Help, I have done it again
I have been here many times before
Hurt myself again today
And, the worst part is there's no-one else to blame.
Breathe Me, Sia.
She hears his footsteps before she sees him; the weary, dependable tread that used to be anything but, until he met Bella Swan. She takes a violent drag of her cigarette, watching the smoke dissipate into the dense canopy of the trees, and avoids the constriction of her lungs when she thinks of his face.
"Those things kill 'ya know," Jacob says quietly, voice making her tired just listening to it.
"Yeah, well, not that they do anything much to these lungs, but I figure it adds to the whole I-don't-give-a-fuck-that-my-life's-gone-down-the-shithole attitude," she quips, eyeing him through a hazy coil of cigarette smoke.
He eyes the narrow purse of her lips around the cigarette, speculatively, then the elegant exhale, shaking his head.
"If only," he sighs, the gravity of his eyes making Leah uncomfortable.
"What are you out here for, anyway?" she asks, after another heavy sigh and compression of his shoulders.
"Escaping. Getting some air," he adds, an underlying knowledge to his words.
Oh, shit. I KNEW that bloodsucker would blab!
"Oh, yeah?" she replies, wincing at the all too casual draw of her cigarette, "I guess, there's only so much of the Stepford Vampires one can tolerate in a day."
Jake chuckles and she lingers on the stretch of his grin, the flash of teeth, studiously ignoring the way her own mirrors it.
"Seriously, Leah. Edward told me you said something to Bella. I mean, I appreciate the sentiment and all, but I don't think she needs it right now. She's…well, she's not well."
"I know. It's tragic and sad and cruel. Still doesn't change what she did when she was well," Leah replies, and she knows it sounds callous, heartless, and the ever dormant sympathy in her cringes at her words, but it's what they all expect of her. What Jacob expects of her.
Wouldn't want to let them down, she thinks bitterly.
She ignores the heavy compression of her ribcage, the guilt that swells into her throat, when she sees his eyes narrow, harden, and his jaw tick.
"You know, Leah, being nice and happy might be a better 'fuck you' than this bitter bitch act. Aren't you tired of it?"
All the time, replies the small, hurt vulnerability she covets beneath layers of bitterness and resentment. She watches with detached emotion as he shakes his head, the angry tempo of his footsteps fading into the undergrowth, and thinks again,
All the time.
I hate everything about you.
Why do I love you?
I Hate Everything About You, Three Days Grace.
She'd always found Jared irritating. A typical male, all bravado and sports and careless words.
But there was a self-assured understanding that laced his words, flanked by Quil and Colin in wolf form, which reeked of smug superiority. He was beta now. Sam's right hand man now that Jacob had gone rogue. Jared was as slippery as a politician, with persuasive words and repeated rhetoric, trying to convince them to return to the pack.
But she could never go back. Never wanted to return to that place where she felt more lost than ever, more unwanted and more ugly. More trapped.
He wants you home, Lee-lee, where you belong.
Something snaps in her then, Jared's words inciting the acerbic pulse of her blood in her ears, a relentless rhythm that rips her wide open. The vulnerable innermost chamber that contains the girl she once was is shaking, bars rattling, weeping at those forbidden, dangerous words. He wants you home. He wants you. But he didn't want her. He wanted numbers. And she was nothing more than a number to him anymore.
"Sam told me to beg. He told me to literally get down on my knees if I have to. This is -"
The rest of his words fade into a static white noise, fury and hurt overruling any other feeling. Sam told Jared to beg for her. Beg, just like she did all those years before, crying and screaming for him to talk to her, to let her in, to drop that calm detachment that she no longer recognised as Sam. Only to have him leave her.
She imagines herself phasing then, the rapid elongation of her limbs, the unrelenting brutality of her jaws clamped to Jared's jugular, the treacly molasses of his blood running warm down her throat. They would pounce then his wolf sentries, rip into her after only one second's consideration. One second to weigh her worth against his. One second that was all her life was worth to them. He was a brother and she was only the bitter interloper that no one would miss.
The warm placement of Jacob's human hand against her shoulder stills the raging tremor of her fury, leaving her exhausted. His eyes capture hers, a silent message of understanding before he speaks.
"Sam can beg all he wants, but Leah's free to choose her place."
Leah's gaze meets Jared's cool indifference as she says, "and my place is not with Sam, so you can scurry on home and tell him that I'm not leaving. He's wrong and I won't stand by and watch him murder innocent," she hesitates, swallowing the foul taste of wrongness she feels at defending the Cullens, "innocent people."
Jake's gaze meets hers, and pleasure flushes her cheeks at his look of almost pride.
"Well, then. I think you've got your answer," Jake says, grin quick and superior.
Love is something of an art,
when we are led by such divided hearts,
painted black, their centre red,
beating now, they're loaded with regret,
full of memories that you can't neglect.
I Could Never Belong to You, Sarah Blasko
"Can you quit blowing that toxic cloud in my face?" Jake sighs. Leah takes an exaggerated drag of her cigarette, stubbing it out at the intolerant exhaustion on his face.
Apparently the whole 'I'm proud of you' moment has well and truly passed, she thinks ruefully.
"Can you quit being a whiny little bitch?" she replies snarkily.
He shoots her a weak attempt at a glare, and Leah rolls her eyes thinking that a girl scout selling cookies would be more intimidating.
"Sorry," he mumbles, the apology making the hard lines around her eyes soften.
"S'okay."
"Nah, it's not."
His head drops low and heavy across the stiff axis of his shoulders, and his next words tumble forth in an exhale, "Nothing's okay."
"I'm with you on that, Black," she agrees, hoping the flippant tone of her voice will cease this line of conversation.
"Does it ever fade? I mean, I just, I feel sick every time I see them together. Like a physical punch to the heart."
She wants to make him laugh, drag him from this darkness, but the vulnerable need in his voice floors her, spinning words she never wanted spoken.
"I could tell you the usual crap, like 'time heals all wounds', but it just grows quieter, more secret, more intimate. You might not speak it out loud, you might not look at them and see forever anymore, but that small part of you, that hidden, clandestine longing, will always be there. Waiting. Hoping."
She laughs abruptly, humourlessly, and drags a hand through her shorn hair. The barbs prick her fingers unpleasantly and she forces a smile at the depth in his sympathetic eyes.
"Heck. Don't listen to me. I'm like the 101 of how not to move on."
"You should give yourself more credit. It was a shitty thing that happened to you. You're allowed to feel betrayed and angry. I do."
The honesty in his gaze makes her swallow thickly, heat prickling across the nape of her neck, heart an unsteady staccato. She breaks hers away, laughter rough edged with unease.
"Ah, look at us two heartbroken souls, Black. Honestly, we're a sobfest in the making. All we need is icecream and some hair ties. I'd let you braid my hair but I'm afraid yours is far more promising in the braids' department."
"There is no way you're getting near my hair. Quil would never let me hear the end of it."
"More promising every second," she replies, stepping closer under his wary eyes. She laughs as he flourishes a warding sign towards her.
"Be gone, evil spawn!"
"Get your mythology right, Black. Vampires are the ones whipped by that finger voodoo, not us."
"Right. Just let me get my silver bullets then. I'll be right back."
Their laughter quiets into companionable silence, the forest swelling with the sounds of life around them.
"Would you take Sam back if he begged you?" he asks warily.
She looks at him, takes in the earnest eyes and sunlit skin, feels her love for him beat stronger and stronger, a heartbeat in her ear.
"No."
His eyes flicker to her mouth and she licks her lips instinctively, looking away at her dirty feet. When she looks back, whatever emotion was stirring beneath the colour of his irises has been replaced by surprise.
"Truly?" he asks, "if Bella asked I don't think I'd have the will or desire to say no."
Jealously flares thick and ugly through her heart as he continues speaking, "but that's never going to happen now. Maybe once. But now she's dying and I can't stop it. I can't save her. Now everything that happened before, me loving her, her loving him, seems so pointless."
He stops, slams his fist suddenly into the trunk of a tree. His knuckles are shredded when he pulls it away, blood running in scarlet rivers down his wrist, but he keeps talking, almost frantic.
"I mean, this can't be it! This can't be how it all ends. But she's so stubborn, so selfish, always getting what she wants. Even if it means she-" he chokes, hands covering his eyes.
Something ugly and hurtful swells into her throat, exits her mouth before she can even think to stop it.
"Well, she's pretty much a corpse now, anyway. Guess she got her wish, after all."
Her body senses the oncoming attack, arching away from the violence of his hands. Too late. Her back slams mercilessly against the rough bark of a nearby tree, Jake's hands, trembling, around her throat.
"Don't. Say. That."
Survival instinct makes her submissive in the face of her alpha's fury, makes her remain motionless against the heat of his body, even as her legs beg to flee.
She's suddenly very aware of their bodies; her breasts brushing his chest with every heavy, expanded breath, his torso hard against the softness of her own, the curve of his mouth inviting, parted with his laboured breathing. His eyes meet hers, anger transformed into something heady, something that makes her breath come fast and her heart hammer wildly in her chest. His head inclines forwards, eyes darting lower to her mouth, before meeting hers again. He swallows hard, and she watches the movement of his throat with an ache she hasn't felt in so long. His mouth hesitates a breath from hers.
She closes her eyes at the sensation, then feels the warmth of his body disappear, his footsteps barely audible as he leaves.
She collapses back against the tree, heart restless and eyes wide.
What the hell was that?