Summary: Can they fight their way back to happiness, or will their pasts destroy them completely? AU. OCC. Drabble fic.

Disclaimer: Stephanie Meyers owns Twilight.

The Mountain between Us

/ He built a fort around, making it impossible for anyone to go near him. And he sat near the window watching her dance in the rain, with someone else /

Akshay Vasu

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He lays in the darkness, a drizzle of rain tapping lightly on the roof.

With his arm slung over his face, sheet bunching at his hips, he breathes into the abyss. His heart beat thumps in his own ears, like a ceremonial drum.

He imagines being sprawled on a slab of rock, his chest cavity open, his ancestors using his insides as makeshift animal skin pulled over carved wood. Imagines his ancestor adorned in full tribal regalia and feathers. Red, black and ochre paint. Mouth wide, calling to the past, the present, and the future.

There is also a mountain in his dreams; he sees it. Snow-capped and reaching as far as the eye can see. At the base of the rock circling its girth are pine trees, thick and old, older than anyone he knows or has ever known. They protect the mountain; this is the first defence.

After the pine, the grey stone moves up, jagged ridges cutting like spikes along the bridge. It reminds him of a thorny crown, one which history says the Christian Messiah once wore before he was crucified. It reaches around like a belt; this is the second defence.

Slowly as his chin rises, following the edges of the monolith, the spiked rock soon turns into torrents of small rocks, rocks in which if you were to stand on, would dissolve underfoot, sending you careening to probable impalement. Loose dirt and stones; nothing considerable to grip or steady one's self on. Like sand through his fingers; this is the third defence.

Beyond that, the crisp white of the snow sprinkles atop the stone. Soft, cool and at peace. It harbours no threat, no imminent danger. Not until you venture further, higher, climbing towards the peak. It is there where the temperature plummets, where the skin prickles in order to heat itself to fight against the sub zero conditions. While the white represents a pureness he has never experienced, it also shows its cold face of terror by soaking into each trachea of his lungs, stilling everything in its path. Deep, hard breaths full of frozen air. Killing; soundlessly. And this is the forth defence, a quiet death.

Wiping a hand over his face, he pulls the pillow from under his head and hurls it across the room, in both anger and frustration. No matter what he does these days, he can't get comfortable. The house is too empty. Too quiet. Sometimes when he is almost asleep he can swear he hears the creak of the weathered floors, like a soft step padding against the beaten wood. His breath catches at those times, wondering if it's her and strains his ears to hear something more than just the empty silence. Anything.

When nothing comes he scolds himself for thinking such ridiculous thoughts. She wasn't coming back. She had told him so. There had been no malice, just pity.

'I'm leaving Jake. It's not you, it's me. It doesn't mean I don't love you, but I need to experience the world. LaPush is too small', she had said.

'I don't want to stay. It's you, not me. It means I don't love you, and I need to get away from you. This life is killing me', is what he heard.

When she left, she had taken nothing will her, no mementos of their life together, no trinkets to remember him by. She had left with nothing and left him with nothing.

Nothing but an empty bed, an empty house and an empty life.

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