Leah Clearwater/Quil Ateara V
I am but a voice;
My life is but the life of winds and tides,
No more than winds and tides can I avail:—
But thou canst.—Be thou therefore in the van
Of circumstance; yea, seize the arrow's barb
Before the tense string murmur.
Hyperion - John Keats
A/N: You may recognise this from my one-shot collection - doing a bit of rearranging to find some fics their new home.
001.
The night was cool and dank, with only the plumes of his breath in the air before him to keep him company. It was the night before he turned, his final night of normality, and by all accounts, he should have been inside when it happened. He shouldn't have seen it.
Even so, he saw it. Quil saw everything.
Looking back, he remembers every last detail of that night, like a haunted tableau destined to be viewed ad nauseam. It happened at the junction of Seastone Lane and Creek Drive, right at the spot where he used to meet Jacob and Embry on hot summer nights when they'd convince their parents to let them stay out just that little bit longer. He didn't suppose that would be happening again any time soon. In the nights since, Seastone and Creek had come to take on a different meaning to Quil, a place of horror and repulsion that troubled him in every waking moment, and plenty of dreamed ones, too.
If he closes his eyes tightly enough, he can reproduce the scene as faithfully as a photograph would. He remembers Dante Morgan's father, raising an amber beer bottle to a perfect eighty-five-degree angle over his head like a pitcher primed for a speedball. Even worse, he remembers Dante's little sister - Corey, he finds out later, her name is Corey - crouched and crying and defenceless on the splintered pine porch of the bungalow.
The next parts are blurry. He has to rely on Sam's recollections to fill in the gaps.
Quil, marching across the dirt road with all of the confidence of a grown man, big and bold and furious. Quil, shouting down Gale Morgan until he was red in the face, spluttering and spitting like a rabid animal. Soon, he'd come to discover that he was indeed the animal his mother lovingly called him, but that was still to come.
Sam had appeared instantaneously at his flank in a sudden whisper of movement. Where he was once alone, he now had company, albeit in the form of a strange, often intimidating older teen. Sam had set his palms firmly on Quil's shoulders, pushing him towards the treeline with only a single sentence in the way of explanation.
Do not resist.
Sam Uley learns many things that year. When he thinks back to that moment months later, he finds himself wishing he had made that sentence an order. Quil Ateara V, the boy who saw it all, had more tenacity than Uley had ever anticipated. That knowledge comes later, though.
002.
Quil didn't shift the night he confronted Gale, a fact that had baffled his mother and grandfather endlessly after Sam had returned young Ateara to the house. It didn't make sense. He was showing all of the signs of a male about to phase, from the elevated temperature to the hair-trigger temper. Joy had half-heartedly scolded him for sneaking out of the house, and he had retreated to sulk in his room in the way that all sullen teenage boys do, but there had been no trembling, no snarling. Only the moodiness. Joy started to wonder whether he would phase after all.
In the end, all it took was a visit from Jacob Black to trigger the transformation.
Jacob and Quil had been as close as twins - triplets, really, if you included Embry - from the time they were in diapers. They did everything together, from school to sleepovers to torch-lit outdoor expeditions. Quil spent more time in Jake's garage than he did in his own bedroom, returning to sleep only briefly before bounding out to reunite with his friends. Joy always joked that they were the first successful Siamese triplet separation, and from the eerily similar way they tended to move in formation, they truly did resemble brothers. Quil considered himself an extension of Jake and Embry. That was just how things went around the Rez.
Everything had changed that spring when his friends gravitated into the orbit of one Samuel Uley, a boy a few grades ahead who he only knew through the town gossip overheard in Joy's phone calls. Sam had disappeared into the woods without a trace for weeks, reemerging only to cast aside his long-time girlfriend in favour of her Makah cousin. Sam was trouble with a capital T, and no matter how many positive things Old Quil said about the good work he was doing for the council, he wouldn't trust him. He couldn't. What did Uley have to offer his two best friends that Quil himself couldn't? He didn't want to think about the answer.
He didn't want to think about anything really, not when he sequestered himself to his bedroom for what felt like the millionth time that month. He paced. He cried. He thumped his hands against his forehead again and again until his palms ached. None of it helped; none of it quelled the growing unease in his belly that threatened to rise in his throat and choke him like a gnarled vine. The tension grew and grew, twisting tighter until he was writhing on his carpet gasping for air. He sweated and he choked, choked and sweated, the room swirling around him in tremendous whorls of disorienting colour.
Tip tip tip tip
The pebbles dancing against his window pane were a merciful distraction from his torment. Quil rolled to his knees like a drunken man, momentarily stumbling before unlatching the window. The movements are mechanical, parts going through the motions without stopping to process the entire situation. It was only when his eyes settled on the dark figure below - Jacob? - that some sort of awareness came back to his body. He finds himself lithely slipping out of the window with a kind of grace that had never belonged to him. It both startles and enthralls him.
His mouth is dry, but he speaks anyway.
"Jake, how could you-"
"You'll understand soon, Quil. I'm only here to help," Jacob says, but the words sound foreign coming from his lips. His voice is all different now, deeper and raspier; it's the voice of a stranger.
Quil feels the all-too-familiar heat licking at his spine as he stares at Jake, studying his figure. Sure, he's seen him at a distance, he'd noticed the changes, but seeing him up close was something different entirely. Jacob was huge, muscled and hulking like all of Uley's followers, complete with an intricate, swirling tattoo on his upper shoulder. He wasn't Jake, not anymore.
"What, do you finally feel sorry for me? First you, then Embry, and then nothing. For weeks. The fuck did I ever do you to you?" he snaps, clenching and unclenching his fists.
Jacob says nothing, levelling him with an inscrutable stare that makes Quil want to claw his eyes out.
"I trusted you, Jake, I fucking cared about you, and you went and-"
Joy almost faints as she watches the boys - no, men - quarrel through the windows. Where her son once stood is now a tremendous shaggy beast, whimpering and whining into the darkness. She watches until Jake, in his colossal shifted form, leads her son away into the woods.
It's the last time she ever feels truly in control of her son. Quil Ateara V, the boy who didn't know enough, was no more. She celebrates with him later at the tribal bonfire, but her heart aches as she lays awake at night, conscious of the Herculean burden he has taken on. In chasing his friends, he's chased his destiny into a corner, running headlong into a future of warfare and death that he has no true appreciation of. Soon, Quil will be faced with a kind of horror that he's only ever seen in comics and TV shows, but he doesn't know that yet. All Quil knows is fun and friendship and playing explorer in the woods.
Joy wishes with all of her heart that she could keep it that way.
003.
Quil doesn't do a lot of thinking in the first few months of being a shifter. There's so much to do and learn to freaking survive - thanks, Cullens, you assholes - and he's basically on the verge of zombiehood by the end of June. Quil's pretty sure they all only passed due to a bribe offered to the school board by Old Quil, but he's not about to question it. After all, he missed the English class on how to construct an argument. He'd have no clue where to start.
Life as a wolf is pretty sweet. Sure, Sam's got them on a patrol schedule tighter than a nun's pussy, but he gets to see Jake and Embry again, and wrestling is so much better when you're a big ass forest creature. For the first time in a fair while, Quil's actually happy. Leah points out later that his happiness is probably what triggered it - fate just can't bear to see one of them content. She's cynical, but she might just have a point, he thinks, mulling it over. Before any of this happened - before he knew the legends were true - Quil never really put too much stock in fate. He'd always been the kind of person to take life as it came, trying to do the right thing (or at least, what his mother taught him was right). He always thought he had a choice, an opportunity to make a change, to forge his own way. The decisions had always been simple, too: sneak around or obey the rules, show up for patrol or bunk off. The choices were always easy.
And then Claire happened.
They'd heard about imprinting, sure; he'd seen Emily and Kim, he'd watched the ways the women interacted with their partners with a curious eye. Quil didn't have an eye for women - not yet, at least - and he wasn't too concerned about imprinting. Why would he care, anyway, when he could be out running as a big, bad wolf?
Fate seemed to have other plans.
It had been any other Tuesday, just some ordinary cookout on the plains of First Beach that drew in all sorts of friends and relatives of the pack. It was going to be a special one, Emily had excitedly told them the week before; she'd invited a bunch of her family from the Makah Rez, ones that didn't make the trip as often, and she was beyond excited to see them. Personally, Quil had only her famous potato salad on his mind, but he'd go along with the pleasantries. Being polite was the good choice. The Quil choice. The choice that got him into trouble.
He tries not to think too much about what would have happened if he had chosen differently that day, like if he had rocketed off into the surf with the other guys, content to ignore the new guests. Or if he'd skipped the cookout entirely - they had plenty of those, there'd always be another one - and made other plans, and he'd never met her. The simple thought makes his chest ache, awful squeezing palpitations that seem to hammer in the guilt with every ba-bump. Just like turning into an enormous hairy creature, his life becoming entwined with Claire's was entirely out of his control.
Emily had cried when she noticed the way his eyes froze on little Claire's. She'd thumped Sam hard on the chest, pointing one trembling finger towards a horror-stricken Quil. Hell, Sam didn't even need to chase him away; Quil was already ripping his shorts off in the tree line before anyone else had even realised what was going on. That didn't stop Sam from figuratively and literally ripping into him, though, forcefully scouring his every thought in a desperate attempt for clarity.
It had never happened before, not like this. Never like this.
Quil made the most important choice that day. The thought came first, sharp and quick and as sure as the sunset. The words came later, long after the sun had dipped low in the sky and the blood had crusted over his wounds.
"I'll protect her with my life, but she will never be mine. I'll die before that happens."
At sixteen, Quil's sure of one thing and one thing only: he doesn't have control of a damn thing, not really, and it terrifies him.
004.
Claire's parents take a lot longer to come around to the whole soulmate thing. Quil avoids the Makah Rez for an entire month out of respect for their wishes, though he knows that Claire cries every night over the big boy on the beach that played sandcastles with her. He'd take it all back if he could, but he couldn't, he can't, and he needs to accept that. The Young Issue, as Paul had taken to calling it in his typical smart-ass way, had driven a wedge between Quil and the others, as much as they all tried to deny it. Everyone knew that imprinting was entirely involuntary, but nobody could deny the consistent undercurrent of repulsion that coloured every thought of the situation. Patrols, once Quil's favourite pastime, had turned into something of a humiliating, ostracising routine that left him feeling shitty and terrible about every possible thing he could have done differently.
The only person who didn't shit on his entire existence was, surprisingly, Leah.
Leah was an unlikely ally. Quil had tried to avoid her in the first few months after she'd phased, when she was full steam ahead on the anti-Emily and Sam train. Of course, she had plenty of reasons to dislike them - he could barely deal with everyone being in his head 24/7; Quil could hardly imagine having to share a brain with an ex. Sure, his situation with Claire was bad, but things could definitely be worse.
He'd started spending a little more time with Leah here and there, willingly trading patrol shifts when the others would bail last minute. It was nice to run with Leah. She didn't talk too much, not like Paul, and she didn't want to constantly sniff out new things (Jared, guilty as charged). Patrolling together was easy. Hanging out together as humans was harder. She'd turned her nose up at him the first time he'd invited her over, laughing off the invite without a second thought. He'd tried to hide his disappointment the next time he phased, but it slipped through his defences like water through a sieve.
You actually wanted to hang out with me? She'd questioned, her head cocked to one side.
Duh, dumbass, that's why I invited you over.
She didn't reply straight away. Her mind was a jumbled carousel of glimpses of forest, thoughts that were very clearly not intended for him, and little bits and pieces that he didn't feel so bad for seeing. She hadn't quite mastered the art of hiding things just yet, but she was already far better than he was. Eventually, much later in their patrol route, she'd reached out to him, more tentative than usual.
Quil? Maybe we could do something after patrol. I think Mom will still be down at the diner.
Hiding his glee was pointless. Hell yeah! I could go for some ice cream.
By the end of that summer, Sue's made enough in dessert sales to add an extra flavour. Quil and Leah bug her every day until she adds rum and raisin to the menu, offering Seth a fresh new sharpie to mark the words on the board.
It's the first of many choices they make together.
005.
He doesn't realise it until three years later, not until the doors of the Greyhound seal shut with a final thunk.
Quil's made many choices in his nineteen years of life, carelessly navigating his way through the world like a paperback choose-your-own-adventure book. His years in the pack have changed him; he's seen way more than anyone his age should have seen - interspecies war, anyone? - but he likes to think he's wiser, better, something like that. For starters, he actually thinks about other people every now and then. He signs up for college so he can stop leeching off his mom and Emily for food. He takes a first aid course so he can make sure Claire doesn't die when he babysits. It's the simple things, really.
Quil's good to his friends, too. When Jake moves out to Seattle with the Cullens, he makes sure to visit Billy weekly to trim the grass and fix that old-ass hot water heater every time it trips. He does a boatload of running around for Embry, too, working double-time to set him up with his imprint. Quil even learns to cook - nothing too fancy, just some simple stuff - so he can help Leah out with her new job. She's talked his ear off for god knows how long about becoming a nurse, but between shifting and her Dad dying and failing senior year twice, nothing had really happened on that front.
At least, not until Charlie Swan had come over for dinner one night at the Clearwaters'. In between dry anecdotes about policing in Forks and recollections of his last phone call with Bella, he'd mentioned that the hospital was in dire need of EMTs. Quil's eyes had immediately darted towards Leah, who perked up instantly after a quick kick to the shin. She'd applied for a job first thing the next morning and was off to her trial shift that same evening. Quil buys an Instant Pot to celebrate, delivering some mildly burnt casserole over to her house, still clad in his gag-gift teddy bear apron.
Leah's up at all hours, but Quil is too, having taken the brunt of all of the weird patrol shifts. She drops by a lot after her shifts, bringing him gas station coffee in the early mornings and leftover snacks in the evenings. Leah becomes as much of a constant in his life as Embry and Jared - and, shit, he lives with them - and it becomes a regular part of his routine to end up falling asleep beside her. They'd messed around once when they'd first started phasing, something weird and awkward that had been pushed to the back of his mind ever since. Okay, that's a lie - he thinks of it every time he sees her phase back, whenever he catches a little sliver of exposed skin, and he ends up having to avoid phasing near her to prevent anyone else catching on. It's their best-kept secret.
It happens again the night before Leah leaves for Washington State. He's not quite sure who moved first - maybe him, maybe her, maybe both - but somewhere in between Saw 2 and Nightmare on Elm Street her pants are off and she's on top of him.
The first time they were together, the first time they fucked, it was sudden and quick and shameful. He was pleased that she was his first, but he knew it was nothing memorable for her.
He'd had plenty of practice since.
The second time is slow and purposeful. When he sinks into her, it's not until she's whining his name, breathy and light in his ear. He wants to savour every second, to make it last, to give her something good to remember until she's back from WSU -
She kisses him, gentle and soft, and it's all over.
Paul teases him mercilessly when he finds out.
They don't talk much afterwards. She slips into his shirt instead of hers, some old faded jersey, and he doesn't realise it's missing until a week after she's left. Nothing is said, not even in the morning when he drops her off at the station. It's not until the bus pulls away from the depot that all of the words he should have said come to mind.
The biggest choice that he failed to make lingers in his mind long after the bus disappears into the horizon.
He should have told her that he loves her.