There was whistling. There was crackling. There was stepping. There was movement. There was breeze. There was warmth.

This passing out thing seemed to be happening with a lot of frequency lately and I was none to pleased with it. I really hoped it stop. I also really hoped imaginary creatures would stop popping into my life. Or dreams?

I distinctly remembered getting chased around my yard by a pair of vampires. But that couldn't be right. I wouldn't be alive. I wouldn't be thinking about it at this very moment. What if they had changed me? My head spun and stomach rolled at the very thought, but that alone told me I must've still been human.

As my brain realized that it still had a stomach, I became aware of the rest of my body. This wasn't disembodied dreaming. I was conscious. I just had my eyes closed. And – oddly enough – I was hearing some weird things.

I opened my eyes. I was on my porch, laying on one of the lawn chairs. I sat up – rather too quickly apparently, because I got a serious case of vertigo and an instant throb in the back of my skull.

"Whoa!" I heard a low bass. "Slow down there, killer. You took quite a bump." I felt my shoulders pressed back and I compromised by at least sitting up a little straighter. My vision cleared and I could see Brady, sitting on the porch next to me, his legs dangling over the edge as he carefully guided my unstable self back to a more realistic position.

"Brady?" I muttered. The words were in my head but they weren't coming out of my mouth quite yet. I still had a bit of a disconnect. I looked around me, smelling something heady and unfamiliar. My yard was hazy and my gaze trained back behind me towards the corner where the grass gave way to open woods. I saw a fire teeming and snapping. Acrid, purple-black smoke billowed from the pyre. Copious amounts puffed into the sky as a small remainder hovered low over the yard like dull fog.

My vision was fuzzy, but I could still see someone – a pack someone – standing close to the blaze. His arms were crossed, his back was to us. I looked back to Brady, who I could only vaguely discern.

"Would you please just… not move for a while? I'd feel a lot better." Brady looked worried. And not just about my stumbling around like a concussed drunk. Like a bigger general concern.

"Why does my head hurt?" I whined with a groggy voice as I laid back and closed my eyes.

"You were attacked, Rachel." Brady was apparently not up on my thinking I imagined recent history. Nor was he going to sugarcoat anything. Apparently. "You torched two rogue newborns in the middle of your yard, just as me and Collin got here. You smacked your head against the rock-hard ground."

"Ugh," I sighed in response.

"Doctor Fang patched you up. Said you probably had a concussion. He wanted you to take it easy for a while."

Ew. That did not make me feel any better. Carlisle was nice enough when I thought he was human. Now that I knew all the havoc he and his family wreaked on this small little community, I was not happy to have been an unwilling patient.

Brady must've recognized my disgusted face. "Hey, he's the only choice we got. Regular doctors ask questions and file reports if you call 911 because there's an unconscious girl, a raging wild fire and two mutant dogs in someone's yard."

"Still… I don't want him…" I fumbled for the word I wanted as I rolled onto my side towards Brady, "…around me. That's creepy."

"Bloodsucker he may be, but he's a good resource. He's inside with your brother now."

"Jake?" I asked sitting bolt upright. Again – far too quickly for my skull to appreciate. I sat for a moment, nursing my perceptions of the horizon back into reality as I thought over the days events. Vampires in my yard. Because of that epic vampire battle, with all the newborns. And Jake was hurt. That meant…

"Oh my god," I wailed as realization crashed around me. "Is he okay?" I stood up rather haphazardly, gripping the siding so I didn't fall off the open porch. I stumbled forward a few steps, scraping my knee against the doorframe but couldn't get much further.

"He'll. Be. Fine." Brady told me firmly as he stopped my path and propped me up. He guided me back to the lawn chair. "Please. Just at least sit up for a while? I don't need you getting more injured. I'm here to make sure you don't do anything stupid. Otherwise someone will kill me."

"Like who?" I asked.

"Well, I don't know," Brady remarked sarcastically. "Maybe the line of intimidating men you know. Paul, Jake, your dad?"

"You're afraid of my dad?" I asked flatly.

"You don't know him like the rest of us do. He's a nice old guy, but he can totally kick my ass."

"What's wrong with my brother?" I asked quietly.

"He's in a lot of pain," Brady admitted staring at the floorboards he was sitting on. "But he's supposed to be fine. He got really messed up, but it shouldn't take him too long to heal up."

"What happened?" My voice was a whisper. I was torn between an absolute desperate desire to know what happened and to never want to here the course of events. Ever.

"It was Leah," he nodded. "She got caught with a newborn on her own. Jake went to help her, but he got chewed out. He's knocked out right now."

"Why?" I asked. "I thought it wasn't that bad?"

Brady laughed once with that one. He looked up and was smiling. "Carlisle is absolutely running blind when it comes to giving meds to him because his metabolism is so jacked. So he's either got nothing and is swearing six ways to Sunday, or he gets too much and gets knocked out. Apparently he should be up in a while, but… Carlisle pretty much told us he was going to be stoned out of his mind."

I couldn't help but smile with that one. "Awesome." I had to stick around for that. "What else? Anymore bad news I should know about now?"

"Not really," Brady shook his head and I could tell he was being honest. "Battle went well enough. Between us and the Cullens, the entire army and their leader got polished off. We kind of amscrayed after that."

"Another coven – apparently a really important, really dangerous one – came to find out about all the ruckus. But they don't really know about us… We figured we'd lay low."

I nodded. Trying to process it all. Brady hadn't mentioned any other catastrophes. I assumed everyone else was all right. "Okay. I can see all right now. Can I move about freely?"

He stood up. "Walk from here to the end of the porch." He placed his hands on his hips and pointed with one hand. For a moment he looked like a little boy in his stance. Brady appeared to be about eighteen or twenty, which – if his heightened growth matched the rate of Jake and Paul's – probably put him at about thirteen. I didn't think much beyond that. I was trying to keep my head straight.

I took a few careful steps. When I didn't fall over I walked to the other end of the porch, pivoted and returned. "There," I said proudly.

"Okay," he said glancing back to the one standing at the fire. "I'm going inside with Jared, Seth and Leah. Call out if you're going to fall over and die or something?"

I rolled my eyes, "Sure, sure."

Brady stuck his hands in his pockets and moseyed back into my house. I took the three steps off the porch carefully. I turned towards the figure at the fire. I had figured out who it was. I walked carefully across the grass, the dissipating smoke burning in my nose.

I placed a careful hand on Paul's arm as I approached from behind. "That smells horrible," I said quietly.

"I think that is the best smell in the whole world," Paul said flatly. His voice was distant and cold. Like he wasn't all there. I let my hand slide down and slip into his own, allowing my fingers to twine with his.

For a while he just stood there. No moving. No talking. Nothing. He had that inalterable face. Like he'd been carved of wood. I didn't like that face. He never got that way around me. After a while I took another stop forward, standing between him and the now mellowing fire. "Would you please say something?"

He looked towards my slightly lower face. He seemed surprised that I was there. With his other hand he reached up behind me. "How's your head?" he asked. His face shifted and came back to life. He was worried about me. I winced slightly as his warm and careful fingers ghosted over the raw stitches on the back of my head.

"No permanent damage," I shrugged. "You okay? Because you've just been standing over here. You're worrying me."

He laughed once without humor and pulled me a little closer. "I've been better."

As the fire hushed to a pile of coals I coaxed Paul over to the steps at least where I got him to sit down. I sat beside him as he put an arm around me, preventing my shivering in the evening cold.

He was only slightly more responsive than when he was standing. He kept me warm but he was still just staring right ahead, like he was seeing something inside his own head.

"You know, when you left here you were a completely different person. Did something happen out there?" I asked. "Something I should know about."

His head swayed down to mine. "When I left, you were safe and fully intact."

That's what he was mourning over? "As opposed to my being safe and fully intact now?" I was not playing into this. No way.

"As opposed to your being attacked by two vampires, Rachel. As opposed to that."

"It was an accident, Paul. I'm fine. It was my own fault. I got stupid and opened the door."

He just shook his head. "Rach, this isn't your fault. I shouldn't have… I shouldn't have left you…" Now that he came out with it, I wasn't surprised. I should've seen it. He was going to let this eat away at him unless I nipped it in the bud.

"Well, what are you going to do? Just sit around and watch me all the time? You have a job, Paul. You can't just protect me. You have to help the rest of La Push too."

"But I shouldn't have—"

"Bull," I said. "You're going to have to step away from me on occasion. It can't be helped. Even if you were the one patrolling – not Collin and Brady – do you really think you would have been able to get here any faster? It could've happened to anyone. To Emily, to Kim, to Sue… It was an accident. I'm all right now."

"It was way too close for comfort."

"You have a hazardous job, my dear. It comes with the territory. I get it."

"That doesn't bother you?" he inquired.

"What? Your job hazards? No. Not more than I suppose is natural." I worried about him and all the others, but it wasn't something that normally kept me up at night. Only in these types of extenuating circumstances. Which I was kind of hoping weren't going to roll around too often.

"With all of it," he amended. "The job hazards, the stress, me. Is it worth it?"

I sat slightly away from his side at this point so as to see his face. He was just staring into my yard, his face eight different shades of torture. What kind of pain did it cause a wolf to tell his imprint: it's okay if you leave me?

I stood up and swung a leg over to his other side so I could sit on his lap. I held his face in my hands and angled his gaze to my own. "I would not trade it for anything," I uttered point blank. "I love you and all your freakish wolfy-habits."

He reached up and took my hands in his own. Holding them between us, he watched them. "I lost it, Rachel."

I was not sure what he was trying to say, but I was pretty sure this is why he wasn't actually able to meet my gaze for more than a few moments. "It?" I hedged.

"Control," he muttered. "I could see, in Collin and Brady's heads, what was happening. I got back here just as Collin was tearing that female to bits. But I couldn't stay human. I was so mad… I just… for hours, I stalked around in those trees over there," he indicated over my shoulder. "I was too angry to shift back and scared shitless of leaving you."

"That's why I made Brady leave you on the porch. He couldn't fit in your house shifted and I wanted to be able to see you."

This was it. He was ashamed of his loss of control. I had still yet to bear first-hand experience to one of Paul's rage-induced unintentional shifts, but I knew they happened. Usually it was something trite, another pack mate antagonizing him. This was admittedly a bigger deal. I had been hurt. Big time. Down for the count, not even conscious and aware of my surroundings. And he was so angry about leaving me, so angry about not being there to help me, that he couldn't shift back. He had to make Brady guard over me like a mother bear.

How do you react to that? How do I tell him it's okay? I always know that there's other pack and family to help me out in a pinch, but I am the uncompromising center of Paul's universe. How do I explain to him that his being physically and mentally MIA is all right. It would royally offend him; he'd just beat himself up further.

I can't just tell him it's okay. Because for him, it really is not okay. By any degree for which the word 'okay' may be judged. And this isn't anything I can help him with. This isn't housework. This isn't school. This isn't people.

This isn't anything that I can be more involved in beyond observer status. I can only watch. And for all it pains him to lose control he does always come back to me. His overwrought, stressed-out, self-deprecating, human self. He comes back to help me. But I can never meet him on the other side. I can't shift into a wolf and help him. I'm stuck here. Human. Like there's this force field around me. I can see everything that's happening, but I can't move from my spot to help him.

And he's not the type to ever ask anyone for help. Boys are not particularly perceptive. And I know that despite their shared mind, the pack only gets a taste for what's happening in each other's heads. You can only pay attention to ten other minds at any given point for so long. And outside trivial things, they sort of let stuff slide. They don't touch on anything unless asked, because you might be thinking about something you don't want to talk about. How can you help it?

Sam is older and does kind of coach each one of them along. He's remarkably paternalistic. A good guide for all of them. He's never said, but I know he worries about Paul's temper. Sam's only been shifting a few months longer than Paul. He's concerned his control isn't developing at the rate of others. But he feels bad treating him like one of the new kids. He can't keep him away from people forever.

"Paul," I began, trying to feel my way blindly through this conversation. "I'm your imprint, right?"

"Yeah…" he trailed. "I thought we cleared that one up a while ago."

"Okay," I rolled my eyes. "What is the most important thing to you? In your whole life."

"Knowing that you are safe and happy," he said deliberately.

"Does this look like a happy face," I asked, trying to maintain whatever expression I had been using – so he could accurately judge. He looked up from our hands.

"No," he shook his head morosely. "You look…" he paused searching for the right word to describe what he felt coming off me, "worn."

"Do you know why?" I didn't allow him to respond but kept going. "Because you imprinted on me, Paul. You are by default rather high up on my priority list. I didn't imprint, so on occasion things like food, sleep and my need for the bathroom will outrank you in importance for minutes at a time but you are damn high up there, my boy."

He continued to stare downward between our laps as I sat on him. He eventually released my hands as I used them to talk and was wrestling with his own head of hair.

"How do you think it makes me feel, seeing you completely tear yourself apart over things that may not necessarily be in your power to control?" I paused and then answered my own question, "It makes me sick."

"Rachel," Paul began. He sounded like he might've been still beating himself up over this, but at least marginally better for the first time. At the rate he was tugging on his hair he would be bald before sunrise. Before he continued I reached up and gently disentangled his fingers.

He looked up at me and his face wasn't so harsh. The ridged line between his brows was gone, they had pulled back and his eyes weren't in such shadow anymore. He wasn't smiling, but his mouth wasn't that tense line anymore either.

"Are you trying to imprint mind-fuck me into not beating myself up over this?"

"Is it working?" I uttered half tired, half hopeful.

He laughed once and this time there was the resurgence of a small grain of his humor. "A little."

I had somehow convinced Paul that my happiness was contingent on his own and that he should really try not to dig his own grave with this one accident. I know he'll never forget it and he'll protect me even more intensely from now own. As long as it's not slowly killing his soul like it had been – then that's just one step in the right direction.

He eventually mellowed out and moved from total depression and complete self-hate to telling himself that he fucked up (how he still convinced himself of that one, I'm not sure) and for one night: that was good enough for me. It was a few degrees closer to neutral ground.

We went back inside, as I was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. He held onto my hand like a life belt. I didn't mind. We got him some food, which Emily had been kind enough to prepare and we joined Seth, Leah, Jared and my dad in the living room.

I sat on the couch between Leah and Paul. Paul ate with one hand, and continued to hold my own. While he talked with Jared. I drew idle designs on the back of his hand as I talked to Leah.

For a brief second – and I mean brief as in almost entirely fleeting – I was mad at Leah. Because to get to my kitchen from the back porch I had to pass my brother's room, where I peeked in and saw him lying knocked out from painkillers. That sisterly instinct just sort of flared without my willing it to.

Then I reasoned with myself. She hardly pushed your brother in front of the barrel of a gun, Rachel. She was caught off guard and Jake helped her. Because he's a nice guy and a good packmate. There's no one to blame here.

"You all right?" I asked her as she stared into her mug of tea.

She shrugged one shoulder, "I guess so. I feel like a total load though." She looked up at me with an expression I rarely saw on her. Remorse. It was rare – not because she was a complete bitch and didn't feel it – I just don't think she always knew how to express it. Or maybe she saw it as a sign of weakness and didn't want the guys to see it. If she kept the hardened exterior, she wasn't as susceptible to friendly fire.

"I'm sorry," she told me honestly. "I really am. I should've known I couldn't take the leech on my own… And my—"

"Leah," I interrupted her. "I get it. I know you didn't mean for anyone to get hurt. In the end, we just get to see Jake all buzzed on painkillers, which should be a riot."

I knew for a fact that Sam was strict with his pack. Paul came home all the time yelling about what asshole he was and why the fuck was he demanding all this shit from people that they couldn't do. Sam expected a lot from them all and when things went wrong – like missed patrols or dangerous behavior – he wasn't shy about telling them what was what.

Leah and Sam's pack relationship is – as I can only imagine – stilted at best. But I also don't doubt he already read her the riot act about thinking before you act. He's got that one memorized. Because Paul reiterates it for me at least twice a week.

Basically, I didn't want her to keep spiraling downward. The fight was over. We won. Everyone was alive and (mostly) okay. There was no reason for everyone to be so morose. This should've been a happy victory. If I of all people had to be the beacon of positive energy for a few of these wolves for a few hours then so be it.