Dark Haired Children, Chapter 1.
title: Dark Haired Children.
author: channings.
rating: T.
type: multi-chapter.
status: work in progress.
description: Jacob Black is haunted by vivid dreams of the girl he loves - pale, furious, deadly. But she knows her feelings now and despite her approaching nuptials, Jacob is convinced he can save her. 'Until your heart stops beating' was a promise.
A/N: I'll be updating this once a week on Tuesdays. I'll also be adding this to FF.NET so that it's easier to follow and in the future, I'll also include the FF.NET link.
- chapter one -
and i might see you in my nightmares
well, how did you get there?
cause we were once a fairytale
Jacob dove into the waves, propelling himself through the water as fast as was inhumanly possible-but still not fast enough. He could see Bella floating so many feet away-pale and lifeless, her brown hair circling her head like an extinguished halo-and he feared that he was too late. But then he was kneeling on the shore, pressing two shaking hands into her chest, pumping life back into her body, commanding her sharply to, "Breathe!" And she was gasping beneath him, her eyes flying open. Water spurted from the corners of her mouth.
"What are you, crazy?" he asked, but his voice was an echo, far off and fading. Where had they been before those moments of fear, choppy waters, and then-finally-relief?
He closed his eyes, but when they opened again, he was gripping the edge of a fancy sports car, his skin vibrating. Please, Bella. I'm begging. The day had been filled with close calls, with almost-kisses, with cuddling in his car, and he hadn't thought there was anything that could put a stop to Jake and Bells at its simplest. She wasn't ready to love him yet, but he could feel it-soon she could be. A stupid phone call had changed all that.
"For Charlie." So what if the leech wanted to kill himself? He left and Jacob was still there, hopeful, and loving, and warm. "For me."
And then she was gone, and only the stench of burned rubber lingered. Jacob wandered towards the woods, but he couldn't even phase. He just trudged forward with sad eyes and a lack of purpose. That was when he realized that Edward Cullen stole everything. For months, he had robbed Bella of happiness. In a matter of seconds, he had robbed her of her selflessness, her caution. Her father was at a funeral, mourning the loss of a friend, and she was off to Italy to save her ex-boyfriend? A Bella who existed without Cullen-Jacob's Bella-could never do something like that. Jacob's Bella had a knack for putting everyone else first even when she shouldn't.
The setting had changed, and though he was starting to wonder how, it seemed inconsequential. All that mattered was that Cullen was back, and he was grasping at Bella hungrily, was stealing more of her than he ever had before. Jake watched her whisper into the leech's neck, inhale his sickly sweet vampire stench, and he couldn't take it anymore-he punched a tree, phased, ran so fast that he could only make out the blurs of trees as he sped past them.
One minute soil and leaves were beneath his padded feet, and then he was himself again-the Jacob who hadn't yet lost himself in a tangle of fur and snarls-and he was zooming towards the rez with Bella's wiry arms wound tightly around his waist. He glanced behind him and took in her closed eyes, her cheek pressing into his back. He smiled. "Not bad for a prison break, eh?" He said.
It was much later. Time was skipping forward, jumping torturously to all the moments that involved Bella Swan, to all the times she'd broken him. "I want you to pick me," Jacob said desperately, and when Bella turned and walked away, he wasn't even surprised. She preferred skin like stone-cold and spectral -to skin that gave beneath hers, skin that was warm, skin like his.
He persisted against his better judgment. There was a kiss that hadn't counted, a kiss she hadn't wanted but he had needed. She gave them so freely to Edward, her lips ripping at his self control, and it stung all the more because Jacob knew his kisses had to be better. I wouldn't have to fight myself to keep from killing her, he thought angrily.
Everything was dark suddenly, but he didn't need sight. He could feel Bella curled up in his arms, could smell her and the sickly sweetness of vampire on her skin. Wind whistled against tent poles and Jake realized where they were, had to remind himself that they were lying that way just for warmth but then-Jacob, my Jacob. The walls he'd built came crashing down around him because he was her Jacob, and she, though she couldn't quite see it, was his Bella once more.
The tent faded away, and then he was standing outside of it, hearing about an engagement. They were so young, and he didn't want to believe it. The image of her in a white dress, gliding down an aisle was a harder vision to see than the one that had tortured his nightmares for weeks, the one where her skin was a cold marble that sparkled in the sunlight...
It was later but not by much. "Kiss me and come back," she told him. And when they were done, and he held her close to him, it was easy to imagine things were always that way, effortless for them-comfortable, easy as breathing. She chose Cullen in the end, but she'd done it so many times before then that he was used to it.
The dream-and now, he was sure that was what it was-shifted to Bella laying on Cullen's couch, her wrist pressed casually to his lips. He reared back and then sank his teeth into her, sucked at her savagely, and she screamed. The way he was drinking from her, Jacob was sure she wouldn't make it, but he was frozen in place, he couldn't save her. Instead he watched her die through tear-filled eyes.
His surroundings blurred then refocused, and he was standing on his porch, looking at a Bella who was colorless, cold. Please still be Bella, he thought as she approached with a grace that didn't fit her. Please. He couldn't count how many times he'd told her she wouldn't be Bella anymore, but he still found himself hoping he was wrong.
"Friends," she laughed, "you were right-I'm not your Bella anymore."
Her soul, her humanity, her warmth, it was all suddenly and sadly absent. Cullen had taken even the inconsequential things: like the pink in her cheeks, the sound of her steady breaths, her ability to stumble over flat, unobstructed surfaces.
Even things Jake hadn't realized he would miss stood in his line of vision, taunting him. Two children-one girl, one boy-strode up behind Bella, each with black hair and Bella's eyes. “Mom, Dad, come on!” the girl urged.
Bella turned to them with a devious smile. “This is who I am now, Jacob,” she told him. And then, before Jacob could think, before he could move, Bella lunged and the two children were in pieces.
Jacob woke with a start.
***
in the dead of night, you'll wonder where i've gone
wasn't it you, wasn't it you, wasn't it you
that made me run away?
For Jacob Black, there had never been much to be ashamed of before Bella Swan. The day she strode into his garage lugging broken motorcycles and a broken heart, he had thrown his pride completely to the wayside. Because of her he could unfurl the list of things he wasn’t proud of, at the top of which now read running away. And beneath that, being brought back by Edward Cullen.
Jake had managed a week out in the wilderness - searching for a place so far from Forks and La Push, from vampires, wolves, and clumsy human girls. It was calm inside his head, then. No Bella telling him over and over how selfish she was, no Cullen parading her around as behind closed doors he made plans for her death. There were only thick trees, grass so tall that it swallowed Jake completely, and creatures of inconsequence - insects, raccoons, deer. Until, so suddenly it was like lightning, the stench of vampire found him and Edward Cullen - sparkly visage and all - quickly followed.
“Hello, Jacob,” He said, politely. As if they weren’t enemies. As if his fiancé wasn’t planning to die for him. Jacob’s wolf eyes narrowed.
Here to kill me, leech? He thought. He squared off against the vampire, gnashing his teeth, preparing for what he was sure was a fight.
“Not today, Jacob,” Edward assured him, “I just need to speak to you.”
You can turn around, then, Jacob spat in his mind, because I don’t want to hear whatever it is you traveled all this way to tell me. He was lying and he knew Edward could see. Because his curiosity wasn’t just his - it belonged to the stupid mind-reading leech the second it reared its ugly head at the forefront of his thoughts.
“As I figured,” Cullen said, smirking. And then, savagely, “What is wrong with you, dog?”
Taken aback, Jacob couldn’t help thinking. What is wrong with you, leech?
“You have sworn never to speak to her once she is like me,” - like I need the reminder, Jacob sneered - “And then you run off a week before her wedding, before she turns?”
Jacob blinked. He realized, now, what Edward had come to say. So, in essence, you think I’m being a baby.
“Yes.”
He could tell his thoughts were betraying him. As much as he hated to admit it, he was being childish. But did Cullen really have to find him and tell him so? Thanks for that, he thought, really, did you have nothing better to do?
“She’s not alright with you gone,” Edward said. “Come back. Don't leave things on this note.”
She has you to cheer her up, does she not? Jacob thought viciously, go back and tell her to be happy with her choice. And then he bounded off, knowing Cullen wouldn’t chase him.
He crossed a state border before his heart stopped him. It beat in protest against his ribs, screaming, "It's Bella!" until his paws forced him to an abrupt halt. He had a week, right? One week before she headed for ‘Alaska’, reeking of poison and dead flesh, still carrying Jacob Black within her.
Jake turned around. One foot fell in step before the other until he was padding onto the rez and Quil and Embry were exchanging glances, calling out to Sam that, “Jake’s back!” Forget that he’d disappeared for a week, they welcomed him warmly, threw a t-shirt and jeans at him and told him to change back and eat some dinner. There were no questions, no hard stares, and once he was seated at the table in Emily’s kitchen, scarfing down his first real meal in days, it was easy to think his disappearance bore no consequences. Until, at least, Bella appeared in his doorway.
“Hey, guys,” She said, smiling and waving to everyone. Then, she turned on Jacob. “Do you think you could come with me for a second? I’m going to kill you.”
Next: Chapter 2