Category: Twilight (Life and Death)
Warnings: Another imprint story with gender reversed Young/Uley/Clearwater drama. Angst. Bad language. Female Quileute shape-shifters.
Notes: Elliott is Emily, Sam is Samantha, and Lee is Leah (or so says Wikia).
Disclaimer: I have no rights to the Twilight novels.
The First
"I suppose I'll have to add the force of gravity to my list of enemies."
Lemony Snicket, "The Penultimate Peril"
day one.
La Push already feels more like home than Neah Bay ever has, and Elliott Young is just telling his cousin as much when they spot The Girlfriend stalking up the driveway.
Samantha Uley is a whole six feet of lean muscle, choppy hair, perfect skin and sharp features, and she's looking as if she has had a real bad day at the office.
Elliott's cousin doesn't seem to notice. Lee leaps off the porch to meet her with a mile-wide grin on his face and takes her hand instantly, pulling her close. He introduces her to Elliott as if they have never met before, but Elliott remembers The Girlfriend and his cousin sneaking off into the woods a year or so back at a family thing. They nearly got caught by Aunt Holly and shot by Uncle Saul.
"This is Sam."
Elliott decides to not remind Lee about the time the whole family could hear weird noises in the trees. Instead he says, "Nice to meet you, I'm Elliott," while he tries to not notice how Samantha looks nothing like the girl he saw last. She's nearly as tall as he is, with legs up to her neck which make him clear his throat so that he might have a chance at remembering the rest of his manners.
He extends a hand, and something wonderful flips in his chest when she looks up at him.
day two.
A small voice tells him he shouldn't, but he can't help but ask. He has to know. "No Sam today?"
He reasons that he's just jealous because Lee has been with Samantha longer than it took him to complete Pokémon FireRed. He's never had anything with anyone steady enough to really count. While Lee is thinking about proposing before Sam heads off to college, Elliott barely remembers to feed himself, let alone poor Squishy the Goldfish he has left behind.
"No." Lee looks a little pissed. Shit. Elliott thinks that he is rumbled and slightly done for but his cousin sighs loudly. "She's got this friend Jade. Y'know Jade Cameron? Oh. Well, they're both hanging out with this new chick called Paula. I don't like her."
Elliott doesn't know Jade, but Paula has a reputation which is known beyond the reservation. "The hot one."
Lee scowls. "Hot-tempered. But now everyone's talking about Sam the same way too."
Elliott hasn't been in La Push since the family thing, and not for three long years before that, but everything he knows and loves about it is suddenly feeling a bit wrong.
day three.
Paula Lahote is definitely hot, Elliott decides when he sees the three girls together on First Beach. And definitely hot-tempered. The girls are arguing animatedly about something, but Elliott can't hear and he's trying to act as if he hasn't noticed them.
He wonders whether Sam has seen Lee yet, because Lee's been unbearable all morning and everyone in the house had needed a break from his brooding. Uncle Saul had excused himself to go fishing for the day to get away from it, and Aunt Holly had looked positively murderous as her husband had walked out the door. With her daughter upstairs and sleeping the day away, she'd turned pleadingly towards her nephew sitting at the table, who was still trying to wrap his head over his grandfather's will.
"Talk to him," she'd said, looking pointedly into the living room where Lee had been sprawled miserably over the couch.
But Elliott had hastily grabbed the paperwork and followed Saul out of the door. There would be hell to pay for the both of them when they returned.
He sneaks a glance down the beach again and notices that Jade and Paula have disappeared. Samantha has been left to scream at the waves.
"You want me to call Lee?"
She all but jumps out of her skin when she spins in the sand to face him.
Her eyes wide and wet, she breathes his name.
He's fucked.
day four.
Elliott stands in his grandfather's home—his home, now—and wonders what he's going to do with all of the empty space.
Aunt Holly is doing her best to help him put it all together for him so that he has something to proudly call his own, but he can tell that she's uncomfortable being here after a death in the faily and he doesn't want her to do anything that might make her even paler than she already looks. She takes eight pills a day for her bad heart.
"Are you ok?"
"Just a little tired, Eli. I'll be fine."
He feels a little bad for leaving her to suffer her son's brooding the day before, and he's going to apologise when Lee turns up and seems a little more cheerful. Sam follows, and then hot and hot-tempered Paula, who is carrying some boxes.
It turns out that today it is Sam who is the one looking as if she needs the escape. Lee tugs on her hand, and Elliott swears he sees Paula knee her in the behind to get her through the door. There is no trace of the outburst on her face from yesterday, but it doesn't go unnoticed by him that she won't look his way.
Sam lasts one minute indoors before she and the Hot-Tempered-Hot-Chick go to his little car to help bring in more of his belongings.
"You made up then," he says to his cousin.
Lee grunts his reply. So much for cheerful.
The boys have grown up together and there's only six months between them, so Elliott thinks he is well within his rights when he tells his cousin to get his shit together, but Lee doesn't take it well. He joins Sam in avoiding him for the rest of the afternoon. and unpacking is spent mostly in silence.
When the girls leave to drive Aunt Holly home and then go off to do whatever the hell they do together, Elliott has to all but beg Lee to stay. He orders pizza as a bribe.
Food makes Lee open up. He says that when Sam does eventually get round to seeing him these days she barely talks to him, and that when he tries to hug her she cries. He says that he might hold off proposing for a while, but she's leaving for college soon and he doesn't want her to leave without a ring on her finger. He says that he ignored Elliott before because he knew he was right.
Lee asks him what he thinks he should do (other than get his goddamn shit together and just ask her outright), but Elliott can only bring himself to say he knows fuck all about girls so maybe they should go look on a forum or something. Find the advice column in the paper. Read a horoscope. Anything, Elliott thinks, anything but asking him, because he's a traitor of the first order; he can't stop thinking about the way Sam cried in his arms on First Beach.
day five.
Sam's at his door.
"Is Lee here?"
"He's out looking for you," he tells her. He pretends to not notice when her expression mangles on her face. She looks worse than her mom does, who he knows is only ever spotted in the store buying bottles of wine these days. Samantha's eyes are dark and weary as if she's not slept properly in a while, but maybe she's just hungover — it isn't like he doesn't remember seeing her new friend Paula getting trashed on the beach, even before she and Sam had started spending so much time together. Paula Lahote has put a lot of hard work into her reputation. Maybe people are whispering about them for the same reason.
"Can I come in?"
"I don't know if that's a good idea."
"Why not?"
"You know why, Sam."
He closes the door.
Sam doesn't leave until the sun sets. She sits on the weather worn porch and whispers strange stories through the cracks of his house, of wolves and Cold Ones which he has heard so many times before as a child. She speaks of the emptiness and the sadness which grips her, but which has a chance of being love and devotion and happiness if he would just let her in.
"I'll do anything you want," she pleads.
She continues begging into the door frame. By the time Elliott musters to courage to open the door and tell her to go, she has disappeared.
day six & day seven.
"How can you be so unfair?" He tries to sound hurtful his voice lacks the necessary bite, because Samantha Uley is on his doorstep again and still looking as if she might keel over any second. "He's my cousin, Sam."
"Second cousin."
He almost laughs at her, but he is worried the sound might knock her over. "It doesn't matter!"
"I know, I know," she moans. She is miserable as she takes a step forward, her hands outstretched and only a hair's breadth from fisting into his shirt and—
"You're crazy." He takes a step back. This whole thing is crazy. It is crazy that it is physically hurting him to hurt her, crazy that he is so ashamed of himself. He is guilty. He is a traitor.
Maybe she'll go back to Lee if he shuts her out, although he is scared of what is going to happen if she does that.
"Leave me alone, Sam. This isn't right."
"I know." She mouths the words, unable to meet his eyes, and her hands fall limply to her sides as he shuts her out. But it doesn't stop her from spending hours and hours on his porch again while she murmurs to him through the darkness. He sits on his cold, bare floor, and listens, his eyes staying open until dawn breaks and he hears her leave.
Eventually he opens the door to check that she's not hiding around the corner. He peeks around the frame because it's scared him that she's absolutely meant every word she's said so far.
(Imprint. Mine. Yours.)
She's not there, but he sees something which suspiciously looks like ripped jeans and a shredded top all over his front lawn.
He shuts the door on that too.
He spends the rest of the day sleeping fitfully and dreaming about wolves chasing him through the trees.
day eight.
Elliott catches himself feeling concerned, so he forces himself to finally get up and finish what Aunt Holly had started: making this house his home. Sam didn't come to the door last night.
(He checked. Four times.)
He works all day, even though there is not much to work with. He's moved the couch three times, turned the small rug to match each change, and he's completely rearranged everything in the kitchen drawers and the cupboards.
He orders another pizza for lunch and he orders another pizza for dinner, so it's no surprise that he's now on first-name terms with the spotty delivery kid all because he refuses to go to the store. He has a feeling that she is waiting for him, that she will find him.
He thinks about calling Lee, but he's been so wracked with guilt that he's picked the phone up twice only to slam it back down.
He remembers when Sam soaked his shirt with her tears and how not long after he told Lee to get his shit together.
He's the worst person this side of Washington.
day nine.
"I saw the pizza boxes." Samantha looks immensely pleased with herself, but whether it's because he's broken his self-imposed exile or because she's proud of the bag of groceries she is brandishing he doesn't know.
He raises his eyebrows and looks back at the table from which the pizza boxes have not moved, and she takes advantage of her opening. She slips between him and the cracked door frame which keep her whispered promises and her strange stories safe and strides into the open kitchen.
"You don't look so hot." She is confident in whatever mission she has assigned herself and begins packing everything away. "You want me to fix you something to eat?"
He is still holding the door open, unable to find his voice to speak the words he needs. He feels as if he has been cooped up for much longer than a few days, as if he's meeting human beings for the first time in years.
She doesn't look much better. She looks much the same as she did on the porch, but she moves with more purpose at least. She lifts up a lid of one of the pizza boxes Joseph the Delivery Boy brought over and wrinkles her nose. "What is that? Smells like ham, and… S'all gone hard and shit, look. You should have put that in the fridge."
He doesn't want to look.
"Huh. Didn't figure you for a pineapple on your pizza kinda guy. You'd get on with Jade."
"Didn't figure you for a coward." The words are out before he can think about it.
He immediately regrets it when she takes a few, deep shuddering breaths and closes her eyes. She grips the counter even after she opens them again and mouths his words back to herself like it is something she must come to terms with. She doesn't look at him as she straightens herself and pushes the pizza box aside, pineapple and ham forgotten, steeling herself as she goes back to digging deep in the grocery bag.
But he's started now. He can't stop. He slams the front door shut, though he is the only one who flinches when new cracks appear in the old wood. "Outside my door, talking about wolves and love and shit when you're going out with my cousin."
A humourless laugh. "Love and shit." She scrunches up the now empty paper bag. "I'm not. Going out with Lee. I broke it off."
"When?"
"Last night."
"You're mad."
"Maybe," she says all too agreeably. She doesn't seem too annoyed and finally looks at him. "Are you hungry?"
"Get out."
There's that broken look again, though her purpose seems to have remained in tact as she surges towards him. "Elliott, please—"
"No."
day ten.
He'd told her that he wished he had never met her.
She'd pleaded with him to sit down.
He'd chased her out of the house. He'd yelled that everything was ruined because of her.
Now he's laying in hospital and Aunt Holly is at his bedside and says that she knows. She knows. She says she believes whatever he is about to tell her with her whole heart but first he needs to do her a favour.
"You went hiking, okay? You were attacked by a bear."
His heart is awfully heavy and his throat is scratchy. He's near-paralysed from the drugs he's been given and he's lucky he still has two eyes. But he's able to find it within himself to whisper one word which drains the remaining colour from both of their faces.
"Wolf."
day eleven.
He has promised to keep the secret which the Quileutes and their ancestors have kept guarded for so many generations. He will keep it if the nightmares plague him and he will keep it when he is asked how exactly Samantha Uley managed to drag him through the woods and find him help.
Hiking. Bear attack. Saved. Scarred. It is a miracle he is alive, he will agree.
There are many things which he will keep secret, now.
He will not say that he is afraid of the day the bandages will finally be taken off, because he knows what he'll see. It's what everyone else will see, what will make them uncomfortable. Parts of his expressions are forever lost because where upon they once appeared will no longer move. Where his battered and torn side can be hidden and protected by his clothes, where the skin which has been harvested from both his groin and his abdomen in surgery will heal over, the rest of him and the world will have to relearn one another.
Lee, Uncle Saul and even little Sarah appear late afternoon and serve as his first lesson.
day twelve.
Aunt Holly's presence is as constant as that of the nurse, protective when her family have gone and when her life-long friends Bonnie Black and Quil Ateara come to ask many questions. They are among the very few who have always known the truth, who encourage rumours of a bear roaming wild on the outskirts of the Reservation. They fill the holes in the legends he has heard before as a child who spent time on both the Makah and Quileute reservations, tribes whose histories are closely woven together and both tell of great female spirit warriors who are feared by Cold Ones.
Sometimes Holly offers up small pieces of information, but otherwise she is quiet and watchful, guarded yet haunted, long after the other two women have left them in peace.
They haven't spoken about how terrible Lee is looking, nor of the revelation that her youngest child is on the list of Quileute daughters to be watched, but she does say that Bonnie's kid is frighteningly closer to the ceiling with every day that passes.
It strikes him that none of the older women have seemed particularly worried about it. Holly is confident when she says, "Samantha will look after Julie."
Elliott remembers the look on Sam's face just before it was replaced by a mass of black fur. Not for the first time, he wonders who is the one to look after her, like she looks after their children. It is only one of many things he should have asked before he passed out on the front lawn.
day thirteen.
When Paula Lahote comes to visit she agrees that, yes, she is indeed a great female, and a feared warrior at that, too. She shoos Aunt Holly away to go and take a break then falls on a chair, puts her feet up on the bed, and it is not long before Elliott discovers that she has talents in both oversharing and being overwhelmingly forthright.
He tries to not sound ungrateful for fresh company when he dares to ask, "Why are you here?"
"Halloween is coming up and I needed some inspiration."
Paula is more brutal than the Elders who have come to see him, but he is surprisingly glad for it because he's been tiptoed around for long enough already.
"That's because they worship Sam," she tells him. "Practically slobber when she goes to a council meeting. They're afraid to upset you because that will upset her."
Like the older women, Paula speaks with unwavering loyalty about Samantha and even Jade, though she swears blind in the same breath that she wants to rip their throats out most of the time. She says that she knows Sam is really sorry, more than he will ever be able to comprehend, because not three days ago she and Jade had to talk her out of throwing herself across the boundary line. It would have broken the treaty and then they would have all been royally fucked because Jade's second-in-command but too soft and too young to be the Alpha.
"And everyone knows that I'd screw up all the newbies, so getting bit wasn't an option."
"Bit?"
"Leech venom is poisonous to us. No cure. Not enough insurance cover in the world to fix," Paula says as she studies her nails. She picks at them as Elliott's stomach rolls, because he understands insurance; his own has barely covered the basic skin graft and the following operations for nerve damage which will never be fixed. "Would have finished you off completely if she'd died, I reckon."
day fourteen.
His aunt is almost as surprised as he is when Paula takes over his bedside watch again. She mutters often about imprints and how she's lucky to be the last free woman who doesn't pine for someone who can make her brain turn to mush. She doesn't need to grovel to somebody for saying or doing the wrong thing.
"She's not exactly grovelling," he replies, even though it's not what he wants. He remembers the things which Sam whispered from the other side of the door and he understands what it means to hurt her, how it makes him feel, and he doesn't want her to grovel or beg or plead any more than he's already seen.
"Wanna bet? She hasn't been able to calm herself down enough to phase back since Holly found you."
"But that was what... four, five days ago?" He's had so many drugs pumped through him that he should be flying, but at least the fog is gone and he knows why Sam hasn't come by.
"Four. She's in Oregon somewhere. I think."
"You think?"
"Pack mind. We can..." Paula realises that he knows as much as Holly, Bonnie and Old Quil have told him, but there is still so much left unsaid, so much that he does not understand. "Hell, Sam's gonna kick my ass," she says, but she ends up sticking around until the doctor has to tell her twice that visiting hours are over. When she leaves she tells him that she thinks he's sort of alright after all.
"You'll do."
Coming from someone like Paula, it's a high compliment.
"Have I passed?"
Paula laughs loudly, and for a moment the hardness in her eyes is something else. "See you around, Young."
day fifteen.
The bandages have to stay on for another seven days, but he can go home in two. He makes more promises that he will stay on strict bed rest, that he will not scratch and he'll keep everything dry, but only if he can go back to his own bed in his empty home. The doctor has him sign something and talks him through his pain meds, but he's not really listening because Sam's asleep in the chair where Aunt Holly usually takes her post.
He doesn't know how long she's been there, or what he's going to say when she wakes. He wonders whether she kicked Paula's ass or whether Paula's kicked hers and that's why she's here. There's a leaf buried in her cropped, uneven hair and she's wearing weird clothes that look like they've come from lost property, but there's a feeling that everything everyone has ever said to him about imprints and commitment and devotion and adoration and all of the other words Paula Lahote sneered at have fallen into place.
It's not right, but he can't run this time, can't shut the door in her face or herd her out of the house. He's been denying it since she looked at him that first day, because Lee means too much to him even though they don't see each other much anymore—family means too much to him to be able to give in, but he knows that it was all a bit too late when he found her on First Beach. Futile. Absolutely pointless.
"Bonnie Black said that I need to tell you what to do, for the good of the pack, or something," he tells her when she finally opens her eyes and looks like she's trying not to breathe. Maybe that's what he's looked like these past two weeks. "Apparently I have a choice. But I don't really feel like I do."
Her breath escapes her at the same time she says, "You do. Tell me to go. Tell me to lie on the highway. Please."
"I can't."
"I'll do anything." She's on her feet and reaching for him, and this time he doesn't shy away, even when her hands fall hesitantly on the bandages which wrap his arm. She realises what she's done and her fingers tremble up and down the white fabric, but he knows that this is different from when he was shouting at her. Her voice cracks as tears begin staining her cheeks. "I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry. I can't—"
"You're gonna have to. I passed Paula's weird test for you."
Sam chokes back a sob, made all the more worse because he can't move and he's forced to watch what has happened to them in such a short space of time. "She likes you."
"You kicked her butt, didn't you?"
Her laugh is a bit wrong, but he realises that he's not heard it before so how does he know? "Yeah. A little bit. She was mean to you."
He doesn't tell her that he quite liked it, that he thought it was somewhat refreshing, but they're sisters so maybe she already knows what that kind of bitterness can do when it's needed.
She hovers on the edge of the hard hospital bed, unsure and as afraid as he is. He is afraid of how to deal with what is to come, while she seems afraid of what he is going to say because of the awful things he has said to her already. If he hadn't, they might still be working their way through the groceries she bought and packed away into his cupboards and his fridge as if she were very much at home.
"So did you win?"
"I'm still spitting out her fur. It's my own fault, I guess. I left too many loopholes in the order."
"Right. Alpha thing. Doesn't work on me, does it?"
There is a faint smile as she shakes her head and finally gathers the courage to sink into the uncomfortable mattress. "No. If anything, you're the one person I have to listen to."
This is the part where he has to tell her what he wants. "Okay. First order. No taunting the vampires. No getting poisoned. No lying on the highway."
"What about jumping off the cliff?"
"Definitely not."
Sam rolls her eyes. "Fine. What else?"
"No blaming yourself." This is something both of them will have to accept on any of the roads they take from here: blaming themselves. He is the one who triggered the phase which rippled underneath her skin, and she is the one that has torn his. "I don't blame you."
A low and mournful sound escapes her. "How can you not? I hate myself for... This. I have done this to you. I wasn't strong enough. I lost control, Elliott, and I can't promise that I won't again." Her words start coming in a rush, so quickly that if he thinks about her hand still on his bandages that he'll miss it. "This is the first time anything like this has ever happened, I'm the first and I'm the one who is supposed to know what to do and I don't and it hurts so much because I can't think about what's going to happen if you don't want me around because I need to be around you—no, I need you to want me around even if it only means that I bring your groceries every now and then or something—"
"I don't mind groceries."
"—and it's all stabbing in the dark because there's only legends and stories to go off but apparently I'm supposed to be happy..." She nearly chokes on the word "... I'm supposed to be alright about it if all you want is groceries but I don't think I will be and—"
"Sam, stop. Stop."
It hurts when he stretches his unmarked hand over himself and tentatively touches her blazing skin, just as it will probably hurt when he lets himself remember his cousin, but there is something else settling next to the pain. Everything that Bonnie and Quil have said, everything that Paula has sneered at, the promises Sam has already made—it's making a home deep within him. It's permanent and irreversible and it's gonna hurt like hell, but he wants it.
"Elliott." She stares at their hands. "I nearly killed you."
"Yeah, you did," he agrees, but there's some things that bind people together, strange things that make the unlikeliest of friends. "You also have a leaf in your hair. It's been driving me crazy."
"They topped up your morphine recently?" she asks, but she can't resist ruffling her dark hair with her free hand. She looks bemused when the leaf floats to the shiny floor.
"So. Here it is. You can bring my shopping. I'll need that for a bit." The smile only pulls up one half of his face, the other side still underneath the hideous dressing. "But maybe you can eat it with me too. Maybe you can cook, or I'll cook, and we'll just... I don't know. Go from there."
"Go from there," she repeats slowly.
"You swear you don't know what you're doing. Neither do I, but..." Oh, he's going to Hell, and he doesn't care. "I want to figure it out."
"Okay." She wipes away the last of her tears. "You want groceries."
And all the rest, he thinks, pushing away the shame and the guilt.
"I can do that," she says as if she has heard his silent words, and Elliott knows that he can, too, so long as she's right there with him.