A/N: Something new, because there are only so many times I can write in Jacob or Bella's perspective (not that I won't keep trying).
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Without Emmett, the Cullens probably wouldn't exist.
The truth is that each and every member of their family is a part of a whole, an equation to make up the end (even when the end is a bunch of monsters that don't fit in, with their own kind as well as others), strange ingredients batched together to make something that few people can really enjoy.
But another clandestine truth is that Emmett is the one that holds them all together. Edward can hear people's thoughts, Alice can see their futures, Jasper knows what they're feeling, but Emmett is the one that notices everything else.
People call him dumb, but he could easily relay their deepest secrets, the ones they don't even think about, because Emmett notices the looks and the smiles and the humanity within all of them, werewolves or vampires or seventeen-year-old girls.
He saw it with Rosalie when he was coming back to life, he saw his angel and the look on her face and he knew, without explanation, without assurance, that he was set. He saw it with Alice and Jasper and their cryptic ways of being a separate unity, apart from the rest of them but still just as connected through blood and bone and body.
It's harder when Edward falls in love. Because he can't read Bella's mind, and even when that isn't always enough (because the real things aren't thoughts or emotions but the path of blood to the heart—the hidden stuff behind the closed lids, folded into layer upon layer of creative self-sabotage. And that's what Emmett sees), Edward takes comfort in the fact that he knows people just as well as they know themselves.
The problem is that Edward doesn't know Bella, and Bella doesn't know Bella, and Emmett sees their careful charade of promises and the gentle tugs of lips and sleep-talking that is invisible to Edward in a way he isn't used to. Emmett sees all this, the same way he sees that Bella and Edward are perfect in the kind of separate world that counts on timing and circumstance.
The same as the butterfly effect, every aspect of their relationship depends on the tiniest of decisions. Emmett can dissect these—Edward's cautious kisses, leaving, broken hearts, friendships, Charlie, Angela Webber and uneaten lunch trays.
The fatal flaw of EdwardandBella and the way they fit together is not in their love or their looks or even their species, but the world that they live in. Had Bella been born one hundred years earlier, or had both been dragonflies stuck in a garden, or had Edward grown up without the pretense of old-age customs, then there would be no reason to keep them apart.
But Bella was living now and so was Edward, and, truthfully, both of them are hurting.
Emmett sees Jacob and knows that he looks at Bella the same as Edward does (and yet entirely differently). Jacob has the love in his dark eyes that Edward holds in his hungry ones, but he also has the perfect knowing of Alice's and the creased numbness of Jasper's and the clear fervor (and the sad realization) of Emmett's own. Emmett knows that Jacob has time and circumstance on his side, but he is living in a world where he doesn't stand a chance.
Emmett wants so badly to take Bella by the wrists and lead her in the right direction, because he sees the way her heartstrings pull and gravity flips on its axis. He sees that Edward is her soul mate, but also that Jacob is the one that's meant to be.
Emmett sees life brewing inside of her eyes and her being the same way Rosalie's shine in front of Bella. He knows that if Bella were to let in the thoughts that she keeps away (always hiding even though Edward can't hear), she would know that Emmett is right, Rosalie is right, Charlie is right, Jacob is right.
But Emmett keeps quiet and smiles, spreading his dimples deep and squinting his glazed stare. He hopes that Bella has a power of her own, and that Jacob will take his chance.
Because Emmett knows that this family can't stay together with a member that doesn't belong.
Because Emmett can see.
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END