[August 10] [Twilight] With a Spade in my Hands

[audentiae.livejournal.com]

Title: with a spade in my hands
Day/Theme: August 10 / funeral season
Series: Twilight
Character/Pairing: Leah Clearwater
Rating: K+/PG
Warning(s): SPOILERS FOR BREAKING DAWN

with a spade in my hands

Life seemed to fall on her all at once, crushing her under a lifetime of pain and hurt that came too soon, too fast. She should have had time to regret, to mourn. She didn’t.

She buried so many people that year.

/

She’s never loved anyone quite like she loves Sam. He’s her sweetheart, the smiling face that makes her beautiful. He’s her sunshine on a cloudy day, the one who makes January seem like mid-June. He makes her love more than she thought she ever could.

She loves him, every part of him, werewolf and all.

He loves her, every part of her, but as the Quileute legends say, “his center of gravity shifted.”

Imprint trumps everything, after all.

It’s a shame she has a bury Emily along with Sam.

//

She and her father have a give-and-take relationship that suits them both fine. He would take her and Seth on fishing trips that she was always more excited for; she would let him put her dolls in mismatched clothes so long as he rocked them to sleep when she shoved them in his unsuspecting arms.

But that childhood is a thing of the past, just like the sweet girl she had been back then.

She finds her mother, head in her hands, sobbing, and she runs until she can’t run any more.

She buries her father alone.

///

She used to think she was a fairly decent person, funny, happy, loving, loved.

That was before Sam, of course, and before her father, and before this.

Now she’s not even sure what she is, let alone who.

It’s okay, Leah, she hears in her head, and howls.

You’d think it would be hard to bury yourself, but it’s not so difficult when there’s so little of you left.

////

Suddenly all the thoughts that are crowding her mind, all the thoughts that aren’t hers, fade away into nothingness. All she can hear is her own harsh breathing and the sound of her frantic heart.

Leah? she hears, and her heart almost breaks at the sound.

Seth?

A sandy wolf appears in the trees and she phases back to her naked, lonely body, if only to cry.

She hates to bury someone so unwilling to die.

/////

There’s a part of her that hates Jacob Black. She hates his heartbreak, his pitiful hope, the thrum of his paws on the ground as he runs away from what will inevitably catch him and kill him slowly.

She hates that he is so weak where she is strong.

But more than anything, she hates him for being so much like her.

It’s nearly impossible to bury someone who’s been so deeply inside her mind, almost as impossible as burying herself. Good thing she’s had practice.

//////

He comes back to haunt her in ways she never could have imagined.

She hates having him inside her head.

When Jacob walks away, he offers her a different option, a new life, healing, hope. When Seth walks away, he leaves her with no other choice.

When she walks away, a freer Leah emerges.

This time, she’s more than willing to bury Sam.

///////

The first time he phases after it’s happened, she nearly cries with the irony of it.

His heart swells in her chest with an irrational, overwhelming, perfect love. She can feel his happiness and it makes her sick.

Once upon a time, they had talked about it, about how it strips your very sense of choice away, your free will, your very self.

There’s not much left to Jacob Black anymore, she thinks.

In her mind, Jacob has died, and she buries him with tears in her eyes.

////////

Leah packed her bags with an odd determination in her heart.

Forks would be the last thing she ever buried.