A/N: Hello, and welcome to storytime hour with in a blue bathrobe and Feisty. This story was originally supposed to be a oneshot for Fandom Gives Back for deelovely60, but it ended up kind of growing impossibly larger and longer, straining painfully against the confines of the ...buttons of no, wait, the... Word document, into a ...throbbing... uh, multichapter.

Chapter 1: Oblivious Snail

In the pale pink light of the sunrise, I throw my arm over, expecting to find his warm body next to me. My sheets are cold, smooth. It's the smoothness, the lack of dirt and granules of sand, that makes my body realize, even before my mind will admit it, that he's not here. That he will never behere again. "Fuck," I say out loud. Lately, I seem to begin a lot of days this way.

I remember, foggily, what it was like to wake up with his arms around me, skin taut and muscular and musky, his even breathing washing up and over me like the tide. I sit up slowly and stare at the empty spot in my bed. Christ, I still sleep curled up on "my side" of the bed. I wonder if I will always save his side of the bed just in case he comes back. I'm so angry for even entertaining the possibility that I punch the pillow that still smells like him. I should have changed the pillowcase, but I'm an idiot, a masochist. It's the only thing left I have of him, from the time he was mine.

But he was never mine.

I get out of bed and stumble to my dresser. I steel myself to look at my reflection in the mirror above the dresser, the pads of my fingers touching the dark wood my dad sanded and finished when I was still a baby. I start with my head bent down, chin to chest, and take a deep breath with my eyes closed. Please be someone different today. Please wake up from this crapper of a life. Just wake the fuck up. Be anyone but me.Slowly, hopefully, I lift up my head and open my eyes, begging for a different girl to look back at me. Someone I don't recognize.

But it's always me, no matter how many times I wish different. And I know I'm not good enough.

Maybe in another time, another world. There's probably some parallel universe out there where life isn't completely fucked up, where people in love can just stay in love. I bet in that alternate universe the alterna-version of me is getting primo morning nookie from alterna-him. I bet in that alternate universe my alterna-dad is still alive.

"I hate you," I say to my reflection, and her mouth moves just like mine, hating me right back.

When you're fatherless anda scorned woman, you can be as crabby as you want. I don't know if that was written somewhere, but I've decided it's true. When I get to the kitchen, my idiot brother is drinking milk right out of the carton. Such a neanderthal. "What makes you think anyone wants to drink your backwash?" I say, reaching for the container. His head is tilted way back, so when I yank the milk away, he gets a face full of it. Milk is dripping off the ends of his shaggy eyebrows. "Got milk?" I say like an asshole, because I'm an asshole. It's allowed.

"Why don't you find someone to dump you again?" he says as he wipes his face up with a dishcloth. I'm sure he'll put the cloth right back on the hook instead of in the laundry, like we wantour pots dried with soured milk and teenage-boy spittle.

I ride my bicycle to the cemetery, the same way I do every morning. I like the burning in my legs as I strain to go uphill, pushing all my weight against the pedals. Physical challenges, well, they're things I know I can handle. I'm young, my body's strong, and I have the will to succeed. And that's all you need. For fifteen minutes I'm a well-oiled machine, my body doing exactly what I will it to. My brain is focused on sending signals to pump blood, make the valves in my heart open and close. There's no room to feel sorry for myself. All I know is the feel of the wind cutting into my lungs, my aching hamstrings, just pure animal instinct. And then when I ditch the bike by the cemetery gate, my toxic, human thoughts seep back into my body. No longer animal nor machine. Only me. Only Leah. Onlywrong.

It's hard enough when the love of your life ditches you for your own cousin-I mean, that is like some Greek mythology shit-but for all of us to be living practically on top of each other ... I can't even have the comfort of distance, of ignorance. I see him touch her, and I can feel the ghost of his fingertips flit across my skin. I see him touch her, and I wish I were blind.

I see him touch her, and I wish I were dead.

It's like they're there every time I turn around, holding hands, walking attached at the hip, gazing at each other like they are the only people on earth-the only people on earth who matter, at least. Were we ever this disgusting? My breath catches when I think of the we that I'll never be part of again. There is no we, only a me and a them.

My eyes are already stinging with tears by the time I reach the familiar gravestone. "Hey, Dad," I say. "It's me again. Just saying hi. Just saying I miss you. I wish you were here to tell me things will be okay, even if we both know that isn't true." Nothing's been right since Dad died. Well, the truth is that things were going downhill far before then, but Dad's death was like the assfucking cake topper on a seven-tiered shit cake.

The wind rustles around me, almost like Dad is telling me not to think such foul language on sacred ground. "I can't help it, okay?" I shout to the wind. "Life's a fucking joke." The breeze grows stronger, and a flower skitters across the matted-down grass and lands by my foot. I can smell it before my fingers curl around the stem. A violet rose, special ordered from a farm in California. Sam used to get these for me, long ago. I look past Dad's grave to see where the rose has come from, and there's a whole bouquet of them lying in front of one of those tasteless, bourgeois family mausoleums-the McMansion of gravestones: concrete pillars, ridiculous curlicues, fat little naked angels.

Carved in gigantic, ridiculous, Vegas-style letters (why didn't they just use a neon sign and a couple of naked lady silhouette mudflaps and be done with it?) on the side of the mausoleum is one name: "ULEY." Figures. How have I never noticed this monstrosity before? Maybe my eyes just refused to acknowledge its existence, like that bit inHitchhiker's where they paint the mountain pink to make it disappear. I crush the roses under my feet, which, okay, is kind of bitchy and disrespectful, but my god, I can't believe Sam is giving dead people the flowers he used to special order for me. Myflowers. And whatever the fuck do stupid fat angel babies have to do with the Quileutes? I mean, none of that makes even a lick of a sense.

The scent of the crushed rose petals thrusts me deep into the past like I'm falling down a hole. There's Sam showing up at my doorstep for our first date, grinning nervously, offering me these lavender blooms. There's his bed covered in the fragrant petals the night we first had sex. I remember the coolness of the petals on my bare skin as he moved, slick and warm, on top of and in me. And there's the last time, the dozen he sent in apology for, you know, falling in love with my goddamn cousin, for the love of Pete. All those memories ripping through the gray matter in my brain in the time it takes me to crush the blossoms under my feet.

Suddenly just crushing the roses under my feet isn't enough. I kneel down and tear the roses apart, shred every last bit of them, my hands cut up from the thorns the florist has neglected to remove. The pain is welcome; it takes away the focus from the slow implosion of my heart. My hands are bloody, but I don't care. I'm just pulverizing rosebuds and screaming because life is so fucking unfair. To add insult to injury, one of those asinine granite cherubs on the tomb stares at me with an impish smile on him face, like my anguish is somehow funny to him. "Funny? You think this is fucking funny? What do you think you know about love? About losing everyone you ever cared about?"

The carved stone continues to leer and smirk at me. "Of course you don't care. You don't feel a damn thing!" I stand up and kick the stupid, tacky cherub as hard as I can, but nothing will remove that smug grin from his face. In frustration, I squeeze the head of the statue with my hand, like I'm trying to break it clear off. Maybe I am. I'm fully aware I should have more respect for the dead, but ... that face, mocking me. It's too much. As my rage ebbs a little, I draw my hands away to see his face bloodied from my wounded hands. He resembles a serial killer: blood-splattered, unfazed, even happy. At least now he looks like the sociopath he is.

I realize that if anyone's been watching me just now, they probably think I'm an escapee from some home for the criminally insane, so I wipe my hands off on the grass, smooth out my clothes, and begin to walk out of the cemetery as if I were a sane woman. When I look over my shoulder to get one last glance at my dad's gravestone, the stupid little naked angel looks as pleased with himself as ever. Fuck love. Fuck life. Fuck you all, I think, raising a double-barreled bird-flip high enough for all the stupid naked angels in the world to see before I fetch the bicycle I've carelessly discarded just beyond the cemetery gates.

Yeah, I listen.

I mean, Valentine's is my Day, even though it's been bastardized into a monstrosity of farcical proportions, but worship is worship, and without it I fade.

Ever hear of Uller? Not unless you're a Finnish skier who shoots archery. (He's not bad, beaten me in a few events, but he peaked at the 1924 Olympics.) He's disappearing like a melting ice sculpture. Sad, really.

Pa-Cha is a ghost, all but gone, for an empty locust carapace scuttling around the pantheon.

And Priapus? Now, there was a deity. Women used to lose their virginity on statues erected to him, and sorry about the pun there, but blood sacrifice is the shiznit. He might be coming back, though, he's getting a following. That little blue pill is genius.

So I keep tabs, make sure my name is still out there during months other than February, just to keep up appearances. It makes Mom happy that her son is one of the "it" kids, and keeps Dad off my back.

Don't tell me you don't Google your name once in a while, or search Twitter for mentions. I know you do it, just like the rest of us. No one likes oblivion.

So when I get the blast of hate from nowhere, as if Hades just bitchslapped me backwards, I have to go look, like a prom queen following a Facebook conversation that's snarking about her dress.

I'm staring at this girl, she's hot in an athletic-but-not-butch-at-all way, and she's raging mad, and she's yelling, and she's just smeared me with blood.

And blood is life, people.

Her blood is wild, salty and rich with passion, and it makes my heart pound hard, but there is so much pain that I'm reeling. I stand there, shocked, gasping, and I must have said something aloud, because fuck me if both my parents aren't standing right behind me, looking at the girl who is flipping me off with both bloody fists.

At least they are both clothed and not arguing.

You know how it's so embarrassing to walk in on your parents when they are either fighting or getting it on? Imagine being the son of the Goddess of Love and the God of War. Squick isn't just a lifestyle at our house; Mom and Dad make it an artform.

"What on earth have you done, son?" Mom asks, hands on her hips. "Why is she shouting at you?"

"She's a feisty one," Dad approves, watching the girl ride away.

"I have no idea," I say, also watching her ride away. Girls always look good on a bicycle at that angle.

"Well, fix it," my mother says, smacking my head. "Now."

"Ow! Why?"

"Because she's shouting loud enough to wake Persephone, much less me, and I won't have the Queen of the Damned Pomegranate Seeds bitching to Zeus that I can't control my own child!"

"Me? What did I do?"

"I have no idea! It's your idol that she's spilling blood on, not mine."

Another shout of rage shakes the foundation. Mom winces. "She's giving me a headache."

Dad glares at me, and I roll my eyes. Heaven forbid he doesn't get any tonight.

"What am I supposed to do? I shoot arrows at people. Occasionally a snowball," I protest. "I don't deal with pissed off hormonal chicks on bicycles!"

The girl is pretty impressive, actually. She's about my age, with fantastic dark eyes and full lips too pretty to be spitting such dirty words. Mom catches me staring.

"You do now," she says, smirking.

"Just go talk to her," my father advises, like he's any good at peacemaking. Or parenting for that matter; he lets Phobos run wild. That kid can cause havoc within three seconds of escaping his playpen.

I contemplate some old-fashioned teenage defiance, but Mom gives me the bitchbrow.

"Make it stop. If you don't, you're grounded." She turns her back before I can protest. Her dramatic flounce is somewhat lessened by Dad, who grabs her ass as he follows her off.

I swear, and flick a speck of dirt at a dove that's watching a snail slime its way up a headstone.

Last time mom "grounded me," I was stuck in the mind of a giant tortoise for a month. D'you know how tortoises have sex? The male climbs aboard and if she's feeling shy, he bops her on the head until she draws it into her shell, which shoves her ass out, forcing her to assume the position. Can you guess which partner's shell the Goddess of Love decided I should inhabit? My head still hurts to think about it.

I stare after the girl, wondering where she's going, and what her problem is.

The dove coos with devotion, and sidesteps along the gravestone. The snail oozes on, oblivious.

My legs feel like jelly on the bicycle pedals, but I'm almost there. The one place, the only place in my whole fucking world where I am free of them, is the shooting range. They don't belong here. We-I mean, he and I-never came here together. This is a piece of me that is still all-Leah. It's like my own Fortress of Solitude, because every other part of my life is polluted with his presence-everywhere his shadow has passed, however briefly, holds his print. It's like poison, these traces of him I can't escape, and disillusionment and bitterness are the only antidotes I know. Temporary ones, but they're all I have. I'm just trying to survive. It feels like treading water, all my limbs struggling just to keep my head above the surface.

But this, this place. This place is mine.

I can feel the tension leaving my body, my armor falling off like I'm molting. I smile an easy, genuine smile at Old Joe and his pimply great-nephew manning the counter. I sign the logbook and go to my locker, not stopping to chat. I realize later that I should have noticed the funny looks on their faces, like they're seeing a carwreck in slow motion, unsure if they want to stop it or gawk or snap cameraphone video to sell to the news later. I'm too distracted by my own inner calm to notice anything awry.

I'm all ready to unleash a quiver of whoop-ass on the target I've named "Samily," when I think I see Old Joe trying to get my attention. But I'm too annoyed at the lavender roses and the cuts on my hands to pay him any mind. I can already feel the satisfaction of putting arrow to bowstring, squinting one eye and aiming, and that whoosh as the arrow flies freer than I'll ever be, smacking Samily right through its deceptively cheery yellow center. I needthat now, so no time for Old Joe.

Strange, someone ... has dared to take my spot in front of Samily. Everyone at the range knows that this one is mine. It's silly to have a favorite target, I suppose, but I've been coming here for so long, and the staff was so great to me when I turned into a bereft, unloved zombie, and it was just sort of ... accepted that Samily was mine. At first they'd just scoot out of the way and apologize, find a different target, but after a while it was like they saved that station for me. And here's this bodyin the way. I have half a mind to shoot an arrow right into it, but I realize that that's Homicidal Leah, and I don't want to be Homicidal Leah. Yet.

He-I think the offending body is a he, based on height and build-is messing around with his equipment, like he's not happy with the point of his arrow. He's not even ... shooting. Why am I more annoyed than I would be if he were just shooting arrow after arrow into the heart of Samily? I really want to shove him. Shoving wouldn't make me Homicidal Leah. Just Belligerent Leah, and I'm okay with that.

So I bump into him as hard as I can. "Oh, excuseme," I say, sounding polite, but not really. There is something so satisfying about the solidity of his body against mine as I pretend to trip, the whoosh of air I've pushed from his lungs in surprise (and I hope, maybe, a little pain). "You know us girls, so clumsy. Might shoot your eye out, haha," I say, but I kind of mean it. Okay, not really, but part of me wants to mean it, if that makes sense.

He doesn't turn around, and he doesn't acknowledge me, and I'm fuming now, wanting him just to turn the fuck around and lookat me. Like, acknowledge my bitchy badassery, you target-usurping assmunch! But all I hear is a low chuckle, fucking smug little prick.

Oh my god. I am so going to shoot him right in the back.