Hi, so this is my first story for this pairing and I have to admit I am liking it so far so let's see where it goes! I hope you all enjoy this story and this chapter.

Leah is criminally underused and criminally treated. She's the Rosalie of the Wolf Pack. Seriously the shit that she goes through because she's not skipping at the idea of being Emily's maid of honour (and seriously what the fuck possessed Emily to ask that? Like seriously Stephanie). So this story is a love letter to Leah.

I also have a huge amount of respect for Embry's Mom. Not sorry. Also I know she has a different name in the books to here but here she is Layla and she was seventeen when she got pregnant.

Also on Embry's father...I know a lot people assume it is Joshua Uley but somehow that seems to nice and neat, I also think it's pretty ironic, that both Jacob and Quill end up being friends with a kid who might be their half brother. So my views on Embry's Dad is that is has to be one of them and I do tend to lead towards Billy just for reasons I can't name. The council bit deciding whose parents should know and who doesn't is my own and I know it does not correlate with the books but then again this whole story is AU so (shrugs), I just think it's a fun angle to explore that everyone is terrified with who Embry's father could be.

Again, all of this is my own design, the characters belong to someone else, I am just playing in my writers box.

On a note with Chelsea-As a teenager I thought her powers were cool, now a a woman grown I think she essentially is the definition of cohesive control, she forces the Volturi to stay together stripping them of free will. Bitch needs taking down and my girl Rosalie helped by Leah were the woman to do that. Any conversation that Leah and Rosalie might have had about this is one hundred percent fictional and probably wouldn't have happened even in the realms of Fanfiction, but wouldn't it be wonderful if it had?

Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine.

Please Read and Review.

I have been struggling a little recently but hopefully I can now bring you the Final Three, yes THE FINAL TWO chapters of this story sooner rather than later. I didn't go into detail with the battle simply because it was always a bit more of a Cullen fight for me rather than a wolf one regardless of how it was described in the books.

That's it from me, enjoy!

A First Time For Everything

Chapter 21-Just Getting By

Leah goes back home and finally talks to her mother. Perhaps it's time to move on from the past and look towards the future.

Eventually they went home.

There was no way of prying Nessie from Jacob so Paul who was going to see Rachel said he would pass on that he had survived to Billy, Leah wasn't sure what Jake had then said to Paul but both of them had looked at each other with a bit less hostility than before so that had to be a good thing. Right?

They were invited back to the house but Leah had no interest in playing nice with the vampires. To put it frank she was exhausted and she needed a bath, a very fattening pizza, a glass of wine, a good night's sleep and Embry on his back pronto and it differed in what order.

But she needed to go home.

She was tired.

And she was. Leah was tired of the near constant danger that seemed to follow her and her friends around. It had started when Bella Swan had come to town and had never stopped. She was tired of the heartbreak and the heartache that seemed to follow. She was tired of the constant sickening gossip that followed her and Emily when they were in the near vicinity, she was tired of mourning the life that she should have had. She was tired of it all.

More than anything she was sick and tired of the constant anger that she felt towards her mother.

Watching Esme Cullen embrace her children with all the fervour of a mother made her feel strangely melancholy for her own. It was not that she had, had a bad mother, far from it. It was that even when she had known the reasoning behind her mother siding with Emily, even when she had known that Emily had been imprinted on, she had felt terribly, horribly betrayed. She still couldn't understand why her mother had done what she had done but maybe if she couldn't forgive just yet then maybe she could start forgiving.

She, Embry and Seth ran back to the border and then transformed. There was something nice about walking back home holding hands with Embry their fingers entangled and Seth skimming stones and throwing sticks into the air. They were free at last to live their lives free of the constant fear of the Volturi, of the Newborns, of the Cullens…of that red head…whatever the hell was coming next.

Embry stopped as they came back to his house.

"I should go in" he said jerking his head. "If I know her she's back as soon as Paul went back to Billy's and I need a hug from my Mom."

"I hear you" Seth muttered. "I also need a hot bath and a sleep"

"I am having the bath first" Leah intoned.

"Ah Leah! I will be half an hour, once you're in there it's all night!"

"I need time to look good you know"

"Cause you always take so much time in your appearance don't you"

"Okay" Embry said looking between the two of them. "I am going to go now…I'll err…call you later?"

"Sure" she said and she hated that she was blushing but actually for once she kinda loved it as well. She loved it when he kissed her gently (here Seth looked away looking very disgruntled) and then he skipped off into the trees tall shoulders broader than the average tree and there she was, close to melting like sugar in a sauce pot at the sight of it.

There was a pause as she watched him and then Seth with an eye roll that bled into his voice scoffed into the silence forcing her to turn around and look at him.

"Good God you are like a sickening teenager in love for the first time" Seth said with false irritability. "Isn't that supposed to be my job?"

"I don't know" she said sticking her tongue out. "I always thought infancy was supposed to be your job"

"Bitch"

"Dog"

"Bath" he said solemnly and then before she could stop him he had transformed (leaving her to pick up his shorts the little shit) and he had leapt over a log and ran down the trail to their house which meant that by the time she walked home he was going to be in the house, in the bath and their Mom was probably cooking the little gremlin chicken and fries.

She sighed.

She was not in a great mood to transform and run down the path so instead she walked at a sedate pace. There was still things that had to be discussed she knew, with Embry, with her Mom, with Jake. She needed to tell him that he was losing his Beta because she had meant the vow she had said to herself in that clearing, she was done. She was done with the whole lot, she was done with the night shifts and the transformation and she was done with the pity parties. And to be honest she was good with not going to that wedding. She suspected deep down that Sam was good with it too. It had only been Emily and her constant presence and her constant need to have things be back to normal between the two of them that had forced her to accept the green fucking dress in the first place—and it wasn't even a nice dress!

No…she would find a middle road though. She would skip the ceremony completely. She would not sit there and watch Sam say his vows to another woman. It wasn't even romance in that case—it was about self-preservation. She wanted to walk out of this with her dignity in tact and she wanted to stop transforming and sitting in a church and seeing everyone look at her when the Priest said Speak Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace was quite frankly too much to bear.

But she would go to the party.

Nothing quite frankly would make her feel happier than to get drunk on Sam's dime.

Besides…she wanted to see her brothers dance.

That had to be worth a bit of askance looks.

Leah was done being the nice guy in it all. Screw it.

Right now…she was only thinking of her own happiness…and her own happiness led her too here.

Her Mom was waiting for her when she got back. Leah could see the tightness in the way she gripped her mug and the way she had not been connived by Seth coming home earlier and telling her that both of her children had survived. She took in the sight of her mother her hair a mess her eyes creamy with shadow and lack of sleep and she wondered just how many other mothers in La Push would look like this when their sons came home.

"Hey" she said sitting down on the decking. "Seth in the bath"

"Yep. I said I would order some food, I was thinking we throw it all to hell and order whatever you want, Seth wants pizza. You want to share Thai?"

"Thai? For breakfast?"

"Yeah. And Chinese, could annihilate some prawn toast right now"

Leah shot her Mom an amused look.

"You must have had one hell of a night if you are letting us have all that junk food for breakfast."

Her mother shot her a look that was less amused.

"Darling I haven't slept since this nightmare began, haven't slept well in even longer…this is my third bottle of wine and Layla Call came round at one in the morning with Billy—thank God he was driving—with twelve Krispy Kremes. We sat and waited and ate and drank like we were teenagers and neither one of us spoke about weather or not we would lose our children. I am going to recover from this for months, so yes…yes Leah…order whatever fucking food you like"

There was a pause as Leah took the mug that was out of her mother's loose hands and downed what was left of the coffee.

"You got more of this?"

"Coffee or wine?"

"Either I'm not fussy"

"What happened? And don't spare me any detail"

Leah sighed and she looked out over the yard and she needed it, needed to look at her childhood yard where she and Seth would play and then she gathered her wits and her words about her and she began to speak.

She spoke for a long time about what had happened, about Bella and Edward and Bella's plan to get her daughter out even if it meant the rest of them dying. She spoke about the Volturi, about the guard, she spoke about Chelsea and what she had done and what she could do and what she had been planning to do. She spoke about Nahuel and the other half vampires out there and the sire of them all who thought that it was a new race he was building, she spoke about Bella's shield and Bella's powers and that it meant that they were safe and then she spoke about Alice and she spoke about Alice's return, how she had brought the vampires that had saved them and how they were all aloud to go home with only one casualty and that was the snitch.

She spoke until she couldn't speak anymore purging it all out and then when she was done her mother sighed.

"Well…I suppose that's the best of a lot of bad scenarios" she said finally. "I didn't want…I didn't dare hope that it wouldn't come to a fight, thought Layla was going to kill Billy and his bloody cheerful optimism but I have to admit I didn't think that you both would make it out alive. I have gone through some nights but that one…" she shuddered violently. "I hope to God Leah, and every deity out there that you never, ever have to live through a night like that."

Leah said nothing and then…

"I've decided something" she said finally. "I don't want to transform anymore. I don't want to be angry anymore and it's all tied into that, into Dad, into you and Emily and all of it. I'm with Embry now. I'm happy with him now…I want to be happy with him and as a human if I can…I want to see if I can get my life back before this…thing that I have become takes over again. I want to have a life. I want to go to college. And I want to stop most of all, being angry with the world and that means that I have to let it go. So I am not going to Sam and Emily's wedding, I wont be a bridesmaid. I will go and pay my respects at the end of the wedding, I will go the wake and eat the free food but I am not going to the ceremony. If you want to, if Seth wants to then that is fine. But I am not going."

Her Mom said nothing for a second and then…

"When we had that talk, I didn't…I had to do a lot of soul searching. Last night was the perfect time for it and I sat in the room I shared with your father for thirty years with a glass of more gin than tonic and I thought about what you said and I realised that somewhere along the line I had failed. Somewhere along the line I had let you and maybe even your brother but certainly you, I had let you believe that you were not as important to me. Somewhere between loving your father and losing your father and grieving your father which is a grief that I feel every day I somehow…I somehow let you think that you weren't important and that…that is something that I have to wear on my shoulders every day. But Leah…I love you. I love you and your brother more than anything in the world and certainly more than my own life. I don't…If I have ever made you feel anything otherwise then I am sorrier than I can ever say. So you do whatever you gotta do to be happy. And I promise you that I will be standing right by your side when you do it."

She reached out with her hand and Leah took it. They linked hands and the two of them, mother and daughter and Leah though that while it might not be perfect it was a start. The two of them just getting buy in this fucked up world where the normal met the supernatural as easy as it was to breathe.

"I want us to start again Mom" she said quietly.

"I want us to start again too Leah" her Mom said just as quiet. "I want that more than anything"

She gripped her Mom's hand and she leaned her head on her Mom's shoulder and her Mom gently kissed her on the top of her head.

There wasn't a need for words, neither one of them had to say I Love You.

They were mother and daughter.

They both knew it to be true.

And they stayed like that until Seth at long last (with a smile frightenedly his father's) came out of the bath.

And yeah, that so needed to happen!

Next Chapter-The Penultimate Chapter-Leah shares her plans with her brother and with Embry who too makes a decision about what life looks like going forwards.