The one
She is the one. Of course it's her, who else could it be?!
She is the one to do what none of the boys have been able to, or actually even thought about doing, because let's face it, they are all lazy motherfuckers who settled and thought it was comfy to have fate hand you the person you were supposed to love and live with forever.
The second she lays eyes on the baby, she makes up her mind.
She doesn't care about what the others say about her action. As she pushes out the door she hears her dear dear cousin's whiny martyr-voice complaining about how Leah is yet again acting selfish and immature, how can she abandon her imprint, doesn't she have a heart, oh they all knew she was bitter and bitchy but Emily had never thought it until she saw the proof today, how can Leah be so cruel, so mean. Phuleease. Like the entire pack wouldn't be enough to protect one baby, like the baby would need her, Leah, to protect him, the Alpha's son.
If they for one second think that she will sit and coo over this baby and watch and wait for him to grow up, they have another thing coming. It's sick, that's what it is, and just because they call it fate and soulmates, because they secretly have read a little too many romance novels, don't make it into something it's not, and it's not love.
Leah knows love even if she hasn't exactly experienced the happy-ending, but she has been loved, she has felt love and she has loved herself. Love is freedom, the freedom to choose to stay or to leave, freedom to choose to tie yourself to another or break the shackles. Love is seeing the other for who he is, faults and all, and then choosing if to accept him, to love him despite his faults. Love is about fighting, about compromising, about making it work not by magic but by putting all of you into it. No matter how your heart hurts, love always leaves you the freedom of choice, and Leah will choose!
Imprinting is the sick twisted humor of the gods used to make Leah's life a hell.
The stupid little brainwashed zombies don't even see what they are missing, what they have become, how fucked-up it all is!
Emily looked so pleased, so overjoyed, so relieved when Leah's face showed all the motions of being one of the idiots she refuses to be, because Leah imprinting on Emily's and Sam's perfect little child explains to Emily why Sam and Leah were together all those years before. It was all for this child's sake! It wasn't that Sam had been in love with Leah at all, not for real that is, Emily was reasoning. It was because Sam felt the connection through the future birth of his and Emily's son. Like that would even make sense to anyone but the gooey-headed imprint idiots. That is maybe the dumbest thing ever heard of but the sick fuckers of the pack seem to buy it.
"Oh that is so true, you're so smart" Kim agreed, because that could also explain why Jared hadn't noticed Kim before he became a wolf, because the reason must be that he wouldn't impregnate her too soon. How does this make sense? Don't ask, but to the imbeciles everything made sense somehow. You know there are a lot of blonde jokes, but all the blondes of the world could be traded for the little imprintees because their brain capacity was even less than the brain capacity of blondes in blonde jokes.
What about Sam? Don't for a second think that he wasn't just as pleased as Emily, thinking about how Leah now was forever tied to him. Oh yea, he always had control issues, always wanted to have Leah at his heel.
Did he once stop to consider his son? Of course not! This was Sam were talking about. When did he ever think about anybody else's feelings? That poor poor innocent thing, Levi Uley, that fate tries to force on her hands, or is it the other way around? Because let's face it, poor boy almost as fucked over by fate as her being forever tied to his father's ex girlfriend, hadn't it been that she now is going to free him too. What boy would ever want his father's leftovers? What boy should be forced to have his fathers leftovers?
Sick! Sick the lot of them! Why, oh why had Leah ever decided to come home and visit over the summer? Every time things looked up, she got fucked over, but enough was enough!
She was going to fight this and she was going to win because Leah Clearwater was a fighter and god dammit she was going to be a winner too!
She noticed how her arms wanted to cradle the baby and how her throat wanted to form cooing noises and her face break out in a smile, but Leah was stronger than that. She promptly shoved the baby back into Emily's hands and stormed out.
It doesn't take that long for her to pull herself together after nearly surrendering herself to that damn baby. She's been through it before, so the pain doesn't kill her, it isn't even close. She gets pissed when she realizes that it really is a piece of cake! That motherfucker Sam had told her that he had tried to fight it, but Leah now knows that he has lied or even worse, that he really is a whimpering coward and a cry-baby who can't endure a little stinging, a little misery, a little hurt. Sam it shows, isn't much of a man at all. This realization makes her let out at long guffawing laugh as she lays down alone engulfed by darkness far away at the end of the world.
Breaking this off doesn't feel anywhere near the piercing soul crushing pain she has endured before. It is nothing like when her childish juvenile heart shattered and broke, making her feel hollow and miserable. It isn't nowhere close to the killing slaughtering pain of her father dieing, of her father leaving her all alone because that hurt as hell, still hurts. It is nothing, nothing compared to the ravishing feverish longing that is slowly killing her making her want to crawl up in a hole and die, because she realized she would never be able to have the only one her heart wants, because even that one, the one she put all her faith in, had his brain fried and followed the Cullen's precious darling wonderchild like another lapdog.
This pain might be physical and yes it tugs at her heart and maybe, maybe this is just what it feels like to have a heart attack, but the pain isn't real and it has nothing to do with the pain of heartbreak.
She is lying in a cave somewhere far away, everything dark around her, no sound, no nothing just her and her thoughts and a sharp knife twisting in her heart. Every stab, every twist is welcomed because she knows the blade is sharp and by slashing like that it will also slash the steel cables that has been attached to her heart against her will.
Then one day there isn't even a dull ache and she sees the sun as she crawls out from the cave she's been hiding in. How long, you might wonder... Three years? Three months? NO! It doesn't even take her three weeks. Three weeks is absolutely nothing, especially considering the life span of a shapeshifter.
The anger of it being so easy, of it costing her nothing, nothing really, makes her grit her teeth!
Oh god, only now she realizes how weak the others are, and how strong she is. She has always thought it was the other way around, but now finally, she knows the truth!
She is strong! She is free! She is happy!
For the first time in years she feels completely at ease. She is more than happy, she is pretty damn ecstatic! She, Leah Clearwater, has defied destiny. She has taken fate into her own hands and she will damn sure make something great of her own life now that she is in the driver seat once more.
She knows exactly what she wants! Oh yes! She wanted it for a long time, maybe forever, she has wanted even before she knew she wanted it and now she will damn well have it. She is free, and she is going to set him free as well.
So she heads to Alaska. The surprise on their faces is evident when she marches in, but she only smiles and keeps her head blank. She is polite, not feeling hostile at all, because she doesn't need to, since she is now on in charge of the show, her own show and the Cullen's are just the extras. She is happily surprised to find out that the one she is going to cast as the leading man isn't there! He has left. Where? When? Why? The little half-breed is clearly left behind, standing here with them, visibly upset, and did she say little? Rensemee Cullen isn't little anymore, she looks fully grown.
"He left when he got the news that you disappeared" her stepsister says accusingly.
Leah only smiles at her because the bitch doesn't even annoy her anymore. Why should she? She is nothing, she isn't even going to be mentioned by name in Leah's play.
"Okay" she shrugs and heads off. She will hunt the world to find him because she has decided it's going to be him and her, and she will bloody well have him.
In La Push they growl viciously at her when she returns but she only laughs. Her laugh is deep and bubbly at the same time. It has been so long since she laughed out of the plain happiness of just laughing, and she feels like laughing and smiling all the time, which is exactly what she does, earning confused looks that doesn't bother her the least.
Emily tries to shove her son in Leah's face but she feels nothing anymore. Nothing! Sure, the kid is cute, no denying of that and he looks exactly like his father, but he is just like any other kid, nothing about him that will make her notice him anymore than anyone else, and like any other kid he too takes her to his little heart and tries to crawl after her to both parents dismay when it becomes clear what she has done, how she has freed herself from their grip.
This has the other Alpha, the untrue one, the one she will cast as the loser in her play, try to get her banned from the rez for defying her destiny, disrespecting the way of the wolf. That only shows what an idiot the man is, because he can't see that Leah is the one in charge of destiny now! She makes her own rules, she carves out her own fate. She does what he could not do!
As he stands there and tries to lay out the law to her, the power she holds surfaces and she sees the Alpha's confusion, and then his fear, when it becomes evident who is the stronger of the two of them. It's a stare-off and she already sees him wavering, sees how he shrinks a little, how the coward in him is surfacing, how his mask is about to break. She has only to grasp it and the power would be hers. She could snatch and break this man if she would choose to. But she chooses not to, she is merciful, much more merciful than he ever was, than he ever will be. She just smiles at him gently, like you might smile at a scared child, shakes her head and heads to the cliffs. He won't try to make her leave ever again, won't dare to, because he has now seen the strength in her and he is afraid. He now respects her, because he fears her and because he now, only now realizes that he can never have her, that he never deserved her, that she never was his I the first place. She is so much more than he will ever be able to be.
Since the one she hunts isn't here anymore, although he has been recently, asking for her, looking for signs of her, she does what her father has taught her all those years ago. She tracks her pray. She is pretty good at it, in truth she is excellent. She picks up his trail quickly and isn't long gone before the other one, the hunted, is assaulting her mind with a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions, thundering through the woods towards her at such a speed it might even be faster than she has ever been able to run, and she is pretty damn fast.
He appears in front of her naked, dirty, sweaty and looking starved.
"Where the fuck did you go?" he demands, his tone angry and harsh, his eyes ablaze.
She only laughs and the light dances in her eyes as she grabs him and pushes him up against a tree and kisses him hard and demanding, but oh so sweetly too, leaving him with no choice but to comply to her wishes. He tries to battle for control, to dominate, but she is in control now. This is her show. She is both the director and the leading-lady and he will follow her directions. She will punish him for being lazy, for being a lapdog, for not freeing himself sooner and then she will reward him for finally coming to his senses and showing that he too can be strong, just like her.
Tears are rimming his eyes. "I love you Leah, I love you!" he croaks as she breaks off allowing him to breathe.
"Let me show you how much I love you" he growls as he tries to straighten himself, tries to turn them around so that he will be the one crushing her against that tree.
"No Jacob! You don't get a say in this! You are mine now!" She laughs touching him in ways she has dreamed of many a night, ways he has fantasized of forever, in ways that makes him moan and whimper and clearly unable to think, to breathe, to even support himself as he almost topples on her slumping against her, but she is strong enough to carry both of their weights.
"Say it!" She teases as he pants and tries to grind against her, tries to set a pace, tries to make her feel as lost by his touch as he is lost by her.
"Please Leah! Please!" His voice a ragged plea. His knees are weak, his heart, his soul, his body screaming with the unbearable need to feel her everywhere around him, to be one with her. This is torture!
"Please what Jacob?" She asks her voice still teasing but laced with such gentleness it sends shivers deep down to the very depths of his being.
"Say it!" She demands.
"I want you, I need you, I love you so much, please Leah let me love you!" He begs. But it still isn't enough, because she has suffered and he needs to know that she won't accept being pushed around ever again by anyone, not even him - although truth to be told he has never really tried to control her ever - before she will free him from this agony.
"Say it" she whispers her voice tender now but showing such authority that he forms the words his heart has said for years already, but he has never voiced because he has always been to damn proud and too damn blinded! How could he not know that he could have left the Cullen's years ago, that he could have made Leah his years ago, that he always had a choice, that he just had to take control! But now the tables have turned. She is the one in control now!
" I'm yours Leah, I'm yours." He cries in pain begging her to take him, to release him.
"I love you Jacob! I'm yours too Jacob, if you want me!" She tells him and that is all she manages to say before they crash together on the forest floor, before they become one, before they are equals in all respects giving and receiving in equal mesure, before they are both set free by the other, over and over again as they cry each others names.
Free together and forever tied to each other by choice, by love, by free will.
AN: Disclaimer, no Jacob still isn't mine, and yes that sucks!