Love Isn't Just For Werewolves, Vampires, and Imprints

Preface:

The most unlikely of loves are born from unlikely times. What more of an unlikely time for love is there, than during death. Can two people find love amongst tragedy and loss? Can two people rise together while everything they once believed to be imaginary is becoming a reality?

Love isn't just for the young. It's for the willing. Love isn't just for those who possess magic. Love is magic. This is the story of two people who have outgrown their youth, but not their hope that magic can touch their lives as well.

A Charlie Swan and Sue Clearwater story.

A love that shows you don't need to imprint to feel love, nor do you need to sparkle in the sunlight.

Charlie POV

I have long been an observer of love. My parents had a love to be envied. It was one I learned from. Though I never saw them so much as hug, I realized to them that sort of affection was treasured in private. They had such a stable unyielding love. It made me search for my own.

I thought I had found it in Renee. She was so full of life; how I could I not want to spend mine with her? She had such energy; I wish it had been infectious.

Instead, I wasn't enough to keep up with her. For years I thought that was my fault, but eventually I saw it was merely incompatibility. It took seeing her with her next husband, Phil, for me to see our love was not the kind I was searching for. She found it in Phil, and I was alone again.

Sometimes I wish I had realized sooner that Renee and I weren't a match. If I had though, Bella might not have arrived.

The love I felt for her sustained me for the years I was alone. There is no love that can match the love one has for their child. It's a blessing I am proud to have experienced. I never felt something was missing as long as I had my daughter.

I'm not one who can voice those thoughts easily. It's a downfall of mine. I feel such great emotion, but cannot express it. I do the best I can, and I know Bella knows she is loved. That's the most important. It is clear to her there is no one more cherished or precious in my life.

There never will be.

However, that didn't mean I gave up hope. I always wished there'd be someone else. Renee couldn't be the only love I had. It wasn't even true.

There had to be someone else out there.

The question was where was she?

In the years I asked myself that, I got to witness other loves. I suffered through the biggest tragedy of fatherhood, next to the idea of losing a child. I handed my daughter's hand to another man.

Edward and Bella were undeniably in love. They had that spark the very first time I saw them together. Sure, I denied it. I even fought it. What father wouldn't? I just wanted what was best for her. It took me a while to see through the fog, that Edward was it.

When I gave him her hand on their wedding day, I stopped denying I had lost my daughter. I stopped fighting it. I saw their mutual adoration and respect, and it filled me with more hope than I could ever imagine.

Bella, who was so like me, was open to this kind of consuming love. Why couldn't I be? Why couldn't I find it?

I could. I would.

Realizing this and having it become a reality were two separate things.

I never lost hope though.

The saying that love is blind couldn't be more true.

I myself have always equated this with it doesn't matter what one looks like. Love is what you feel, not what you see.

When I found my love though, I realized there was another way love could be blind.

You could have been around the person most of your life, and never realized they were for you. You could have gone great lengths of time without even considering it. It's because you weren't ready. It wasn't time. So you were blind.

I was blind with Sue Clearwater. She was one of my closest friend's wife. This would obviously make her off limits. I never once considered her anything other than a friend in my years of knowing her. I never once felt more for her in that time.

When Harry, my friend and her husband, passed away suddenly, the thought never crossed my mind to pursue Sue. The only thought I had, aside from grief for Harry, was that Sue needed support.

With Bella grown and grasping onto independence, I ended up lacking someone to take care of. I wanted to make sure Sue had nothing to worry about. I wanted to do Harry proud, and make sure his family was ok. He would have done the same for me.

I made sure Sue and her two kids were coping. I made sure they knew they had people around them who cared.

I can't pinpoint the exact moment that changed. I don't think it ever did. That was always my main intention. It merely morphed into something new.

Maybe it was the way she watched her kids with an eagle eye. Maybe it was her unyielding strength and serenity. Maybe it was the moment when she came to my house in search of someone to talk to. I was needed suddenly.

It was even more daunting to realize I needed her as well.

The moment I found out what walked on this earth with me, and realized my daughter and her new family were something different; I began questioning everything.

Sue was there with answers.

She steadied me when I felt myself fall.

It was in those weeks that a different part of me fell.

I found myself part of a new life. A life that completed me, and I felt was where I belonged. Leah and Seth were as dear to me as Bella was. Watching all of them mesh together was a great joy to me. By a month after Bella was married, I was sure of a few things.

I found my family could grow.

I found the love I had hoped for.

I found my true self.

Love isn't always for the young or the magical. It's for the ones who feel it.

I am a perfectly average man. Nothing to call the National Enquirer about. I merely live amongst those who can do things unimaginable. I've been a spectator of magic and impossible loves.

Yet here I stand, no longer a witness. In the darkest of times, in the most impossible way, I found what I'd been hoping for.

I found love.

A love I'd never let go.

She was mine, and I was her's.

Sue POV

When I was nineteen years old I got married. It wasn't because I was pregnant, or had no other way out. It was for love.

I loved Harry, so I married him. The events that have come in my later life do not change that fact.

I loved a man so deeply once. I loved him all my days, and I made a family with him.

When I lost him, I thought I had lost a part of me.

Instead, I also found myself. I found I was strong and capable of survival.

I found I could withstand my children changing before my eyes, into legends of our tribe.

I found I could let them go to protect us, while it had always been my job to protect them.

I found I could live, even through death.

Most surprisingly, I found there was still so much left in me that could give love.

If someone had told me years ago that the burly Sheriff and best friend of my husband would one day be the man I called my love, I would have checked them for head injuries.

I always believed to love someone they must be the opposite of you. The differences between you form compliments, and mold into one complete person.

Harry had been the complete opposite of me. I believed it to be why we worked together. We meshed.

Sometimes though, in my lowest times, I'd admit to myself that something was missing in that love. Sometimes I wished for calm when all I got was excitement.

That didn't mean I looked for anything else though.

When I lost Harry, I concentrated on another love. The love I felt for my children.

Through every stage of grief and perseverance, there was Charlie.

He was there when Seth needed help with the homework I was at a loss over.

He was there when I couldn't fix the leak in Leah's room.

He was there when I wanted to pull out my hair from frustration of it all.

He was always there.

Maybe that was why I found it easy to love Charlie. I had never had someone so sturdy in my life. Someone who I knew would never let me down. Someone who I never had to doubt my feelings for, or wonder if it was right.

Charlie filled every void in me.

He broke through the darkest part of my life.

I was certain, when I saw him with my kids. After both of them had shifted, they were always on edge. One afternoon they fought.

It was over something trivial, yet Charlie stepped in, even after he knew what they were. They could have easily lost control and tore him to pieces, but he didn't fear them.

As he lectured them on the importance of family and respecting one another, my mind screamed in agreement. Then when Leah snapped at him that he wasn't even family, he looked at her calmly and said; "I'd be honored to be. Whether you two accept me to be or not, I'm always going to be here for you. No matter what happens."

My heart sang in agreement.

From that moment on I knew, I could never, and would never, let him go.

He was my love, and I was his.

Charlie and Sue POV

We were both married once.

We both had children.

We both lived alone.

We both never lost hope that there was something else out there.

We both waited for each other.

Now we both stand at an altar. Vowing to take each other, and never let go.

For richer, for poorer.

In sickness, and in health.

To love, and to honor.

To hold, and to keep.

From each sun, to each moon.

From tomorrow, to tomorrow.

From now, to forever.

Til death do us part.

With simple rings encircling our simple flesh, we become one.

We look at each other and smile. We look at the smiling faces of our now expanded family and feel fulfilled.

We're together, despite it never crossing our minds that it was possible.

Like so many other love stories, we beat all odds, refusing to ever give up hope.

As we walk back down the aisle, past our family, but never without them; the certainty we feel is worth all the years of waiting.

We walk together to the cliffs edge, to absorb the enormity of the day, and our relationship in general.

We can't help but remember the loves we let go, and lost. As we watch the sun set, we know we have set aside those old times. We look back on them fondly, but the future is what we move towards.

We started as two separate and average individuals. We leave this ceremony, as a couple with as much magic and love as the others that walk among us.

As unlikely as we began, we continue through life united, and never wavering in the love we feel.

Human or not, that's a magic that cannot be broken.

We'd like to find a vampire or werewolf who could try.