I know it's been a while, I hope you guys are doing good. In my defence, this was a very hard chapter to write and I'm sorry it took so long. I couldn't think of a good name for it. But I hope you like it anyway.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Beatles or anything else you might recognize.

BLACKBIRD

Chapter Twelve

~GEORGE~

George smiled.

'Whatya smiling at,' muttered John ill-temperedly. He looked like he was PMSing. 'Fuck you, George. Fuck you for being so goddamn happy all the time. It's because of that Leah bird, isn't it?' George beamed. The two months that they had been dating had put him in a good mood.

'John, what are you doing in my apartment?' asked George sweetly. 'You and Paul practically live here. At least Paul does it openly, with all his things here. You should pay me rent.'

John cast another dark glare at George and uttered another 'fuck you, fuck the world' under his breath. He stalked out of the apartment and slammed the door. Or attempted to - Leah caught it before it hit the frame. She shut it behind herself. John stuck his head in again, glared at her and slammed the door. 'That's better!' he exclaimed from the hallway. Leah shook her head, laughing. She didn't stop laughing - she walked unsteadily to the couch where George sat and collapsed, giggling, on the carpet in front of him.

'Hello there, Leah,' said George, amused. 'What's up?'

She giggled, trying to get a word in, but the laughter just kept bubbling out of her mouth, swallowing the words. Then all at once she became poker-faced and sat up straight. 'I'm done now,' she said, matter-of-factly.

'Are ya?' George looked at her warily. She nodded. 'He just reminded me of someone,' she explained, sitting on the sofa next to George.

'Who?' asked George curiously.

'My brother.'

'You have a brother?' asked George.

'Not by blood. But he was like my brother,' she said. 'You know, he had a mop top too. But it was much longer.' She looked thoughtful for a second. 'I should visit him sometime.'

'Can I come?'

'Sure,' said Leah absentmindedly, now playing with George's hair, 'He loves you guys.'

'Huh?'

'Uh. I mean, he would love you guys,' said Leah, calmly. George frowned and shrugged. She stood up. 'Where ya going?' asked George, 'You just came!'

'I need to get something from my room,' she said, walking towards the door. George jumped up and followed her, 'I'll come with ya.' She shrugged and he followed her up the stairs.

~LEAH~

Leah was cursing herself. She'd damn near given herself away - well ... even if she'd glossed over her mistake without George suspecting anything, she sure as hell couldn't let that happen again. It was way, way too dangerous. She'd almost let slip that her brother loved the Beatles, and how would she have explained that to George? The Quarrymen weren't famous enough for that yet. She'd gotten up to give herself a moment alone to calm herself down, but she figured it'd all be okay, and she did want to spend time with George. Because as much as Leah was against steady relationships, dating George proved to be nothing she'd feared: it was fun, effortless, and he was so sweet.

They both worked by day, but at night they went out dancing, or to dinner, or to do something fun, and nights they always spent together.

He lay, now, on her mattress, against the cushions, and picked up a book she'd left lying next to it. Leah caught her breath and glanced quickly at the cover - The Catcher in the Rye - and was relieved, because it was published in 1945, and wouldn't mention anything modern that George would wonder about. She had to be careful now, making sure she didn't leave anything suspicious lying around the apartment - none of her numerous music t-shirts, including some Beatles ones, nor any of her favourite books and certainly not her iPod or digital camera.

~GEORGE~

George flipped through the book; he'd read it, a little while ago, after his brother insisted that it was a work of brilliance. Remembering the strange book he'd found in Leah's apartment a while ago - the one with funny words he didn't know and its references to the future - though it might just have been fiction - he flipped to the first page, the one with all of the publishing details, and checked the year. Sure, it was written just a couple of years ago, a little over a decade. That was the date of the copyright. And then he looked closer, to the various dates of publication below it - different publishing houses and different editions - and this one was published in 2010. He would even have let that go if he hadn't flipped the page to the title and dedication page: on the top right corner, penned under the name Stevie Willows in black, was the date 2011. George remembered that name: it took a moment for him to recall that it was the name written on the back of a photograph he'd seen in Leah's apartment that first night they'd slept together.

He'd pondered this before; in passing conversation, Leah had mentioned a bunch of places she'd been to. And she never told him about those places directly, only mentioning a little bit about them, whatever was related to the conversation they were having, so he was sure she wasn't boasting, or making it up. She'd never told him about where she was from - he still couldn't figure out the origin of her caramel skin - and he barely knew about her past, where she'd been before she arrived in Liverpool one day and knocked on his door, asking him to kill a cockroach. He remembered asking her several times - but somehow the conversation would always lead around the answer without him realising it.

'Who's Stevie?' asked George, looking up from the book. Leah was sitting on the edge of the mattress, unlacing her boots. When she wasn't barefoot or in flats, she always wore huge combat boots. Leah glanced at the book in his hands. 'Girl I borrowed that book from,' she answered, kicking off the boots and lying on her back. George poked her side with his toe and she giggled, squirming away. 'Get out, your toes are cold.'

'What's she like?'

'Huh?'

'Stevie,' said George. 'Is she your sister?'

Leah shook her head, 'Don't have a sister.'

No sisters ... so those pictures weren't of her sisters. Were they all of her? George wanted so badly to ask, but she was answering his questions, even if very shortly. She never answered his questions. 'Then?'

'She's a friend. From New York,' said Leah. She wasn't really paying attention to him. She was drawing with a pen on George's toes. He wriggled them. 'Did you live in New York?' he asked.

'For a little while,' said Leah.

'What was it like?'

'It was fun,' she said, smiling. 'But it's a big city. Gets dangerous there, sometimes.'

'Did your parents live there too?'

'No,' said Leah. 'I had a roommate. My landlady chucked me out, though. She was a bitch.'

'Sounds like it,' said George, craning his neck to see what she was trying to draw on his feet. 'It tickles,' he giggled. 'Was that where you were before you came here?'

Leah nodded absentmindedly.

'Was that where you grew up?'

She shook her head. 'My parents traveled a lot, so there wasn't really any one place.'

'Did you ever go to school?'

'No, they homeschooled me, mostly. They were professors before they started traveling ... and they didn't travel after I was born till I turned four.'

'Did you like it? Always moving around?'

'I loved it,' said Leah, grinning, 'I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world.'

George sensed the past tense when she spoke about her parents. 'What happened to them?'

'They died,' she said. She didn't say it with the simplicity of time-brought acceptance, nor with the shortness that denied questioning, nor with the chokiness of a grief not yet over. He was spared from replying, because she continued, 'After that, I kept on traveling.'

'How old were you?'

'Ten, eleven? I don't remember.'

'All by yourself?'

'Well, I made friends most places I went to.'

'What happened to your parents? I mean, how did it happen?'

Leah didn't answer. Her face was set in stone.

'You can talk to me, you know.'

More silence.

'I promise, Leah, you can trust me! Have you ever trusted anyone, ever?'

George wasn't sure what his limits were. He probably wouldn't, not till he pushed them. 'Whatever your problem is with trust, I can help you get over it. I know you have secrets that you don't want to tell, and that's okay, I don't want you to tell me everything. But don't you trust me enough to talk to me a little?'

Well aware that he was probably past his limits by now, George continued, 'Like, who were those girls in the photographs? They all looked exactly like you, but their names were different. And what about those t-shirts with strange people on them - Bob Marley and Pink Floyd? What are those? I thought maybe I just hadn't heard of them, so I looked them up. Everywhere. And I couldn't find them anywhere. What is all of that, Leah? Why do you need to hide from everyone all the time? I love you for who you are and I don't care what your past is -'

'Shut up!' screamed Leah suddenly. She was standing, and she looked enraged. 'Shut up, George! Who the fuck do you think you are, looking through my stuff like that? It's none of your business, okay? I'll trust who I want to and if I don't want to trust anyone, I fucking won't!'

'How can you expect us to love each other if we can't even trust each other?' George found the strength to shout back, anger rising inside him too - did she think it was just okay to treat him that way, expect him to love her from so far away?

'I do trust you,' she said, her voice dropping. 'More than I've trusted anyone in a long, long time. But there are things in my past that I don't like anyone to know. They're things that aren't even a part of me anymore - not a part of Leah. They're different parts of another girl. And that girl's not here anymore.'

'Yes, she is,' said George. 'She's there, inside you. You think you've shut her out, but you've just shut her in. She's in there, she's a part of you. Stop trying to hide.'

Leah was crying now. 'No, she's not! She's just a fucking photograph! Why do you care anyway?'

'Because I don't want just Leah. I want the whole girl there, not just the one you let out. I want to love her and her past, too. Whatever it is.'

Leah just stood there, tears running down her face. George didn't know if she was still angry. He wondered if she was ever going to stop crying, but he knew better than to comfort her - she wouldn't let him touch her, he knew, when she was in a mood like this. He hated to see her cry and wished he'd just let the whole thing go. Finally she said, 'I'm sorry. But if I let everything out, it ... nothing will be okay. It's better this way. I'm sorry I couldn't give you more.' George stepped forward and wiped away her tears gently with his thumbs. She gave him a watery smile and then hugged him, hard. Then she took his hand and led him to the mattress, and made him lie down. He thought she was going to take off his clothes, but instead she covered him with a blanket, and whispered softly, 'Close your eyes.' She held his hand while he did, sitting next to him on the mattress. George wasn't sure what would come next. She was singing, softly, too softly for him to hear the words, but it was a beautiful tune, the kind, he thought, that sometimes drifted through his head when he played his guitar, or when he looked at her while she was sleeping. He could feel sleep rising up to take him, and his eyes fluttered open, but she whispered, 'Shh', stroking his face, and he shut them again.

Dimly, somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, he registered a feeling - lips kissing his, so gently, and then moving away.

When he woke up, the next morning, the room was completely empty and she was gone.

Long chapter, I know. Like seriously, what is up with Leah. She's a bit crazy. If a boy was ever so sweet to me as George is to her, I would just marry him. Even though I don't believe in marriage. Incidentally, a boy who I like very much recently told me that Something is his favourite song, and like in The Perks of Being A Wallflower, he plans to give an old 45 record of Something to someone who he thinks as as beautiful as the song, someday, when he finds her. (Which I've always wanted to do too) Valentine's Day is coming up, I really hope it's me! That would honestly be the second best thing, if I can't have George himself. Sigh. There's only one love song I like as much as Something - that's Layla. I absolutely love it. The story of Lalya and Majnun, too :O What's your favourite love song? I'm guessing most of you guys have good music taste, since you're reading this fic :D anyway, thanks so much for reading. For all the complaining and effort it takes me to put up another chapter, I really do love writing and reading your reviews. This isn't the end of the story, don't worry. love, Jen.