Title: Learning To Hunt
Chapter: Future Sections of Learning To Hunt
Fandom: The Tribe
Author: PinkTribeChick
Summary: Sometimes, love is just right under your nose . . .
Extended Summary: An alternate-universe Series 4 romance story, from the point of view of Pride, Jack, and an original female character.
Rating: Teen
Pairing: Jack-Original Female Fiction Character, Pride-Original Female Fiction Character, Jack-Ellie, and Bray-Amber, with a few mentions of other pairings.
Author's Notes: Massive thanks to Ariannya and Whit for their thoughts and proofreading on various sections over the years! Enjoy, and please review! Feedback is much appreciated!
Disclaimer: All characters, situations, and song lyrics remain the property of their respective owners. Any original characters are sole property of me, PinkTribeChick.
Learning To Hunt
Future Sections
Liliana stood by herself in the kitchen, fixing a cup of hot apple cider. She needed something to soothe her nerves. Samuel was taking a nap for once, which afforded her a little time to herself. Time to think over things.
So much had happened in the past few days. Ellie coming to the cabin, Jack's sudden confusion because of her, Samuel's brief bout of the flu, Amber giving birth. And to top it all off, Pride was acting weirder than ever. She and Pride barely even spoke anymore, and even when they did, it was all polite civilities or another argument. His behavior baffled her. One minute, he would be totally sweet, and the next he'd be trying to break her and Jack up again. It just didn't make sense.
As she sat down at the table, Pride came into the room. Liliana looked down at her cup angrily, pretending not to notice he was there. She really wasn't in the mood for a shouting match again.
Pride said nothing either, just walked over to the cabinet and opened it. He riffled through its contents, searching for something, then, sighing loudly, he slammed the cabinet door shut. He turned to face Liliana.
"Is there any more cider?" he asked, a stressed expression on his face.
"No . . . I'm drinking the last cup. I'm sorry," she said sincerely.
"It's okay," Pride said with a kind smile. "I just wanted something to settle my nerves a bit." Liliana smiled back at him.
"Well . . . we can share this cup. There's plenty in it," she offered.
"Are you sure?" Pride asked. She nodded, patting the chair beside her for him to sit in. He walked over to her and sat down.
"Here." She handed him the cup. Their fingers brushed, sending tingles up both their arms. They both blushed a bit.
"Thanks," he said quietly. He took a sip and put the cup down on the table. He closed his eyes for a moment and savored the flavor. "Did you put some cinnamon in this?"
"Mm-hmm," she said. She took another sip of the cider. Pride thought carefully as he watched her. He had to tell her, there was no doubt about that. He was just unsure how to go about it. Finally, he decided that there was no good way to say it and chose to just lay it all out on the table bluntly.
"Listen . . . can I say something?" he asked. Liliana made a face, groaning irritably.
"No . . . but I'm sure you will anyway," she replied sarcastically. "Go for it."
"Well . . . as much as I know you don't want to hear this . . . ," he began. "I need to say it . . . I really don't think Jack is the right guy for you. And I don't think he really knows how he feels about you at all."
"And what made you come to this conclusion this time around?"she asked calmly, even though she could feel her blood rising. He was doing it again. Just when they were getting along again, he was picking another fight about Jack. Pride took a deep breath before speaking.
"I've been around Ellie and Jack more than you have. They're meant to be together. And I think, the first chance he gets, Jack is going to go straight back - . . ."
"Stop it now, okay?!" she interrupted him abruptly. "Don't say another word. I really don't want to hear it." She practically slammed the cup down, sending cider sloshing over the sides. "Is it so hard for you to believe that Jack might really love me? That he might love me more than her?"
"No, it isn't that hard to believe. He sees all the same wonderful things in you that I do. But that doesn't change the fact that he cares about Ellie or that it's really obvious that he loves her more, Lili," Pride responded. "It's only a matter of time before he'll break your heart." Liliana stood up and started to pace.
"You know, I have had it with you! For the past two months, you've been trying to split Jack and I up!" she exclaimed angrily. "You're supposed to be my best friend! Would it hurt you to just be happy for me?" She looked at him incredulously. Pride seemed startled initially by her outburst, but then he grew angry himself, and she could see it on his face.
"Why should I be happy about you getting your heart stomped all over, Lili? Huh?" he said defensively. "And why are you getting so wound up about this? Is it because you know I'm right?!" He tried to get her to make eye contact with him, but she just looked away. "All I'm doing is being honest, telling you what I know to be true. That's what real friends are supposed to do!"
"Ha! Real friends? That's a joke!" she spat back. "You are, without a doubt, the most selfish jerk I've ever known! And believe me, I've known that for a long time, but I put up with it anyway! Not anymore! You've already broken my heart once before, Pride! I'm not about to let you interfere in my life and do it again!" Pride's eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to speak, but quickly closed it again. He gave her a puzzled look as she realized what she had just said to him, what she had just confessed. Pride stood up. She turned her back to him, biting her thumbnail nervously. What had she done? she chided herself. He put his hands on her arms and turned her gently to face him. His green eyes searched her blue-gray ones for some sort of answer, but he found nothing as she looked at him like a deer caught in the headlights of an automobile.
"What do you mean?" he asked finally. "I've never done anything to hurt you ever, muchless break your heart. You never even told me you felt that way about me before." Liliana bit her lower lip and started twirling a strand of hair around her finger anxiously. She wouldn't look him in the eye now. "Lili?"
"Well . . . now you know," she mumbled softly, nodding her head a bit, staring off vaguely.
"How long have you felt this way about me?" he inquired. She gathered her thoughts and snapped back into reality, looking at him.
"Since I was about five years old, I have always . . . I did always . . . like you," she corrected herself. "Doesn't mean I like you now, though." She glared at him hatefully and backed a little ways away from him. She was trying so hard not to break down and cry in front of him. She was through crying over him. She'd promised herself that months ago. She couldn't let him see that he'd gotten to her at all.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked.
"Would it really have made any differ . . . any difference?" Her voice cracked in the middle of her sentence, and she sank down in a nearby chair, beginning to sob. She looked up at him, tears running down her cheeks. "You've never looked at me that way. To you, I was Liliana, your best friend. The girl who was like a sister to you." Her tone was bitter, and he could tell she had been bottling this up for a long time.
"But I never said I didn't look at you romantically," he insisted.
"But you never let on otherwise, Pride. Not even once," she replied sadly, shaking her head a couple of times as her face scrunched up and she started to cry again.
"Then how did I break your heart?" he questioned her desperately. "We were never together . . . I rarely dated anyway. What did I do that was so awful?" He crouched down in front of her. She sniffled a bit, wiping her eyes with her fingertips. She had opened her big mouth and gotten herself into this. She might as well just tell him everything now. She looked at him and took a deep breath, steadying herself.
"Do you remember Deirdre's 16th birthday party?" she said.
"What?" he said in bewilderment. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Do you remember it, though? It was several months before the virus hit. She had the party on a boat that her dad rented specially for the occassion," Liliana pressed.
"Yeah, I remember it. It was a lot of fun. I danced a lot with other girls, since you didn't want to dance that evening, and I got all sweaty. And someone spiked the punch, but by the time it was discovered, we were all really drunk," he said, smiling at the memory. "I only had three cups of the stuff. But since I'd never had alcohol before, it was more than enough to leave me sotted. After that . . . everything's a blank. I don't remember anything else that happened. The next thing I know is that I woke up the morning after, still on the boat, stark naked in bed by myself. And I was hungover. Everyone else had already left, and the boat had set sail for some port on an island nearby. They had to turn the boat around and take me back to shore. It took me two hours to get home after that, because I kept having to stop to throw up. And I never drank again, ever." He laughed a little bit at that.
"Is that it?" she asked, tears filling her eyes again. He nodded, then paused for a moment.
"Actually, I do remember seeing you dancing pretty close with Ashton Ford before I blacked out," Pride added. Liliana hung her head and sobbed again. Pride put a hand on her shoulder. "It's alright, really. I knew Samuel was yours a long time ago."
"What? You knew?" Her head popped up, and she looked at him in astonishment.
"Yeah. That's what you're trying to tell me, isn't it? That you slept with that jerk Ashton at the party. I mean . . . that exchange student excuse of yours was good, but I'm not stupid." Liliana couldn't believe what he was saying. He was so off-base about Samuel being Ashton's son. She had only been dancing with Ashton to make Pride jealous, which had worked. Pride had come stomping over there angrily, even more drunk than she was at the time. He and Ashton had exchanged a few harsh words, and then Pride had led her away, off toward one of the bedrooms. Pride continued, "You were gone almost nine months, long enough to have Samuel without anyone ever knowing he was yours. But I knew. He looks just like you, Lili, aside from his smile and that dark crop of hair he has. He must have gotten that from Ashton. But it was just so obvious. Why didn't you just tell me he was your son in the first place? Was I that untrustworthy or something?" Pride took her hands in his. She looked at him strangely, as though she was looking at him, but looking through him at the same time.
"I didn't tell you . . . ," she sputtered, unable to get the words out. Pride was looking at her so understandingly. It made it hard to tell him, because she didn't want to burst his bubble of false happiness or make him angry with her again. How could she tell him this? How could she tell him that she had been in love with him all along, that her feelings had never changed? That Samuel was his son? "I didn't tell you because . . ." She looked away from him, staring out the window. A dove was sitting on the windowsill, pecking at something. As it suddenly flew away, she remembered her mother always telling her how the truth would set her free. She knew it was time for her to be free of the secret she had been living for so long with. She looked at Pride again, cupping her hands around his chin. "Samuel's not Ashton's son, Pride. He's yours," she just barely managed to whisper.
"What?" he said, his expression turning from an initial confusion to shock. She kissed him on the forehead.
"He's your son," she repeated, nodding, before getting up and running out of the room in tears. Pride fell back onto his rear from where he'd been crouching in front of her. He just sat there, his mouth slightly open in amazement. He tried to remember what had happened that night, and slowly, it came back to him piece-by-piece as he sat there. The dreams he had been having weren't really dreams at all! They were fragments of the memory of that night. He started piecing together the dreams he remembered details from.
He remembered how beautiful she had looked that night, and how he had fallen in love with her the first moment he had seen her when he picked her up for the party, and how he had wondered why he had never noticed her before. He remembered leading her to one of the bedrooms and how wonderful it felt to kiss her, to hold her in his arms, and to tell her how much he loved her. How incredible her skin felt against his and how amazing the whole thing had been. He remembered how he had promised himself, as she slept in his arms that night, that he wouldn't forget this had happened. It had been the most memorable night of his life, and because he'd been drunk, he hadn't remembered it the next day or any day after that up until now.
Suddenly, it made sense why she had been so hurt by it. She had remembered it, and when she had asked him a few days later about it, that weird question that had no relevence to him at the time, and he'd had no idea what she was talking about, he'd broken her heart without even knowing it. And after that - he'd never had the chance to tell her how he felt. He'd been bottling it up, shoving it to the back of his mind until it didn't exist to him anymore. He had to tell her he did remember now, and that he still felt the same way. He still loved her, and he loved Samuel, too, and he wanted them to be a real family. He scrambled up off the floor and ran after her.
Liliana ran toward Jack's room blindly, her eyes constantly refilling with tears as they ran down her cheeks. If she could just see him, and he held her, everything would be alright. She just knew it. When she got to his room, the door was slightly ajar, so she pushed it open and peered inside.
"Jack?" she said. Her eyes widened when she saw what was going on. Jack and Ellie were wrapped up in each others arms, kissing. Pride had been right. Jack pulled away from Ellie and looked at the doorway, seeing Liliana standing there.
"Oh, god . . . Liliana! I can explain . . . ," he said quickly, walking toward her.
"Yeah, I'm sure you can. But I really don't want to hear it," she responded. She looked at him incredulously. "I opened myself up to you, I let you in! I told you all my secrets! I let you get close to me and Samuel! And you do this?" Ellie looked at Liliana smugly.
"Lili, it was an accident!" Jack stuttered. But it was too late. The damage had been done.
"How could you?!" she raged at him in a quiet voice. "How?" She backed away from him, turning to leave, when Pride walked into the doorway. They bumped into each other.
"Whoa, Lili. We need to talk," Pride said caringly. Liliana looked back and forth, from Ellie, to Jack, to Pride, and back again. Her expression turned from one of distress to complete hatred.
"I've had enough of the three of you! You know what? You can all go to hell!" With that, she pushed past Pride and ran down the hall to her room. Pride looked at Jack questioningly, even though he knew what Liliana had most likely seen. Ellie and Jack kissing. Jack shrugged his shoulders. Ellie stood with her hands on her hips, grinning smugly.
"Thanks a lot, Ellie," Jack said irritably, glaring at the girl.
"What? I just kissed you! You didn't have to kiss back!" she exclaimed innocently. She looked at Pride, hoping for his support on this. She got the opposite.
"The two of you really make me sick, you know that?" Pride snarled. "It wasn't enough that you two have to argue like cats and dogs, that you're constantly breaking up and getting back together, that you can never make up your minds to get it together or not! You had to drag an innocent girl and my son into it!" Jack looked taken aback, as did Ellie. "When you guys finally figure yourselves out, I hope you realize how much pain you caused and that it comes back to you three-fold. Because you just hurt someone that is a better, kinder person than the two of you put together! She's been through a lot, and she deserves better than this! I hope you're happy!" He gave them one last deadly look, and then left in search of Liliana.
Liliana grabbed her duffle bag out of the closet. She started pulling clothes out of the bureau and stuffing them into the bag. She and Samuel were going to have to find a new home. She couldn't stand this one anymore. She grabbed Samuel's toys and shoved them into the bag. She didn't know who was the worst of the three: Ellie, Jack, or Pride. She was just sick of being their doormat, she knew that much. She dragged the bag over to the bureau and pushed all her toiletries into it with one fair sweep. She looked at the picture of her and Pride from before the virus that still sat on the bureau. Holding back her tears, she picked it up and threw it to the floor. The frame shattered loudly into several pieces, waking Samuel up. He started crying.
Pride could hear all the crashing and noise coming from Liliana's room as he walked down the hallway. He heard Samuel start crying and walked a little faster. As he reached the doorway, he heard something hit the wall and break. He stepped inside the room. It was a complete mess, clothes and toys strewn everywhere. Liliana was across the room, shoving more clothes into her bag.
Pride walked silently into the room, trying not to grab Liliana's attention. He picked Samuel up out of his crib and held him close. He jiggled him a little bit, and Samuel started to calm down. Pride watched Liliana as she continued to shove things into the bag, even though there was no more room. He could hear her crying as she did so.
"Lili?" he finally said. She spun around to look at him, scowling at him immediately.
"Go away," she growled at him.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"I'm leaving, and taking Samuel with me. I can't stand being here anymore," she replied, with a digusted tone to her voice.
"You're not going anywhere, atleast not with our son. He's staying right here," Pride said firmly.
"Says who? You?" she asked, out of breath. She looked at him pointedly. "He was my son long before you ever knew about him, and you can't tell me what to do with him or where to take him."
"Well, he's my son, too, and now that I know that, I'm not about to let you take him away. I'm not about to let you leave, either," he said.
"And why is that?" she asked, calming down a bit. She sat down on the bed.
"Lili . . . I may not have remembered what happened between us at the time, but I remember now. And I remember how much it meant to me when it happened and how much I loved you. I still love you, more than you know. I always have," he said.
"And?" she said.
"I'm sorry I didn't remember what happened, but that's the past. I'm here now, and that's what matters, isn't it?" he responded. "God, Lili . . . you've been part of my life for so long, I don't know what I'd do without you. You and Samuel mean the world to me. I don't want you to leave." He looked down at his son to find him fast asleep. He smiled, looking back up at Liliana. "This is what it's all about, Lili. You, me, and Samuel. I want to spend the rest of my life taking care of the both of you. I want us to raise Samuel together, as a real family." He walked over to Samuel's crib and placed him in it, pulling the blanket up over him. He looked at the shattered picture frame nearby and pulled the photo out of it, staring at it for a moment. He looked up at Liliana again. "Do you really hate me that much?"
"I don't hate you at all. I love you too much to be angry with you for long," she said softly, tears filling her eyes again. "And we won't leave."
"That's a relief," he said, smiling. "I'd hate to have to spend the rest of my life chasing after a girl who hates me." He walked gently through the mess to her, standing over her. Liliana laughed a little bit, looking up at him shyly.
"Is that your idea of a proposal?" she said with a grin. Pride knelt down in front of her.
"No. This is." He took her hand in his and looked her in the eye. "Liliana, will you do me the honor of being my wife?" He could feel her tiny hand shaking in his as the tears started to roll down her cheeks.
"Yes," she said hoarsely. She nodded. "Yes, I would like that very much." A smile spread across her face as she continued to cry. He leaned up on his knees a little bit and kissed her gently. She put her arms around his neck. He broke away from the kiss for a moment, looking at her with a serious expression.
"I was hoping you'd say that," he teased, a sly grin escaping, then kissed her again. They fell back against the bed as they continued to kiss.
So there you go – a happy ending for Pride and Liliana. Yes, the reveal of everything is a little different from where I was going when I stopped writing the story, but that's okay. The next chapter will be a different attempt at the flashbacks from earlier in the story.