"So it's true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love"
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
Leah knows that love means pain. When she looks into Jacob’s tortured eyes all she can see is a mirror reflection of herself. His world is one person and one person only. Bella Swan seems like an ordinary girl all around, very subtle in her beauty and not overly riveting ─ but to Jacob she is everything. If Leah looks long enough at her, she can see something underneath the austere facade.
There is a keen perception in the girl’s eyes and an abnormal acuity in her face when she listens to a person speak. The words Bella says come from a soul much older than the body. It is moments when watching the two teens interact, Leah can see the very same dangerous game that she and Sam played once.
Love became a thing most closely intertwined with hate and heartbreak. Jacob would get heartbroken eventually because the girl’s entirety belonged to another, and Leah knows what that looks like.
Feelings she’s been trying to push down for the betterment of others ─ for the pack ─ slowly boil to the surface. Once upon a time, a boy’s heart was hers but the beastly thing that has always ruined everything good in her life destroys that, too.
She doesn’t want what destroyed her life to destroy Jacob’s. Besides Seth and her mother, Jacob has been the only family to ever, if even for a second, see her. Everybody except Jacob, under Sam’s reign, has scummed to the situation, not willing to learn or attempt to help her learn what it means to be a woman and a wolf. The only she-wolf.
Every day the feelings only multiply themselves until they are ready to detonate. Emily and she used to be close, sisters in spirit. The gnarly scars give Leah a sick sense of satisfaction because she knows that in one form or another Emily is just as much a prisoner to the curse that plagues them all.
When the time comes, when she finally can do it, Leah will leave the things in her life that have caused her so much pain: Sam, Emily, vampires. Never will she be able to leave her feral condemnation but maybe she will be able to ignore it.
At the current time, she will focus on things that really need attention, like, the Cullens. The irony of the affairs isn’t lost on her. Leah could laugh about the absurdity of Sam’s contradicting perspectives; the shape-shifters are just as much monsters as the blood-suckers are.
They both kill. They both are cursed. Cursed to love too much, feel too much, to see too much. Ultimately, there is an eternity ─ if they so wish ─ to revel in special pains no human will have to suffer in their lives ─ how lucky. Why would Bella ever want to give up her precious gift of humanity?
Truthfully, Leah is scared to spend her whole life pinning, in some part of herself, for a person who will never love her and for a life she will never get to have. Because what is her job but to find love and have children? Apparently, her life has no meaning beyond that to the pack, and a disgusting part of her agrees.
...
Eventually, in the meaningless entity that is her life, things settle down for a second. The vampire army is subdued by another vampire organization. She should be able to relax, but for Leah life will never be calm. The only time it’s even a bit tranquil is when the thing that she hates most is her and she’s it.
She’s good at suppression and Leah easly blocks off the chatter in her head. It’s a pretty lie wrapped up in a neat bow because even the most classified part of her are scrubbed raw for all to see. Yet another reason why she should leave the pack.
Wind and rain tears through her fur in a way that’s almost painful but Leah needs it, needs it. The little bit of physical pain she gets when in her wolf form reminds her of who she is and what she’s become.
Giving over to her other part is frighteningly easy and everything ─ the smells, the sights, the sounds ─ overwhelm Leah. For a few minutes, the wolf and she are intrinsically one.
It doesn’t take long for them to sense the sharp smell of old blood, and they are off in the direction of their next meal. Faster... faster... faster.
Just around that tree.
The thing that they see gives Leah enough shock to shift and sagger a few steps back. The wolf knows the blood is stale but the snow is still alarmingly a deep rusty mauve.
Her face is familiar. Deadly so. Perfect in its severity and feline in making. It’s the face of the women they fought, though, Leah doesn’t remember her name at that second.
No cuts are visible on the marble skin that should only belong to a Michelangelo sculpture, and Leah finally knows that vampires can in fact bleed even if no harm is evident. As if she was Sleeping Beauty, the body is positioned pristinely still, and a light dusting of snow covers her, but with first-hand experience, Leah holds no folly innocence of what the creature in front of her can do.
Reluctantly, Leah steps forward to peer at the shape even if she could have seen it in perfect clarity where she was standing before. A wild main of harsh orange-colored hair splays around the person’s skill like a halo behind a saint in a mural.
Shouldn’t she be dead? Well, more dead?
The woman doesn’t blink or breathe and for a solid few minutes, Leah thinks she really is dead. Possibly she has a death wish because Leah creeps forward a few more steps to look at the women’s eyes.
Blank. She’s startled at how blank they are. There’s a look of defeat, of absolute defeat. More painful is the loss; possibly the loss is from the war that ended in defeat on her end and victory on Leah’s but she knows better than that.
The thing that frightens her most is the look of love bygone. Familiarity curls a fist in her stomach because that look is one that Leah carries around with her every single day.
“Oh, how the mighty have fallen.” A voice interrupts Leah’s thoughts.
She looks down to see the bitter melancholy in the woman's face.
...
Ma moitié, the woman whispers to her on the days where Leah feels lost, feels like there’s no way forward.
It always escapes Leah’s mind to ask her what it means and who taught her the phrase. Was it a friend, a family member, a lover? The word lover sits with Leah, feeling forbidden. They’ve never talked at length about what they were to each other.
To Leah, the woman has filled in a spot long left abandoned and scarred. She wanderers if maybe it’s an unhealthy attachment ─ parasitic even. It really only matters that she can stay and that the woman doesn’t seem bothered because maybe she needs Leah just as much.