Flipside

[mogseltof.livejournal.com]

Title: Flipside
Author: Mogseltof
Fandom(s): Twilight
Rating: PG -13
Word Count: 4 389
Inspiration: The idea of imprints being the perfect true love.
Warnings: Implications of horrible things. Just generally depressing with some Angst A Plenty and some insinuations of, well, violent death and other violence.
Summary: The other side of the coin for the perfect match.
Author's Notes: I kind of went all out – I think I got every imprint bar those not mentioned by name (if there are. I can’t remember). Rachel’s kind of got out of control though.

Emily

Admiring, she stared at the web page. Emily meant ‘admiring’.

Emily clicked out of the window and stared at her slightly swelling stomach gloomily. Admiring didn’t quite have the same ring to it. Admired maybe. That was all Sam ever did. Admired.

He admired the hairstyle she wore because he thought it looked good.

He admired her bravery about going for a second kid because he’d wanted a big brood, even though she’d cried for days after the first and the doctors had said that it maybe wouldn’t be wise to go for a second.

He admired her stoic way of bearing with Leah’s “inability to understand” the fact that he had to break off his engagement with Leah to be with Emily.

He admired her scars to prove that he loved her no matter what.

Emily hated being admired. She despised it.

She got up from the computer and picked up her bag, despite the fact that the little timer in the corner told her she had twelve minutes and thirty two seconds left. The librarian smiled on the way out – she had returned her book early, and, though the woman behind the counter didn’t know it, unread – but she didn’t return the expression. She wasn’t sure if she could smile, actually smile anymore.

Admired. It probably wasn’t the only meaning of Emily, and she was fairly sure she’d seen others, but the fact that it had been the first one she’d clicked one out of idle curiosity sent a deep shiver up her spine and she didn’t care about other meanings anymore.

That’s all she was. Something to be admired despite it’s faults, like her stubbornness, and her deep attachment to her family that wasn’t Sam, and her wanting the ability to decide things about herself.

Slowly Sam had been erasing the faults. He didn’t want her to be so stubborn. He didn’t want her to worry about Leah’s or her parent’s or her sister’s feelings. He didn’t want her to lose her femininity.

And if Emily ever got free, her femininity would be the first thing she lost. Her mind fantasized about her perfect life – freedom, earning Leah’s forgiveness and love back, being able to wear her hair the way she wanted, being allowed to decide whether she wanted to threaten her life with a child that could kill her.

Sam was constantly reassuring her that she could do whatever she liked. The scars on her face remained slightly cooler than the rest of her though, and Sam would always kiss them, always reminding her that there was no such thing as freedom left in her gilded cage. She was there to be admired and adored and to fulfil her role. Choice was a fallacy that she didn’t think she knew the meaning of anymore.

Leah

Emily in a hospital bed. Again and again and again. Seeing a Emily and Sam at their altar, the scars still livid on her cousin’s face as she married Leah’s fiancé. Emily’s constant reassurance’s that she was fine, that she was so sorry, that yes she really loved Sam…

The stick Leah was fiddling with snapped under her hands. True love was never something she had believed in. Destiny, fate, soul mates, fated hearts, one true loves, imprints, eyes across the room… she had never believed in it. Now even less so.

Leah had always believed in plain love – being able to laugh with someone, the giddy feeling of happiness whenever you saw them, looking into your own future and seeing them by your side for every major milestone, accepting the fact that they were going to end up a hell of a lot like your future in-laws and not really minding.

Leah had always believed in heart break – crying for days, thinking it was the end of the world while knowing that you had to go into work or school the next day, ice cream and chocolate and your friends with funny stories and action movies, continuous girl outings, pooh-poohing of the crass commercialisation holiday of February fourteenth.

Leah had always believed in moving on – waking up and not feeling teary because they weren’t there, being able to watch romantic movies without bursting into tears, buying half-priced heart shaped chocolates on February fifteenth, going out and enjoying flirting with guys, looking forward to what the day would hold, all of it after you had lost someone you thought you wanted to be with forever.

And then the supernatural had moved in and turned everything topsy-turvy. Apparently there was such a thing as true love and soul mates. Leah wanted nothing to do with it if it involved ripping off someone’s face to gain their acceptance. Broken hearts were the domain only of soul mates torn apart by extenuating circumstances. Plain love wasn’t good enough. And if you didn’t move on from plain love you were a heartless, cold, calculating bitch with a shard of ice instead of a soul.

Another stick snapped in Leah’s hands.

She wanted to move on. So badly. She wanted nothing more than to wake up and not to have to deal with everyone treading on glass, and not to feel incredibly bitter every time she saw an ad for the next epic romance at the movies, and to be able to face the day without some kind of feeling of dread, and more than anything she would give everything in the world not to have to sit inside her ex’s head as he mulled over his pure true love for her cousin.

She shrieked and flung a full arm of a tree across the small clearing. Shuddering, she collapsed into a heap, clutching at her knees, tears stinging at her eyes. She could feel the sensation of fur wanting to leap out of her skin and claws to burst out of her fingers and she fought it tooth and nail, not willing to share her rage with every other guy in the pack.

It probably wouldn’t make a difference to how they thought of her, she realised miserably.

And with that thought she succumbed to the wolf, to the life she hated, to what had driven everyone she once thought she could rely on away from her. She gave in to the beast and their expectations. She handed over her life to the misery which condemned her.

One day, she promised herself. One day, I’m going to escape.

Kim

Kim’s favourite book had always been The Princess Bride. There was something about the idea of true love that always clung to her. She liked the idea that one day she would be bound, body and soul, in a relationship where she and her one true love would do anything for each other – storm a castle, give up one’s freedom for the other’s life, refuse to accept a loss of the other’s freedom as a victory of any kind.

Jared, she reflected later, was not a Wesley to her Buttercup.

She remembered having a crush on him, remembered the feeling of being in love with being in love with him – she decided that she could never have been truly in love with him for himself. She liked the idea and the feeling of being in love more. Something in the pit of her stomach told her that that was half of Jared’s attraction to her anyway. She remembered sneaking glances at him in class, sometimes staring across the cafeteria, imagining him doing simple things like combing her hair with his fingers, or giving her chocolate out of the blue. In her head, they had grown close and been on romantic dates and had truly fallen for each other.

In reality, soul mates were a lot less romantic and fun and wholesome than her history class daydreams ever were.

They day it had happened she had been at her locker, collecting her books for first period English when she had felt the prickle of eyes on the back of her neck. Turning around she had noticed Jared, who had smiled brightly at her. She blinked and grinned back, mind shrieking in excitement. “Hey, Kim isn’t it?” he’d asked.

A small part of her had drooped. Great. He doesn’t even know my name. “Yeah,” she said, shutting her locker. “That’s my name, don’t wear it out!” Oh I did not just say that…

He grinned. “It’s a very nice one too. Would you like to go on a date sometime? Friday maybe? Catch a movie?”

Internally her jaw dropped. Jared chuckled, and Kim realised that it had dropped externally too. No way… “I – yes!” she blurted happily. “Movie! Friday! Yeah! Great!”

Jared was grinning widely and Kim vaguely realised she wasn’t forming coherent sentences. “Cool,” he said. “I’ll see you around.”

Kim watched him walk off, brain fuzzy as the bell rang over her head. She only realised when she got to English that she’d left her copy of Frankenstein in her locker. Jared found her at lunch, and when she mentioned it as a tentative joke, he’d apologised for flustering her and lent her his own copy.

Now, six months later, her English class had moved on from Frankenstein and Kim found herself comparing her two copies of the book. Her own was battered, well worn and loved, she had annotated the shit out of it and there were tabs sticking out all over the place. The copy Jared had given her was neat with a few tabs in it, and when she opened the front cover it said ‘To Kim with love, Jared’.

She sighed and replaced the books. She hadn’t done quite as well on that essay as she’d hoped, but she didn’t really mind. Slipping into her seat she flipped open her copy of the poetry book they were studying.

Jared had taken her to the pack home three months after they started dating, just as Kim had been starting to have her doubts as to whether a relationship with him was what she really wanted. Staring across the table at Emily, the bottom of her stomach had dropped out of her, and she’d barely been able to keep the contents of her stomach in her digestive system. That was what they called true love?

Kim couldn’t see the wonder in that. She definitely couldn’t see Sam rolling down a hillside yelling “As you wish”. It was not what she dreamed about.

Kim stared blankly at the poem. All that was running through her head was that day and that idyllic scene with Emily in the kitchen, baking for a pack of teenage werewolves. And Emily with the scars across her face.

She began to trace the outline of something in pencil up the side of the page. She didn’t think she liked Jared anymore. It was like all her other crushes – kinda short, unfulfilled and really only fun when she didn’t know him. She didn’t really like him that much. He was patronising and treated her like she could barely stand on her own two feet. The whole pack treated her like that because that was what she was like in his head.

The pencil lines on her page made the face of a gnarled tree trunk. It wasn’t a very good sketch, and Kim let the pages flip shut over it with a sigh. Jared was in true love with a complete stranger. And he’d chosen to design that stranger on top of her.

She was sixteen. And probably lost for life.

Rachel

He was kind of hot. Rachel decided as she cracked open the can of coke. Very cute too, the way he was watching her with those huge puppy dog’s eyes. She upended the can, taking long swallows. He was her younger brother’s friend though. Emphasis on the younger. He looked a lot older than she figured he was – mind you, so did Jacob. He looked a lot older. It was kind of creepy.

“You need to go off the steroids, little bro,” she joked, reaching up to ruffle his hair. He scoffed and batted her hands away, though not before shooting his friend – Paul? Patrick? Something with a ‘P’ – a kind of half-worried, half-disgusted look.

She rolled her eyes. Like he had to worry about any of his friends hitting on her. She’d shut them down before they got out the first cheesy pick up line. Though… it was always fun to press her brother’s buttons a little…

“So, Paul, isn’t it? How d’you know Jakey-kid?” she asked, leaning over the counter, smiling friendlily and fiddling with a strand of her hair. Jacob made a gesture that was half-way between an eye roll and a face-palm, leaving Rachel mildly impressed at her brother’s ability to convey his annoyance.

“I-uh-we,” Paul said, looking like he’d been completely clothes-lined. “We’re in the same werewolf pack!” he blurted.

Jacob thumped his head against the counter.

Rachel laughed, taking another sip of coke, completely unable to take either of them seriously anymore. “Werewolf pack?” she choked out through her giggles. “Is that the name of your little gang? Your World of Warcraft team?”

Jacob looked strangely hopeful at that particular response, but then Paul flushed and turned into a large brown wolf and he lost the look. Rachel spat coke clear across the room. Then she screamed. The wolf, the werewolf, bounded across the room and sailed clear out the back window with a long leap, Rachel watching it wide-eyed.

She screamed again. Her dad wheeled in from the next room. “What is going on in here?” he asked with a slight frown.

Rachel moved her mouth noiselessly. Jacob sighed and turned to him. “Paul imprinted on Rachel,” he said as if he were reporting the mail they’d received that day. “Then he got so embarrassed that he phased.”

Jacob stood up properly and turned to go up to his room. Rachel suddenly found her voice. “Oh you are so not getting away with just that!” she yelled. “I want a proper explanation!” her voice trailed off into a squeak as Jacob turned into a large wolf and bounded out the window as well. “Dad?” she asked weakly, turning to him.

Dad had told her to sit down, and he told her all the old legends, only this time the part of her body that contained her survival skills really believed them this time, and then Jacob and Paul came back and Paul had apologised profusely and explained that he had just fallen in love with her, had imprinted – whatever the hell that meant –

And just as she had opened her mouth to hotly tell them where they could stick their imprinting shit they had told the happy, oh-so-romantic story of their first imprints and how they’d had to overcome their hardships and a horrible, wicked woman who stood between their pure true love and with a sinking feeling in her stomach, Rachel realised that she didn’t really have a choice about it at all.

She turned to her father – Jacob and Paul didn’t really seem to care about whether or not she liked that she was becoming some kid’s girlfriend because he had a mystical mojo crush moment – but he smiled at her, patted her on the shoulder and told Paul, mock stern, not to hurt his girl.

She stared in disbelief as the people around her decided her future, and when a furiously blushing Paul kissed her on the cheek she was too surprised to take much notice, which they all apparently took as her assent and approval of the situation.

They took her out to meet the rest of the pack and the happy imprints of Sam and Emily. Rachel felt a lurch in her stomach just looking at Emily’s face and a small voice in the back of her head whispered; that’ll be you if you aren’t perfectly happy, you see.

She felt dizzy, rushed, sick and completely out of place – she had only gotten back from college that morning – but no one seemed to notice.

Over the next few weeks she tried to get to know Paul, even to fall in love with him, to be friendly, to know him as more than just ‘one of Jacob’s friends’, but she somehow couldn’t get past the fact that he’d known her for all of half a second before figuring out that she was his one and only.

She didn’t know what she was going to say to her girlfriend. They had just been starting to get serious.

She went back to school with a very confused and heavy heart. She lied to Jessica about all the notes from Paul scattered through her belongings professing his affection for her – “Just some kid friend of my brother’s with an annoying crush on me… you don’t have to beat him up, I think time, distance and a few girls his own age will do the trick…

“If all else fails we can run away together,” said in a not-quite joking tone. Jess had laughed though, and Rachel had smiled her reassuring smile. “I’ll always be here for you.”

When the next holiday break came she didn’t go back down to La Push. She left an apologetic and muffled call with many regrets, saying she had far too much study to do, and couldn’t focus with Paul around and on top of that had caught some viral thing that was going around. She felt a twinge of guilt, but overrode it by fiercely focusing on the benevolent looks on Jacob, Paul and her dad’s faces as they laid out exactly where she was going in life.

She and Jessica started to talk more seriously about going off together after school had finished. She threw herself into her studies with fervour and began to start saving up even more than she had been. She and Jessica began to look at other flats and jobs interstate for once they left school. She began to get a handle on her life again, and after a little while she half convinced herself that the disorienting fortnight might have been exactly what she said it was.

Then, on the second to last day of their break, she came home from work to find her shared room with Jessica empty. No one had seen her. There were a few missed calls on the phone for each of them. Rachel knew that Jess hadn’t had any plans – they were going to stay in and watch a movie.

She couldn’t sleep that night.

Next morning a note was shoved through the door. I’ll always be here to protect you. Rachel didn’t have to compare it to the notes she’d screwed up and thrown out to recognise the handwriting. She felt bile rising in her throat.

The message light on her phone was blinking, and there was a vaguely disappointed message from her dad left in her message bank. She pressed ‘one’ to listen, heart pounding.

“Rachel, sweetie, you know, we’re always here for you… and you can talk to us about anything. Paul called us and told us about your situation. You could’ve told us – we would have done something to help you. Failing that there are always other authorities to go to when you have an issue. Paul was distraught; he felt that he’d failed you.

There was a short pause.

“He took care of it though. You can come home now. You don’t have to worry about anyone who might be… threatening to you like that girl who was stalking you was. Paul said she was positively infatuated. Remember you can always tell us when you have problems with anything, particularly anything like that. Paul and the rest of us will always be here to deal with it. You can come home. You don’t have to deal with it by yourself anymore. Love you.”

The message ended with the clunk of her dad hanging up the phone and the automated response of the message service prattled on in Rachel’s ear. She didn’t hear. The phone was clutched to her ear and she was barely conscious of the world around her. She didn’t even marvel that it was the longest message her dad had ever left her
 

 

He took care of it...

Claire

Claire wasn’t entirely sure when she stopped remembering the tea parties as fun and started finding them downright disturbing. She remembered enjoying, she attached happy feelings to the memories, but looking back she couldn’t quite put a finger on what it was about the general atmosphere that felt creepy.

It bugged her. She sighed and stopped fiddling with her pen, picking up her mobile. Nine years of memory clouding my perception, she thought ruefully. The phone only rang for a few beats before it was picked up on the other end. “Claire?”

“Hey Quil, long time no chat,” Claire said absentmindedly, clearing a space on her desk to rest her elbows.

“Hey! We still on for Saturday?”

“Yeah, sure. For old times’ sake,” Claire said, ignoring the reproachful stare that she could feel emanating from her huge pile of economics homework. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Tomorrow came and Claire found herself walking down to the beach, her mind drifting back to the seas of homework sitting on her desk. The first thing she noticed was a small, flickering fire with a pot of tea warming over it that she could smell from her position. A herbal of some kind, making her wrinkle her nose. She didn’t drink much tea, and when she did it was normally with truckloads of milk and sugar.

There was a pair of tin cups sitting on a rock next to the fire, but she couldn’t see Quil.  Claire dropped her bag by a fallen tree trunk and knelt to poke the fire with a stick. “Quil?” she called, not looking up. “You know you probably shouldn’t leave a fire unattended so close to so much dry wood…”

She looked up at the sound of footsteps, a welcoming smile on her face, her mind not quite processing that she could hear one set too many feet. A large wolf stood in front of her and Claire froze, eyes widening, all coherent thought flying out of her mind in sheer, numbing terror. It was huge.

And incredibly endangered! This can’t be it’s natural habitat… her mind prattled, running off along several of it’s own tangents; she was unable to gather her thoughts, though not for lack of trying.

The wolf’s shape rippled and changed, and Quil was standing before her. Butt naked, but that wasn’t what Claire was really focusing on. “You – you – wolf!” she croaked, attempting to stand but toppling backwards. Her vision went dark.

When she woke up, it was because Quil was waving a cup of the tea under her nose. She spluttered and shot upwards, head coming off his lap like a rocket. “Explanation,” she said, giving him a hard stare and ignoring the cup of tea he was proffering her nose. “Now.”

So Quil sighed and set down the cup of tea and leant forward, resting his elbows on his knees. And he explained. He explained altogether too much for Claire’s liking. She probably could have done without knowing the explicit details of the time Sam lost focus during a hunt and accidentally shared the details of his and Emily’s ‘fun’ the previous night.

Her sense of perspective didn’t really come back and hit her full force though until Quil said something he probably shouldn’t have: “And when I first met you, I imprinted on you

Claire jerked away. He had imprinted on her? When he first met her? “I was two!” she shrieked. “TWO!”

Quil looked at her calmly. “I am well aware of that,” he said. “That doesn’t change the fact that I started loving you even then.”

Claire stood up and backed away from him. “Nononononono,” she said, shaking her head. Quil got up and started to move towards her, but she put out her hands to stop him. “We have a special word for people who fall in love with two year olds,” she spat. “We call them paedophiles.”

Quil’s face adopted a look of such patronising understanding that made Claire want to hit him. “It’s not like that Claire -”

“Like hell it isn’t!” Claire shrieked.

Quil came over to her and hugged her, making soothing noises, but all Claire could think of, petrified, was what this could mean, and what kind of person felt attracted to a two year old girl.

Wren

Wren had been running for too long. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d started – numbers held no meaning for her anymore. She couldn’t tell how old she was, but felt that her size was entirely disproportionate to how long she could remember. And she could remember everything in her life.

She pulled at her knotted, sap-sticky hair with bird feathers, twigs and leaves stuck in it worriedly, glancing around before sinking into her rest position. She couldn’t remember when the last time she slept was. That didn’t worry her as much as it should of.

Images flicked into her mind and she discarded them as quickly as they came. Bath, bed, food, clothes, house, shoes… it wouldn’t do to dwell on what she couldn’t have while she still had to run. A final image assaulted her; her dressing in the flimsy little outfit that had barely lasted two weeks, waving and laughing to her grinning hunter so he wouldn’t suspect, the lies she told it’ll be fun… just a game… you’ll catch me, won’t you?

A howl sounded off to her left and Wren’s head went up, brain wiring to alert, eyes widening in alarm. She sprung to the balls of her feet and began to run again, not noticing the pain in her feet and her legs and her side and her arms and her gut and her lungs and her knees and her everything.

The wolf howled out three times, sending a signal with his mind to his pack. She had wanted to play so much, and he would do anything for her, but the game had gone on for nigh on two years now, and Jacob wanted his Loch Ness Monster back.
 

      

 

Comments

[evanesco75.livejournal.com]

Terrifying. Vividly written, imaginative and so terrifying.

[ts-wing.livejournal.com]

Holy crap, this is just so, so , SO wrong. SO wrong. And so terrifyingly right if logic existed in the Meyer-verse.

[mogseltof.livejournal.com]

Thank you :)

[erikalyndis.livejournal.com]

I am freaked out. Like... really freaked out. The Rachel one in particular. Yeah... really, really freaked out.

[quicksilvermad.livejournal.com]

Oh, Rachel... Oh my God...

This whole thing made my heart hurt but that line: "he took care of it" and calling her girlfriend a stalker just... Oh my God.

[kseenaa.livejournal.com]

Shit.... That was bloody terrifying... o.O

[thebitterend327.livejournal.com]

Very chilling and very well written. Excellent job portraiting the horrors of imprinting.

[mogseltof.livejournal.com]

Thank you :)

[xxburningsoulxx.livejournal.com]

Holy...shit, that was just...*shudders* creepy...wait, more than just creepy, terrifying.

Hell, I got the chills. *shudders again*

[mogseltof.livejournal.com]

Mission accomplished then :D

[miyuko-matsuda.livejournal.com]

Jesus,That was Really well written..though i have one question about the last one..i`m just confused about why she's running, My reading comprehension isn't the greatest sometimes,sorry

[mogseltof.livejournal.com]

That's ok :) The deal with the last one is that Renesmee is trying to get away from Jacob and has told him that she wants to play a chasing game where she runs away and he has to catch her. Only she doesn't really mean it as a game, but Jacob won't stop chasing after her, so she can't stop running.

And thank you :)

[miyuko-matsuda.livejournal.com]

Oh Okay, thank you I understand now,thank you yourself :)

[melissatreglia]

Oh my god, that's creepy. This is what imprinting would be, though, if there were any logic in the series.

It would've been awesome if SMeyer had the talent to depict the possibilities of imprinting as true, gothic horror rather than that nauseating Twu Wuv romantic crap.

[rhipowered.livejournal.com]

Random driveby to say this was pretty brilliant, indeed.

[mibamonster.livejournal.com]

Wow. Wow. Especially the one about Rachel. (I have always wondered what would happen if werewolves imprinted on someone whose sexual orientation doesn't make it possible.) She wanted to have a life, but I suppose that's ruled out in the Twilight!verse....

Imprinting

[wanda releford (from livejournal.com)]

Thank you, and I read a story with the most stupid Bella ever written. Her imprint was Sam Dad. The loser who abandoned his family and never paid a penny of child support or visited. Yes, this is every girls dream guy. NOT. I could not even finish the POS. Thanks for saying exactly what this whole idea is a nightmare.

[scorpionspear77]

Run, Ness, run...