Author's Notes: Written for thelittlebang on LiveJournal. Endless thank-yous to my betas damkianna and masagoroll for their absolutely invaluable help. The title is from one of the tracks on Zoe Keating's beautiful instrumental album "Into The Trees." I did not write a word of "Flying and Flocking without this CD playing, and thus it really helped shape the mood of the story. You may want to track it down for yourself to listen to as you read. There are a few background pairings, both implicit and explicit, drawn from where the canon stands (or seems to stand) at the end of Breaking Dawn, so keep that in mind. All characterizations and past events are meant to be canon-compliant. This story is rated M for strong language and mild sexuality.

I wish you out of the woods
And into a picture with me.
I wish you over the moon,
Come out of the question and be.

- Nickel Creek, "Out of the Woods"

Flying and Flocking
Part One

What kills her the most is that even though Bella dumped him like a bucket of hot coals into the ocean, he will still end up with a bloodsucker to cool down his bed each night.

Leah doesn't cool down. She can't. She tries so hard for a year, because of Seth, because of Jake, because of her mother. Because of Sam. She skims websites on breathing techniques at least three times before shoving the mouse, hard, off the back end of the desk. Each time, it dangles there listlessly for hours after she stumbles out the door with her toes already curling into claws.

She used to think she knew how to handle it when people imprinted.

She was wrong. There are no breathing techniques for this. There is nothing she can do to fix this, even though she wants to, more than she ever wanted to repair the broken pieces of her own life. Every day, the sick smile on Jacob's face, or the clouds in his thoughts make her lose a little bit more of her carefully gathered control.

At some point, Leah will snap, and break again. She knows this.

It's why she has to leave.

(She ignores the fact that leaving is a kind of breaking of its own.)

Renesmee smiles at Bella again, that perfect sunburst of a smile, and Rosalie feels as though a knife is being plunged into her still heart.

She watches, a hawk in the treetops, as they link hands to form a circle, and they spin, spin, spin, with the tips of their toes twirling in the grass. The circle is impenetrable. They are each two halves of the whole; mother, daughter, neither can exist without the other.

Renesmee has put her tiny hands in Rosalie's, but they both know that this circle is different. There is no force that runs between their connected fingers like veins of blood flowing through one single being.

Rosalie used to think she envied Bella.

She had no idea.

Every time she hears or feels Renesmee's heartbeat, she wants to burst into nonexistent tears. Bella has always had everything that matters: a choice, a child. The perfect life, for the girl who does not deserve it.

Bella chose wrongly, and she still got her happy ending.

(If Rosalie thought this could actually kill her, she might be inclined to stay.)

When Leah was five years old, she liked pretending to be a wolf. The tribe's bonfires never interested her much then, except that they allowed her to stay up during those hours taboo for children. She would drift in and out of the stories, gathering the bits and pieces she liked for later. The wolves were the best. Nobody talked about them overly much, but when they did, Leah would sit up, alert, eagerness dancing in her eyes alongside the reflection of the fire. It would take hours of excited squirming in her bed before she would finally fall asleep, and when she did, she would dream of running and forests and maybe chasing squirrels like Emily's dog liked to do.

Then, morning. Hands and knees already scraped and bruised from climbing too many rocks and trees, Leah would prowl around the kitchen floor on all fours, stalking Seth, who would cry when she growled too convincingly. She got in trouble for all the howling after a while, but she could always get away with pretending to eat her brother, because she would mouth and tickle his rounded, toddler belly until he convulsed with giggles. When he was older, he would join her, and they would race in a pack around the backyard like the wild creatures they would one day become.

Now, Leah plays at being human. Her imagination has become her reality, and she wishes it would go back. Maybe it will go back, if she pretends with the same fervor she used to.

The games aren't as fun as they were, not in reverse. She is the wolf who stands on its hind legs, tottering like a fool through the city streets of Washington.

Leah hates cities. She thought she'd like them, once. The grit of them, the sheer urbanity of a place made out of glass and steel instead of wood; the clipped tones of the people who lived in them, people you would see but never know. The reservation had been like a trap: once you were there, you stayed. That was the world you would come into when you were born, and it was the one you would leave when you died. Maybe you would do something in between. It might even be important. But no matter what you did, you'd always be standing still. The Clearwaters don't even have a car anymore.

The transformations—those are another kind of cage, one that masquerades as freedom. You can go wherever you want, as long as you aren't seen, but you are always tethered to the Pack. You are always needed on the reservation, because now, they say, you are finally something.

So here's a little something they don't mention on the brochures: werewolves don't get to have a future.

Leah prowls Seattle, feeling exposed. She rubs her bare arms, where goosebumps have prickled, even though she isn't cold. Everything is so closed in, at the same time that it is far too open. Her nose recoils at the scents brought on by every false breeze; this mask of human skin can't hide the wolf's sense of smell.

When she tours the local community college, she haunts the campus like a phantom. Her questions go unasked, unspoken. Eyes glance around her and through her. She rubs her arms more, harder; her skin is dry. Someone looks at her finally, and she flips them off.

"Jesus," the girl says. "Fuck you, too."

It's so much harder to hear it back. At home, Leah is the one who gives it. Everyone lets her. She never takes it. It's her right, not to have to.

These people, in this big city, with their sophisticated bullshit—they don't know her, and they don't know anything.

Nobody looks at her again as she leaves the tour group.

Leah hates cities. She's always been barred from them, and now she knows why.

Hitchhiking gets her through Washington. Her mother had always warned her not to hitchhike, and she's seen enough horror movies to reinforce everything Sue Clearwater told her. But Leah flirts with danger like she used to flirt with Sam, before there was history or even meaning between them. Besides, one of the perks of not being human is being able to defend yourself against those who are.

And anyway, with her dirty, shorn-off hair, faded purple tank top, thinning jeans, and sour expression, she's the one that mothers warn against. She may as well have a rusty axe strapped to her back, for all the useless time her thumb spends perched in the air.

After Seattle, an old Latino couple take pity on her. Their station wagon grinds off the road, and Leah steps back as the dust rises to meet her eyes. The man rolls down the window—manually, judging by the way his shoulder is rotating—and leans out to speak to her. His dark hair looks as though it has been dusted with pepper, and there are crinkles around his eyes that Leah doesn't think have come just with old age.

"Where you going, honey?" he asks. His voice has the barest trace of an accent, and more than a hint of kindness, and together, they seem to caress the last word, making her wish that where she is going were home.

"Oregon," Leah says. "Just across the state line."

"That's a pretty long line," the man observes casually. "Lots of places to cross."

Leah shrugs. "Surprise me."

He smiles. "Okay."

As she climbs into the backseat of the station wagon, the man introduces himself as Ulysses. Leah calls herself Rebecca, and almost blushes when the little woman in the passenger seat turns out to have the same name. Rebeca—"Just one 'C,'" she tells Leah—has a long, white braid, and squints behind her glasses in a way that makes Leah glad that Rebeca's husband is the one driving.

The station wagon doesn't go very fast, and Ulysses and Rebeca don't seem to be in much of a hurry, themselves, but Leah doesn't mind, even when they stop at the little vistas carved off the side of the road.

"For just a few minutes, Rebecca," they tell her each time, cheery, but always slightly apologetic, as if they are the ones burdening her.

Feeling guilty, she gets out of the car every time they stop, except for the few hours she falls asleep to the hypnotic paint swirls of leaves out the window.

When they pass over the Bridge of the Gods into Oregon, though, Leah knows it's time. The trees are beginning to thicken here, and she can smell real, true forest nearby. The sap and the pine needles seem to sing to her blood.

Between goodbyes, Leah has to repeatedly refuse the twenty dollars that Ulysses tries to press into her hands.

"Take care of yourself, honey," he settles on at last. Rebeca wraps her in a bony but warm embrace.

Leah walks as the station wagon drives away. She isn't sure how far she goes, just that she keeps going, pressing onward until it feels right. Until she's hidden. Then, she strips naked among the trees, relishing the way the cool air touches her skin, and tucks her clothes and sandals into a small bag that she attaches loosely to her leg.

It's time to run.

Where the hell are you?

Seth is in her head an hour later. The connection is faint, but there, like fishing line.

Watch your language, she snaps.

That's real funny, coming from you, y'know.

I'm older than you.

So? You're not acting like it.

She realizes, too late, that the petulance in Seth's tone is forced; even in her head, there's a quaver behind his words, one that only increases at her harshness. All of his usual humor is gone; she has taken it away.

I'm sorry, she says.

For what? Being bitchy, or running away? I guess they're kinda the same thing, though, aren't they?

Seth, stop—

Stop what? You left, Leah. How could you? I found your note first. I had to deal with Mom. I'm still dealing with her.

Seth—

Just. You're okay, right? he interrupts.

I'm fine, I...

Good. You better be. I'll tell Mom.

When she doesn't reply, she feels his frown.

You're being selfish, Leah.

She ducks her head and runs faster, till she can't hear anything but the wind in her ears.

I know, I know, I know.

She doesn't try to listen for a reply.

At some point in central Oregon, the connection she has with her pack fizzles and dies. At first, she thinks that Seth has finally grown disgusted enough with her to push her away for good. He'd been checking in with her every few hours, though he didn't say much; sometimes, he was merely a presence in her head, like silent breathing on the other end of a phone.

She'd sensed Jacob there once, but that had been too much. Her body had shuddered with emotion, and a white-hot wave had rushed over her like anger. But it wasn't anger. Leah hadn't known what it was, but it had made her stumble, and by the time she touched the ground, she'd had human hands to reach out and break her fall.

Leah has never been one to lie on the ground like a wounded animal, and so she had gotten to her feet easily enough. Even so, she had stayed by one, sturdy tree, her hand pressed against its sandpaper bark, her sweating forehead pressed against her hand, for longer than she could count. She didn't cry, but dry heaved a little, alone in the forest.

Jacob didn't try to contact her again. Seth had, just once more. Then he couldn't.

As a wolf again, the solitude pleases her. She has run away from her last lifelines, the last threads that have clung to her for three hundred miles as she continued to unravel.

But there's a small part of her, hidden beneath the floorboards of her heart, that's grateful she's the one who broke the connection, not them. She couldn't stand to be abandoned by two of the last people in the world who still care about her.

Leah smells the California redwoods from miles away, and she flies into them as into an embrace.

"Rose?"

Rosalie has decided to answer her phone this time. Because it amuses her in the stretches of nothingness, she's made a game of it: she keeps a tally in her head of the times the phone rings, who's calling, for how long each caller tries before giving up, and who's clever enough to make her pick up. For instance, since she left Forks three days ago, Emmett has called her one hundred and sixty-seven times. For the last one hundred, he's hung up before the third ring.

Edward is too far away to read her mind, but she thinks that he and Alice have been teaming up in trying to contact her. They've succeeded three times. Once, by calling a pay phone just as she was walking past it; she had answered for the sheer curiosity of it, a half smirk curling at her lips, and had waited for exactly two minutes before hanging up. Again, by calling her cellphone from a phone in New York. The area code was so familiar, even though it had been implemented in her post-human times, that she was too startled to remember her game. The third time, they had used Esme's phone.

Esme is the only one she still talks to. Esme will love anyone, and judge no one with an ounce of kindness in their hearts; but Rosalie once—and only once—saw the way she looked at Renesmee, the way her hands unconsciously fluttered to her stomach, and thought that if anyone could understand why she had to leave, it would be her adopted mother. Hearing Edward on the line when she expected Esme, however, has made her cautious.

Sometimes, she likes to imagine Edward and Alice, sitting together on the floor like children, with their legs crossed, Indian-style. They whisper at each other, "Will she? Or won't she?", and play with her as much as she is playing with them.

This afterlife is a game. Rosalie approaches it with a cruel flippancy that still shocks her family.

It wasn't always like that, of course. At one point in time, her optimism outweighed her bitterness, but gradually, they've come to switch. The games had started only when she'd realized the scales were perfectly balanced. Now, she can be anything she wants, do anything she wants, and act any way she pleases, because in this game, that is the only way to survive.

This time, Emmett is calling her.

She stays silent for a while, taking false and stolen breaths as, on what may as well be the other side of the world, Emmett does the same; they simply exist on two ends of the same phone line, connected by wires and empty space. With her phone pressed against her ear, she can almost feel him there, his hand tracing the outline of her cheek and jaw instead of the plastic that is there. For a moment—a simple moment—she wavers; but this electronic caress is already so much warmer than any of them will ever be again.

God, to be human. Not simply the vestiges, the scraps, the walking carrion.

"Will you come home?" Emmett finally asks. Rosalie almost laughs, but doesn't.

"Will you at least talk to me?" he tries again. "Tell me—"

"Tell you what?" The voice of the queen of ice cuts quick and deep.

"I know something happened. Something set you off. I get it. You need space. I just... Rose, please tell me where you are. I just want to know you're okay."

When she bites her lip, sliding her teeth back and forth along it, she can feel the slickness of venom like the slime of a snail.

"Please, baby."

"It's not you."

"Okay, but—"

"Don't look for me."

"I won't, I swear. Just—"

"California."

She snaps her phone shut with a too-loud click before he can finish saying the three words she knows she doesn't deserve. The game continues on.

The normal people of her frozen age—what is it they do? She is eighteen and ninety-three, out of her time, but never out of time itself. She supposes eighteen is when you're supposed to graduate from high school, and leave with your friends to backpack around Europe, and sleep in questionable youth hostels. Eighteen is when you're supposed to open up your eyes, and see the world for the first time. It's when your heart is lightest, and your head is at its most foolish, and your life—your life is full of emotion and promise.

The first time Rosalie turned eighteen, she had been primped and primed for marriage. That was to be her grand adventure, the maiden voyage of her adulthood. A husband was the only promise she had needed, back then.

And so she is caught. She should be in Paris, snapping photographs with strangers under the Eiffel Tower, or getting drunk around a campfire to keep away the cold and the raccoons.

The first time Rosalie turned eighteen, people her age still went to California, looking for different kinds of gold. Those were often the improper people, the ones who left their homes to see a white-lettered sign on a hill, or the ones so poor all they could afford to do was continue moving until they reached the end of the line. Those were the sorts of people that Rosalie Lillian Hale, banker's daughter, had been bred not to become. Proper girls stayed where they were—were swept away only to be settled down a few miles from home, like dust carried on a faltering wind. If a girl traveled to Paris, it was with a ring on her finger and a man on her arm. If a girl traveled to California, her name was spoken in hissing whispers behind satin-gloved hands.

At least, it was in the rising social circle of the Hales.

And so if Rosalie Hale is to defy the laws of everything—life, death, the universe, herself—she may as well defy her parents' ghosts. Rosalie Hale has gone to California, and it feels like setting fire to old photographs: the last connection she has to an ancient, long-lost world.

Of course, she's been here before—to California. She's been everywhere. The world is her oyster, prised open with pointed, glittering teeth that have masked the beauty of the pearl.

In the south, she finds beaches and too-bright sun. Palm trees sprout from the earth like weeds, but Rosalie loves the sound of the wind moving through their fronds, dry as dune grass.

Care must be taken, though. Oversized sunglasses obscure her golden eyes, and she wears hats to shade her like an old movie star. Hours tick away as she meticulously paints liquid foundation all over her skin. She is constructing herself, just as she has always done. On a whim, she even dots freckles over the bridge of her nose with eyeliner.

Sometimes, she longs for freckles as much as she does for a child. Both are little kisses from the sun, little signs of humanity. At age thirteen, Rosalie had despaired of freckles, waking up each morning to bleach them out of existence with lemon juice and Orchard White. She had wanted porcelain skin like the dolls' of her childhood; beauty and status were unblemished. Only laborers' children, her mother had said, showed signs of overexposure to the sun—this, from knowing firsthand. Every little detail taken together would define you. Look and act better than you are, and that is what you will be.

Look wealthy, cultured, desirable, and you will be murdered in the dark by a man you are meant to love, like attracted to like.

Look otherworldly, and forget to rejoice in your own pulse. Look human, act human, and never be human again.

Her mother had been wrong. You are not what you pretend to be, because sooner or later, someone will find you out, and it will not set you free.

For now, Rosalie forges freckles and tanned skin, knowing she will have to relinquish them soon, these borrowed pieces of her persona.

The life of a vampire is both stagnant and full of motion. It is the juxtaposition of miles of still sand and churning, endless gallons of ocean. They bleed together, each wearing at the other, and yet that they exist together is an unquestionable fact.

Standing at the meeting point, Rosalie finds that the wave-tossed sand stings her legs. It chips at her paint. But the longer she stays, the more the sea breezes comb their fingers through her Rapunzel-golden hair, pulling it behind her as if trying to grasp and plait it, as if just trying to touch, to connect. The gentle intimacy of it all makes her disregard, for a while, the growing shimmer of her calves on the water.

The life of a vampire is both stagnant and full of motion. It is both the desire for solitude and the craving of a simple touch—the right touch. It is the constant longing for the thing that will make you whole.

For a few minutes, Rosalie feels it: the emptiness shrinking.

Then she remembers the touches, the connections, she left behind—she, the spoiled girl who always wanted more—and stumbles backward out of the water.

As she runs back to her hotel room, heedless of witnesses, she becomes the wind herself. And the makeup, the persona, it comes off in peach streaks in the basin of a fiberglass hotel shower.

In the end, it's the North that draws her in again. Wasted time should mean nothing—not to her—but it does. It catches up. Normal humans can go outside without spending three hours beforehand working carefully to blend in. They don't always—she remembers this, so well—but they can, as their right. They can walk outside with the early-morning sunlight dusting their pajamas, their unmade faces, to fetch the newspaper, or post a letter; and while they may worry about being seen, it is not the most pivotal thing. They may have dark circles under their eyes, and lips too thin and pale, but these are expected and understood. Natural, from worry and lack of sleep and caffeine deprivation.

Rosalie would like to step outside one morning and not have to worry. Not have to waste time doing something that everyone else can do and be so effortlessly. She has always wanted to look her best, but sometimes she wishes she could look her worst, and be accepted for it by all the passers in the street.

San Francisco promises her this, but does not come through for her. Too many places, the people, the streets, the buildings, the air itself—reek and rot. She finds herself choking, and she doesn't even need to breathe.

Cities are different now. Or rather, she is too different to be in them. Once, they had been home, the harshness of them comforting. Now, with her heightened senses, San Francisco overwhelms her.

Another thing taken from her. She had stayed away so long, because cities held too many people, too many temptations, too much blood, pumping and alive. But that had been her choice, to follow Carlisle's advice to retreat. She had always thought that the day would come when she could go back.

Now she knows. And she keeps moving away.

She doesn't run. Sometimes she walks, and sometimes she can't even remember what is carrying her—cars, buses, trains. BART is too fast, but Amtrak rumbles along slowly enough that she can look out the window and pretend to see the world. The stations are often deserted, and these are the ones she likes to stop at, to visit. When the train pauses for only a minute or so at each, Rosalie simply catches the next one. She has no luggage to worry about, after all.

She sees California in patches, judges it by its railroad tracks. Nearby diners allow her to pretend; if she keeps moving the food around on her plate, no one will notice that she isn't eating. If she yawns as she checks into a motel, no one will think that she doesn't sleep. Funny, how even though she knows her mother's rule comes to nothing, she still follows it like the threads of fate.

Ever the human-pretender, she craves to leave her footprints in the earth. Of course she can travel discreetly. She can be invisible if she chooses. Rosalie does not want to be followed, but still, she insists on leaving a trail behind her, an emblazoned sign above it reading, Notice me.

This is a different kind of attention, different from the kind that comes from lipstick, curls, and coquettish glances, low-backed dresses or scooping necklines. It is different from the men and women who lust and envy. She may glory in her vanity, but it is never enough.

She wants to be seen. She wants a stranger to ask her, without agenda, to smile. She wants to exchange a glance with the woman behind the counter as she hands over the room key, a glance that says, I know that you are here. She wants to leave an imprint of her body in the bed, and her name in the guest register, with a few quick thoughts about her stay. She wants to hold open the door for someone who, like her, is just passing through; and her fingerprints will stay on the glass for hours after they have both gone.

This is what she wants, and it is what she tells herself she wants; but the pretending—always the pretending, the forced normality—breaks her pretend heart all over again. The cycle never ends: want, take, have, lose. Try to pretend, never forget. In limbo, she screams and screams, and the sound recycles back to her as the wind that snaps at her face.

Rosalie Hale remains in the cycle for one week.

Then, despairing, she decides to disappear. If no one sees you in plain sight, what is the point of even trying? What is the harm in hiding if no one will know that you have gone?

Another week passes. Feral, she darts among the redwood trees with dirt under her nails, killing, surviving, never living.

Then one day, Rosalie smells another shadow. Her lips curl, and her nostrils flare.

This is where the wild things are.

Something has changed. Leah senses it immediately. Even the dirt smells different as the water droplets from her hair splash and ripple into it; and the way the particles cling to her wet feet, mixing themselves into shoes of mud, are not the same as they were. There is a heaviness to everything.

The warning is mixed, though, like an interrupted radio transmission from faraway. The birds have not quieted as they should. Rather, they continue to flutter like unconcerned butterflies among the tree branches. Animals peer from their sleepy hollows, blinking in the sunlight of any other day. No cries of alarm burst from the brush.

But Leah knows. Something has been here. Something is still here. The smell has been too corrupted to tell if it is human; and if it is, she can't phase. If it isn't, she will have to wait until it reveals itself to act. Jacob has always been the one who can so easily shift back and forth, choosing fur or flesh like a half-second whim. Leah never mastered the skill. Even with a proper catalyst, it might still take a heartbeat too long to grow into her own defenses.

Her Swiss Army Knife is still buried under a corner of the three-man tent she had found in a dumpster the week before. (The tent had been discarded because of a hole in its side like a wounded beast. She had patched it up with duct tape and a piece of the rainfly. Like her mother, Leah had never had the patience for learning to sew, and wouldn't have known where to begin looking for a needle and thread, anyway. She wouldn't have even bothered to fix it, if not for the mosquitoes. The knife she keeps buried when it isn't in her pocket because she's afraid that someone will find her camp and steal the only real thing of value.)

Warily, silently, Leah stalks her own campsite. She is careful next to the pile of firewood, swaddled in the rest of the rainfly. A few crumpled balls of newspaper have been moved around in her absence, but they are too haphazardly scattered to be anything but windblown. The tent's zipper hasn't changed position.

Slowly, she backs toward the tent, toward the corner that hides the knife. One of the tent stakes acts as a shovel, and she pries the knife out of the ground. Like lightning, she pulls the blade out of its red sheath. There are over twenty tools on this knife, and Leah knows which ones cut the deepest.

It always feels unnatural when the deadliest tool isn't one attached to her body, but at least now she feels less weak, less vulnerable. Trusting the feeling of the plastic and metal in her hand, Leah closes her eyes to listen, and to smell.

She can see, smell, hear, taste, touch, just like any other human being; but when the wolf stirs within her, pacing in her belly, everything is utterly transformed—even when she is not. Her senses become unrecognizable. They become the master sixth sense: the Wolf. When Leah closes her eyes and concentrates, its silent howl resonates in her throat, taking control of her as easily as a child bends the limbs of a doll.

With the wolf peering out through her, she is unbreakable.

There.

Her eyes startle open when she finally recognizes the scent.

Sweet, sweet death. The kind that fights.

Leah could use a fight. Words and claws. She doesn't phase yet, because she needs to yell at this thing, to taunt it, to let it know exactly why it is going to die. The wolf, after all, is still in her throat.

And anyway, Leah Clearwater is just the kind of batshit-crazy girl who would take on a vampire with a pocketknife, just to make things interesting. Sam may have stripped her of some of her confidence, all those years ago; but what he left behind was a space for an assuredness of a different kind to take its place: arrogance. Leah knows she is going to win this fight. She is not just going to snap; she is going to explode.

And she wants to make it last.

"Okay, bloodsucker," she says, gripping the knife. Her throat feels dry and scratched from not speaking aloud in so long, but she knows her words will carry far enough. There is only one other being to hear them.

Leah expects the vampire to run at her straightaway, and she braces herself for the impact—her body has hardened, but it's nothing like stone, not comparatively. Her feet, still bare, grip into the dirt. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she dimly notes that she'll have to find new clothes, after she ruins the ones she's wearing when she eventually phases.

But Leah doesn't expect what steps out of the trees. Who.

"Still intent on killing my family and me?" asks the blonde bloodsucker—Rosalie, Leah thinks. "How unfortunate for me that they aren't here to help fend off that little weapon of yours."

"It's not the weapon that matters; it's how you use it," Leah shoots back without pause.

"I believe that's a misquoted euphemism," says Rosalie, sounding bored, "which normally deals with the male preoccupation with phallic size. In case you've failed to notice, that sort of thing has no place here. It's just"—she comes closer, stepping deliberately in time with each word—"us—girls."

Neither of them is smiling.

The last time Leah had seen Rosalie, Rosalie had looked the part of the spoiled, undead beauty queen. A near too-perfect part of civilization. Perfect hair, perfect face, perfect body, perfect clothes. Like all of them, really, and yet so much more beautiful that Leah had wanted to sneer. Beauty has no place on the face of a killer; Leah would know.

Now, though. Now, Rosalie's golden hair shines with a different light, styled only by the spiny hands of leaves and twigs and wind, and it's curlier now—it has clearly not been tamed in some time. Instead of the ridiculous style of clothing her family always seem to wear—designer, and matching, for fuck's sake—she's in a simple blue top and jeans. The boots are a bit overkill, and the jeans probably do cost more than Leah's college fund could pay for, but the part that involuntarily sends a thrill down her spine is that they're ruined. So ruined, in a way that's almost deliberate. Rosalie does not simply move through the forest, she is a part of it, and it suits her in the strange way that it suits Leah.

The ruination is not the downfall. It is the climax.

"Lose your mirror?" Leah asks casually.

"You certainly haven't found it."

Now Leah laughs. She hasn't looked into a mirror in weeks, it's true. She's pleased with what she sees in the river, with her reflection bubbling, rushing, changing, living, as if the outside is only just beginning to reflect what's hidden within. The ratty shirt, the jeans she'd ripped into shorts earlier in the week... The only difference between them and what Rosalie wears is that Leah's clothes had started out beyond repair.

"So?"

"So, what?"

"Are we gonna fight?"

Rosalie almost cackles. "Fight? Hardly."

Leah quirks a brow. The action stretches a thin scratch she'd gotten a few days before—maybe around the same time she'd had to rip her jeans, she doesn't remember or care. "Did you come to bring me back, then? Is that what you want?"

A very small part of her hopes, but doesn't really believe.

"No offense," Rosalie says, wrinkling her nose, "but I leave the fetching to the dogs."

"So do I," Leah replies pointedly. "Do I need to repeat my question?"

"Very funny. I'm certain this must be why you're so popular back home."

"Right." Leah snorts. "Yeah. Let's talk about popularity."

Something like a smile flits across Rosalie's face—too fleeting for Leah to dissect, and too ambiguous to arouse too much curiosity.

"So..." Leah doesn't lower her knife, and Rosalie doesn't even look at it. "You're not here to fight. You're not here to kidnap me. You look like absolute shit." (She doesn't, though.)

"Thanks."

"I doubt you'd bother to go this far hunting. So that begs the question: what the hell do you want?"

"Would you believe me if I told you I'd found you by accident?" Rosalie smirks. "No, of course not. I could smell you, just as you could smell me."

"It took a while, though. You've been in the woods too long. You're starting to smell like them."

Like rotting leaves instead of rotting flesh.

"You're one to talk. I wouldn't have believed you'd been bathing if I hadn't seen it myself."

"Ah. I guess creepy stalkers kind of run in the family, don't they?"

Rosalie tosses her hair, a gesture Leah guesses is based on habit, rather than intent. They're both silent for a few minutes; the knife feels less hot in Leah's hand, and after a while, she closes it up and pockets it. The plastic bulges against her leg. At the same time, Rosalie leaves the outskirts of the campsite, finally coming into its center. They are still standing too far apart for this to be a conversation; it's still an encounter, guarded.

Leah knows from experience that bloodsuckers are as likely to explain everything they're thinking as they are to dance around in full sunlight, and Rosalie doesn't disappoint when she eventually does speak.

"You're not the only one who left," is all she says.

Of all the explanations she could have given, this, strangely enough, is the one that Leah finds she can accept. The magic words. Abracadabra. Open sesame.

"Okay."

For now.

It isn't easy, sharing a camp with a vampire. Not that Leah can remember agreeing to it, or even extending an invitation. One moment, they were separate, staring at each other from opposites sides of something, and the next, here they are, moving fluidly within the same space. The usual division of us and them has crumbled while neither of them were looking. If anything, the only separation they seem to think of is here and there, no other names or labels; and that distinction, though ever-present, remains the elephant in the room. The question, What are we even doing here? rings out in Leah's head at least once every hour for the first few days. Not I, but we. Why does this routine even exist for us?

Half the time, when she thinks about it, she can't even put her finger on what the routine is. It isn't like they talk and roast marshmallows around the campfire and sing Kum-ba-fucking-ya. But the days, all the same, still pass.

Rosalie doesn't share the tent. Sometimes, she simply disappears, and Leah can only guess where she's gone to. (It takes her a while to remember that vampires don't sleep.) She isn't hunting, most of the time; Leah doesn't often wake up in the middle of the night, scenting blood on the air. Rosalie prefers to feed in the daylight hours. Sometimes, she returns to the camp, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand when she thinks Leah can't see, and Leah turns back to the rabbit on the fire with a snort. The woods have made Rosalie a lot less ladylike.

Then again, Leah had noticed that the first time Rosalie had stepped into her camp.

The first time Leah shows Rosalie how she's been getting her food, almost five days in, Rosalie isn't sure whether to be disgusted or impressed. But then she remembers, as she disdainfully regards the snare Leah has set, that this is humanity, the thing she has been craving. Humanity, at is barest. Even in weakness, it will survive.

"Why can't you just hunt the normal way?" she has to ask, because she doesn't want Leah to follow the zig-zagging train of her thoughts. This is another game she's always played: disagree, even if you don't.

"This is the normal way," Leah snaps. "Just a few hundred years outdated. It does make me feel like I'm about to get shot in the back by fucking John Smith, but it works."

Rosalie smiles involuntarily. "It takes longer, though. You know, there's a grocery store not too far away—it isn't as if we're thatdeep in the woods. For us, I mean."

Leah doesn't look up, just continues affixing the rope to a young, narrow tree. She brushes the dirt over the loop she's made with the rope on the ground with the care of an artist adding a final brushstroke to her masterpiece.

"I know," she answers after she's done. "But it's not like there's a whole lot to do here in the middle of the woods."

"Then why stay?"

Leah snorts. "You tell me. Besides, I don't have any money."

Rosalie crouches down next to the half-buried rope. With her vampire eyes, she could probably detect and avoid it from over a mile away. It amazes her, sometimes, the things that animals will fall for—especially when she is an animal, herself. She reaches out to touch the trap, then stops, her hand hovering above it. The weaker animals still have enough sense to avoid places containing her scent.

"It's okay."

Rosalie looks up.

"It's like I said. You know. When you first got here and invaded my camp." Leah shrugs. "You're starting to smell like the woods. Like one of them. Makes you a little more bearable. You can touch the snare if you want, just don't fuck it up or set it off."

Rosalie shakes her head. She could paint a portrait on a gnat's wing with a thousand controlled strokes. A clunky swirl of old rope will hardly suffer for her attention to it. Somehow, though, she doesn't want to touch it anymore, this thing that Leah has constructed, poised with so much potential for the future.

"Where did you learn to do that, anyway?" she asks instead.

"They taught it to us in school," Leah says. A lock of hair sticks to her skin as she wipes her forehead with the back of her hand. "That was the lesson right after we made our own bows and arrows, and the one before we went after the buffalo. Oh no, wait, that was after the basket-weaving, and the buffalo came—"

"Stop it," Rosalie interrupts suddenly, forceful. So forceful, the sardonic twist of Leah's mouth goes slack.

This is what it's like, living with Leah. Rosalie will be resting on the sweet cusp of enjoyment—of peace, even—finally letting down her guard; and then Leah will say something sudden and sour, as if she is taking careful measures to destroy any mutual happiness. The peace shatters, the connection broken. They will never move any closer to each other, but continue butting up against the other like a boat to a dock—never staying still, leaving bruises in the wood with the curls of little waves.

Rosalie desires the closeness of a simple companionship, that place past acquaintances, but not quite friends. For the first time since finding this place, she has begun to wonder about Leah in a way she never has before. What makes her tick, her cogs turn? How much of their inner clockwork is actually the same? What differences lie beneath her copper skin, hidden, but keeping her alive like blood through veins?

"I'm not trying to be rude, so please stop making it out as though I am," Rosalie says.

"Sorry," Leah replies off handedly. "Habit."

"Maybe you should try to break it."

Leah laughs hollowly. "Says the ice queen to the bitch."

Rosalie flinches.

"And anyway, the real story is much less interesting. No room for sarcasm. It involves Google and an episode of Survivorman. Although," Leah adds, "they did teach us other tribal stuff in school. More cultural aspects than survival skills, though."

For a moment, she almost forgets what Leah is talking about, and the words make about as much sense to her as babbled Swedish—one of the only languages someone in her family doesn't speak. She's still shaken from Leah's retort. She knows she shouldn't be, and that she is—an ice queen, that is—that it's something she calls herself all the time, and knows other people call her behind her back. The shock comes, then, from the frankness of it, in the place where they are both seeking a kind of utopia, free from the pressures of a mask. It frustrates her so much that the only time in her unlife she wants to help and be helped, it's like trying to claw her way through a brick wall with human hands.

"Now, let's go forage."

"Leah, please—"

Leah dusts her palms off on her shorts and stands. Her smile is a peace offering. "Hey," she says. "I was actually being serious this time. I used to watch a lot of Discovery Channel. I know what I'm doing."

Together, they move deeper into the forest, searching for bushes, and rubbing leaves between their fingers. Bemusement plays with Rosalie's hands and the curve of her brows, but she gathers berries and roots in her cool palms until they are brimming and stained with dripping shades of blacks and reds and browns. Leah knows the names of some, and eventually murmurs them under her breath like a hum when the silence grows too heavy. Blackberries, thimbleberries, huckleberries—the fruits of a late summer. Closer to the camp, they pass a carpeted growth of what looks like tiny lily pads trumpeting from the earth; Rosalie wouldn't have noticed it, but for the stick jammed into the ground beside it, a little piece of Leah's jeans—she recognizes the scent, not the fabric—tied around the top.

There's something... not quite wonderful, but perhaps novel, about the fact that it is Rosalie who has something to learn, and not to teach. Very little still holds any mystery for her in the present world; the unknown will come steadily from the progression of time, and then she and her family will scramble again to find ways of disappearing. For with time, the human race carries on, growing and changing, falling and thriving; Rosalie knows this like a fact recited from a textbook. What she's never known—or at least, has long since forgotten—is how.

This is what Leah has to teach her. The knowledge comes too little, too late, but there is a part of her that is grateful to be taught that humanity is not fueled by power or magic, but the sun-soaked seeds of a blackberry, or the insignificant sprout of green from grainy dirt. A fundamental hunger runs through living bodies, too. Rosalie has forgotten this, somehow, but welcomes the reminder. Somehow, the differences between the gentle gnawing at one person's stomach and the lustful fire that consumes another's seem small. Ignore one too long, either way, and it will destroy you.

Like Leah's, Rosalie's steps are silent on the forest floor, but even so, Leah notices when Rosalie has stopped.

"That's Indian Lettuce," she says, nodding at the green patch Rosalie hasn't realized she's been staring at. "Good source of Vitamin C. People call it Miner's Lettuce sometimes because the gold miners in the eighteen-fifties used to eat it so they wouldn't get scurvy."

Flashes of spots, swollen gums, and jaundiced skin pervade her mind, things she wishes she had never been told about. (Of course she had heard of it before then, but had never seen it. Not like Carlisle had, at least, holed up amongst the rats and steerage passengers of a ship he never should have boarded, not realizing the help that even he could offer would never be enough.) Rosalie almost shudders.

"More Discovery Channel?" she asks with a thin smile, tossing her hair to disguise the revulsion in her thoughts.

"Where else, right?"

At this, Rosalie's brows rise, visions of scurvy startled away. Leah's tone isn't sarcastic. Her words don't try to bite at Rosalie's skin like angry horse flies. They haven't, in fact, since Leah apologized for herself, however flippant that apology may have sounded, and the realization of this pleases her more than she likes.

Leah frowns. "What?"

"Nothing. Just..."

"Let me guess." One by one, as if she is counting them, Leah flicks three strands of black, sweat-laced hair out of her eyes. Her breathing isn't quite uneven, but much less so than Rosalie's would be if she were still human—much less so than anyone not used to moving through the woods. "You miss my witty Squanto jokes."

Rosalie scoffs, but without malice. "Oh, hardly."

Leah pauses. One of the strands of hair she's just pushed away falls back into place, but she doesn't attend to it with the same effortless nonchalance as before. Instead, one hand reaches for it jerkily, reflecting the slight moment's uncertainty in her eyes. "Want me to really shock you?" she asks, and the uncertainty is gone like a blink.

Rosalie crosses her arms. "Try me," she challenges.

"Okay." Leah smiles, not with mirth, but mischief. The shifting shadows of the trees play with her expression like wind. "When I was younger, before all this wolf and vampire shit happened, I used to read a lot. Like, not just fiction, but the stuff that told you how to survive in the wild, and how other people'd done it, and basically just what it was like, being there. I guess that pretty much ranges from Walden to trail guides to The Encyclopedia of Edible Plants of North America. They were having this thing at a college once, for kids, you know, smart ones, that my dad signed me up for. It was on the whole 'edible plants' thing. My mom kept flipping out every time I kept eating the stuff I found growing on the side of the road, so my dad figured that, at least this way, I wouldn't end up killing myself. Of course, he taught me some stuff, too."

A shadow darkens her expression for another brief moment. Leah glances to the side, where they've come from, but there isn't anything to see, because they've rounded a corner. "He liked fishing best, but he remembered catching rabbits with his grandpa in the summer when he was a kid, and figured, hey, this is something my psychotic daughter would enjoy. Anyway. Pretty much from the time I was seven, I figured I was going to run away and live in the woods like some hermit, or something, only I'd never stay in one place for long—I was good at sitting still, I just didn't like to. So I guess I've been preparing for something like this for most of my life. I only ever watched TV when my mom thought it was too cold to go outside, or I had to babysit Seth. Which I guess was a lot. So I brought the outside in and took notes."

Rosalie waits a beat. "That's shocking?"

Because it isn't, what Leah's just impulsively shared. It so perfectly fits with the picture Rosalie is forming of Leah in her mind with little puzzle pieces of information that she feels as if she knew this already. Leah is becoming predictable, in a way—in a good way. Satisfyingly.

Leah snorts. "It's shocking because I told you something without you having to torture it out of me first. That's rare, you know. My mom'd kill to be let in on that kind of introspection. It's hot gossip."

"Your strange obsession with subsisting on dirty weeds is hot gossip?"

"People are lucky if I tell them what crap cereal I have for breakfast."

Lucky. Rosalie considers the word, and surprises herself by finding that she doesn't disagree.

All she says to this, however, is a "Hm" through thoughtfully-pursed lips.

Leah bends down to pluck up a few shoots of Indian Lettuce and put them in her mouth.

"We should check the snares," she comments, after.