regenerated | do i even dare? i just have to do it.

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jacob black

do i even dare? i just have to do it.

There's a problem that Claire's come across lately. Which is, namely, that there are only so many times she can bake cupcakes before all of it feels kind of repetitive and no longer serves as a decent distraction from all of her problems. She's had a few of them lately. As comforting as it's been to talk to certain people, like Mary Jane, Claire can't help but think about it all, that nightmare she shared about a month ago, where she scared someone enough that the woman kept on shooting. Bullets searing through her shoulder time and time again, only for skin and muscle to start weaving right back together, good as new. Baking just keeps her in the kitchen, the sort of area where so much has happened in the past. Washing her injured hand under running water. Watching her broken fingers repair themselves after being run through the trash disposal. Blood tripping onto the floor, hands burning after pulling a tray of cupcakes out.

It's just a little too much of a reminder of her previous life and general lack of caring, neither of which apply entirely anymore. So today, instead of using up some of the rarer items in the pantry, Claire sits at the kitchen counter with a coloring book nabbed from the bookshelf (The Little Mermaid, fancy that) and filling it in with completely unfitting colors. That keeps it from being too much like cheating.

When she hears footsteps approaching, she continues coloring, keeping her ears open for any hint of a voice that might help her know who it is. Hopefully a friend.

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Jacob sort of knew how to go about making Emily Young's muffins. It was the practice that tripped him up every single time and he wanted to get a chance to practice before he and Alexis actually staged a real competition to show off his skills. Her skills. Whichever.

Seeing Claire at the table, though, had him stopping for a second, looking down at the book she was working on so intently.

"Working hard or hardly working?"

Shooting Jacob an amused look, Claire leaned back and pushed her arms away to reveal the coloring book. Apparently, Ariel had gone the way of the smurf, with light blue skin and white hair tinged with a hint of orange at the tips, eyes bright and purple. Her lips were pursed in a smile, glad for someone to talk to, as she was definitely running low on pages to color in the book.

"Hey, Jacob," she grinned, returning her crayons to the small plastic pouch attached to the book itself. "I am totally working hard on the next great masterpiece of the island. Monet was great with colors, but even he didn't get a set of sixty-four Crayola crayons to work with. Including colors like robin blue egg and macaroni and cheese. Though I haven't used the latter yet. I'm not sure how well it goes with seawater."

She craned her neck curiously back toward the kitchen. "What're you working on?"

"Top secret stuff," Jacob said, laughing a little at the crazy-colored pages. It reminded him of something that Claire, Emily's little toddler cousin, would have done only it would have been fingerpaints and the canvas would have been Quil's face.

"I'm trying to organize a baking competition thing with this girl...uh, Alexis? Anyway, I was trying to remember how to do this muffin recipe from scratch. Are you any good with this kind of stuff. I don't want to assume just 'cause you're a girl..."

"A baking competition," Claire repeated, suddenly beaming from ear to ear as she pushed her coloring book slightly away, not about to waste the pages on idle coloring when she had something better to focus her attention on. Sitting straight, she let her cheek rest in a palm while she surveyed the much taller boy. "I definitely know Alexis, even if I didn't know she baked. That's good to know, in case I ever need help around the kitchen, but..."

She tapped her cheek. "I hate to brag, but I make a really mean cupcake, and muffins aren't too far off. They're like, the cousins of cupcakes. So if you need help, I'm totally your girl. I baked a lot of batches for bake sales and stuff back at school."

"Cousin to the cupcake, huh? I guess I could use some help, if you're offering."

He grinned wide. "Alexis seems to think girls are going to be better at boys than this whole...baking thing. I'm going to have to really bring it to beat her. I guess I could take some help from the other team."

"I'm offering, if you're asking," Claire replied with a raise of her chin, even as she was already carefully folding and putting away all of her coloring supplies and pushing her chair out from behind her. As always, she still hesitated a little before actually standing up to her full height, which was significantly shorter than Jacob. Maybe about one and a half feet, if her eyeballing was correct (he looked about three or four inches taller than her dad). In the end, the difference in height only made her giggle with a touch of a snort before she headed in the direction of the kitchen, trying to figure out what he'd already set out for the both of them.

"Does it really prove that boys aren't worse than girls at this if you're asking my help?" Claire quipped with a smile, before peering in the fridge for ideas. "But I guess I don't feel too bad about helping. Especially if it means more cupcakes. Did you have a specific flavor in mind?"

"Anything is good with me," Jacob said, gesturing toward the supplies in the kitchen. "I even think there's a little bit of chocolate, if you want to go crazy. As far as whether or not boys are better, at least we're crafty enough to ask for help instead of flailing helplessly?"

It was all about the delivery, wasn't it? Besides, it sounded good in his head.

"Oh my god, chocolate, you're right," Claire exclaimed, immediately stepping into the pantry to try and pull away any of the seasonal items that had apparently shown up on the island to celebrate winter. Lips pursed, she snagged some dried mint leaves and chocolate, gathered them in her arms, and returned to the main area of the kitchen to lay them on the counter. She had never really tried the mix of the two before, but Claire was pretty sure one could never go wrong with mint chocolate.

"I keep on forgetting that we're not limited to crackers and fruit anymore in there," she laughed, laying all of the ingredients out in a row as she peered up at Jacob. "If you manage chocolate muffins, I'm pretty sure Alexis is going down. Or, at least, you'll give her a run for her money. But you came to the right person for sage advice, Jacob. So. What do you know about baking muffins?"

"Um, well, I know there's...flour. And batter. And you pour it into those little pans?"

He knew a little more than that but Jacob had always been the type to find it easier to do something rather than just explain it. He liked being hands on and it made it easier to tackle the concepts and master them that way.

"I'm a doer, not an explainer, if you couldn't tell."

"I'm totally the same way, don't worry," Claire laughed, nodding right along as she pulled together some of the ingredients and laid them on the counter, right in front of Jacob, just in case he wanted to start the process and just have her correct by observation. "Whenever we have presentations during home ec, I completely forget what to say and just go ahead and start cooking. I mean, that's how you learn to do things with your hands, anyway. No matter how much people say, twist your wrist and beat the fork against the bowl quickly, it's twice as easy just to watch someone else beat eggs and learn by example."

Wrinkling her nose, Claire gestured to the bowls. "But okay, show me what you can do. I'm guessing you were planning on working off of a recipe, and usually those aren't too hard to follow."

"Well, the recipe I know is up here," Jacob said, tapping his forehead lightly. Emily had been a whiz in the kitchen and without her, he and the rest of the wolves might have been forced to hunt or steal to keep fed. Wasn't fair to put that burden on their parents.

"My friend Sam, back home, his fiancee was an amazing cook. She used to have piles and piles of muffins and cookies and stuff for us to eat, no questions asked." He cracked eggs and started whisking them, figuring that was a good place to start.

"I always wanted to be able to cook like her, be able to give her a day off."

"Up there is the best place to store recipes," Claire laughed, pulling out some oil to grease the pans very lightly with, to help make sure that the muffins wouldn't get stuck there— she'd made that mistake so many times when she'd started baking, ruining many a dozen cupcakes for the bake sales they were intended for. Then again, given the way that mistakes meant more baked goods staying in the house, Claire hadn't always minded, and she was sure Lyle never complained either. "I mean, my mom and dad write down recipes for me so that I have a starting point, but it's best if you're flexible about making it taste just right for yourself."

Resting her chin on the back of her head afterward, Claire peered on over at the sink before tossing the small square of cloth over to wash later. "I think my dad started cooking for that same reason, though. It used to be just my mom. But then she started breeding show dogs again and liked that so much that my dad figured he'd help out, let her free her schedule for more shows. And now Mr. Muggles has won a lot of rallies, so it must have worked."

"What kind of dog is Mr. Muggles?"

Jacob thought that was kind of a girly name and figured it would be a poodle or a chihuahua or some other kind of little dog, but you never knew sometimes. Tiny could be a Great Dane, after all.

"I'm expecting something, you know," he said, holding his hand low and almost flush against the counter.

"You wouldn't be far off," Claire grinned, before leaning over the counter and tilting her head in an effort to see to the rec room, where the dog had last slipped out of her arms. It was a bit easier those days to keep track of the Pomeranian, who at the very least, didn't like cold much. Although, she noted with slight exasperation, the sight of it always made Mr. Muggles forget that fact as he ran out into the powder, covering himself with snow before dragging it all back inside with a petulant whine.

She whistled, patting the counter. "Mr. Muggles," Claire wheedled. "Mr. Muggles, someone wants to meet you."

Obedient for once, a tiny set of paws began clamoring over for the kitchen as the dog panted up at the stranger, running in circles around Jacob's ankles.

"Oh, he's here?"

Jacob knew there were people with pets but he figured they'd gotten them for island Christmas and not brought them along. He didn't have anything but his clothes when he showed up and he imagined most people came the same way.

"Hey little guy," he said soothingly, reaching down to the pet the dog. "You're tiny. I was expecting a Great Dane for sure."

"Yep," Claire affirmed with a nod, watching Mr. Muggles start to jump on his hind legs once Jacob had lowered himself enough to reach the dog. No doubt the Pomeranian was expecting some kind of treat, she thought. "He's actually been here longer than I have, this time around. I was here before, but I don't remember any of that or anything, I've just been told several times that I did some pretty crazy things. Which is weird."

Claire took up the bowl of eggs, abandoned by the side, and began to whisk them in Jacob's stead. "He's terribly spoiled and an attention monger, by the way. In case you couldn't already tell."

"Eh, you're supposed to spoil pets," Jacob said, casting that off as he scratched the dog's ears. "And weird, that you've been here before. Are there people around who remember that?"

"My mom says that sometimes," Claire agreed with a laugh, shaking her head as she pursed her lips in amusement at Mr. Muggles, who was wearing a fairly content look on his doggy face while being scratched by Jacob. "She always said that spoiling me or my little brother always resulted in us asking for crazier and crazier things, like the time Lyle actually asked if he could have a dirt bike, or when I got way too involved in the cheerleading culture. But Mr. Muggles, she said, all he'd ever ask for was more doggie treats, and that she could do."

Combing her hair back with her fingers, Claire paused for a second before turning to sift through the flour the both of them were to use. "And yeah, there are people around who remember my previous self on the island. Actually, my cousin's adoptive dad is one of them, and he told me some things I did that I'm... not sure I'd do anymore."

"Really? Sorry if it's too personal," Jacob warned, content to rub the dog's ears and just hang out if she didn't want to talk about it. "But what kinds of things? Did you go on a mass murdering spree or something? Because you're too cute for that, gotta say. Usually it's not the blonde cheerleaders that do that kind of thing."

Of course, you could always be surprised. Rosalie could have been like Claire, she was definitely blonde and pretty enough, but she was a bloodsucker by night. Appearances could always be deceiving.

"It is kind of personal," Claire said, lips pursing as she watched Jacob pet Mr. Muggles, the dog scuttling around for a little longer before finally giving up the fight and rolling onto his back, four paws lifted in the air and waving about. "But you're a friend, and in the end that previous me wasn't really... me, so hopefully you won't judge. Not that it's even that bad."

Sighing, Claire whisked the eggs a bit more, not out of any specific need, but just to give her hands something to do. "I can't go into all of the details, but there was this girl on the island who had gotten used to feeding on blood in her world? I think that was the only way she could eat there or something, maybe she was like a vampire, but here it was a force of habit and the previous me helped it continue, kinda, by giving the girl blood straight from her finger. It's a nice gesture, but maybe this version of me's just got thin skin, because I think it's kinda creepy."

Jacob always tried not to judge, especially considering he used to have a less than normal side, but that was just extremely creepy. More than the sort of weird he was used to, that was for sure.

"So, the other girl didn't even need it to survive anymore, did she? I mean, when Alice was here she didn't feed on blood as far as I know."

The Cullens had always hunted, even if they wouldn't feed on humans, but Alice had seemed human.

Claire breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that Jacob wasn't judging her too much for her initial reaction to it all. If she had the courage, if facing some other form of herself wasn't so difficult, Claire knew that she would have gone through the records and fleshed out the whole situation more. Unfortunately, it was just too weird, and not important enough on a practical level to bother.

"No, the other girl, she didn't need it to survive anymore. I heard that she was a bit... weird, and I guess it'd be difficult for anyone to adjust, but it's still, I don't know." Claire pursed her lips and shrugged heavily with a sigh. "It wigs me out. I feel like having an evil twin would be easier."

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do i even dare? i just have to do it.

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