AN/Disclaimer/Warnings: Drabble fic wherein Julie is Alpha (and has been almost immediately after she joined the Pack, because you cannot convince me that Twilight wouldn't have been hella different with female wolves running things with their rightful Alpha at the helm. I will die on this hill; fight me). Varying POV, update schedule sketchy. Title from 'Let It Burn' by Red. Twilight and its inclusive material (including its alternate universe, 'Life and Death') is copyright to Stephenie Meyer. No copyright infringement is intended.
these dreams
(like ashes, float away)
one: julie
.
Leland is the first to leave her Pack.
It shouldn't come as a shock, really. He has sworn for as long as they can all remember that he will stop phasing as soon as possible. The moment he had a passable level of control, he was gone — cold turkey, never to look back, to hell with them all.
Julie has had plenty of time to prepare for this, to steel herself for the loss, but still she feels Lee's absence like a phantom limb. She feels her wolves waiting with bated breath for him to succeed and prove them all wrong. Because if Lee can do it — if he can stop phasing with his temper — then they can, too.
She wonders who she will lose next. Wonders what it is that makes Lee hers to lose.
.
two: leland
.
He has never been good at speaking his mind.
It gets worse after having spent two years of his life simply casting a thought and receiving immediate response, his raw thoughts and feelings on show for everyone else. He hadn't cared what they'd seen or what they'd thought, because finally he had been understood.
Now? Now he has quit phasing he struggles more than ever, still entirely too used to sharing his head with so little effort. Now he gets frustrated when people don't understand what he is trying to say, when people can't read him like he can read them.
It's why he still goes to the garage, where Julie understands. Where he understands her. Whether it's her brow lifting, lips curving, shoulders tensing, he knows what all her movements mean, knows the words that would accompany those little tells of hers if she voiced them. This is how he speaks, with body language, with touch. This is how wolves speak.
Julie is better. She has always been able to rally her Pack with a few fierce sentences; she can share her feelings without stumbling, without fear; she was able to re-negotiate the treaty and rearrange its boundary lines to accommodate battles and hunting requirements, her head high and her back straight all the while.
Lee tries to absorb her confidence. But instead he struggles through each day, trying to be normal, trying to work through his temper. He struggles to the point he is unable to do anything else except fall into bed night after night, utterly exhausted. And he dreams.
He dreams of Julie in her garage, dreams of himself leaning against the door and watching her.
She is cross-legged on the concrete floor, her back to him as she considers a part of the Rabbit she is dismantling. He doesn't know what exactly — she has spent countless hours explaining, countless days trying to teach him the names and tricks to things, but he can never quite focus on her words more than he does her lips and the lines of her body. Especially when she ties her hair back before leaning over to stare into the depths of her engine.
The beat-up stereo plays mindless pop nearby. Julie swears to anyone who listens that she doesn't know the lyrics, but often he catches her humming underneath her breath as she loses herself within her sanctuary.
(Lee has long since learned that Julie calms whenever her hands touch metal — she finds her centre, breathes more freely. Because whilst his Alpha has the fire to tear down forests, cities, the fire to burn all the bloodsuckers within them, if she's given her a toolbox then she embraces her spanners and her screwdrivers with more reverence than anything else in her world.)
She's humming as he walks in, and then she is smiling after he wraps his arms around her and tells her how much he has missed her, keeping her close for longer than he's kept anyone in years. He says yours by the way his shoulders drop when she presses her lips to the line of his jaw; he says mine by tilting his head and claiming her mouth for his own.
"I need to work," she says when she breaks away, her laughter breathless and her cheeks flushed. But she doesn't wrestle out of her arms, not even as he holds her tighter and dips his head down to meet her again.
Her lips are soft and wet against his, yielding all control. Her days are full of keeping her sisters in line, protecting them and the reservation; her life is theirs so that they can all live — but with him, only him, she surrenders.
Her arms wind around his shoulders and she shapes her body against his, shivering when he trails his fingers over her shoulders, down her back, along her hips. Marking patterns into her skin is his way of showing her what he means, and she understands.
He feels her grin against his neck. "I love you too, honey."
And then he wakes.
.
three: julie
.
Three months and sixteen days after he quits phasing, Lee starts dating a girl called Natalie.
He meets her during his first year at U-Dub — because that's his thing now, the thing which keeps him distracted, focused long enough that he can stave off a phase and keep himself on two feet, even though he used to say that college was Sam and Adam's dream. Not his.
(It's not what hurts though, really. What hurts is that he must have applied ages ago, that he was thinking about leaving before he allowed that thought be heard. He planned it. On his own.)
Natalie is funny (not dark, not dry, just . . . funny). And she's a little overbearing (but so is Lee), and she doesn't know how to change a tyre (but then neither does he, so as far as Julie's concerned they're both totally screwed, aren't they, because they're gonna have to pay recovery fees when they get a flat and his go-to mechanic refuses to answer her phone — and then Lee will realise how horribly he's fucked up, won't he). Honestly. The girl can't even tell the difference between a Mercedes and a Honda.
Julie learns all of this when Lee brings The Girlfriend to the reservation at the same time he comes home for Christmas, and says, "Jules — this is Natalie, my girlfriend."
He says it with an ounce of hesitancy — but that's probably because Lee knows Julie so well that he can tell what she's thinking when Natalie tosses her golden hair over her shoulder and holds him a little too possessively for anyone's taste.
It's not that Julie is jealous. It's just . . . this girl, she's not Pack, is she? But maybe that's what Lee wants. Maybe he wants to be less . . . connected with this girl. And as the days, weeks go by, he seems okay with Natalie not knowing the sixteen different corners of his mind which Julie has come to know so well.
Maybe, she thinks, maybe it's less about what Lee wants and more about what he needs.
And he seems calmer, happier than he has been in a long while (Paula swears it's the sex, that's all), so Julie plasters a smile on her face. And she tries to get to know The Girlfriend.
"Natalie," Lee corrects, long-suffering but amused all the same.
Jules curses herself; she must have said that out loud again.
.
four: leland
.
There's only five in the Pack now: Julie, Emma, Quil, Paula and Sarah.
For all she initially refused to take up the mantle during those early days, leadership sits well with Julie.
Lee was not part of the Pack when Sam was Alpha, and he's inherently grateful for it. He's been told over and over how heavy-handed his ex-girlfriend-almost-fiancee was with her directives, how disorganised she was, and he knows that the Pack would have fallen to pieces long before he joined if Julie had not assumed control.
The girls love Julie — but she has always been easy to love. And they're all in perfect sync with her. When she moves, they move.
Sarah still hangs off Julie's every word, but it's not hero-worship anymore; it's respect, it's love, it's Sarah wanting to do the right thing because it's the right thing and not just because she wants Julie to notice her.
And Julie — she loves Sarah. She loves Emma, Quil. Even Paula, who is unbelievably mellow these days under the Alpha's command. The true Alpha, who loves each of her wolves equally and would die before a bad word is said against them. And it makes Lee so green with envy that sometimes he has to look away, has to wipe the scowl off his face before anyone notices. But that's why he wanted to leave in the first place, wasn't it? Because . . . because . . .
He shuts everything down, focuses instead on building the bonfire.
A vampire hasn't crossed their lands in months, and they're celebrating the only way they know how: they build a bonfire, making it bigger than the last, and Julie gives her Pack the night off on two conditions.
One. The agreement that they each take turns running short bursts every hour.
Two. They invite everyone else.
Everyone.
Sam and Elliott are stretched out over a blanket nearby, all four of their entwined hands over her stomach. She must be two months along now — Lee can't remember; it feels like yesterday she quit the Pack right after him and then announced her bundle of joy the second she took a test. Feels like yesterday since he tried to drink himself into oblivion after hearing the news.
(Lee learned on the same day that even though he's not phasing anymore, he still can't get drunk. No matter how hard he tries. The worst that happens is that he gets a little dehydrated, but it seems that he won't be able to totally leave the wolf behind after all.)
Wrapped around Kam, Jade watches her best friend. She stares at Sam's non-existent bump with a Look on her face that has Lee rolling his eyes and wondering how long it will be before Jade's announcing the start of her own family. There'll be a whole brood of tiny cubs on the Rez before they know it.
Girls.
Beside him, Natalie leans her head against his shoulder. She's been watching Sam, too. "I love kids," she sighs up at him dreamily. "I can't wait to have some of my own."
Across the fire, Julie chokes on her soda. Emma has to hit her back several times before her throat clears.
.
Later, Lee finds Julie underneath the cover of the trees, staring into the night, scanning the quiet darkness. Arms at her sides, back straight, entirely at attention. He wishes he could remember the last time he saw her laugh.
Lee holds a hotdog out to her, and Jules looks down at it with a blank expression.
"I haven't seen you eat all night," he says by way of explanation.
"You haven't seen me at all lately," she tells him, her voice devoid of emotion, but she takes the hotdog. She doesn't eat it. "You stopped coming over."
He doesn't answer, because he can't tell her that he smells oil and metal in his dreams. That he can't hole up with her in the garage anymore in fear he'll break.
Julie sniffs. "Where did The Girlfriend get to?"
"Nat," he says pointedly.
"Yeah, that's what I said. Where is she?"
He rolls his eyes. "What do you care?"
"I don't," Julie says in that same bland voice that betrays nothing. "She's not Pack."
The unspoken 'Why should I?' hangs in the air afterwards, but Lee lets it go. Not because he knows he should defend Natalie, but because Julie's life is the Pack and, some days, she cannot see past that. It'd be a waste of breath to try and argue with her about it.
He opts for a lame shrug. "Neither am I."
"Yes, you are," she says. She keeps her stare on the trees in front of her, but he sees her fist clench around the bread, squashing it. "You choosing to leave us doesn't change that. You'll always be one of my—" She swallows harshly, breathes deep. "You'll always be Pack. And you're not doing her — call me Nat — any favours by pretending you're something you're not."
"I'm not—"
"Do you even like her?" Julie asks suddenly. "Or is Paula right? Is it just the sex?"
Lee looks back at Julie, but there's nothing in her face except quiet curiosity. "What do you care?" he asks her again.
Julie holds his eyes for a long, long time. Then she sighs, and she hands the hotdog back to him before turning to leave. She's disappointed, but he doesn't know why.
"I'm not hungry," she says, already walking away. "Make sure you say goodbye when you leave for Seattle again, won't you? It will upset Sarah otherwise; she missed you after Thanksgiving."
He launches the hotdog, watches it fly through the trees. Wishes he still could, too.
.
Leland pulls his sister up into a hug when he calls it a night, and he looks for Julie over her shoulder.
She's standing at the fire, eyes staring unseeingly into the roaring flames. She doesn't even notice him leave.
.
five: julie
.
It's been four months and twenty days, and still she misses him. Her mind is empty, her days too quiet.
Emma and Quil, they've always been her friends, her sisters in all but blood, but they're not Lee. And they do their best to fill that void he's left behind, except Quil's world revolves around little Clay and Emma . . . Emma has gotten it into her head that, soon, it will be time for her to leave the Pack too.
It was hard when Lee left. It will be worse when Emma does. Because Julie has always loved them both the most, more than anyone or anything.
At least when Lee quit, she still had Emma. Now she will have neither.
"Look on the bright side," Paula says brightly when they rise back up onto two legs at the forest's edge (five months and twenty-one days later), yanking on their clothes. The rest of the Pack has just learned what Emma wants to do. "You've still got me." She shoves at Julie's shoulder. "Does this mean I'm your Second now?"
Julie shoves her back. "You're not even Third."
Paula shrugs, untroubled. "Personally," she says loftily, "I always thought that there was a too-heavy dose of favouritism in this Pack. Emma has been your Second from the minute you took over. Lee was your Third. Then Quil was your Third. What about the rest of us, huh? You know, those of us who haven't grown up with you or who you haven't secretly been in love with since before puberty?"
If it wasn't for the grin splitting Paula's face, Julie would have probably pushed her over by now. As it is, she can't do anything other than shake her head and breathe a laugh. She and Paula sorted out their differences years ago; as it turns out, all the girl needs is an Alpha who's not imprinted, a family that's reasonably functional, and regular praise for a job well done. She doesn't have that at home.
"So?" Paula hedges. "Can I? It's not like I'm going to leave you too, or anything, so you don't have to worry about that."
Julie considers it, but, for the life of her, she can't see a reason why she shouldn't give her sister the position. Paula has proved unfailingly loyal (if a little annoying and quick to anger still, but only occasionally) and exactly what a Second needs to be.
An Alpha had to be cold at times, unyielding and ruthless when necessary. Like ice. (It's a dangerous line — one which Sam had crossed too often.) And a Second needed to be the fire to that ice, to challenge the Alpha when they needed it most. A Third needed to be rock, grounded enough to level the first two out.
Julie thinks that if she is ice, as she's had to become, then Paula is fire. The perfect Second, just as Emma has been for nearly three years. And Quil is their rock. Her perfect Third. Her cousin.
Except—
"We gotta grow up some time or another, Paula. You really want to do this for the rest of your life?"
Paula's a few inches shorter than Julie is, but she slings an arm over her shoulders as they start the walk home. "Do you?" she challenges. "You wanna be stuck with just Quil mooning over Clay and Lee's little sister for the rest of your life?"
Julie thinks about the long years ahead, how many of them will be spent waiting with Quil until little Clay grows up. Until Sarah leaves — something which might not be too far off in their distant future; the kid's gotta graduate, or Lee will sling both her and his sister up by their proverbials.
"Fine. You can be Second. But you can't rub Quil's nose in it," Julie warns, "and if you start abusing your power, I'll gut you."
Paula feigns hurt, hand flying to her chest. "Me? Abuse?"
Julie shoves her again, and this time her Second falls.
.
six: julie
.
Emma leaves five days later.
.
seven: leland
.
It takes Leland a long time to realise that Julie was right — that he's pretending, even if she didn't really know the real truth of what she was saying at the time.
After dreaming of her for ten nights in a row (or maybe it's thirty, or a hundred, he doesn't really know; he stopped counting the week after he stopped phasing), Lee leaps out of his dorm bed and into his bathroom, and he has to drench the back of his neck with cold water to stop himself from splitting his skin right there and then.
Natalie doesn't wake. She never does.
His girlfriend spends more nights here in the dorm with him than not. And if he's honest, it's more nights than he likes. He thought she would have ended things by now, but she seems determined to cling onto whatever it is that initially sparked between them — that fleeting hint of chemistry.
It had faded by the time he'd found himself agreeing to a second date, but he'd been so determined to start living a semi-normal life that he'd let the whole thing carry on.
He knows he's a total asshole for it. And he knows he shouldn't have taken her home to the Rez, home to a life he can never tell her the truth about. He's probably given her false hope, or something — even if, to the girl's credit, she hadn't baulked before all those other females who Lee had introduced as his closest family.
Do you even like her? asks Julie's echo, and he wonders whether she knew she was right about that too. But of course did she, because Julie knows everything. Julie scents moods and feelings as easily as she reads the thoughts on the faces of her Pack.
You'll always be Pack.
He splashes more cold water over himself and holds onto the sink with shaking hands.
In the next room, Natalie snores.
Leland sleeps on the cool, bathroom tiles for the rest of the night. It's the only thing which calms the burning underneath his skin.
It doesn't stop the dreams.
.
He breaks it off with Natalie the next morning.
.
eight: leland
.
It's hard, staying on campus where he seems to run into Nat enough that he kind of worries that she's stalking him over the course of the next week (why can't he run into Adam that often?) — but he sticks with it, college, and he tells himself that he's not going to go home again until after Finals Week. Not even for Spring Break.
Sarah is disappointed, and she laments over the phone that she misses him, that they all miss him.
He promises to see her soon. Just not yet. This is his semi-normal life; he might not be able to keep a girlfriend, might not be able to sleep through the night, but he's going to do this. He's going to get through his first year of college if it kills him.
Sarah doesn't understand, he knows. He doesn't really understand it either — the reservation was, is, will always be his heart, but he just feels like he needs to prove himself that while it's his heart, it's not the world. It's not everything.
Surely there's more to life than La Push, more to being Pack. He only needs to find whatever that is.
Still, he asks his sister about Julie and their sisters, his family. He shamelessly pries for information.
"Emma quit," Sarah tells him with a hint of sadness. "Jules took it really hard — harder than she let on, but we all knew. It was almost as bad as when you left."
Lee presses his cell to his ear, leans forward on the park bench he's dropped onto. "When?"
"Couple weeks ago now. She was so pissed when we took down those pair of bloodsuckers last week, she—"
He surges to his feet and ignores the startled looks from passersby. "You did what?"
"Uh — yeah. Didn't you . . . Probably not, I guess, you've not phased for so long now, same as Sam and Jade," his sister says a little dismissively. "But Emma, she had just kind of got a hold of herself and then Jules put out the call, so you can imagine how annoyed she was when she had to start her streak from scratch the next day. But I think she enjoyed it, really. It was so awesome, Lee — the five of us against these two 'suckers, I don't think they even knew what was happening until we—"
"When? When did this happen?"
Sarah pauses. "Last week," she says, a little annoyed at the interruption of what she surely thinks is a fantastic retelling. "I told you."
"Yes, but what day?"
"Tuesday night," she tells him, sounding confused. "I remember, because . . ."
His sister carries on, launching again into her story of five against two, but he's not really listening. Because last Tuesday night had been the night he'd slept on the bathroom floor — it had been one of the worst nights he's had since leaving the Pack, so bad he'd wanted to split his skin and . . . and now he realises that, even from miles away, he'd unconsciously been fighting Julie's summons.
He calls Jade after Sarah finally hangs up, and she doesn't even say hello.
"You heard, then," she says by way of greeting.
"Was it bad for you, too?"
"I hurled my guts up. Scared Kam half to death. And then we heard the howls," Jade says, and he thinks she sounds a little disappointed. But he's too enraged to feel the disappointment of missing the battle just yet — what if all this has been for nothing? "I think that made it worse. Knowing what was happening. Consider yourself lucky you're a million miles away."
"Just a hundred and fifty-two," he says.
(Not that he's counted.)
.
It takes him another week to work up the courage to call Jules. A week of falling behind in his classes, still too preoccupied and downright furious that he's suffered through months of pain only for any kind of progress to be shattered when a rotting vampire crosses their lands again.
She answers on the second ring — but he's called her house phone. No caller ID for her to avoid, flashing on her cell. He's not sure she would have answered otherwise, considering how they last left things.
"Hello, Leland."
"How'dya know it was me?"
She sighs, and he imagines her running her fingers through her wayward hair. "Call it a feeling, I guess."
Lee tries to swallow, his mouth suddenly dry, and Julie sighs again in the silence that's fallen. Then she says, "Look, if you're calling to give me hell about—"
"I broke up with Natalie."
It's not exactly what he'd planned to say, and he almost slaps himself, but he needed her to know that. Before anything else.
A beat. Then, "Who?"
"Nat," he says, hoping the girl's not hiding in the hallway of his dorm with her ear pressed against his door. He's still — quite literally — bumping into her everywhere.
Julie's still quiet, so he adds (with a roll of his eyes), "You know — 'The Girlfriend'."
"Oh, her," she replies flatly, clearly uninterested. "What happened? Did you get a flat tyre?"
He has no idea what she's talking about. "What?"
"Did you . . . It doesn't matter." She sounds slightly amused, but she doesn't laugh. He's still waiting to hear her do that. "When are you coming home?"
All the promises Lee has made to himself fly right out of his head, and he tells Julie that he'll be home for Spring Break.