A/N: I don't anticipate this story being super long, but with my track record who knows. All feedback and constructive criticism is welcome! Without further adieu, enjoy chaptertwo!Disclaimer: I am not Stephanie Meyer and I do not own Twilight.
Waves crashed onto the shores of the outer edge of a sleepy, sparsely populated Native American reservation a few thousand odd miles away. Gusts of air swirled up the sand and knocked what few brave beachgoers were milling about with thick sea spray.
A lone figure sat atop a surfboard that he'd paddled out a few hundred yards from the rocky shoreline, staring into a marmalade sky welcoming the suns first morning rays. The air was fresh with the possibilities held by the new day, and the heavy air propelled the water into the perfect condition for his cathartic daily ritual.
She had loved the ocean. Being here made him feel close to her. Kept him from going insane after she'd disappeared from his life.
Some mornings he would wade through the waves just to watch the sun rise, imagining a dark haired girl giggling over the sound of the breakers. Other days he would submerge himself under his board a few seconds more than he should and feel the pain of his despair rip through his lungs just like it did his heart every second of the past twenty-odd years.
Quil Ateara remembered bits and pieces of the worst day of his life, like a choppy black and white stop-motion film that played in his mind over and over. A high-pitched scream of disbelief. A punch to the jaw and the sound of knuckles fracturing. The cries of a child that cut through his chest like a knife through butter. The screech of tires and his imprint screaming his name from the back seat of a car, pulverizing his already anxiety-lacerated heart.
He'd had such a short time with his imprint, his little angel, and it took five minutes for his future to crumble to dust in front of him. He couldn't blame her parents. If someone came to him and told him his baby girl was tied by the spirits to a sixteen year old freak he would've done the same thing.
Sam and Jake had convinced him to give it some time before running after them, so he'd realized a few hours too late that the Locklear's hadn't made the turn off the 101 towards the Makah Reservation. He'd followed her scent all the way to the airport in Port Angeles, and it disappeared into a gate for a plane headed to Seattle. He'd broken through security trying to get to her. Had almost phased in the middle of the airport terminal when he realized that she could be headed anywhere. He let security detain him in a last ditch effort to control himself and preserve the secret of his people. Jake had come with the full weight of the Cullen family coffers and bailed him out, assuring him that she would be found.
But those assurances never came to anything, despite the best efforts of everyone who cared about him. Jasper Whitlock had tracked Todd and Dena Locklear and their daughters to a small town outside of St. Paul a few days after they'd fled. Emily called the hotel they were staying at to try and make some sort of peace with her sister, to try to explain and to mollify her, but instead it spooked them and they fell off the grid. No traceable cell phone. No credit card records. No investments or bank accounts or tax returns.
His wolf had gone berserk the first few months. He exploded after Emily's failed phone call and subsequent emotional breakdown and simply hadn't had the willpower to change back, giving himself over to the animal he now shared his body with.
He went to St. Paul the following year, hoping for a miracle. By then any trace of the Locklear family was long gone and he wanted to kick his own ass for his inability to get control of himself sooner.
Months turned into two years, and then four, and ten. At some point after three or four more times tracking them down only to have them disappear again, he'd accepted that he may never see his Claire-bear again, accepted her parents' obvious choice to keep her as far from him as possible. He stopped looking, and the little girl that his world had once revolved around became entombed in his mind, never changing, never growing older, always in the forefront of his thoughts.
He'd helped Jake open a garage that straddled the border of Forks and La Push. Embry and Paul were more suited to help with mechanical work, though, so he'd taken over the finances with the guidance of Alice Cullen, investment banker extraordinaire. He found a knack for numbers so he eventually found himself as treasurer for the tribal council, channeling limited resources and spearheading economic diversification outside of the tourism industry.
Quil hadn't moved on. He didn't date. He didn't age. He watched his pack come back together and grow up and start families, nurture a new generation of wolves and foster a greater sense of pride within their small community. He watched his grandfather slowly pass on to the spirit world- the second most difficult thing he'd ever done.
As he sat bobbing up and down with the swells, legs floating on either side of the board he was straddling, he reminisced on a day nearly twenty-two years ago. A day in early September that had been the best day of his life: Claire's third birthday. Before the drama of telling her parents, before the absolute gutting pain of literally feeling the other half of him being ripped away. It had been just him, his imprint, and her wish that they be princesses for a day. He would do anything for her, then and now, right down to strutting around in a bright pink feathered tiara.
She would be twenty-five in a month. He wondered everyday what she looked like. If she was still the same funny, caring, stubborn person she'd been as a toddler. If she liked school or art or music. What kind of friends she had and what she liked to do for fun. What she did for a living. After her twenty-first birthday came and went he made himself sick thinking about whether she dated, had a serious boyfriend, was married with a couple kids, but decided that as long as she was happy that he would be too, if only he could see her one more time.
"Jules, I swear, they are hiding something serious from me and I can't figure out what it is."
"Look Claire, I'm sure they just don't want to rehash the past. Maybe you're looking too much into old family drama."
Claire walked briskly down a pristine hallway situated in the middle of the hospital wing she worked in, her cell phone balanced between her left shoulder and ear while she half-concentrated on the paperwork in front of her as her best friend tried to reason with her.
"I mean, what could YOUR parents possibly be hiding from you? Your family is cellophane-level transparent. Accountant dad. Teacher Mom. Tallin's a marketing executive and you're a freaking nurse. It's like the Stepfords or some shit."
"But Jules, that's what I'm saying. It's always been just the four of us as this like, immaculate family unit. I knew we had family that no one talked about, but I didn't think it was so bad that my parents didn't want them to know where we live or how to even contact us. And they refuse to even consider going back to see my grandma even though she's supposedly dying. They think it's some trick to get us back and they're even talking about moving. My dad basically forbade me from even talking about it. I don't understand what's going on. What if the detective or whatever is telling the truth? What if she dies without me ever getting to even meet her?"
Walking in to her section of the partitioned cubicles for her unit on the last day of her work week, Claire tossed the files in her hand down on her desk and sat heavily in front of her computer with a frustrated sigh. Pinching between her eyes with her thumb and forefinger, she listened to Jules breathe on the other end of the line.
Finally, "What does your sister think about all this?"
"That's the weirdest part. My mom begged me not to say anything to her. She remembers our grandmother just a little bit and mom wanted to tell her herself but I don't see that happening anytime soon. Plus Tallin has always been super suspicious of our past life or whatever, used to have nightmares about all this crazy, far-fetched stuff she thinks are actually things she remembers even though she was only five, so I think my parents just don't want to add fuel to the fire until they figure out what they're going to do."
Claire could hear her friend chewing on her lip through the earpiece, a habit she'd had as long as Claire had known her. "You've got some vacation days that you were saving for your honeymoon, right? What if you just, I don't know, go to La Push?"
"But my dad-"
"Screw your dad, Claire. You're a grown woman who was about to get married, for God's sake. I know you and I know you're gonna chew on this till your teeth fall out of your head if you don't find out for yourself."
She stared and the blinking light on her office phone that indicated she had a voicemail, hoping that if she looked at it long enough it would give her the answer to her life's current great mystery.
"I'm kinda scared, Jay. I don't know what I'm walking in to. They could actually be psychotic like my dad says and I'm headed for something straight out of Deliverance."
Jules laughed. "You watch way too much Netflix, C. Didn't you say a police chief called you? Hopefully it's not so awful of a scenario that even police forces from neighboring cities are in on the corruption."
Claire smiled for what felt like the first time in weeks. "I guess you have a point. Look, I'm gonna mull this over and I'll call you when I leave work. Thanks. For everything."
After a familiar goodbye they'd repeated countless times over eleven years of friendship, Claire shut off her phone and turned her attention to the charts on her desk. She tried for twenty minutes to focus on what was in front of her with little success. A voicemail from the floor supervisor requesting a brief meeting to go over a patient's discharge instructions afforded her the opportunity to get out of her own head for the time being.
She waved in greeting to the clerks assigned to the reception area for the afternoon as she passed by them on her way to one of the inpatient rooms. Nora Smith was a six year old burn victim who was being moved to a rehabilitation facility after undergoing numerous skin grafts over the past two weeks. Claire had taken a liking to the vibrant little girl, who throughout her stay had remained positive despite the amount of pain she was in and was always on the lookout for anyone willing to sneak her Skittles.
"How's my favorite patient today? Excited to be going on a new adventure, I hope?" Striking up a conversation while checking Nora's vitals, Claire glanced around at the family members gathered around her hospital bed, each with varying degrees of worry and relief etched across their faces. None looked more weatherworn than the girl's mother, but an elderly gentleman at the foot of the bed wore a mile-wide grin as he clutched a large stuffed koala bear Nora had passed to him as Claire placed a blood pressure cuff around her undamaged arm. As the floor supervisor came in with the plastic surgeon and attending doctor on duty to speak with Nora's parents, Claire watched out of the corner of her eye as what she assumed was the girl's grandfather made animal noises and cracked jokes to distract her while the doctors lifted her wound dressings for a final analysis of her progress.
With a pang of longing and feeling as if she were at a crossroads as she walked out of the room after her final exchange of hugs and goodbyes, she lost herself in thought over the choice she had before her. The image of Nora and her grandfather seared into the forefront of her mind, Claire mused about what it would be like to have an extended family. She loved her parents and had immense respect for them. They had worked hard and sacrificed to make sure she and Tallin had a comfortable, happy childhood. Being an adult and still leaning on her parents for advice and emotional support, she could appreciate how difficult it must have been for them to leave everything they knew behind and set out on their own with two young children. She knew that something terrible must have happened for her seemingly logical parents to have made a decision like that.
But she just couldn't quell the feeling inside of her that La Push might hold the key to her finally finding the fulfillment she had longed for as far back as she could recall. Pulling her phone out of her smock pocket, she pulled up a travel website with the fleeting thought that maybe she would just see what an airline ticket to the past would set her back.
Emily's mother was sick. Ovarian cancer. Lack of access to health care and general apathy on Aiyanna Young's part had meant they hadn't caught it in time and she didn't want to spend what she had left of her life taking treatments. Her only request was that someone find her oldest daughter and try to get her back home.
There was a part of Quil that wanted absolutely nothing to do with any of it. That part of him remembered how debilitating it was to feel like he finally had Claire within his reach only for her to slip away again and the emptiness come rushing back into the pit of his stomach.
But he wouldn't give up, and he wouldn't leave it just to Emily and Sam to go digging through the past to catch up to the Locklear's present.
A fruitless month-long search through every Todd and Dena Locklear in the continental US had been a colossal failure. They'd begun to assume that either they'd changed their identities or had left the country altogether.
Back at square one as of the previous night, Sam had called a Hail Mary and asked Alice Cullen, who couldn't see any of the imprints as a side effect of being blinded by the shapeshifters themselves, to keep a lookout on the future for anyone in town briefly disappearing as a result of contact with an imprint. It was an extremely long shot that also meant Claire would somehow find her way home from wherever the hell she was, but with no other options it was their only play at the moment.
Turning with the board and swimming hard to catch his first ride of the day, Quil almost felt like he could clear his mind as he dropped in to the crest of the breaking wave. Halfway through his descent into the controlled chaos, he saw Embry Call running over the beach at break neck pace, waving his arms and screaming Quil's name like a man possessed.
"Quil! Quil, get your ass to the beach! Quil!"
Half annoyed at the interruption and half amused at how exasperated his friend was beginning to look, Quil cut his surfboard back to the right and then swung himself left again, prepared to draw out his time before becoming embroiled in whatever stupid shit Embry had gotten into with Brady on patrol that morning.
"Alice found them, you dipshit! ALICE FOUND CLAIRE!"
Quil wiped out. Under the water, his perception went cloudy as he fought to remember where he was amongst the thrum of liquid in his ears and the loop of "Claire, Claire, Claire, Claire" circling through his mind. If Alice had found her, it meant that she'd somehow seen Claire coming to La Push.
In a haze, he propelled himself upwards, gulping in a breath of redemptive, salty air and swimming back in to shore as fast as his preternatural abilities and surfboard tagalong would allow him. Ripping off his ankle strap as soon as he got his feet on dry sand, Quil slung his board at Embry and took off in a dead sprint toward Sam and Emily's.
With the mantra, "Take a risk for once in your damn life, Claire" playing like a broken record over and over in her head, it had taken her all of ten minutes from the time she pulled up flight times to book a seat on a redeye into SeaTac that night. Despite the alarm bells ringing in her head, once she had made up her mind to go she wasted no time in seeing her plans through. An understanding boss had granted her two weeks of leave pending she could find someone to cover her already-scheduled shifts for the following week. Her unit had all been sympathetic to the dissolution of her engagement and then the illness of her grandmother, so it took her no time to pin down a couple of unfortunate but willing souls to divvy up her forty hours.
She called Jules from the car so someone would know where she was going in case these people really were psychotic and she was never heard from again, and then resolved that she wouldn't tell her parents anything about what she was doing to avoid the inevitable fight when they tried to stop her.
"Better to ask for forgiveness than permission," Claire murmured to herself after she'd snuck her and her suitcase out of the house under the guise of spending the weekend with Jules.
After an hour of Friday evening traffic, a half an hour wait at the security check, and two hours sitting at her gate mentally arguing back and forth with herself during moments of extreme anxiety, Claire Walker found herself sitting in a plane about to take off towards the precipice of her destiny.