oh, love, let me see inside your heart / all the cracks and broken parts

ross copperman, "hunger"

chapter 22.

here with me

(leah)

Before the phase takes hold of him completely, Jacob's cry is mangled. It twists between outrage and misery, between pain and despair. And then he's howling — a deafening, mournful sound which leaves the russet wolf breathless and broken.

Leah falls on her own four paws without even half a thought to what she's doing, and she lunges towards Jacob with a kind of strength that sends him tumbling down the riverbank and into the shallow water.

Jacob growls, low and deep. He's so blind with fury that he can't think. His thoughts stutter, tripping over each other in their haste and Leah can't catch a single word of it. But there's feelings. Raw, personal feelings, the kind which should belong to Jake and Jake alone. Feelings which he's been hiding from her ever since he imprinted on Renesmee.

Not since Renesmee was born, and Bella was reborn, have Leah and Jacob been in these forms at the same time. Because the hive mind of a Pack is a constant stream of subconscious thoughts and fleeting memories. Absolutely everything is laid bare for everyone to see, hear and feel, and not a single second of it can be filtered out.

So Leah cannot help but listen to the way the red wolf chants Renesmee, Renesmee, Renesmee… over and over and over, while the man – Jacob – pushes and pulls and attempts to find some control. He rolls in the water, scrambling to his feet, and then his massive head snaps in the direction of the white house.

Renesmee.

Leah's heart leaps. Whether it's because of Jacob's anticipation from what is to come, or whether it's because of her own frightened panic she doesn't know. Either way, it sends her tumbling down the riverbank and crashing into Jacob again.

No, she roars, spitting and snarling. No.

Water flies as the wolves attack one another — one trying to stop the other as he prepares to flee. Jacob might be bigger, stronger, but he's so maddened at himself, his wolf, at Leah, that he can't focus on what he's doing. It makes it easy for her smaller, quicker form to gain the upper hand, even with his rage bleeding into her own head.

Letmegoletmegoletme—

Stop, Jacob. She digs her claws in, hard enough to pierce the skin underneath his pelt. Stop.

She feels his pain as her claws begin to make him bleed. She doesn't care. It's enough — just enough — to make him stop. He gives up fighting, gives up struggling, and just stops.

Only their ragged, hot panting can be heard. She can see it billowing out in front of them, the air has turned that cold in the time they have been gone.

Then, underneath her weight, Jacob whines.

Leah.

Her name comes as a plea. A lament across the soul-bridge which connects them, which has opened up after so long of being closed off to one another.

I'm here, she tells him. I'm here, I'm here.

And she doesn't let up.

After they had returned home, after she had — against all her new instincts — told Jacob to stay, and after she had left him behind, Paul Lahote had sought Leah out.

Sam's second-in-command had followed her all the way to her doorstep, and as she shut her front door behind her she knew that Paul stood there still, staring after her, wanting more answers than she could give — more than she was willing to give.

They were no longer Pack, her and Paul. Her and Sam. Her and Seth, Embry, Quil… And she owed no explanations whatsoever to any of them. To anyone.

Not about Jacob.

When Jacob thinks about Renesmee, Leah digs her claws in a little deeper and reminds him about the last month or so. About how he's lived, how he's been able to smile and laugh and learn what it's like to be just Jacob.

When he considers fighting her and bolting towards The House, Leah shows her teeth and thinks about why he left. Why he ran.

When he loses himself in the memory of being touched by his imprint, Leah loses herself in her memories of being touched by him.

You don't want this, she tells him. You've been fighting this. Please, Jake. Please. Try and remember.

She drags up memory after memory: the relief she'd felt after he'd returned, bruised and broken but on two legs and breathing; the way he'd curled around her in Texas, and every state they passed through since; how he holds her hand and traces strange patterns on her bare skin when he doesn't seem to be thinking about it; the image of him standing underneath her window, waiting to be let in.

And slowly, so slowly, with painstaking effort, his jaw tight, Jacob finds his focus.

He remembers, too. He remembers picking up the trail she'd left for him to follow in Rockport. He remembers holding onto her, remembers the feel of her against him at night. He remembers her standing in the bathroom doorway in nothing but a towel while her eyes had roved over him. He remembers her.

Leah.

Leah.

Yes, she thinks back. I'm here. With you. And you're here with me. It's just us.

... and just like that, the fight leaves Jake's body.

Leah.

Her huff is triumphant, and she pulls back her claws. Yes, she says again, and she gingerly steps off him, knowing that they need to get away. Now. They need to get back behind their lines — behind Sam's lines, where she can think and he can breathe, where they can decide just exactly what the fuck they're going to—

There's a prickle against her neck, and the undeniable smell of leech and—

"Welcome back, Jacob."