Ember // Chapter Eleven: Dreaming.
Pairing: Jacob Black x Reader (female).
Running...you’re running, running, running through the darkness, desperately searching for something.
For him.
Trees tore as bare skin and tangled in your hair, the wind screaming and tearing at you. It was as though the earth and sky itself did not want you to find him but you wanted nothing else but him…
Jacob.
There was something else…
Something running alongside you...no, not running. Hunting. Hatred poured from lips like venom, howl's ripping into the air. They were hunting something and you...you had to stop this. Stop him. Because this wasn’t who he was, it wasn’t what he wanted. You knew his heart as well as your own, heart wrenching in your chest as you tried to outrace the beasts in the darkness.
“Jacob!”
There he stood in the darkness, alone in a barren meadow.
Beasts circled the trees as you ran to him, Jacob shaking with emotion as you reached out towards him.
“Jay?” you gasped, taking his hand in yours. “Jacob, don’t do this. Please, don’t do this.”
“Y/N...go…”
There was something else moving in the woods. Some pale, creeping thing that moved too quickly to be caught. The howling beasts met the pale creatures in the darkness, rage ripping through the air as the war began.
“I can’t, I’m not leaving you–”
“Go! I can’t fight them!”
“You can, Jacob.”
A scream of pain fell from him, his hand ripping from yours as he fell to the withered grass. Beasts howled with his pain as the darkness swallowed him...gone. He was gone, gone away. Cries of creatures and war silence for a moment, only a moment, the silence broken by a single, soft thing…
A baby cried out.
And you awoke, ripping yourself from the nightmare. Stumbling out of bed in a panic, you rushed to check on Willow, still sleeping in her crib. Safe and sound. The sight of your daughter was almost enough to calm your thundering heart, the fear that had chilled your veins slowly warming as you watched over her.
A dream.
Just a dream.
And yet that wasn’t enough to quell your worries over Jacob, your thoughts wandering back to him again and again.
For three days, you moved through the motions, going to work and taking care of Willow, reading and embroidering and doing anything you could to try and distract yourself. But nothing helped. When you worked, when you cleaned and cooked, when you sang to your baby, you thought of him. You saw him in the pages of the books you read, in stories of sad boys in Tulsa running away from trouble, you heard him when the wolves in the woods howled.
And as you couldn’t sleep well, you saw him in the midnight sky, watching the stars glitter in the distance.
It only took three days of worrying to break you.
Knowing that it would be another night of restlessness if you didn’t, you called the number Jacob had left as the twilight set it, rocking Willow with your free arm as you did.
“Hello?”
It wasn’t Jacob that answered. The man’s voice was similar but older, a little bit rougher, and yet...it was similar to Jacob, somehow, in a way that almost flustered you, wondering if you even had the right number for a moment.
“I’m sorry, is this Jacob black’s number?”
“It is,” the man replied. “You must be Y/N.”
And suddenly it made sense who you were talking to, the fact that he sounded so much like Jacob and already knew who you were.
“And you must be his dad.”
“Billy Black. It’s good to finally put a voice to the name.”
Billy, as it turned out, was charming and funny. Knowing that Jacob must have mentioned you at some point was a nice sort of feeling but the realization as to how different your lives were was a much odder feeling. You were on your own, he lived at home; you were working and trying for college, he had just graduated from high school; you have a baby, he was young and free. It was weird. But Billy had a skill at making you forget the weirdness, even making you laugh once or twice, Willow laughing along with you, just out of the joy.
“Is that you little girl?” Billy asked, having heard her giggling.
“It is,” you replied, smiling down at her. “Did Jacob mention her too?”
“He has, actually. But on that note, did you need to talk to him? He’s out with a few friends right now. I’m not so sure when he’ll be coming back home but whenever he does, I can have him call you back.”
“No, no, it’s fine. It sounds like he’s okay and I just...wanted to check on him, I guess, I’m sorry to bother you for this long. That must sound so strange.”
“It’s not strange to me at all,” Billy replied so warmly that you could almost hear the smile as he spoke. “Actually, don’t go and tell him that I told you this, but I think Jacob’s been wanting you to call him for a while. He worried about you too.”
Billy somehow managed to distract you again for a moment, his laughter loud enough to make Willow laugh along with him (it was official, she liked this guy and so did you). But on the other end of the line, a voice spoke, too far to hear it clearly. But Bill greeted the speaker with the warmest “there you are” you’d heard since your grandfather’s passing and you knew who it was before he’d even said his goodbyes and passed over the phone.
“Jacob…”
“Hey, Y/N. Sorry if my dad drove you crazy, he’s really good at that kind of thing.”
Billy said something in the background and Jacob gave a cry of pain in between laughs, grinning at their antics.
“I think he’s rather charming, actually. And Willow already likes him, she kept laughing at his jokes even when she didn’t understand them.”
“I’ll tell him, he’ll be stoked,” Jacob replied.
And you could almost hear the smile in his voice, realizing even more just how similar he and his father were, wondering who his sisters took after, their father or their mother. But you didn’t ask that, pulled back into the conversation and away from unspoken questions when he asked you what you’d called for.
“Oh, I just,” you laughed a little at yourself, the fear you’d felt long since gone. “It must be the mom in me. I called because I was worried about you. I had this weird dream with wolves and pale monsters and you were there.”
“Wolves?” he asked softly, his voice suddenly quiet, the smile vanishing from it. “And monsters?”
“Isn’t that so weird?”
“Yeah. So weird.”
“But you’re okay, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” Jacob whispered. “I’m okay. And I was worried about you too.”
“You were?”
“Well, I mean, I kind of told you and your baby that you should move to some town in the middle of Washington and that’s a big step.”
“It’s not like you forced me to do, Jacob. I wanted to come.”
“Would you wanna come down here? To La Push?” he asked. “We could hang out. You could meet my friends. They’re really annoying but I think you’d like them anyway. I know they’d like you.”
“Would it be alright if I bring Willow with me?”
“Wouldn’t be a party without her. I’ll pick you both up.”
You couldn’t even count the times you’d wanted to hang out with your friends or go to something, but Willow wasn’t welcome (most college students aren’t keen on having a baby around) or you couldn’t afford a sitter. But here was Jacob, welcoming her with open arms and you couldn’t stop yourself from smiling, wondering if he could hear your smile too.
“It sounds perfect.”
