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Dreaming of Butterflies - A Jacob/Bella Fic - Chapter 6

2009-07-11T22:57:32Z

Title: Dreaming of Butterflies
Chapter: 6 (1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5)
Character(s): Jacob/Bella, Ensemble
Rating: PG-13
Summary: “Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”
-Zhuangzi (Philosopher)

Chapter 6:

“I can’t believe you’re making me do this…” Bella muttered, trying to sleep with her head against the window. But each time the cruiser hit a pothole the entire car would lurch, slamming her skull against the glass and waking her up.

Beside her, Charlie just smiled and continued to nod in time with the oldies pouring out of the speakers. “Have a heart, Bella. I’m an old man, worried about the safety of his daughter.”

“Stop,” she told him darkly, rubbing her bruised forehead. “Just stop. You’ve already guilted me into coming, what more do you want from me?”

“Well a smile wouldn’t hurt.” Bella sneered in response. Twenty minutes earlier she’d been pulled from the throws of a nightmare by Charlie, dressed head to toe in fishing gear, and already fully caffeinated. It seemed their conversation last night had been insufficient to allay his fears, and the only way he could possibly go out and enjoy himself today would be if she came with him. After another ten minutes of protest, during which Bella made it abundantly clear she would not, under any circumstances, be fishing, Charlie agreed she’d be sufficiently close enough if she spent the day at the beach.

So now she was stuffed into the cruiser with a backpack full of her backlogged homework and all the sun block she could find, heading back to one of the last places she expected to go today: La Push.

***

First Beach was…empty, both literally and metaphorically. It was still too cool out for there to be much beach interest, even on a sunny day, and the wind was too weak for the surfer crowds. Which left Bella alone on the sand, a blank expanse she’d once walked so many times she could practically do it in her sleep.

Of course, the irony there was that she actually had done it in her sleep.

She refused to venture towards any of the familiar spots in her head. The driftwood log, the cliffs etched into the distance. The ocean and the shores and the forests that lined them all, they no longer held any mysteries for her. They were trees and rocks and nothing more.

Bella was nothing more.

And as of yesterday, on her knees in the school parking lot, she made it her goal to accept that lot in life. She didn’t have to let go of the memories, but she owed it to herself to try and let go of the bitterness that accompanied them.

She was Bella Swan. No addendum, no subtitle. A girl, once interrupted but now back on track. And she would learn to make that enough.

But it seemed as though the higher the sun rose in the sky, the longer she sat there, pensive before the waves, the more impossible that goal became. Normal was not in her vocabulary, her repertoire. Normal girls had wants, needs. Normal girls craved social interaction; they had friend and enemies, families and lovers. Bella had no one.

Correction, Bella had someone. Singular. And he was only half a mile away.

***

A relief that she had not felt once since waking up washed over Bella when she emerged from the undergrowth right where she expected to be. The dilapidated building had once been painted barn red, but age and weather had chipped away at most of the color. The roof lacked shingles, the plywood covered only in sealant and tarpaper that did little to ward off the rain at times. The only natural light came from a long row of windows up high, beneath the eves, probably designed for ventilation without allowing people to snoop inside. The entire structure listed uneasily to the left, and was probably approaching the point where it wasn’t safe for habitation. But as far as Bella was concerned, it was perfect.

It was identical to the building which she had only ever seen in her mind’s eye. And that made it more perfect still.

The large doors on the opposite side must have been opened to the fleeting Olympic sun, because voices, loud and boisterous, filtered back through the trees around her. In another time, maybe, Bella would’ve simply bounded around the garage and jumped into the fray. But here, now, she felt like an interloper. This was not the Jake she remembered, she was not the Bella she wanted to be, and this garage had not become a second home for her the way it once had.

Sure, he’d said he’d see her when she got out. But what was Bella supposed to say? “Hi Jake, sorry I seemed so crazy last time we met. But my shrink said I’m just fine now. So what’s new with you?” The real world didn’t work like that. At least, it wasn’t supposed to. So no one was more surprised than her when she found herself balanced precariously on top of the wood pile stacked against the back wall, straining to see in the small window.

A myriad of different voices drifted up from inside. She recognized Jake’s timbre right away, though the others seemed familiar. From the sound of it they were working on a car, though she wasn’t tall enough to see it.

“You have to bang it harder,” Jacob’s voice ordered. “Otherwise it’s never going to budge.”

“Dude, I know you keep saying that, but I have about six inches of room in to work in down here. I can’t even swing the damn hammer all the way.”

“Well…” Jake seemed to falter. “I don’t know, find a way to make it work. If Uma Thurman could punch her way out of a coffin with less than six inches to work in, you should be able to bang out a dent.”

“If that is what Uma Thurman really looks like, then I am switching teams,” a third voice declared. “Quil, you make one fugly woman.”

“Fuck off, Call! You’re a nerd and nobody likes you!” Quil (at least, Bella thought it was him) apparently thought of himself as an attractive woman, as he seemed to take the comment personally.

“Jake?” Embry asked in response. “Can I borrow your lug wrench?”

“Why, you think that would work better?” It sounded like Jacob was the only one actually focused on the task at hand.

“No, I’m going to use it to hit Quil repeatedly.”

“What…no!” Jake declared in response. “Dude, I stocked boxes at the Piggly Wiggly for eight months to buy that tool set. Hit him with something less valuable, like a rock or your fist.”

“Hey!” Quil protested, obviously not wild about the idea of being beaten. “Can’t we just focus on the car and, you know, not on bashing my brains in?”

Suddenly curious to see what they were working on, Bella stood on her tiptoes and strained to see over the window sill. She was barely able to make out the familiar curve of an orange bumper before she felt the wood beneath her begin to slide away.

“Shit…” Her feet flew out from under her as the log pile collapsed, and Bella crashed to the ground, landing flat on her back. The force of the impact knocked all the air out of her lungs, and left her gasping like a fish on dry land.

The crash was loud enough to get the boys’ attention, and she heard footsteps moments before a familiar face appeared above her. She’d never met Quil Ateara before, at least, not in real life.

He looked exactly the way she’d imagined.

“Hey guys!” Quil called out brightly, peering down at her curiously. “Come here! I think its raining chicks!” He looked up at the sky expectantly.

“Chick, Quil,” Embry’s voice shot back. “As in singular. As in your dreams of a foursome with the Swedish models has been crushed yet again. As in, it will never be anything more than a fantasy archived to the Penthouse Forum.”

“Stuff it, Call! You’re a nerd and nobody likes you.”

Embry ignored him and squatted down into Bella’s line of sight. He was long and lean, the spitting image of the boy she’d dreamt an encounter with. “You okay?” he asked. Bella tried to respond, but through the combination of shock and impact, she couldn’t force any sounds out of her mouth.

“Holy shit!” A third voice finally exclaimed. Seconds later another body crashed down beside Embry’s. “Shit!” Jake exclaimed again. “Bella? Please tell me you’re not dead! Are you alright?”

“Bella? Wait, that’s coma girl?” Quil demanded. Everyone ignored him.

“Super,” she finally managed to croak in response. She could picture people she’d never met with shocking clarity and had probably re-fractured her skull, but it’s not like any of that actually mattered. “I’m super.” Her breathing was returning to normal slowly. But her head and back still throbbed, and the world didn’t seem as clearly defined as it had once been. Everything had soft, fuzzy edges.

Jake calmed down now that he saw she was actually alive. “What the hell were you doing?” he demanded.

“Testing gravity. Looks like it’s working…” Bella groaned and tried to sit up, but Jake and Embry pinned her shoulders to the ground in perfect unison.

“Lie down for a second,” Jake ordered. “You might have a concussion or something.” He looked at Embry expectantly. “Shit, what’re the signs of a concussion? Isn’t it--”

“Bella,” Embry interrupted, saying her name very slowly and clearly. “Do you know where you are?”

“Hell?” she ventured to guess. Her head pounded wickedly in response.

Embry turned to glare at Jake, who was now nervously pacing in the background. “I’m not a doctor, but I believe sarcasm is usually a good indicator that someone is not concussed.” He got back to his feet, then hauled Bella back to hers with one large hand. “I think she’s fine.”

As if on cue the grass seemed to incline slightly and her balance wavered. Jake was instantly at her side, his shoulder tucked beneath her arm. “Relax,” she scolded him as her equilibrium righted itself. “I’ve got a hard head, remember?”

“Okay, I get that you’re trying to be ironically cute and all,” he muttered, leading her around toward the front of the garage. “But you see, I have to figure out how to get to Canada before Charlie finds out you were hurt on my watch and kills me, so I’m too busy to engage in witty banter with you right now. I mean Jesus, Bella. It’s called a door…”

“So I should shut up, then?” Bella replied sarcastically, her mood improving now that the pain in her back was beginning to ebb.

“Just for a minute, yes.” But he took the sting out of his words with a soft smile, and bumped into her shoulder playfully. Inside he cleared away some boxes and junk, eventually plunking her down on an old milk crate. And when it seemed like the other two boys were adequately distracted and out of earshot, he leaned in a whispered something only to her. “By the way, welcome back.”

***

Jake handed her a warm Coke, and Bella tried not to let her hand shake as she took it from him. “Now, isn’t this more fun than sitting on the beach alone?” he teased.

“It’s certainly…something,” she agreed, wincing involuntarily as Embry and Quil selected which tools to beat the inside of her truck with. “I still can’t believe Charlie agreed to pay you for this.”

“He’d get over charged anywhere else around here,” Jake said defensively. “It’s not really a difficult or skilled procedure.”

The boys worked as well as they fought, exchanging insults and swapping tools with ease. “See,” Quil tried to explain. “With a vehicle as old as yours body work is more a science than an art.

Embry, sprawled beneath her truck on a dolly, then proceeded to whack at the foot-long dent from the opposite side with a hammer. “And when says science,” he shouted over the sound of his own banging. “Quil means physics. Action…” he took a particularly hefty swing, but the dent didn’t budge. “And reaction…or lack there of.”

Quil grabbed his friend around his ankles and hauled him out from under the car. “Embry, you’re so nerdy it’s sad,” he muttered shaking his head in disappointment. “And it means you’re never going to get laid.”

“Not true,” he protested waving his hammer under Quil’s nose. “Nerdy teenagers eventually turn into doctors, and chicks love doctors. Right?” he turned to Bella for confirmation.

“He has a point,” she was forced to agree. “George Clooney was never more attractive then when he was playing a sympathetic pediatrician.”

“Ha!” Embry gloated.

Jake looked over the bed of the truck to stare at her strangely. “What?” Bella demanded, fidgeting under his gaze. “Renee and I went through an ER phase when I was younger. Don’t judge me.”

“Zero judging,” he assured her. “I’m just reevaluating my future goals now, don’t mind me…”

Food was eventually demanded, and upon finding what Jake’s fridge had to offer unsatisfactory, money was counted.

“I have five,” Jake said, throwing it down onto the sad little pile. Embry pulled a few crumbled bills from his pocket.

“I have a ten, but I need some of it for lunch on Monday.” Quil added it to the stack, then stuffed Jake’s contribution back into his pocket.

“I have a ten,” Bella lied. “That should be enough to buy us a pizza.” She pulled out the cell phone that had been a mutual gift from Renee and Charlie before she’d gone home last week. It was flashy and silver and had a lot of features which Bella had no use or patience for. She carried it the way a horse wore a bridal: reluctantly, but with the knowledge that resisting would only be more painful in the end. It gave both her parents peace of mind, and that was great, but in return Bella felt as though she was always being watched.

Still, it came in handy when feeding three hungry boys. She ordered an extra pizza and told the guy at Pizzono’s to cover them both with as much meat as they had. The guys had been nice to her today - t seemed like the appropriate way to say thanks. Besides, she did owe Jake a meal.

When the driver pulled up in front of Billy’s house, she ran out to meet him. Hoping the guys couldn’t see Bella pulled two twenties from her purse, then tipped the driver with a five. She turned to start back up the path towards the garage, but practically collided with Quil, who was barreling down on her.

“What the hell was that for Swan?” he demanded, catching her by the elbow before she could trip and drop their food. He waved their pile of collected money under her nose. “We can pay for our own pizza, you know?”

“No it’s…I,” she stuttered, taken aback by his sudden defensiveness. “That’s not what I was implying at all. I just--”

“I know things look a little different here than where you live, but we don’t need your charity.”

“That’s not what I meant at all,” Bella protested. “It’s just that I owe Jake lunch. You guys are benefiting by proximity. But if you want to pay me for your share that’s fine…”

“Oh,” Quil said dumbly, taking one of the boxes from her hand. “No, that’s okay then. I’m happy to benefit from his generosity. I just didn’t want…I didn’t want you to think…”

“Its fine,” she assured him with a nod, though still a little puzzled by his reaction. She’d only been trying to be nice…

“So,” Quil said, taking a slice from the box and devouring it while they walked. “This is your way of paying Jake back from all those nights he spent at the hospital, huh?”

“Yeah, I gues - wait,” Bella said, after her brain took a moment to process what he’d said. “What?! Quil, what are you talking about?”

The color drained from Quil’s face as Bella turned the tables and started barreling down on him. “Oh, shit…”

***

Charlie, Billy, and Harry returned to dry land shortly before the sun went down, and with a cooler full of fish to show for it. Impromptu plans were made as Billy lit a fire in the pit in his back yard, and the boys set about teaching Bella how to clean fish.

“That’s gross,” she declared, watching Embry and Jake scrape the internal organs from two particularly large trout. “I could barely handle dissecting the frog in eight grade science class, and now you want me to do this?”

“C’mon Bella,” Embry teased. “Guys love those outdoorsy chicks.”

“Well, when you put it like that…nope, sorry,” she shot back. “Still no flipping way.”

They came to a compromise when Quil handed her a knife and let her de-scale the fish he’d already cleaned. It was more culinary than biological, and certainly something that Bella, being Charlie’s daughter, had done before. They worked shoulder to shoulder at the big picnic table in the backyard, which Billy claimed to have built himself ten years prior, and Jake assured everyone had been purchased at the Wal Mart in Port Angeles last Christmas as a gift from his sisters.

Charlie and Harry cooked the fish on a grill rack over the open flames, and they ate their fill with their fingers off paper plates, picking carefully around the bones and, in Harry’s case, a stray eyeball that had been left behind accidentally. It was a comfortable event, familiar in a strange way. The conversation seemed to flow easy and with less strain than Bella was used too. And when she didn’t have anything to offer there were no awkward silences, as someone else always had a story to tell. By the time they’d eaten their fill, and run through all the usual tales (and lies) that old men typically tell, the sun was long gone.

“Go straight home,” Billy said warningly when Quil and Embry, finally sated, went to retrieve their bikes from behind the garage. “I won’t tolerate any of that delinquent horseshit from my boys, and that includes you two.”

“You still having trouble with--”

“Yeah,” Billy told Charlie. “But they still don’t want you involved. The tribal council wants to handle this one on their own.”

Charlie pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers, fighting off a frustration induced headache. “Well you tell the tribal council to do something soon, or else I’m going to get involved whether they like it or not. You’re the chief, lay down the law.”

“I’m working on it,” Billy muttered, rolling back into the house. “In the meantime I just want to keep my boys out of trouble.”

“If you’re worried, I could’ve drive them home,” Bella offered, and both boys paused at the edge of the lawn, intrigued by a route home that required no effort on their part. “I mean, my truck’s already here.”

“You don’t have a license, Bells,” Charlie reminded her.

“No, but I have a permit,” Jacob added helpfully. “She could supervise me while I drove them home…” Bella shot him a glance and he winked in response.

“I…” Charlie stuttered, looking from one hopeful face to the other. Finally he threw up his hands. “Fine, go. Be safe, come straight home.” Shaking his finger at Jake, he added, “And you, no funny business.”

***

“What was that all about, back at the house?” Bella asked as she watched Quil wheel his bike up the path to his house.

Jake shook his head ruefully. “Nothing, just some guys making trouble on the rez. The adults can’t agree on how to handle it. They’ll figure it out.” He tried to sound nonchalant, but something in his tone implied he just didn’t want to talk about it anymore, and Bella let the subject drop.

After dropping both boys off at their respective houses, Bella and Jacob drove home in silence, interrupted only by the sounds of the gravel crunching beneath the tires, drifting in through the open windows. Bella thought they’d have a lot to talk about, that Jake would ask a hundred questions about the hospital and the shrink and how she’d gotten out. But she was tired and he was quiet and it just felt…nice.

“So,” Jake said finally. “When did you become a baseball fan, exactly?” He reached over the flicked the bill of her cap. “Big fan of the Muckdogs, are you?”

Bella laughed – she had no idea what team the hat belonged to. She just liked the logo: a snarling brown bulldog in a baseball uniform. “It was a gift. I’m just using it to cover up the spot where I had my surgery.”

“Why?” he asked. But before Bella could respond he flicked the cap off her head, revealing the bald patch on the back of her skull.

“Hey!” she protested, making a grab for the hat. But Jake snatched it from her grasp and plopped it squarely on his head. “Give that back.”

“In a second,” he teased with a grin. “Give your head a chance to breathe. No one can see your bald spot while we’re driving.”

“You can.”

“Okay,” he amended. “No one who cares can see your bald spot while we’re driving.”

Bella had to admit that it did feel nice. She took down her ponytail and let her hair blow in the breeze. The hat didn’t look half bad on Jake, either.

“So,” Bella continued to look at him curiously. “I still don’t get why you’re being so nice to me…”

Jacob threw back his head and laughed, a raucous, infectious sound that made Bella smile without intending to. He looked at her like she was crazy. “Did they beat you back in Phoenix or something?”

“What?”

“It’s like you walk around under the belief that all people are inherently evil schmucks who kick puppies. Would you like me to be mean to you? Would that be easier to wrap your head around? Cause, I mean I could try…” He let the threat hang in the air.

Bella rolled her eyes at him, and let her hand drift out the open window and into the night air. “I’m sorry, I’m just not used to people being so willingly…I don’t know, friendly? You’re just so easy to get along with, it’s strange…” She wiggled her fingers in the wind, playing with the feel of the cold air as it whipped around them.

“Ah, I see,” Jake said suddenly. “I’m not standoffish enough for you.”

“That’s not--”

But he cut her off. “No, no, it’s okay. I have girl friends, I have sisters,” he said knowingly. “I get it: you like it when we brood. I can brood with the best of them, Bella. Here, watch.” He pursed his lips into a frown and lowered his head, glancing over at her from beneath his heavy brow. “How’s this?”

Bella snorted into her hands. “You look like a stroke victim.”

“Damn,” he muttered, slamming his fist against the steering wheel. “Okay, so I’ll have to work on my brooding. But in the meantime don’t you think it might just be easier for you to learn to like friendly people?”

“I’ll work on that too,” Bella promised, flashing Jake the same Girl Scout salute she’d given Phil earlier in the week.

“Good,” he said with a smile. Bella recognized Billy’s house in the distance, as they turned down the unmarked street. “So I’m still waiting for you to thank me.”

That caught Bella completely by surprise. “Thank you for what?” she demanded. “For failing to fix the dent in my truck?”

“No.” He drove the truck into the grass and threw it into park beside the garage, but didn’t get out. Instead he turned to look at her, sporting that same, sly smile he’d been wearing all afternoon. “For today,” he explained. “Admit it, Bella – you had fun.”

And she had, Bella was shocked to realize. Maybe it had been so long she’d forgotten what it felt like, or maybe she’d just been unwilling to open herself up to the possibilities of enjoying her life as it now was. But pizza and fish and too many dirty jokes to count had been such a welcome, such a natural, distraction that she’d actually enjoyed herself without even realizing it.

But Jacob had broken the bubble by pointing that out; calling attention to the change only forced Bella to remember that she didn’t usually have fun, and it was because of everything that she’d managed to forget for those few, precious hours. Still, he looked so pleased with himself, sitting there, proudly displaying the fact he could make her laugh like a badge of honor…Bella didn’t have it in her to take the wind from his sails.

“Thank you,” she said softly, turning away as she got out of the truck so that he wouldn’t be able to see her face fall. She knew what she’d be facing the moment she left his side, the inevitable ghosts that would be waiting to haunt her at home and in her dreams tonight. She started walking towards the house, but Jake jogged over to the passenger side of the truck and stopped her there.

“So if you really did have fun, that only begs the question,” he explained, touching her gently on the arm to stop her from walking away. “When are you coming back?”

She hesitated. The feel of his hand on her arm was strange, if only because it felt natural to have it there. You’re crazy, Bella reminded herself. You can’t tell fantasy from reality. You can barely deal with this on your own – don’t drag him down with you. “I’m…not sure that’s a good idea,” she finally muttered. She tried to push past him, but Jake held on to her forearm and spun her around to face him.

“Why not?” he asked.

There was no simple way to answer that question, no way to dance around the subject. Besides, he already knew her secret. Sometimes honesty was the best policy. “Because I’m dealing with some stuff that I’m not entirely sure I can handle. I’m not sure it would make me very good company.”

He shrugged. “I don’t care.”

“You do realize that I’m crazy?”

“Have you met my friends?” he shot back. “You’ll fit right in.”

“I’m being serious, Jake.”

His smile faltered a little. “So am I.”

“But…” Bella hesitated. “What if I can’t do it? What if I can’t keep this you and…and the other you, separate? What if I can’t--”

“Bella!” Jake interrupted. He seemed more confident, as if he could sense her walls were crumbling. He took the stolen hat off his head and plunked it back down on Bella’s. “Stop worrying so much.”

He began walking towards the house, and Bella hurried to keep up with his long strides. “I can’t help it – it’s my default state.”

“You should get into that stress relief stuff Rachel does,” he said thoughtfully. “Yoga or Tai Chi or Tai Bo or Tai something. Or you can just come down here and beat Quil,” he joked. “That seems to work well enough for me.”

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that – hey!” Bella suddenly remembered her earlier conversation with Quil, after the pizza debacle. “That reminds me, I wanted to ask you--”

“BELLA!” The shout rang out across the lawn as they approached the back door. Charlie was standing by the side of the cruiser, holding a cooler full of leftovers and waving with his other hand. “C’mon kid. We gotta go!”

She turned to run, but Jake caught her hand. “Wait. What did you want to ask?”

Bella spun around and looked at him sheepishly. “It’s…never mind. It’s not important. I’ll ask you next time.” And she said it like a promise, pleased when Jake smiled in response.

Reluctantly he let go of her hand. “I’m gonna hold you to that, Swan,” he declared as she hurried across the lawn to where Charlie was waiting. “Though next time just knock on the door!” Bella turned as she piled into the passenger seat, and waved one final goodbye.

“So,” Charlie said smugly, handing her the cooler. “I take it you had fun too.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bella admitted. “You were right: today wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.”

“See, this is why you should always listen to your parents.”

She tried to think of something snarky to say in response, trying to ensure that being right just this once didn’t go to Charlie’s head. But the engine was purring beneath them and the seat was soft and Bella Swan was too tired to do anything but smile.

***

“You’re not paying attention, Bella!” Rosalie snapped, whacking the blackboard sharply with her wooden pointer.

“Yes I am!” Bella protested again, stamping her foot in frustration beneath her grade school desk. She was wearing her favorite shoes with the lights in the heel, and they flickered with each impact.

Rosalie adjusted her glasses as they sat balanced on the bridge of her nose. “Then prove it to me and read it again, correctly this time.” She held her pointer beneath the only line on the board, written in delicate cursive.

“I am Bella Swan,” Bella read aloud, enunciating each world with perfect clarity as Rose pointed to it. But again this was the wrong answer, and again teacher lashed out in rage, slamming her stick against the top of Bella’s desk and making her jump.

“You’re not listening, Bella. Are you stupid or just naive?! Do I need to write home to your mother and tell her she gave birth to a moron?”

“No please!” Bella pleaded, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Please don’t tell my Mom! I’ll try harder, I swear!”

“Last chance.” Teacher Rosalie resumed her place at the board, and touched each neatly written word once more.

“I am,” Bella tried again, in a quivering voice. “Bella Swan.”

Rosalie did not scream, did not admonish her again. Instead she just looked terribly sad. “I’m sorry Bella,” she muttered, in a voice devoid of any real emotion. “That’s incorrect. The correct answer is…”

She flipped the chalkboard over, revealing the other side on which someone had scrawled a message in a substance that looked a lot like blood:

I AM THE MONSTER IN YOUR CLOSET

***

For the first time in ten years, Bella Swan slept with the lights on.

***

A/N: I am so so so sorry for yesterday. It was not my intention to be a glorified cock tease. I just didn't have time to go over all the edits last night in time to post both chapters, and I had the early shift at work this morning, which is why this one languished until this evening. Mark my words, it will never happen again. But you guys demanded more Jake so here he is. That being said, if this read like Bark at the Moon Part II, I appologize: Quil and Embry seem to take over when I write them. I'm going to have to work on that...

Also, in case you didn't know voting as started for the Indie TwiFic Awards!. Dreaming of Butterflies is up for 3 different awards, as are a ton of other great Jacob/Bella stories. I've posted a master list of them here, so what are you waiting for? Go vote for your favorite doomed ship!

And, as always, thanks to bluesuzanne for being a speedy beta.

Dreaming of Butterflies - A Jacob/Bella Fic - Chapter 5

2009-07-11T04:41:49Z

Title: Dreaming of Butterflies
Chapter: 5 (1 | 2 | 3 | 4)
Character(s): Jacob/Bella, Ensemble
Rating: PG-13
Summary: “Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”
-Zhuangzi (Philosopher)

Chapter 5:

Rain pounded against the living room window with its usual, monotonous roar. Bella leaned her forehead against the cool glass and exhaled. The pane fogged up briefly before the condensation was chased away by the outside humidity. The weather was growing warmer now as summer approached, turning the usual Forks downpour into a muggy, and often foggy, mess.

Bella thought it made a fitting backdrop for the day’s activities.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Charlie said, clunking into the room. He propped his foot up on the coffee table and began to lace his boots.

“Yeah,” she sighed, turning away from the window and the greasy streak left by her forehead. At least cleaning it would give her something to do later. “I do.”

“Eventually maybe, but it doesn’t have to be today.” He finished tying his shoes and then, shooting a furtive glance at his daughter, brushed the few crumbles of dirt off the table and onto the floor where they could be easily swept up. “We can wait till next week…or the week after that.”

“We already made the appointment,” Bella reminded him.

“Appointments can be rescheduled.”

Maybe he was trying to give her an exit. Or maybe he was just as afraid of going back there as she was. But either way Bella could tell her dad was stalling. It was easy behavior to recognize – after all, she’d been doing it all week. But she could only clean and languish around the house for so long before she worried it would start to make her crazy.

Well, crazier than she already was, at least.

“No time like the present.” Bella tried to make her face reflect the optimistic sentiment, but all she could manage was an expression of determined apprehension. “Let’s go.”

Charlie looked at her for a moment, fighting his own reluctance. “Alright,” he finally consented. “Get your bag. I’ll meet you in the cruiser.”

For the first time in three months, Bella retrieved her backpack from its usual position at the foot of her bed, dislodging some stray dust bunnies as she did so. With trembling hands, she pulled on one of the baseball caps that Phil had given her as a present before he and Renee grudgingly flew back to Phoenix.

Alone.

A quick glance in the mirror confirmed that the black hat neatly covered the bald patch which still marred her skull. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was better than walking around feeling exposed to the world. She felt exposed enough as it was. And she had the sinking feeling that it was only going to get worse. She pulled the front door shut behind her and prepared to make the run from the porch to the car through the storm.

“Wait.” Bella skidded to a stop a second before leaping into the cruiser. Through the blinding rain she glanced around the driveway and the surrounding street. They were both empty, and something was missing. The rain now forgotten, Bella stuck her head in the car door and demanded to know, “Where’s my truck?”

***

They took the long route to the school, traveling the side streets instead of going up Route 54. It wasn’t until they had parked in front of the main office that Bella realized it was because the longer route avoided passing the student parking lot. She was silently grateful as she peered through the rain and mist at the administrative wing of the building.

“You know,” her father muttered darkly, turning off the car, “You could’ve avoided this entire experience if you’d just gone back to Phoenix.”

Bella zipped up her coat. “I know,” she replied with a sad smile. “But I’m glad I stayed.”

He didn’t respond, but Bella could tell that, despite all the extra worry she caused, Charlie was glad she’d stayed too. “I’m coming in with you,” he said finally, and Bella didn’t protest. In fact, she welcomed his company. It was funny – two months ago this had been her nightmare scenario: getting dropped off in the cruiser on her first day of school, then escorted in by the town sheriff. But now Charlie seemed like a welcomed ally as she made her way back into enemy territory.

Welcomed and necessary, because the moment Bella set foot in the familiar school office, she shut down. Her body was there, but her mind was back in a different time, a different place. Edward and his cold demeanor, his desperation to escape from class, a desperation she had once believed to be related to her.

Now she knew better.

On autopilot she listened to her counselor and the vice principal explain her options. Thick packets of missed homework and handwritten notes from the teachers were stuffed into her backpack. The words “supplemental classes” and “extended instruction” were tossed around a lot, but she really didn’t know what they were in reference to. Bella only contributed to the conversation when her counselor suggested that maybe she’d benefit from finishing the rest of this year’s curriculum with a private tutor in Port Angeles, then rejoining her class in the fall.

“Yes, please,” Bella said softly. All three adults stopped talking and turned to stare at her. They were the first words she’d spoken since the meeting had begun.

“Bells, are you sure?” Charlie asked hesitantly. “I mean, Ms. Jorgensen doesn’t think you’ll have any problem catching up with a little bit of help.”

“I…I just think it would be for the best,” she stuttered. A business card with the name of the tutor found its way into Bella’s bag as well, and she again disengaged from the conversation.

Just moments before they could make their escape, Charlie was detained by the secretary. “I’m so sorry, Chief Swan,” she apologized for the hundredth time. “This paperwork has been sitting here for forever, but the school needs you to go through all these liability papers and the extended absence forms…” She dropped a stack of papers as thick as a phonebook into Charlie’s waiting hands.

“Why don’t you go get what you need out of your locker and, I don’t know, take a walk or something,” he suggested, looking exasperated. “I think I’m going to be here a while.”
Freedom was the last thing Bella wanted in this institution. She drifted at first, going hall to hall in the main building, until she randomly wound up in the correct one. Her locker had been turned into an impromptu memorial, it seemed. Cards and notes and even a few cheap stuffed toys had been secured to the front with painter’s tape and other, less school endorsed, adhesives. While three months ago they’d probably been bright and cheery, the hustle and bustle and general disarray of the teenage populous during passing periods had left most of them wrinkled and grimy. The cards taped lowest to the door were stained black from the splashes of dirty snow dislodged from dozens of boots as they swarmed by. It was both a sweet and utterly depressing display to behold.

Bella lightly pushed open one card near the top depicting a bunny covered in a rainbow band-aids, and read the generic note inside. It wished her a speedy recovery and was signed by a girl named Liz. Bella had no idea who she was, or who most of the cards were from. It baffled her that these people would presume to care about a person they’d never even met. Maybe it was the result of her minor celebrity status here in Forks, or maybe because people felt a connection to the accident since it took place in the school lot, but for whatever reason the students here wished her well.

And Bella wanted nothing to do with them.

In her first days at school she’d been too consumed with being the awkward new girl to want to meet people. The kids at Forks had seemed intent upon breaking her bubble, the barrier Bella had spent so long building around herself in Phoenix, and she resented them for it. And now…

…now she was too consumed by the loss of the few people who had managed to tear those walls down to want to let anyone else get that close again, no matter how good their intentions were. One by one, Bella ripped the tape (and a fair amount of blue paint) off her locker door. She wadded up the cards and the paper and all the well wishes.

Every note and knick knack.

Every hope and dream that she’d ever (never) had in this godforsaken building.

All of them went into a pile, and when she was finished she carried the mess out the doors at the end of the hall and pitched them into the dumpster behind the building. It wasn’t until she bent down to wipe her hands clean on the damp grass that Bella realized exactly where she was.

Her feet moved of their own accord, through the throngs of cars arranged neatly into rows. It had once been her path from History class to the Biology building. She knew the steps well. At the end of the last row she turned to look out toward Route 54. At the entrance to the parking lot, beneath the puddles of murky rain water, a set of black skid marks was faintly visible, drifting over the gravel, and disappearing exactly where Bella was standing.

Exactly where she’d been standing nearly three months ago, lost in her music and a boy’s stare from across the lot. If she closed her eyes, she could still see it all happening, feel those same emotions all over again.

She waited for the tears to spring to her eyes, but none came. She was beyond the kind of pain that could be expressed through tears. Bitterly she wondered what she would do if she was given the chance to stop the accident from happening. Five seconds later, five seconds earlier, and she could’ve avoided the impact that crushed her skull. A difference of five seconds, and she could’ve avoided the madness, the hallucinations that now plagued her.

Five seconds, and Edward Cullen, a boy she didn’t truly know, would not haunt her anymore.

She tried to determine an answer, but the question, the problem itself was insurmountable. Too big and too much for Bella to hold. As she looked out over the slick pavement all she could hear was the chorus of squealing tires in her head, repeating over and over again, stopping every time and drowning her in a sickening silence. Her whole body seemed to clench, freeze, and shut down. It wasn’t just her lungs that weren’t working this time. Bella felt her stomach twist into knots, pitching and rolling from side to side. She felt the burn of acid on the back of her tongue. She felt the gravel of the pavement bite into her skin as she dropped to her knees and threw up in the bushes.

Wracked with heaves, it felt as though her body were trying to purge itself of the entire situation: the crash, the school, the Cullens. When she was ill as a child her doctor in Phoenix used to say “garbage in, garbage out” as a way to encourage her to eat better. Bella had always believed it to be a stupid mantra, but it felt more true and applicable now that it ever had in her youth. Poisonous thoughts in, poison out. Hatred in, hatred out. Anger in, anger out.

As much as she might or might not wish it to be so, Bella couldn’t undo the damage that had already been done to her. Nothing short of a miracle or a time machine could take away the scars the accident had marked her with, both seen and unseen. But as she lay there, panting and slumped against the cold brick exterior of the science building, Bella knew the time for such bitterness had passed. Something had been taken from her, something irreplaceable. She could mourn, she could cling to her memories until they laid her in the ground. But both her mind and her body agreed: the time for such anger was over.

“Life’s not fair,” she’d told Phil bitterly. It was easy to say the words aloud, but another thing entirely to live by them. Still, as Bella wiped the sweat off her clammy forehead, she knew she’d have to try.

It was what Edward would’ve wanted.

“Bella?” a voice called out cautiously. “Bella Swan?” Gravel crunched beneath two sets of feet to her left, and she whirled in response. Angela Webber was running across the parking lot towards her, followed by a camera-toting blonde girl she didn’t recognize. “Are you alright?”

Self-conscious now that she had an audience, Bella wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and tried to straighten her hat. Still, she felt that making herself look presentable was probably a losing battle. It wasn’t like Angela was likely to care anyway. “I’m fine,” she assured her, but the words came out weak and shaky. Her throat burned when she spoke.

Angela bent down and put her cool hand against Bella’s forehead. “You don’t look fine.”

“Um, Angie?” the blond girl interrupted, awkwardly pacing behind them. “Is this something I’m supposed to get a picture of?” She raised the camera around her neck.

Angela sighed, but it didn’t seem to touch her good-natured attitude. “No, Kacey, this is not a Kodak moment. Tell you what, go back to the office without me and pick the best from those shots we got. We’ll go over them when I get back, okay?”

This didn’t appear to be the answer Kacey was looking for, but it was almost impossible to talk back to Angela. She just had that demeanor – she could find the good in every one, make the best out of every bad situation. She never held a grudge, never believed the gossip, never had an ulterior motive. It made her easy to like…and absolutely impossible to argue with.

“Fine,” Kacey pouted, but started to walk back towards the English building where the school paper had their offices.

“Oh, Kacey?” Angela added. “If Eric asks, I stopped to talk to Mr. Lambert, okay?”

“Fine, whatever.” She kicked at a stray stone as she sulked away.

With a groan, Angela mimicked Bella and leaned back against the wall, pulling her knees to her chest. “I figured since it seems you’re trying to fly under the radar, you probably don’t want the editor of the school paper finding out you’re here, huh?”

Bella said a silent prayer, thanking the powers that be for Angela’s perceptiveness. “Thank you. I’m just not ready yet and…”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to explain,” she assured her quietly. “But you do look like you’re feeling pretty lousy,” she said, indicating that Bella looked like hell in the kindest way possible.

Bella chuckled darkly. “Yeah, it’s been a long day. A long few weeks, in fact.”

“I bet.” The sky above them rumbled threateningly, but neither girl felt the urge to move. Forks managed to both give people a whole new respect for Mother Nature, and make them completely immune to her usual tactics. It would take a lot more than a little thunder to drive either of them inside.

“So I met your mom when you were in the hospital,” Angela said finally, trying to fill the silence. “She seemed real nice, but she said the family didn’t want visitors so I didn’t come back.”

Bella actually recalled Renee mentioning something about it once she’d woken up. “Yeah, she loved your cookies.”

“Really?” Angela asked, her smile growing exponentially. “It was a new recipe. I’ll give it to you tomorrow and you can send it to her.”

“I--” Bella grimaced. “Um…I’m don’t think I’m coming back, Angela. Not this year at least…”

“You’re leaving?” Her smile suddenly faltered, and she looked inexplicably sad behind her tortoise shell glasses. It was strange – Bella had only known this girl a few weeks in real life. How could the thought of her leaving possibly make her so sad?
How could she possibly care so much when Bella cared about the people here so little?

“No,” Bella assured her hurriedly, eager to chase away Angela’s doomed expression. “I mean, my mother wanted me to go back to Phoenix. But I’m staying here. I’m just going to see a private tutor through the end of the school year, I think. Being here right now is just…it’s still too hard.”

“Sure. And I bet the tutor’s really nice. You probably get to make your own schedule and no passing period,” Angela said wistfully, as though Bella had been given an enviable opportunity. And the way she spoke about it, she was beginning to believe it actually was.

“No gym,” Bella added to the list. “That’s probably good both for me and for the rest of my class.”

Angela laughed as Bella pantomimed hitting herself in the face with a volleyball serve. “Yeah,” she agreed. “But Mike will miss you. Actually, we all do,” she admitted.

Bella knew this was when she was supposed to say she missed them all too, but the honest truth was that she hadn’t thought of the people she’d left behind at school since coming home. They’d been easy to write off as figments of her imagination. After meeting Edward, their encounters had been brief, superficial, shallow. And in reality they’d only gotten to know her for a few weeks before her world had fallen apart. She was more an oddity to them than a friend.

Or so she’d thought.

But it seemed that perception was wrong.

“I…” she started to say, knowing that whatever came out of her mouth would either be a lie, or the disappointing truth. But the sight of Charlie pulling up in the car saved Bella from either fate. “I should go,” she told Angela lamely, shaking the mud (and other liquids) off the bottom of her bag. “But it was good to see you again.”

Before she could hop into the cruiser though, Angela pulled her into an enthusiastic hug, and then scribbled her phone number onto a post it note. “Just in case you forgot what it was,” she said as a joke. Bella didn’t laugh.

She actually had.

***

Scalding water did little to wash away the events of the day, but it left Bella feeling slightly calmer. Not that it was likely to make sleep come any easier or more peacefully than it ever had. She was drying her hair on the landing afterwards, and was surprised to hear voices echoing through the usually quiet house.
Correction: one voice. Charlie was talking on the phone. And judging by the calm, even friendly tone he was using, he was probably not speaking to Renee. She crept down the stairs and paused at the bottom, listening.

“I don’t know, Harry. What if something happens and no one’s home? I’d never forgive myself. And even if I did manage to, Renee would certainly never forgive me.” There was a long pause before Charlie laughed briefly. “Are you really going to lecture me on the medical benefits of eating fish right now?”

Apparently Harry really was, as Charlie was quiet for a long time after that. “No,” he said finally. “I just think it’s too soon. But I’ve got that three day weekend coming up after the June review. Maybe then…”

Bella had heard enough. She didn’t have to hear the conversation in its entirety to know that Charlie was bailing on some much needed time with the guys, and that he was using her as an excuse. Irritated, she promptly marched upstairs and into Charlie’s room, grabbing the portable phone off his nightstand. She pushed the TALK button in time to hear Charlie parry another suggestion.

“Hi Dad,” she said brightly into the receiver. “Hello Harry.”

“Bells?” Charlie demanded, and it sounded strange hearing him both through the speaker and faintly down the hall. “What are you--”

“Bella, babe!” Harry exclaimed, cutting Charlie off mid-rant. “How’re you feeling, dear? Sue and I’ve been thinking of you.”

“Much better, Harry,” she chirped, though there was an edge to her voice that she was sure both men noticed. “I hear I should be asking you the same thing, though. You watching what you eat?”

Harry laughed into the receiver. “If I’m not, then you can bet your ass Sue is. She practically weighs everything before it goes on my plate.” There was an unintelligible shout in the background that indicated Sue did not appreciate being mocked. “But I love her for it,” Harry added quickly. “And it’s got me feeling fit as a fiddle, so I can’t complain.”

“Good.” Bella climbed back down the stairs, peeking around the corner at Charlie. He glared at her while she danced beyond the reach of the cord on the phone in the kitchen. He’d either have to surrender his phone to come take hers away, or surrender himself to the kitchen and allow her to stay on the line. But either way, Charlie recognized he was suddenly outnumbered.

“Isabella Swan,” he said warningly. “Hang up--”

This time Bella cut him off. “So Harry, I’m sorry but I couldn’t help but overhearing your earlier conversation.”

“Small house,” he said, playing along with her. “It happens.”

“It really does. Anyway, Charlie has the day off tomorrow and he’s completely free. He’d love to go fishing. Should he grab Billy and meet at your house around, say, quarter after six?”

“Sounds perfect,” Harry agreed.

Charlie’s protests were losing their edge. “Now just hold on--”

Bella stuck out her tongue at her father where he slumped, looking exasperated, against the kitchen counter. “Okay, I’ll tell him. And I’ll even throw some goodies in the cooler for you guys.”

“Why thank you, Bella. That’s so sweet of you. Give our love to Renee next time you talk to her.”

“Will do. Have a good night, Harry.”

“You too,” he signed off. A second later the phone line went dead, and Bella hung up her receiver as well, walking into the kitchen. Charlie looked torn between rage and amusement as he hung up his phone, then snatched the portable from Bella’s hand.

“Young lady…” he admonished, but Bella only laughed

“You’re not seriously going to give me the ‘young lady’ talk, are you Dad?” She pushed past him and opened up the fridge, unloading cold cuts and various condiments onto the counter. “I’m not a kid anymore.”

“Then what was that little stunt back there?” he demanded, finally stepping out of her way as Bella seemed bent on working around him.

She began lining up bread on the counter in a sandwich assembly line, slathering two-thirds of the slices with mayo. “That,” she said matter-of-factly, “was me giving you a much needed day off.”

“Bella--” he started to protest again, but she cut him off with a wave of her butter knife.

“No Dad, listen for a second.” She whirled around to stare him straight in the eye. “I’m fine. I’m not made of glass. I’m not going to break while you’re gone. You can’t baby sit me all hours of the day and night. You don’t do it when you’re at the station, you didn’t do it while I was at school today. What makes this so different?”

Charlie threw up his hands. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “Its one thing to leave you to go to work – I have an obligation to put a roof over your head too, after all. But if something were to happen while I’m out goofing off then…” He shrugged and let the sentence hang in the air, but Bella knew what he meant. If she were to have a seizure or pass out or something while he was off fishing, he’d never forgive himself for being so irresponsible.

Bella put the knife on the counter and wiped her hands on a nearby dishtowel before walking over and throwing her arms around Charlie’s neck.

“What’s this for?” he asked, returning the hug.

“Just…for being a good Dad, that’s all.” Since waking up Bella had been too busy being consumed by her own problems to really think about what kind of impact the accident had had on her family. After all, she slept through the worst of it. But…two months of waiting while the person who means the most to you hovers somewhere between life and death…it was no small wonder that Charlie was having a hard time letting go.

But that didn’t mean the accident could be allowed to impact their lives like this forever, either.

“I get that you’re worried,” Bella said, breaking their awkward embrace. “But you have to start living again, okay? It can’t be all about me anymore. It’s can’t be all about the accident anymore.” She couldn’t help but think that she sounded like the world’s biggest hypocrite as she spoke, but Charlie shouldn’t have to suffer for her madness. She returned to the counter, busying herself with the sandwiches and praying that Charlie couldn’t see right through her.

“You’re right,” he said finally, punctuating the words with a deep sigh. “I know you’re right, Bells but…”

“But what?”

Charlie hesitated again. “There’s no way to say it without sounding condescending, but until you have kids, and I expect that to be a long, long time from now,” he added as a caveat. “But until you have kids you just can’t understand what it feels like. From the first moment we hold you in our arms, from that first step you take away from us, you can never understand the kind of worry that a parent feels. It’s…indescribable. And hard to conquer. And seeing you like that…after the accident…” He sighed again. “I’ll try, that’s all I can promise.”

“And that’s all I can ask,” Bella said, wrapping foil around the last of the sandwiches. She stacked them in the fridge, then turned to face her father. “It’ll be fine, Dad,” she added, trying to chase away the lines crossing his forehead in deep furrows. “Don’t forget to put the sandwiches in the cooler before you leave in the morning, and take some water, not just coffee. Harry’s are the sandwiches with no mayo, and I made you tuna. Okay?”

Charlie finally smiled at her ruefully and nodded. “Okay. I’ll call you tomorrow to check up on you. Sleep tight, Bella.” But his smile dissolved into a look of perverse worry as she climbed the stairs back up to her room.

***

“Wait, stop!” Bella screamed, her breaths coming in short, desperate gasps. Still, she pumped her arms and legs faster, faster. Faster than she knew was safe. Brambles reached up and tore at her ankles, roots sent her crashing to the ground, only for her to get up again and continue the chase.

But still it was not fast enough. The figure flitted between the trees, always out of reach, always ignoring her desperate pleas. A liquid shadow, it moved black on black against the backdrop of the forest. Each stride was sure, each jump was true. The being moved with an uncanny grace, a lithe stride that never missed a step. It practically flew.

And yet Bella knew she had to catch her. “Stop,” she screamed. “Stop! Alice!”

It was her, it had to be. Nothing, no human, no vampire, nothing moved the way she did, darting between the branches with reflexes not of this world. She’d come back for her…and now she was leaving again. No! Bella wouldn’t be left, not again!

But the figure remained in the shade, masked by the leaves and unwilling to recognize her. Before them the trees thinned and disappeared…and so did the ground. They raced towards the cliff, one after the other.

“No!” Bella screamed as the ground raced up at her, scratching and tearing at her flesh as she fell. “No!” There was no chance now, no hope. She watched as the girl…as Alice reached the tree line, the edge of the cliff, and hurled herself into space.

But before she could plunge to the torrential waters below she exploded into dust, vapor that mixed with the sea spray and dissipated on the wind, leaving Bella alone once more.

***

A/N: This chapter was originally well over 10,000 words long, and thus LJ forced me to cut it into two parts. So part two, which has become Chapter 6, will be posted tomorrow evening when I get home from work. I'm telling you this because I know I promised that Jake would return this chapter and...well he did, just below where I split the story in two. So I priomse you'll get your daily dose of wolf loving tomorrow.

Also, in case you didn't know voting as started for the Indie TwiFic Awards!. Dreaming of Butterflies is up for 3 different awards, as are a ton of other great Jacob/Bella stories. I've posted a master list of them here, so what are you waiting for? Go vote for your favorite doomed ship!

And, as always, thanks to bluesuzanne for being a speedy beta.

Burn, Burn, Burn Your Life Down - A Leah Clearwater Fanmix

2009-07-07T20:20:55Z

Burn, Burn, Burn Your Life Down
A Leah Clearwater Mix

I Don’t Believe You – P!nk
I won’t remind you, you said we wouldn’t be apart. No I don’t believe you when you say you don’t need me anymore.

Time Can Never Kill The True Heart – Stars
One heart, but the mind was in two. One half filled with the dreams of a saint, the other filled with nothing but hate.

Relief Next To Me – Tegan & Sara
In the dark it won't be easy to find relief. And I'm not proud that nothing will seem easy about me…

The Wrong Girl – Missy Higgins
And I'm lonely again tonight, I can feel it like a knot in my side. They keep saying this is part of the ride but I'm not getting stronger…

Happy – Saving Jane
I can walk around with a pretty face on, even when I'm black and blue. What's the point in telling everybody I'm not over you?

5 Tracks + Cover Art

Dreaming of Butterflies - A Jacob/Bella Fic - Chapter 4

2009-07-03T01:50:07Z

Title: Dreaming of Butterflies
Chapter: 4 (1 | 2 | 3)
Character(s): Jacob/Bella, Ensemble
Rating: PG-13
Summary: “Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”
-Zhuangzi (Philosopher)

Chapter 4:

“I--”

“It’s only for a few months Bella,” Charlie admonished gently, more amused that annoyed it seemed.

“But I’m fine,” Bella continued to protest. “And there are half a dozen medical professionals who agree with me. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be sitting here.” She slapped at the side of the passenger seat in Charlie’s cruiser to emphasize her point. “Besides, I wasn’t even the one driving. Why should I be punished?”

“You’re not being punished. It’s just a precaution and as a state official I’m required to enforce the law, even against my own daughter.”

“Sure, hide behind the badge…” Bella clutched her duffel bag closer to her chest, and tried not to sulk. Today was supposed to be a good day, the good day. Discharge, release, freedom. But her mood had soured slightly when the doctor signing off on her release refused to do so until she surrendered her driver’s license to him. She’d only had her purse back for five minutes before she was yanking things out of it.

“Sorry,” Dr. Pritcher, her neurologist, had said with a rueful smile. “Washington has tough laws on head injuries. You had a mild seizure during surgery. Means you have to be seizure free another six months before you can have this bad boy back. But don’t worry, August will get here soon enough.” He waved the card beneath her nose in a taunting fashion, but Bella bit her tongue and didn’t say anything further until she was out of the wheelchair and safely in Charlie’s car.

She knew it wasn’t his fault, but her frustrations had been building for the last week and a half, and Charlie just happened to be the closest target when the straw broke the camel’s back. Not that he was complaining – it was the most Bella had said to him since waking up. Even as she sighed and pouted beside him, he looked as though he was fighting the urge to laugh. After all this time, all those nights of worrying and pacing and praying, his baby was finally coming home. Bella could’ve probably gotten away with murder on his watch.

She just couldn’t drive.

Glaring out the window, Bella watched the trees and undergrowth and miles and miles of green whip past. Despite being irritated and distracted, she couldn’t fight the intense feeling of déjà vu that overtook her as Charlie turned onto their street. Duffel bag perched on her lap, all she could think about was getting off a plane under the same overcast sky, burdened by a similar disillusionment. If only she’d known then how much worse it would get…

They drove the last half mile in that same, comfortable silence, broken only by the occasional crackle of the police radio under the dash. Renee and Phil and Italian take-out were waiting in the driveway when they finally pulled up in front of the house. Though she’d seen her just hours earlier, Renee still bounded up to the cruiser before Charlie could even put it in park, pulling the door open and her daughter out into her arms.

Bella tried to focus on her mother, but the sight of her rusted, red-orange truck had caught her eye. Sitting in front of the garage that Charlie rarely used, a streak of foreign, blue paint was clearly visible. She hugged Phil and her mother but all she could feel when they touched her were the icy arms of a stranger as he pulled her from harm’s way. She replied half-heartedly to their barrage of questions and small talk, but all she could hear in response was the squeal of tires and a voice, screaming her name.

Despite being out in the open, it was suddenly hard to breathe.

“Mom,” Bella interjected, unsure of what the conversation was actually about. “I…can I just have a second to freshen up and stuff?” she asked hesitantly. The truck, her closed bedroom window, the old familiar scenes from her melodrama nightmare…she knew it would be tough, but Bella never expected it to feel this bad.

“Of course, honey,” Renee planted a kiss lightly on her forehead, scooping up their bags of food. We’ll go get dinner ready. You just go get settled and everything, okay?”

Bella nodded grimly and walked the narrow path up the driveway and to her front door. With trembling fingers, she lightly brushed against the dent in the side of her truck as she passed. There was no imprint of his fingers, like she’d been expecting. Just the faint blue streaks of paint from where the van had impacted her vehicle, seconds before crushing her body in a similar fashion.

***

Pink and purple sheets were twisted into a knot. Drawers were half-opened, their contents disheveled and unfolded and spilling out onto the floor. A hairbrush not her own balanced on the edge of her desk precariously. It looked as though a hurricane had ripped through her room, but Bella knew it was just the aftermath of her mother, staying there at night before she’d moved to the motel, then bringing clothes and other necessities to the hospital for her. Renee had always been many things, but organized wasn’t one of them. Still, if the roles were reversed and it had been Renee in the hospital, Bella couldn’t imagine herself taking the time to be much neater…

She opened the closet door, which was already hanging ajar, and placed her bag inside and away from potentially prying eyes. She didn’t want her mom to help her unpack later on. She didn’t want to try and explain…

Her feet wandered the familiar floorboards, remembering how each one creaked beneath her weight. Fingers touched the sheets with a misplaced reverence. The last person to sleep beneath them had been her mother, not a vampire from another time, another place. The last night Bella had spent curled up here, she’d been alone, left with the weight of her dreams. Carefully she sat on the edge of the mattress, feeling the texture of the sheets against her legs, and imagining they were there as a barrier to keep her from getting too cold pressed in the marble crook of his arms.

“Your father told me you’ve been having some pretty upsetting dreams lately. Can you tell me what they’re about?”

Sure, Bella thought, pulling the sheets up around herself. They’re about love, they’re about completeness. They’re about knowing both, only to lose it all and find yourself empty and forgotten and alone and lost in the dark. They’re about finding your soul mate sitting next to you, only to wake up and realize it was all just a cosmic misunderstanding.

But, of course, that wasn’t what Bella had said when the shrink had asked.

“I--,” she stuttered. “They’re…about the accident.”

“But Dr. Collins says you don’t remember what happened.”

A chill swept through Bella, despite the fact that the rising May humidity outside was making the air in her tiny room thick and heavy. She tried to push the memories of the interview from her mind, but they cycled through like demonic reels of tape she was forced to watch. She didn’t remember the accident…not the way anyone else did.

“I don’t,” Bella hesitated, struggling to come up with explanation that didn’t involve being in love with a fictional vampire. “That’s the problem – each night it happens a new way. I’ve been crushed practically to death each time I close my eyes. I guess the imagination really is a powerful tool…” she finished weakly.

The doctor just scribbled onto his pad.

But Bella knew the real nightmare was just beginning. She fell backwards onto the mattress, sinking into the pile of pillows at the head of the bed. Already it felt wrong, empty lying there like that. She closed her eyes, tried to will herself to feel tired and safe in an empty bed…but all she felt was a pull behind her ribs, an echo that told her she would never close her eyes without feeling the loss.

“And this Edward person, the one your mother says you keep talking about, who is he exactly?

She felt the tears leak from beneath her tightly closed eyelids. Tiny rivers pouring silently down her cheeks, staining the pink sheets rouge.

“He’s…” There were no words to describe him, the outline of himself that he’d carved in her heart and flesh and bones. And even if there were words enough, there were none in that category that made her sound healthy, normal. Sane.

Edward burned in her mind like a beacon, but this time his face was overshadowed by that of her Renee. Then Charlie. Phil. Mike. Angela. Jacob.

He was right. Jake, that is. There were other people that cared for her, even if they didn’t know it yet.. Other people that needed her to be well, even if she wasn’t ready to be. She couldn’t throw her life away without hurting theirs as well. She couldn’t be that selfish.

“He is,” she started to say softly, then corrected herself. “He was a boy from school. My lab partner, actually. And when I was under all those months, I had a dream about him too, that’s all…”

Bella wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her sweatshirt, drying her tearstained cheeks. He would understand, she told herself. Edward, the one who loved her and cared for her and had been willing to die for her. He would…he would have, she corrected herself again. He would have understood why she did what she did. He would’ve understood that it was a lie she had to tell, a game she had a play. To pretend that he was nothing more than a boy from school, and she was nothing more than his science partner…he had a family too, after all. People to protect.

He would understand. He would forgive her.

He would have forgiven her.

Had any of it, any moment of it, been real.

Bella suddenly hurled herself from the bed, scrambling to the floor and taking half the tangled sheets with her. The realization hit her with the force of a train, slamming through all the confusion and delusion and the other tangled webs she was weaving.

She had never spent the night in that bed with Edward Cullen, and she never would. He would never come through that window, he would never hold her, and the monsters would never be at bay. For the rest of her life Bella would be at the mercy of the nightmares, sleeping with a ghost in her empty bed.

Choking on the weight of the truth Bella kicked the tangled sheets from around her ankles and scrambled for the door on her hands and knees. She emerged into the hallway and slammed it shut behind her, warding off the phantoms that felt like they were breathing down her neck.

“Bella!” Renee’s shout echoed up the stairs, making her jump. “Come on, we’re going to eat!”

She took a split second, a deep breath to compose herself, wiping her face a final time and smoothing back her hair. Calm and cool, she ventured downstairs, shrugging off the nagging feeling that no matter what happened tonight, she wouldn’t be sleeping in that bed for a long, long time.

***

Bella watched Renee move around the kitchen with misplaced efficiency. She gathered plates and forks and produced a baking sheet which she used to re-heat a length of garlic bread in the ancient oven without so much as opening an incorrect drawer. With shocking sadness, Bella realized that the kitchen must have been the same since the day her mother walked out the door. She shuddered silently, feeling as though she wasn’t sitting in the kitchen any longer, but in a mausoleum instead, an effigy to her parents’ failed marriage. Somewhere in the living room Phil laughed, a sound that Charlie echoed in an empty, broken tone.

Bella didn’t feel so hungry anymore.

But the four of them arranged themselves around the narrow table and pretended to be a functional, modern family as Renee heaped too much food on Bella’s plate, and Charlie took much longer, deeper swings of his beer than usual. Phil caught her up on the details of spring training, Charlie discussed hiring a new deputy for the Forks Police force since Brian Williams had retired in January, and Renee planned to join (and eventually quit) a new book club over the summer, in addition to the tutoring she did on the side. It was all pleasant, mindless drivel, and at first Bella figured it was intended to mask the awkwardness of the situation. However, soon she began to suspect she was the only one in the room who didn’t know something.

Renee blanched as Bella called her out on it. “It’s nothing big, honey. We can discuss it after the meal.”

Bella pushed her plate away from her and crossed her arms defiantly. “In that case I’m done, so somebody tell me what’s going on.”

Charlie and Renee played a game of hot potato with their eyes, tossing the topic back and forth between them both, before her father finally lost. “Bells, we’ve been talking. All three of us,” he stressed. “And we think it might be best if you move back to Phoenix with your mother during your recovery.”

Renee jumped in before Bella could so much as muster a response. “It will be better, sweetie. There’re quite a few great neurologists in the area, so you can finish your rehab at home, and I can be there for you twenty-four seven as soon as school lets out.” She looked over at Phil expectantly. “And Phil’s looking at some coaching opportunities for the fall so travel might not be as big an issue as we once thought. So this could be a really good thing, in the end…”

“She has a point, Bells,” Charlie chimed in, a little too quickly. His upbeat tone failed to match the expression on his face, full of remorse and dread. “There's gonna be nights when I’m stuck at the station, and it’s not good for you to be alone, or to have to live around my schedule until you can drive aga--”

“Dad!” Bella finally exclaimed, throwing herself headfirst into the conversation. “Mom, you can’t seriously think this is a good idea. I mean, my doctors are all here and--”

“We are serious, Bella. I know it would mean changing doctors, but coming home could be the best thing for you right now,” Renee said, glaring first at her ex, then at her new husband as if daring them to do anything but agree with her.

“But…I just got out,” she looked from face to face, searching for an ally. “I just got home…and you already want me to leave?”

“Sweetie,” Renee reached out and grabbed one of Bella’s waving hands. “You were only here for a few weeks anyway. It’s not like you’re leaving behind the only school and friends you’ve ever known. Phoenix was home for you for a long time. All we’re saying is that maybe it could be that for you again.” Beside her, Phil nodded resolutely.

Bella searched for Charlie’s eyes in desperation. Surely he wouldn’t want to be alone again. He’d want her to stay and cook and keep him company and fill this empty house with something other than the ghosts of his ex-wife. But Charlie’s face was a perfect copy of Phil’s, outlining his stubborn intention to do what he thought was best for her, and not what he actually wanted.

Bella was surrounded.

They had ganged up on her. A mob, resolute in their desire to rip her from the one place in her life that felt as though it had any meaning. There was a time, long ago before the accident, when she would have said the same thing about the tiny blue house in Phoenix. But…things were different now. Phoenix was a desert, empty and dead and devoid of anything that had real meaning, now that she knew what meaning actually was, what living actually was. Forks, with its rain and snow and moss and trees, it had awakened something within her. Maybe it was magic, maybe it was madness, but Bella wasn’t willing to walk away from it. Now yet, not now.

“Don’t…I,” she stammered. “Don’t I get any say in this at all?”

“Of course you do,” Renee chimed in, clearly the elected voice of the group. “But we need you to think about it, really think about it Bella, and then we’ll decide, as a family, where you’ll be better off.”

The room was a swirl of faces, all sympathetic in view and manipulating in motive. Bella felt like they were closing in on her. She couldn’t think with them all pressing in so close now. “I need some air,” she declared, shoving back from the table with more force than necessary. “Alone.”

Before any of them could utter a protest Bella slipped through the kitchen door and into the backyard, slamming the screen door shut on her family.

***

Bella heard the wet boards creak in protest behind her. She expected Renee or Charlie accompanied by the usual parental pep talk. But the steps were too heavy to be her mother’s, and missing the weight of her father’s steel toed boots. She turned around just as Phil took a seat on the stair above her.

“I don’t know how you get used to living in weather like this,” he said, looking out over the backyard and into the woods beyond. The air was thick with the promise of spring rain; heavy lines of clouds creating a ceiling so low in the sky is looked like a well timed jump from the roof would allow you land in them. “But there’s no denying the scenery is amazing. I’ve never seen so much green.”

“Yeah…” Bella agreed weakly, some part of her finding it darkly humorous that they were talking about the weather, of all things. “But you get used to it. It’s worse when it snows.”

“I can imagine.”

A punctuated silence passed between them. Bella had always liked Phil, not only because he was good to Renee, but because as the product of a divorced home himself, he got it. The entire time that he and Renee were dating, then engaged, then living together all under the same roof, he had never tried to be her dad. He didn’t make any attempt to be her best friend either. He realized that she’d already grown into the person she was going to be, and that all he could do in her life was become a presence that she didn’t resent.

And he did so, with the quiet grace of someone who has watched and learned from the mistakes of those who came before him. If Bella called home and Phil got to the phone first, he was more than happy to come pick her up. He left the disciplining and the curfews and the serious parent talks to Renee, and rightfully so. He asked her to help with things around the house rather than expecting her to, and never cajoled her into doing something he wasn’t willing to tackle himself. But most of all, he never resented her for being the reason his wife wasn’t with him many of those nights on the road, or if he did, he certainly never showed it. So for what it had been worth, their little system had worked fairly well, and Bella was grateful to him for that.

But it didn’t make her any less surprised by the direction the conversation had taken at dinner.

She sighed deeply, breaking their silent observance of the cloud patterns as they shifted in the darkening sky. “Coaching, Phil? Is that really what you want to do with your life?” She turned around to stare at him quizzically.

Phil took off his baseball cap and ran his fingers through hair that looked a lot thinner than the last time Bella had seen him. “Have you ever seen a movie called Bull Durham?”

Bella shook her head.

“How about one called For Love of the Game?”

Bella could only shake her head again.

“Have you ever seen any Kevin Costner baseball movie?” he said, slightly exasperated that his explanation was being thwarted by Bella’s lack of cinematic experience. “I mean, they’re pretty much all the same.”

“Sorry,” she said lamely. “I’m not really into sports movies…or any movies.”

“It’s okay,” Phil said, with a flip of his hand. “Look…it’s just…” he struggled to find the right way to phrase what he was thinking. “When you’re 21 and you tell people you’re a minor league baseball player, they think it’s cute. But when you get to be my age and you’re still slugging it out down on the farm, trying to make it, and watching guys half your age and twice your size get called up instead, it becomes way less cute.” He shrugged absently, but his eyes betrayed how sad he truly was. “It’s just time to grow up.”

“So…you don’t end up like Kevin Costner?” Bella asked, still not getting the connection he was trying to draw between the films and his career.

He chuckled lightly in response. “Exactly, so I don’t end up like Kevin Costner…sort of. But it’s not just that, Bella.” He looked back out over the yard, staring at the trees in the distance. “Look, when I married your mom you guys became my family. Both of you,” he said, pointedly. “And family takes care of each other, family comes first – it’s what Renee and I agreed to when we got married, and we knew it. It’s why she’s been willing to spend all her extra days cavorting to the ass end of the country and back with me. And it’s why I’m willing to find a normal, 9 to 5 job without so much as blinking.” He reached out and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “That’s what family does, Bella. Like it or not, kid, you’re stuck with that.”

Bella felt that familiar tingle as tears started to well up in the corners of her eyes. She turned away and chewed on her bottom lip, trying to keep it together. She might have always appreciated Phil, but she’d never known he cared that much. But to give up a dream like that, to be willing to make that kind of sacrifice…

…well, Bella had only experienced selflessness like that in another lifetime. She sniffed wetly, and wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve like a child, trying to be discreet. But Phil noticed and squeezed her shoulder again.

“Oh, buck up kiddo – it’s not that bad,” he said brightly, misinterpreting her tears. “But I felt like you needed to hear it from the horse’s mouth. The choice really is up to you. You need to focus on getting yourself better, and that means you need to be where you think you can do that best. So while I know it’s a challenge, don’t fixate on us old farts and just worry about yourself for a little while, okay?”

Bella nodded with a sad smile. “I’ll try, I promise. It’s just hard, I mean there’s my Dad, and you still have this season to play so you don’t even know where you might be living next year…you old guys give us a lot to worry about,” she teased gently.

Phil just chuckled again. “Yeah, we do that pretty good. And I will say this: if there’s a silver lining in this mess of a situation it’s that I got to meet your old man.”

That was the last thing Bella expected to hear. “Really?” she asked in disbelief.

“Yeah,” Phil nodded. “Really, he’s a great guy Bella, and you’re so much like him.” He got quiet for a second, contemplative. “I know it must be hard, having to see me with Renee, I know he misses her, and I know I’d feel the same if the roles were switched. But…I don’t know. I feel like I understand what happened so much better now. I feel like I get it, you know? I think that he’s one of the people who shaped your mom into the person she is today, and if anything I owe him for that.”

“I don’t think he’d see it the same way,” Bella said softly, “But that’s still…real nice to hear.”

“That being said, we’ve had this discussion a good, few times before tonight,” Phil further confessed. “And the three of us are in agreement that this needs to be your decision – you shouldn’t feel obligated to stay here because of Charlie or my job, and you shouldn’t feel obligated to come back to Phoenix just because your mom is worried.”

“So no pressure?” Bella asked, sarcastically.

“Exactly,” he agreed, but his tone betrayed that fact that he realized just how much was riding on her decision. “I know it doesn’t seem fair--”

“No kidding,” Bella interrupted. “But do you want to know something I’ve learned in the last few weeks?”

“Shoot.”

She turned to glare at him over her shoulder. “Life’s not fair either. It sucks that it takes severe head trauma to figure it out, but it’s true…”

“No shit, kid. No shit.”

Somewhere behind the canopy of clouds the sun was beginning to descend. The horizon was tinged barely pink, but the ambient light was beginning to fade and make it difficult to see. It was also alerting the mosquitoes that it was time for dinner. Even in this reality, Bella figured her blood must taste delicious, as she began to swat angrily at swarms that descended on her bare legs. Still, they were a minor annoyance compared to life lately, and Bella wasn’t really willing to admit defeat and return inside just yet.

“So, Philadelphia?” she finally asked, breaking the silence that indicated Phil wasn’t going back inside unless she came with him.

“Your mom tell you?”

“I…may have accidentally heard her mention it…” Bella confessed, and despite her reservations she felt a sly smile cross the planes of her mouth.

“You have good hearing. She’s supposed to be keeping that information to herself until I actually know something.” He laughed at himself. “We ballplayers are a superstitious lot – don’t want to jinx anything before it happens.”

“I’ll keep it to myself,” she assured him, raising her hand into the traditional Girl Scout salute, even though she hadn’t been one since third grade. “Scout’s honor. What’s Mom think about that?”

“Speaking of sacrifices…” Phil muttered more to himself than to Bella. He leaned back against the porch front, brown furrowed in thought. “She puts on a good front, tries to act excited for my sake,” he finally confessed.

“But…”

“But…she’s your mom,” he said, as if that explained everything. Which, to a degree, it did. “She’ll hate the cold, she’ll hate the winters and the rain. And she’s never particularly cared for cheese steak, so there’s that…” He shrugged helplessly. “I’d honestly hate to have to ask her to move, but there’s the potential for it to be good money. Really good money. We’ll just have to wait and see I guess.”

“What about some of the southern teams?” Bella asked cautiously, suddenly sensing this was the perfect opportunity to test a theory she had. “Like Florida or something?”

Phil just shook his head sadly. “Couldn’t stir up a damn bit of interest there, or in Texas, not for lack of trying. Shame, too. Would’ve been good clubs to play with, and the climate would’ve much better suited your mother, but…” He shrugged again. “What’re you gonna do?”

It was a rhetorical question, but Bella was asking herself the same thing. Philly, and not Jacksonville…for some reason she was surprised that the location had changed. Location, but not the situation – Phil was still pursuing a contract deal. What did it all mean, and why were the details wrong? You’re crazy, Bella, not precognitive. Stop thinking that real life is going to follow your own personal mind fuck, she chided herself mentally. Of course ballplayers want contracts, you have to stop thinking you know what’s coming, you have to stop thinking that…that any of it was real – you know better. And you have to stop talking to yourself! That can’t be a sign of anything good. Stop it!

“Bella!” Phil said sharply, penetrating the haze of her one-on-one mental conference. She shook her head slightly and glanced up at him. His expression was worried. “I was talking to you for like a minute. Are you okay?”

“Sorry,” she said, grinning sheepishly and trying her best not to look like someone who probably needed to have her sanity re-evaluated. “Just got lost in thought for a second. What were you saying?”

“I was asking you what you thought your mom might think of Chicago?” he said, relaxing a bit now that he knew she wasn’t have an unresponsive seizure or anything.

Bella was mildly confused, and still a few steps behind in the conversation. “Chicago in the context of…?”

“In the context of a new home. I haven’t told her yet, and it’s just rumor at this point, but there’s scuttlebutt that they might be looking to pick up a second baseman and I’m on the short list.”

“Um,” Bella tried to wrap her mind around this new information. “Well, it’s more southwest than Philly, so there’s that…”

“That’s…completely unhelpful Bella, but thanks,” Phil muttered with a sardonic smile. “Besides, that’s even more of a long shot that Pittsburg. Still, you think I should have one of those frozen deep dish pizzas flown out to Phoenix, just to see if she likes it?

“Probably couldn’t hurt,” Bella agreed, whacking a particularly big mosquito as it feasted on her forearm. Her hand came away gooey. “Eugh!”

“You’re getting eaten alive. That’s probably our cue to retreat.” Phil rose to his feet with the groan of a man who’d taken a physical beating recently, and extended a hand to help her up. “You coming?”

Bella wiped the bug guts on the damp grass in front of her, than waved him off. “I’ll be inside in a minute, okay?”

“Sure, but you’d better hurry,” he said lightly. “I heard your mom say something about butterscotch rum soaked cake earlier. I have no idea what that is, but with both ‘rum’ and ‘cake’ in the title it can’t possibly be bad, right?” He laughed at his own joke, and hurried back through the balky screen door and into the safety of the house.

The backyard was now dark, but Bella could still make out the clouds as they obfuscated the stars behind them. If possible, they seemed even lower now. Closer. Heavier. Pushing down on both Forks and Bella alike.

“Great,” Bella muttered to herself bitterly. “Like I need any more pressure…” She got to her feet heavily and, with one more slap at the last errant insect, ventured back into the kitchen where not even the promise of cake could alleviate the weight of the worry on her shoulders.

***

Bella pushed the edge of the screwdriver into the crack in the humid wood, and held her breath as it squeaked loudly in response. Biting her lip, she waited to hear footsteps outside her door. But Charlie confirmed that he was safely in bed down the hall by snorting loudly in his sleep, before his light snores resumed their usual rhythm. She pushed against the screwdriver again, with more force this time, until it finally slipped into the space between the two slightly warped floorboards, popping one of them free.

“Thank God Charlie can sleep through a hurricane,” she whispered to herself. It had taken a good half hour of tapping, banging, digging, prying, and occasionally swearing, to get the old boards to part with each other. Age and moisture hadn’t made her job any easier. But it would be worth it to have a hiding place, away from the rest of the world.

For the first time Bella could remember, she was happy for her own delusional state. She’d forgotten about her hidey-hole years ago, and the contents showed it. She reached her hand into the depths of the hole, fingers blindly brushing against plumbing and cobwebs before they found the small shoebox. When she finally managed to pull it from the crevice, it was covered in a thick blanket of dust, which Bella was careful not to scatter about the room.

Inside were not pictures of herself and Edward, hidden by him in his haste to leave her to a human life, but the things that, as an eight year old, she had considered to be her most prized possessions: the post-card her cousin had sent her from her honeymoon in Paris, a collection of paper “moolah” dollars she’d been saving to get a free hot fudge sundae at the Diary Dream, and a much coveted sparkly rainbow super ball that she’d won off Rachel Black in a game of Jenga almost a decade ago.

But Bella hadn’t spoken to her cousin in almost five years, the Dairy Dream got bought out and bulldozed to make room for a mini-mall, and she lost touch with the Black twins about the same time she lost touch with Jake…and the rest of Forks. Bella emptied the box and dumped the contents into the top drawer of her desk. Such precious treasures, now absolutely meaningless…

She wondered if five, ten years down the road, she’d open up that same box and contemplate how inconsequential its new contents were. Part of her hoped so, because it would mean she’d finally reached a point where the accident didn’t matter, where she was okay, where she was just an ordinary girl living the same sane, ordinary life as every other girl. But until then…

Bella treated her duffel bag like it held something fragile. Maybe it did - the last pieces of her sanity. Or the last pieces of the Bella she once though she was. She didn’t know. She dug beneath the neatly folded clothes and pulled out a pair of white socks. She unrolled then and reached into the toe, pulling out the crumpled, smudged, and torn remnants of an old MacDonald’s bag. With a tiny half-smile she put it in the box without unfolding it – just knowing it was there made her feel a little bit stronger, made her hands shake just a bit less when she reached for her next hidden article.

Unfolding a tee shirt, she removed a blue Hallmark card, featuring a palm tree and the words “wish you were here.”

It was not made out to her.

The moment Bella learned that, regardless of whether or not they were right, everyone including the shrink seemed to think she was sane, she began preparing to be released. All those weeks languishing in bed, Bella had been drifting, a boat that refused to be moored by anything in this life. After all, she’d awoken to find that all she had left to live for was now gone, so what was the point? But facing that certainty, knowing that she was going to be ejected back into her old life whether she wanted to be or not, had compelled Bella to do…well, something. Anything.

So she had walked. Not just back and forth to the bathroom, but up and down the halls. Forks Hospital was shaped like a U, and Charlie’s clout had gotten Bella a fairly secluded room at the far north end. With a week to go before being released, her goal was to get to the south end by the busy nurses’ station. Easier said than done – two months of total disuse had taken their toll on her muscles, and though she’d never been exceedingly athletic, she’d recently found even the simplest of physical tasks had left her feeling winded.

But Bella had become determined: if she was going to be flung back into the real world, at least she’d land on her own two feet. So despite the fact that she was no longer hooked to an IV, Bella had used the stand as a makeshift crutch, and proceeded to comb the hallways whenever permitted. On day one she’d only made it four rooms down and back before collapsing back into bed. Her calves had throbbed that night as she tossed in a restless sleep.

But her body’s learning curve was quick, and by day three her feet and knees and ligaments remembered enough to get her around the first corner and into the narrow stretch of hallway by the supply room. Day five had put her around both corners, the bustle of the nurses’ station acting as a beacon in the distance. She’d grabbed a pamphlet on herpes prevention off a rack on the wall as a milestone, a souvenir to mark her progress.

Day six had dawned with Bella at the far end of the south hallway, eight rooms separating her from her goal.

She never made it there.

Tired, but feeling upbeat, Bella had collapsed onto a bench between rooms to catch her breath momentarily. Breathing hard, she’d allowed her eyes to trail over the brightly colored bulletin board nailed to the wall across from where she sat. Similar boards peppered the stark landscape of each hallway, covered with bright paper and offering patients information on various events, menus for the cafeteria, interesting news stories, etc. This particular board was titled “Friends and Family of Forks General” and was covered with pictures of former patients, children of the staff, and local officials. There were hand-written thank you notes to various doctors and nurses, some in neat print, others scribbled in crayon on lined notebook paper. It was sweet and sentimental, and for a brief second Bella had allowed herself to smile. That smile had quickly vanished when she recognized two of the faces starting back at her from a glossy photograph, pinned beside a blue card.

Bella looked down at that same card, the one she stole from the hospital and smuggled out, now clutched in her hands. With shaking fingers she opened it. Inside, there was a note addressed to “all the staffers at Forks Hospital who have made such an impact on our lives” written in elegant scrawl, and a picture. Bella flipped it over, and Carlisle and Esme Cullen, along with 30 scrub-clad doctors-in-training, smiled back at her from the sun soaked pavilion in front of the UCLA Medical Center.

They were very much human.

A/N: A hearty thanks to bluesuzanne for ruining the surprise and beta-ing for me. And don’t worry all, I promise Jake will be making his grand reappearance soon enough. Also, if you've never seen a Kevin Costner baseball movie either, go rent one for crying out loud! It's pretty much all the man is good for :)

30 New Moon Cover Icons

2009-06-26T17:58:16Z

[30] - Icons of the new New Moon Cover

Teasers:

1-6

7-12

13-18

19-24

25-30

Eyes on Fire - A Rogue/Remy Fanmix

2009-06-14T03:32:08Z

Eyes on Fire
A Rogue/Remy Fanmix

At Full Speed – Jack’s Mannequin
And I have travelled far/and I've seen things that I'd rather not say/ when you're travellin' it's better that way/the darker the secret/the harder you'll keep it

The Runaway – Anberlin
I know your desire is to be desired/steal a kiss yet/and call us friends/distance is the thief in which you conspire

Eyes on Fire – Blue Foundation
I’m taking it slow/feeding my flame/shuffling the cards of your game/and just in time/in the right place/suddenly I will play my ace

Closer – Jimmy Eat World
Remember me, she said smiling/write my name somewhere safe/touch and taste/fades with space/I'll never be who you'll dream

Hope For The Hopeless – A Fine Frenzy
Making the best of it/playing the hand you get/you're not alone in this

5 Songs + Cover Art

Dreaming of Butterflies - A Jacob/Bella Fic - Chapter 3

2009-06-12T01:18:16Z

Title: Dreaming of Butterflies
Chapter: 3 (1, 2)
Character(s): Jacob/Bella, Ensemble
Rating: PG-13
Summary: “Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”
-Zhuangzi (Philosopher)

Chapter 3:

Black.

No, dark.

Bella came-to slowly. No bolting awake from the throws of a nightmare. No screaming, no pain, no gasping for air as her lungs flooded with rolling seawater.

No dreams from a failed existence.

Instead the medicated sleep hovered over her brain like a dense fog, fuzzy and soft, hiding the unpleasant details of reality. She rolled over and stretched, a tangled mess in the starchy hospital sheets. Her foot kicked against something soft.

The fog began to recede and Bella blinked, willing her eyes to acclimate to the darkness. And when they did, she blinked even more, just to be certain that what she was seeing was real.

Beside the end of her bed was a chair, containing a body which appeared to be connected to the head that was currently sleeping, face down, against the corner of her mattress. Jacob.

He had stayed.

Bella froze, then slowly pulled her knees up to her chest while she tried to wrap her sleep-addled brain around the situation. He had stayed when…by all accounts he didn’t even know her.

It was sad, but the more Bella thought about it the more she realized it was true. Jacob…the one…in her head, he had been her best friend, the keeper of her darkest secrets. But this kid before her, snoring softly at the edge of her bed…he had never walked across First Beach with her, whispering ghost stories. He’d never taught her how to ride a motorcycle, or light a charcoal grill, or how to properly check the tire pressure on her truck.

He’d never grabbed her in the woods and kissed her so hard that her soul almost burned.

He was, by all intents and purposes, a stranger to her. If it was possible, that revelation made Bella feel even more horrifically alone than she already did. As soon as she thought she’d gotten something back, it was ripped away from her again. Reflexively she wrapped her arms around her chest, trying in vain to close a hole that didn’t exist, and never had.

Frozen like that, tied in a human knot, Bella watched the boy sleeping with trepidation. He snored softly into the mattress pad, the slight rise and fall of his back the only indication that he was still living, that he wasn’t just some twisted figure produced by her demented imagination or damaged brain.

Once…and she knew that was the wrong word, because it wasn’t a time that actually ever was, but once Bella had longed reverently to see the boy who had been her best friend again. He’d disappeared, hidden by responsibilities and a war not his own, and she’d mourned that loss. The boy had smiled brightly and been quick with a laugh, faithful and understanding and true.

And he had loved her, first with the honest innocence of a child, then with the passion of a man he wasn’t prepared to be. She had loved him. Too. Too little, too late, but she had.

Bella was suddenly overwhelmed with the need to touch the figure before her, just to reassure herself that he was real. She unwound her limbs and leaned over, poking him lightly in one shoulder. When he didn’t respond, Bella poked him again, harder.

Jake snorted into the sheets, then bolted upright. “I didn’t do it!” he exclaimed frantically.

Bella flew backwards in surprise, flattening herself against her headboard while her heart attempted to beat its way out past her ribs. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she repeated in a harsh whisper. “I didn’t mean to--” she started to say, but hesitated because really, what else had she intended to do by prodding him in the shoulder other than wake him up. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Oh.” Jake smoothed back his tousled hair, blinking frantically. “Oh, no worries. It’s just for a second there I was back in Ms. Michon’s fourth grade class and I didn’t have any pants on and, well…you know.” He gave a comedic shudder.

Bella untangled her IV cord and her limbs as her heart rate slowed. “Yeah, elementary school was pretty scarring.”

She watched as he dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, as if he could physically rub the sleep out of them. “Um…so what are you doing here?” she asked, before realizing how trite the question sounded.

Jake seemed unfazed. “You asked me to stay.”

“Do you always do what strange, raving coma girls ask you to do?”

“Only when they say ‘please’,” he replied with a cheeky grin, and Bella felt smile growing on her own lips. His personality had always been infectious – at least that hadn’t seemed to change.

“So you only baby-sit the polite strange, raving coma girls?” Bella asked lightly, the banter spilling so easily from between her lips. She hadn’t spoken this much to anyone in days, it seemed. “That must limit your numbers some.”

Jake stood and stretched, his back popping several times in succession. He must have been hunched over her bed for a while. “Actually, can I let you in on a little secret?” he asked, dragging his chair up to the head of her bed, and sitting down by her side. “You’re actually my first.” He grimaced and rolled his eyes skyward in mock-embarrassment. “Please don’t tell the guys I’m a strange, raving coma girl virgin – I was just waiting for the right time, you know?”

For the first time in the two months since going under, and despite her best attempts not to, Bella laughed. It was strange sound, stranger still in that it sounded odd coming from her. But real or imaginary or whatever the hell he was, this had always been Jacob’s affect on her: to draw out her best when she was at her worst.

“I promise your secret is safe with me,” she assured him, only to catch herself thinking if only you knew the other secrets I used to keep for you… The thought dragged her back down into the pit Bella had made her home, and the smile vanished from her face and the silence started to stretch as her she drifted back to a place and a time and a boy and a truck and an almost.

“Um, are you okay?” Jake asked hesitantly, drawing Bella from her silent reprieve. “I mean, I didn’t even think…should I go get a nurse or something?” He reached for the call button resting on her nightstand.

“No!” Bella exclaimed, pulling herself back into reality. She caught his wrist in her IV’d hand. “No, please no nurses,” she said again, much more quietly, watching the door to see if her shout had roused any attention. But it seemed the hospital was silent and sleeping around them.

“Okay, okay,” Jake surrendered the button and grinned. “No nurses. What, not interested in being forcibly sedated again?”

“Yeah, that wasn’t exactly fun and…did you bring me flowers?” Bella’s eyes drifted up from the infamous call button to where a bundle of sunflowers was sitting in a large, red Solo cup vase.

“No, well sort of,” he stuttered. “Your dad’s friend, Harry Clearwater, well his wife Sue has a greenhouse so she grows stuff all year round.” Bella could’ve sworn he looked a little flustered explaining this all to her. “Anyways she said it would be nice to take some and so they’re mostly from her and ...yeah, can I have my hand back?”

It wasn’t until he mentioned it that Bella realized she still had his wrist in a vice grip. She let him go, blushing furiously. “Oh, I’m sorry. I…this is…so awkward.” She buried her face in her hands in a burst of sudden frustration.
Awkward wasn’t the right word for the situation. There was no right word for it. Her friendship with Jake had always been…easy. It fit like a well worn glove – comfortable and safe and well worn. But to fall into it now, and him with no idea of a past she seemed to think they’d had, well it just felt wrong.

Hollow.

An empty gesture.

And she didn’t know if she could start over again, had she already been too tainted by what had happened to her ever re-create that friendship here? Even worse, was it wrong for her to try? Would it be fake, trying to conform the link between two people into something unnatural because she wanted it to be and --

“Hey, hey, hey, it’s not that bad. Don’t you see?” Jacob interrupted her thoughts, a moment later prying her hands away from her face. He grinned reassuringly. “Something is only awkward when one of the parties involved doesn’t recognize that it’s awkward. In declaring the situation awkward, we’re basically negating its inherent awkwardness. Get it?”

“I…no. I have no idea what you just said,” Bella admitted, but he was smiling and his hands were warm against hers and it felt so much like it was supposed to that she couldn’t help but return his smile. “But I’ll take your word for it. I’m --”

“Bella Swan, and I’m Jacob Black, and you once let my sister cut your pigtails off cause I kept pulling them,” he surrendered his grip on her hands before she was ready to let go. “See, childhood history also helps negate awkward situations. So are we cool now?”

Bella could only nod.

“Good, cause I can’t have you freaking out right now. I have to ninja my way out to the payphone in the front without Nurse Ratchet catching me and it’s going to take all my focus to pull this off.” He stood up and gave an exaggerated karate chop with his hand.

Bella felt that familiar panic start to build again. “Wait, you’re leaving?”

She grabbed at his hand. Jake caught it and gave it a squeeze. “The only way we could convince your dad to go home was if I promised to call him the minute you woke up, which seemed like an easy promise at the time, until I realized there isn’t a phone in here.”

The nurses had taken it out days earlier, when Bella had tried place a collect call to Los Angeles.

Jake tried to pull his hand away, but Bella held it fast. “Wait a second, where is my dad?”

He laughed, and wrenched his limb out of Bella’s worried grip. “Never let it be said that a man in a wheelchair can’t hold his own. I believe my old man dragged Charlie out of here so as to avoid any…physical confrontations between him and the staff,” he shuddered. “Charlie was not pleased with the way they treated you. And I don’t want to risk having that ire turned on me.”

“Sure, sure,” Bella muttered out of habit, her hands falling limply into her lap in defeat.

“But I’ll come back for a visit,” Jake added brightly. “I mean, if you want me to…”

“Absolutely,” she agreed, a little too eagerly. “I mean, until you find another strange, raving coma girl, that is.”

***

He was gone.

And she was alone. Again.

The room felt bigger, somehow. More empty. The shadows that played from between the blinds seemed more menacing. Because for a second, Bella had tasted what she craved, she had...regained that sense of balance that comes from remembering your past, and having it intersect your future. Real, fake, or some combination of the two, it was more than she’d had to cling two in the past two weeks. And now it was gone.

But for a second, a split-second even, it was as though she’d been pedaling a bike up the hill and the chain kept slipping. Only when Jake walked through the door it caught for the first time, catching a spoke, propelling her somewhere instead of merely standing still, unable to move.

It wasn’t perfect, she wasn’t fixed. But she didn’t feel quite as broken anymore either. As with everything else, Bella was stuck somewhere in between.

Which is why she was so surprised she nearly leapt out of her skin when, at three in the morning her door banged open, only to be slammed shut a second later by a figure leaning, huffing and puffing, against the wall.

Bella watched the space beneath the doors as two pairs of silhouetted shoes paused, then continued running down the hall.

“God damn!” Jake chuckled, letting his head slam back against the wall. “For hospital security guards, those boys sure are fast.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Bella demanded, panting just as hard despite not having done any running. She reached up and wrenched the plug of her heart monitor from the wall, tired of dealing with her continually spiking blood pressure.

“Avoiding arrest for trespassing after visiting hours,” he shot back sarcastically. “What’s it look like?”

“I got that part,” she hissed back, but even she couldn’t fight the effects of his infectious grin. “I meant what are you doing here? What happened to calling for a ride, all that?”

“Ah, well ‘tis a tale of sorrow and woe I’m afraid, m’lady.” He threw back his hood and freed his pony tail as he sauntered over to the bed. He seemed to crinkle and clank as he walked, and the room took on a funny odor that Bella couldn’t seem to place, but her stomach gurgled in recognition.

“Do I smell French fries?”

Jake collapsed into his chair with laugh. “Can’t get anything past you.” From the front pocket of his hoodie he pulled a rolled up McDonald’s bag. “See, I went to find the payphone. But I’m a guy and we…well, we’re easily distracted sometimes. So as I’m standing there, trying to read my calling card in the dark, I can’t help but notice that the Micky Dee’s across the street is now open 24/7.”

He unrolled the bag and began unloading its contents onto the tray by Bella’s bed. Ketchup packets, napkins, and grease soaked burgers warped in yellow paper. “So I’m standing there when I just can’t help but realize that I’m starving. So I’m thinking I’ll run on over, grab a burger then I can eat it while I wait for my ride. But as I’m standing there in line I can’t help be remember that you were sedated through dinner, so I get to thinking that you must be as hungry as me. And now what kind of gentleman would I be if I ate while you starved? So I grabbed some chow, used my awesome ninja skills to sneak back into the hospital, and now – we feast!”

He thrust a quarter pounder with cheese into her hands, overturned the empty bag, and dumped a single box of fries on top of it. “I only had a five,” he said, looking kind of embarrassed. “So we’ll have to share. But I did have enough change to grab these from the vending machine before security spotted me.” He pulled two cans of Sprite from his side pockets and put them on the tray as well.

Bella was speechless, left staring and gaping at the burger in her hand. She felt tears welling up in her eyes, doing battle with her empty stomach – she didn’t know whether to eat or cry from the kindness of it all. And so she sat there and started at her burger.

“Bella…” Jake said cautiously. She turned to look at him, the same goofy expression on her face. “It works better if you eat it, you know?”

“I…” she stuttered, before finally saying the first thing that came to mind. “I’ll pay you back.”

Jake’s hand flew to his mouth as he laughed and tried to keep a fry from spilling out of his gaping maw. “Would you stop worrying about it and just eat? You can pay me back when you get out of here.”

Bella finally gave in to her hunger and peeled back the paper, relishing the taste of overcooked meat and gooey cheese. She usually wasn’t one for fast food, but after two weeks of gray, bland hospital slop, and as many months on a liquid diet, she’d have licked heavily salted cardboard just for the MSG. She thought carefully as she chewed.

“Why are you being so nice to me?”

Jake tossed back the final bite of his burger, having inhaled it faster than Bella was willing. “I’m sorry. Would you prefer I be mean to you?”

“No I…” Bella hesitated, taking another bite when the silence seemed to stretch too long. Part of her didn’t want to know, didn’t want to break the rapport that seemed so blessedly familiar. But the other part of her had to be sure that it was real, that it wasn’t just something she was projecting onto him. “I mean, seriously? All this? For strange, raving coma girl? Why?”

Jake chuckled, but at least had the decency to look at her with mild disbelief. But when Bella continued to leer at him with that penetrating stare, he realized he wasn’t going to get off without answering the question. “Well,” he rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. “I don’t know, I guess you just looked like you needed a friend is all. And I wasn’t busy or anything…”

“So you just decided to, what, become that friend?” It sounded a little harsh. Then again, maybe it was just the pickle she’d bit down on. Bella picked the uneaten part of it off of her bun and shuddered as she laid it on the corner of her wrapper.

“Well…yeah?” Jake sipped at his soda, then cocked a stray eyebrow at her over the top of his can. “That going to be a problem for you?”

“No.”

“Good,” and the serious looked returned to his face. “And since we’re friends now, I wanted to ask you a question. I mean, if it’s too personal you can tell me to go to hell or something but, I’m just curious about how you knew--”

“Can you keep a secret?” Bella interrupted him. It was a stupid question – she already knew he could. But she needed to cut him off. He was going to ask the question that she was finally prepared to answer, but he needed to understand first.

And Bella desperately needed someone, anyone, to listen who might be capable of understanding, without the worrying condemnation of a parent, or the outright disbelief of someone reliant on science. Jacob was right, Bella did need a friend. And if he was willing to be that person, he at least deserved to know what he was getting himself into.

“Um, sure. As long as it’s not that you’re planning to off yourself or something.”

“No,” Bella said. “Nothing like that. So you won’t tell Charlie?”

Jake crossed his heart with a fry before eating it. “I swear.”

Bella took a deep breath and tried to find the words. The proper way to tell him that soda straight from the can reminded her of a garage she’d never been to, and that when she closed her eyes at night she slept in the cold arms of a man who saved her life, but who always vanished before she could wake up to say goodbye. “I…when I…when that truck hit me…”

Bella was floundering, drowning under the weight of her own words. Jake took the now-empty wrapper out of her hands before she tore it in half, and gave her hand a gentle squeeze in passing. “Hey, hey, hey, you don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to, Bella.”

“No, I do want to, I just don’t know how…have you ever had a dream that was so real, when you woke up you thought you were still in it?”

Jake shrugged. “Sure, every time I dream about the fourth grade. I have to wake up and make sure I’m not naked. Why?”

Bella looked down at her lap. “When I was unconscious all those months? I had a dream like that,” she finally choked out. With that past, the words seemed to come easier now. “I dreamed about a boy at school who was…special. I dreamed he stopped the truck from hitting me.”

“What, like he had superpowers or something?”

“Sort of,” Bella said with trepidation, not wanting to test the limits of her newfound friendship by setting Jacob off. “He was a cold one,” she admitted softly, looking up to gauge Jake’s reaction.

He started at her blankly and gave his head a little shake.

“You know, a cold one,” Bella repeated again, more insistently. “A vampire, you’ve never heard of them?”

“Well yeah, I’ve heard of vampires before, just never by that stupid name.”

“But you…” Bella hesitated. She had to remind herself that the boy sitting before he wasn’t the same boy from inside her head. Maybe things were…different here, maybe the legends weren’t the same. “It doesn’t matter.” But some sinking part of her felt the absence of the legend was somehow significant.

“So this kid, this vampire,” Jake ventured, trying to get her back on track. He seemed intrigued now – at least that hadn’t changed. Jacob had always been one to appreciate a good story. “He just stopped the truck with his bare hands?”

“Yeah he…he…” she tried to find the words to explain all Edward had been to her, all he’d meant to her. She wasn’t certain there were enough words in the English language to describe it. “He saved me because he loved me.” It was too simple, the words too mundane, but she didn’t have the strength right now to give proper voice to her feelings. She looked Jake in the eye, hoping he would understand. “For two years of my life we were together and he loved me.”

Before her, Jake’s sympathetic gaze turned to one of confusion. “Wait, but you were only out for two m--”

“I know.”

“But in your dream you were there for two y--”

“Yes.

He sat back in his chair, flabbergasted. “Whoa, sounds like one hell of a dream. So, aside from the fact that there were car-stopping vampires in it, there was no other indication it was all just a dream? I mean, could everyone fly or did they at least all walk around naked or something weird like that?”

“No,” she sighed, carving tiny half-moons into the flesh of her palm with her nails. “I ate, I slept, I loved…and then I lost it all and woke up here…” The tears were flowing freely now, but Bella didn’t make any move to stop them. She half expected Jake to realize how crazy this all was and run from the room, but instead he just offered her a gently used napkin to wipe her face with.

“They tell me it’s not possible, and the rational part of my brain knows that it isn’t, but it didn’t feel like a dream to me, and it still doesn’t.” The words poured out of her wildly now, just like her tears. “It’s not fading, it’s not disappearing. It feels like I lost half of my life and I can’t get it back because everyone else just thinks I’m crazy! You want to know how I recognized you when you walked in the room? You were going to ask that earlier?”

“Yeah,” Jake nodded. “But you don’t have to--”

“You were in my dream too, Jake. You were as real and tangible as you are before me this instant.”

Bella waited for that him to process that information, but instead Jake just broke out into one of his trademark grins. “That is so weirdly cool!” he exclaimed softly. “Like an out of body experience or something. Did I look the same? Did I have superpowers too?”

Bella snorted into her napkin, a dark chuckle – that would be the kind of question he’d ask. Jake had always been exceptionally good at weird. He’d also been exceptionally good at comforting her too. “Yeah, you had superpowers too.”

“Awesome. Could I fly? Did I shoot lasers out of my fingers or something?”

“No you could actually turn into this super powered wolf – it was pretty impressive, if I do say so myself,” she explained. “You lost your pants pretty frequently doing it though.”

He pouted weakly and clutched at his jeans. “Figures. Pants, or lack thereof, have always been my greatest weakness.”

“Don’t complain too much,” Bella chided him gently, her emotions more controlled now it seemed. “You were very powerful. Saved my butt more than a few times. We were…” Again, she struggled to find a word. But she’d never been able to label what they were in that time either. Something more than friends, something less than lovers – an irreconcilable difference. “We were best friends, you and I. You were there for me when nobody else was.”

Jake threw his hands up in exasperation. “Well see, now that’s just not fair. You already know what to expect from this whole ‘friendship’ thing. Cheater.” But he smiled to take the sting out of the words. “I guess we’re just destined to be friends. You should really stop fighting it.”

“Apparently, but…” The appointment with the shrink loomed heavy in her mind, along with her growing belief that she really did belong in a place where she’d be allowed to languish with the memory or Edward forever, since the idea of losing him again was just too painful to contemplate. “I have a feeling I won’t be able to be a very good friend to you. I’m supposed to have a psych evaluation tomorrow.”

“Bella, you suffered a traumatic head injury – don’t you think that sort of thing is pretty standard?” But Jake had picked up on the panic in her voice.

“Charlie doesn’t think I can tell the difference between fantasy and reality anymore….and he’s right,” she muttered. “I’m in love with a man who doesn’t really exist in my life…and I don’t think I want to get better.” The napkin was little more than shreds now, but Bella used the remnants to dab at the fresh tears that had started flowing again.

“You have to,” Jake said, his voice resolute, determined. “You have to get better, Bella. You can’t stay locked up in here forever.”

“I’ve never been very good at lying. And as soon as he starts asking questions, he’s going to know I’m not right…”

“It’s not lying it’s just…” he looked for the correct word, the right spin to put on the situation. “Presenting selective information. You tell the man what he wants to hear. Yeah, you had a dream. Yeah, you were really disoriented for a few days. But it’s all starting to come back together now and you’re eager to get out of here and get on with your life. Done.”

“Why do you care so much?” Bella suddenly demanded, the words sound cold and judgmental, bitter. “Why do you care what happens to me?”

“Because Charlie needs you,” Jacob answered a little too quickly. “You’re all he talked about, from the moment he knew you were coming. He bought that truck off me weeks in advance, he dragged Sue Clearwater through all these department stores to buy girlie stuff for your room and the house, and I honestly don’t think he’s slept for more than an hour at a time since you landed yourself in here. I’m not trying to make you feel guilty or anything but…people need you Bella,” he said firmly. “Your family needs you to at least try.”

A look of strange contemplation settled over his features, and it seemed that now Jake was the one lost inside his own head. Lines furrowed in his forehead for a second before he reached out and snaked the last fry off the makeshift plate. “Besides,” he said with a grin that didn’t reach his eyes as he popped it in his mouth. “You owe me lunch.”

***

Bella couldn’t remember closing her eyes. She remembered talking about schools, and parents. She remembered picking Chuck Norris over Jackie Chan when asked who she’d want on her side in a fight against a horde of zombies. She remembered hearing a story about how Rachel and Rebecca once crazy-glued Jake’s head inside a bucket when he was six.

And she remembered watching the light growing ever brighter in the window behind them.

But she didn’t remember falling asleep, so when she came to hours later in the middle of the afternoon, and the room was empty, she couldn’t shake the déjà vu-like feeling of dread that rose in her chest as she briefly wondered if the entire evening was just another twisted dream.

But there were flowers on her nightstand, and a soda can peeking out of the waste basket, and when she stretched to shake the sleep from her limbs her hand brushed against something rough tucked underneath her pillow. She pulled out a scrap of paper, ripped from the corner of a McDonald’s bag, folded over twice.

I’ll see you when you get out,
-J

It was both juvenile and sweet, and Bella felt a smile cross her lips just like the night before as she read it again and again. Sure, several of her briefly known classmates had sent cards or flowers, and according to Renee a young girl named Angela once delivered a batch of the best homemade butterscotch cookies she’d ever tasted. But none of those tokens had half the meaning of that little note, scribbled on the remnants of a grease-stained fast food bag.

Bella still had it clutched between her fingers when the door to her room opened sharply. Charlie’s jacket was lying in its usual place, tossed over the back of the chair in the far corner, so she readily expected it to be him. “Hey Dad,” she murmured without looking up.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Swan,” an unfamiliar voice answered. She glanced up immediately to see an older gentleman she didn’t recognize standing in the doorway, clutching a box clipboard in one hand, and a manila envelope overflowing with papers, which Bella quickly recognized as her medical records, in the other. “May I come in?”

Bella crumpled the note into a ball inside her fist and shoved it beneath her sheets, all traces of the happiness it had given her moments earlier now rapidly being replaced by dread. Reluctantly she nodded. What other choice did she have? Not like she could tell him to get the hell out.

He smiled what appeared to be a well practiced smile, judging from the contour of the lines that smiled along with it. He sported a salt n’ pepper beard, closely trimmed, and thick brown glasses that made him look like a friendly uncle, or grandfather. Completely harmless.

And to anyone else, he probably was.

“I’m Dr. Adair,” he said by way of introduction. He hung Charlie’s jacket on the bathroom door handle, then pulled the chair to her bedside, landing in exactly the same spot Jake had occupied only hours earlier. “I’m--”

“A shrink,” Bella interrupted, her voice high and squeaky. She desperately wanted to sound intimidating, like someone with an attitude, someone who lied all the time without a second thought. Instead her voice wavered like a California fault line, and she hid the fact that her hands were now both trembling beneath the paper-y hospital sheets.

“A psychologist, yes,” Adair said, taking a seat. “Dr. Collins asked me to set up a consultation with you, before you’re discharged.”

“I know,” Bella interjected sharply. “I’ve got good ears.” She felt Jake’s note growing damp against her palm as she clutched at it tightly, like it were a talisman that could ward off what she knew was coming.

“Ah, well good,” the doctor seemed unfazed by her tone. He clicked open a pen and held it poised above the yellow legal pad on his clipboard. “I wanted to ask you a couple questions before we really get started. Your father told me you’ve been having some pretty upsetting dreams lately. Can you tell me what they’re about?”

Bella felt all the moisture evaporate from her mouth. She remembered a time when fear this overpowering would’ve produced a voice in her head, strong and smooth as silk, to love her and tell her what to do. A voice, inside a dream, inside her head…and all she wanted at that very moment was to hear it again.

Maybe she really did need to be locked up.

However, Jake’s note was weighed heavy in her trembling hand, and his words weighed heavy in her mind. “I--"

But even as she opened her mouth, Bella didn’t know what she was going to say.

36 New Moon Icons

2009-06-03T00:38:56Z

[36] - Icons from the New Moon Trailer

Teasers:

1-5

6-10

11-15

16-20

21-25

26-30

31-35

36

Dreaming of Butterflies - A Jacob/Bella Fic - Chapter 2

2009-05-28T22:24:43Z

Title: Dreaming of Butterflies
Chapter: 2 (1)
Character(s): Jacob/Bella, Ensemble
Rating: PG-13
Summary: “Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”
-Zhuangzi (Philosopher)

When Edward left the first time, a hole developed in Bella’s chest. Like a cancer, it grew with the weight of her despair. It was her body’s physical reaction to her emotional loss – Bella’s entire being was grieving.

But this…this time it was entirely different. After all, how can you mourn for something you never truly had, that was never yours to loose?

In death there was comfort, taken from the knowledge that the person lost had lived a full life, taken from the memories shared, the memories retained. Bella had no memories, just cruel parodies, carved into damaged gray matter. Film strips and movies she could watch, but had never actually participated in.

There weren’t words to express that kind of deception, that kind of loss.

That kind of pain.

It was beyond describing, beyond actually feeling. Like the universe had turned in on itself, and been swallowed up by the blackest of holes, the change was only noticeable in the absence of self, the absence of existence. Not its discontinuation, but its failure to be altogether.

Bella Swan, the girl she had thought she was, hadn’t just ceased to be. She’d never been real at all.

She didn’t know who she was anymore.

***

She was never alone. Awake, asleep, someone was always present at her bedside. It was a devotion from her parents she’d never wanted nor received before, and some bitter part of her felt that it paled in comparison to the doting she’d once been subjected to by another.

Even worse, now that she was no longer dead to the world, Bella no longer trusted herself. Sleep seemed to overtake her so frequently now – a natural reaction, the doctor assured her – and when she slept, she spoke.

Rather, when she slept, she screamed.

The first time it happened, Renee shook her awake, terrified that Bella was in pain. And she was, but not the kind of pain you could put words to. In her sleep-addled haze, Bella pleaded with her mother to remember the bronze-haired boy she’d brought to visit her in Jacksonville, thinking that if only she could convince her to remember than she might wake up from this, the real dream. That if Renee could remember too, the spell might then be broken, and the handsome prince could return.

But Renee only smoothed back the hair from her sweaty forehead, and tried to control her own ragged breathing. “It was only a dream, sweetie. Phil and I live in Phoenix at the old house, remember? The blue one?” Then she squeezed her daughter’s hand, and ran off in pursuit of a nurse who could tell her what must be physically ailing her daughter.

In her own twisted way, Renee was actually right.

Her life…had only been a dream.

And Bella lay awake in bed, suffocating under the weight of the realization that now she was awake for the nightmare.

***

It was strange. Her family, her few visitors, even the staff seemed to have adapted to the idea of Bella being in a coma so well that the moment she closed her eyes, they assumed she could no longer hear them.

They were wrong.

Bella discovered more by lying still and pretending to sleep than either her parents or the doctors had openly disclosed to her.

She learned that for two months she’d been here Renee had barely left her side. She only took sporadic bathroom breaks, which ironically was when Bella had decided to wake up, and had to be dragged away to the motel down the street to shower and change clothes. And even then, she’d only go if Bella was safely in the hands of Charlie or another trusted friend.

She also learned that Forks only needed its Sheriff when he was otherwise occupied. The usually quiet town had called Charlie away from her bedside to deal with a break in and robbery at the convenience store by the highway, two acts of vandalism related to Spring Fling dance revelries, and the usual two or three hikers who managed to get lost for more than 48 hours at a time.

Bella learned that Phil was pursuing a contract with Pittsburg, that Charlie’s friend Harry Clearwater had been her neighbor for a week after he suffered a heart attack caused by high blood pressure, and that one of the nurses named Bonnie was having an affair with a married surgical resident.

But most importantly, Bella learned that despite their brave faces and confident fronts, neither of her parents seemed to think she was okay.

"It doesn’t make any sense, Doctor,” Charlie admitted one afternoon, while Bella appeared to be napping. “I don’t know what to do. She’s stopped talking about it now but…the minute she falls asleep she starts to yell. She keeps calling for people who aren’t there…this Edward…and I don’t know what to do anymore.” She’d never heard her father sound so exasperated, so defeated.

“Disorientation is perfectly normal under these circumstances,” Dr. Collins assured him in a confident, professional tone. “Just because--”

“But for two weeks?” Renee interrupted.

Dr. Collins cleared her throat, a subtle cue that Bella had learned indicated her mounting irritation. “Just because Bella is awake doesn’t mean that her body has fully adjusted yet. Comatose experiences can be very traumatic. It’s going to take time, and patience for her to make a--”

“But she will recover, won’t she?” Renee interrupted again. “I mean, right now she’s like a little kid – she can’t tell the difference between what’s fake and what’s real. But you said her last X-Rays didn’t indicate anything abnormal after the surgery…so she should be fine then?”

“Physically, she’s making a full recovery,” Dr. Collins said, the irritation now evident in her tone. She didn’t appreciate having her diagnoses called into question. “The inter-cranial swelling has gone down, and the bone appears to be setting well. But psychologically these things can take--”

“Well then maybe there’s something she’s not telling us. Maybe something happened before the accident. Did you know this boy? His family?” Renee demanded, cutting off the doctor yet again.

“Town this size?” Charlie murmured. “Sure Renee, not many people I don’t know. Good kid, good family. His father was a doctor here, but they moved about a week before Bella’s accident. I honestly had no idea his son and Bella had been so close. She never talked about her school friends really, other than Newton and the Weber girl. She never brought anyone home either.”

“Carlisle, the boy’s father, said he’d been looking to get into teaching for a while,” Collins interjected, eager to add her two cents to the conversation. “Talked about it all the time, actually. One of his old colleagues at UCLA medical school went on emergency bed rest in her second trimester, and Carlisle jumped at the chance to fill in for her. Gave his notice first week of April and moved down there right away. Pretty big loss for the hospital, we were scrambling to find a replacement.”

“But I still don’t understand, Bella talks like she lost years with this boy--”

“And in my dreams I can fly, Ms. Dwyer, but that doesn’t make it true,” Dr. Collins interrupted sharply, turning the tables on Renee. “Bella just needs time to let her body and mind heal.” Renee must have looked like she was ready to protest again, because Dr. Collins quickly added, “but if you’re that concerned I can schedule a consultation with the hospital psychologist, just to verify that everything’s progressing normally, okay?”

“Thank you, Doctor…”

Bella stopping listening then, too scared, too defeated, too empty to want to hear anything else. She just shut down, and waited until a wave of real sleep washed over her and took her away into that blessed nothingness.

***

That night, Bella dreamed she could fly.

***

Charlie appeared in the morning, relieving Renee and sending her to get some rest. He didn’t mention the conversation from the previous evening – not his concerns, nor the impending visit from the hospital shrink.

He had aged years in a matter of months, Bella noticed, as he sat down at her bedside. She’d never seen the prominent lines beside his eyes before. She didn’t know how someone who so infrequently laughed could get laugh lines, but her Dad had managed that as well. Still, his demeanor seemed much improved. He never let on how worried he was about his daughter’s state of mind.

And Bella never let on that she knew he was.

A weak smile was all she could muster when he brightly asked how she was feeling.

“Fine.” A single word, a single syllable. And still it felt as if it was too much for Bella’s tongue to handle.

The dark look reappeared to haunt Charlie’s features. It wasn’t that Bella wasn’t getting any better, it’s that she wasn’t even trying anymore, and he knew it.

“Look, Bells, we need to talk--” he started to say, but stopped when Bonnie burst through the door.

“Morning!” she announced with all the enthusiasm of someone who just received a quickie in the supply closet. Bella and Charlie scowled in unison. Charlie conceded and stepped back to give the nurse room to change Bella’s IV. He was sulking against the wall when his cell phone buzzed in his pocket.

“Chief,” Bonnie chided with more brevity than Bella appreciated in someone pulling a needle out of the back of her hand. “You know the rules – no phones.”

“I know, I know, I know,” he muttered, checking the caller ID. “I’m just gonna step out and grab this, Bells. I’ll be right back.” Bella waved him off with her free hand, eager to delay the conversation she knew was coming. Charlie was going to want answers, and Bella didn’t think she was ready to handle the look of disappointment on his face when he got them.

After a while, Bonnie slid the needle back into her vein. Bella didn’t even flinch – she’d built a wall around herself since the conversation between her parents and Dr. Collins. It was the final nail in the coffin she’d willingly laid in. She was crazy, she was alone, and once she spoke to the psychologist, she’d be that way forever. The will to fight the inevitable had been drained from her. Now Bella was content to sit behind her invisible walls, numb to the world.

At least, she would’ve been content to do so, had a sound, tinged with familiarity, not reached her ears just then. It tore through her self imposed wall like a nuclear blast. Bella bolted upright in bed.

“Stop squirming Bella,” Bonnie ordered, trying to restrain the girl with one hand, and take her blood pressure with the other. “I can’t get a good reading if you’re moving all over the place.”

But the voice, there it was again.

“Old man, I swear if you run over my foot one more time you’re hitchhiking home…” A chorus of laughter followed.

Bella knew that voice, something deep in the recesses of her mind screamed for it. More voices joined in: Charlie, and someone else she recognized. But none of it mattered. It was all trivial, useless detail save for that one. That one that ignited all the memories in her head that she tried to bury, tried to convince herself weren’t real. Motor oil and grass and heat.

Her world lately had been consumed by so much nothing. In her head, in her past, in this room.

She needed something solid. Something real. Something to hold her here, to tell her that it hadn’t all been in her mind, that it hadn’t all been a dream.

“Jacob.” She murmured his name under her breath, feeling the weight of it on her tongue. She heard footsteps stop outside the door, a murmur of voices and muffled laughter, but they didn’t come inside. “Jake,” she said louder.

“Bella, what are you going about?” Bonnie demanded to know, her patience waning Bella ignored her, willing the visitors to step through her door, because any second now Jacob would come crashing in, all smiles and warmth. He’d pull her to his chest and crush the air out of her lungs and tell her that she wasn’t crazy. He’d make it all better, he’d put her back together. Just like he always did.

“Jacob.” No response. Well, if they weren’t going to come inside, then Bella would just go to them. She started to peel the tape off the back of her IV, which was still hanging on the bed post. She’d only been allowed to walk to the bathroom and back since waking up, and then only with the help of her mom or a nurse, but the door was only a few feet away. She could make it

She was sure of it.

Bella had the needle halfway out of her wrist when Bonnie turned around. “Bella, what the hell are you doing?” She grabbed both the girl’s hands and attempted to stop her from getting the needle all the way out. But Bonnie wasn’t much bigger than Bella, and Bella was feeling particularly compelled, so she resisted, trying to bring her hands back together.

That was the last straw for Bonnie, whose post-coital pleasantness had all but disappeared. She let go one of Bella’s hands just long enough to hit the intercom on the wall and demand that someone page Dr. Collins.

Bella seized the opportunity for escape and wrenched the last of the needle from her arm, releasing a faint trickle of blood that oozed down the back of her hand. In another lifetime that would’ve been enough to set the room spinning, but Bella had bigger things to worry about now. She slipped from Bonnie grip and scooted off the edge of the bed.

But Bella’s feet shook beneath her as they hit the cold tile, and the door suddenly seemed so much farther away then before. She made it two steps before Bonnie regrouped and latched onto her forearm.

“Help!” the nurse shouted, trying desperately to keep Bella from further injuring herself while avoiding a lawsuit.

Bella tried to jerk herself free, but it didn’t matter because the door flew open and Jacob ran in, and…

…and he looked like the average fifteen year old boy. No rippling muscles, no tightly controlled face, no monster buried beneath his lanky frame. He was just a surprised kid, holding what appeared to be a bunch of flowers, and gaping at her strangely.

“Um…Bella?”

That was the final straw. The room began to spin as Bella lost her tenuous grip on reality. With nothing left to hold on to, to hope for, there was nothing to keep her from spiraling off into oblivion.

“You’re not him…he, I…you’re not…where’s Jake?” Her heart was beating desperately, trying to lunge out of her chest. Bella’s vision slipped and spun, she was hearing everything too fast, too loud. Her knees went out from under her, and she felt someone catch her a moment before she collapsed into a on the floor.

Arms, voices, hands pulled her back into the bed, pinned down her wrists.

“Bella?” Charlie was at her side now. Someone shoved him away. A new pain bit into the crook of her arm. A sedative?

The world began to get fuzzy. “Jake…”

A set of fingers intertwined with her own, soft and cool and completely, utterly human. “I’m right here.”

Yelling, there was so much yelling. Charlie was yelling at the doctor. The nurse was yelling at Charlie. And all the while the world was becoming smaller and darker and so much smaller.

“Please stay…” a voice pleaded. Her own? “I don’t…don’t leave me just…stay. Please stay?”

Bella felt a hand squeeze hers before it all went dark.

Dreaming of Butterflies - A Jacob/Bella Fic

2009-05-22T05:06:24Z

Title: Dreaming of Butterflies
Chapter: 1
Character(s): Jacob/Bella, Ensemble
Rating: PG-13
Summary: “Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”
-Zhuangzi (Philosopher)

Bella never cared for Journey. But as she lay there with her eyes closed she couldn't say she was surprised to hear Steve Perry singing about a small town girl.
Forks had pretty limited radio reception, and the 6 am DJ at WMXM seemed to have a thing for the band - this wasn't the first time they’d been her unceremonious wake up call. With her eyes still closed she groped blindly for her bedside alarm clock, hoping to silence their screeching and maybe catch a few more minutes sleep.

And that's when Bella realized that something was wrong.

A sharp pain lanced through her wrist when she tried to move her arm. She jerked the offending limb again and almost cried out as a wave of fire washed up her forearm. She opened her eyes only to be greeted with absolute darkness...and an empty bed.

“Edward?” she whispered, not wanting to wake Charlie. Her voice sounded strange, raspy and dry. Her throat burned from the friction of that one word. And still, there was no Edward to be found. Bella tried to remember if he was hunting. That really was the only time she ever used the alarm clock anymore. But her brain was…fuzzy. She couldn’t make the pieces come together right. No date, no time, no sense of when.

Giving up on the alarm clock, Bella tried to approximate where her lamp would be. But again, as soon as she reached for her nightstand that crippling pain shot through her arm. Tears sprang into the corners of her eyes. She cradled her arm to her chest, feeling for cuts or swelling. Maybe she had rolled on it in her sleep?

Her fingers felt normal, and they all seemed to bend well enough. But as Bella explored further she bumped into something trailing out of the back of her hand. Something hard and round and tube-like. She recognized the shape instantly. It was an IV.

Bella Swan was in the hospital.

Again.

It was all becoming clear now that her eyes we adjusting to the intense darkness. She could faintly make out the rails on the bed, the series of sleeping machines humming faintly on the wall above her, and a barely lit door that was in the wrong place for it to be the one in her own bedroom. Still, solving that mystery only left her with a new one: what had happened to her this time?

Even more importantly: why wasn’t Edward here with her? Her mind drifted back to the days following her encounter with James. Edward had refused to leave her bedside, feigning sleep and forgoing food for days just to watch over her, just to be with her. Had she been unconscious so long this time that he’d been forced to leave her side to hunt? Did she get hurt while he was away?

Where was he?

Bella was felt that twinge of panic start build inside her. Her heart was pounding frantically enough to make her hospital robe jump with each frantic beat. She scrambled with her free hand, searching for a call button, a light switch, anything that could provide her with more answers. Above her one of the machines noted her rising pulse and cackled to life, triggering an alarm that didn’t do much to help calm Bella’s nerves.

Footsteps thundered outside her door, which was thrown open to the blinding industrial lighting of a hospital hallway. Two shadows ran through, revealed moments later to be two nurses when one of them had the fortitude to throw on the lights. One rushed frantically to her side, where she slapped off the radio playing softly on the bedside table, while the other sprinted to a phone hanging on the wall.

“Page Dr. Collins,” she ordered into the receiver. “Swan, in 214? She’s awake.” She paused. “Yes, and find her father.” Pause. “No, just use the radio. Channel 5. It’ll be faster.”

The other nurse shined an even brighter flash light into Bella’s spot-blinded eyes with one hand, shutting off the blaring machine with the other. “Bella, my name is Linda. Do you know where you are?” she demanded. They were both concentrated chaos, all prodding hands and curt voices. It was sensory overload compared to the quiet dark from a moment ago. Bella had to blink a few times just to get her brain to process it all.

“Bella,” the unnamed nurse now chirped, her cold fingers prodding her wrist for a pulse. “Do you know where you are?” She enunciated each individual word, as if Bella was having problems understand the English language.

“In the hospital?” Bella finally ventured. She attempted to roll her eyes, but the motion only made her stomach churn.

“Shhh.” Linda now had a stethoscope pressed to Bella’s chest, and apparently answering her question was interfering with her listening. Panic was beginning to give way to irritation, and only the dryness of her throat was preventing Bella from saying something snide.

Fortunately they were interrupted as another figure crossed the threshold into the room. Doctor Collins, as clearly identified by her nametag, was a far from imposing figure. She couldn’t have been an inch over five feet tall, but her presence instantly silenced the fluttering nurses, both of whom retreated from her bedside.

“I’m--”

“Dr. Collins,” Bella interrupted harshly. But the doctor only responded with an enthusiastic smile that made it impossible for Bella to resent her.

“Exactly. Can you tell me how you’re feeling?” She placed her own stethoscope against Bella’s chest and continued where Linda had left off.

“Confused,” Bella admitted, taking a deep breath. “Where’s my Dad? Where’s my fiancé? What happened to me?”

“Your family is on their way,” she said reassuringly, clearly sidestepping the question.

“What--”

“Follow my finger with your eyes, Bella,” Dr. Collins interrupted. “The sooner we get through this the sooner we can talk.”

Bella reluctantly followed the doctor’s well manicured nail. “I don’t--”

“Bella!” A familiar voice proclaimed. “Oh thank God, my baby!” Bella looked up in time to see Renee plow through the nursing staff. Dr. Collins had the sense to get out of the way before she could suffer the same fate. Unobtrusively she ushered the two nurses out of the room, and made herself inconspicuous against the far wall. Renee crashed down onto the edge of the bed and swept Bella into her arms. She crushed her daughter to her chest with no regard for the tubes or wires that tangled them both.

Bella buried her face into the warmth of her mother’s neck, reveling in the fact that at least something was making sense. She didn’t know why her mother was here, but she was and she loved her and that’s what mother’s did. The logic of it all calmed her slightly. The sound of steel toes and sharp heels against the tile reached her ears, and a moment later her hands were pried off Renee’s shoulders, and cradled between a larger, rougher set.

Charlie.

Her family, together in one room. Back when she was ten this was her wildest dream. Now she was old enough to know it was too good to be true, and that something unthinkable must have happened to cause it. “Mom,” she whispered, trying to loosen the vice grip Renee had on her shoulders. “Mom, what are you doing here? What happened?”

Renee reluctantly drew back, but refused to surrender contact with her daughter. With shaking fingers she brushed Bella’s cheeks, pushed back her hair, as if checking to make sure she was real. Bella noticed a few gray hairs amongst the brown framing her mother’s face. Her eyes were ringed by dark circles, as if she hadn’t been asleep for days. She looked…worn down, weary. Bella wanted to comfort her, reassure her that it was all going to be okay, but she didn’t know how to, she didn’t know that it would be.

She looked up at her dad in desperation, wanting to find answers in his eyes, reassurances that she didn’t usually need from him, from anyone. But Charlie just continued to hover behind them both, still clutching Bella’s hand, but with none of his usual awkwardness. Even worse, Bella watched a big, beady tear trickle down the side of his nose.

“I…” Renee hesitated, as though she didn’t have the words…or she did but was afraid to use them. She, too, looked over her shoulder at Charlie for help.

"Bella," Charlie murmured softly, his cheeks still damp. The tears looked painfully awkward on his usually stoic face. Charlie wasn’t a talker, let alone a crier. That was more terrifying that anything Bella could’ve imagined. "Honey…” He hesitated and looked back Renee, practically pleading with his eyes.

“There was an accident at school, Baby,” Renee said softly. Again, she smoothed back Bella’s wild hair with shaking fingers. Her skin felt cool to the touch, clammy.

“What kind of accident?” Bella demanded, her mind traveling to dark places. The scent of damp stone suddenly flooded her nostrils, a haunting sense memory. Visions of red eyes and faces like rice paper. The Volturi, had they finally made good on their promise? Had she damned everyone she cared about, everyone she’d ever touched?

Charlie sighed deeply, but the anguish on his face was quickly replaced by something close to rage. “You were in a car accident at school, Bells. You remember Tyler Crowley?" He didn’t wait for her to answer. “There was a storm. He hit a patch of black ice, lost control, pinned you up against the frame of your truck…”

“Oh baby!” Renee threw her arms around Bella’s neck once more. “There was…so much head trauma…I just can’t believe you finally came back to us…” A stead trail of warm tears began to course down the back of her neck as Renee’s composure finally dissolved into heaving sobs.

Bella clung to her mother with equal voracity. She couldn't breathe, it was as if her lungs had just given up. She tried desperately to inflate them again, but her muscles absolutely refused to listen to her. It wasn't possible! Edward had saved her, had exposed himself by doing so. That was when she knew there was something so vastly and beautifully different about him. That was when...she almost couldn't bear to think it…

That was when she had realized she was falling in love with him.

Deep in the recesses of her mind she felt the touch of his cool skin against the fire of her own, and she lost herself in the gold pools of his eyes. With painful desperation, Bella took in enough air to whisper one question: "When?"

Renee broke their embrace, wiping her nose on the back of her hand like a child. She exchanged another nervous look with her ex-husband. Charlie placed his hand on Bella's shoulder and whispered in a relieved tone, "two months ago, Bells. You've...you've been comatose since then."

The last thing Bella remembered seeing was her mother's panicked face as the blackness closed in on her again, and she willingly surrendered herself into the blessed nothingness.

24 New Moon Poster Icons

2009-05-19T06:34:07Z

[24] - Icons from the New Moon Poster

Teasers:

1-6

7-12

13-18

19-24

Mourn The Living - A Jacob/Bella Fanmix

2009-04-26T19:38:57Z

Mourn The Living
A Jacob/Bella Fanmix

For Me This Is Heaven//Jimmy Eat World
This is what she says gets her through it: "if I don't let myself by happy now then when?"

For You//Manfred Mann
I've broken all your windows and I've rammed through all your doors, who am I to ask you to fight my wars?

Antebellum//Vienna Teng
How I couldn't be what you'd need, but oh how I could make you bleed...

Your Ex-Lover Is Dead//Stars
You were what I wanted, I gave what I gave. I'm not sorry I met you, I'm not sorry it's over, I'm not sorry there's nothing to save...

Golden//Fall Out Boy
And I saw God cry in the reflection of my enemies, and all the lovers with no time for me...

5 Tracks + Artwork

Taylor Kitsch and Gambit Icons and Banners

2009-04-16T02:09:03Z

[16] - Icons of Taylor Kitsch as Gambit
[08] - Icons of Taylor Kitsch as Gambit Animated
[05] - Icons of Taylor Kitsch
[06] - Banners

Teasers:

Gambit:
1-5

6-10

11-15

16

Animated:
1-5
6-8

Taylor Kitsch:
1-5

Banners:

16 Watchment Icons + 17 Wolverine Icons + 2 Banners

2009-03-30T02:43:10Z

[16] - Watchmen Icons
[17] - X-Men Origins: Wolverine Icons
[02] - X-Men Origins: Wolverine Banners

Teasers:

1-5

6-10

11-15

16

1-5

6-10

11-15

16-17

Banners:

Silence - A Jacob/Bella Fanfic - Part 3

2009-03-17T01:58:05Z

Title: Silence
Chapter: 3/3 (part 1 part 2)
Character(s): Jake/Bella
Rating: M
Summary: And again there were the hands. Jacob's too warm hands and they wrenched her from that blackness. Jacob's hands as they frantically beat the air back into her body. Jacob's hands and he held her on the beach, wet and freezing and covered in sand. Jacob's hands…holding her together.
Notes: Many stories have explored what would have happened if the phone never rang, but I decided to take it a step further and explore what would have happened if Harry Clearwater had never died in New Moon. What if Jake and Bella were never interrupted at his house? In fact, what if they were stuck there, together? Obviously, slightly AU, slightly fluffy, and slightly smutty later on. As always thanks to the_angry_pixie for her help

Part Three: Reconciliation

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Bella tried to find her alarm. Just one more snooze. Five more minutes.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

She slapped her nightstand again. Why wouldn’t it shut off?

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

She just wanted to sleep a bit longer. The smoke was making her sleepy.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Smoke?

Bella bolted awake. One too many encounters with Charlie’s (attempted) cooking had left her far too sensitive to the smell. She threw off the blanket and bolted from the couch, trying to clear the smoke that was obscuring her brain at the same time.

“Jake?” she called out, remembering that she was at the Black’s home and not her own.

“In here!” he shouted back, over the alarm. Bella ran into the kitchen and almost collided with his chest. He was standing by the doorway with a screwdriver, trying in vain to pull the fire alarm from the ceiling.

“What happened?!”

“WHAT?”

Bella sighed and grabbed a baking sheet off a pile sitting by the stove, where a charred mass of what appeared to be pancakes sat smoldering on the griddle. “Move!” she ordered Jacob, who for all of his mechanical skill seemed unable to get the alarm to part with the ceiling. Frantically she beat the air with the tray, until finally the ringing ceased.

At least, it ceased in the kitchen. Her ears were still buzzing, and it wasn’t helping her shake off her morning confusion any faster. “Okay,” she tried again. “What happened?”

Jake shrugged. “Breakfast in bed, er couch?” he offered up with a weak smile. “I was trying to make pancakes, but I had to use water instead of milk because we had to toss the milk out yesterday. But they got all goopy and cooked really fast, and I just turned around to find those nice plates my sister’s have stashed around here and when I turned back…” He just shrugged again and gestured helplessly at the stove.

“Well, at least that’s one way to get going in the morning,” Bella sighed, her blood pressure returning to normal now that she was certain the house wasn’t burning down on top of them.

“I’ll bet,” he agreed. “Sorry to wake you up in such a state of…undress.”

“What are you talking ab--” Bella started to say, but stopped short because that was the moment she realized she wasn’t wearing a shirt.

Jake could barely contain his laughter as Bella tried in vain to conceal herself with the baking sheet, the color rushing to her face.

“What?” he protested when she shot him a dirty look. “It’s not like it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

Bella suddenly felt like she couldn’t breathe. She tore out of the kitchen and down the hall, pan still in hand, and barricaded herself in the bathroom. A second later she heard Jacob’s hands connect with the wood as he skidded into the locked door.

“C’mon, Bells,” he pleaded gently. “Whatever I did, I’m sorry…”

Bella slumped down onto the edge of the bathtub in defeat, the previous night’s activities rushing back with surprising clarity. She remembered everything in high definition: the touch of his skin, the warmth of his breath, the frantic throbbing of her heart, the frantic throbbing of…other things.

And it was too much.

Much too much too much.

***

Bella stared out the screen door, ignoring the spray on her face as the rain pounded past the eves. Through the ever-falling sheets of gray she could just make out the silhouette of her truck. It was twenty-five, maybe thirty feet from the house. If she ran, and somehow managed to avoid tripping, falling, or the breaking of any limbs, she could be sitting in the cab in a matter of seconds.

And from there it was just a quick fifteen minutes back to Forks.
Back to her house.
Back to her life.
Back to where things made sense.
Back to where Bella was broken and Jake was her friend.

The Black house had become Bella’s refuge over the past months. Filled with memories completely unrelated to what she had lost, filled with people who brought out the best in her. But now it was too small. Her emotions steamed off her, hanging in a thick cloud about her head. And over the past two days they’d been collecting into a permanent haze – a fog she could neither break free from nor see a way through.

She couldn’t breathe anymore.

She had to GET OUT!

Her hand hovered over the doorknob.

“Bells…” Jacob’s hand hovered lightly over her own. She hadn’t even heard him approach. He was practically a ghost in his own right.

Bella was haunted wherever she went now.

“Bells, Please,” he said again. He finally worked up the nerve to touch her, and he pulled her arm away from the knob. “Whatever you’re feeling right now…that’s fine, but I promise Charlie I’d keep you safe.”

“It’s not that far…” But the excuse tasted weak on her tongue.

“Says the girl who was raised in Phoenix.” Jake pulled her away from the door, and gently spun her around to face him. “But I’ve lived here all my life and I can tell you that every road between here and Forks is under about three feet of water right now.”

“My truck--”

“Is a fine piece of American engineering,” he interrupted. “But it’s also not a submarine. Please,” he pleaded with her, a note of desperation in him voice.

Bella felt her own will beginning to crack. “I…can’t stay here, Jake.”

“Yeah,” he said. “You can…and it’s not like you really have a choice,” he joked lamely. “We both know you can’t really swim that well.”

“I’m not kidding.”

“Neither am I.” His voice was serious again as his gaze slipped off her face and disappeared somewhere outside, somewhere far away. “I’m gonna leave for a while, go run a patrol, do some thinking, take care of some business, give you some space”

“But--”

“You can sleep in my bed tonight,” he muttered sadly, managing to look her in the eye once more, but only briefly. “Alone,” he added, sensing that Bella was about to protest. “You can close the door and lock it – keep me out, keep yourself in, whatever you want.”

“But what about you?” Bella croaked out softly. Jake flashed her a tragic replica of his usual smile, and squeezed her hand. It was strange – she hadn’t even been aware he was still holding it. Like the same way you don’t notice your heartbeat, or breathing.

It just happened.

“There’s a perfectly good couch in the living room. Or I’ll crash on the old man’s bed. Don’t worry about me, Bells,” he said, and his fingers slipped out of her grasp. “I’ll manage. I always do.”

One final, sad smile was all Bella saw before he slipped out the door and disappeared into the wall of water. Seconds later a russet blur shot across the grass, bound for the woods.

And just like that, she was alone.

***

She barricaded herself in what remained of Rachel and Rebecca’s room, closing the door against the spirits that haunted the rest of the house. The bunk beds had been sold, replaced by a set of worn free weights belonging to Jake, and a long table covered in bits and pieces that Billy somehow assembled into home made fishing lures and whatnot. But all essences of female habitation had not yet been purged from the room. Faded floral wallpaper, curling and sun faded in places, still clung stubbornly to the walls. And two white dressers stood in opposite corners, their left behind contents peeking out of half opened drawers.

Even though Bella knew they had been the source of her clothing for the past two days, she still felt like a trespasser here. She closed the drawers, slipping old shirts and cut off jeans back inside. Her haggard expression taunted her from the reflection in the chipped but matching vanity mirror.

Coward, it seemed to say accusingly.

“You don’t understand,” Bella muttered back. “It’s different with Jake…” The words even sounded empty, weak.

Pathetic, her reflection now declared. Hollow eyes returned her glare. They told her what she already knew to be true: the situation was out of control.

She and Jake had danced their twisted dance for so long, pretending their relationship was something else. But the subtle glances and his gentle touches and the secret smiles they shared had all been leading up to this moment, these few tender days. A snowflake had become an avalanche. They had reached the do or die moment.

All that Bella had to do to claim Jacob as her own was take that final leap…and she just couldn’t.

He loves you, the mirror declared. You jumped for the memory of Edward, but you won’t jump for the boy who loves you.

Coward.

Bella grabbed a sheet out of the closet and threw it over the mirror. Even her reflection loved Jacob.

So why couldn’t she?

***

She locked the door when Jacob returned several hours later. His footsteps paused by the door, evidently to pick up the towels she’d left waiting for him.

But even Bella couldn’t hide forever. The paltry gray daylight, whatever managed to sneak through the cloud cover, was already beginning to dim. Soon it would be too black to see, and she hadn’t had the foresight to grab a flashlight. Besides, the remnants of a thousand Mad Libs lay at her feet, and she wasn’t looking forward to the prospect of a thousand more. Tired and starving and with the sheet-covered mirror beginning to give her the creeps in the dark, she worked up the nerve to make a run for the kitchen. Bella slowly opened the door…

…Where she rammed straight into Jake, standing stupidly with his hand raised trying to muster the courage to knock. He regained his composure quickly enough, and caught Bella as she ricocheted off his chest.

“We’ve got to stop running into each other like this,” he said, feigning calm, but there was a terseness in him that his voice betrayed.

“Sorry.” Bella’s temporary bravery seemed to have fled. She dropped her eyes and tried in vain to sidle around him down the hall, but he tightened the grip on her elbow.

“Bells, wait,” he pleaded. “Talk to me. Tell what I did wrong so I can fix this.” He sounded plaintive, like a kicked puppy. The metaphor seemed apt, and his apology, unwarranted.

“Nothing Jake,” she replied coldly. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Bella wanted to flee down the hall and out of his grasp, but she knew he wasn’t going to let her off that easy. It was only fair.

“Then why are you treating my like this?”

“Because…it’s complicated,” Bella said weakly. “But…it’s nothing you did. This is all me. So just, let it go, okay?” At least it was partly true. Bella jerked away and made it a few steps down the hall before Jacob caught up with her again, and pulled her into the doorway of his bedroom.

“I’m sorry Bells,” he said. “But I can’t let it go, and it’s not just you this time. You made me a part of this when you strolled back into my life, when you…when we… so talk to me.” Bella pulled away, but he held her fast and moved so that she had to face him. “Talk to me,” he demanded again.

Confrontation – it was never Bella’s strong suit. “Why would I talk to you about it Jake,” she muttered dejectedly. “You’re like a dog with a bone when it comes to me. You never take the hint. You just never get it.”

"No, I don't get it," Jake shot back. "So please, enlighten me Bella - it's only okay to love me in the dark, is that it? Cause I gotta tell ya, you can’t blame this entirely on me. There it takes two to tango. So what, it's only alright when you can claim it's an accident and deny it happened the next day? Is that how it is?"

"No," she protested weakly. Bella was a child all over again, being chastised by her mother for something she already felt guilty about.

"No? Then what is it, Bells?" he demanded harshly. "Why can't you stop thinking and just be with me?"

Jacob really did know Bella inside and out – he'd even managed to vocalize the single most pertinent question that she'd been trying to answer for days.

But there was no easy answer.

"Because," Bella murmured softly, shattering the heavy silence. "Because…it’s wrong."

Jacob's face fell. No, it plummeted, dropping like a stone, or the feet of a wall street businessman as he took a swan dive off the 51st story, or her, plunging over a cliff and into the sea. It was worse than anger, worse than tears, worse than anything Bella could ever have pictured. And for the first time since he had left, she now understood how she looked to other people.

It was the same way that Jacob was looking at her now.

He drifted deeper into the cave of his room and sat down hard on the edge of his bed, slumped and broken.

"Okay…" he muttered, staring down at his lap. "Okay then."

"No," Bella said quickly. "No, Jake that's not what I meant. What I meant was--"

"No Bella, it's exactly what you meant." His voice was hollow, empty. "I just wish you'd figured it out a little sooner…"

She moved to stand beside him, reached for him, but he shrugged off her touch. "Jake, what I meant was that it feels wrong, like…like a betrayal. It feels like I'm betraying someone…when I'm…with…you." Putting it that way didn’t sound any better. The words were burning a hole through her too, it seemed. Another half truth. Maybe that had been the reality of the situation once, before. But now…

Something had changed. And Bella didn’t have the words to explain it.

"Funny, and yet I'm the one who's still here," Jake hissed finally, his whisper harsh, but the emotion was gathering in his voice again. He laughed bitterly, and it echoed like a bark in the tiny room. "You can't betray someone who's gone, Bella."

"You don't understand--"

"No Bella, you don't understand. You're the only one who doesn't fucking understand. Edward is gone, Bella! He left you, and he's not coming back!"

The words bit into her mind, his name sending her reeling. But Jacob wasn't pulling punches this time around.

"He left you, but I'm here, Bells!" He grabbed her wrist, forcing her hand over his heart so that she felt every beat. "I'm here and I'm willing and I'm waiting, but you have to make up your mind first. You can sit here, broken and wallowing and empty for the rest of your life, waiting for someone who's never coming back…or you can move on. But the choice is yours Bella, and the damn day of reckoning is upon us. And I’m sitting right here.”

Beneath her fingertips Jacob’s heart began to pound. Her’s was doing the same. The room around her seemed to jump and twitch with each beat, and she couldn’t get it to stop, to settle. Her mind mirrored the actions, leaping violently between options, futures, wants, needs, desires. When it felt like she knew what she was doing that old war wound, that shooting pain each time she breathed, would rip through her chest. And when she thought that she wasn’t strong enough to ever overcome it, Jacob’s face would swim before her eyes, and something new and vibrant would stir within her.

Bella pressed her hand harder against his chest. "If I could just let you inside my head you could…you'd get it, just how crazy…how messed up this whole thing…”

“Bella,” Jake interrupted her rambling, his voice more normal now – all calm and tightly controlled. “Time for a brutally honest question: do you love me?”

The blunt question caught her by surprise. “I don’t know,” she confessed lamely, for the umpteenth time in as many days.

“That’s not an answer,” Jacob muttered harshly. “It’s not a hard question.”

“Yes it is,” Bella shot back, anger rising in her voice this time. “Love is nothing but one big confusion and complication and…and mess.”

“No, love is simple: you either do or you don’t. It’s how you deal with love, how you handle it, how it affects your life that makes it complicated. But the emotion, that feeling you get in your chest and your head and your gut? That’s easy.”

Bella wanted nothing more than to smack him and exclaim that he had no idea what he was talking about – he was just a stupid kid with a stupid crush. But when she opened her mouth to speak the words rushed through her lips uncontrollably, like a dam had cracked somewhere deep inside of her. “You just don’t understand Jake. I’m not even a person any more! I’m pieces of Bella because of love. And what I felt…what I feel is something that you don’t just know that…that you just don’t “get over”. But then I stumble into your garage and it all becomes a tangled mess because on most days I feel like I don’t have the strength to turn on the lights or get up in the morning, but you crawl into bed with me and put me on the back of a bike and you smile at me and it makes me feel like I can do it as long as I have you with me. And that’s not the love I know and I don’t know what it means all I know is that this is just a mess that we’ve gotten ourselves into and I don’t know the way out anymore!”

Jacob didn’t say anything at first. Instead he reached out through the darkness and touched Bella’s panting body, reaching up to her, raising her chin with the crook of his finger. He’d left a candle burning by the book on his nightstand. And through the flickering gold and gray she could faintly make out the contours of his face as he stared at her.

“Bella,” he said again. “Do you love me?”

This time the word spilled from her lips breathlessly. “Yes.”

The walls were gone, the damn was shattered, and Bella was tired and flustered and distracted just long enough for her instincts to voice what her heart knew to be true all along: yes she did love Jacob. Yes it was real. Not some echo of the emotions he clearly felt for her, or a paltry martyristic attempt to make him happy by sacrificing her own needs.

Bella Swan loved Jacob Black.

True, it wasn’t the same as loving him, as loving Edward. That had been like a ride in a stock car, a rollercoaster loop. Fast and hard and a blur of self contained wonder, but accompanied with the knowledge that the ride would either stop or kill them both in the process. In many ways it nearly had. In Bella’s mind it had actually succeeded for a while…all those months lost…

But loving Jacob was different. Like a baseball glove or a favorite pair of blue jeans, their relationship had been forged over time, through trials and struggles, successes and failures. But the wear and tear was what made it special, perfect, and in the end it fit like a second skin – easy and soft and warm and made for exactly who she was.

Who they were.

Together.

“Yes?” It was Jacob’s turn to be disbelieving. Too fast for Bella’s eyes to register he swept her off her feet and into his lap. “Really?” he asked softly, holding her gently, like a china doll he was afraid to drop and shatter.

A hunger burned in his eyes. How long had be been waiting, Bella wondered. How long had he wanted to hear those words from her? She placed her hand firmly against his cheek. “I…really,” she said softly, amazed at how easy the words slipped from her lips. She leaned in and punctuated that declaration with a swift kiss. But even after she broke away, he held her there, cheek to cheek, for a long time.

And in that very moment Bella finally understood something about her mother: bravery was simple when you knew it was right. Right didn’t always equate to easy – Jacob was not going to able to wave a wand and repair all the parts of her that had rusted and disintegrated and disappeared into the depths of the Pacific – but that didn’t matter because it just meant the battle with him beside her was the worthier cause.

Jake was certainly worthy.

And looking into his eyes, Bella was beginning to think that maybe she was too.

So neither of them moved, both afraid to pierce the bubble that had sheltered them from the rest of the world, and made them part of each others. They had used up all their words saying things that were only shallow parodies of the emotions they represented. There was something in their actions that conveyed more than their voices ever could. Something in the way that Jake held her so tightly to his chest, he seemed to be trying to make her a prisoner of his ribcage. Something in the way that Bella could momentarily breathe without pain, as if the tightness in her chest had had more to do with a newly formed love, and less to do with a dearly departed one.

Something in the way that when Jake leaned over and blew out the dwindling stub of the candle, Bella had no desire to spend the evening in any other place but his arms. The anger, the words from before, right and wrong, vanished into the blackness. And in the abyss, Jacob and Bella found each other.

***

Bella was dying.

No, not dying. Roasting alive.

The fire danced in front of her, but the farther she retreated from it, deeper into her room, the warmer it got. The air cooked in her lungs, hands flying to her throat as she clawed for air. She was drowning on dry land.

She was drowning again.

Tongues of flame licked her doorway, but it did not ignite. It beckoned, a safe haven which she had to make it to, make it through…

She hovered at the invisible edge, the break line, hands outstretched to the flames.

“Bella, love…” Hands around her wrists, and pleading golden eyes, that pulled her back back back to the corner, back to the window, back to the darkness and the heat and the lung crushing smoke. “Stay…”

She pulled back, and felt the fingers like shackles crack like bitter porcelain and fall away.

“I’m sorry…”

She stepped into the flame.

***

Bella awoke suddenly, damp with sweat and feeling shaky. She wriggled her hands free from the tangled sheets and tangled limbs. In the darkness they seemed perfect, free from burns and scars, untouched by the flames that had seemed so real.

The dreams always seemed real.

Jake shifted where he spooned behind her, muttering and burying his face deeper into the crook of her neck, the curtain of her hair. Somewhere beneath the sheet he grasped at her hand, and laced his fingers between her own again.

Bella burned at his touch. The familiar scorch that reminded her of a couch and a fireplace and a stolen kiss that passed between them again and again. Stolen glances and stolen caresses and stolen heats. Bare flesh against bare flesh.

The fire seeped into her stomach, and trickled downward. Bella had to clamp her lips shut over the longing sigh that tried to punctuate the air.

But it didn’t matter. Jacob had a sixth sense that was tied to her in some inexplicable way. “Bells…you ‘wake?” He nuzzled her neck again, and Bella shivered.

“Just a dream,” she whispered heavily. Her heart was pounding inside her chest. “I’m okay, I’m just…a little warm.” She wriggled away from him a bit, but Bella knew Jacob’s proximity wasn’t the source of her discomfort. At least not directly.

He sighed sleepily again. “You wan’ me to move to the couch?” But he only wrapped her up tighter in his free arm.

“No, I want you to stay right here,” she whispered, hesitating. “But I was thinking of taking my shirt off…like last night…you know if you don’t mind.”

Jake’s neck suddenly snapped upright, the sleep retreating from his face. He perched up on one elbow and looked down at her with a slightly wicked gleam in his eye. “I liked last night,” he said cautiously, and as if he was offering to help his free hand began toying with the hem of her shirt. “I liked the way your skin felt on mine.”

“Me too.” She shivered at his words and the way he proceeded to work her shirt up underneath the covers. Bella rolled over to face him, wiggled her arms through the holes, then ducked her head and allowed Jake to pull the borrowed garment all the way off. He pitched it somewhere in the dark and smoothed back her static charged hair.

“I always knew you were shocking,” he said softly, looking at her with something close to reverence. Bella’s hands were shaking as she reached up to gently touch his face. Jacob felt the tremor, and covered her hand in his own. “Are you alright, Bells?” he practically whispered.

“I’m not sure,” she confessed breathlessly, honestly.

“Okay.” He leaned over and kissed her softly, their hands still locked together. There was no hesitation, like the first time. No desperation, like the second. It was just softness and warmth and…

…and love.

Bella leaned into the kiss, savoring the heat, and the way it lingered. Opening herself up to every sensation that was firing in her lips, her body. It felt different tonight. She felt different tonight. Strange.

She felt Jake smile into the kiss as always, lingering for a moment before he broke away. “God Bells,” he murmured. “You look so beautiful…”

Bella felt the color rise in her cheeks. “Are you always this sappy after you take a girl’s shirt off?” she couldn’t resist asking.

He just grinned wider and stroked her hair again. “I don’t know, not a whole lot of experience to go on there.”

Bella looked up at him shyly as Jake’s hands drifted below the covers and began to tease the length of her collarbone. “You seemed to know what you were doing last night.” His fingers drifted lower.

He chuckled, settling back down into the bed and moving her over, reclaiming his position as the big spoon. His arms wound back around her where they continued their naughty endeavors. “Maybe I’m just naturally gifted?”

Bella couldn’t see him anymore, but his breath tickled her ear. “That must be it,” she sighed, too distracted by his roving hands to care about how lame his lines were. Beneath the sheets, Jake was exploring. He danced on her ribcage, blazed a trail across her stomach, circled her breast leaving increasingly warm paths until he reached her peak. His fingers tweaked her erect nipple and Bella caught her breath sharply.

“Oh!”

Jake squeezed again, his breathing sounding more ragged. “I’m sorry, would you like me to stop?” His lips planted a burning kiss on her neck, teeth grazing the skin ever so softly.

“No…” Bella hissed. “No, no, no.”

Jake wound his free hand down beneath her hips where he clutched at her thigh, tracing the soft skin up the leg of her shorts. Bella held her breath as he abandoned her breast with the other one and slid it beneath the waistband of her shorts. She was bound, tied up like a package by his limbs, but as his thumb brushed against the top of her panties Bella realized that she didn’t really mind too much.

Jake leaned in a kissed her ear. “Tell me if I go too far,” he whispered.

Instead she arched into his touch, silently urging him downward. Pleading, in the confines of her mind, further, harder, more. His skin was electric, it was igniting the bonfire from her dream, a passion, a spreading heat, and it was gathering beneath his hands. Between her legs.

She wanted to feel him there.

Her response spurred Jake on, and he began exploring her with the gentlest of pressure. Teasing, his fingers caressed the damp fabric again and again, tracing her from top to bottom. Bella writhed beneath his touch, craving more than Jake was ready to give just yet.

“Bella,” he said huskily, and she felt him tauntingly trace the seam of her panties. “I think this might be easier if we got something out of the way…”

Bella gasped nervously as he began to pull down her shorts, and the underwear beneath them. Something clenched in her stomach nervously. “Wait,” she gasped, catching his wrists. She opened her eyes and rolled over where Jake’s face swam into view as he propped himself up on a pillow beside her.

He smiled the way she liked. That genuine grin that was all Jacob, the real Jacob. Her Jacob. “Trust me,” he assured her, holding her gaze. His expression flickered slightly, and in that instant Bella could tell he was nervous too.

She released his hands and raised her hips and Jake slowly peeled the clothing away. She felt it reach her calves, where she kicked them off and pushed them down to the edge of the bed with her toes. The second they were gone Belle exhaled a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding.

She was lying naked in Jacob Black’s bed.

She shivered beneath Jake’s penetrating gaze, as he trailed a finger up the inside of her thigh. “Are you alright?”

Was she? Bella couldn’t seem to make sense of what was happening, all she knew it she didn’t want it to stop. Her confident smile broke into a moan as he reached that place between her legs once more.

With those amazing hands Jake trigged responses from Bella that she’d never heard before. She bit her lip against the animalistic noises escaping from her throat as he toyed softly with her slit.

“Help me,” he suddenly pleaded against her ear. “I’m lost here Bells…” and his voice wavered nervously. Bella brazenly grabbed his wrist and guided him to that hidden gem he was after. “Here?” He stroked her clit softly with his thumb and Bella couldn’t stifle her moans any longer.

“Jake!” She raised herself off the bed, pushing up against his touch as her vision swam wickedly. Jake pushed back and a power surge seemed to overtake her. Bella closed her eyes, giving herself over to her other senses as Jacob, evidently feeling much more confident, played with her relentlessly.

He circled her sensitive bud again and again, and Bella felt a nameless need welling up inside her, growing with the pressure that seemed to be spreading from the core of her body. “More please,” she pleaded senselessly. “Jake I…I…”

Bella couldn’t speak, couldn’t focus, couldn’t comprehend what was happening as Jake responded by spreading her open and gently pushing inside her. She clenched tightly around him as Jake slowly slipped his finger deeper and deeper. Bella clutched at the mattress, at Jacob, at anything she could touch as he pressed himself into her depths, and then retreated. She thrust her hips upward eagerly, urging him to do it again.

And he obliged. In and out, Jake explored her neck with his mouth while his fingers explored inside her. His teeth raked at her soft skin hungrily, gently with each penetration. And each time she moaned his name he shivered against her.

His hot breath on the nape of her neck, his own ragged gasps drew Bella away from her own pleasure as she suddenly realized the inequity of the situation. With extreme willpower she grabbed his wrist and pulled him out of her.

“What are you doing?”

“Trust me,” she told him. She flipped him over, then motioned for him to sit up against the headboard. Like the night before Bella straddled his lap, resting on her knees. And like the night before the look in his eyes gave her all the confidence she needed.

With trembling fingers she again reached for the tie of his shorts. “Bella, you don’t--” he started to say, but she cut him off with a kiss. She’s been stopped last night, but she wasn’t about to be similarly deterred this time around. She parted his lips hungrily while her fingers fumbled with the string, brushing clumsily against his all too apparent bulge.

When the knot finally gave she broke away.

“You don’t have to, Be--” Jacob started to protest again as Bella wrenched his zipper down.

“But I want to,” she replied sharply. “I want to make you feel good too…”

“You do ma—Oh God!” Bella reached inside his shorts and wrapped her fingers deftly around his shaft. His mouth hung open as she slowly trailed down its length, brushing a soft tangle of hair, before climbing to toy with the sensitive head.

She let go and in perfect unison they both scrambled to remove the last errant piece of clothing. Finally on equal footing, Bella drank in the sight of him. Long and lean and cut. She grabbed him again, eagerly repeating the same motion as before. It was Jake’s turn to throw back his head and as he bucked into her touch. His response made her own breathing become fast and choppy.

She applied more pressure, working the length of his member achingly slow. Jake pulled his taught fingers down her back, squeezed her butt, touched every inch of her skin as she played with him. “God Bella…you’re sooo good at that…”

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” she admitted throatily. Her own muscles clenched achingly each time Jake moved beneath her. Some animal part inside of her screamed for something more. She wanted to be pressed up against him, their sweaty bodies moving in unison. She wanted to feel each pump of his body inside her.

“Just don’t st--” was all he got out before Bella released him. Jake moaned brokenly, raggedly breathing. She didn’t give him time to catch his breath, as she climbed up his lap and positioned herself squarely above his rigid member.

“Bells,” he whispered, composure returning. “Are you sure?” His hands stroked her back reassuringly.

She wrapped her arms tightly around his neck. “I’m sure.” She leaned in and stole a kiss that turned into two, four. “I want to do this with you.”

With nervous desire, she lowered herself onto him. A momentary bite of pain exploded somewhere inside her, and Jacob caught her hips as her body tensed against him. But it ebbed under the heat that he was rapidly spreading within her. Bella guided him in, feeling herself stretch to accommodate his every inch.

Jake filled her to the brim, and as she thrust her hips against him Bella could feel that longed-for release building inside her. The animal was growing, and it wanted out.

“Bella,” Jacob moaned, his hands clawing at her back. “Jesus, you feel so good.” He grabbed her hips and raised her upwards, only to lower her back down again.

Bella thrust down harder, grinding against him. “Say it again, Jake,” she pleaded. Her hands drifted off his neck and clutched the top of his headboard in desperation.

“Bella…” he repeated. “Oh God, Bells.”

She leaned in and attacked his neck ferociously, kissing and biting and licking. She teased his skin with her tongue, sucked it gently between her teeth. “I love the way you say that,” she breathed against him, stealing his line. She understood it better now. “When you say my name like that…just for me.”

He pulled her tighter against him. “Just for you,” he agreed. “Always for you, Bells. It’s – ahh – it’s always been for you…”

Again and again, Bella forced herself down on top of him, reveling in the way it felt when Jake filled her completely, their bodies writhing together as one, and savoring the lurching emptiness he left behind when they broke apart. It was a dance, a maddening dizzy complex series of steps and rhythms and desire that even Bella managed to understand. Each time Jake drove into her she felt his blazing heat stoke the fire deep within her core. Her muscles clenched one by one as the pyre raged.

“Jake,” she pleaded incoherently. Again and again she called his name until with one final thrust, something inside Bella exploded. She clenched, inside and out, writhing against his chest as the orgasm rolled over her body in waves. Her breathless whispers spelled out incoherent words in a language only lovers understood as Jake took her weight in his hands.

He held her up, drove himself into her. Each thrust only milked her pleasure longer, until Jacob could no longer take it. They throbbed once more in unison as, with one final gasp, he erupted inside her.

Weak and shaky, he pulled himself from her, then pulled her down against his chest. Down into his arms. “Bells, oh Bells,” he repeated over and over again, running his fingers through her damp and matted hair. “God Bells, that was just…”

“I know,” she panted weakly. Exhaustion was beginning to replace euphoria, and she snuggled tightly against him as her sweat soaked body began to cool. “I know.” Her thoughts were a jumbled mess, a jagged puzzle of emotions and sensations. But Jake was beside her. Jake was her anchor. And without needing to rationalize it she knew that her heart was pounding only for him.

“I really do love you,” he murmured.

Strangely, it was laugher that Bella felt overwhelming her. She was naked and sweaty and drained…and all she could do was laugh. “It doesn’t count when you say it now,” she teased. “There’s no blood flowing to your brain. You’re not thinking straight”

He chuckled weakly in response. “Bells, I could love you without thinking at all. I could love you without air, without blood, without bones in my body.” His lips found hers and she kissed him back weakly. “That you can always count on…”

***

It was light when Bella opened her eyes. Not light in that it was raining during the day time, but light in that the sun was actually out. The absence of sound, the lack of rain and hail thundering onto the roof, was practically deafening. The damned sounds of silence, punctuated only by Jacob’s soft snoring. Her hair fluttered each time he exhaled, warm against the top of her head as she lay cradled against his chest.

Bella was fascinated by the way he slept – how the soft smile seemed etched to his peaceful face. Those lines of worry, the ones she’d seen far too frequently since his transformation, had vanished. He looked…contented, happy.

It was the first time she’d ever watched anyone else in the throws of sleep. A dark, twisted realization perhaps, but it no longer frightened Bella. Those moments were bound to come, just as they were bound to pass. And for the first time she really understood why Edward had been so fascinated with her sleeping habits. It was the elimination of the mask that everyone seemed to wear, a glimpse into the secret soul when their guard was down. The Jake she was looking at now was her Jake, absent the tight control and stiff demeanor. Even in sleep, his smile was friendly, bright, genuine. Gently, she reached up and traced the curve of his cheek with her hand.

Jake leaned into the touch reflexively, and stirred. “Hey,” he mumbled thickly, kissing the top of her head. A split second later he froze and went rigid. “How’re you s’morning?”

“Contemplative,” she answered softly. “I was thinking about what you said last night – about how it’s easy to love you in the dark…”

Jake, almost instantly awake, remained frozen…braced for impact. “Yeah?”

“You were right, sort of,” she confessed. “It was easy to be with you in the dark. In the morning everything was perfectly clear. What I stood to risk, what I stood to lose…the scars that we both carry. We’re an ugly mess in broad daylight. But at night…” she trailed off.

“Yeah?” Jake prompted her again with baited breath.

“At night it was easy to just…surrender. Everything was hidden and everything was close and small and warm and safe. I didn’t have to see myself reflected in your eyes, I didn’t have to see the look on your face if it all went wrong. It was just…it was easy. It’s hard to face what you stand to lose after you’ve been…after you’ve lost it all before…”

Jake seemed to relax, but his arms tightened around her. “You’re not going to lose me Bells. I’m not going to be something else that you have to overcome.”

“I know that.” She allowed herself to crash into that embrace, her cheek pressed against the warm skin of his chest. His heart beat frantically beneath her, and Bella dimly recalled burning lungs and burning hands that beat against her chest in vain, trying to make her own heart mimic the sound. Don’t leave me, Bella! Breathe, Bella! Damnit, Bella, breathe! She wasn’t the only one with something at stake, someone to lose.

She took a shuddering breath, but her voice was steady when she spoke. “You’re not going to lose me either.”

And this time she was the one smiling into their kiss as Jake pulled them together, and threw the covers over their heads.

Ultimate X-Men and Wolverine Origins Icons and Wallpapers

2009-03-10T00:58:40Z

[19] - Wolverine: X-Men Origins Icons
[65] - Ultimate X-Men: Rogue & Remn Icons
[08] - Wolverine: X-Men Origins Wallpapers

Teasers:

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

1-5

6-10

11-15

16-19

Ultimate X-Men: Rogue & Remy

1-5

6-10

11-15

16-20

21-25

26-30

31-35

36-40

41-45

46-50

51-55

56-60

61-65

Wallpapers:

Wolverine: Origins Wallpapers and Icons

2009-02-22T03:08:16Z

[27] - Wolverine: Origins Icons
[04] - Wolverine: Origins Wallpapers

Teasers:

1-5

6-10

11-15

16-20

21-25

26-27

Wallpapers:

Bark at the Moon - A Jacob/Bella Fic

2009-02-12T22:29:41Z

Title: Bark At The Moon
Character(s): Jake/Bella, Quil, Embry
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The boys refused to tell her much, only that they’d pick up at 8pm, and that she should dress in warm, and preferably flame retardant, clothing. And seeing as how her NASCAR jumpsuit was back in Phoenix, she hoped they were only kidding about that last part...
Notes: My ficathon entry for runningsissors. Her prompts were: dry humor, the three amigos – Jake, Embry and Quil, and the quote "To say the truth, reason and love keep little company together." I tried to include the last one thematically, but I'm not sure how effectively I managed to convey it. She didn't want to see: fluff, first person narration, or Bella whining about her broken heart. So you tell me if I met my requirements or not. As always, it's longer than intended - I'm sorry.

“I’m telling you dude, it’s not going to fucking fit.”

“Of course it will, you just have to jam it in harder!”

“Ugh!”

“Just like that…okay, do it again.”

Bella followed the grunting and cussing around to the front of the unfamiliar brown truck. Though old, it was still a distant, more evolved relative of her own vehicle. Two huge bodies fought for space in the narrow gap beneath the raised hood.

“Shit, its dripping.”

“That’s perfectly normal, keep going…”

Supernatural senses aside, the pair seemed oblivious to her presence. “Am I interrupting something?” Bella teased, dropping her backpack loudly. Two heads simultaneously shot up and slammed into to the hood. In perfect unison, two voices began swearing. For the first time in a while, Bella felt laughter bubbling up in her chest. Nothing like watching else being clumsy for once…

Quil and Embry finally emerged from the shaded eves beneath the garage, each rubbing a rapidly healing goose egg.

“Bella,” Quil said. “It’s been too long – I knew you couldn’t stay away.” He had the balls to shoot her a none to subtle wink.

“From the sound of it, you two have been keeping yourselves plenty occupied in my absence,” she shot back. “Did he jam it in hard enough for you there, Quil?”

Emby cuffed his friend on the shoulder to keep from falling over, laughing.

Quil remained unfazed. “Hey, I take what I can get,” he muttered, shrugging Embry off. “I’m up for round two, if you’re willing…”

“Not a chance. I’m actually just looking for Jake, I promised to help him edit that history paper. Is he floating around here somewhere?”

“Yeah, he’s in the house cleaning up after Quil had his manly way with him earlier,” Embry managed to gasp, still slumped against the truck and wiping the tears from his eyes. “You missed quite a show.”

“Apparently,” Bella agreed, scrambling out of range as Quil lunged, taking a good natured swipe at his friend. The swing was answered by another, and a scuffle ensued. Bella grabbed her bag and tried to beat a hasty retreat towards the house, not wanting to be present when the boys starting destroying Jake’s precious garage.

She was almost at the door – home free – when two voices behind her cried out, “WAIT!”

Embry, using his height to his advantage, had Quil in a headlock that he seemed blissfully unaware of. “You have remarkably skinny arms, Bella,” he said in a complementary tone.

“Small hands, too,” Embry added, sacrificing his grip on his friend.

Bella clutched her bag to her chest nervously as both boys eyed her like a prime cut of beef. “So…?”

The boys grinned at each other wickedly. “You want to help us out for a minute?”

***

“I think Embry’s right--”

“HA!”

“--it's not going to fit.”

The light flickering through the engine block of the truck dimmed as Quil stuck his head back beneath the hood. Under the vehicle, Bella wheeled the dolly a few inches to the right to see him better. A wire dropped down between the pipes, and Bella watched it tap idly against a bundle of unidentifiable tubing.

“Well you’re both wrong, and I know this because the damn belt fit 20 minutes ago when I first took it of the car. You see these?” He tapped the tubes with the wire again.

“Yeah.”

“Well, you need to move those about six inches towards the back of the truck. Then I can get my hand down there and stretch the belt back on.”

“And you couldn’t do this yourselves…why?” Bella ventured to ask.

Embry squatted down on his haunches and peered at her under the bumper. “Cause both of our arms are too big to get the pipe in far enough.” He rolled a small, skinny piece of plumbing pipe to her, and Bella snagged it before it disappeared beneath her dolly. “It’s too tight in there to just grab them, even with your tiny hands.”

“All you have to do, Bella,” Quil called down through the mechanical mayhem, “is reach up as high as you can, and then jam the pipe against the engine housing.” He tapped the wire against what Bella assumed was the housing.

Despite having little to no idea what he was talking about, Bella took the pipe and began to push it through the mess of cables and wires and pipes that crossed and tangled in every direction.

“Try very hard not to break anything while you’re at it,” Embry added helpfully, and Bella felt him grab the edge of the dolly to keep her from rolling all over the place.

“Dully noted,” Bella muttered sarcastically. She was beginning to realize why the boys had had trouble. It was a tight fit, even with her skinny wrists and narrow arms. She couldn’t see her hand or the pipe anymore, and her wrist was bent at a 45 degree angle around a pipe somewhere in the fray. But finally her upward mobility was stopped, and she felt a tremor as the pipe found purchase against something solid. “Am I there?”

“Spot on,” Quil called back. “Now, I just need you to pull towards the back of the truck as hard as you can. That’ll move the tubes without me having to disconnect the entire electrical system.”

Easier said than done. Bella might have gotten her arm to fit into the mess, but that didn’t mean she had room to move. Still, she braced against the dolly, and pushed as far as the awkward angle would allow.

Quil blocked the light completely as she heard him fumbling above her. “I need a few more inches,” he grunted. Bella leaned into the pipe with all her might, bracing against what felt like Embry’s forearm with her foot. A few drips of something oily and greasy splattered beside her face, but she ignored them.

“Quil…” she called out in warning. Her hand was beginning to slip.

“Just two more seconds.”

She leaned in harder, to no avail. “QUIL!”

“…Done!” There was a resounding snap and clunk above her, and Bella took it to be a good sign. A split-second later the pipe slipped from Bella’s fingers, and ricocheted against the engine housing with a loud TWANG!

“WHAT, IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT’S HOLY, IS GOING ON HERE?”

The shout rang out across the yard, followed by the slamming of a familiarly, balky screen door. Embry grabbed her ankles and quickly hauled her out from under the truck. He plopped her onto her feet, dusted off her back with a few quick swipes of his arm, then spun her around just in time to face an irate Jacob who was storming across the grass.

“Down boy,” Quil said sharply, slamming down the hood. “We haven’t irrevocably scarred her or anything...”

Jake ignored him, but he seemed calmer now that she was out from under the vehicle, and clearly uninjured. “Whatever they did, I’m so sorry,” he said to Bella.

“Relax,” she said, shooting him a reassuring smile. “I was just--"

The sound of an engine roaring to life behind them cut Bella off, and before she could protest Embry let out a whoop, sweeping her up into his arms and twirling her around. Coming to his senses, he shot Jake a furtive glance before sheepishly dropping her to her feet.

Dizzy, Bella slumped against Jacob’s shoulder, wearing a Cheshire grin. “I helped,” she finally managed to say, with all the pride and enthusiasm of the old Shake n’ Bake girl.

“Yes, I can see that,” Jake replied, unable to keep a straight face of his own. He touched her cheek, where the oil had splattered against her skin. “The look suits you.”

“Damn right it does!” Quil proclaimed, jumping out of the cab and rejoining the group. “Jake likes a woman who can work under his hood.”

Jake took a halfhearted swing at him, but Quil danced nimbly out of the way. “Heel, boy!” he shouted. “Before you go off on us, Embry and I fully intend to pay Bella for her services.”

“And not in the way you’re thinking,” Embry quickly added. “So get your mind out of the gutter and don’t try to beat us to death or anything.”

Jacob sighed under his breath, and pulled Bella in tighter against him even though the dizziness had long since faded. She didn’t protest the way she usually did.

She didn’t want to.

“Since Bella was such a trooper, and in our hour of need no less,” Quil said, waving his arms about dramatically. “We’ve decided that it’s only fair she accompany us tonight!” He paused dramatically, waiting for Bella’s reaction.

“Um…” she hesitated, and Quil’s enthusiasm seemed to deflate. “Accompany you…where, exactly?”

“On a mission of danger, mayhem, and general teenage stupidity,” Jake leaned down and whispered. His breath tickled against her cheek, and despite herself she felt herself returning the boys’ grins.

“So…are you in?” Embry asked.

Bella poked Jacob in the ribs. “Definitely.”

***

The boys refused to tell her much, only that they’d pick up at 8pm, and that she should dress in warm, and preferably flame retardant, clothing. And seeing as how her NASCAR jumpsuit was back in Phoenix, she hoped they were only kidding about that last part. Still, at 8 on the dot there was a knock on the door, so fire or not there was no turning back even if she’d wanted to.

Bella opened the door in a bathrobe, with a toothbrush planted firmly in her cheek. Jake lounged in the doorway, looking strange in that he was fully clothed.

“Oo’re fweakshly pfunctual ‘or a guy,” she muttered around the toothbrush, retreating back up to her room.

Jake let the door close behind him and followed, trying hard not to stare at her bare legs. “I’m sorry?” he replied with a chuckle. “I’ll be sure to work on that. You, on the other had, seem to have mastered the whole punctual thing…”

He flopped down onto the edge of Bella’s bed while she disappeared back into the bathroom. The sink ran for a moment, followed by the sound of gargling before she shouted something under the door that sounded faintly like, “get bent!”

“Your bathrobe already took care of that…” Jacob muttered under his breath.

“WHAT WAS THAT?” The hairdryer was running now.

“Nothing!” he replied quickly. “Are you almost done yet? The guys are waiting…”

The bathroom door creaked opened and Bella appeared in the doorway, fully dressed and pulling her hair back. “Sorry, I’m hurrying.” She brushed past him and dug through the closet for a moment, a rushed glow on her cheeks. She looked…better, Jake though. Delightfully rushed. Unburdened. The last few weeks had been especially good to her. Normal. Safe. Bordering on happy, even.

Jacob just smiled, and continued to push his luck. “I mean, I expect this kind of behavior when there’s makeup and curling irons involved, but you’re so low maintenance Bella. I can’t imagine what it must be like waiting for you to get ready for a party or wedding or something actually requiring effort…”

He ducked suddenly as Bella hurled a shoe at him. “I made spaghetti for dinner so that Charlie could eat before going to work,” she explained more rationally, pulling a blue hoodie from the fray and yanking it on. “He likes the night shift better if he gets to tackle it on a full stomach. But there was a ‘sauce malfunction’ and let’s just say that a change and shower were required. Lay off.”

“Fair enough,” he conceded with a laugh. He shut off the light and held out a hand for her to take. “Now let’s go before the guys get bored and do something stup--”

They were interrupted by the sound of mad cackling from the backyard, followed by the sharp sound of rocks ricocheting off of glass.

Only they weren’t hitting Bella’s window.

“Did you tell them that Charlie’s at the station tonight?” Bella asked Jacob. She navigated her room in the dark and pressed her nose against the glass of her dark window.

“Nope,” Jake said.

Bella slowly opened her window a crack, and felt the cool night air rush in to greet them. Through she couldn’t see them in the dark, she could clearly hear Quil and Embry on the north end of the lawn. Another handful of rocks hit glass.

“What light through younger window breaks?” Embry called. Bella could vaguely see him on bended knee, his arms outstretched to the window with the flickering light filtering through it. “It is the east, and Quil’s mom – she is the sun!”

“Embry, so help me God, do you really want to declare open season on mom jokes? You, of all people?” There was no response other than the sound of a fist meeting flesh.

“Hey Romeos!” Bella called at them. There was a long pause while the boys processed just where she was calling them from. “My room’s over here. But if you’re so eager to seduce Chief Swan I can just have him meet you at the front door…”

Jake chuckled as the two boys scrambled over each other and sprinted from the backyard. “Whatever you do, don’t tell them your dad forgets to turn off the TV in his room, kay?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Bella replied. She took Jake’s hand and led him from the room. “Where’s the fun in that?”

***

The guys had moved the truck down the street, killed the lights, and were hunched down in the front seat trying to look as inconspicuous as possible when Jake rapped lighty on the window. “We’re ready, let’s go.”

Bella was preoccupied, staring at the seating arrangements and trying to figure out how three huge teenage werewolves and herself were supposed to cram into the narrow cab. “I don’t get it,” she said finally. “Why don’t we just take the rabbit – we can all fit in there. Well, mostly.”

“Because,” Jake said, helping Quil and Embry move something large and flat around in the truck bed, “while my car may be a feat of fine German engineering, it’s not the best when it comes to going off road.”

“Off road?” Bella repeated nervously.

“Don’t worry, Bella-baby,” Quil purred, climbing back into the cab. “You’re gonna ride up here with me, where it’s nice and safe.” He stroked the vinyl seat seductively.

“What about me?” Embry protested.

“Oh, sorry man but three’s a crowd, especially with this lot. You’ll have to ride in the back with Jake like the mutt you are I guess.”

“Ha. Ha.” Jake put his arm around Bella’s shoulder. “Sorry Quil, but I’m calling veto. You and Embry can snuggle in the front all you want. We’re riding in the back.”

“We are?” Bella parroted again. “Jake, maybe you’ve fallen on your head and forgotten, but seatbelts and I are really, really, really good friends--”

“Relax,” he assured her, lowing the hatch and giving Bella a leg up into the back. “I’m safer than any seatbelt.”

“You’d better be, cause if I get maimed I’m telling Charlie it was all your fault…” He laughed at the threat and hopped cleanly into the back. The truck bounced when he landed.

“Shocks, man!” Quil called through the open window, and started the truck with a roar. Jake ignored him, instead he spread a musty blanket on top of what felt like a stack of plywood, and collapsed against the back of the cab. He pulled Bella down beside him as the truck started to move, swirling the chilly air about them both. She leaned into him, warm beneath the weight of his arms as he held her close, tucked beneath his chin.

They roared down the street. The lights from town eventually faded from view as they kept going, until finally only the moon lit their path on the dark roads.

“What a view…” Bella muttered, taking in the millions of starts that seemed to explode into view as the lights of town dimmed behind them.

“You’re telling me.” Only Jake wasn’t looking at the stars.

***

“This? You guys went to all that trouble for…this?” Bella threw her hands out wide at the cliff expanse before them. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, the view is lovely. But so is First Beach, and I can get there without losing the ability to sit down for the next week and a half.” She tried to rub her sore posterior discretely.

“I offered to let you sit on my lap…” Jake offered helpfully, laughing in her ear.

“Yes, with the purest of intentions, I’m sure.”

“Well I never said that.”

“And for your information Bella,” Quil interjected. “We didn’t come here for the view. We came here for this.” A sudden spark lit the night, and before Bella could see what was going on Quil hurled a flaming object out into the night sky. It sailed past the break-line, and splashed somewhere beyond the surf. A second later a BOOM reverberated against the cliff face, a jet of water shooting up into the sky.

“What the hell was that, an M80?” Embry asked. He stuck his hand into the duffle bag Quil produced from under the front seat and rifled around.

“Yes, yes it was.”

“Sweet,” Jake and Embry echoed in unison, bright teeth flashing in wide grins.

Jake grabbed one himself and handed it to her. “C’mon Bells,” he said devilishly. “Haven’t you wanted to blow something up lately?”

He had no idea.

It took several attempts for Bella to get the lighter to flare, and then her hand was shaking when she held it to the tip. In another lifetime, one not so long ago, she would never have been permitted to play with explosives.

For her own good, of course.

“Throw it fast once it catches,” Jake muttered in her ear. “Charlie’ll kill me if you come back missing a hand.” The wick darkened, smoldered, and then burned brightly. Bella ran up to the cliff’s edge and hurled the firework out into the darkness…

…only, she didn’t have the strength of the average male, teenage werewolf apparently, and the bomb plopped down into the sand on the beach below.

“Oops…”

Jake grabbed her hand roughly and pulled her back from the edge, and straight into his chest as the explosion shook the precipice. Sand rained down on them, sticking in their hair and clothes. After a few moments Jake seemed to realize he was still holding her, and relinquished his grip.

“Clearly we need to work on your arm,” he sighed, shaking the sand from his hair.

“Does that mean we get to do that again?” Bella demanded with far too much enthusiasm.

Quil tucked the bag of explosives under his arm, and shot Bella a worried look. “Just keep crazy there away from my truck…”

***

“So how exactly does your cousin get all this stuff over the border?” Bella was clinging to Quil’s arm as they made their way down the narrow and slippery path to the beach. In the dark she could barely see, but Quil seemed to know where he was going.

“No clue, but he goes down to visit friends in Mexico City about once a year and somehow he always manages to come back with loot. I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, if you know what I mean.”

“Gotcha.”

Bella’s misaimed dynamite had created a pretty sizeable crater in the sand, but the boys were putting it to good use.

“Bombs away!” Embry bellowed, and a minute later something wide and flat hit the sand with impressive force.

“And that came from Mexico too?” Bella murmured, watching the sky for more falling objects. Upon closer inspection she noticed that Jake and Embry were tossing pallets, those wooden crate things that the forklifts moved around in warehouses. Apparently that was what she and Jake had been sitting on in the truck bed.

“No,” Quil corrected her. “We stole those from the loading dock outside the Piggly Wiggly.”

“Stole? I though you guys were supposed to be role models on the rez?” She didn’t need to be able to see in the dark to know that Quil was rolling his eyes.

“It’s lumber, Swan. Try not to get too bent out of shape about it.” Another pallet hit the ground, and fractured into pieces. “They’ll just throw the old ones in the garbage. We’re putting them to good use – being green and all. Hippies love us!”

Bella had a sneaking suspicion she knew where this was going. “And, praytell, what good use are we putting them too?”

Quil lit a match in the dark, holding it up to his face where it illuminated his features in strange and grotesque ways. He grinned wickedly. “We’re going to burn ‘em, duh.”

Before the flame could reach his fingertips, he touched it to the end of a roman candle taken from his bag of tricks. “Now c’mere and hold this thing Swan, so I can get the rest of the show going.”

Bella felt strangely satisfied aiming the fireballs, and watching them burn out over the dark water. She could think of worse ways to go out, than exploding into a blaze of glory.

***

When they couldn’t get the bonfire going properly, Embry suggested they use some driftwood as tinder. Bella eagerly offered to help him, wanting to put a wide berth between herself and the bottle of lighter fluid that Quil was waving about. They left Jacob to focus on disarming the pyromaniac.

Embry carried the driftwood in the crook of his arm like a baby, Bella adding a new stick to the pile every few feet. They walked in comfortable silence. Away from the guys, Embry was the quiet type, more content to observe and understand than to contribute.

“You know he likes you.” Okay, he was the quiet type in most situations, anyway.

Bella dragged a long stick behind her, making wavy lines in the sand. “I know.”

“You like him too.” It wasn’t a question.

“Am I that transparent?”

Embry chuckled. “Let me put it this way: you’re both about as opaque as polished glass.”

His intentions were good, but Bella’s retort was still a little sharp, annoyed. “Well then, Doctor Love, what’s your point?”

“My point is this: please just jump his bones already.”

Bella stumbled over her own feet in surprise. She crashed to the sand, catching herself on her knees and palms. “Excuse me?!” she yelped, looking disparagingly at the hand that Embry extended to haul her back to her feet.

“C’mon Bella,” he said, a note of genuine desperation in his voice. “It’s bad enough dealing with one horny teenager in your head, let alone a pack of them. There’s just some things about your friends that you really don’t want to know. I mean, I knew Jake was a leg man and all, but the things that float around that boy’s brain--”

“Stop. Talking. Embry.” Bella took his hand, but only because she was secretly hoping to pull him down with her in the process. But he didn’t so much as budge, and so she reluctantly allowed herself to be hauled to her feet.

“Fine, but everything I’ve said, I’ve said for the greater good of my packmates,” he replied like a martyr. Suddenly he threw his arms out and turned to defiantly face the waves. “I HAVE RISKED EVERYTHING AND I REGRET NOTHING!”

“Shhhhhh, shut up you freak!” Bella hissed, poking him in the shoulder with a stick. But he looked so ridiculous that she couldn’t honestly stay mad at him.

He resumed walking, keeping a slow pace with her and sporting a sheepish smile. “Look, in all seriousness Bella, whatever you do…just go easy on him, okay?”

“Even when I’m ‘jumping his bones?’” she teased, adding air quotes for emphasis.

“No, then you can be as rough with him as you want, and beyond that I don’t want to know anything more, clear?”

“Clear.”

The comfortable silence resumed, with only the sound of the waves between them.

“Although now that I’m thinking about it, Jake was right about your legs…”

Bella whacked him sharply on the head with her stick. Embry didn’t so much as gratify her with a flinch.

***

“Fire in the hole!” Quil lit another firework, resting in an empty Coke can, and then retreated as far as he could. It scorched out over the water before exploding into a shower of purple sparks.

After spending about half an hour trying to teach Bella the difference between throwing from her wrist and throwing from her shoulder, they had run out of M80’s and Quil had run out of patience. He seemed more than content to amuse himself with the bigger options now.

Behind him the pyre burned brightly on the sand. The heat was intense, and Bella stripped down to her tee-shirt while she sat in its glow.

“You get any closer and your eyebrows are going to catch fire,” Jake teased, collapsing into the sand beside her. “If you were cold all you had to do was ask.” He pulled her tightly into against his chest, and held her like that, tight and friendly and comforting. There was a bubble around them, and it was a moment, the kind where Bella felt her breathing speed up in a way that had nothing to do with the flames. But the bubble popped as Jake proceeded to give her, of all things, a noogie.

“Get off me, you beast!” she laughed, and hit him futilely in the chest. Not that he would feel it.

“Knock it off you two – don’t make me come over there!” Quil ordered.

“Bring it, short-stack!”

“Don’t be like that, Jake,” he teased. “With an attitude I might not let you partake of my final gift.”

“Awww Quil, that’s sweet of you,” he mocked back. “But I’m just not that into guys. I’m flattered though, really…”

“Cram it, Black! Or so help me…” The threat hung in the air while Quil dug in his bag, riffling through the mostly empty fireworks containers and shrink wrap.

“Please be marshmallows, please be marshmallows…” Embry whispered with his fingers crossed.

“What are we, nine?” Quil shot back. “No, I have something better.”

“You fit a naked girl in that bag?” Embry pretended to be shocked. “Quil, I though we talked about this: it’s still against her will, even if she’s unconscious.”

Quil pointed at Jake and Embry with his free hand. “You two? You’re both dicks. Which is why only Bella gets to enjoy this with me!” Triumphantly he presented a bottle of tequila. “What do you say, Swan? Feel like a little underage drinking.”

“You can ignore him if you want,” Jake told her, softly. “It tastes like shit anyways.”

But Bella took the bottle from him with steady hands. She’d never had anything more than a glass of wine with her mother, but it didn’t matter – tonight she was feeling brave. Brave and wild. She put the bottle to her lips and took an eager swig. The tequila left a trail of fire down her throat and seemed to seep into her windpipe, making her sputter in cough in a way that was anything but cool.

Embry thumped her on the back and laughed. “Quil forgot to mention that his cousin is cheap, and so is his liquor.”

Quil yanked the bottle from her hands and took a swig, as if to prove it was more than drinkable. But even he grimaced on the way down. “Okay, it sucks. But we’ll make do. I propose a toast to make this shit legit!” he bellowed to the night.

Dixie cups emerged, were filled to the brim, and then raised to the sky.

“To friends,” he said.

“To family,” Embry added.

“To the future, whatever it holds,” Jake said.

It was Bella’s turn. “To the present,” she said boldly. And in the darkness she found Jake’s hand.

“Here, here!” And then the glasses were drained. The liquor burned beautifully on the way down now that Bella knew what to expect.

Quil threw the remainder of the firecrackers into the flames, and the four of them ran into the surf as they watched the fire erupt into a halo of sparks that danced out in every direction. The tide licked at their ankles as they watched the flames eat up the night.

***

“That was fun,” Bella confessed breathlessly, using a bucket to throw more sand on the remnants of their fire. She was dead on her feet, and yet she longed to stay on the beach just a little bit longer. Above her the cliff face lit up in headlight glow, followed by the roar of the engine as Quil and Embry repacked the truck. “I mean everything – the truck and the fire and this whole absolutely pointless outing.”

“Good.” Jake picked up the last of their firework launching cans. “You deserved some - you don’t get out enough.”

“I have fun,” Bella protested weakly, but it was a lie. And she was nothing if not a bad liar. “Okay,” she said with a sulky expression. “But I’m trying to have more fun.”

“Well then I’m glad I could help.”

“You really did, you know?” Bella said. She stood there, staring at him dumbly as an epiphany of sorts welled up inside her. “I mean, I never really thanked you for everything but I feel like I should. Thank you, I mean, for…well, for everything.” The bucket felt heavy in her hands, overloaded with her own awkwardness in addition to sand.

“Since when do you have to thank friends for being friendly?” Jake tossed the last empty can into his trash bag, then hurled it up over the cliff, back by the truck.

“Yeah, but we’re more then friends, aren’t we?”

A poignant pause stretched out between them. “Liquor makes you kinda blunt, doesn’t it?” Jake finally said. It was a joke, but not much of one.

“Well…maybe a little,” Bella confessed. She still felt a little flushed, but there was an ever more increasing chance that it had nothing to do with the tequila. “So, does my being forward intimidate you?”

“Bells, I’m 6’7”, two hundred and seventy pounds, and I can turn into a giant feral wolf,” he said with barely concealed amusement. “Not much intimidates me anymore.”

Bella’s curled her hands into tight fists, obstinate in the face of his laughter. “Well then, come over here and prove that.”

“Prove it how?”

Bella didn’t answer, just continued to glare at him, eyes blazing in a way that had nothing to do with the still smoldering embers at their feet. He closed the difference between them slowly, looking for a change of heart, a missed signal.

He brushed the hair back from Bella’s face, but she didn’t waver. “Fine, if that’s what you want…”

He leaned over and kissed her, a warm rough hand cupping her cheek with a tremble. His lips were fleeting and soft and frantic and burning…and then they were gone. “Told you I wasn’t scared of you…”

“Liar,” Bella replied in a voice barely audible. “I felt you shaking…” His hand still on her face, they both seemed uable to move.

“Well then maybe I didn’t make my point clearly enough,” Jake muttered in mock confession. “Can I try one more time?”

Bella grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him back against her lips. They pinned themselves to one another, the initial fear being replaced with something more daring and bold and appropriately explosive. They burst like a firework, and Jake could barely contain himself when he felt Bella’s lips curve into a smile against his own.

“Yeah man!! Now grab her ass!”
“Ride it like you paid for it!”

They broke apart reluctantly, glaring at where Quil and Embry were cat-calling over the cliff face.

“Please, don’t let us stop you,” Quil threw up his hands. “I love free porn!”

Jake pulled Bella in close once more. “I’m sorry, but I have to go kill my best friends right now. Can we maybe pick this up later?”

Bella just laughed. “Yeah. Go, it’s your duty to go destroy them both. But I’m totally sitting on your lap on the ride home. Just throwing that out there…”

“THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID!”

Jake shot her a reluctant smile, before tearing up the narrow path at top speed. Quil and Embry disappeared, and Bella heard what sounded like a truck trying to reverse at top speed, and failing.

Bella picked up her bucket and followed the sounds of the squabbling boys, her mind much farther away. Tomorrow was going to hurt, and sleep tonight was probably going to be impossible, but for the first time Bella found that she just didn’t care.

She’d face tomorrow’s problems tomorrow. In the meantime, she was content to live with today.

Silence - A Jacob/Bella Fanfic - Part 2

2009-01-22T02:10:17Z

Title: Silence
Chapter: 2/3 (part 1)
Character(s): Jake/Bella
Rating: M
Summary: And again there were the hands. Jacob's too warm hands and they wrenched her from that blackness. Jacob's hands as they frantically beat the air back into her body. Jacob's hands and he held her on the beach, wet and freezing and covered in sand. Jacob's hands…holding her together.
Notes: Many stories have explored what would have happened if the phone never rang, but I decided to take it a step further and explore what would have happened if Harry Clearwater had never died in New Moon. What if Jake and Bella were never interrupted at his house? In fact, what if they were stuck there, together? Obviously, slightly AU, slightly fluffy, and slightly smutty later on. As always thanks to the_angry_pixie for her help

Part Two: Revelations

The power surged once at exactly 10:03 before dying silently. Bella knew the time because she’d been staring at the clock, lying in the warm divot Jacob had left in the bed, since the moment he’d skipped out the door.

“Well, this is going swimmingly,” Bella muttered to herself in the darkness. If not for the clock, she would never have guessed it was morning yet. No light filtered through the curtains, and the steady pounding of the rain on the roof continued with no signs of stopping. With a sigh she decided that she might as well get up and face the day, however awkward and rainy it was sure it be.

However, being stuck in the Black’s house, in the middle of a hurricane, and with zero electricity only left Bella with so many forms of entertainment, namely snooping through Jake’s room for illicit stuff, or housework. And while the prospect of digging up the dirt on Jake was growing ever more tempting, Bella decided that she really had no desire to find out if he had a Playboy collection (he did), where it was (bottom dresser drawer below the socks), or what his preferred ‘type’ was (Babes of Motocross). Which left the house.

In Phoenix, Bella’s domesticity had been a necessity – housekeeping wasn’t in Renee’s repertoire. In Forks it was somewhat less true. Charlie managed for himself all those years. But when she’d first moved to Washington cleaning had been a way to make the time pass, the homesickness fade. Then it became a way to make the hours in between him fly by, make the separation, no matter how brief, that much easier. Now, it was just a way to keep her from dwelling on last night, and the conflicting battle taking place inside her. The war between the side that wanted to forget...and the one that desperately wanted to remember.

For once luck was on her side, albeit in a twisted way, for while on her search for a non-electrical task to do, Bella walked into the kitchen…and stepped into a puddle.

***

Two hours and one pack of matches later, Bella had all four burners on the (thankfully) gas stove going, cooking everything from Italian sausage, to spaghetti sauce, to…well basically anything in the Black’s fridge and freezer that was perishable. She has no idea why it wasn’t staying cold, but with the power off the entire appliance was becoming way too warm to be safe.

So Bella cooked. And stirred. And sautéed. And successfully blocked out all memories of the previous night…right up until back door flew open with impressive force, and Bella practically leapt out of her skin in shock.

“Sweet zombie Jesus!” Jake hollered, flying through the door and forcing it closed behind him. He stood dripping on the kitchen floor with a stupid grin on his face. “I don’t want to alarm you Bella, but I think we’re in for a storm.”

“You think?” she gasped, her heart still trying to beat its way out of her chest. She leaned against the counter and tried not to have a coronary. “Don’t move,” she choked out. “I’ll grab you a towel.”

“Thanks,” he shouted down the hall after her. “Hey, why are you running a restaurant out of my kitchen?”

“Because your fridge sucks, and I’ve seen the way you eat,” she called, grabbing a whole stack out of towels out of the linen closet. “Billy can’t afford to lose and entire fridge worth of food just because the power goes out!”

A huge crash suddenly reverberated down the hall. Bella tore back into the room only to find Jacob practically overturning the fridge, leaving a wet, muddy river in his wake.

“What did I tell you about standing still?” Bella demanded in exasperation.

Jacob grunted, as he wedged his large figure behind the fridge. “Whoever built this house had a bright idea to stick a heating duct behind back here. Whenever the power goes the thing gets hot as all blue blazes way…too…fast.” The refrigerator jumped forward another foot as Jake gave one final heave. “That should help a little bit.”

“One mystery down then,” Bella chided playfully, handing him the towels. Jake’s warm hand brushed against her own, and she flinched away from the contact unexpectedly.

Jake froze. “Bella…”

“Sorry,” she murmured, feeling the color rising back into her cheek. It was instinctual, a reflex reaction to…to whatever they were now. “Just take ‘em…”

She tried to force the stack into Jacob’s unwilling hands but instead he pounced, sweeping both her and the laundry into his wet arms. “I am going to hug you until this awkwardness goes away,” he informed Bella matter-of-factly.

She squirmed in his damp embrace. “Jake, oxygen!”

“A trivial detail!” he teased before setting her back down on her feet. “There, are we cool?”

“We were always cool,” Bella murmured softly, gazing up at him shyly. “Now we’re both just cool and…drippy.” She shoved the pile of towels into his chest. “So dry off, then come in here and empty out the freezer while I finish up. It’s either that, or we’re eating ramen until the storm breaks.”

“Aye aye, Ma’am!” he gave her a mock salute. ”Your voice sounds loads better, by the way. You quit smoking or something?”

“Shut up.”

***

Jake’s extra set of hands was both a blessing and a curse. Before Bella could even pull her spaghetti sauce off the stove, he’d assembled a mess of candles and flashlights from niches all over the house, lit a fire in the living room hearth, and unearthed an old fishing cooler, which we was currently emptying the freezer contents into. He was chatty and goofy and a fun to have around. He was just…Jake.

Unfortunately his presence was making it hard for Bella to do what he’d asked of her. The more she tried to draw a veil over the previous night’s events, the more she found herself dwelling them. When he reached out to pinch her as he walked by, all she could do was remember the way his hands had felt when he touched her in a very different way. He smiled, and she remembered feeling that same smile cross his face while he kissed her.

It was becoming distracting.

“Your turn, Bells.”

“Huh?” she shook her head, reemerging from her own little world.

“I told you a stupid story about my childhood,” Jake said. “As requested. Ante up, I need blackmail on you now.”

“Um…okay,” she struggled to draw up a memory worth talking about, and was suddenly struck with an idea, a savage impulse. “When I was little I went to this sleepover at Becky Martin’s house, and instead of truth or dare the girls played this game called brutal honesty,” Bella explained, chopping peppers in a way that made Jacob exceptionally nervous.

“That sounds uplifting,” he murmured. “This better get more interesting as the story goes on. Did you guys practice kissing on each other or something?”

Bella threw a wadded up napkin at him. “No, now shush. The rules of the game were that you were paired up with another person, and they to ask you any question they wanted to and you had to give an honest answer. The rub was you got to ask them one back, and neither of you was allowed to get mad based on the other one’s response.”

Jake snickered. “Yeah, sounds like the perfect game for a bunch of catty girls to play. I’m sure no one ever got their feelings hurt doing that…” His head emerged from the freezer, wearing an expression of sudden puzzlement. “So I know I’m going to regret asking this Bells, but why are you telling me this exactly?”

“Because,” she started, taking a deep breath to steady her nerves. “I need to ask you a brutally honest question.”

“You don’t need to play any stupid game to do that, just ask away.” His voice was confident, teasing. But his pallor seemed more ashen that usual. If it were possible for Jake to be pale, he was.

No amount of deep breathing was going to calm Bella’s nerves, though she didn’t understand why she was so jittery. She tried to take a sip of her tea, but the cup shook so badly that she set it back on the table before Jacob could notice. “Okay,” she finally relented. “What did you mean…last night, when you said that you tried not to…care about me?”

This was clearly not the question Jake had been expecting, and he shut the freezer door and plopped down into the chair next to her, staring at her curiously.

“Why do you ask?” he wondered, reaching across to take her hand. But it was still trembling, so Bella jerked it out of reach and busied herself cutting the core out of another pepper.

“That’s not how the game works, Jake. You have to answer my question first.”

“Fine,” he relented softly, but the worried lines in his forehead remained. “I meant that I know you’re sad a lot. I know that you don’t do ‘love’, not anymore at least. I know that you’re broken and lonely and stuff. I knew that the minute you pulled into my driveway.”

Bella remembered that day with exquisite clarity.

“And I…” he chuckled softly. “I already had a little crush on you, but I’m sure you knew that.”

“Yeah, just a little bit.”

“But you…you just looked so sad that day, and I knew you needed a friend and I just wanted to do that,” he said, throwing his hands up in mock helplessness. “I wanted to be what you needed me to be. And despite the fact that you were miserable you were good company. I liked having someone there to talk to, and you seemed to like just having someone around. And so I tried to be good. I told myself you were off limits, tried to look at you through those ‘just one of the guys’ goggles…” His voice trailed off.

“But…” Bella prompted. She’d long since given up focusing on the food.

Jake looked at her with a soft, sad expression. “But…I don’t know. Every once in a while you’d look at me while we were driving, or working on the bikes, or doing homework, and you’d shoot me this little smile and…and I just loved it so damn much.”

He reached for her hand again, and this time Bella let him take it. He gave it a tight squeeze. “I loved being the reason you smiled, and I loved being the reason you laughed, and I loved being the reason you looked…happy again. And all of that just built up and accumulated until I realized I was just in love with you, period. All of you, every breath, every emotion, happy or sad and everything in between – I loved you.”

“But I knew you didn’t need a lover, and knowing would just make it hard for you because even if you didn’t love me, you certainly liked me. And saying ‘no’ to someone you like is hard enough on your best days, so I kept it to myself.”

“Not very well,” Bella muttered, staring down at her lap. Jake squeezed her hand again.

“I’m not perfect,” he said defensively. I slipped sometimes. Like around that Mike kid…it was hard not to.” His voice took on a rueful quality, and Bella knew that he was remembering that night the same way she was. It was their last night together as normal, average, human teenagers. “But I tried.”

Bella didn’t know what to say to that. Jacob has just confessed his love for her, but those words were essentially meaningless – she’d already known, they both had. His love had been in the bikes, the road trips, the spaghetti dinners, his warm smiles and bear hugs. It was in his laugh and his touch.

It was in the way he follow her over a cliff without so much as blinking.

And yet…still something inside Bella throbbed emptily. Jake had given her, was giving her everything, and it was still not enough.

“I know you did,” Bella whispered, still unwilling to look at him until Jake stuck a finger under her chin and forced her face upwards. His smile was sad, but very understanding.

“I don’t want anything from you, Bella,” he told her softly. “I promise, I’m happy to just be your friend. I’ll keep trying not to love you, it’s just hard,” his voice was teasing now. “I mean, clearly you’re just irresistible.”

“Must be the clothes,” Bella tried to tease back, but she couldn’t hide the sadness in her voice. “I hear the guys really go for the hand-me-down look.”

He saw right through her lame attempt at a joke though, and Jacob refused to be deterred from making her feel better. “I mean it, Bells, so stop worrying about it. Last night was an accident, its okay, we all get lonely. I’m just…I want you to know I’m here for you, okay? You can always talk to me. Just…know that above all else, okay?”

“I…” Bella tried to respond, but she was back under the water, unable to breathe, unable to speak. She shook her head and tried to find the words. “Thanks. For everything.”

Jake pushed the hair back from her face, and his fingers lingered warmly against her cheek before he took his hand away. “No worries. So,” he clapped his hands together brightly. “Shall we try to prepare our feast? I’m starving.”

“Sure,” Bella agreed, plastering an all too fake smile on her face. The conversation should have made her feel better. After all, Jacob had told her exactly what she wanted to hear: he cared for her, but he understood that she couldn’t reciprocate.

But if that was what she wanted to hear then why was the hole, that gaping wound in her chest, aching again? And why did it seem to hurt for Jake this time? And why, each time he mentioned forgetting the previous night, did Bella have to bite her tongue to keep from telling him that she didn’t want to forget, that she wanted it to mean something more than just a lonely accident?

She buried the confusion in her work, going back to the stove and stirring in silence until Bella remembered something.

“Now you get to ask one,” Bella said.

“Do I have to?” He poked a package of what appeared to be frozen fish, and they squished beneath his finger.

“Yes,” Bella assured him. “That’s the only way to make sure it’s fair.”

Jake just rolled his eyes. “Fine. Did you come into my room last night because you were…you know?”

“Know what?”

“You know...” Jake said again, as if the emphasis would clarify something. Bella just continued to stare at him blankly. “Because you were…looking to…get some?” he finally blurted out.

Bella choked on her mouthful of tea, angrily trying to will her blood to flow anywhere but her face. An utterly futile attempt - she turned bright red as she glowered at Jake from over her cup. “No,” she muttered firmly. “But thanks for implying that I’m a common hussy.”

”Okay, one – I wasn’t implying anything, I just asked a question. Two, I thought the whole point of this game was that you weren’t allowed to get mad at me. And three, who says ‘hussy’ anymore? You sound like my grandmother…”

“I say ‘hussy’ you jerk,” Bella shot back. “That better?”

“Okay, okay, I withdraw the question,” Jake said, throwing his hands up in mock surrender and biting back his laughter. Bella tried her best to look more intimidating, but it wasn’t working, and he only chuckled more. “I didn’t mean to push your buttons, sheesh. I just assumed--”

“Assumed what?”

”Well, I…what I meant was…well I saw the pills in your purse when we went through that drive thru and you asked me to hand you your wallet and…I…well, I just figured and…this game sucks,” he finally stuttered. But Bella wasn’t done being mortified.

“Well you know what they say when--”

“Yes, I’ve made as ass out of myself,” Jake interrupted. “Go me. Look, I’m a guy. We see little round pill boxes, our thoughts naturally drift to sex. Hell, we see lug wrenches and our thoughts naturally drift to sex – it can’t be avoided. And again, aren’t you not allowed to be mad at me?”

Bella glared down at her tea, since glaring at Jacob was not producing the desired effect. “I have really bad acne, okay,” she finally admitted, huffily. “It’s a touchy subject.”

“What are you talking about?” Jake asked, tossing some quickly thawing steaks into his makeshift cooler. “You don’t have a spot on you.”

“Exactly,” she retorted.

Jake suddenly paused, mid-throw with another frozen mystery package. “So…not to stick my head in the lion’s mouth of anything but…does that mean you’ve…never?”

“Not that it’s any of your business,” Bella muttered. “But no.”

“Oh. Okay. Um, okay.”

Bella sighed, and fought the urge to bang her head on the table a few times. But knowing her luck it would splinter beneath her, and she’d impale herself through the eye on a wooden skewer, so she decided against it. “Any more personal issues you’d like to delve into, Jake? Want the results of my last pap smear?”

“Nope, I’m done,” he chirped, seemingly unperturbed. “I still say this game bites though. And you cheat at it.”

“Sucks to be you then,” Bella said, but the sarcasm was fading from her voice.

“Yeah, no kidding,” he shot back. He flashed her a toothy grin, but Bella couldn’t quite tell if he was being serious of not.

***

Night came quickly with no power. The gorged on the myriad of food that Bella cooked. What Jacob didn’t manage to choke down joined the rest of the salvaged packages in the fishing cooler. Jake and Billy would have to live on leftovers for a while, but the way Jake wolfed down her food, she didn’t anticipate that being a problem.

They indulged in increasingly competitive games of Scrabble by candlelight, while Jake regaled her with tales of pack hijinks that Quil and Embry would probably have preferred he not share, and managed to hit a triple word score by spelling “clitoris” correctly. They danced around the subject of sleep, with Bella finally admitting she was tired when the letter tiles in front of her would no longer come into focus.

Jake threw another log on the fire. “Just so you stay warm.”

“And to keep the shadows away,” Bella replied, absently fluffing the pillows on the couch.

“Exactly.” He leaned over, and Bella’s heart skipped a rebellious beat before Jake planted a kiss on the top of her head. “Sleep tight, Bells. I’m going to jump in the shower, so don’t panic if you hear me walking around.”

Bella didn’t lay down until she heard the door lock and the water pipes creak to life. She had a feeling Jake was going to stay in the shower until she was fast asleep. She pulled the blanket up tight under her chin, and clutched a stray pillow to her chest.

It was going to be a long night…

***
Minutes, hours. Bella had no idea how long she laid there, staring into the fire…

“Still can’t sleep?” Jake appeared at the foot of the couch, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and drying his damp hair with a towel.

“Story of my life?” Bella responded sadly, rolling over to look at him. “What’s your excuse?”

“I just came in here to dry off,” he replied. “Figured you might still be awake.” He slid the coffee table out of the way and collapsed on the floor in front of the couch. He was so long that his feet reached the hearth of the fireplace, which was apparently the point.

“Sure, sure,” Bella replied snidely. “Admit it, you were afraid weren’t you?”

Jake grinned and leaned his head back against the couch cushions, so he could look at her upside down. “You caught me, I’m terrified of the dark. Hold me, Bella!”

She poked him in the head, good-naturedly, but the atmosphere had suddenly changed. Jake’s words hit too close to home for both of them.

“Bella…I can’t believe I’m doing this…” he muttered.

She toyed with his damp hair. “Doing what?” she asked, teasing.

He continued to stare pointedly into the fire. “I need to ask you a brutally honest question,” he said finally, and something in his voice made Bella’s heart clench.

“Okay,” she answered hesitantly. “Fire away.”

“Why?” he seemed to ask the flames in front of them. “Why did you really come into my room last night?

Bella’s hands froze, her throat constricting in a way that had nothing to do with her still recuperating voice. Jake turned to look at her when she didn’t respond. “I don’t know,” she finally admitted lamely.

“Cheater,” Jacob hissed lightly. “C’mon Bella, you must have had a reason. Please, just tell me.”

“I really don’t know, Jake.” Memories from the previous even filtered back into her head, through the wall she had put up to contain them. But now she was standing in the hallway again, peering into the dark abyss of his room, looking for…something.

Wanting something.

“I think…” she said finally, and the words felt thick in her mouth, heavy with significance. “I think I wanted to know what if felt like to be you.” Jake stared at her, puzzled but afraid to interrupt. “I wanted to try to look at you…at us…and see what you see. Feel what you feel…I guess. Kinda stupid, huh?”

“I don’t think so,” Jake said softly. “What you tried to see…did you?”

Bella’s eyes slid off his face, and she gazed into the flickering flames behind him. “I don’t know,” she said again. Another half-truth. The answer was there, buried in a dark recess she dare not face, a gaping hole that echoed with voices and memories she longed to run from, and so Bella pulled a sheet over the hole, clinging to her answer which was anything but.

“Cheat,” Jake accused her again, but his voice was gentle.

“Hey, you’re only entitled to one question, which I answered,” Bella reminded him. “And speaking of rules, isn’t it my turn to ask a question now?”

“Shoot,” Jacob said, and he leaned back into her touch as she continued to run her fingers through is damp hair.

“Why did you really come in here just now?” The words were past Bella lips before she could stop to think about their consequences.

Jake’s eyes slowly opened, and he turned to look at her over his shoulder. The orange firelight played across his features, illuminating the tension in his face. “I…” He seemed unable to get the words out.

But before Bella could offer him any encouragement he reached for her face, and a second later his lips were crashing against her own. His touch was fast, his fingers trembling against her skin. It was a kiss of desperation, and it ended before Bella could really grasp that it was happening.

When she opened her eyes his face was hovering inches from her own. “That’s why I came in here, Bells,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I know I promised--”

He paused as Bella’s hand reached out and brushed his cheek in the darkness. He leaned into her touch as she traced the line of his jaw, the lines that seemed permanently etched into his forehead, the bridge of his nose, the edge of his lips. His face in the firelight was captivating, the warmth of his skin inviting her hands to stay.

“Jake...” she breathed him in.

“I know I said I wouldn’t, but I couldn’t stop thinking about last night.” he confessed in a rush, as if Bella touch was drawing the truth out of him. “About how your lips and your hands and…I walked to Emily’s and back in the rain just so I could keep those memories to myself for a little while longer but…”

Bella’s hands smoothed his forehead. “But what?”

“I’m greedy,” he confessed. “I…I just wanted one more.”

Bella’s heart pounded thunderously against her ribcage, her pulse echoing in her ears. Her fingers ran back into his hair, and before she knew it was happening she tightened her grip and pulled his lips back into her own. They scrambled, a tangle of limbs as Jacob climbed onto the couch with her, not once breaking their kiss. He crouched over her, his hands combing her hair and tracing her arms and brushing the exposed flesh of her stomach and then returning to lightly touching her face again and again and again.

And Bella didn’t stop him.

She didn’t want him to stop. She was a vampire this time, stealing his heat, the fire that bled into her limbs each time he touched her. The voice of protest shouted in the back of her head, reminding her to be broken and bruised and lonely, but the sounds was muffled by the bass of her heart pounding in her ears, and the fire ate away at it until the words dissolved into blissful nothingness. Jake didn’t stop to contemplate his good fortune, he just continued to kiss her in exultation.

And Bella didn’t stop him.

He broke from her suddenly, breathing hard. “Don’t st--” Bella started to plead with him, but her fears were unwarranted. Jake was far from done.

And so she smoldered, but it had nothing to do with their proximity to the fireplace, and everything to do with the way Jake’s lips brushed her ear, finally landing on her neck. He moved inch by inch, kissing her slowly, deliberately – exploring every secret her body had to offer. And when she felt his tongue graze against her skin Bella shuddered and clutched at his back reflexively.

But her response only made Jacob bolder, as he nipped at collarbone, tracing its contour across her chest, and back up to the other side. He paused below her jaw, his tongue drawing tight circles and tracing invisible shapes.

“Jake,” Bella moaned, as each touch, each caress burned her up from within.

His lips brushed against her ear once more. “Say it again Bells,” he whispered throatily. Beneath her shirt his hand brushed the bottom of her ribcage, and climbed onward.

“Jake,” she breathed again, arching into his touch.

He shuddered against her. “I love the way you say that,” he confessed. “Just for me…” Bella turned her head and captured his mouth against her own. She pulled him against her with all her strength, but it still wasn’t enough. She wanted…more…something that Jacob had to give. It was involuntary, instinctual, the way that her body seemed to respond to his subtle cues, his softest caresses.

“Just for you,” Bella agreed when they broke apart.

Jacob’s face was a dichotomy, half hidden in shadow, half bathed in orange light, but every inch of it seemed to radiate triumph. With a devilish grin he suddenly wrenched them both upwards, sitting up and straddling Bella across his lap as if she weighed nothing at all.

His hands grazed her stomach, toying with the edge of her shirt. And when he pulled back there was something in his eyes that was very human. It was the looked of a 16 year old boy, and he was asking her permission.

That very human part of Bella was equally nervous, and her own expression clearly crying: I’m nervous, but I want you to so badly.

And so slowly Jake gripped the bottom of her tank top, and slowly he peeled it up, exposing new flesh bit by bit, until, with the swiftness of ripping off and band-aid he yanked it over her upraised arms.

Bella squinched her eyes shut, dropping her head and rolling her shoulders, as if she could fold in on herself and cover her exposed chest.

“Don’t,” Jake whispered, a warm hand guiding her face upwards. “Don’t do that, Bells. You never have to do that, not in front of me.” More gentle hands pulled her arms back down to her sides, straightened her back so that she was facing him.

Bella opened one eye cautiously, fighting the insecurities that threatened to overtake her with such ease. Jake smiled, then chuckled, then laughed at her outright, his face happy and his eyes still smoldering.

Warm hands gripped her hips, then traced up the expanse of her back and down again, exploring her skin. “You never have to be embarrassed in front of me,” he assured her again, and Bella tired to give him a shaky smile. He pulled her in close, gently crushing her body against his own in a tell-tale hug. Bella shivered as his lips brushed lightly against her cheek, then her ear. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you really are?”

Color crept into Bella’s cheeks, but this time it wasn’t from embarrassment. Jake pulled back from her gently, and ever so slowly his hand tickled up her stomach, higher, playing against every one of her ribs, and higher still as he circled her breast.

“Jake…” she breathed again, a subtle plea that translated into more…more.

His thumb brushed against her nipple, and it hardened at his touch. Bella bit back the moan that tried to claw out of her mouth as Jacob did it again, squeezing the sensitive bud between his fingers. A tingle shot through her nerves, a pleasurable wave that overtook her senses. Her insecurities evaporated against his searing skin, leaving nothing but desire in their wake.

And Jacob did his best to slake those desires.

Bella moaned aloud when Jake’s mouth found her other breast, her hands tangling in his hair. He flicked her nipple with his tongue, kissing and nibbling lightly, again and again and again.

It was too much. Bella arched her back, anything to bring her closer to him. Her breaths were coming in short gasps, murmuring incoherent sounds, each one seeming to encourage Jacob more and more. She shifted in his lap, and for the first time Bella realized that she wasn’t the only one enjoying the experience. She leaned in surreptitiously, grinding her hips against Jake’s, and the bulge in his shorts. He froze and she did it again.

“Bella,” he moaned into her breast, his hands clutching at her. The way he said her name sounded good in her ear. The fact that she was making him feel good, that what she was doing was making him want her even more…it made Bella feel powerful…confident. She tried to do it again, wiggling her hips in what she hoped was a seductive manner, but Jake caught her and held her fast. The animal in his eyes had softened and he looked…abashed?

Ashamed.

“Don’t,” Bella whispered, leaning into him closer. “You never have to be embarrassed in front of me.”

She ground against him defiantly, and this time he didn’t stop her. Bella freed her hands from his, and wrapped Jacob up in her arms. Gently she pulled her nails across his back, and felt the goose-bumps rise on his arms. His skin was salty and warm against her lips, as she pressed them against his neck. He writhed beneath her, and it urged Bella onward.

“I like making you feel good too,” she murmured.

He tangled his hands in her hair. “Everything you do feels good,” he said breathlessly.

“Good.”

Her hands traced paths up and down his chest, across the taught muscles in his arms, his stomach. Jake’s transformation had affected his body drastically. He was no longer the willowy boy he had once been. He was built like a track runner – long and lean, but with the hidden bulk of subtle muscle. She traced the lines with her fingers, following with her lips.

“Bells…” he moaned again, as she flicked her tongue against the hollow at the base of his throat. For a second she was worried he was going to tell her to stop, but Bella didn’t care anymore – there was nothing in her head that wasn’t her body intertwined with Jacob’s. He was in her mind and her eyes and her ears, dominating senses she didn’t even know she had. The throaty way he repeated her name again and again lay heavy in her ears. She had stolen his fire and now it smoldered in her core, heat creeping through every inch of her veins. She throbbed for him, somewhere deep inside, a tingle that ran down from her stomach, and touched that place between her legs.

Before she knew what she was doing, Bella’s hands were toying with the hem of Jake’s shorts, slipping beneath the seam, toying with the button. She didn’t know where the boldness was coming from, all she knew was she wanted more – more heat, more touch.

More Jake.

She reached for his zipper.

“Bells.” He caught her wrists. “Bella, stop…please,” he said breathlessly, his eyes pleading with hers in the dim light. “If you don’t stop now I won’t be able to…”

“What if I don’t want you to stop?” she whispered.

“Then you might hate me in the morning,” he muttered sadly. Reluctantly, she surrendered her grip on his shorts, but only so she could hold his face.

“I…could never hate you,” she murmured. And he smiled faintly in response before leaning in to kiss her. It was fleeting and gentle, the madness of passion fading, leaving them both drained. The fire was dying.

“I should go,” Jake finally said, and he tried to pick Bella up but she clung to him tightly.

“Stay.”

He tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear and sighed. “If that’s what you want…”

It took some shuffling – Jacob was really too long for the couch. He propped his knees against one armrest, laid his head on the other, then pulled Bella on top of him. His arms wrapped around her tightly, as if he was afraid she would run away in the night, disappearing somehow. Behind them the fire faded into blackness, but it didn’t matter, because Bella was happy…for the first time in too long a time.

So why couldn’t she shake the feeling that something was wrong?

It didn’t matter. Jake’s chest rose and fell steadily beneath her, warm skin pressed against warm skin. There was no need for blankets, no need for explanations or words. There would be plenty of time for that tomorrow. But tonight there was just Jake and Bells, wrapped up in their own little world, in the eye of the hungry storm.

8 X-Men: Origins Wallpapers

2009-01-19T19:29:00Z

Preview:

Color:

Black and White:

As Close As Skin - A Rogue/Remy Mix

2009-01-17T07:37:43Z

As Close As Skin
A Rogue/Remy Mix

I Can Still Feel You – Collin Raye
I can still feel you just as close a skin, every now and then, all by myself, in a crowded room, on my empty bed

How ‘Bout Them Cowgirls – George Strait
And she'll never change, don't know how to hide her stubborn will or her fightin' side,
but you treat her right and she'll love you like no one else

I Won’t Back Down – Johnny Cash
Hey baby, there ain't no easy way out, hey I will stand my ground and I won't back down

Never Again, Again – Lee Ann Womack
Never again, again, once more I'll let you back in, I know how the story ends but I can't help myself

Shameless – Garth Brooks
I could walk away from anyone I ever knew, but I can't walk away from you

Best of Intentions – Travis Tritt
Never could build you a castle, even though you're the queen of my heart, but I've had the best of intentions from the start

A Matter of Trust – Billy Joel
You can take it, you can leave it, whatever you choose, I won't hold back anything, and I'll walk away a fool or a king

Two of a Kind Workin’ on a Full House – Garth Brooks
Yes, she's my lady luck and I'm her wild card man, together we're buildin' up a real hot hand

Holdin’ You – Gretchen Wilson
Holding you holds me together, when holding on gets just a little too hard

9 Tracks + Cover Art

Silence - A Jacob/Bella Fanfic - Part 1

2009-01-10T18:47:58Z

Title: Silence
Chapter: 1/3
Character(s): Jake/Bella
Rating: M (for later chapters)
Summary: And again there were the hands. Jacob's too warm hands and they wrenched her from that blackness. Jacob's hands as they frantically beat the air back into her body. Jacob's hands and he held her on the beach, wet and freezing and covered in sand. Jacob's hands…holding her together.
Notes: Many stories have explored what would have happened if the phone never rang, but I decided to take it a step further and explore what would have happened if Harry Clearwater had never died in New Moon. What if Jake and Bella were never interrupted at his house? In fact, what if they were stuck there, together? Obviously, slightly AU, slightly fluffy, and slightly smutty later on. Special thanks to the_angry_pixie for her help.

Part One: Resuscitation

She wonders if it will always be like this, her clinging desperately to Jacob, him being the only solid thing in her world. The last few months, the last few minutes, they’re all a blur save for his face, his smile, the strength of his hands. Hands that now clutch her to his chest and try in vain to keep the ever more biting rain from hitting her in the eyes. Hands that moments ago literally pounded the life back into her body.

“Bella!” he had screamed at her through the seawater soaked into her muscles, through the air that couldn’t get in. “Don’t leave me, Bella! Breathe, Bella! Damnit, Bella, breathe!”

So she did, and each breath cut through her lungs like a knife. But Jacob had gone through all the trouble of saving her – she figured she at least owed him that much. Still dying had been painless. It was living, it was life that hurt more than anything else.

Jake deposited her gently on the couch, then went back to slam the door against the quickly darkening sky. He was back before she had time to blink, crouched on the floor in front of her, yet still tall enough to stare her in the eye.

“Do I need to get you to a doctor?” he asked, one errant hand reaching out the push the matted hair back from her face. The hospital was the last place Bella wanted to be right then. She opened her mouth to speak, but the simple act of exhalation burned her throat so wickedly that the only sound that emerged was a weak moan. She settled for just shaking her head vehemently.

Jake sighed deeply, but relief was starting to eat away at the worry lines that marred his face. “Bella, why couldn’t you have just waited for me?” he murmured. “I called your house like 9 times this morning and told you I’d be late.”

“What?” Bella mouthed wordlessly.

“Yeah, I had to take Dad to the airport, he’s flying out to see Rebecca for the week. Harry was supposed to take him but he called at dawn saying that something was up with Leah and – look, it doesn’t matter.”

But his hand shivered against her face. Shuddered, like he was angry, trying to hold his skin together. “It’s just…Jesus Bella,” he finally hissed. “Would it have killed you to wait for once in your life? What if…if I’d so much as caught one more red light…if something happened to you Charlie would just give up. Period! And you know that!”

But they weren’t talking about Charlie – not really.

And they both knew that.

Jacob’s breath was hot against her face, his entire body quivering from head to toe. But his voice was tightly controlled again, so like Sam’s voice, rough and hardened from the truth. His words pierced her eardrum, lanced swiftly into her brain where they stayed, lodged, springing roots, invading and infecting and making in impossible not to feel their sting. “You can’t be selfish with your life Bells,” he said flatly. “Not when other people care about you. Not when I…”

He never finished. Instead he peeled himself off the floor, away from her, and disappeared down the hallway. “You’re alive and that’s what matters.”

He reappeared, carrying a pile of towels and wearing a somber expression, his face stiff. “You know where the bathroom is – go get warm, I’ll try and find you some clothes.” He brushed her face briefly, apologetically, with the back of his hand. Bella left him standing here, in front of the couch, staring at nothing and wringing his hands.

Numb.

***

Water.

After the day’s earlier adventure Bella figured the last thing she’d want would be more water. But as the shower washed away the gummy salt residue on her skin, and warmed her freezing limbs she found herself languishing in it.

Up until now her actions, her attempts to seek danger had been little more than foolish. The thought of facing the assailants who had cornered her that night in Port Angeles had frightened her, yes. But approaching some men outside a well lit pub and in the company of her girlfriend was probably only dangerous in her head. And motorcycles aren’t without their share of risks, but Jacob was teaching her, and he knew what he was doing, both when it came to mechanics and looking after her.

But standing on the edge of that cliff this morning, looking down at the waves, knowing that she didn’t have a clue what she was doing and simply not caring? Understanding that she could have been dashed upon the cliff face, or towed out to sea, and choosing to jump anyway? That had been dangerous. But even worse than that wasn’t the fact that she had deliberately put herself in danger, but that when it had mattered the most Bella stopped fighting. After all the adventures and danger and risk just to keep her alive, at the bottom of the ocean Bella had been willing to give that all away. And for what? A voice? Something she knew to be unreal?

All these months she had been living a half life, utterly incomplete, desolate, alone. But the realization that she had been about to surrender it all hit Bella harder than any of those pains ever could. Jacob was right – she was selfish. Her mind played horrible images for her to see: Charlie and Renee sobbing over and empty coffin, her name etched in a marble slab, tears pouring down the faces of Angela, Mike…Jacob.

Selfish.

Bella put her face up against the spigot of the shower, and let the tears wash away before they could even touch her cheeks, indiscriminate against the water pouring from the faucet. Throughout her life Bella found herself thinking of the heroines in her books when she needed guidance the most– drawing on their insight to get her through, borrowing on their strength when she didn’t have enough of her own. But sobbing in the Black’s shower in the middle of a thunderstorm, Bella found herself thinking not of Elizabeth, Juliet, or Tess, but of her own mother.

It was hard to see past her faults sometimes. Renee was flighty and scatterbrained, forgetting the most trivial details, misplacing everything. But she had not been much older than Bella when she had taken her baby, packed her bags, and walked out of the only life she’d ever known. It would’ve been simple for Renee to have remained in Forks. Charlie was by all accounts a good man – set in his ways and a bit quiet, but honorable to a fault. Life in Forks would have been easy, safe, even comfortable. And yet Renee, armed with nothing more than a desire for something greater, for a love that was greater, had walked out of that safety and into the blackness of the unknown, and with an infant daughter no less. What strength must that have taken, what bravery, what hope.

Bella tried to picture herself there, standing in her mother’s shoes, and wondered if she would’ve been able to even get one foot out the door. Her life seemed too hard now – a yoke she was not fit to carry. But in looking back, in holding it up next to Renee’s…well, it seemed so much lighter. Renee had been brave, and Bella owed it to her mother, if not to herself, to try and find that same strength within her.

She couldn’t keep living like this.

She wouldn’t.

Bella shut off the shower and leaned her forehead gently against the damp tile wall. Maybe she couldn’t put the pieces of her heart back together again, but for the first time since that last fateful walk in the woods, she felt as though maybe she could find a way to carry on without them.

Maybe.

***

Jacob had put a pile of dry clothes outside the bathroom door, leftovers from the twins. Bella had to roll the workout shorts twice to keep them from falling off her non-existent hips, and the Habitat for Humanity shirt smelled musty, but they were warm and dry and that mattered more than anything.

The Weather Channel was flickering on the television in the living room, Jacob watching it out of the corner on his eye while he tucked sheets into the sofa cushions. Most of the Olympic peninsula was obfuscated by a red mass that seemed to hover on the radar, rather than moving like a normal storm. It looked as though it was going to be a long night. The windows rattled in their frames as a gust of wind battered the tiny house, confirming her sentiment.

“Feeling warmer?” Jake asked as she sidled into view. Bella could only nod in response, but it seemed to brighten his mood considerably. Before she could ask why he was making up the couch, or even protest he swept her off her feet and into his arms, wrenching her into a hug.

He buried his face into her wet hair, and sighed an apology into her scalp. “I’m sorry about earlier--”

From the kitchen the phone rang sharply, cutting him off. With a sigh Jacob untangled himself from Bella and disappeared through the doorway.

“Charlie?” she heard him say. “Is everything okay?” She limped quickly back into the kitchen trying to read his face.

There was more loud squawking from the headset, but Bella couldn’t quite make out the words over her own ragged breathing. “Uh-huh…absolutely Charlie, you know that…of course we’ll be careful, is there anything…” Jake’s face suddenly looked panicked, and he reached into the sink behind him, filled a glass up with water, and thrust it into Bella’s hand, motioning for her to drink. “No, she just ran into the twin’s room to try and find some dry clothes, hold on, I’ll go get her.” He covered the mouthpiece with his hand, and then started walking loudly in place.

“Drink,” he hissed at her. “Your Dad wants to talk to you, and I don’t want to explain to him that you can’t talk properly because you almost drowned on my watch.”

Bella waved her hands back and forth and tried to back away, but Jacob brought the phone back to his mouth and caught the sleeve of her shirt with his free hand, then pushed the glass up to her lips “Hang on Charlie, she’s barricaded in the bathroom trying something on.”

Bella chugged the water, trying to ignore the fact that it burned like fire trickling down her throat. When she had drained it Jake swapped the glass for the phone before she could protest. “Dad?” she rasped hesitantly into the receiver, her voice sounding like that of a 60 year old chain smoker.

“Bella,” he replied far too loudly. “I can barely understand you – the wind’s really playing havoc with the phone lines.” Bella sighed in relief, one bullet dodged. “Look, the weather is getting really bad and it’s about to get a whole lot worse. 60 mph winds and hail they’re saying. This thing just kicked up outta the blue, part of that whole el Nino phenomena or something. The department of water and power is predicting massive outages, mayor’s worried about the roads. I’m headed into the station, and I don’t want you to leave the Black’s house until I call you – you understand me.”

“Yes sir,” Bella murmured as loudly as she could. She could hear the sounds of Charlie’s keys clinking in the background. “You be careful.”

“I will Bells, I gotta run. Stay inside and remember I love you, okay?” he practically screamed into the receiver. In the background Bella thought she heard the doorbell chime. It sounds like chaos back home.

“I love you too, Dad,” she replied harshly, trying to be as loud as possible. Still her voice didn’t seem willing to raise above whisper volume. She hoped Charlie had heard her. Trouble was hard to come by in Forks…at least the kind of trouble that involved the police. But when it did…well Charlie wasn’t as young as he used to be, and Bella just worried. She handed the receiver back to Jake reluctantly.

“Staying here tonight?” he asked, putting the glass back in the sink and the phone on the counter. Bella nodded, and Jake smiled. “I figured – it’s…it’s really bad outside. I ran out to the garage to get a few things.” He jerked his head in the direction of the back door, and Bella saw a pile of flashlights and tools and what looked like a tarp sitting in a wet heap on the doormat. “I could barely see the house just standing by your truck it was coming down so hard.”

Bella shot him a puzzled look, which he interpreted perfectly. “Just in case,” Jake reassured her, by way of the tools. “If the power goes or we spring a leak. Luck favors the prepared.”

“Luck doesn’t favor me at all,” Bella muttered harshly.

Jake barked a harsh laugh, drifting into the living room where he spread a blanket over what Bella now knew to be her temporary bed. “Actually, depends on how you look at it. Storm like that, it’s gonna wash your scent off of…well, practically everything. Means we won’t have to deal with the hunter for a while.”

Not exactly the reassurance that Bella was looking for. She shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature. Jake noticed, laying a warm hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry. Nothing’s gonna touch you while I’m around – I won’t allow it,” he declared. Bella wanted to tell him that he didn’t understand the situation, he didn’t fully comprehend the depths of Victoria’s wrath the way she did, but she knew it was a useless argument.

“So,” he said decisively, obviously trying to change the subject. “Want me to pop in a movie and a frozen pizza? You must be hungry.” But food was the last thing on Bella’s mind.

“I know it’s early,” she muttered, “but I really just want to crash.”

“Sure, sure – you must be wiped.” He leaned over and kissed the top of her head, something he’d grown to doing so frequently that Bella usually didn’t notice it. But tonight it sent a wave of goose bumps down her spine. “Night Bells,” he whispered, disappearing into his own room with silent footsteps.

***

Outside the storm screamed, and Bella felt the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. It had been howling like that for hours now, the tempest growing more and more to resemble a hungry animal. It swung wildly, pounding on the coast with generic rage, frustrated that the lines of tiny homes refused to surrender and be swallowed up into its maw.

Inside Bella was exhausted – physically, mentally, emotionally. Each one of her burning muscles begged for sleep…but sleep just wouldn't come. If her time here in Forks had helped Bella grow in any way, it was that she had developed the ability to sleep through anything, the pounding of the rain on the roof, the echoes of thunder from the storms battering the coast.

The threat of her own demise.

The loss of…of him.

True, there were nightmares, and the sleep was never peaceful, but Bella had found a way to manage. And tonight should have been no different – the same emptiness, the same loss, the same phantom pain lingering in her chest. But tonight was different, tonight was worse because the heartache was coupled by real aches, and her head was swirling with memories, images, movies that refused to be still, be silenced. Again and again she watched the last bubbles of air float away from her, leaving her silent and still. Again and again she heard the voice, full of rage and screaming at her to do what she knew she no longer had the strength for.

And again there were the hands. Jacob's too warm hands and they wrenched her from that blackness. Jacob's hands as they frantically beat the air back into her body. Jacob's hands and he held her on the beach, wet and freezing and covered in sand.

Jacob's hands…holding her together.

Too much. There was too much in her head, too much in her heart for her to process right now. She needed a break, she needed to breathe, she needed something.

Bella always needed something…only now she just didn't know what.

And in the meantime each flickering shadow against the wall was a face in the window, and each protesting creak and groan in the house was the approach of the enemy. It didn't matter that she was in La Push – there was no civility in creatures like Victoria, no agreement, no treaty. Rain be damned, Bella knew she was walking around with a bullseye on her chest and all she had managed to do in being here was shift it away from Charlie and onto Jacob.

Jacob.

It all happened so suddenly. She was on her feet and halfway down the hall before she contemplate even standing up. I'm just going to check on him Bella told herself. She tiptoed down the hall, treading as if it were made of live landmines rather than wood. The floor balked and creaked with every step, and she would freeze and hold her breath each time it did. Each stride felt harder than the one before it, like some invisible force was telling Bella to turn around, to go back.

To let go.

But her hands were on his doorframe, and she was peering into the darkness before she could --

"Bells?" Jacob called out suddenly, and Bella had to clutch at her chest to keep from having a heart attack. Lightning split the sky, and in the flash she could just make out his face in the dark, his eyes puzzled. "Everything okay?"

She felt his fingers reach out and wind around her wrist, and he guided her around his small bedside table to sit on the mattress. “You’re not hurt, are you?” he asked

Bella wanted to ask him how she could possibly hurt herself sleeping, but then he’d make the joke about how if anyone could find a way to do it, she could, and her throat ached too much for her to bother when she already knew how the repertoire would end. She shook her head in the dark, certain that he could see.

“I just,” she choked out, cleared her throat, and tried again. “I couldn’t sleep,” she whispered. Jacob didn’t ask why. Either he already knew or he figured it was best not to pry. Instead he scooted over and thumped on the mattress.

“Lie down,” he said. “I promise I’ll keep the monsters at bay.”

And so she did. They lay side by side awkwardly. Jacob took up more than half the bed, and so Bella had to teeter dangerously close to the edge of the mattress in order to maintain was seemed an appropriate gap between their two bodies.

Jacob coughed uncomfortably, the rain pummeled the roof loudly, and Bella sighed and began to wish that she’d never left the couch. Finally she felt a warm hand grab her around the waist and pull her away from her precarious perch.

“C’mere,” Jacob said. “The last thing I want to have happen is for you to fall off the bed and fracture your skull in the middle of a hurricane.”

“We have both had enough emergencies for one day,” Bella agreed, hesitantly. She flipped over to face him, and laid her head on his shoulder. The rest of her body seemed to take the hint, and she melted around Jacob’s contour. “This…this okay for you?”

“Mmmm,” he affirmed, wrapping his long arms around her.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry Bella,” he murmured, sleepily. “I haven’t made this any easier on you. I tried, believe me, I tired so hard not to…not to feel the way I do about you. And I swear, I’m fine with just being your friend, it’s just that I slip sometimes and…well, I know that you pick up on it and that doesn’t make things any easier. So…so, yeah. I’m just…I’m trying, okay?”

Jacob was warm and his proximity was comforting and protective and Bella’s limbs suddenly felt too heavy to move. And so she drifted into the welcoming embrace of sleep before she could tell him it was okay, she didn’t mind that much anyways.

***

She descended willingly into the blank expanse, into the black, the blue. Deeper and deeper until the world was nothing, and she was nothing in it. The cold crawled through her mouth, her nose. It froze in her ears and shattered in her eyes. Deeper and deeper, it descended into her lungs, pushing against the walls of her heart. Deeper and deeper into her mind. And yet she did not fight.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” Her fingers ceased their frenzied twitching, her eyelids froze mid-blink. “This is what you miss.”

The voice was right, this was her ultimate desire, the frozen clutch of eternity, absent of sun or reprieve.

The hand latched onto her ankle, but there was no air left to scream with, no motion with which to turn away. His dead amber eyes stared back at her, for all eternity, as Edward pulled her down to the bottom of an endless sea.

“Bella…”

***

“BELLA!” Jacob shouted again,

He cradled her like a child, his hand moving in comforting circles against her back. He breathed reassurance into her ear. He brushed the hair back from her sweaty face.

He promised her everything would be alright.

“No, it won’t be,” she whispered bitterly, ignoring the obvious throbbing of her throat. “It will never be okay. It doesn’t matter how hard I try, and it doesn’t matter how much I want things to change. I am damaged goods, Jacob…and there’s no rectifying that.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s the truth,” she protested numbly, but it wasn’t the full truth…and Bella knew that. She hadn’t really wanted to get better. True, she had wanted the pain to stop, but in her mind the only way of achieving that had been for Edward to come back, or for her to wake up and realize the past few months had been just another cruel nightmare. And since both of those seemed highly unlikely, Bella had clung desperately to her own insanity, comforted only by voices that could not be real, addicted to the methadone now that her heroin was gone. She had traded sickness for sickness because she didn’t remember how to be healthy. No, she told her father, told Jacob that she was trying, but that was a much as lie as anything else. In reality she was forbidden to remember, and yet still terrified to forget.

“Well just in case you haven’t noticed, Bells, I’m pretty good at fixing things.” Jake said, interrupting her thoughts as he pressed his warm hand against her cheek, holding her with more tenderness and compassion than she deserved.

“I’ve been hearing voices,” she whispered bitterly. “Every time I do something dangerous, something irrational or unhealthy or stupid I hear him? Think you can fix that, Jake? Think you can take me apart like a carburetor and pull out the parts that are crazy? The bits and pieces that don’t work right anymore?”

She tried to pull away, but Jacob continued to hold her against him. “Voices?” he asked skeptically.

Bella just nodded against his chest. “That’s why I wanted to fix the motorcycles – because I knew that every time I got on one, I’d hear E - I’d hear his voice again. Don’t you think that kind of behavior indicates a problem that’s far beyond repair?” Her voice was bitter, full of anger at herself, anger at Edward, anger at the world. But some part of her desperately needed Jake to disagree, because he was right – he was good at fixing things. Bella needed faith, needed someone to believe in something that she couldn’t anymore. Jacob was so much more than a friend, he’d been her beacon in the dark, her sun in the middle of a monsoon, always there to show her the way when she couldn’t make it on her own. If he believed…maybe it was actually possible. Maybe Bella Swan could be whole again.

But Jacob didn’t respond with his usual hope, his optimistic outlook. His body seemed to droop against hers. “So…so the bikes…wanting to go cliff diving…it was just a stunt to pull so you could hear your ex-boyfriend’s voice in your head?” he asked finally, his dejection palpable. His arms were suddenly stiff around her.

“Oh, Jake,” Bella sputtered, wishing more than anything that she could pull the words out of the air and stuff them back in her mouth, along with her foot. “Oh, Jake no, I didn’t mean…it’s not like that…”

She reached out to touch his face, but he pulled away from her. “Tell me Bella?” he whispered throatily. “Was any part of it…did it…”

“Jake, it may have started out that way,” she pleaded. “But it didn’t end that way.” When he still refused to meet her eyes Bella lurched out and caught his face between both her hands. “Jacob Black you listen to me right now!”

“Now” emerged as more of a throaty rasp than an actual word, and his face softened a little bit. “I came to you because I needed you to fix the bikes, but after that…everything changed. You’re the best thing in my life, my best friend, and you know that’s true so stop being a martyr…stop doing…this, when you know how very much you mean to me.”

It took Bella by surprise how much her own words applied to herself. Stop. Stop playing the victim, prolonging her own pain – she was one to talk. Without warning she found herself thinking of her mother again. Renee had closed the door on her past. She hadn’t waited, sitting around forlorn, staring out the window waiting for Prince Charming to drive up in a Volvo and rescue her from a trapped existence. She had ridden her own horse out of Forks instead, setting out to find her own happiness, rather than sitting home sabotaging herself.

Maybe that was true bravery – being strong enough to take that first step, being able to say enough’s enough.

“Bella…”

“Shhhhh,” she whispered, and placed a finger against his lips. For once Bella was glad she couldn’t really speak that well. Her words were always empty, twisted paroxysms of the truth. Words hurt, words lied, and she was tired of both.

Jacob peered at her curiously through the darkness, but he didn’t say a word as Bella moved one of her shaking hands down to rest against his chest. His heart beat like a drum beneath it. Then slowly, so slowly Bella closed the distance between them. Inch by inch she her face drew closer to his. Eyes wide, surprise spelled out all over Jacob’s features, but he was silent. And his look of panic was the last thing Bella saw before breached that final gap and kissed him.

She braced herself, waiting for the onslaught of sorrow and betrayal to rip through her mind, to tear at the edges of the hole in her chest. But it never came. No voices, no pain. It was all blinded by a sudden warmth that seemed to radiate from Jacob as he sat there, unresponsive. Bella reeled back in surprise.

Through dark to her eyes, she was sure Jacob could see everything as clear as day, especially the frantic look in her eyes. The silence between them, usually so pleasant, was beginning to stretch into uncomfortable territory, and Bella longed for him to say something, do something. Anything!

Before Bella could gather the courage to bolt from the room though, the look of surprise on Jake’s face vanished. Through the murky blackness his expression morphed into one of understanding and…and hope?

Bella leaned towards him again and this time he met her halfway. His lips moved slowly, hesitantly against her own, as if he wasn’t quite sure what was happening, but was more than willing to try and figure it out. Again that delicious warmth flooded Bella’s senses. It seemed to spread downward from her lips, coursing through her limbs, thawing parts of her that had been numb for far too long now. It burned down her spine and across her chest, and she felt a flush rise in her cheeks for the first time in a very, very long time.

They came up for air at the same time, gasping, faces inches apart in the darkness. The hesitation in Jacob’s expression had been replaced by something different, something more animal, instinctual. It smoldered in his eyes as he pulled Bella’s body up against his own. His hand gently ran up her neck to cup her cheek, tangle in her hair, and bring her face back against his own.

He kissed her with fervor, a reckless passion that Bella had never known, but it was infectious, and she found herself returning the enthusiasm. They crashed together, again and again, and when she felt Jacob’s lips part her own she was more than willing to let him inside. Bella had never been able to try this before, to give into her desires without restraint or fear of consequence. But Jacob was willing and more than able – his body was playground that Bella was eager to explore.

And so she tangled her tongue with his. She nibbled his lower lip, and pulled him eagerly back when he started to move away. She let her hands wander the planes of his chest, his neck, his face. And she eagerly drank in his confident smile each time he broke away to catch his breath.

He never had it long before she took it away again.

And it didn’t matter then that Bella was alone, or a mess of a human being, incomplete and adrift in a sea of lies and deceit and hopelessness. Because for a moment Bella was free, with only Jacob’s arms to keep her from floating away. And so she kissed him back, and explored feelings that until that night had been locked away in the darkest recesses of her being. And when her energy was finally drained Bella laid her head down on his chest, where the echo of Jacob’s heartbeat, and the feel of his hand combing through her tangled hair, lulled her to sleep.

***

Heat.

It was the first thing Bella’s sleepy mind was able to register: a warmth that radiated throughout her entire body, despite the fact that there wasn’t a blanket to be found. Blearily she opened her eyes, but the room was a fuzzy mess, still obfuscated by gloom despite the blinking of an unfamiliar clock which informed her it was 9:18.

It took a moment for her brain to catch up and make sense of where she was and what was happening. But eventually the previous night’s memories came flooding back to her, and Bella felt her heart stutter. In response her chest gave a telltale throb, a weak echo of pain as though it had been hurting in the night, and Bella had blissfully slept through it. And what a blissful sleep it had been. For the first time in months Bella had not been torn from sleep by the sound of her own screaming, or the demons in her head. It was strange, and yet not.

Jacob’s long body was curled around her own, holding her gently. She felt the tickle of his warm breath against the back of her head, each exhalation producing a steady, sleepy sigh. And his arm was snaked across her chest, right against the hole.

Even in his sleep Jacob had been holding her together.

Bella smiled sadly, because it was only a further reminder of the line she had crossed last night, and all that she stood to loose. The last time she’d woken up in someone’s arms it…he… She shifted uncomfortably as the hole in her chest throbbed again, a fresh tear in an old wound. Blood beneath a scar.

Jacob must have felt it because he snorted suddenly and tightened his grip around her. “Bells?” he murmured softly.

Heat rose in Bella’s cheeks that had nothing to do with last night’s passion. Fresh tears welling up in her eyes, her only instinct was to run from the room. She tried to untangle herself from Jacob’s limbs, to get free and disappear before he could see the hurt on her face and realize it had everything to do with Ed-- with him. But Jacob tightened her arms around her further, and burrowed his face in her hair.

“Please Bells,” he pleaded, his voice thick with sleep. “I promise I understand – last night never happened. And we can get out of this bed and never talk about it again. Just please…give me one more minute right here…” Sadness, tangible enough to hold, was evident in his tone. Wiping the stray tears away with the heel of her hand Bella relaxed her tensed limbs, and leaned back into the curve of his body as the silent seconds ticked by, but something had changed.

Her heart was still pounding, each beat, each breath bringing fresh pain with it. Only now Bella wasn’t sure if it was because last night had happened, or because Jacob wanted to pretend that it hadn’t. And so she let him hold her as the LED second ticked by, and when 9:19 became 9:20 he softly kissed the top of her head, muttered something about needing to see the pack, and bound out the door before Bella’s feet touched the ground.

11 Gambit Icons - Primarily Black and White

2009-01-06T20:12:54Z

[11] - Gambit Icons

Teasers:

1-5

6-10

11

Teenage Wasteland - A Runaways Fanmix

2009-01-05T07:37:16Z

Teenage Wasteland
a runaways fanmix

Everything We Had - The Adacemy Is...
It was the only place I'd ever known, turned off the light on my way out the door

We Built This City - Starship
Too many runaways eating up the night

A Little More For Little You - The Hives
Take lies and believe them true, knew it all along, another act and a truth gone wrong

American Girl - Tom Petty
With lots of places to run to yeah, and if she had to die tryin'...

This Is Your Life - The Killers
Crooked wheels keep turning. Children are you learning?

Run Away - Live
We could just run away, run away tonight? It ain't no victory, but I don't care...

6 Songs + Cover Art

Conquer - A Civilizations Fanmix

2009-01-04T08:14:59Z

Conquer
a civilizations fanmix

Viva la Vida - Coldplay
Listen as the crowd would sing: "Now the old king is dead! Long live the king!"

The City is At War - Cobra Starship
The city is at war, bless the young and rich

The King - Piebald
The king he sat in a chair of gold and let life let him be

Yer Majesty - Shinedown
And I'm sorry you're on your knees, but you can't blame me, yer majesty

Long Road to Ruin - Foo Fighters
One flag was taken down to raise another in it's place

Conquer: Tracks + Artwork