Darkbloom

Chapter 2: Running

A/N: Thank you so much to all who read, reviewed, and voted in the Les Femmes Noires contest. I was honored to receive the Cherry Popper Judges Award for first-ever fanfic. I appreciate anyone who's willing to put up with my neuroses with no promises of smut. ;) I hope you enjoy the continuation! Also, thank you to all my UU girls for being my bra, to my ficwife Feisty Y. Beden, to my DG Adoraklutz, and to Philadelphic, who always encourages me. ^_^

Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns. Also, my chapters are short (for now).

&.&.&

I stared at him hard, seeing a bevy of emotions flit across his face: shock, panic, contrition, and something else indefinable … not lust. Not even attraction. The look pierced my heart as though a grappling hook had shot out and a steel cable was drawing us together, anchoring us permanently. The emotion terrified me.

Feeling my breath catch in my chest, I tore my eyes away and took off like a shot towards the south.

I didn't stop for days.

&.&.&

I heard him call out as I ran, but his words fell in the air behind me, and I paid them no mind. At first, I ran a crazy path to the south, only taking care to avoid roads, cities — anything that might put me in contact with humans.

I never feel completely right around them — humans. Besides Charlie, who never asks questions and who is as quiet as a vampire except for his vital signs, I've been around few humans in my short life. Once, my mother and father had taken me to a movie. They said it was something they'd been meaning to do, and my mother said it was something everyone should experience at some point. She'd winked at my dad, muttering something about "better late than never"…

On a rainy afternoon, we'd gone to the earliest show at the tiny theater in Port Angeles. We were the only ones there. Quickly bored by the slow-moving actors and distracted by the flickering of the screen and visible dust mites on the reel, I'd spent the entire time replaying our interaction with the ticket-taker. A skinny girl with red, splotchy skin, she'd gawked at my parents and at me — mostly at my dad, who appeared not to notice. She looked at our tickets, then at us, then back at our tickets, her eyes shifting back and forth at what felt like a monotonous pace. I'm sure my impatience must've showed, as my father's hand squeezed mine, a warning to be good.

"Oh, you need an adult ticket, too," she said to me in an exaggerated whisper, and I was distracted by the metal bands around her teeth, which forced tiny drops of spittle out as she talked. Her cheeks burned so red that my mouth watered thinking about her blood underneath, though I'd never tasted human blood from the source. The idea was both appealing and disgusting, given her unwashed state.

"Why?" my mother asked, clearly confused, as my dad stepped in front of us reaching for his wallet.

"Oh, but I won't tell anybody, no worries," she grinned moonily at my dad, who made the annoyed face he reserved for when Jacob was visiting. "You three have a great time," she spat animatedly. He hazarded a small smile, mumbling thanks, and we continued into the theater.

"What was that about?" my mother asked when she was out of earshot. Dad's mouth moved for a second without any sound coming out as though he was picking the right words.

"She was confused, as she thinks we're high-schoolers, going to the movies. She thinks Renesmee is, uh … a dwarf, to put it delicately."

"What?" my mother snapped, but my father laughed.

"She's perfectly formed," he said. "She might be the size of an 8-year-old, but she carries herself well, and her eyes betray her age. Can you blame her?" My mother made no answer except for the snarling growl that emanated from her chest. Dad just chuckled and kissed her head and mumbled some nonsense about "mama bears" not being allowed to tackle teenagers.

&.&.&

As I ran through the first forests I didn't recognize, I thought back to the last human I encountered who wasn't Charlie… Emily Uley, I realized. While connected to the wolves, she was as human as my grandfather. Jacob had taken me onto the reservation about a month ago. I'm not often invited as my presence in La Push seems to upset some of the elders, who are skittish about my family. I don't know why, as we never hunt on their land and rarely interact with any Quileutes unless they come to our home.

Standing in Sam and Emily's cramped kitchen while she baked chocolate chip cookies, I'd pressed my hand to her belly, swollen and round, a life growing inside of it. My mother had told me Emily would soon have a baby.

"Will it be a wolf, or a human? Or something like me?" I'd asked Mother later.

"Well, if it is a girl, she will be human, like Emily. If it is a boy, he will be a wolf, like Sam."

"Will the baby be my friend, when it gets older, I mean?" I was afraid to say what I really meant — that I felt so lonely without anyone like me, anyone around my age at all, who also had "exceptional abilities," as my Grandma Esme called them. I knew the truth: I was something stronger than a human, but weaker than a vampire. In my mind it only made me a freak who didn't fit anywhere.

I had asked my mother for some details on the birth process, trying to fill in blanks of what I'd read in books.

"So, babies grow inside their mothers for months, and then they come out?" I felt very young questioning her about something everyone already knew. It was frustrating. "Was I born that way?"

"Yes," my mother replied with a dash of hesitation in her voice. "Though, you took a bit less time, and your birth was very … unconventional. I'll tell you about it sometime," she'd said, and had changed the subject, asking me who else had been at Emily's.

"Jacob was there, but he didn't say anything the whole time. Leah came over, but she left in a hurry." I remembered Leah's glare flickering toward me as she'd come to find Jacob. The way she'd marched straight up to him and gestured for the two of them to go outside, like she had something important to discuss with him that I couldn't hear. At the time I'd been annoyed. Now I wondered if they'd been … together — or whatever they were — then. The thought sickened me.

&.&.&

"Why does Leah hate me?" I had asked Emily. She smiled down at me, her scars pulling the right side of her face taut as our hands formed the dough into neat little balls, placing them onto the cookie sheet.

"Try not to take Leah's manner personally," she said quietly. "She's unhappy with her life, and sometimes the anger oozes out onto whoever is near."

"Even onto you?" I had a hard time imagining anyone acting hateful towards kind-hearted Emily. She laughed one hard, staccato sound.

"Yes."

"Why is she so unhappy?" I had wondered. "She has all the wolves to keep her company and be her friends and brothers."

"Can I trust you to keep some things I tell you just between us?" Emily asked. I nodded, keeping my face serious so she would speak freely.

"When wolves change, their bodies freeze — sort of like your parents'. Do you know what that means?" she asked.

"They don't get any older?"

"Yes, until they transition back to being all-human, which is not always their own choice," she explained. "Leah didn't want to change, didn't want to freeze. I think deep down, she's afraid that there are things she wanted in her life that she may never have, because of who she is: the only female wolf in a large pack. She might even be afraid there are things she doesn't know that she wants yet." She paused, furrowing her brow at me. "Am I confusing you?"

I understood completely: Leah, the only one of her kind, felt like a freak. I certainly could relate. But it didn't explain why she acted so nasty all the time, particularly to me.

Emily's head wrinkled further when I shared this, as though she were carefully thinking through her answer.

"Maybe, she doesn't understand how alike you two really are," she said slowly. I frowned. I didn't want to be like Leah, who made everyone miserable. Everyone except Jacob, apparently, I reminded myself, wishing I could forget the way they looked together.

"At least she has the wolves, who sort of understand her. What more could she want?" I asked, feeling particularly vindictive.

"Maybe she thinks you have things that she wants, or will have things that she cannot," Emily had said in her minimal way, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear deftly with her fourth finger, which had not been in the cookie dough.

"Like Aunt Rosalie," I'd said. Emily had shrugged one shoulder and given me a half-smile.

The truth is, even I didn't know exactly what I was talking about. I'd heard my mother and Alice talking about Rosalie, saying she'd resented my mom for having things she could not, and that I had somehow brought them closer — the language Emily used had reminded me of the overheard words. They made Rosalie sound possessive and demanding, which shocked me. I'd never seen a sign of the jealousy or contempt that radiated off Leah onto everyone around her. Rose was fierce and protective over our entire family. She had always treated me like her own daughter, making sure I was fed and clothed and tucked into my bed at night whether my mother was there or not.

Her touches lingered on my hair and forehead when she'd sat with me when I was younger, still scared to sleep at night. I'd hated the feeling that I was missing half my life, that there was a whole side to my parents' lives that I wasn't around for, and that maybe nobody wanted me around during those times. I had fought sleep, pushing myself at activities and playtime until I could barely prop open my eyelids. Rosalie would come into my room, picking me up and changing me into my nightgown, then sit by me until I fell asleep.

I remembered Rosalie's anger for me, with me, at Jacob and Leah. The way she shouted and stormed rivaled my father's reaction. She'd seemed angrier than my own mother; that was where they differed: where my mother was stoic, impassive, Rosalie wore her heart on her sleeve. I admired her for it, wishing I could express myself half as well.

&.&.&

I'd been running for two days, from what I could tell, stopping only to rest periodically and a couple of times for what my mother called "a human moment." I hated the term, as I did anything that called attention to my alien nature. It was humiliating. I felt more comfortable peeing in the woods, my back braced against a tree trunk, than I did at home knowing every vampire in the vicinity could hear me.

By the time the sun was rising for the second time since I'd left La Push, my midsection was throbbing so hard I wanted to curl up on the forest floor. I'd never felt such pain before, not only cramping, but the hollow gnawing, like something was eating away inside me. Eating… I thought.

I paused, listening intently to the wood noises — birds chirping, insects buzzing, small rodents scampering, leaves rustling… I started to walk a zigzag pattern further into the woods. I knew what to listen for, what to look for, but what I wanted eluded me.

When I passed a knobby pine that stood tall above the other trees, I scaled it carefully, ignoring the ache in my belly. Once I was high enough, I saw what I'd been after: a stream gurgling in the distance.

By the time I reached the clear water, spots were dancing in front of my eyes, and my head felt fuzzy. I lay down on my belly and scooped the water into my mouth hastily, giving thanks that it was clean and not foul-tasting. I rarely drank water — only a little that Carlisle made sure I had in the mornings every other day or so — and I hadn't realized my body's dependence on it.

I stayed there resting in the cool shade for what felt like hours, drinking as much as I could. After a while the spots in my vision cleared and the hazy feeling left me, but the gnawing remained. I heaved a deep breath, absorbing all the smells surrounding me in the forest. As one smell wafted from the east, my head snapped in that direction. Deer… And I realized, I was starving.

&.&.&

A/N: Thank you so much for reading and for the reviews. I cherish every one! More is coming very soon... ^_^