I don't own twilight or the characters from twilight.

Madonna - Gone

Chapter 21

JPOV

"Any time now. I can feel him on the air." I commented to Sam. We stood in my backyard waiting impatiently.

"Old Quil has gone through the changes so fast. Why is that?" Sam pondered.

"It's not his first time is my guess. I wonder what his mind is like." Until now, we had tried not to talk about the impending addition. We were worried about Old Quil finding out what we were thinking later. We kept our thoughts at a minimum.

"One of us should phase. It's Barbie and Paul on patrol right now, he's probably teasing her." I sighed.

"Yeah, why is Paul patroling with Barbie?" Sam asked me.

"She wanted to go see a Miley Cyrus movie so she switched with Quil." We both shuddered at the thought of watching Miley Cyrus at the movies. The girl was poisoning the pack mind. We used to think about the Playboy channel.

I was a little scared of sharing mind space with Old Quil. I was supposed to retain my leadership as Alpha with an ancient man under my command. How does that work? Besides Billy coming next. I just didn't feel right being in charge of the elders. Why couldn't Billy be Alpha? I wanted to avoid this as long as possible. But Sam was my second in command. He was in the same position as I was. I wasn't sure where the three elders would fit in the pecking order of things.

Initially pecking order was by ancestry and then by age. As Embry was unsure of ancestry, I had taken him under the Black name. Uley's had been second in charge for generations, so we continued this order. But soon challenges began. Stronger, faster, better fighters challenged those higher in the pecking order. Unfortunately the truth was that we were a pack of wolves and I couldn't find a better way to find order than to allow these challenges. Many challenges were solved with signs of submission. But some came down to fights. After numerous challenges our pecking order stood as follows. Myself, Sam, Paul, Embry, Quil, Jared, Seth, Daniel, Leah, Collin, Brady, Javier, Etu, Lenno and Barbie. Each of my pack knew their place. Leah and Daniel had fought and traded places multiple times. I was surprised Seth had been held his rank so well and Jared hadn't held over Embry and Quil. He didn't seem to be too concerned with rank. Leah was bothered by young Daniel and Seth holding rank over her. But she was a good deal smaller. Only Barbie was smaller than Leah. She should have been impressed that she held rank over Colling, Brady, Javier, Etu and Lenno. She proved that size didn't determine rank.

All this said, we had settled into a dynamic. Where were Billy, Old Quil and Susan going to fit into this pecking order? Or would they, as elders, exist outside of this pecking order? For all intents and purposes, Bella was a part of our pack and yet she existed outside of the pecking order. Neither above or below. But she didn't share out thoughts. The spark in the air indicated that someone had phased. Sam and I looked at each other before turning away to remove our clothes to phase.

'Life's what you make it!' Barbie was singing crap music through her head gleefully knowing how much it would disturb Paul. His mind was screaming and begging and pleading for her to stop.

'Barbie, do you have to torture the man?' I asked her feeling empathy for him. She shared an image of him remembering a centerfold from Hustler magazine that he saw this afternoon only he had replaced the woman's face with Barbie's.

'Paul! It's Barbie!' We were disgusted. He covered his face with his paws and whined.

'I didn't mean to. I was hanging out remembering something, then she phased and her face just popped up in the picture.' I saw the moment replayed from his perspective. I wanted to smack him upside the head. But I could see that mistake had been payed for with half an hour of Barbie singing preteen songs in her head.

'Didn't Quil mention that he was switching?' Barbie asked, referring to Quil Jr.

'Nope.' Paul grumbled. He clearly felt his manhood had been ravaged in all of this.

'Barbie, go. We'll take care of patrol.' As soon as she left, a stream of x-rated thoughts sprang forward.
'Oh God, that was torture.' Me, Sam and Paul exclaimed shock hearing Old Quil's graphic thoughts release in a whirlwind.
'I haven't shared my thoughts in a long time and then I saw Paul's images from his porn. I've never tried to withold thoughts from a young girl before. I never had to share a mind with a young girl before. I couldn't interact and keep those thoughts to one side. I think I'm going to need some practice before I share minds with Leah and Dinah. And why are you calling her Barbie?' Old Quil stumbled on his thoughts almost stuttering. He slowly became more coherent. I felt bad for him. I saw a small taste of previous packs in his memory where they openly shared x-rated thoughts. That was us before Leah. Now we were always on guard.

'Calling her Barbie helped remind us how old she is even if she looks like an eighteen year old centerfold. She was playing with Barbies still last year. The mantra became her nickname. Besides, she doesn't like to get muddy.' Paul explained feeling embarrassed still about his gaff from earlier. Old Quil marvelled at having to deal with these issues as Billy and him had wondered about this but hadn't deigned to get involved in pack consciouness.

It was strange sharing minds with a new wolf that wasn't new. Old Quil wasn't freaking out. He was just having to adjust to a pack with a different situation. He noticed that our minds worked differently than he was used to. He could see how our technology had sequenced our thoughts differently. Despite regaining a youthful mind, our thoughts were more rapid and seemed more random. He was also more aware of how little we knew about the scenery. We couldn't name many species of plants even for their uses but we knew hundreds of celebrities, books, movies and random information. There was a marked difference between how his mind worked and how the information age affected our thought processes. He deliberated his thoughts and decisions seeking balance. We filtered and scanned information for relevance and accepted what we considered a logical solution shortly. His mind was like time travel.

It was a sort of reassurance that someone so much older was having difficulty with a girl sharing his head. He was curious as to what Barbie added to the pack given that she didn't like getting muddy. We explained her temper and how we were harnessing it. Old Quil was reminded of a wolf generations back that Barbie was related to. 'Docile and even tempered. At least until he got hurt. We had to pull his wolf off the shredded vampire remains to burn it. He was pure instinct when triggered. Of course, there were two other vampires and he ignored them entirely. He was too busy ripping apart his attacker.'

'We should go for a run. Want to help cover Barbies patrol?' I asked. He knew the route all too well. I saw many previous nights that he had patrolled this route. Only he remained constant. The landscape had made minor changes over the years. He remembered old battles and wolves and characters drawing parallels to relations. It was surreal to see other generations of Alpha's looking so much like Billy in his memories. Old Quil chuckled inwardly remembering watching Billy growing up and struggling to not obey Billy as he automatically submitted to his Alpha. Billy would be the only replica that Old Quil had seen that didn't become Alpha. And even now, he wasn't destined to be Alpha. His son was Alpha. As we ran routes, Old Quil shared memories of forgotten times, forgotten customs and ceremonies he hadn't dared to share. Most had been forgotten in the late nineteenth century with the influx of pale faces, disease, war and hunger. While the tribe had always been small, it had been strong and robust.

One memory was particularly poignant. His first wife. We saw images of a girl close to Barbie's age. He had been watching her for years before he reached his sixteenth summer. He knew others were interested and he needed to make sure his interests were known before her father married her off. Otherwise he would have been too afraid to go through the customs. She was too important to him to procrastinate the way that he procrastinated about other things. He remembered sweetly bedding her for their first time. He watched her grow round with his child but halfway through her time she grew sick. They tried to help her but she grew weak and deteriorated. Eventually she went into labour too early and they had not choice but to sit by and watch helplessly as she and their child died. His mourning triggered his first phase. At the very least, they didn't have to hide the wolves when he was young. It wasn't a secret. She was burned into his memory. I felt all the more grateful for Bella and EJ.

We had been watching Old Quil's memories for sometime before he came to his memory of meeting the Cullens. They had a human girl with them that Edward kept in his embrace. She was clearly uncomfortable and squirmed away from him. During negotiations Ephraim included inquiring if she wanted to stay with the Cullens or if she preferred to stay with the tribe. Dr Cullen explained her parents had died and they had not intentions of abandoning her. Ephraim had asked Georgina if she wished to stay with the tribe or stay with the Cullens. She had gone with the tribe to most of the Cullens relief. Only Edward seemed disappointed. She had been covered in bruises. But as any young white woman of her day, she never considered marrying into the tribe. She married a pale face trader by the name of Douglas Swan agreeing to not speak of all she knew after the Cullens had left. They had gone to Seattle and many years later her son had moved to Forks to start his own family where Charlie was born and later Bella. Old Quil had been disturbed to see Edward have another daughter from that family in his clutches. The same brown doe eyes staring out him as they had before. It mu'st have hurt Edward to have 'the girl' choose the tribe over Edward a second time. Watching Old Quil's memories brought home one lesson. History really did repeat itself.

We practiced phasing with Old Quil before determining that he was safe to join the rest of the population. Before he could leave another mind joined us, sooner than we had expected. Like the rest of us, this mind was experiencing pain in their first phase. Billy had grown taller, although we didn't usually see how tall he was, Old Quil and Billy remembered what height he had been before the wheelchair. The pain was new and different, but Billy was used to pain. He had felt it physically and emotionally since the day he lost his wife and was confined to a wheelchair. He could handle pain. His life had been painful for so long that it was a bitter friend. He was more stunned by the sensation of being mobile than by experiencing phasing into a dog. For the first time in almost ten years he was walking. Of course, he was walking on all fours, but he was joyful. He only wished that he could have Sarah with him. It hurt to see and feel just how much he missed her. Walking was rehashing all of his memories and emotions. Things that he locked away to focus on his day to day life. I saw just how much Harry and Charlie had done to keep him functional as a father with twin daughters and young son after the accident.

'How old was Mom when she had Rach and Rebecca?' The twins were slightly older than Bella, but he looked younger than Charlie when Mom died.

'Seventeen.' Old Quil and Billy laughed. I suddenly understood why Charlie and Billy took the teen pregnancy in stride. Charlie was nineteen when Bella was born and she was the same age when she had EJ. Billy was the same age as me when Mom had the twins. It wasn't what they had hoped for us, but they knew we would manage. We never really talked about Mom. I'd never stopped to think about how old they were when they had us

'You're thirty-six?' Sam asked, I could hear the back of his mind doing the math.

'Thirty-seven.' Billy corrected. Sam was twenty-four. I decided it was time to get back to task. We needed Billy to begin learning control. We began practicing phasing between human and wolf. He adjusted just as well as I had but still had much work to do.

'I haven't felt this good in fifty years. Leave Billy with me, we'll take care of this. You two get back to your girlfriends.' Old Quil reassured me and Sam. 'When are you proposing to Bella, Jake?' Old Quil threw in. Sam and Leah had their wedding plans well under way. I remembered my last conversation with Bella about marriage.

'Renee has beaten it into Bella's head that she won't marry straight out of high school because the commitment is too big.' The guys laughed.

'Dude, she gave birth to your son. Isn't that a bigger commitment?' Paul asked. I remembered her exact words.

"I'd rather tell Renee that I boiled live kittens than tell her that I got engaged." I recalled her face and words verbatim for them.

'I had no idea Renee was that scarred from her divorce from Charlie.' Billy chuckled.

'Any conversations involving the words 'marriage' with Bella end with her looking like a deer caught in headlights. Maybe when she isn't so skittish. I'd love my ring on her finger though.' Old Quil seemed to be the most confused.

'Things sure have changed among young people since I last phased.' He commented.

I phased back to human and enjoyed the walk back to Bella and EJ. It wasn't far. I could hear her singing to him as she made dinner. All of the words were nonsensical and he was squealing in delight. I could already picture them with him in his highchair.

"Hi Bells! 'S'up Little Man?" I pulled EJ out of his highchair and greeted Bella. Bella used to be so serious whenever I left and until I came back. But leaving her with EJ, he seemed to keep her smiling much of the time. I appreciated help keeping my Bells smiling. We ate dinner as a family but missed Dad at the table. Billy wasn't going to be ready to eat in the house for a least a week, so I brought out helpings for him in the backyard. EJ laughed hysterically seeing the big dog trot over to us. We averted our eyes while he phased and hung out at a distance while he ate. I almost couldn't remember Dad walking. It was so strange to see. He had tears in his eyes.

"I wish I could have this but look my age." He laughed.

"It is a little weird having my boyfriends father look the same age as my boyfriend." Bella grinned. I was only an inch or two taller than Billy and he had a marginally heavier build.

Bella and EJ stayed outside while I went into clean up the dishes from dinner. I listened inside as Bella asked questions about Billy phasing for the first time as she rocked EJ off to sleep. Billy left and Bella brought EJ putting him down for night. I thought about everything I had seen in Old Quil's and Billy's memories. The fact that Bella wasn't willing to marry was bothering me now more than ever. I couldn't just let this go. It had been immature of me to so easily drop the subject. Bella needed better reasons than she had given me. Fear of her mother and fear of commitment were both things that we could work though. At least, I thought we could. We really needed to talk about this. I smiled to myself. She begged me for sex the first time and I wanted the wedding. Our roles were reversed once again.

AN: Hope you enjoyed it. I wasn't sure whether to skip over the elders phasing but decided to add it.