Title: Dirty You Up, Bring You Down
Rating: PG
Pairing: Jacob/Bella
Warnings: spoilers through Breaking Dawn
Word Count: 427
Summary: Written for the
sortofbeautiful drabble contest. Prompt: meet me on your best behavior/meet me at your worst
Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me and I am not making profit off of this in any way. Twilight belongs to the Stephenie Meyer.
Author's Note: Comments = ♥. Originally posted
here. Thanks so much to everyone who voted for mine <3
Bella's never pretended she wasn't a hypocrite at heart. Take take take and never give. Lead on and on and never crush.
At least, deep within her most private of thoughts, she is honest with herself.
She doesn't want Jacob to find happiness with anyone else.
She wants him for herself.
Jacob's seen her at her worst. Worse than she ever could have imagined she'd act. More deadened than she ever could have thought she'd feel. Broken to the point of recklessness, battered to the point of cruelty.
She's only ever seen him at his best.
When Jacob figures out how to break the imprint, she's excited. Renesmee's her daughter. She's excited.
Jacob goes to Leah.
And then she's deeply, bitterly jealous.
Bella didn't get what was wrong with her own relationship until she saw Jacob and Renesmee's. Quil just became the world's greatest babysitter. Sam had always been associated in her mind with the word intense, whether it be gang leader or world's most devoted lover. But Jacob - Jacob she knew well. She knew his sunrise grin and his headstrong determination. His love for all things greasy with engine oil or warm straight out of the oven. And, most of all, his heart as big as the sun.
Everyone joked that her daughter should be called Nessie, but Jacob's the one who turned into a monster. A creature facing an eternity of life as a living dead. Brainless. Prisoner to leave. Utterly focused on one entity to the exclusion of the rest of the world, including himself.
Including her. (She's admitted it. She's selfish. She's cruel. She's a hypocrite at heart.)
So she realized she had to leave. Edward told her he'd leave with her. They really did make the world's worst parents.
She made him stay with the rest. It wasn't for Renesmee's sake.
She's alone now. She deserves it. She wishes she wished him and Leah happiness together, but she doesn't. Leah deserves the warmth he emits, this she knows as truth.
If Jacob ruined the spot he’d carved out for himself now, the point it had taken him years to reach - a life free of anything sleepless or hard and cold as marble, filled only with those he could naturally love, father, sisters, lover, the opportunity to live a normal life - it would be the most awful, most reckless, most selfish thing he'd ever done.
But one day he appears on the doorstep of her tiny house.
Now she sees him at his worst and finally, finally, they fit together.