Title: Brave New World: Shift

Summary: After a climate shift, the structure of humanity falls apart and the world becomes a vampire free for all. /Completed/

Disclaimer: Characters belong to Stephenie Meyer. Story is produced without profit.

Characters: Leah/Renesmee, other.

Genre: Apocalyptic/Survival

Rating: Teen

Warnings: Apocalyptic themes.

Status: Completed.

Archiving: Please PM me.

Inspirations/Dedications: ~

Author's Notes: This story is part of a series. It is purposely left open with the aim of adding more to it.

Shift: Chapter Three

"We stayed at the house for a while, until the Volturi fell. Uncle Jasper didn't trust that they could forgo the interrogation, so he thought we should move. He was right. We found out a few years later that the new clan were rounding up all of the vampires the Volturi kept track of."

Nessie steps over a fallen branch without pausing in her story. "We lost Alice in a wave. It's so hard to find your bearings. Everything looks the same when the snow settles. We looked for days but we couldn't find any trace of her. My grandfather had to make the decision to keep moving, before the Hunters could catch up with us, but Uncle Jasper couldn't leave her. I haven't seen him in three years and I still wonder if he ever found her."

Leah stops suddenly and the two of them nearly collide. "Shit. I think we've already been here,"she says, her eyes taking in the scenery around her. The ground, the trees; everything is covered in a thick sheet of snow. She hauls her pack up on her shoulder, tins and pans rattling, and starts walking. "Let's go this way, see if we can pick up any markers."

It takes them three hours to find a route and Nessie keeps up the chatter without pausing. By the time darkness falls, Leah is about ready to kill her.

"Why are you alone? Where is the rest of your pack?"

Leah spins around and growls at her. "I think you know where our Alpha was. He was sunning himself in Brazil with you and your family while the rest of us were trying to survive."

Nessie steps back, her eyes wide in the face of Leah's anger. She lowers her head, an act which Leah automatically interprets as a submission, and so she turns away and resumes walking. She hears soft footsteps fall into a rhythm behind her but she is past caring whether the girl can keep up and so she picks up her pace.

"He didn't stay with me."

The words cause her to stop in her tracks. Nessie's expression is one of sadness and weariness. "He tried to call when things got really bad but by then the telephone lines were down. I begged him not to leave me but he did anyway. He said his pack was more important than anything. That he had to find you. All of you." She adds before Leah can do anything as stupid as think that Jacob had braved hell on earth for her.

Nessie's revelation has sparked the hope that is buried somewhere deep in the pit of the stomach. She hasn't seen Jacob since he left La Push, since he left the country, eight years ago, to be with his imprint, but perhaps he has found Seth and Quil and Embry. Maybe her brothers are all together and looking for her.

They find a cave, buried deep in the hills. Her foot hits metal at the entrance and after a few minutes of digging, she unearths a road sign, welcoming visitors in a foreign language. Nessie studies it for a few minutes, finally deducting that the sign is written in Lithuanian.

"Fuck. I thought we'd be closer to home than that. Where were you when you lost the others?"

Nessie shakes her head, bronze curls bouncing against her pale face. "I don't know. We came home before the waves started. Back to the house, I mean. Grandfather hadn't sold it because we were going to go back when nobody would be able to recognise us, -"

"Get to the point."Leah snaps, pulling a bundle of dry sticks from her pack. Nessie flushes a little at her anger but resumes her story in a quiet voice. She unpacks the bags, laying blankets on the floor, as she speaks.

"We left Brazil about three years after we arrived. The riots had gotten worse and we had people trying to break into the mansion a few times. None of you were there when came home. Jacob asked your mother were you had gone and she told him that you had taken the pack to try and find a safe place to settle down in."

"I didn't know the waves would start. I didn't know we wouldn't be able to find our way back." Leah whispers, her hands fumbling to light a match.

Nessie places a comforting hand on her shoulder, moving it slowly away as Leah glares at it. "It wasn't your fault. Nobody could have guessed what would happen. Even the experts didn't know."

Leah nods, solemnly, and gestures for her to continue. "Jacob left to find you. He asked us to watch over your mother. Charlie had already been killed by that point."

"That happened while we were still there. He got caught in the riots. Some guy was trying to get medicine for his daughter, so he shoots the first guy in a uniform he saw."

Nessie nods. "Mother was so upset. She still feels guilty now for not being there. When Uncle Jasper said we had to leave, we tried to convince your mother to come with us but she refused to leave La Push. She said that if she was going to die anywhere, it would be at home where her children could always find her."

She pauses and studies Leah's face, looking disappointed when she doesn't spot the onset of tears or sadness. Leah's face remains blank but Nessie obviously sees something that makes her think she is upset. "Maybe she's still alive. You know how tough your mother is."

Leah smiles, although she isn't going to get her hopes up on that one. They both watch the dancing flame, each thinking of their own families and a time when things were both simpler and happier.

"How did you get separated from the others?" Nessie asks, her curiosity seeping through every pore. Leah considers telling her to shut up but it has been a while since she has had anyone to really talk to, so she leans back against the cave wall and rests her hands on her knees.

"When the riots started and Charlie was killed, I moved the pack into my house. I was Alpha since Jacob had left and it was my job to keep them safe. Old Quil had died a few months before Charlie...the cold got him. The old and the young were the first to go. So, my mom and Billy Black were the only elders left on the council. They kept up the meetings, said we needed stability at a time like this and they both proposed that we should reunite the packs under Sam's lead...but I refused, and my pack backed me up."

A tree branch falls outside of the fire and she pushes it back in with the toe of her boot.

"I'm not gonna lie and say I saw this whole thing coming. I didn't. I don't think anybody did, but I did know that my pack could handle it better than Sam's. I knew we were stronger and I didn't want him dragging us down. I had a plan. We were gonna stick together. And so we all squeezed into our tiny house. My family, Quil and Claire's family. Embry and his mom, my imprint, and the Blacks...except for Jacob. Rachel refused to leave her father so we had to put up with Paul because he refused to leave Rachel...and when we heard of the snow hitting Hawaii, Billy begged Bex to come home. She and her husband made it back just before they shut the airports down."

Nessie leans forward, her elbow is propped on her knee and her chin rests in her hand. Her eyes glitter with the horrified excitement of one who knows that this story can't have a happy ending. Leah pauses, wringing the younger girl's curiosity for all it is worth. She doesn't blame her for her excitement, it's a damn good story. Just a shame it is all true.

"So, we were all under one roof, sleeping on a rota and bitching about the bathroom never being free. It seemed like hell at the time but looking back, it was fucking heaven. Then we start hearing about the random attacks, on the independent news channel. Vicious, rabid like humans. That's how they described it. A whole village worth of humans had been slaughtered in the Amazon."

The young girl winces at that. She knows of only a few vampires who reside there and all of them she considers friends. Leah notes her residual guilt with a vicious smile.

"So my plan wasn't worth shit anymore. I knew that we wouldn't be safe. I had a feeling in my gut. So I took my pack and we left to find somewhere safer, where we would be better protected against the cold and the leeches. I knew that Sam and his pack would protect my mom and the others from the leeches if they did get close. And so we set off, promising that we would come back soon, with food and blankets and everything else we needed but didn't have. Then the waves started."

Her eyes cloud over as she remembers the first wave. The one that had separated her from her brothers. "You know what it's like. You can't stand still and by the time it settles, you have no idea how far you've moved or where the others have gone. We didn't know enough to hold on to each other, that doesn't always make a difference anyway, but we didn't know enough to try."

She clears her throat, embarrassed at her display of emotion and for allowing herself to get lost in the story. "That was six years ago. I've been looking for them ever since and trying to get home, but everytime I think I'm getting somewhere, another wave hits and I lose my sense of direction. I've tried marking the ground I've covered, but it all gets lost under the snow and I find myself right back where I started, with no idea which way to go."

"Six years?" Nessie whispers and her eyes fill with tears. "I might not see my family for six years."

Leah watches her in silence for a moment as thick tears track down her cheeks. They don't last for long, evaporating before they hit the ground but she hasn't seen anyone cry since she found that girl two and a half years ago. She had been cowering in the bushes and Leah couldn't bring herself to leave her. She was dead by night fall.

"You might never see your family again," she says, regretting the words as Nessie's sniffling dissolves into thick, heaving sobs. She kicks at her pack angrily. She has a plan, and babysitting a vampire/human hybrid isn't part of it, but one look at the crying girl in front of her and she knows she has no choice.

It's a rare thing to find such innocence in this world. She has seen packs of children carving up an old man and putting his flesh on the fire. She has watched them devouring skin off the bone. Nobody cries in this world, not anymore.

"What are we going to do?" Nessie says with a pathetic sniffle.

Leeches, werewolves, humans...none of them are a match for mother nature and none of them can cheat death. Not when it wants you.

"Will you help me find them?" Nessie begs, her eyes filling with fresh tears. She looks so much like Bella that Leah wants to slap the weakness out of her.

Leah sighs and finally admits the truth she's know all along. It's pointless to search for anything anymore. You just have to keep moving in the struggle and hope that fate takes pity on you. Hope is all any of them have left.

"You can stick with me but I won't go chasing after your family, not when my own might be out there. We'll just keep moving, hope we stumble across the others. That's all we can do."

Nessie nods and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. She manages a weak smile but Leah knows that it's not enough. It never is. And it never has been.

All that is left to do is try.

~fin~