Hushed is meant to be something close to Feel in the sense that it's a series of shorts but the ones you will read with this fic will be connected and will tell Jacob's life post-Bella. (: Any questions or misunderstandings can be left in your comment with the flame you all will want to write me. I'm not a Jacob/Bella fan but this just wouldn't leave me alone. Iunno, maybe it'll make me change my mind.
Hushed
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Part I:
White
The walls of his first apartment are white. They've been bleached and scrubbed to perfection since he last saw the small two-bedroom place he now calls home. There had been smudges of red paint and gray penciling throughout the master bedroom while the living room held various swipes of brown and black from fresh wet soil.
He had liked the scribbled notes and the doodles on the walls. The home had personality with them. It was the closest thing to welcoming he'd found since he'd moved to the busy city and now that they were gone he was regretting renting the place at all.
It would take a lot to make white feel like home.
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Weeks passed and the walls seemed to grow starker with each passing day. The manager of the building had welcomed him to the idea of painting the walls with colors of his choice but part of him had hoped it wouldn't come to that.
It seemed that his hoping was fruitless.
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The walls of the hardware store are lined with color palettes and decorative ideas for the homes of all types of people; the reds along the right are suggested for brown décor and furniture while the creams and beiges on the left are for natural tones of green, orange and blue. But his furniture has no set color scheme and he only wishes to replace the white with a more comfortable color to remind him of the home he left and misses.
He glances around, taking the smallest steps he can with his long legs, and ponders critically over the various choices.
The reds remind him of the blood he knew her body was still craving for, even after all these months. They call upon memories of arguing with his pack brother nights after her departure, when the sight of their blood splattered messily along the trunks of the wide Washington trees and over the dewy grass of the silent forest wasn't an uncommon sight.
Greens of all shades remind him of the t-shirts she wore and how they brought out her finest features like the small specks of dark green that were sprinkled gently between varying shades of beautiful browns and dark golds.
The palettes with creams and beiges remind him of his tiny room back home where his body hardly fit on the bed and the air conditioner never worked. They're also much like the shade of her skin through various times of the day. Every part of Bella was different depending on the time and place in which you saw her and yet, all of these colors seem to capture every shade he'd ever witnessed her skin look. It was devastating to remember.
Yellow reminded him of the sun he rarely saw at home but that never left him alone here while blue was the sky and the ocean that he missed spending nights lying under and jumping into. Even the light purple that he'd seen from the corner of his eye recalled memories of the bruises that lined her arms before she'd disappeared to never return.
It was all too much, too complicated and tainting the new life he was trying to create away from La Push and Forks and Bella Swan.
It was all just too much.
The walls, he thought as he walked quickly from the store to climb into his car, would stay white.
Because white kept the memories hushed.
x x x
Her finger tapped against the small square on the color palette and smiled slightly. The warm copper color was perfect and reminded her of home and of the thick fur her cold hands had once taken purchase in to warm her.
"This one, Edward, would be perfect for the living room."