Title: An Accolade For Winter

Author: Freesias and Strawberries

Summary: Jacob provides us with insight about his mother and her passing through a few snippets of past winter Christmases - spent with Bella, of course.

Word count: 3,410

Rating: T

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

I've always hated winter.

I hated snow, I hated wind, I hated rain, and I hated Christmas and New Year's and Valentine's Day. It wasn't because I was a 'summer child,' who sprouted from the ground in the form of a measly green shrub in broad daylight and walked around naked and sung tunes from the Cassidy's and drank wheatgrass, no, that was not it. I hated winter because it was when my mother had passed away – exactly a week before Christmas. My family and I became disjointed and lost and broken. Christmas day that year, we didn't do anything; dad was in the hospital, and my sisters and I spent the entire day in different rooms of the house.

I was seven at the time, and knew that Santa was a bastardised version of Satan because I didn't receive any presents and it was an anagram for the devil's first name. I thought that I would get a lot that year, seeing that my beautiful mother passed away, and thought that with a stroke of luck and praying by my bed in the few days leading up to the twenty fifth, Santa would give me all the Play station games and matchbox cars that the world had to offer.

I got squat, and I sulked in my room because my mother and father were not there and one of them was dead and the other wasn't able to feel the bottom half of their body. Later that night, Charlie Swan came over. It sparked the first of many traditions in years to come.

Chief bought all three of us together in the same room, not meeting anyone's eyes. Bella Swan, a former playmate of mine from what seemed like a different life, walked in wearing a huge candy apple coloured parka and a big frown on her eight year old face. It was the first Christmas she ever had with Charlie after the divorce of her parents. "Dad, I want to go home!" She protests, her cheeks pink and her face pale as ever – it had been snowing outside and all of us were surprised to see Charlie here with us.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, finally meeting the chestnut coloured eyes of my father's best friend, and the local police chief.

He crouched down to my level, a sad smile tugging at his face. "Billy asked me to stay the night here – he thought it would be best."

"Is he awake?" Rebecca asked, concern etching her face.

She looked like my mother and I grew confused.

Charlie shook his head no and then looked down at the seven and eight year old. "Jake, why don't you take Bella to your room and show her your things?" He asked me politely. I nodded and Bella scowled at me but followed. She was small and fragile and tired and pissed off – even I knew that.

"My daddy says that your daddy is sick." She says, sniffling. I sit down calmly on the floor of my bedroom and offer her my favourite toy dinosaur.

I nod my head. "Yeah, he has to get his legs chopped off." I say gruffly, wondering how to play with this girl.

"That will hurt." She takes the dinosaur off me and inspects it closely. "Mommy says that she's coming down soon to visit because she loves you a lot." Bella tells me. The fact that this ungrateful girl even had her mother made me sick to my stomach.

From what I understood, Bella's parents were not the best of friends after their marriage crumbled. "Where's your mommy?" She asks me.

I twist my lips as I grab a few toys. "She's up there." I point toward the ceiling and Bella nods, but not understanding. That's all I was told – that she was up there, always looking out for me.

"Jake?"

"What?"

"Where are your presents?" She asks, blinking.

I shrug. "Santa left my family out this year, we've all been bad." Bella trills about how she got the parka she's wearing from her father and how her mother spoiled her rotten with heaps of chocolate and clothes and Barbie dolls. Charlie said he would buy her a tea set, and she threw a fit because she told him she wasn't three anymore and wanted grown up items.

"What kind of items?" I couldn't help but pry, I was curious.

Bella shrugs. "I don't know, make up and bubble bath. So daddy said maybe, and then he said that we were seeing you later today and I cried because I never see daddy anymore and now he's going to another family."

I guess that's why she had a fit earlier on and I guess that's why she was glaring at me now. "I hate you, Bella."

"I hate you." She retorts with a small, stupid smile, and snaps the head off my favourite toy dinosaur.

I hated girls.

I saw the police cruiser pull up before Billy did and I opened the door and wheeled him out to greet our guests. We were all smiles on the outside, but soon enough it would be the two men sulking about how another shit year just had to end as quick as possible. I scowled bitterly at the rain as it began to fall, my skin instantly turning cold as the wind bit and snapped at me. Bella stepped out of the cruiser, holding a six pack of beer and a few packets of chips.

She was fourteen, and she had recently got breasts.

She was magnificent, and I still hated her a little bit. It was the first time I had seen her since she was eight, and that memory was enough to make me shiver. Billy clapped Charlie on the back and Bella tossed a dazzling smile at him as we all piled inside. It was just myself and the old man now, seeing that both my sisters moved out six months ago after graduation, desperate to get out and experience a world outside of La Push. I didn't blame them.

"Hey Jacob." Bella greets with a smile. "Merry Christmas."

"Yeah, you too." My voice had broke quite recently and it was going to take some time getting used to. Charlie told me I was growing taller and muscular every time he saw me and I smiled lightly at his words as we walked inside. The four of us made awkward small talk before Charlie and Billy watched a few replays of old Mariner's games. I was going to sit with them when Billy gave me a harsh look, indicating that I should be a chivalrous idiot and hang out with Swan bitch.

I made my way to my bedroom and threw everything on the ground into my small wardrobe, just as Bella walked in with a timid expression. She wore a plain blue sweater and jeans and I wanted to shoot myself in the head, because she was pretty hot and she was just standing in my room and I was stupid and pissed off and was going to be like this until March.

It wasn't a choice – I was set in my ways now. It was custom, traditional – it was home.

"How was your Christmas?" She asked me.

"Fifty bucks and a second hand fishing rod. You?" I ask.

She tells me about how her mother took her clothes shopping and how all they ended up with was the sweater she had on now. To make up for it, Renee bought her all the CD's she wanted and a few hundred bucks. From Charlie, she received a bottle of perfume that Renee had told him to get for her. I wanted to know how her parents handled that situation, and I wondered idly if they were still bitter enemies.

Bella pulls her phone out, having just received a text and blushes. The colour warms my heart and I hate myself instantly. "Who the hell makes you blush like that?" I ask rudely and her head snaps up to meet my gaze. I wanted to swim in her eyes.

"Just a boy," she responds casually, coolly, as though it happened all the time. It probably did.

"Is he your boyfriend?" I ask her.

She looks at me like I'm bat shit crazy. "I've never had a boyfriend."

"Me neither." I say, and she laughs loudly before closing her phone over and putting it in the pocket of her jeans.

"Is your dad alright?" She asks me, stepping on thin ice in an instant.

"Nobody is this time of year." I shrug, like it's no big deal. My mother was a jaded memory now and I only allowed myself to think of her from time to time. Bella nods and then reminds me of a time when we made mud pies in my backyard when she was about four, and that my mother screamed at me because I had pulled out the flowers she was trying to grow and had used them as a garnish.

"I liked your mother." She tells me with red cheeks. "She was funny and so weird and wonderful, and she was always singing Jackson Five."

Could this girl really be dazzling me right now with memories of my mother and times when everything was easy and beautiful and uncomplicated? "She couldn't sing, she was so terrible." I droned, and Bella laughed delightedly. From what I was told, my mother sang Jackson Five and was a hardcore feminist and spiders scared the shit out of her. Everything I knew about her was locked up safe and tight, not to ever be tainted or harmed with.

"She wasn't terrible. And the headscarves! She always had a headscarf on." She tells me, her eyes twinkling as she recollects.

I nod in appreciation. "You've grown up a lot, Jake." Her voice is low, sultry and husky.

I'm having trouble trying to hide my erection. I go red, like Bella, and I lower my eyes to her breasts. They were there, that was all that mattered. "You've grown up too." You used to be some wannabe rich bitch girl who tore the head off my favourite dinosaur exactly six years ago and now you've got breasts and a nice face and a pleasant laugh and memories of my mother that I can't exactly remember myself because I was young and I'm forgetful.

She moves closer to me, and just when I think she's about to kiss me, she lays her head on my shoulder. Fuck that, I was in the friend zone.

I was out the door before Billy was, knowing he could wheel himself out this time around. "Jake, don't say anything that will upset her." My father warns. I roll my eyes as I walk down the ramp and pull my best friend into a hug, knowing that I would disobey my father's words unintentionally. "Merry Christmas to you too." Her melodic voice sings to me and I take it eagerly, letting the disease infiltrate my poor heart that would never be completely loved by her in return.

Her cold body smells like leech and I wrinkle my nose in disgust. Charlie claps me on the back with a broad but tight smile, oblivious to the supernatural elements that contain themselves in his town. I felt like I hadn't seen her in so long, when in actual fact, I had visited her twenty four hours ago, speaking to her before her vampire boyfriend did. We were in my room the very next moment, Billy with his watchful eyes on my best friend. He felt betrayed that she was siding with the bloodsuckers, but he would always love her like his own third daughter, despite her terrible prefernce in dead guys.

"I got you something." I say, as she crawls into my lap, letting me warm her up. "Bella, you really smell."

"I do not." She says gruffly, pulling her arms across her chest. I reach behind my head and pass her the present I made for her, wrapped in brown paper. "I need to teach you to wrap." She says it under her breath but I hear it anyway. Being a wolf truly had its advantages.

She opens it carefully and spins around to face me. She smiles brightly and I wish more than anything to plant my lips on her own. The leech would have a heart attack...oh, wait..."It's beautiful. Did you make this?" She asks me with an awestruck expression.

"Yeah, all it took were a few chunks of wood and some ribbon and stuff." I tell her, avoiding the fact that I had given myself nine splinters and Paul said it looked like I attempted to make love to a tree. I wrap the charm bracelet around her wrist and she beams at me – she fucking beams, unaware of how she manages to knock me off my feet and make my breathing hitch. Yes, I am a girl.

"I like this." She says, pointing to the small, russet coloured wolf. "This is meant to be you, yeah? To always have a piece of you with me?" Her voice is a fine whisper.

"Yeah, something like that." I'm lame tonight. I hold her hand in mine as we examine each charm together. She notices one that makes the blood drain from her cheeks. "Is this your mother?" She asks me, pointing to the dove with the white wings.

"Yep. Wanna know why?"

"I know why – Edge of Seventeen was her favourite song, just like the white winged dove..." Tears brim her eyes and I want to capture them and hold them in a glass jar. They fall like crystals. "It's beautiful, Jacob. Best present, hands down." She chuckles a little at the end and I cradle her in my arms as we talk animatedly about this year and the ups and downs.

Then, we breach onwards about Christmas Day. "We went to the Clearwater's for lunch and then the pack went to Emily and Sam's place." I tell her. "Oh, and a new car parts and a pair of cut offs. You?" I say, with a light smile. Today had been the best Christmas I had ever had.

"Clothes and money, the usual from Renee. Charlie gave me one of those iTunes cards and a new notebook as well as a few other items. Alice took it upon herself to take me shopping tomorrow and Edward got me this."

She exposes her neck and I glare instantly at the pure diamond necklace. The pendant is a sapphire and I cringe. She gives me a sharp look. "How much did he spend, or was that home made? I wasn't aware that he doubled as a jeweller."

I couldn't stop my body from vibrating and she rolled her eyes, not at all concerned that I was a minute away from phrasing and ripping her entire body into four parts. "He didn't make it, but he didn't spend anything either. It's a Masen heirloom."

"A what?"

"Masen is his last name, when he was human. He has various objects from his mother before she died and he's managed to save most of it. He thought this would be appropriate to give me, for the meanwhile." His words, not hers.

So a bloodsucker saves his dead mother's shit and then it's romantic as hell when he passes it down to her? Bella was visibly swooning with a twinkle in her eye and all I could think about was how I wanted to beat the crap out of him. "Don't be mad, Jake." She tells me with a sugary sweet voice.

"How can I not be? He beats me every time Bella. He left you, and you went back to him." I began, and she shook her head no. Yet, I was stupid enough to come crawling back to her every goddamn time, hoping to God that I would imprint and get it all over and done with. The bloodsucker can fall out of love – if I imprinted, I literally could not.

"Jacob, you are my best friend. He is my boyfriend – there's a little bit of a difference." She tells me with a stiff tone.

"Shut up!" I exclaim. "You treat me like I'm your goddamn boyfriend and you know it. You let me do all this for you and then you turn around and start talking about him when it's our turn for conversation."

She looks disgusted with me, and for the first time, I really couldn't blame her – I was being an asshole and both of us knew it. "I love both of you." She says simply. "Jake, it isn't as if I'm leading you on or something."

Yeah, well, tell that to my blue balls that I've had since I was thirteen. "Can't we just be us two, together right now? Can we not bring him up in every little conversation?"

"You asked me what I got for Christmas and I answered." She said simply. I wanted to yell at her and tell her to not put this shit on me, but I refrained for the sake of the speck of sanity that I had managed to hold on to. "What is there to talk about?" She asks.

"I've had the best Christmas in my entire life." I tell her lamely, diverting attention away from her stupid boyfriend.

"Tell me about it."

So I do. I tell her about how everyone at the Clearwater's could now sympathise adequately with my family, seeing that they lost Harry a while back now and it was the first Christmas they had without him. It had been the first Christmas where we had ventured outside of our house, and it was strangely normal. Billy stayed at the Clearwater's and the pack and I travelled to Emily and Sam's to have an early dinner. I wasn't sure how she managed to afford it, but Emily fed us all and I hadn't eaten two full meals like that in a long time. After that, I picked Billy up and we came home.

"Right before you came over, I came out of my room and found dad looking at photos of him and mom. He's never done that before, I don't think. I mean, it's been a long time, but we all miss her terribly for the whole of winter. It's a tradition, you know?"

"Yeah, I get you. Renee called today and told me that I should go to Jacksonville for Christmas next year with Edward."

"He can't." I say flatly. The stupid leech would glitter like a bizarre fairy in sunlight and it made me snicker like an idiot.

"Neither will I." She reminds me, and I sigh intently. We were back to square one, where I was bitter because my mother had left us before we had the chance to say goodbye and we took it out on the rest of the world and eight year old Bella was a cow and hated me and I hated her because she got gifts that she didn't even want or deserve and now I was hopelessly in love with her and she would be a miserable leech within the next year and it made winter worse than it ever had been.

"Let's not," I say calmly.

"Ok." She agrees, resting her head in my shoulder. Charlie knocks on the door, telling her it's time to leave. From what he understood, we were just two best friends from two very close-knit families who had seen each other in the highest highs and lowest lows that anyone could experience.

He was still waiting for me to make a move, Edward or no Edward.

Billy and I walk them out to the cruiser and Bella hugs me securely around my middle. "I'll see you soon." She promises. "That is, if the weather clears up. Depending on this snowstorm, I may not get to see you until Valentine's Day." She tells me with a cute laugh, pecks my cheek, and gets in the car.

That was two months away, and due to the fact that I had no luck, I probably wouldn't get to see her until the fourteenth of February, where I would most likely give her a box of conversation hearts and we would sit and talk about the things that people our age talked about.

Screw you, winter.