Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns all.
The Sides of Every Story
Really, you've done this to yourself. It's your fault that this has happened. You always have had a sharp tongue when you were angry. Maybe you should have learned a long time ago how to keep the angry and splintered words inside of you. Maybe then you wouldn't be lying here on this white hospital bed, your face covered with bandages that everyone knows underneath lies the mangled and bloody mess you generally see in gory horror movies and not in real life.
I really don't know why I'm sitting here in this uncomfortable plastic hospital chair in your room just watching you breathe in and out while you are in a drug induced sleep, but I am. Because it is not my fault. It's yours. All yours. Not mine, not mine at all.
Thinking this is what keeps me sane, of course. Not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, my brain whispers to me, trying to make me feel better. Of course this does not work immediately, but I've been told that if you say something enough that eventually you come to believe it and I honestly hope that this is true.
Did you know that I was always jealous of you? I don't think that you ever did, but I was. I was painfully aware of it, how it polluted my mind and made me feel horrible just for thinking like that. After all it wasn't your fault that you were prettier than me and that people (and boys!) liked you more than me.
I was a skinny and shy child. You were outgoing and cheerful and beautiful. You were everything that I wasn't, everything in me that was lacking, and I always thought that was why we had been able to best friends. I completed you and you completed me. Together we were Yin and Yang.
But not anymore. We grew slightly apart as we grew older. For one thing we lived on different reservations, which was going to pull us apart no matter what, especially through Junior High. Then I had met Sam, and it's sad to say, I had forgotten most of my friends.
I was just so filled with him that I couldn't stand it. He was a senior and I was a freshman. I was madly and passionately in love with him; I didn't need anything else. He was Sam and I was Leah and we were better together than we ever were apart. He was my forever.
Eventually you stopped calling me because all I would talk about was Sam. Eventually I stopped begging my mom to go up there because heaven knows she had enough to deal with now that everyone in the reservation refused to go the hospital in Forks because Dr. Cullen worked there.
But when your mom had said that you had wanted to come over for a week or two I had been eager. I had missed you in our months of no contact, and wanted you to meet Sam. I had never been particularly close to any of the girls that were in my grade and I wanted someone to giggle over him with. He had, after all, graduated the year before and he was just as cute and sweet as ever. I hadn't even been afraid that you would take him from me like I would have been before Sam because I knew that Sam loved me unconditionally.
He had promised me that he would love me forever and that one day we would buy our own quaint house and have our happily ever after. He meant every single word that he had said to me and I believed him with my whole heart. Sam meant it, he really did.
I just should have known that happily ever after only happens in story books and Disney movies. But I didn't, not yet.
The day that I had brought you to meet him I had been so excited. We had been having some issues lately over things that were beyond his or mine's control (his furry little problem, for one thing) but we had been working it out and I knew that as soon as you saw him you would know that he was just as great as I had been describing him. You had been rolling your eyes good naturedly the whole time and grinning because my excitement had been infectious. You had said something about wanting to be with Seth instead, but I ignored you and had pulled you along.
I remember you perfectly in that moment. I had wanted to keep that image of you in my mind because that was the last time that I ever saw you in a light that wasn't tinged with green. That was the last time that I saw you as my sister/cousin, the last time that you had been my best friend. I kept you like that in my mind because I had wanted to see what Sam saw in you that he didn't see in me. What was so different in that moment? We almost looked alike then.
You had been wearing a white spaghetti strapped top and short khaki shorts and brown flip flops. You had an blue elastic around your left wrist just in case we went swimming and an braided bracelet around your right. From your neck hung a silver 'E' and your hair was down and pushed back with white sunglasses. You had no make up on other than some concealer that had some SPF in it. You were cracking your gum obnoxiously.
For you it was an ordinary day. You weren't sparkling like a diamond and your eyes weren't glimmering like jewels and your shorts didn't turn into a ball gown suddenly. I was pretty sure that you hadn't even brushed your hair yet.
But that didn't matter with Sam. From the first moment that he saw you it was almost like you weren't absolutely normal. You were different, and in a good way, different in a way that I wasn't. He never looked at me the way that he looks at you, past, present, and probably even future.
I remember feeling so confused when he had just stared at you like you were some lumbent commodity. I had even turned around to look at you, to see if you had suddenly turned into a giant ruby, but you hadn't. You were only you, just a little more confused than usual. You had raised an eyebrow at me, but I hadn't been able to say anything.
When you saw me walking up he had smiled widely at me, like usual, but when his eyes slid to you the enthusiastic greeting had died in my throat, because in that moment I knew, I knew. I had felt the air change and it was almost as if the two of your souls met where I was standing or something and I was just very much in the way. You didn't seem to feel it, but Sam and I did.
Sam just looked at you and you had stared back, uncomfortable until he had turned and sprinted to the woods. Then you just looked at me with the infamous Emily stare until I had looked away and tried not to feel mortified.
That night Sam came to the house and told me that he couldn't be my boyfriend anymore. Not that he didn't want to be, but he couldn't be. The difference had been striking to me. And then he had asked for you. I had agreed without really realizing what I was doing. I was in an unhealthy state of shock. My forever was gone.
You had been throughly disgusted when you came back inside. "I cannot believe him." You had said, your face absolutely livid. "Trust me, Leah, you are so much better without him. He does not deserve you in the slightest. You are worth twelve million of him."
I had not even asked to hear what Sam had said. I had not wanted to know. If I found out the fault line along my heart might just break off a piece of it completely and never come back. But I knew, somewhere deep in my veins. I knew from the very beginning. I probably knew what was going on way before Sam had.
In a way I understood. You had always been better than me at everything that really mattered. Of course Sam would want you more than he wanted me. It almost make sense in a way. And then my father had come to me and explained imprinting to me. The council had decided that I needed to know because this interfered directly with my life and I already knew about werewolves anyway.
I had heard the stories my whole life, but had not heard this story explained fully. I had always figured it was to explain those people that felt like they always knew each other, kind of like reincarnation. I had totally brushed off that story and forgot about it. I had no idea that it would make its mark on my life forever. Not then.
"Imprinting," my father had said, deeply upset by having to be the one to tell me. He had never been very good with feelings and the like, that was more of my mother's territory but he had trudged on, knowing that it was his duty as an elder to tell me. "Imprinting is not a voluntary thing, Leah. It's like breathing. He just sees her, and he knows."
I demanded to know what Sam had learned just by looking at you. What did he 'know'? The secrets of the universe? Did you give him the recipe to the Krabby Patty while I wasn't looking? I didn't understand.
Basically, my father told me, it boils down to one thing. Soul mates. You were his soul mate. He was made for you and you were made for him. It was like Yin and Yang again, except this time I was not a part of it. Now only you two were swimming around each other and I was left out in the cold.
"Are we going to tell Emily?" I had asked. After all, this affected you far more than it affected me and you were still around the house. You were staying with us all summer.
Dad frowned at me, his wrinkles deepening. "No. Sam is the one that's going to tell her."
And he had tried to tell you, and again and again you brushed him off. I hated you for that, hated you for the tortured look on his face whenever you walked away from him not realizing what you had in your grasp. Every time I looked at you jealously clouded my vision and it hurt like the feeling that you get when you accidently shave layers of skin off in the shower. But I hid it well, or so I thought. I hadn't noticed that you realized something was wrong.
When he did tell you you were so furious. "He's a crack pot, Leah," you had raged at me. "He has to be on dope. He thinks that we are soul mates or something, and that he can change into a giant wolf or some shit." Your words had been dripping with contempt and I tried not to judge you. You didn't know. "As if it wasn't bad enough that he dropped you because he thought he could get me that way. I would never do that to you though, Leah. I promise." You grabbed my hand and looked at me in earnest. You had no idea, you didn't know what I knew, I had to keep reminding myself of that. Actually, you did, but you wouldn't believe it.
We heard the stuttering of Sam's truck and we knew that he had come by the house again, and we both knew how he wanted to talk to you again. He had done this every day since he saw you. It was routine now, to have a little bit of my heart ripped out.
I had not even cried, though. I refused to, knowing that you were in the other double bed across from me. When we were younger my room was small enough that if we both reached far enough we could hold hands. I was strong.
You looked out the window and shut the blinds. "Ugh," you complained. "I hate that he does this to me. To you." You paused and leaned against the wall. "You know what? I'm going to finally go and give him a piece of my mind. He can go straight to fucking hell, thinking that I would ever, ever hurt you the way that he did."
I knew that what you were going to say to him wasn't going to be pretty and it sure as hell wasn't going to be nice. It would probably make him angry because of all his frustration. I knew he wasn't supposed to get angry. It would turn him into a monster- a werewolf. How many times had he walked away from me when I didn't know because I was yelling at him? How many times had he just had stop, take a deep breath and count to ten in front of me?
But I let you go anyway, probably subconsciously knowing that something like this would happen. I sneaked down the stairs behind you, wanting to know what he was going to say to you. Normally I never listened to this, but for some reason tonight I wanted to hear what he was going to say to you.
He asked you to go into the woods near my house with him. You said yes, the rage barely suppressed in your voice. I went and sat on the hood of my dad's car, closing my eyes and listening intently. I could hear him pleading with you, begging you to listen. I heard your angry retort loud and clear. I heard his voice grow louder, and yours did too. It was almost like watching your parents shadows against the wall while they fought, except it was much worse than that. But they you said them, the words that made him snap in two like a trodden on twig. "What don't you understand?" You had screamed at him. "I can't believe you. Think about what you have done, you sick twisted bastard." The venom in your tone was horrible.
Then I heard the roar and the swipe of claws against skin. I opened my eyes and rushed to the woods. I found you two not even twenty feet away from the house. I saw you, my cousin, once my best friend forever, the girl that I had made cookies with and shared so much with, lying there mangled on the floor. But I couldn't look at you for long. As sick as it was I still loved Sam and that love was stronger than my love for you.
His face was twisted in agony; he had already changed himself to human form out of need. Your need was far greater than his. I saw the look in his eyes after knowing what he did to you. He was staring at you and I had never seen him in pain this bad. And I saw that expression in his eyes again, the one that I never saw reflected at me.
"Let's get her to mom," I told him. "She knows about the wolves and everything, but the official story is that a bear got her. Okay?" I was surprising myself at my quick thinking in the face of ruin. We had to hurry. It looked like your face had been ripped off. I repressed a gag.
Sam had nodded and had picked you up gently as if you were a china doll. I had screamed, "Mom!" and she had run out of the house. When she saw you she got you in the car and told Sam not to let you go. He didn't. Seth had run out of the house in all of the commotion, but I was the only one who had realized that he had even come outside.
My mother had driven to emergency room with frantic speed. We had to go to Port Angles, Sam wouldn't want to take you to Forks, which I understood. Every time he heard your strangled breathing Sam's self hatred became more and more pronounced on his face. The smell of blood was horrible, and so was looking at you so I closed my eyes and focused on breathing in through my mouth hoping to stifle the smell.
My mother and Sam had then run in the hospital and they took you up right away.
And that is how we got here, you on the bed covered in bandages and stitches, me sitting on the ugly plastic chair in this God awful and looking at you and telling you this story inside my head. I am pretending that you can hear me, that you are sympathizing with me, nodding like you would be if you were alive. The way you would be if this hadn't happened to you.
Eventually my mom drove Sam home because he had just broken down so bad. I had never seen him like that. He was sobbing like he was the one with the mangled face. He couldn't turn into a wolf; his 'powers' had gotten so screwed up. You broke him.
When people hear this story (that is, if they knew everything) once they get past the horrified stage they are going to wonder who's fault it was that made you end it up like this, at least a small part of them will. People enjoying pointing a finger at somebody, it makes things easier to understand, easier to deal with. If they blame someone they can wrap it up in a little box and say, "Done."
Maybe people will blame me. I knew what was going to happen, at least I knew the risks, and yet I had still let you go out there with him alone. Maybe they will blame you, but I doubt it. You are the victim after all. People might think that maybe if you hadn't of been such a bitch that none of these things will have never happened to you and you would still have your whole face. Your beautiful, perfect face.
But most people will blame Sam. After all, he's the one who got angry even though he knew he shouldn't have. He's the one who ripped your face off. He's the reason that he imprinted on you and this whole mess began.
To tell the truth, I'm kind of scared to see what side these people will choose.
I really don't want to know who's fault it is that now the three of us are harmed, you physically, Sam and I emotionally.
Was it fate? Was it destiny? I'm not sure anymore, now that I'm sitting here in this God awful hospital sitting in this stupid hair waiting for you to wake up and wondering what's going to happen next.
Because I'm not sure anymore. After all, the story is not yet done.
A/N: Okay, I don't normally do Author's Notes, but I loved writing this story, so I'm going to ask just this once. Please review? I hope that you liked this as much as I liked reading it. I played with it FOREVER and I want to know what people think of it. Thanks. -AG