Edward

Edward was restless. He listened to the house grow quiet, as first one, then another person settled in for the night. He waited until there was only silence. And still, he waited. Finally, he slid out from under the blankets, and crept to the window. It make a quiet squeak, but he managed to push it open enough to slide through. The whole house was on one level, so there was no climbing down from anywhere. He walked barefoot around the house, and toward the beach. It wasn't as dark as he thought it would be: the ocean reflected and magnified the moonlight, and made the night almost as bright as the day. He started to walk along the waterline, keeping it to his left. He wasn't sure where he was going, or what he was looking for, but he knew he just had to keep walking.

"Edward?" Jacob's voice startled him out of his thoughts, and he looked up. "What are you doing out this late?"

"I couldn't sleep," Edward mumbled. He knew how dumb it sounded - he was exhausted. But Jacob nodded.

"Could you use some company on your walk?" He asked. Edward shrugged, and they continued on, Jacob keeping easy pace with Edward. "Can I ask you something?" He asked after a while.

"I guess."

"When do you cry?" Edward paused.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, Bella said she's never seen you cry. And from what I've heard, you have plenty of reasons to. So when do you cry?"

"I… I can't." He bit his lip hard, and Jacob stopped him and put a hand on his. He glanced at it, almost surprised to see his nails biting into the palm of his clenched hand.

"You should," Jacob said. "You're allowed to."

"What?"

"Well, we weren't allowed to. Before. It wasn't until someone told me I was allowed to cry that I could." Embry materialized out of the shadows of a nearby building, and from his lack of reaction, it was clear that Jacob knew he was there. He signed something. "He wants to know if you're okay, or if he should text Emmett to help bring you back," Jacob translated.

"I don't want to be there right now," Edward said. Embry nodded once, and fell into step on Edward's other side. "What are you two doing out this late?"

"Embry wanted a stroll in the moonlight," Jacob said. Embry laughed a voiceless laugh. "No, really, we had a feeling you'd probably try to sneak out, and we wanted to make sure you were safe," Jacob said. Edward nodded. They walked on for a while. Finally, Edward asked what had been bothering him for a while.

"Is it hard, not having a voice?" Embry gave him a thoughtful look. And then he began to sign. Jacob kept up a translation.

"No. I'm used to it now, but still, no. It means I can be selective on who I speak to. And it means I pay more attention to how I communicate with other people. I suppose it's not very different from a deaf person, but it's easier because I still have my hearing. Or most of it," Jacob threw in with a quick grin. Embry punched him lightly. "His music is always too loud, and he's going to go deaf eventually." Jacob explained.

Embry shrugged and signed, "At least I won't have to learn to sign afterwards."

"Why don't you have the struggles that Brady had?" Edward asked, watching this easy exchange. Jacob thought for a long moment. Embry began to sign, and when Jacob didn't immediately start to translate, he gave an exasperated sigh, and began to whisper, which until then, Edward had never realized didn't involve vocal chords. Even with a whisper, Edward could hear the Russian accent that added a lilt to his words.

"Brady had the hardest time of it, for one thing. He was alone the longest. He was considered the prettiest, and he was the youngest. In some ways, he was doomed from the start, and there was no stopping that. He also didn't have an emotional barrier to what happened to him, so the things they did hurt him emotionally as well as physically more than they hurt the rest of us. But I think the biggest thing was that he was alone. Even after."

"But Sam and Jared didn't have brothers," Edward said, frowning.

"Sam and Jared have been in love for years," Jacob said, shaking his head. "Maybe it was the trauma that drew them together initially, but then they also had the same handlers, so they had each other."

"And that doesn't bother you?" Edward asked.

"Why would it? Shouldn't they be allowed to be happy after everything they went through?"

"Well, yeah, of course, but…"

"But they're gay," Jacob finished, reading his face. "Actually, I'm not sure if they are, so much as they don't want anyone else, and they're happy without labels. Besides, who else besides each other would understand what they went through? Either way, they're happy, and that's good enough for me. Just like you and Brady would have been, had it all worked out." Edward stopped at that, familiar heartache shooting through him. Embry looked reproachfully at Jacob over his head. "Shit, I'm sorry. I just meant that -" Embry shook his head. Enough. Edward let out a heavy breath. He worked to keep the sadness at bay, but the crushing weight of it would not be stopped.

Emmett

Emmett woke up in the middle of the night, and at first, he wasn't sure what it was that woke him. He listened in the darkness for a minute, and then there it was again. He left his room, and hesitated outside Brady's room before pushing the door open. The bed was empty. So was the room. And the window stood wide open. Instantly, he was wide awake. If Edward wasn't here, where was he? The bathroom was dark and empty, and so was the kitchen and the living room.

"Esme," he whispered, going to her room. But he didn't need to be quiet, she wasn't asleep yet, and Carlisle had a shift at the hospital.

"What is it?" She asked, getting up.

"Edward's gone."

"What? How could he be…" She reached the bedroom and saw it empty. A cursory look around the house told her he wasn't there. "Check the beach, I'll call Sam and Bella." Emmett nodded and shoved his feet into tennis shoes by the back door. He jogged the few steps to the tree line, and broke through it. The beach was empty, and there was no sign of Edward anywhere. He jogged a few steps further, but then he realized that without knowing which way Edward went, searching alone would be useless.

"He's on the beach with Jacob," Sam said, when Emmett came back in. Bella was pacing the living room, and Sam was sitting on the couch with a tired-looking Jared. "Embry's out there with them, too. They're safe," he said with a yawn.

"We should be out there with him," Bella insisted.

"Trust me, Embry's-" Sam started, but Bella rounded on him.

"You don't know Edward. You haven't see him fall apart and get torn down over and over. Not just at his brother's party. Or when his boyfriend died. But his entire life. What you all went through was horrible. But he's been through plenty, and he was alone through it. I hope you can help him, but you should know that he's like a brother to me, and I will not see him hurt again." Sam got up, not to oppose her, but just so that she would take him seriously.

"Listen, these boys are my priority. All of them, and when Brady fell in love with Edward, that made Edward one of them. They've all been through more in one lifetime that anyone should have to deal with, and they're never going to go through anything like it again. I trust my brothers to take care of one another, and I assure you that Embry will not allow anything to happen to Jacob or Edward." Bella looked at Emmett for reassurance, and Emmett nodded.

"I trust them," he said.

"It's not that I don't trust you. It's just that so few people have ever been in Edward's corner, that it's easier to expect that to continue than to expect that things will change for him," she said with a sigh. "But if you've got this under control, then I'm going to believe you. God knows, nothing I've tried has worked."

Sam sat back down with Jared on the couch, and Emmett went into the kitchen to make some coffee.

"This reminds me of so many nights with Brady," he said.

"He used to sneak out?" Bella was mildly surprised. Brady never seemed the type.

"Occasionally, but it was more often a thing about nightmares. He had a hard time at night. We didn't get a ton of quiet nights."

"That explains a lot," Bella said. At the question in his expression, she grinned. "He used to send a lot of late night messages."

"Ah." They both looked up as the door opened, and Embry came in. He nodded at them, and went to the living room, looking for Sam. Sam was asleep, with Jared sleeping next to him, and Embry nudged his foot. Sam jerked awake, a moment of panic flooking his face before it cleared. Embry signed something, and Sam nodded, and shifted Jared to the other side against the cushions before getting up.

"What's wrong?" Emmett asked. Embry glanced between the two, and hesitated. Sam put a hand on his shoulder.

"Jacob sent him back to get help. Edward made it a few miles, and it's too far to walk all the way back."

"Which way did they go?" Emmett asked. Embry gestured, and the three of them set off at a jog. They found Edward and Jacob sitting on the sand. Jacob was watching the waves, and Edward was fast asleep, his head resting on Jacob's shoulder. Emmett shook Edward awake and helped him up. He let Edward lean on him for most of the walk back, but at the pace they were going, it took them over an hour to get to the house. They finally walked through the door, and they deposited Edward at the kitchen table to rest for a minute. Edward sagged in the chair, letting his head rest on the tabletop. In the end, it was Mike that shook him awake again, and made sure he got back into bed.

"Well, do you think we can help him?" Jared asked when Mike and Edward left the kitchen. Sam, Jacob, Embry and Emmett sat with him at the table. It was approaching 4am, and they were all tired.

"I think that if any of us can come back from as far as we went, then Edward will be, too," Jacob said.

"Sometimes, it's almost as if…" Jared started

"As if Brady were coming back through him," Sam nodded. "I was thinking the same thing. Maybe he's doing what he always did, and giving us all a second chance."

"And this time, we can't let him down," Jacob nodded.

"What do you mean, let him down again?" Emmett asked, catching the look the others shared between themselves. Embry, Jared and Jacob looked at Sam, as if asking for permission. Sam nodded in resignation.

"Brady… had the chance to escape about five years ago," Jared said reluctantly. "We were all together in a holding area overnight, and usually the handlers kept us all zip tied together, but this time, his ties were loose enough that he could slide his hands out. It was a mistake that could have meant his freedom. He was standing there, and all that stood between him and freedom was a broken window about six feet up, but he was afraid."

"He asked us what he should do, and we told him he should try to escape, but he thought it was a trick. He was tired and hungry and afraid, we all were," Jacob said. "I was closest. I could have boosted him up and pushed him out the window. Freedom was so close. But in the end, he stayed."

"There's no way of knowing if he could have escaped," Sam said. "But he was the only one smallest enough to fit through that window."

"He stayed for us. He didn't want to leave us behind," Jacob said. A sad half smile crossed his face. "And when he was rescued, the first thing he did was make sure the detectives found us."