A/N: Short Jacob/Bella drabble. R&R.
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You never intended it to be this way.
You thought, without him, you would just sort of fade out of existence. You kept repeating those stupid, pointless words in the back of your head, like they held something, like they had some sort of power even you did not know about. One, forever, need, true, always, love, mine. They were just words, for God's sake. Just words and nothing else.
You figured that no one would notice. That they would look right through you like you were some sort of ghost, like the pale, translucent white of your skin suggested. You had to think every time you took a breath, in out in out, like it was some kind of reminder that you are still alive. Because you shouldn't be alive. Because you didn't matter. Because there shouldn't be people staring at you, worried, when you didn't even exist.
You thought, when he was gone, that the pain would never cease. You had counted on it becoming some distant ringing in your ears, a stinging from a papercut, a cankersore that never quite heals. You thought that doctors would be able to tell when they took your pulse, a soft, never healing, never ending stutter; he'sgone he'sgone he'sgone. It would continue, forever. Or as long as forever was to you, now that it wasn't really a choice.
You hadn't seen this coming.
You saw him, and you never said a word. Because everything, including this tall, dark, reservation boy, was related to him. He had been the one to tell you the stories, after all. The stories that turned the fantasy into reality, fiction into some horrible living nightmare. So he was part of this pain, even if he didn't want to be. You never thought that he could become something else.
You didn't consider the fact that you liked him. You had liked him, you told yourself, that day on the beach when things hadn't begun. When the world still rotated on it's axis, instead of around him. You hadn't thought that maybe, maybe maybe, he could tell you something that you didn't already know, after the fact, after the stories of vampires and vegetarians that made you positive that you knew everything there was to know.
You saw him, and you didn't register the change in your heartbeat. You concentrated on the mind-numbing pain, on the isolated beeping in the corner of your brain, and you missed the part where it grew farther and farther away. You missed the part where you stopped being invisible. Where you stopped counting your breaths. You missed the part where you fell in love.
You can't decide what to think.
You knew it. Somewhere inside you, maybe the same part that decided enough, you are human, and human memories fade, just like he said they would; somewhere inside you it started up again. The normal pull of gravity, the one with the broken strings? From when he had left you? Well, those strings now pulled you somewhere else. And you didn't want to think about what it meant.
You thought, perhaps, it would all just go away. After all, that's what happened before, wasn't it? You're heart had started beating and he ripped it out, and you were gone. Gone. But he was dangerous, you reasoned, and this one wasn't. He was safe, and strong, and he would save you. He had to save you. He said so. And Jacob Black would never, ever lie.
You knew it. This was what was supposed to happen. Kismet. Karma. Fate. Whatever. This was real, and so what if it wasn't strange or painful? That doesn't make it any less powerful. Real, human love was the same as his love, as that all-consuming love, as that completely masochistic love. Human love had heart and soul and blood, and hers was flowing stronger through her veins; hers was being kept safe by a werewolf. Huh.
You love him. And maybe that's the only thing you're sure of.
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END