Jacob sat motionlessly in the chair in Emily's kitchen, staring bleakly ahead. All the colors that had once lightened the room now had a dull, washed-out appearance to him. His whole life seemed devoid of any brightness now, everything fading away in the new, stark light of his Responsibility to the Pack.
Emily stepped behind him, laying a towel gently around his shoulders and sliding her scarred fingers into the scissors. She had brought a low stool in order to comfortably reach the top of Jacob's head.
Jake already felt too big, too unnatural, for this small, fragile house and the small, fragile woman inside it. He flinched at the scrape of the stool on the floor as Emily nudged it closer with her foot and waited for her to make the first cut.
A quiet snip sounded, and the first lock of long black hair dropped soundlessly to his feet.
Something inside of him cried out at the loss. With each strand of hair that drifted down, a part of the old Jacob Black fell away. First: his youth. The comfort of a world where his major responsibilities included driving his dad around La Push and making sure his mechanical tinkering in the garage didn't cut too deeply into his schoolwork time.
Another snip. Bella. His promise to be there, always, broken almost as quickly as he'd made it. –That wonderful feeling he always had with her, like she was always on the same wavelength as him even if they were thinking different thoughts—cut brutally away by Sam Uley's damned injunction.
Snip. Then came Quil, staring after him with a hurt and confused face as he drifted helplessly away. Another clip, and Jacob said good-bye to college, at least until the problem with the Cold Ones was resolved once and for all. And considering how long they'd been around, that could be a while.
Strand after strand floated down, and a small bit of Jacob's life fell away with each one, until all his hair was gone and he felt stripped to the core: raw, naked, and shivering.
"All right, we're done," murmered Emily. "That wasn't so bad, wasn't it? I think it suits you."
"They shave your head when you're on death row," Jacob mumbled.
Emily was quiet for a moment as she lifted the towel from his shoulders and shook it out. "Oh, Jake," she said.
"Jacob Black is dead," he bit out. "He's gone."
Stepping around the chair to face him, Emily tilted up his chin with her small fingers and looked at his face. "Then what's left?" she asked.
Wide, haunted eyes grazed Emily's mauled face. Jacob dropped his eyes. "Something damned," he whispered.