THE HUMAN CONDITION
Chapter XVI: He'd Be the Moon, Too
/
"Oh," the girl said, shaking her head. "Don't be so simple. People adore monsters. They fill their songs and stories with them. They define themselves in relation to them. You know what a monster is, young shade? Power. Power and choice. Monsters make choices. Monsters shape the world. Monsters force us to become stronger, smarter, better. They sift the weak from the strong and provide a forge for the steeling of souls. Even as we curse monsters, we admire them. Seek to become them, in some ways." Her eyes became distant. "There are far, far worse things to be than a monster."
― Jim Butcher, Ghost Story
/
I WAS STARTLED to be alive when I woke up.
If there was a term for having TV static for memories, that was my brain—hazy, fuzzy, broken. There was a stitch loose, a knot in the rope, that made waking here all a distant picture. All I remembered was dying; nothing directly before and nothing directly after. If I'd gone cataleptic, I had no memory of it. Dakota had gripped my head and crushed it. He'd turned me into a brain slushy. Any sense of pain from dying in my unconscious state was apparently not memorable enough to be there when I woke. I wasn't much of anything. I think I was confused.
I wasn't dead or in immense pain. That was a good reason to be confused. I was in someone's bedroom, evidenced by the posters of rock bands and heap of clothes on the floor, and my hair was tied up into two knots out of my face instead of the mess of unconfined curls it usually was. It looked like my chest gauze was switched out with a new set. I was wearing clothes I distinctly remembered wearing the last time I left my house—and that felt like weeks ago.
I probably smelled awful. When was the last time I showered?
Maybe days ago. I smelt my hair, expecting a distinct, greasy odor. The smell of oil and overworked product. What I got instead was a nothingness. My hair smelt like it was in the day between my last wash and my next.
I was alone in the room, snuggled into a black-and-white duvet. The singers on the bedroom walls, with their spiked hair, annoying black leather get-ups, and teethy grins, were staring straight into my soul, like they wanted to drag me into their circle of groupies. If only they knew where my heart belonged—then they'd steer clear from engaging me with their lust-ridden gazes.
Why am I here? I decided to stop inspecting the room and think about where I was, how I was there. It was different from the last time I woke up alone in a room. It was different from anytime I was in a room period. I wasn't hurt; I was just somewhere I didn't remember the journey to. Someone put me here when I wasn't conscious, and I didn't know who or what could possess them to do so. What's worse was that I didn't remember the build-up of events to now. Anything after getting terrorized by Dakota in school was a blur, with fractions of my leftover memory piecing together to indicate I'd gone to the Archives and sought out my father's help. Everything else was like clouds in a thunderstorm.
But there was something that came out of the woodworks, feeling potent without the framework of memory behind it. A memory that wasn't really a memory, but it felt like one. The thought of it made me shudder, pin-needles of discomfort interweaving into my capillaries.
Worthless.
After school, after running to the Archives, after desperately blabbing my experiences to my father, the only memory I had was of Dakota crushing my skull. I remembered thinking I was going to die and feeling like that was just what I'd get, too. I thought of this after I came awake. I was thinking about it again now.
"What the fuck," I muttered to myself, staring up at the ceiling until I knew it wouldn't calm my body back into order. I pushed up onto my elbows. The ball of discomfort in my bloodstream was getting bigger and stronger, until it reached a level of suffocation that couldn't, wouldn't, go away with time. I felt ill.
Maybe the reason I couldn't remember anything was because they were whisked away with Dakota's hands.
Fuck, I thought. This was serious.
He wasn't just a figment of my imagination anymore, it seemed. He was costing me a lot more than I anticipated—my memories, my lucidity, my perception of reality.
Without knowing what happened before he killed me, I was at a disadvantage and I didn't know how I could obtain my memories back, regardless of whether they were from a dream. Dakota was just smarter than me. He'd been at an advantage since I first matured into my powers.
And that's what scared me most.
It was then, when I looked over at the nightstand in search of a focal point to get a sense of peace restored into my nerves, that I noticed a piece of paper just lounging on the wood. A jolt of surprise went through me. Someone—maybe who brought me here—had left a note.
My muscles ached from long-term disuse, but I managed to get a hand on the paper when I reached over. I unwrinkled it and began to read:
Alissa,
I know you're probably confused. If I were in your situation I know I would be. You passed out in your father's office and we took you here so you could recover. We're all waiting for you in the living room. If you need more time to get your head back on, just say so. We'll understand.
With love,
Sue
Thoughts, assumptions, flitted through my mind. I was at Sue's house, and I had a heaping suspicion I was in Leah's bedroom, hence the dark walls and dark accents. Lost in a space that reeked of anger, not that you could tell by the sunshine leaking through the blinds. It looked and felt like a teenage girl's room, younger than me, more angsty than me, and Leah was the oldest and most emotionally-tumultuous between the two of us.
Last I was here, it wasn't Leah's room I stayed in. It was Sue's guest room. It made no sense to be here, in Leah's room. I was more anxious than I'd been in a bland, non-personalized atmosphere. Sue was the kind, gentle nurse who nurtured wounds back to full-health for everyone on the reserve, and she'd been my pseudo-caretaker more times than I could count digits, but being here still felt unfamiliar. I felt like I was invading something personal. I knew what I was and I knew why I felt this way. I was scatterbrained and mentally fucked. Nothing could heal those aches unless my memory was conjoined anew.
My brain was utter mush and I felt like there was nothing for me to do except take baby steps to gather the pieces back together.
Fuck. A painful tickle crisscrossed over the length of my throat. I swallowed, thinking I could evade the feeling if saliva lapped over and soothed it. I didn't want to be wracked with heaves until my ribcage felt like it was puncturing my organs—especially when I was still processing my situation. Apparently, though, my thoughts on the matter didn't matter.
I fell into a sudden sneezing-coughing fit that left my innards in places not logically-thought possible. Each new cough resulted in a new one, and between coughs the tickle would travel my mucus chamber until my nose had to save itself from the feathery sensation through violently flushing it out, and eventually I thought about how I'd rather die than stay in a loop of flu symptoms.
My throat was raw by the time the fit stopped. Tears were stinging my eyes because of the painful exertion it took to cough and sneeze at least twenty or so times in a row. Fuck. Just fuck. I felt like crying: out of frustration; out of anger; out of confusion.
Bang!
The door slamming open was all it took for my back to snap into perfect posture, tears be damned.
"Alissa," said Paul.
"Paul," Alissa said—wait, that's me. That was me. I said that.
But there was a correlation in the way we'd individually spoken to each other. Even the paralanguage was identical. I felt this fervent need to match him tit for tat, just as strongly as I felt a need to take him in my arms and reassure myself he was real.
"I thought that was you up here choking like a fucking smoker," he said, quirking a weak and forced smile up at me. I returned the smile, motioning with a hand for him to come closer.
Paul easily complied, the tension in his face relaxing the closer he got, until he was standing by my bedside and I skimmed his body language for the panic it'd expunged.
"I think some dust got up my nose or something," I said back, wrinkling said appendage in distaste. I reached out for his wrist. I wasn't sated until he easily relented his arm to me, allowing me to touch and prod at his wrist until I could assert to myself I actually was in his presence right then, safe and in a moment that wouldn't end abruptly. Paul watched my actions silently, a looming cloud of heat that distracted me from the unharmonious cold seeping through my head.
"Jared's downstairs," he said, and he pulled away from me to go over to Leah's messy desk in the corner to grab a chair. He came back and placed it beside me, subsequently sitting down in it. "Thought you'd want to know that before you come down. If you come down."
I didn't feel as angry as I expected. Even hearing my brother's name, which used to provoke me in ways nothing else ever could, just went over my head. It was a staggering feat, really, to know I'd lost all my ire and wrath. I couldn't pinpoint a direct cause, unless I was just sluggish and liable to denying it.
"That's fine," I said, exteriorly unfazed, a outward image of me pretending he didn't just raise his eyebrows. Internally was a whole other story. Damned man, looking at me like that—like I was a whole new person for not throwing hissy fits twenty-four-seven. I could be calm. I didn't have to be violent all the time.
Keep telling yourself that, sweetheart, I thought.
It was definitely the fatigue putting me out of my element. There was no other excuse to be this pleasant.
Paul shook his head at me. "This might get a different reaction out of you," he said, smirking at me. He jabbed a thumb in the direction of the door. "He wants to talk."
I rolled my eyes. "Paul, I'm tired and feel like shit. No matter what you do, or what you say, I'm chill."
"Whatever you say, princess," he muttered, but his words didn't match his eyes. His expression dipped into something more thorough, more solemn. He leaned closer to me, his elbows digging into his shorts, and I knew with a leap in heartbeat that whatever he wanted to say, it was not something I wanted to hear. "Why did you go to your Dad first about the bloodsucker and not me?"
What a question. I didn't know if I could even answer it, to be honest.
Or maybe I could, and thinking I couldn't was just a way to deny responsibility for my behavior.
I tilted my head away from Paul.
"You're not much older than me," I said to him, caressing the bedpost with the right side of my face. I couldn't look him directly in the eye, and if he caught my inter-channel discrepancy, I didn't care. "We're both pretty new to this. Dad's been kicking 'bloodsucker' ass for over two decades. I took my chances on who to turn to."
Not to mention I felt tongue-tied when I did have my chance.
"You looked like you wanted to say something at school," Paul said accusingly, pinpointing the very event I had in mind. I knew there was nothing I could say to look innocent so I just blinked at him, not speaking at all. "And don't think I didn't notice you flinch when I touched you. I heard from your Dad you think he hurt you. I'm not that dumb, Alissa. I can put two and two together. Sam told me all there is to know about Dakota when I first phased."
Paul was a lot smarter than anyone ever gave him credit for, and it was always part of what attracted me to him. He had this knack for coming to plausible conclusions that I could never match. I truly let myself be fooled into thinking Dakota was in my dreams entirely, that he'd left bruises, that he locked my jaw when it came time to spill the truth.
There was something about Dakota that all human reason couldn't explain. It was steadily becoming clearer to me that all these changes in character, this filtered mouth, the black and blue marks I "covered" with concealer—they weren't accountable by a self-carved narrative, regardless of how real and natural they'd first appeared.
Fuck.
I kept saying that. It was becoming more habit than something reactional.
"If that's the case, then you know he's a manipulative piece of shit," I said slowly. "And you know he can read thoughts. Plug thoughts. Turn daisies into fucking bats. That sort of thing. Ya know?"
From the corner of my eye I saw Paul shake his head. I heard him let out a scoff. "It's not about what he can do or how he does it, Alissa. It's about you putting yourself at risk. Why the fuck do you do that when you know you're not invincible?"
I flimsily tossed my head to the right, glancing up at Paul to see the exhausted, fretful expression on his face. That was the last straw. I dug my elbows back into the pillows, using what little strength I had to cup my hands into fists and use them as tools to raise myself into a sitting position. I felt more eye level with Paul when I finally managed it. He was still taller, but we could hold each other's gaze much easier and I felt calmer just by being this much closer.
"Let's just leave it all behind us," I said, reaching out for his hand. It was a small victory, one I internally whooped and hollered for, when he didn't fight off my fingers from interlacing into his own. "I can start all over, right? Be a newer, calmer person. I'm sorry for being crazy and irrational. I'll stop now."
Paul rolled his eyes. "You'd have to be tranquilized before that ever happened," he muttered, in this sarcastic voice I adored him for.
God, I missed him. I missed the little things. I missed our banter and I missed how easily conversation fell between us. It felt like we were handmade for one another, but I knew if I told him that, he'd gloat about it for weeks. And he'd tell me I was foolish to believe in fairy-tales.
I didn't. I wasn't that kind of girl. But in moments like this, even if just for a fleeting second, I let myself think I was.
"You love it," I said, my mouth falling into the first genuine smile I'd had since being awake. I couldn't tell who made the first move—whether it was me leaning deeper into his warmth or him when he reciprocated my smile—but we both fell together like we were magnetized, an attraction that desired a lure of the same voltage.
A cough from in the doorway had us freeze just millimeters away from making contact, and a deep, painful feeling of frustration struck me. It died away when my eyes connected with Jared's.
Fuck. There came that word again. I used the word often and severely, for situations in and out of panic. This time, I recognized it as a reaction to my nerves. A deep-set unease that went unsated when I knew within a second of realizing who it was at the doorway I would be having that "talk" I'd tried avoiding. So soon after trauma, I didn't know if I could handle it—especially if Jared mentioned any of the things he'd done I kept clamped down out of fear of crying.
"Hey," he muttered now, after spending over half a minute just staring between Paul and I, no doubt overthinking our anything-but-innocent proximity. I wondered if he knew anything about our relationship, or if he'd been kept in the dark deliberately so that I would be the one who broke the news. By his nervous expression, I knew none of it mattered. Even if he was curious, he wouldn't ask until we either made up or he fell back into good graces with Paul.
"Hey," Paul said for the both of us, giving my hand a tight squeeze. He leaned the rest of the way over and gave me a quick, none-too-appeasing kiss on the forehead. It didn't satisfy me in the way I knew a kiss on the lips, or even the cheeks, would, but I let the warmth of his mouth wash over me—and I let myself think about how he could kiss me as many times as I wanted once we were past our current conflicts.
Once Dakota was defeated and Jared was back in my life, Paul and I could easily have that relationship I'd fantasized about and thought impossible for years. It wasn't infeasible, as it once was. I now understood him as a fiercely protective, impossibly funny, loving and thoughtful guy and I knew he'd do anything if it meant keeping me by his side. It was crazy to imagine life without him now. I knew if I wanted to keep him there it meant shifting my attitude. And after going so long playing the "bitch" role and desperately vying for affection from anyone if it meant pissing off my brother, I knew I was immature. It was a wonder Paul didn't see me for the child I was.
I smiled up at Paul, basking in the sparks his kiss left on my skin. "When I come downstairs, you can know everything," I muttered, failing to mention just how little I knew myself. I refused to admit how badly my memories were affected, that my head ached from unknown narratives I'd been the primary actress in. "Dad'll drag it out of me at some point, anyway."
Paul nodded, the hand holding mine squeezing like it never wanted to let go. Touching me like I was oil and he was a capitalizer. Like anything with a time limit, though, he had to let go regardless. I felt just how badly he didn't want to leave.
Our fingers detached from one another and he stood from Leah's tiny desk chair. I watched him meet Jared at the doorway, the two of them sharing a look. Paul muttered something in his ear, sneaking a glance in my direction, and maybe it would have mattered more if I wasn't so focused on staring at his backside. For someone so feverishly warm and furry, he sure left his clothes on an awful lot around me.
I let the lust in me scatter into empty corners once Paul had left the room. There was just a hollow void, only intensifying when Jared replaced Paul in Leah's chair.
"It's been a while," was the first thing he said. He eyed me nervously. I knew he was worried I'd explode and he'd have to feel guilt ten times over the original dosage. I remembered what our Dad said when he was angry. He said Jared had run off and not come back. In that statement was the obvious truth that I'd sentenced him to be faulted for something I caused. Even if it was his claws that damaged me, the damage was all self-inflicted. I wished I could make him see that. Fuck, I knew I was the one who deserved to feel horrible. And I did feel horrible. But Jared did too.
We were both in this concurrent sort of post-decisional dissonance that kept us both remorseful and stagnated, stuck in the past, unwilling to come face-to-face. Now that we were here, I wasn't angry anymore. I had come to terms with things and I knew the facts now.
Jared hurt me. He'd done several things I used to think were irredeemable. He dropped me because he didn't want to be best friends with his sister anymore. He made Paul stop coming around because he didn't want us dating and thought the guy was a violent maniac. He would literally put an end to any dates I wanted to go on before they started. For fuck's sake, the bastard thought I was annoying. He broke our pact.
It had been a while indeed.
"'Together forever until the grass is blue and pigs fly high,'" I said, quoting the very pact we made after our Mom died. Jared's shoulders stiffened and his back went pin-straight, his eyes flickering away from mine. "I get it, Jared. No one in their right mind would want to be besties with their little sister. Their annoying little sister."
He didn't reply for several seconds, but there was enough movement in his jaw that I knew he was thinking hard about my words. Maybe he was even processing all that'd we been through together, all the memories we let get clouded over by new ones with different faces. He'd been the one to hold and comfort me when Mom died, but he'd also been the one to push the guy I loved away and make me bitter. He moved on with Sam's pack and Kim, not bothering to rekindle our connection before starting down a new path. He was several miles ahead of me, so far away it was hard to think he was even relevant anymore. I knew he was, but he'd left me in the dark. The only way he kept me in his life was by sabotaging any chances I took at distraction.
I used to wonder if it was a subtle revenge for all the times his friends poked fun at him for being friends with his little sister. I still wondered. I still suspected. He had shitty friends before he phased. Paul was the only decent one, and he'd been sentenced to watch me from afar.
The last time Jared showed me he really cared was three years ago when he beat William Holton into a bloody pulp. After that, he grew more and more distant until the start of this school year when he cut me out completely.
And that lead Paul to cut me out, too.
Dakota was the only thing that should have been relevant. He was the threat, the danger, the monster under my bed. But the momentary promise of shelter caught me in a trance of anger and remorse, and with Jared immobilized in the very seat Paul used to sit, I felt like it was only right to find another right to a wrong.
I was as tired of being angry as I was of running.
Caught in my doubts and ruminating in a dark study, I was violently shaken from it by Jared shifting in his seat and saying, "There's really no excuse for any of it. I know that. I thought I could find the words to say before I shifted. I've had weeks and weeks to come up with something now, but I just don't know, Alissa. I know we made the pact. I know I broke it. I don't know how to fix any of this. I just know if Dakota kills you, I—" He abruptly cut himself off, sucking in a sharp breath of oxygen and releasing it in one swift motion. "I'd never be able to forgive myself."
I sniffed, fighting off a swell of tears. "You could apologize," I snapped at him. "You could say, 'I'm sorry.' Say something, anything."
"I am sorry!" he snapped right back. "Of course I'm fucking sorry. I hurt you so bad, Alissa. I am so, so, so sorry for it. You'll never understand how bad I feel about it. I'm sorry I broke our pact. I'm sorry I didn't let you date. I'm sorry I cut you out and stopped coming around. I'm sorry for scarring you. I'm sorry, alright? Sorry about everything. And, I just—look at you and Paul. You're imprints, for fuck's sake! And I pushed you away from him. I told him to stay away from you. I didn't protect you like I promised I would. I'm a horrible brother and I'm sorry."
I felt like I'd been struck by his words. He sounded half-broken, and maybe it was him with the circuit loose and not me. I remembered feeling that way around Paul so long ago, when being around him got me flustered and stammer-prone and stupid. Jared's apologies came out fast and thoughtless. Listening to them made me feel like I needed a decoder just to understand a semblance of what he'd said.
After staring at him for what felt like an eternity, things made sense to me. My eyes widened.
I'm sorry for hurting you.
You and Paul are imprints.
I'm sorry I broke our pact.
I told him to stay away from you.
I'm a horrible brother and I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
"Imprints?" I repeated, the only thing he'd said that didn't make complete sense to me.
Jared froze. He shook his head. He mouthed what looked like "Shit" to himself and he put up his hands in a defensive motion. "Please, Alissa. Don't ask about it right now. I need to... we need to talk this out. It's killing me. Please."
In any other situation, I wouldn't think twice about disregarding his request and demanding answers. But this was Jared. After so long without holding a meaningful conversation, without a sentiment of love echoing between the syllables, I craved just a second of clarity for our relationship. Before Dakota came and enacted a final revenge, I at least wanted something to be righted, even if it was an amended love between me and my brother. Something I never thought could be repaired.
"Okay," I said, nodding slowly.
Jared let out a breath of relief, but the lack of tension didn't last long. It returned as a full assault and I was forced to watch Jared swallow deeply and close his eyes. Through gritted teeth, he quietly said, "I've been sick with guilt, Alissa."
That was all he said. I shifted on the bed a little, feeling fidgety without sound. "Why?"
"Dad explained it was your powers, but it didn't feel that way when it happened," Jared said, and I realized with a jolt what he was referencing. "It felt like my inner wolf was clawing to get out. I was angry, and I never get angry. I was ready to kill whatever was in my way when I phased. It wasn't until I was baring my teeth at you, and you were unconscious and bleeding and just so fucking pale lying on the ground, I realized what I'd done, and I couldn't stay, I couldn't breathe. I, I fucking ran.
"I think I stayed in the woods for three or four days. Sam came and got me eventually. He told me I could stay with him if I still couldn't face you. I took him up on that. And even if it's been over a week, it hurts to think about. I keep picturing you in my head that way, bloody and half-dead. It makes me feel like a monster."
I shuddered at his words. No one had talked to me about that night so vividly. Our father called me reckless and told me I was immature, but he didn't paint the image of what I looked like on the ground. I knew that they'd called Sue and had to keep pressure on the wound because it was bleeding so much, but it never occurred to me I looked dead. I had felt guilty for forcing Jared to shift, but it reached a peak now. All that sudden anger I felt towards him because of our past evaporated. All of it paled in comparison to me forcing him to hurt me. Leaving him with a lifetime of guilt and me a permanent embellishment of scars.
"Jared, you know it was my fault, right?" I asked him tentatively. He just stared at me, all this guilt and self-disgust brewing there. "Jared, I don't have any control. I've just been so... angry since you broke our pact. I didn't even know what I was until that night." I raised up my hand, showing him the moon tattooed into my palm. "I wasn't thinking clearly. I just... I'm sorry. I did this to me. You didn't do anything."
Jared's gaze wasn't on my tattoo; it was on my shirt, where the scars were hidden underneath. "It was still my claws that made you bleed," he murmured.
"I don't fucking care about that, Jared," I snapped. He jumped in surprise. "All I care about is you apologizing. And not about scarring me. I just wanted to know you still cared about me. I thought you didn't give a fuck about hurting me mentally."
"I've felt guilty since I had my first shift," he said through a sigh. "I used to think it was uncool to be friends with my sister but... you get me in a way Paul and Kim can't. You're like my twin. Not having you around has sucked majorly."
I nodded in agreement. "I love you, Jared," I said, knowing I meant it. It'd been months... fucking months since I'd told him that. I knew if I died or he died without me getting to say that one last time I'd live an afterlife of regrets. "You suck for not coming to apologize sooner, but I still love you."
Jared looked like he might have cried. "I love you too, Alissa," he said, so quietly I almost didn't hear. "I'm sorry for not coming sooner."
I didn't want to fall into another silence. "Me and Paul are dating," I told him nonchalantly, a shard of urgency flooding through me. He mentioned imprints. The concept sounded familiar and I knew it was important I got the facts. But you're talking and not yelling and this feels so soothing compared to the Hell you've been through. The voice was right. "We love each other a lot."
Really, I didn't know if Paul loved me as much as I loved him but if there was an award for putting words in somebody else's mouth, I would have been a prize-winner by then.
"That's good," said Jared, and his smile seemed genuine. I hoped it was genuine. Paul was his best friend; if he didn't approve, that would put a huge rift between Paul and me. "Do you... do you remember anything from when you were out? Dad mentioned Dakota's been targeting you."
I glanced at the door. "I don't remember much," I said honestly. "But maybe Dad can help me remember."
Jared nodded. "If it makes you feel any better, Sam's been working nonstop to track him down," he said. "When we find him, we'll kill him."
It wasn't the best conciliation, but I knew it was Jared's attempt at reassuring me. I took it without intentionally gunning for strife.
"We should go downstairs," I whispered. I continued staring at the door. I was worried about what was going to come from telling them I didn't know much aside from dying. I didn't want them to think I was next to useless. They wouldn't tell me shit then, and I was the one out of them at the most risk. "Shit is crazy right now."
Jared laughed. "You've got that right." I raised up my arms and didn't protest when he stood from his chair to help lift me out of the bed. The covers slipped right off and I held my balance once my toes touched the rough, rust-red carpet.
Jared said nothing when I grabbed onto his arm for stability. He just helped lead me out of the room. He had his hand on the small of my back as he reached the stairs, and he was a needed shadow when I walked—no, shambled my way down the steps. I felt flat-footed. I knew my inability to walk straight was thanks to being unconscious for God-knows-how-long, but I couldn't help but critique how I was walking. It was annoying I had to rely on Jared for assistance.
Jared this, Jared that. It felt shocking to have him present in my narrative again.
I tried not asking myself how long it would last.
My father was the first person I noticed when we made it to the living room, and he looked surprised to see me willingly standing next to Jared. "Alissa," he greeted. That was all he said.
I surveyed the room, seeing Embry on the loveseat, Sam standing by the wall, Sue and Harry standing together with my father, Paul up on his feet heading towards me. Paul up on his feet heading towards me. Jared released me from his grasp and I fell into Paul, giving him as tight an embrace as I possibly could.
"Where's everyone else?" I asked, not a question to any particular person. I pulled away from my boyfriend, fucking boyfriend, to look around the room again. I didn't see Old Quil or Billy anywhere.
"Other business to attend to," Dad said simply and he motioned for me to sit down. I did so reluctantly, pulling Paul into the open seat of the couch with me. "Do you remember what happened, Alissa?"
Straight to the point. I almost damned him for it.
"No," I said, shaking my head. This was it—admitting something I still didn't understand and couldn't imagine myself ever understanding. "I don't even know what happened, Dad. All I... well, all I really remember is coming here."
"Anything after that?" he prompted, desperation tinged into his eyes, his cheekbones, his mouth—fuck, everything. Even his damned paralanguage was sprinkled with it.
I hesitated. "Well..." Everyone's looks sent me into a tizzy of anxiety. I wasn't used to being this out of my element. Warmth suddenly enveloped my hand and I looked down, shocked to see Paul holding my hand. I let the feeling of him touching me manifest as strength. "Dakota killed me."
It was like everyone in the room took a collective breath. Dad blinked. "He can't kill you," he said. "If you die out of reality, you die in reality, too."
"I thought the same," I said, but truly, I didn't know what I thought. I hoped I wasn't lying. "But he did kill me. He crushed my skull. And Dad, I think—I think he didn't do it with killing me in mind. I think he did it to shake my memories."
"It would explain why you can't remember anything," he said musingly, but he didn't look convinced.
"I don't know what he said to me. I don't know what he did to me," I said insistently. "He just fucking killed me and that's all I have to go off in my brain, okay? I don't know what you expect me to say. It's not like my memories are gonna come back like Surprise! This isn't some miracle, sappy sudden-recall bullshit."
Dad shook his head, ignoring the way I was looking at him. He leaned back into Harry and Sue's television stand. "Dakota was in your head. He may have manipulated your memories so you only think what he wants you to think."
He didn't. I knew that wasn't it. He made me feel crazy, but I wasn't crazy, I was sane; Dakota killed me—
"You have not done your reading, boy," cut a deep, ominous voice through the deep strain that Dad had cast between us. "You know less about Dakota than your own daughter does."
No one other than my Dad and I even flinched. The two of us glanced at the kitchen doorway, where Taha Aki stood, standing dressed in traditional garb and looking as weathered and tired as he'd last looked, when we talked all those days ago. It shocked me to see him here, when I was little more than a burden for the tribe. I was sure Dad had told him to avoid further contact with me.
"She isn't the only one to be fucking tortured by that monster," Dad said in the most violent and cold tone I'd ever heard from him. I noticed Sue and Harry sharing bewildered looks. The shapeshifters in the room just looked at me, as though I had all the answers. "You know him better than us all. You were the only one he told when he ran away from home."
"That does not make me the most knowledgeable of his psyche," said Taha Aki. "Dakota is a complex creature. When he left tribal land, he lost all contact with me. I only felt the full connection snap when I felt him change."
He ran away from home.
Dad scowled at Taha Aki and looked over at me, his gaze cutting through me like a knife. "Dakota will continue trapezing through your head until he kills you," he snapped. The tone and volume made me flinch. "He'll hunt you down and kill anyone else that gets in his way. He's a fucking parasite. He'll drive you mad until you crave the immortal life he offers you."
"You need to act on the offensive," said Taha Aki. No one understood who we were talking to, why our emotions flickered between anger, fear, and indignation. "You know what he is, Richard. He does not wait for action from the enemy."
Dad's scowl deepened and he looked over at Sam. "You've been tracking him," he said brusquely. There was no question, only a demand for elaboration.
Sam nodded, not even questioning who Dad had even been talking to. "I've been tracking him through the hillside," he explained. "I found him camped out in the Forks area, closer to the reserve than I'm comfortable with. It might explain how he's able to get access of minds so easily."
Dad nodded. "He has to be close."
"He is taunting you," Taha Aki said, his words mellow but his face hard. Wrinkled with worry lines. "He will continue to terrorize Alissa, until he has her submit or drives her into insanity. It is what he does to every fledgling from his descendent line. It is his cruel idea of an initiation."
"Shut the fuck up before I destroy your remains and leave you as nothing but a tribal story," my father said, voice no lower than a growl. I understood, suddenly, where I got my mouth from—and my temper. "He killed my father to make a show of who he was and what he wanted. My father was fascinated by him, and he repaid him by driving him into madness. It's what he does. He doesn't taunt; he acts. I'll be damned if I let him kill anyone else in my family."
"Is there anyone else he'd go after besides me?" I asked quietly, partially terrified of the amount of anger I felt in the room. It was suffocating, to be honest.
"No," Dad said. It was simple, to the point, curt. "Dakota's only interested in anyone who has a higher chance than normal to possess powerful abilities if they turn. Emissaries are unique to the supernatural. They can communicate with the dead and project the same spirits like defensive and offensive shields."
I nodded, motioning for my father to continue. Taha Aki watched him silently. I could easily see from here he wasn't happy with what Dad was saying.
"Dakota... was rare," Dad said finally. "He—"
My father told me I was unique. Out of everyone of our ancestors, they all had the same gifts. Even my grandfather was nothing out of the ordinary. Father thought I was dormant for the longest time. I was meant to receive my gift from the Moon when I was sixteen. The Moon waited for my eighteenth birthday to make everyone blur together in a vast array of hues. I looked at my brother and knew in my bones he was going to run away into the woods with his lover from another tribe that Father disapproved of. Father called my gifts a blessing. It came to our awareness I could read auras of everyone I met. I knew future directions for their paths before even they knew what they wished to do.
Father called it a blessing but I knew his doubts. My brother was the one who could take shape of the Moon's calling.
I blinked, blinked, blinked until the room came back into focus. I felt myself trembling. No one was paying me attention except for Paul, and he was just rubbing his thumb over my knuckles in an up-and-down motion. Aside from him, not a soul could tell I was paralyzed.
"—His father died—" Dad continued, as if nothing ever happened to me. I was thrust back into darkness.
"Mother," I whispered, bracing a hand against the doorpost of her bedroom. Her figure was invisible in the darkness, but I heard her choking and sobbing from within. She'd been there for three nights, drying her tears on the quilt her and Father shared. After his funeral, she had come here. She had not eaten since his death. "Mot—"
"Go away," she screamed, a choke in her words.
I went away, only to find her there again in the morning.
"—He ran away from home—"
"Rough night?"
I was on my third canister of whiskey when the man sitting beside me in the saloon asked his question. I drowned down the contents enough to make a thirst clench my throat into nubs, and I turned to look at him. The man staring back at me was inhumanely beautiful. I felt his aura. It was deceiving. It felt warm and cold. Looking at him in general felt like drowning.
He had these beautiful eyes I could not stop deciphering for how unnatural they were. They were the color of crimson. If I were not lush, I might have questioned them.
Instead I told him, "Yes. And yourself?"
The unearthly man in black smiled. "Not tonight."
"No one ever saw him again," Dad said.
The inhumanely beautiful man pushed my head deeper into a pillow, my vision blurry from within an inebriated haze. I moaned, letting out a short-lived scream in response to him nipping at my shoulder.
"You like that, huh?" he purred, finding a strip of skin on my bare neck and pulling it into his mouth.
"God, yes," I said, pushing through a tremor induced by his touch.
His only response was to push me over and capture my mouth in an Earth-shattering kiss that numbed me from vessels to bone.
"Alissa, are you okay?" Paul said suddenly.
I awoke bruised and battered, unable to move my legs. The room around us was destroyed. When I looked at the stranger who had so callously ruined me now, his aura was only cold.
The beautiful man was dressing himself in his shadowed suit, tucking in his shirt when he saw my movement.
"What is your name?" I slurred, voice weak.
His smile had a pair of lethal incisors, but I did not feel threatened by them. Beautiful, I thought. He was as beautiful as Daphne and just as poisonous.
"Roman," the crimson-eyed man said.
"Jesus, she looks like she's having a fucking seizure," Jared cursed, moving to my side.
"I'm Dakota," I said.
Roman's smile widened. "I know who you are," he said. He crouched beside me and picked up a loose curl that had fallen in my eyes, twirling it around his finger. "Do you know who I am?"
I mouthed, "No."
I could not move.
The beautiful man leaned until his mouth was on my ear. "I am Roman, and your blood sings to me, Dakota."
I knew everyone's movements before they enacted them but nothing could have prepared me for the beautiful, peculiar man sinking his teeth into my neck.
"Alissa," Paul said, bringing me into his arms and trying his best to get my attention. I saw him, but I didn't care; I was in and out of darkness, submerged one moment and gasping for air the next.
I sensed a sinister power in Roman, and I knew what he was from when I first saw his eyes.
Vampire.
My father had warned me of their kind. He had an inexplicable fear for what they were capable of. After I fled my home, I unshackled myself from Father's expectations and Mother's burdensome grief.
I was not afraid of the Unknown. The Unknown should have been afraid of me.
I felt a snap in the threads tying me back into my consciousness and I fell completely back into Paul's warm, hard side. I trembled and heaved, feeling disconnected from reality—more disconnected than I ever had. Who what how why where were flitting through my head, disastrously out of order. It registered, then, just what that was.
"Dakota," I said, shaking Paul's arm. He grabbed onto my own arm in a futile attempt to stop me, and I ignored his attempts to force composure back into my body. "Dakota, oh my God—it came to me, when you talked, Dad, what you and Taha Aki said—oh my fucking God, he was human once."
Everyone was crowded around me on the couch, I noticed with alarm. I must have been out of it for a while because Sue was dabbing a cloth at my mouth where drool had dribbled out with a compress lying uselessly in her lap and both Paul and Jared were closer than I usually let anyone, both of them trying to reassure me through their hands. I ignored it, using their silence as the only opportunity I'd get to put the pieces together.
Dakota. Roman.
"Of course he was human once," my father said, ignoring the sharp look Sue sent him for his callousness. "We don't know the specifics about his change, but we do know what may have prompted him to leave."
"But I do," I blurted out, Dakota's memories swirling around in my head. It wasn't me living through them. Even if they felt like my memories, they weren't—they were his. From before he was changed. From when he was human and he had feelings and there was nothing left to lose for him. "I just saw something. I saw memories. His memories."
No one believed me. I saw it in their faces. Jared and Paul looked concerned for me and my father, he was angry for reasons I couldn't make into harmonious words.
"What do you mean by that, Alissa?" asked Sam, pushing up from off the wall to be closer to me. He was the only one not crowding the couch, and I only saw him when I craned my head over Sue's fretting, crouched figure. He had that deep, analytical gaze I saw him with almost constantly, the kind that made me wonder just how easily he could see through me.
"I told you he killed me," I started, gripping Paul's arm and the armrest of the couch to keep myself from swaying. I was woozy from what had just happened, and words could not explain the feelings going through me. Nothing made sense. "Well, I think something... happened when he killed me. I think... I think he accidentally gave me some of his memories."
Like a chain-reaction, everyone's backs went pin-straight, a suction of breath whooshing back into their windpipes. My father was the only one who didn't look bewildered or surprised. He continued to look a sweltering shade of angry.
"He had to have been incredibly, incredibly emotional to have let you take pieces of his memories. Vampires have much stronger guards than we do. It's impossible to penetrate them without experience, and even then the most proficient of us fail," he said slowly, like he couldn't even begin to see the logic in my suggestion. I knew it sounded crazy, I knew it made no sense compared to what they knew about Dakota and what I'd been told before—but I knew what I saw. And what I saw was snippets of his life. It all started when it was mentioned that he ran away from home.
I don't know that vampire he was with. Roman. Even thinking his name sent shudders through me. He was beautiful—alarmingly so. Wavy brown hair, translucent white skin, a symmetrically angled jaw, arms coiled in muscles, and most strange of all—crimson eyes. They had sex. I felt his pain and ecstasy. Everything he felt, I felt. Everything he thought, I thought. It felt like I was there right with him.
My father was wrong.
"No, you're wrong," I repeated the sentiment, looking him in the eye. "The memory was like nothing he's ever said or shown to me. I saw his Mom and Dad. I saw him in a saloon. He was drinking and this guy named Roman came up to him, and they chatted, and then they had sex, and then Roman bit him—"
"Roman?" The blood had drained from Dad's face.
"Yeah, Roman," I said, stressing his name.
"Roman," Dad repeated, blinking like he couldn't believe it. Like my words were just grains of incomputable diction and he was taking one short step at a time to process them. I saw both Harry and Sue share looks, Sue's hand with the compress frozen on my cheek. "I know Roman. He's been here before."
"In La Push? Not just Forks?" I asked, searching for any indication they were lying to me. If I remembered correctly, vampires weren't allowed on La Push territory because of the agreement they came to centuries and centuries ago. Knowing a vampire had came over the treaty line and they hadn't killed him alarmed me. "Why didn't you kill him?"
"Roman came when I was just a child to ask the tribe for permission to use his abilities in a magic show down in Forks," my father said, ignoring the sputters that came from my mouth. Whatever I'd anticipated as a reason to come in front of a council, it hadn't been to talk about fucking magic. "He called it 'hypnosis.' My father went to see the show and found that he was using cognitive manipulations to make crowd participants do what he wanted."
Paul, who had been sitting by my side and caressing my hand, suddenly surged his torso forward, a look of bafflement on his face. "Someone had to have changed, then," he said abrasively, and his words confused me. Someone had to have changed; what? What does that even mean? "He came through La Push. That's wolf territory. That's how the gene triggers."
I didn't know that. It never occurred to me that they had changed specifically because of vampires. They called themselves protectors. I thought it was just protection of the tribe and tribal lands. It never once went through my mind to call them vampire killers.
My father nodded along in agreement with Paul's words, his eyes dancing around Sue and Harry but not the men in the room who had shifted. "Many of the men from my generation are dormant," he explained, his words slipping over my head. I found them bewildering. "We had one member, Dorian, who changed upon Roman coming to discuss terms with us but... he died in a bar fight before any of you were born."
A bar fight. What an interesting way for a shapeshifter to die.
"So Billy is human? And Quil? And Paul's Dad? And Harry? And Sam's Dad?" I jabbed a thumb and pointed it at everyone I looked at, everyone I referenced.
Dad nodded his head. "They each have the gene, but during their age of maturity, it didn't activate. Many of the kids from your generation have changed because of their interactions with the Cullens and recently Dakota."
I nodded, absorbing this information as much as I could. It was hard to believe anything he said when none of it made the most sense. Everything was entirely new and having to understand it all after being unconscious for so long and going through a Hell I didn't remember, things were a lot harder than they'd normally be.
"I think Roman's the one who changed him," I whispered.
Dad shook his head. "That is impossible. Roman is a wanderer, he doesn't stick to a single coven."
For a split moment, I debated if my father was delusional and refused to believe anything outside of what felt comfortable. Roman said Dakota's blood sang to him. I could feel more memories swirling in me, untampered and unexplored, and foolishly I craved to see them.
But they needed to be activated somehow, it seemed—Dad and Taha Aki's words sucked me into memory after memory because they'd mentioned Dakota. They mentioned things from his past he'd somehow transferred to my own head. Taha Aki's ghost had disappeared and he was the only one who truly knew what was going on, but I couldn't let that dissuade me from pursuing knowing more about the monster we needed to kill.
"Say something," I said, looking at Dad pointedly. "Say... fuck, I don't know. Say 'change,' I guess."
Dad shook his head, saying, "Alissa, I don't know what is going through your head right now but you—"
"Just say it!" I shouted at him.
Dad's lips fell into a tight line. Then he muttered, "Change."
I blinked and I was gone from Sue's living room.
"You could be immortal," whispered Roman.
The man I laid with had turned out to be a monster, but he was a monster with pleasurable hands and a beautiful brain. I refused his offer many times. If he asked me to lay with him again, I would not deny him. His proposal to turn me into what he was did not settle well.
My blood sang to him. Being mortal was a great weakness to overcome in winning an immortal's heart.
He promised me his dead heart if I let him change me.
I did not want it.
"We could be together for eternity, Dakota," Roman said and his hands grazed across my side and up my ribcage. "Imagine it."
I imagined the power. I imagined the control. I imagined the beauty.
I did not imagine him there with me.
I blinked back into reality only for an onslaught of more unwanted emotions and thoughts.
"You asked for this," said Roman at the sight of me standing by his door with luggage.
I did ask for it. He taught me how to hunt and act normal in public, giving me rewards in the shape of his sacrilegious touch when I did particularly well. Now that he had taught me everything he knew, I was free.
"I love my new life," I told Roman, not discarding my luggage to run to him.
"Then why are you running away?" he asked.
I did not smile. "It is not running away if you never belonged somewhere in the first place," I said.
I heard him cry out when I left, the door slamming shut behind me.
I was free.
"See, it did it again," I burst out, zoning back into reality. Sue was dotting a rag on my chin and cheeks again. "I saw his memories. I saw Roman. I saw it, I swear to God I did."
"I believe you, Alissa," Dad said finally, after I stared at him with pleading eyes. "What did you see?"
I felt an emptiness in Dakota. I felt him read Roman's final aura projection for the pure devastation it was. From the first vision to the last I watched him transition into someone who didn't care whether he hurt anyone in his way to power and glory.
He even said himself he imagined power but didn't imagine someone by his side.
Maybe his intention never was to give power to someone just like him. That'd make him a discarded toy. Maybe he wanted a slave.
Someone to fool around with and participate in games.
It was all power and control with Dakota. Every action had a selfish intention. Do you want an eternity spent beautiful?
It was a taunt, meant to tell new victims they'd never have what he had.
Dakota would always be the Volturi's favorite plaything.
"It doesn't matter," I told Dad, gripping Paul's arm tighter. For a moment it did, but to me it no longer had a purpose other than to scare me.
It doesn't matter.
It hadn't mattered.
It didn't matter.
My vision went black.
It was a laughable sight, to see one of my descendants sitting at his chair in the Archives scribbling along on the page. He did this many times when I visited him. Occasionally I thought it had meaning and he knew I was watching him. He certainly glanced around his empty room too often to be innocent.
"Dakota," Arcus said, sitting up in his chair. "I have something to read for you. I know you're there in my head."
I had been in his head. It was not a beautiful place as it once had been. Age and maturity had shaped him into someone hollow and thin. His brain was just a shell of who I remembered from his youth.
I was silent, anticipating whatever he had scribbled to be a message for me.
"I am fascinated by your kind," Arcus said, his jowls moving with his articulation. "I am fascinated by you most. You are as beautiful as you are dangerous. Some would say you're a viper, but to me you're beautiful in an unsuspecting way. I have been told my fascination will be my death, and so be it. I'll have died understanding you."
He smoothed out the wrinkled edges of the paper he had on his desk, looking at the corner of his office where I stood, ready to unmask his reality. He met my eyes. From the page he began to read.
"To man be the killer,
And to killer be the sun,
And to sun be the darkness,
And to darkness be the moon.
He reflects all the curiosities of life,
All the meticulous details of a new day and old strife,
And I know he is all ends of a compass.
There is no direction for him when he encompasses all meaning to the very root.
If I were the man and the sun,
He'd be the killer and the darkness.
He'd be the moon, too."
It was indeed right for his loved ones to warn him.
I would be his death, and it was a curious thing that he would not turn from his killer.
It did not matter for him to envelope me in flowery praise.
I was a viper whose only purpose was to strike.
Dakota was a viper, but I knew he had a weakness.
I felt it in how he faltered to kill the man fascinated with monsters. The man I knew from his name.
"We have to contact Roman," I told everyone in the room, ignoring their expressions—their anger, their fear, their disgust. They didn't understand what I did.
They didn't understand that Dakota had a weakness, a weakness he denied in his thoughts but I saw and felt in the wisps of his conscience.
His weakness was he felt human emotions. And I knew without a doubt that love was one of them.
/
A/N: BRO THIS CHAPTER IS SO FUCKING LONG, I DIDN'T THINK I HAD IT IN ME
I originally wrote something entirely different. I got 4500 words in before I realized it was complete garbage and scrapped it. I am much more content with this version and I hope you guys are as well! It's freakin' crazy that I wrote 10,000 words for a single chapter. I can barely make it to 5,000 sometimes.
Since it's long I hope that makes up for the wait. I also hope you all can continue telling me what you feel about it and whether it's keeping you on your toes.
Sure, it's a fucking fanfic but I write it to get better at writing itself. I'm an English minor (once upon a time it was major... now it's not) and taking a Creative Writing course in the fall!
Here's a few things that happened that might need explaining or things that I want to clarify even if they haven't been spoken about in the story yet. When Dakota killed Alissa, he knew it wasn't going to kill her because something that her father doesn't know is dying in your dream either re-sets the dream, which cannot happen if an invader's infiltrated it, or jerks you awake. Alissa has no memory of what happened, not because of Dakota killing her but because having him tell her about her Mother and Grandfather was traumatic enough that it made her block out all of their conversations. She's in denial that what she knows isn't what's actually true. And, of course, there's Alissa gaining some of Dakota's memories. When he put his hands on her in the dream, he was angry enough that his own guard shut down and Alissa, who obviously still doesn't understand what she's capable of, unwittingly had several of his memories transfer to hers. Whatever you're confused about, just say and I'll spend my author's notes clarifying them. I hope things are becoming clearer as we learn more about Dakota and the pack world.
Jacob will come back into the picture soon, Alissa will get quality time with the pack and she'll even talk to Kim and Emily, we'll meet Roman, Alissa will interrogate anyone she can about what Jared meant with "imprints," and we'll finally move away from AU elements and back into New Moon territory. Which, y'all, doesn't mean we'll lose the action elements, just that... things will be more like they were in the beginning of the story, which I'm sure a lot of you would love.
Hope you enjoyed this installment of "The Human Condition!"
Peace xx,
Kate
