A.N.: Your reviews and follows and faves warm me up, each one of them. Thank you, and I hope you all enjoy this chapter!

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"I hope you find a way to be yourself someday, in weakness or in strength. Change can be amazing."

–The Neighbourhood, Honest

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Chief Swan shuffled across the rich color that matted the floor of Dr. Cullen's office. The modernity of most of the house dispersed into a waft of molt-scented air that waddled through the wooden shelves and stuck to the knowledge that sat on them, clinging to an infinity of red spines and letters wounded with gold threads. Each book was a literate with impressive studies staring at him sideways, above the frames of its glasses, with an air of solemn rejection, and amidst this surplus of dusty education Charlie felt like an intruder.

"Please," Dr. Cullen said, shaping the weight of his own office's ostentatiousness into an insignificant detail and Charlie's presence into a necessary means to an end. They were here to discuss something important. "Take a seat."

His pale hand waved warmly to the padded chair across his ornate desk, and Charlie made a slow exercise of his rusted joints, sitting down with his habitual wariness, as if the blonde man on the other side of the table was the school director and he'd been called into his burrow in regard to an unpleasant incident involving his daughter. Esme Cullen was standing beside her husband with her arms crossed over the purple silk of her blouse, carrying over her shoulders, like a shawl to keep her warm on a stormy night, an unreadable kind of unease. As if to emphasize her quiet disquiet, a flash of lightning clapped wetly outside, with the sound of two giant hands snapping a tree in two under the discharge of an overcast sky.

"I'm sure you're ready to go home with your daughter… and that we've all tried your patience this evening," Dr. Cullen started, and his words hit jackpot. "I apologize for not having called you myself. Sooner, I mean."

Charlie had one of his usual, awkward grunts stuck in his throat, about to reverberate through his vocal cords, until he remembered that would mean that he accepted the apology. And this was Carlisle Cullen he had in front of him, cordial as ever, someone he held in high regard, despite his sudden departure the previous year.

Was it that long ago?

"It's alright," he said, settling with that one platitude, only a little better than silence, but in his head, after surpassing a couple of barriers, it was injected with sincerity. Of course he'd been pushed into a state of legitimate worry when he'd entered an empty house and received no answer when he'd called his daughter. Remembering when she'd lost herself in the woods after the break-up, he'd even considered starting a search party, when, in reality, the search party should have been for Edward. And seeing a few uncharacteristic lines marring the pale perfection and strange youthfulness of Carlisle and Esme's faces, Charlie had to take a sharp turn, instead of driving along the usual road he followed, and this bumpy lane shook him up with inevitable roughness.

He'd sort of forgotten that Bella was not the only kid in the world.

"You must be wondering what my wife and I wish to discuss with you. Before anything, I'd like you to know that we wouldn't ask this of you if we didn't think it was of extreme importance, but perhaps after you hear what we have to tell you we'll end up coming to an agreement without difficulty."

Please cut to the chase. Charlie's admiration didn't lessen in any way, but he was a man of few words and perhaps Carlisle Cullen used too many. There was obviously something that was tainting the limpid calm of their house, and his understanding of it was clear enough. He was hoping that they knew how thankful he was for what they'd done for his daughter when she'd rushed back to Phoenix and hurt herself, and that he was glad to help where he could. So Dr. Cullen was wasting the time that could be spent getting on with it.

There was only one way he was comfortable solving important matters – quickly.

Plus, the game with the Seahawks was about to start.

"Well, if there's anything I can do…" he muttered. "Don't be afraid to ask."

"Thank you, Chief Swan." Dr. Cullen conceded him a warm smile, with the grace that Charlie lacked, and it catapulted him towards the thought that despite their kids' eventful relationship they still treated each other by their surnames. Or – did they? Maybe they needed to spend time together more often. This level of formality made him somewhat uncomfortable. "Now, since you must have other matters to tend to, I'll get straight to the point." He leaned slightly forward, and the very light brown of his eyes, so odd a color, shed onto the ivory and glass of the stationery on the table a tide of worrisome seriousness. "Your daughter was making a hasty assumption when she said that Edward fell down a hill. In fact, we foundhim at the bottom of a hill in La Push, after Sam Uley called me to inform me of what had happened, for which I am quite grateful."

The mention of his friend's homeplace peeled off the impenetrable resistance that characterized Charlie's mind, and a short circuit passed unbidden through his unawareness, burning it from the inside out, and he was suddenly alert, susceptible to the outside world.

He'd taken notice, long ago, of a certain hostility transpiring through the wrinkles in the embossed leather of Billy's face upon any random reference to the Cullens, and evident signs had stressed the idea that their presence down on the reservation was unwelcome.

"I'm sorry," he said, and his ears sensed like the hissing of a coffee pot the oddness of his next words. "But what was Edward doing in La Push?"

A blunt look fell over Carlisle Cullen's gaze, while he twisted around within tight limits, like an unoiled robot. There was something awfully strange about the way they moved…

"That's a legitimate question, I must admit," he murmured, caught in a regretful stance. The smelted gold of his eyes pelted onto the surface of the table. "I'm afraid I should've encouraged my children to integrate themselves into the community… I suppose this is one of the results. Some people are still wary of us, unfortunately, especially the folks from the Quileute Reservation. You are well aware of that, from what I can see. It's true – we try to avoid those lands. For everyone's sake."

A pale veil of sadness, of quiescent acceptance of this discrimination, dropped onto Dr. Cullen's frame, and Charlie had to imagine what it was like to take in five teenagers and see them being knowingly excluded from a circle where everybody else was allowed entrance. Even if by law that wasn't the case, there was some definite animosity rising off the tribe, directed only at the Cullen family – like they were… delinquents. It was the same sort of bias that'd swept over the town when the news of their arrival had spread, staying firm against the proof that they were absolutely harmless.

The whispers and the rumors had nagged at Charlie, until silence settled, and now the Quileute tribe's attitude nettled his mind with equal force.

The Cullens were good people. Resentment aside, regardless of their leaving without foreshadowing and his daughter's consequent withdrawal from the outside world, Charlie really thought that they were good people. Had done more for the town than many of its veterans.

"Edward didn't actually plan on going to La Push," Esme said, picking up the needles needed to knit a piece that'd been left alone momentarily. "He happened to be close by."

Charlie shifted in his seat. He felt like the report should be given a special amount of attention for some reason, but Carlisle retarded the story-telling in order to offer him what he surely considered an important piece of data.

"We take precautions when we go camping. Seeing as there's a lot of wildlife in the area, we decided that our children should be given the preparation needed to ward off any possible threats. And, actually, it proved to be quite useful today, when Edward decided to help Sam Uley and the group of people that were there with him, which included Jacob."

A suspicious tendril of wariness broke through Chief Swan's receptive mind, and he wanted to slow everything down, his impatience shoved aside, but the two of them seemed to have pulverized their clockworks and a torrent of information was coming out at a pace that'd leave him reeling once the machine stopped.

Ironic.

"We were told that a mountain lion strayed into the area," Esme continued. "When Edward became aware of the danger that Sam and the others were in, he chose to give them a hand. Obviously, he had to put his own safety on the line, but thankfully they managed to chase the animal away without anyone getting hurt."

Dr. Cullen said, "I think you're wondering how Edward got his leg broken." And before Charlie could give any indication that he was right, before he could gather the possible scenarios that could result from a meeting between Edward and Jacob, he dived right into a bothersome justification, a complementation of Charlie's undernourished conjectures. "We're certain that this wasn't a mere accident, Charlie, because Jacob did in fact admit that he's the one responsible for Edward's current situation – rather proudly, I might add."

And so his internal helm initiated a series of stiff movements, moaning and whining like a wounded dog, and it all equaled the state in which one doesn't know what to think. He was very fond of Jacob, treated him like a close relative, had watched him grow up and seen him put Bella back together when the fragments were seemingly nowhere to be found. A pointy beak of competitiveness shot out of him frequently enough, fitting into Charlie's hope that someday he'd be the one that Bella chose for a partner, that he'd replace Edward.

Because for a long time he'd seen the Cullen kid as bad news – even his presence had seemed like a source of trouble, towards which Bella had navigated one too many times since they'd met. And Jacob was familiar. The cheeky attitude didn't make Charlie trust him any less.

But this… This did.

"I'm not sure I got this right," he almost stammered out, anesthetized by the voicing of his vague ideas, the articulation of his mild fears with a truth that wasn't so convenient. "Did they get into a fight over Bella or something?"

Any other time the prospect would spark in him the same sort of contained excitement that held him in front of a TV during an important game, and he'd be betting on Jacob, feeling like he was waving a flag in support. But memory flashes of Edward's bruised eyes and plastered leg whipped his brain in a faithful imitation of a leather belt and left red, punishing marks there, strengthening the seriousness in Dr. Cullen's voice. He reprimanded himself: it shouldn't be a game to begin with; his daughter was not a prize; and the boys were not toys.

Today he'd come upon a sight that'd punched him in the gut: after several months, after Jacob's motorbike prank, he'd admitted that Edward was a decent guy, more mature in questions of safety, and so he became approvable boyfriend material.

Had he childishly imagined that the kid wasn't breakable?

"I highly doubt that," Esme said; and Charlie looked at her and was intimidated by the tapping of her fingers on her forearm and the light restraints that her soft voice was dragging. "Edward has witnessed enough violence to be repelled by it nowadays. He tries to avoid it at all costs, so I'm sure he'd only resort to it if it was extremely necessary."

The marks itched now. The reference to Edward's past stressed the boy's breakability, and it jaded him, knowing that someone this young had been exposed to something of this sort on such a scale. And at the same time, his wariness augmented. Instantly. He couldn't help it: Bella was his daughter, and people who had been in Edward's place…

They tended to be problematic. His doubts inflated in tempo with the growth of his worry over Bella.

And then deflated. Esme had just assured him that Edward abhorred violence, and Charlie saw a weary sort of maturity in him which embraced the statement entirely. He was doing it again – centering his worries on his daughter only, as if Edward hadn't been the one to go through these things. His parents' presence and clear sternness countered the new notion in black ink.

Edward wasn't a bodyguard, nor should he have to be. He was, amongst many other things that weren't for sale, the subject of someone's concern and protection.

(So, for Christ's sake, what had Jacob done?)

"So you're saying that Jacob probably pushed him," he guessed. Alice's sarcasm made a lot more sense then, and it vibrated inside his head, and he felt like he'd been pushed himself, his certainties crumbling and tumbling under Jacob's too poor choice. But the most difficult thing to swallow was the predictability of the act, as if it'd been welling like a great wave far away from him and it was now crashing against the edgy cut-outs of the bottom of a cliff. He could imagine Jacob doing just that – shoving Edward with enough force to send him into a rolling ride down a hill, possibly after an ominous choice of words. A predictable choice of words. The passive-aggressive had suffered too hard a blow for the passive to be maintained.

A game that shouldn't have been a game in the first place had gotten somebody hurt.

"That's the most likely scenario, yes."

Carlisle's nod tore a wound into the weak hope that something else had taken place.

"Well, maybe he didn't mean for this to happen, you know," he tried. "Jacob is very… big. Maybe he just didn't measure his strength."

Carlisle shifted in his seat and the wood underneath creaked with an echo that tracked down Charlie's attempt with the ferocity of a predator. As if his feeble guess matched the implication that they were overreacting. And thinking of it like that – it seemed so. It seemed as if they were barging into a problem that kids their age could normally fix by themselves. But this was Carlisle Cullen, for God's sake. All of him radiated moderation, juxtaposed now with a certain edginess which evoked the thought that there was a limit for every single person on Earth.

"Chief Swan… Normally, when someone causes another person to get hurt, to break their leg, they apologize for it. They don't revel in it," Carlisle said. A modest sort of hardness had chased away the habitual kindness delimitated by his features. "I'm not blind. And besides that, Jacob's justification didn't tend that way. In fact, according to him, Edward is to blame."

Charlie's back straightened, pushing a sour breath of disappointment against the back of the chair. Right – Jacob's side of the story deserved to be heard, too.

"What did he do?" he asked, because surely Edward couldn't be completely guiltless. Even if he didn't adhere to plain and raw aggressiveness… Jacob had probably been provoked, too…

"He made the grave mistake of stepping onto Quileute land with the intention of helping Jacob and his friends," Esme replied, and Charlie thought that a simple "nothing" would've sufficed. "I think I might ground him for putting his safety on the line for someone who will go on bullying him instead of thanking him."

Her sarcasm could as well have been a piece of steel wool scrubbing off his impulsive judgment, and Charlie felt its harshness exude from the unexpectedness of her tone. He had eyes after all – Esme was obviously a very beautiful woman, and there was an unmistakable sweetness to her which posed a startling contrast with the irony of her words.

It meant that, like her husband, she'd been pushed to one of her limits. Charlie tried to put himself in their place and ended up finding that he didn't do it often enough – if Bella had risked her well-being to assist someone and in return they'd made her break leg…

He'd be pretty mad, too.

It'd be useless to ask himself what the hell had been on Jacob's mind. Esme had said "go on" for reasons Charlie had deemed tolerable up until now. The fact that Edward had set foot in La Push wasn't even relevant – that was no excuse to begin with, and it was obviously not the actual reason why Jacob had pushed him down a goddamn hill. Carlisle wasn't blind, and neither was Charlie.

It wasn't questionable anymore – Jacob had gone too far.

"I'm sorry," Charlie sighed, and the weight of Jacob's mistake was back on his shoulders. "You're… you're right. There's no excuse. And, I mean–" A breath saturated with frustration misted the surface of a paperweight that rested on Carlisle's desk. His neck had bent over its border. "Edward has helped him before, and he's helped him today… I don't know if he's done anything, on the other hand…"

"You think you know my son?" Esme interrupted, and the silence that followed roared louder than thunder.

"No, ma'am," Charlie said humbly, and considered himself a moron for a worthy fraction of a minute. He knew some things, actually, and one of them countered the theory that he'd put out into the world in a mumble that cowered under his own disagreement. He didn't think Edward had wronged Jacob. Not really.

He seemed… too jaded. He'd seen things that'd jade anyone. But Charlie had become used to this – judging the kid, for some reason or another. Too many things served. If it wasn't his lack of sociability, it'd be the expensiveness of his belongings. Or his Ivy League grades. Or a general perfection which bugged Charlie, because he didn't believe in it. (As if Edward had to be perfect.) Mostly it was his influence in Bella's life. Especially that.

"You know," Esme said in an almost-whisper that slipped into his ear like a ghost's tortured exhale. The frost in her eyes sparkled now in the sports where it'd fragilely cracked. "Sometimes, when people don't love themselves but love others, they think it's best to push them away." She held her own voice and the moment in a grip large enough to leave fingerprints on Charlie's memory. And at first it also brushed against the father in him, and indignation bled through his thoughts – was she making excuses for him? Did she have any idea what Bella had gone through because of his leaving? What it was like to stand by without knowing how to help?

"Listen, if you're referring to Edward and Bella–" He stopped there, wanting to say more and unable to find the right words.

"I am," said Esme. Redundantly. "When Edward broke up with your daughter, he… He only had her happiness in mind, I can assure you. It might've not been right, but he had the best intentions. He wanted her to have what he didn't think he could give her, always believing that she would find it or build it herself without him in the way. Because he thought he was an obstacle, and I know that's what you and Jacob think. And one of you had been making it unbearably obvious since we came back to Forks, right after Edward's suicide attempt – I don't know if he'll ever forgive himself for causing Bella that kind of suffering or if he'll ever feel better about himself, but this isn't helping, Charlie."

He went still, his breath gone heavy inside his lungs, and the return of her delicacy wore a layer of old despair which echoed faintly the sound of a pain that he knew well.

But not as well as Carlisle and Esme.

"Edward tried to kill himself?"

The discovery spiraled across his vague idea of how things had been for the Cullens meanwhile, and it crashed into his image of the unnaturally polite kid who apparently had everything under control. Most of it anyway. His recent acknowledgement of the boy's destructibility, of his human and still adolescent status, acted as fuel for the explosion.

"He was… in a pretty bad place after we left," Carlisle explained. "Then something happened… There was a misunderstanding, and he was pushed over the edge."

His emotions didn't levitate above his frame like a matinal mist, as Esme's did; they lay amidst the amber in his eyes, the gates to a dungeon that kept them confined, and Charlie saw their side beyond the mirror that he'd put up in front of him, where only his, Bella's, Jacob's stories were reflected.

When had he become this inconsiderate? Bella was okay now, but she'd been getting better even before the Cullens had returned. Probably, like Edward had thought, she would have moved on eventually. Would've found something elsewhere. And Edward, with a wrecked self-esteem, like nothing Charlie had heard of before – would he have done same?

Suicide. The word rang in his head amidst the fuzz. Christ – when did one get to that stage?

"I'm sorry. I didn't know," Charlie said, and his hands closed in on his knees.

He hadn't known anything – that the kid thought so lowly of himself. That Bella influenced his life like this.

How did the Cullens feel about that?

He wanted them to be okay with her presence, for her to feel accepted, and it dawned on him that Carlisle and Esme probably wanted that for their son, too. For him not to feel like an obstacle.

Suicide. Jesus. If he had known…

"All we ask is that you speak to Jacob's father," Carlisle said. "I've noticed that you two are close friends – perhaps he'll listen to you. We really would rather not have to deal with an incident of this sort again."

"I–Of course," he hurried to reassure them. "Guess it's the least I can do."

"Thank you very much." A grateful smile hoisted the corners of Carlisle's mouth, and the importance of this one simple action was accentuated, reunited with the discovery of the Cullens' reminiscent fears. Of Edward's brokenness, infinitely more serious than a world-weary personality. Goddamnit, I could've been nicer to him. "I apologize for keeping you here for such a long time, Charlie. You must be anxious to go back home with Bella."

A grunt trembled in his throat. Indeed, the game with the Seahawks wouldn't be cancelled on account of these particular issues, and he could do with a trade between the cold white of the Cullens' house and the familiarity of his own home.

But there was something he still needed to do.

He stood up, and swiped an inexistent patch of dust off his jacket.

"I hope you don't mind if I have a word with Edward first."

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Night shadows floated above the bed sheets, twisted through the lines carved into Emily's cheek, or at least part of them, rooted in the fraction of skin that wasn't buried in the hollow of the pillow, and puffed onto them an extension of sleepy darkness which heightened the sound of their breathing. Her breathing – so constant, so precious, the phantom of a languid kiss laid upon his ear, a quiet reassurance that he always craved at the end of the day. Her warm flesh lulled the tension beneath his into a coma, rested soft and consistent under his hand, amidst the shadows and the cotton of her old sweater, and the lone stroke of moonlight that was flicked across her face allowed him a peek into the fluid black of her eyes.

His fingers pressed against the small of her back.

"Thanks," he mumbled under the beginning of a quiet yawn. The rain poured outside with a deep chant which embraced the silence of her comprehension – she knew what he was thankful for. It was mainly her existence, her presence, but it was also her hushed support, the willingness of a touch that could as well be a balm for his stressed, fragmented mind.

"Sam," Emily whispered, the sound emerging softly from the dormant dark. "How much do you trust the Cullens, if you trust them at all?"

He wasn't bothered by this, by the evocation of a subject which until then had weighed like bricks on his mind. Emily held him to the world of the living, but in moments like this she pulled him into the section where his sense of self was a priori and everything else was possibly part of the downpour outside.

"I suppose– enough," he said honestly. A fragile kind of trust was how it could be defined, fomented by the lack of misdeeds, the mingling with the humans in town, the comradery shown without charge. None of that changed their nature, but it eased most of his fears about them, planted in him the belief that peace between them and the tribe (without the barely contained hate) could be a constant. He'd thought he was incapable of communicating through spoken language with them, only through Edward's mailing, unless it was extremely necessary, but clearly that'd been a wrong idea.

"I didn't get to thank him," she murmured, and Sam unfolded the regret in her voice until the reasons behind its presence became clear. His chest exhaled through the breathing holes in the mortar that he'd had to fill the old cracks with, because she valued him, worried over his safety, and it was the greatest feeling in the world.

"Would you like to?" he murmured back, because his mind posed no objections. After today's events he thought life in La Push was possibly much more daring than on the other side of the border. Besides, he was grateful, too, for having been warned before his physical integrity could embark on the chance of being corrupted. Rosalie was the blond one, the territorial one, and she was evidently more hostile than the others, and Jasper… He had a projectable gift that made him potentially dangerous, and his aura frothed above a casual sort of indifference which contrasted sharply against Edward and Carlisle's noticeable empathy. The risk had been lurking, and perhaps it'd never show itself in daylight – perhaps nothing would've happened, but Edward had made an effort anyway, had acted responsibly when he could've just let it go, especially after what Jacob had done to him.

"Yeah."

A flash of light gushed into the room and dispersed in less than a second, and moments later a loud rumble was heard, amongst the white noise created by the rain.

"That's okay," Sam mumbled, and shifted slowly, bending his arm behind his head. Dead tree leaves mingled in the ceiling, fluttering eerily against the natural light filtered by the window panes. A distant kind of worry settled into the space behind his breastbone and perturbed only slightly the beating of his pumping muscle, returning from the near past with a gentler approach. "Emily," he sighed.

She ran her hand over his bare stomach, and replied with a whisper, "Yes?"

"What do I do?"

"Sleep," she hummed against his shoulder. His torso shook around the low laugh that flipped his lungs – a laugh that died peacefully, amidst the hope contained in the seriousness of his question.

"Should I be stricter?" he wondered. He'd also thought the hardest phase was over, that they were over their volatile stage, and now there were only the younger ones to worry about.

"This isn't your fault, Sam." Emily twisted beneath the bed sheets until her head was lying on his chest. "I know it feels like the pack is running hot, like something might blow up at any moment, but what happened today is between Edward and Jacob. That much is clear."

"Yeah," he breathed. It didn't take a genius to figure that Jacob's reasons for attacking the telepath were rooted in a particular issue, something that didn't involve the pack. In fact, they'd all seen the images that'd flitted across his mind just before he'd jumped. "But it's just – everyone just stood around. He laid there in pain for a good ten minutes, and Seth was the only one who tried to see if he was okay. And it bothers me, because I'm sure that if it was the other way around any one of us would be getting help right away. Hell, Edward fought his way out of whatever stupor he was in to help me, while I only moved when he passed out trying to get away from us."

The peacefulness of the moment withered away, only to be replaced by palpable guilt, a stone that clanked against the pit of his stomach.

"You couldn't ignore his nature," Emily said softly.

"Why does he have to ignore mine?"

That quieted them both for a couple of minutes. Of course – Sam didn't actually believe that his pack was that lucky. The Cullens had their reservations as well, partly bred in a blurry reflection of the wolves' distaste, but at least they saw them as people worthy of assistance and common courtesy. The more he mused, the more his pack and even the tribe's blatancy, the boasting of their hate for the Cullens, seemed like an instrument of pathetic oppression. The image of a dog barking and snarling at an immobilized feline wouldn't leave his head.

Say the cougar had been put in a cage, considered too dangerous to be out there, and seeing no movement the dog went on barking, snarling, responding irrationally to the presence of another animal.

But seeing as they were rational he could justify their behavior by arguing that they were the good ones, that they didn't suck blood, that they were better than any Cullen by nature.

He could say no more. None of that made sense to him now.

Damn, he was tired.

"I'm meeting with the Council tomorrow morning," he muttered, closing his eyes. His lungs emptied themselves with a sound that overshadowed the static outside, and he felt his muscles melting onto the sheets, his tension sinking into the mattress, and Emily becoming warmth and softness, undefined, against his side.

"It'll be fine," she said. Faintly. Like she was falling under as well.

Sam threaded his fingers through the thick strands of her hair, caressed them, while the rain beat unbidden against the windows, and only stopped when sleep wrapped him up in its gentle hug.