now was a place where no one could possibly know me. A place where no one could know my past or judge me because of it and only by the appearance I settled with now.
I donned my leathers, my black biker helmet and my mother's ring on a silver chain around my neck before I climbed on my 2006 Ducati 999, a model that hadn't even been released to the public yet, driving the straight and narrow all the way to a Reservation called La Push. It was as far away and as small as I could possibly wish for. My accommodation was set, my place in my final year at high school secure and a fresh start stretching before me, finally.
It just had to be the worst and stupidest mistake I could have ever made in my pathetic excuse of a life …
But that was just my opinion.
Others would say otherwise …
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For those of you who are interested, there is an outfit compilation I've posted on my Photobucket for my readers. The link to my PB profile is on my FF profile. Go check it out, but be cautious that there will be spoilers for the rest of the story (and the sequel)
Thanks for reading!
Love MrsWolfPack x