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Disclaimer: I don’t own Twilight, but please donate to the Quileute Tribe.
Trigger Warning: Mention of miscarriages.
Mati en sheva yelu. This action will have no echo. It means we won’t repeat the same mistakes, that we won’t continue to do harm.
— Crooked Kingdom, Leigh Bardugo.
He buys her the wrong candy, but she doesn’t correct him.
Edward always bought her flowers, perfume, jewelry — all the things she didn’t like, didn’t care for, didn’t need or desired. This is perfectly human. It’s happiness.
She takes the Skittles from him and hugs him, sinks into his warmth. He is the sun, and for once, she doesn’t feel like an eternal winter.
~*~
Jacob is impulsive.
In a lot of ways, he’s so much younger than her. In a lot of ways, he’s so much older.
.
.
.
His mother died at the age of nine, his sisters had left, and his dad had gotten sick; it was all on his shoulders. It was all in his hands.
~*~
Bella had always been practical. Sometimes she feels that zip of praise when people say she’s mature for her age, but beneath that is a world of misery. She never got to be a child. Her mother was an eternal child.
For them, life was un-fucking-fair.
~*~
Being with Jacob makes her see the cracks in the facade. Edward, her perfect Edward, her angel, her demon, what was she to him? A trophy, her mind replies. A prize, a trinket. He wanted her human, no choices.
“Would he have let you go?” Jacob asks months later. He’s drinking a warm coke, hers is unopened in her hands; they watch the waves, crashing, falling, back and forth, push and pull. She’s memorized by the waves, by his warmth — alive. She feels alive. But she also feels dead inside.
She had thought the sadness would last forever, and it did. But it also didn’t.
It’s the betrayal that hurts her the most. His leaving, but her mind unraveled the fantasy.
Edward would never let her go, she sees that now. He still has his fangs in her now.
“No,” she says back bitterly and lays back along the sand. Jacob lays beside her and holds her hand. His hand is massive compared to hers, but she feels safe. She feels the protection Edward had promised. It’s real, and she feels alive. Alivealivealive.
Free.
.
.
.
When the sun sets he carries her back to his home — her home.
Home.
She feels safe here, in La Push, with the wolves. They’re her family. She is theirs to protect, and they are hers to love, to care for, and she does.
They have become her life, these young boys with problems beyond their years. They tower over her, sturdy as trees, but she wraps them up in blankets, cooks them food, wraps the wounds that will heal in hours, and dries the tears she pretends not to see. They are her’s, and she has become theirs.
~*~
He makes her a charm.
She stares in awe at how delicate it is.
The intricate details of the wolf's fur, the way it head is thrown back to an invisible moon, it makes her heart flip.
Jacob’s hands are massive. They dwarf cans of soda, her arm, doorknobs, steering wheels, her knee, but it was delicate enough to make something so beautiful for her. Just for her.
She thinks she understands love then, and it almost makes her laugh.
She was so willing to throw away her life for Edward, and that had been love for her, but now she sees it’s the patience needed to make something so beautiful, to let her heal. It was holding Seth’s hand and pretending that he wasn’t crying like the thirteen year old boy he was. It was Sam holding out his hand in truce, to accept her.
It was the way she felt looking at the ocean — it wasn’t forever, but it felt like forever.
She kisses him then, and when he leaves and gets on his bike, she watches him from the porch until he becomes too small for her human eyes to find in the dark, rainy night.
She looks down at the charm and smiles.
.
.
.
Healing.
The pain might last forever, but it wouldn’t destroy her. It wasn’t a black hole sucking her in, but a cut. It was a part of life, that pain. It was the ending of a beginning, a closed chapter.
When she looks at the charm she’s put on her bracelet, she realizes Jacob is also a beginning. She doesn’t know if he’s the story, and she doesn’t know if he’s forever, but he’s now.
Now.
She’d always been so practical. She always had to be the mature one, even as a kid. Her mother had her paying bills, making budgets, making decisions beyond her years — what did she know of these things?
Charlie had tried to force her to be a kid, to have fun, but she was stubborn and prideful… was she even useful without these things?
Fingering the charm, she even wonders about her value with the wolves. Would they love her if she didn’t bandage them? Hold them? Feign a place of safety?
But then she drops her hand from the charm, as if it burned her.
These things were not the same. They weren’t!
She did those things out of love. Real love.
Her mind thinks of Embry. He was tall, almost as tall as Sam and Jacob, with his easy smile and boyish laugh. He always had a joke on his lips and a laugh in his throat, and she thought of the fear she’d seen. She knew he worried about who his dad was, and what that meant about him.
“I really am a bastard,” he’d laughed to her bitterly, the bottle of liquor hanging from his hand. Wolves took a lot to get drunk, she’d seen it from Jacob, when he’d tried to drink away the pain and fear he had felt.
“You’re not,” she protests, reaching for him, but he pulls away and throws the bottle. It shatters loudly against the tree, it rattles, threatens to crumble, and the birds soar high from it. Bella jumps and Embry gives her apologetic eyes as he shakes, begging her to run.
She watches Embry run into the woods, watches his agony manifest in fur and paws and a blur past the tree line, and when Sam asks, she lies.
It’s a pointless thing to do, they all know one another’s thoughts, but she didn’t want to give it a life of its own.
Her mind thinks of Leah. Leah hates her, but because of her love for Jacob. It was an unconditional and unromantic thing they felt for one another, and she finds it beautiful. She’s never really had friends before Jacob, the closest would’ve been Emmett.
She’d always been guarded. She didn’t know how to just be.
Jacob was so much younger than her. He had just turned sixteen, and it seemed like the world was his oyster. It wasn’t true, but still — still!
.
.
.
“All is as it is meant to be,” he tells her while watching the waves, and his voice almost sounds bitter. He resents being a wolf; he resents the future being torn from his hands, but he’s never had a future. Not really. His sisters ran, leaving him no choice but to stay.
He was a man, long before such ceremony bestowed it upon him. He had become a man the moment his mother died, and a man the moment life bound his father to a chair.
Jacob knew what it meant to be a man. Or he thought he did.
He wanted to.
Bella thought she knew what it was to be an adult, and she did. She always did. Always had to.
“So what? Are we like a fish swimming upstream?” she quipped, her voice just as bitter as she crossed her arms against the ocean wind. He wrapped a massive arm around her, but his eyes stayed on the horizon, watching the sun disappear. He swore up and down he could hear the sun drop into the ocean
“That isn’t possible,” Bella had sighed in irritation. She was always irritated if things weren’t as they should be, and it pissed him off. He loved her flaws, though, even the ones that made him want to yank his hair out.
“What is possible?” he asked, just to piss her off. He watched her cheeks redden, her fists ball into her palms. He apologizes and chases after her, but he does it to her again and again.
If her flaw was to correct him, his was to corrupt her perfect, orderly world.
Jacob grins but doesn’t look away. “Something like that.”
~*~
Victoria almost kills Jared.
Bella is making pasta as Emily sleeps.
Emily has miscarried again, and Bella has held her close, wishing she could steal Emily’s pain away.
Bella never wanted to be a mother. She knew nothing of mothers, but she had a strong father she’d been swept away from, and she wonders what her life would’ve been like with Charlie. With Charlie could she have been a kid?
It hurts her heart to think about.
It’s June and adulthood is here, and she’s going to go to Seattle in the fall with Angela, her roommate.
Edward would’ve wanted her in Harvard or Yale — something expensive and pretentious; he’d have written the check, and she would’ve gone. How could she resist her angel? How could she resist a demon?
She’d have been the perfect trinket. The perfect little human pet.
Emily wants a kid — she’s always wanted kids. She loves her niece Claire with her pudgy legs and sweet eyes. Claire’s laugh mesmerizes everyone, even Bella.
Bella thought she hated kids. How could she not? What did she know of children?
Holding Claire, she realizes how scared she is of her. Bella is a mess; Bella will screw up this child, any child, and she wants to protect the baby from herself.
“I would give my child everything,” Emily told her over coffee. They sit on the porch, and Emily’s legs are crossed. It’s still too cold for shorts, but Emily doesn’t seem to mind in her cutoffs and hoodie Bella knows is Sam.
Kim is cleaning the living room when she freezes, she’s crying and screaming about Jared, and Bella tries to hold her. Kim is Jacob’s age, but she seems so young and helpless as Bella tries to console her.
When the boys carry Jared in, Bella shoves aside her thoughts and gets the useless first aid kit. Sam re-breaks Jared’s ribs so they’ll set correctly and she almost faints as he cries out, begging for a mercy that wouldn’t come.
Jacob makes Seth drag Kim from the room as he takes Bella to Emily.
“Don’t listen,” he whispers as he shuts the door.
Emily and her try not to — it was a long day, and for Jared, it’ll be an even longer night as he screams out in agony for Gods she didn’t know, for Kim, in a language she was learning quick. Suffering has no language barrier, and neither did her or Emily’s tears as they listened, unable to look away.
~*~
Victoria doesn’t live long after that.
Brotherhood is a powerful thing.
They talk about it over a fire; there are hotdogs and s’mores, and Jacob kisses her under the starlight on the cliffside.
“I will always protect you,” he vows, cupping her face with his hands. She nuzzles into him.
“I don’t need a vow,” she says quietly. All I want is you. She doesn’t say it. She can’t.
“I know.” And he does. She can feel that in her soul. He was scared — it was close. He could’ve lost his brothers. He could’ve lost his people. He could’ve lost her. It was for him.
He only knew one way to be a man, and that was to have someone to protect. For him, he had so many he took personal responsibility for, and she holds him, vowing to always be with him. In life, in death, even if they didn’t work out, even if they did, she’d be with him always.
~*~
During the last week of finals, she’s sitting in a knockoff Starbucks. Mostly because this one had black mugs and foam art of leaves and her favorite blueberry muffins. They’re not as good as Emily’s, nothing is, but in the cafe, she pretends to smell cedar logs and the ocean breeze as she eats it greedily.
She’s studying for econ, and she loves it. She understands numbers, budgets, supplies, demands, inflation —it’s like her own private language and Jacob hates it. He calls it evil and corrupt, and she agrees. He’s not wrong, and she shares his hatred for money, but she’s good at it.
When she stretches, her eyes briefly glance out the window. She thinks it’s a ghost when she does a double-take. It’s been months since she’s seen his shadow and she turns back quickly, knocking her drink to the floor.
The mug shatters and she almost cries as she apologizes profusely to the barista who cleans it.
Her heart is racing.
She feels like a bird trapped in a cage as a cat circles it.
She is prey, he is the predator.
She gets that now.
He could come in, he could wait for her.
“As if you could outrun me.”
A chill runs down her spine as she gathers her stuff.
“As if you could fight me off.”
She had been such a fool.
Bella wishes her wolves were with her. She smiles at the irony.
Before, she’d have given it all up for him, and now she’d give him up for the heat of her boys and the love of her women. She felt strong with the pack, she felt free and happy.
The Cullens made her feel inferior. She knew they didn’t mean to, that it wasn’t their intention; they were immortal, effortlessly beautiful, wealthy, more educated than any human could be — it was, as Jacob would say, how it was.
Why did I think I was so happy then? She wonders as she grabs her bag. It’s closing time, and she knows he’s out there. It’s cold, and she wraps the scarf Angela knitted her close. It’d been an early Christmas gift, and Bella knew she’d love Angela forever for it.
“You’re avoiding me.” His honey silk voice floats into her ear like a long-forgotten melody. Her human mind was wrong, the voice she made was nowhere near the melodic tone of his. It’s like being wrapped in Emily’s warm blanket. No! Warmer. Warmer than even Jacob, her sun.
Her heart thumps, she pauses slightly, but she forces herself to keep moving. She’s miles from her dorm, but it wouldn’t matter.
As if she could keep him out.
She can almost hear the self-loathing smile. “I see,” he says quietly. “You’re afraid of me.”
She freezes and he is behind her.
Her instinct is to deny it. She doesn’t know why. She can’t comprehend the need she has to deny this, to save him, to be that girl again.
It’s a losing battle. She thinks of her boys, her girls, the love, the pack, but she shatters as she turns around.
“No. Never!” she says, horrified as she looks up at him.
He’s almost glistening in the light snowfall — is it snowing? Does she imagine this? Does her brain turn this act into one of romance?
She wants to close her eyes for an entirely other reason when he touches her face. He’s cold, hard, and she doesn’t flinch, but a part of her that is so quiet wants to.
Run, it whispers. It sounds like Jacob, but it’s her. Only her.
“You are,” he says sadly. He frowns at her, and he looks like a martyr. It’s a knife to the heart. She feels the pack slip through her fingers like sand she’s helplessly clinging to.
“No,” she whispers, her eyes squeezed shut. It’s not in response to his accusation, though, but to what’s happening inside her.
“I shouldn’t have come back,” he says and a part of her knows it’s bait. He wants her to want him, and for some reason, despite it all, she falls for it. She falls with eyes open, but physically they’re shut as she sees the wolves run off into the woods — her woods. Her home.
“I — I missed you..” Bella whispers, her lips tremble. She wants to believe it’s from the cold, her missing him, but she knows it’s because of the war inside her. She’s losing.
Edward is a predator. She is prey. She never had a chance.
Edward takes her home. They’re quiet.
They always used to talk, mostly about her… Jacob is the talker, but it’s not forced. They could be quiet. Content.
When she gets ready for bed that night, she wonders if he’s been into her room here, or if he’s been watching her — it scares her, not knowing what he knows; how many cards did this demon hold?
She ignores Jacob’s call. He calls her three times. She doesn’t listen to the voicemails, and instead, she curls into her bed and cries. She’s scared Edward can hear her, she’s no more than a bird in a cage again. Her freedom had been an illusion, a short-lived illusion.
~*~
She calls Jacob back on her way to class. She wishes they could text, but Jake doesn’t have that kind of luxury, and she knows Edward is near, but when she tries to see him, she can’t.
“I fell asleep early,” she says in a way of apology when he answers.
He yawns, but she can hear the boyish grin in his reply, “No worries, I was being clingy,” he teases and she smiles.
“Never,” she assures him, pausing under a tree and looking up at the pale light streaming through the trees, “you never bother me.”
He laughs, “I hope you feel that way during your vacation, it’s been lonely without you.”
She wants to cry, but she bites it back with a sad smile. “What about the boys?”
“They have nothing on you, babe,” he jokes. “It’s been weird without you. I think even Leah misses you.
Bella’s heart twists and she almost sobs, but somehow she’s strong because she has to be for him. “Well color me shocked, Hell must’ve froze over.”
Jacob lets out a big bark of a laugh and she closes her eyes, letting it sink into her bones, her DNA. She wishes to never be away from that laugh. “Good luck on your exam, Bells.”
“Thanks.” She says, and then, against all her better reason, because this very well might be the last chance — the last time they could ever talk to one another again, she says, “I love you.”
There’s a long pause and she swears to god her heart stops, but then in a breath, he says, “I love you, too.”
She closes her eyes as she hangs up, and she bottles the words in her mind. The feeling is tainted — she should be happy, she should've felt dizzy and free and loved. She pockets the phone and heads to class. It doesn't matter anymore, but the show must go on.
~*~
She almost begs Angela to stay, but not even she could be that selfish.
“You sure you don’t want a ride?” Angela asks, her head tilted to the side. She’s in a knitted hat with a confetti pom-pom she made herself. Bella would’ve said it was childish years ago, back when she first came to Forks.
She thought she was so high and mighty then, but now she loves that hat — she loves the things Angela makes. She crochets to relax while she watches sitcoms and romcoms, even as she reads. Angela loves romance, but Bella never knew that before rooming with her.
It makes her wonder how they were friends. Even Jessica is closer, despite being 1,129.3 miles away.
She had been a better person thanks to Jacob. She had been a person.
“I promise Ben and I will cut back on the PDA,” she teases as she grabs her bag.
Bella grins back, “No, I’m fine. Jacob should look at The Rust Bucket anyways,” she says. The lie tastes sweet. She wants to curl into the lie. She wants to go to the truck — The Rust Bucket as Embry titled it, and despite Bella nearly breaking her hand punching Embry for it, the nickname stuck — and go as fast as it’d go to La Push, to her family, to Charlie.
Would she ever see them again?
Would she care?
When Angela leaves, she waits. She curls into the ball and puts on sports, just for Charlie. She doesn’t want to be alone…
.
.
.
“You love him,” Edward says hours later. He slips into her room as silent as a ghost, and she doesn’t move from her ball. Hadn’t moved when he’d slipped in and stood by the window, watching her silently. Her heart doesn’t race, her pulse doesn’t spike — she feels nothing. It’s worse than death, she thinks. It’s acceptance.
“He is a boy,” Edward says, and she can hear the anger, the underlying malice. She shuts her eyes, afraid for her sun, her stars — they’re her whole universe.
“He’s a friend,” she says quietly and Edward scoffs.
“He is. He’s like a brother to me!” she says, sitting up, pleading with him. The lie tasted like ash, and it’s funny to think that for a short while lies tasted like heaven; ocean breezes, sweet grasses, flowers, baking. Her heart breaks, but she refuses to feel it.
“You left me,” she reminds him. If he’s angry at her, it’d be better. Much better.
Edward gives her a harsh glare. He looks predatory then, but she refuses to yield.
“For your safety,” he hisses and she sees his sharp teeth. He could kill her before she could even scream, how could she have never feared him before?
“Yes… but life goes on,” she says gently.
He sneers at this human thing. Had he always been this way, or was she awake now?
“I didn’t want you to go, but you didn’t want me,” she says quietly, looking down at the blanket she begins to pick. Emily had knitted it as a going away gift.
“Don’t forget us, Bella,” she’d teased as she handed her a wrapped box. Bella had once hated gifts, but not from them. These had been from the heart. These were pieces of home. It was like a photo of her dad or the wolf charm, it was like her skin, her hair — these were her in a way Edward and the Cullens could never be.
“How could you believe such a lie?” he snarled, his teeth gnashing in frustration. “How could you believe I could ever stop loving you? And you believed it so easily, too!”
Tears bite her eyes. The guilt fills her, and she hates herself for feeling it. He. Left. Her. Why is she sorry? Why is she ashamed?
“I — I’m sorry!” she says, her breath coming out in harsh gasps. “I’m sorry!” When she calms, she says, “It never made sense for you to love me. To want me!”
Edward gives her a sad, sad smile. Tears bite her eyes, and she knows he knows. He’s always known.
He glides to her, and at one point she’d see this as an angelic movement, something only an angel could do, but now she sees it like a poisonous miasma. He touches her.
“It’s okay, Bella. It’s okay.”
She cries, and she’s in pain. It’s not physical. His touch is barely there, but inside she’s shattering.
He’s going to turn her, and she doesn’t have a choice.
She thinks of her ocean, First Beach — she thinks of the first time she’d gone and reconnected with Jacob, and she closes her eyes, wishing she could go back. If she knew what she knew now, they’d have talked about his traditions, the tribal stories she’s grown to love, and she’d have become his friend because there is a life where that was meant to be.
The wave pulls her back, and all she sees is Edward. She’s mesmerized, and the sand blows away with the wave. There will be no ocean, no Jacob — she knows home is out of her reach, just like her pack. Edward is there, and it’s all she can feel, see, taste.
The New Bella shatters like glass, no more than a memory.
“I — I love you. Pl — Please!”
She wants to hear Jacob’s laugh, ignore Seth’s tears, feel Leah’s rage, pity Sam’s exhaustion, tame Embry’s misery, tease Quil, smell Emily’s baking, hear her dad’s tv — gone. It’s all gone.
He hovers his hand on her throat, but into her ear, he says, “No. Not yet, Bella.”
.
.
.
She gets into his Volvo again, and he drives and drives.
He leaves her phone behind. She leaves her heart with it.
Edward loves her human, like a pet, but it won’t last forever. Forever will become something she doesn’t want.
Forever will kill her, literally and figuratively.
~*~
When he turns her a year later, she’s nineteen.
It’s agony, but she died the year before.
She thinks of Jacob before her heart freezes over. She hears his laugh.
“All is as it is meant to be,” she hears him say. She can hear the waves and smell the ocean and wet sand and forest.
“Like a fish,” she forces out to no one — Edward is sitting beside her, but she can’t see him with her eyes squeezed shut and back arched in agony as her heart turns to stone.
“Yeah, Bells. Something like that.”
And when she falls to the bed, she smiles. Edward may have thought this was for him, but she knows the truth: It was for Jacob, it was for her new self that died in that cafe, and for this rebirth.
Forever would be a long time, but hopefully not for her.
Author’s Note: Raise your hand if you, too, have wanted to fight Edward about that gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss speech he gives to Bella in New Moon! So no, not “ooc!Edward”, at all. But also, this was originally happy Jacob/Bella, but we see how that ended. Also, incase anyone cares (but I assume we all don't): No, Quil didn't imprint on Claire. Anyways, imma go cry now bye!