Hi all! Making a valiant attempt to not be quite as much of a bitch about updating in reasonable amounts of time. Unedited mess is unedited.

Also, a visit to the triggers/warnings/disclaimers link on my profile may be in order for this chapter.

Chapter 25: A Light From the Shadows Shall Spring

And the heart is hard to translate
it has a language of its own
it talks in tongues and quiet sighs
and prayers and proclamations
in the grandest of great men
in the smallest of gestures
in short shallow gasps

Florence + the Machine's "All This and Heaven Too"

Sunday, April 27, 2008 cont.

Paul had no idea how the hell to say what he needed to say. And as a result, he'd already called Jake's phone, listened to the voicemail beep and hung up. Twice. He felt like a damn chick, which was actually a pretty twisted irony considering he was standing outside having a conniption fit over a phone call while Jezzie laid inside and was slowly poisoned.

Beep!

"Jake, it's Paul. You need to call me back as soon as you get this. This shit's important... It's Jezzie."

"She's what?!" Jacob yelled into the phone. He actually yelled. Paul wasn't scared, but he was startled. Jacob was not the yelling type. And he never yelled within the confines of Pack-related business.

"I don't know what's happening to her," Paul replied as he stepped outside the motel room. Jezzie wasn't exactly sleeping peacefully. She had actually crawled to the closet and closed the door. She took the blanket with her, and Paul could see that she was – once again – sweating to death. He stepped outside mostly because he didn't want her to hear him talking about her. Didn't need to freak her out any more than necessary.

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

"No, I'm not," Paul replied in a lowered tone. "And if you could stop screaming into the receiver, that'd be great… Look, she seems to be surviving it. She's still coherent, she's just a little… well, loopy."

"Loopy?"

"Yeah, Jake. She might be turning into a werewolf, so as you can imagine she's a little irritable. But I need to talk to one of the werewolves. I don't know if that's what's actually happening or if she's just flipping the fuck out about everything. There's a lot of shit involved in this and she crawled into the closet an hour ago growling, and it's starting to freak me the fuck out."

"Okay, okay," Jacob interrupted. "I'll have Damian give you a call. In the meantime, don't tell anyone else."

"Because I have so much time to gossip."

"Hang up the goddamn phone."

"Jezzie?" Paul asked tentatively as he slid the closet door open. There was a growl, followed by a sharp pain in his hand. He let go of the door and shook his hand automatically. "Fuck… that hurt. Jezzie, don't do that. We got enough problems without you clawing my skin off."

He slid the door open the rest of the way and since Jezzie made no move to leave the closet, he sat inside with her. Her forehead was pressed to her knees, and her hands were wound into her unruly red hair. Her toes were curled into the carpet, and there were scratches on the closet's sliding door. She appeared to be rocking. "I just talked with Damian. Do you want to know what he told me, or do you want me to leave you alone?"

"Tell me," she croaked quietly.

"Given your symptoms, he says you're probably not transforming."

"So what's wrong with me?" she asked shortly.

"Not a damn clue," Paul replied. "What does it feel like?"

"Everything's just kind of burning… but it's going away. The burning. But it still hurts." Jezzie explained slowly.

"Damian said the burning would ratchet up if you were transforming," Paul supplied. "Maybe you're body's fighting it off."

"Fucking wonderful," she growled. Jezzie had become exponentially more irate and abrasive in the past few hours. Paul thought part of it was the sheer amount of pain she was in. She growled in pain, and her head slammed back and into the wall. "Do we know anything else? Did he say how long it takes to fight off the contagion?"

Paul just watched with wide eyes, as Jezzie tried not to writhe too much. "No," Paul continued. "Apparently, it doesn't happen very often. Usually you have to be bit to transform. He said a deep cut will do the trick, but yours isn't deep. The thing is… there aren't a lot of occasions for werewolves to issue a minor surface wound. The victim usually is picked to be killed or changed, there's not a lot of reason or precedent for this."

"Goody," Jezzie replied. "How far are we into this?"

"Well, Azrael got you about ten hours ago," Paul leaned outside the closet to check the time.

"The body filters all the blood in your body about once every hour… So whatever is left in my system is in other places. My organs, my tissue, wherever. The burning is passing, but hell is it being replaced by pain."

"Huh?"

"My whole entire body is radiating with an excruciating, vice-like pain," Jezzie explained, as she curled into the corner of the closet. "Ow…"

She winced and Paul couldn't help but mirror the action. It was hard to watch the girl who was normally so full of life roll into a defensive ball of pain. "Can I do anything? Or get anything?"

"Do we know anything about the others, yet?" Jezzie asked.

Paul shook his head. He'd heard from no one except Jake. "Why? What do you need?"

Jezzie began thunking her forehead into the wall in rhythmic pattern that Paul would have assumed was vaguely painful. "I just want my boyfriend."

Paul paced outside for a little while, wondering what the fuck he was gonna do in the middle of Georgia while Jezzie's body did whatever the hell it was doing when there was a shape-shifter pup, a vampire hybrid child, and two werewolf children in the room next door.

Jezzie was probably not going to be a werewolf, but she was in a lot of pain and Paul didn't blame her for a second for being worried as shit about Embry even being alive. Paul figured that Jezzie – much like him and some of the others – had been forced into such long-term emergency mode, that they only now began to realize how much all-consuming panic they were holding onto about the people they loved.

Unfortunately, there was not really anything Paul could do for the girl. He'd stopped trying to connect into the Pack's hivemind days ago. Normally, the La Push wolves fought together and very close to home. That was what their wolves were made for. The collective consciousness was not built to deal with dozens of outside actors spread across so much land. With each wolf seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, feeling so many different things at once it became chaos. Because they were so spread out, no one was seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, or feeling any of the same things and to have all that information coming from a dozen different people at once caused the mind to grind to a halt.

All the wolves had opted out of the telepathic communication, for the most part. At least to the extent that they could. They could avoid pouring gas on the fire, but there was little in the way of other damage control. They couldn't avoid bleeding raw emotion through the Pack bond. As a result all the wolves could feel the panic from La Push when the woods began to go up in flames. The only reason they knew the panic was coming from La Push was because it emanated in equal parts from three conscious minds. No one could differentiate the spare and fleeting moments of individual anxiety or the spikes of pain that bounced around the Pack mind like an echo chamber.

Something had been slightly off kilter since earlier that day. It had felt like something had been knocked off an internal shelf and shattered into a million pieces all over the floor. Something valuable, that couldn't be replaced. Paul had assumed that it was Collin and Jezzie. He assumed that even the light tug the human held on his consciousness was responding to her attack in conjunction with a pup being almost killed. But Collin was probably going to be fine. And Jezzie was losing her marbles, but she also was probably not dying. And that left Paul wondering why he felt off-balance. Almost literally off-balance, as if he had to compensate with every other step…

He couldn't explain it, and he figured he wasn't going to get any answers any time soon. So he decided he would deal with it later, and check on the children in the room next door.

He tried to draw on his reserves of calm energy as he stepped inside. Collin was sitting up and talking, even with his massively bandaged head. Abi and Nessie were playing checkers with crackers on the floor. And Zachary was flipping through TV channels. All four looked at Paul immediately.

"What?" he asked, at a loss.

"You reek, dude," Collin informed him plainly.

Zachary just looked him up and down, told everyone he had to pee, and closed the bathroom door. Abi sat next to Paul on the bed and looked at him quizzically. "You smell like werewolfs," she said sadly.

"Is Jezzie gonna be a werewolf?" Nessie asked pulling her knees up to her chest.

"Nah, kiddo, I don't think so." Paul felt relieved being able to say it out loud.

"Well, that's not so bad," Abi decided.

"I'd say so," Paul replied. There might've been worse things than being a werewolf, but he was pretty sure being a werewolf just generally sucked all around.

"When Zachary and I were turned to werewolfs, lots of people were still scared of werewolfs."

"I think people are still scared," Paul replied.

"Yes, they are," Abi nodded in agreement. "But they think werewolfs are just stories now. So they don't try to pester us. And we don't have to live forever anymore."

"You're not immortal?" Paul asked in surprise. "But you guys got bit, like, a century ago."

Abi nodded. "A long time ago. But my mother… she always liked to work with plants. She found this flower that makes you normal. It's a special kind of one flower and you have to prepare it a certain way. She found out this winter."

"It cures you?" Paul asked dubiously.

Abi shook her head. "No, it makes you get old like regular people. So me and Zachary use it now… and we'll start to get big like everybody else."

"And you'll mature, and grow old, and die someday?"

Abi nodded. "Isn't that wonderful?"

Monday, April 28, 2008

Jezzie had been out in the motel parking lot with Nessie, Zach, and Abi. She'd found cheap sidewalk chalk when she went to the 7-11 for coffee for her and Paul (because if she had a coffee problem before, it was even worse now; especially given that her body recouped it's losses at night simply by making her stay human – true rest hadn't happened). She'd asked the motel owner if the kids could draw and he agreed so long as they didn't draw or write anything obscene.

None of them had talked much since the war had ended in their neck of the woods. Jezzie dearly hoped that they were just pensive. She hadn't wanted any of them to think of her as a killer, but it was better than risking her being hurt or killed. Then when she'd started slowly losing her mind and scratching at the walls the night the werewolf poison was in her system, well, Jezzie wouldn't have blamed anyone for thinking she was absolutely nuts. Ness didn't seem to have an aversion to Jezzie, and Zach and Abi's shyness didn't seem any different than normal. They still sidled up to her when they went to the room next door and visited Collin.

And she couldn't shake the nagging feeling that – like her – maybe the three little ones were wondering about their family and friends. She knew Zachary and Abigail had been victim of at least one Volturi attack recently, and Nessie lived in the heart of a wolfpack. As vague as Jezzie was in her explanations, how could these kids not overhear or intuit what exactly had been unfolding in recent months. They were young, not stupid. They must've been very worried. Because Jezzie was worried as all hell.

In a very serious way, Paul had concluded that Jacob was probably not dead. He was pretty sure that he would've felt it if the Alpha had died. Not to mention it would've accounted for some serious hierarchy shufflings. Nessie's tranquil state corroborated this. Paul was also sure that Rachel was fine… and, by extension, probably Addie. And while Jezzie was glad to hear this, she wanted more. What about Collin and Brady? Seth and Anna? Leah? Kim? Noah? Her dad? Veronica? Embry?

She couldn't help it but, that last name and face echoed around her head and into her consciousness more often than anyone else's. Completely uncalled for and unbeckoned random glimpses of his face or his laugh or the sight of him punching Quil in the arm would drift through her mind like tumbleweeds. And the more she thought about Embry, the more she began to think about the rest. And the thought of losing any of them, of losing Embry, made her throat close up; her stomach would churn, and without her permission she could feel the tears sting her eyes. All this could elapse in the course of a few minutes. And that's why Jezzie kept herself constantly busy when she wasn't asleep.

Because they hadn't heard from anyone. No one was picking up their phones. And Paul couldn't hear anyone the spare few times he'd gone outside to phase. Jezzie got so angry – how could they not call to tell them they were okay? How could they not know how worried they were here? – that she knocked the ice bucket and strategically stacked free toiletries over. Paul had just raised an eyebrow but told her to let it out.

Having Paul around helped. Having Paul around helped a lot. The Beta wolf calmed the minds of Pack with his presence. Not necessarily because Paul was a naturally peaceful being, though he'd definitely mellowed out in recent years. After Jake, Paul was the most dominant male wolf. He had a whole Pack underneath him. Men, women, boys, girls, wolves, humans, vampire hybrids. Pack responded to ranked wolves.

Jezzie wasn't alone anymore. Because as much as Collin was Pack, he was still a kid. And Jezzie refused to lean her adult responsibilities on him – even as they fought a supernatural battle to reestablish the world order. And then he'd had to leave. And when he'd been totally knocked out of commission? Jezzie had the most horrific flashbacks to the first battle. To Sam. To Jared. They'd lost Jared, because the size and scale of his injuries had made him beyond both Jezzie and Carlisle's help. And as Jezzie held Collin's skull together and prayed to God it would heal at least fast enough to keep his brain where it belonged, she realized she couldn't do it alone.

She had Nessie to watch after. Nessie was a child, despite her advanced intelligence. Then there was Zachary and Abigail, who were wonderful children but she didn't blame them for being wary near her. They didn't know her very well. The last time she'd seen them was when they stayed at her house prior to the last battle, a whole year ago. And Jezzie also had to make sure that Collin sort of stayed alive. When Paul came crashing through the trees after Azrael's attack outside their motel, she would've cried tears of joy if she had been thinking clearly. She had another adult to lean on, but they were both exhausted.

Paul had taken Collin duty at night – to make sure he didn't go unconscious, or experience any strange symptoms (though they were admittedly running blind at this point with his internal injuries; he could still understand, and talk, and hear, and move his arms and legs and they declared that a temporary victory) and he and Jezzie alternated during the day. Today, Paul was asleep. And Jezzie and the little ones were spending the sunny, cool day drawing in the middle of the motel parking lot.

Zach was drawing the Mercedes; he seemed to like cars, Jezzie noted, he'd asked her quite a few questions about it over the course of the week. Most she couldn't answer. Abi was drawing a cheese burger, and Jezzie suspected she was getting hungry so close to lunch time. Nessie was drawing wolves and the sight of it made Jezzie both pleased and a little sad. Nessie was far more affected by Pack dynamics. The trials of being imprinted by the Alpha. Jake's absence had set Nessie off-balance. She had no prior experience being separated from her Dad. Jezzie had felt out of place mothering any of the three, but they had responded well to the nurturing. Hugs, and good night stories, and being toted around on occasion – they had grown moderately comfortable with Jezzie after spending a week in car with her.

Jezzie watched as Zach started making engine noises, and Abi drew what might've been french fries. Nessie used her fingers to shade blue into the eyes of one wolf's profile. Seth. Seth was the only wolf with blue eyes. Jezzie grinned, noticing that Nessie had even incorporated his goofy grin. She suddenly paused in her creation, the chalk poised over the pavement. She held entirely still and only turned her head, taking in her surroundings.

Jezzie heard the girl mutter something. "What'd you say, Ness?" Jezzie asked as she drew two wheels for her ice cream truck.

"Daddy," the girl whispered audibly this time. Jezzie's head snapped up and she glanced around and followed Nessie's line of sight. Nothing.

"You'll see him soon, Nessie, I promise. We'll talk to him tonight when we call home, okay?"

"Daddy?" the girl said again, not responding at all to what Jezzie had said.

"I don't hear anything," Zachary noted. Jezzie trusted his senses as they were apparently as good as the vampires and shapeshifters.

Jezzie opened her mouth to speak, but Nessie stood. "Daddy!" The small girl screeched and took off at a run – and Jezzie was briefly thankful that it was at a human pace – before making it to the end of the parking lot.

She glanced at Zach and Abi. "Stay here, you two. Paul, watch the kids!" she shouted. Jezzie stood and ran after Nessie, still so exhausted she couldn't even feel her legs moving beneath her. Nessie disappeared around the corner and Jezzie lost sight of her. "Renesmee!" she shouted before coming to a dead halt on the sidewalk.

Jezzie watched as the small child jumped inhumanly into the arms of an almost seven foot tall teenager, grinning from ear to ear. "Daddy!" Nessie cried in delight. Her jaw dropped at the sight not ten feet from her and then her knees almost followed suit when she saw Embry Call standing only an arm's length behind Jacob.

She froze.

Embry closed the gap between them in a few short steps and enveloped Jezzie entirely in his arms. For a moment her brain disconnected but then remembered how her limbs worked. She wrapped her arms around his neck, strong enough to choke, and her sore legs wound around his waist in a scissorhold. She gasped an inhale and he felt her tears against the skin of his neck where her face was buried. He felt her nails digging into the skin of his back and it was actually vaguely painful. It was the best feeling in the world.

His Jez was alive.

He wound his arms around her, broad hands across her back, willing her breathing to calm. "It's okay, Jez. You're fine. I'm fine." Since when had he become the voice of reason? Jezzie was always the rock. She never wavered in her steadfast determination on anything. She smelled like pain, and poison, and anxiety it was about the most awful combination of smells on the poor girl. It had been a long week for everyone.

Body counts for their side were still tentative. Paul had left Jasper and host of other werewolves in the Midwest. No one had heard from Sam or Quil coming home from Alaska. Anna, Brady, and Seth were unaccounted for. All the power to Olympic Peninsula had either been knocked out by a storm and the fires. They'd had no word from the any of the vampires or the Plains Pack.

Paul and Jezzie talked about it. It didn't make it any easier.

Jezzie breathed Embry's scent and absorbed his warmth with selfish abandon. She didn't care; she could feel his nose in her hair, too. She pulled at where she could reach, willing him impossibly closer as he hugged her tight enough to make it ache.

"I was so worried about you, Jez," Embry said quietly.

He felt her nod against him. "Embry?"

"Yeah, Jez?"

And he finally actually got to see her face as she pulled far enough away from them to see each other. She stared downward for a while before making eye contact. "I killed someone."

Jake and Embry and Jezzie and Nessie made their way back into the parking lot to find a confused Paul and two expectant children. He informed them that he'd woken up when he felt Jezzie falling apart. Ever aware of Pack dynamics, even in the dead of sleep. Surrounded by all ranking Pack members, the responsibility that had been propping Jezzie up for the past week – and especially the last twenty-four hours – had been pulled from underneath her.

People always described overwhelming responsibility as a burden, which made Jezzie think of something you had to carry. But she thought it was a lot more like a crutch. The only thing that kept her from refusing to get out of bed, the only thing that kept her from going completely emotionally non-responsive was knowing she was responsible for other lives – for Nessie and Zach and Abi and Collin. But now that top ranking wolves had arrived? An alpha, who had mastered calm-assertive energy that could mellow out the most high-strung. Paul had been slowly ironing out her kinks since he'd arrived. And Embry. Embry was alive. (If Leah had arrived, Jezzie probably would have just gone comatose with endorphins or something…)

And then she melted. She thought that was the best way to describe it. She didn't crumble and she didn't shatter. She kept together, but with nothing to prop her up, she caved to the emotional turmoil that had crippled her.

"I came half way across the country and Paul tells me you've been in a walking coma." Paul had taken the Batmobile and the kids to go get dinner (they were going a little stir-crazy) that night. Jezzie and Embry had allowed Jacob a moment with his pup – and the Pack's Omega – and the pair sat on a bench in the motel's front grass.

"Azrael got me," she told him. Might as well not sugarcoat it.

Embry looked at her through narrowed eyes before proceeding to sniff around. His hands eventually found her waist and carefully lifted the hem of her shirt. He couldn't see the laceration or Paul's stitches beneath the long patch of gauze and tape, but he could smell it. Blood and werewolf. He hadn't distinguished from the fucking myriad of medical smells coming from Collin. He concentrated his anger and kept it in check. That bastard was so lucky he was already dead.

His hand almost instinctually reached to cover the weak spot, the source of pain, on his mate. Jezzie's hand reached to cover it and held it there.

"That's what Paul meant when he said you were sick?" Embry asked quietly.

Jezzie nodded. "Partly. The cut's really shallow but I got enough… werewolf contagion… for my body to have to fight it off. I had a fever and then chills and it was pretty painful. But it was mostly out of my system the next day. It was a pretty terrible night. My body still hurts all over and it's only getting worse. I'm not sure why. Paul took good care of me. He's done a good job."

"Paul doesn't give himself enough credit, most days," Embry agreed.

"I'll have three more ugly scars to add to the collection," she said blithely.

Embry looked up at her doubtfully. "Yeah… that's it."

"They're not going to heal right," she told him matter-of-factly. "I can tell. They feel funny. I don't like them."

She wrapped her hands around her torso in a defensive way that was so canine Jezzie might've fooled another shape-shifter. "Jezzie," Embry tugged the girl seated next to him and she willfully moved closer and into his embrace. "Scars happen. They're proof you survived some gnarly shit."

"I have enough scars on the inside from my MS slowly tearing apart my brain. I don't need to be any uglier on the outside."

Embry pulled Jezzie closer and into his lap, being careful of her stitches. He wrapped his arms around her middle, leaning down into her back and resting his chin against her shoulder, forming a protective posture. He could smell the salty tinge of tears. "Jezzie, I have seen quite a bit of you over the past year and I have yet to see a single ugly part. So pardon me if I don't believe that for a fucking second."

"Don't you think you might be a bit biased?" Jezzie whispered quietly, her hands on top of his own.

"Oh, I'm definitely biased," he assured her. "But I didn't just get that way over night, Jez. You convinced me, because you're smart and pretty and a helluva lot of fun. And I think there are far worse things in life than being biased in favor of the most beautiful woman who's ever agreed to associate with me."

His hand skirted down and underneath the hem of her shirt. His palm rested flat against her bandaged abdomen. "You're not ugly, Jezzie. Not by any definition. You're actually kind of fucking wonderful, because you're gorgeous inside and out. And I'll tell you that every day until you believe me."

Jezzie uttered an unbelieving sort of laugh and swiped at her eyes. "Oh!" Embry started. "That reminds me… I think you're up for some good news anyways. Wanna hear it?"

"Sure," Jezzie shrugged noncommittally. She wasn't quite sure anything was going to put her into a joyful splendor at this particular moment, but she welcomed the effort.

"Well, remember how Leah and I were doing research into where the hell I came from?"

Jezzie nodded and offered a wet laugh. "Yeah. You told me about how you found your dad. And… you told me about the potlatch stories. About all those women that got killed."

"Okay, so there's an Act II that we managed to dig up," Embry replied excitedly. Jezzie hadn't heard Embry this excited in a while. "After all those women got killed and their other family members started phasing to protect the rez full time, all the guys that had lost a wife or sister or daughter swore they'd never love another woman like they'd loved the ones they'd lost."

"And?"

"And they didn't," Embry replied simply. "Something clicked inside these new wolves heads and they never loved anyone like they loved the women they lost. They took a really unnatural control over their emotional lives. Sometimes we don't choose who we love. Quileute imprinting kind of takes that massively overboard. And Makahs trend the other way. Love is active, not passive. Makah wolves choose who to love and how."

"So…"

"I will never imprint, Jezzie."

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

The following day four skin-walkers and two valkyries showed up in the motel parking lot. Jezzie stood – wan, pale, and emaciated in the window and stumbled back a few feet until she bumped into Embry. She watched as Jacob left the room next door – with Zachary hot on his heels – and they greeted the newcomers.

Whoever ran this motel was going to think they were such weirdos…

Moments later the group turned as Jacob led them towards the door Jacob had just come from. They were gone for a while and Jezzie heard mumblings next door, but she mostly just tuned it out as she curled up and rested.

Awhile later she heard the door next door close and then saw the same caravan make it's way to the door of the room she was currently residing in. "No," she whined, turning her face into Embry's shirt and conceding an early defeat. "No more supernaturals. I can't do it anymore…"

"My senses say this is gonna be a good house call, Jez," Embry replied. He submitted to her tugging need for closeness as Jacob launched the door open.

"Jezzie Sullivan, I've found you another supernatural doctor!"

Jezzie stared mostly dumbfounded as Jake explained that whatever was happening to her was obviously not normal, and clearly they needed help, so he'd called up some of their allies still in a holding pattern in the Appalachian mountain range.

Jezzie didn't know why he hadn't just called Carlisle. But she began to read between the lines and that's how she ended up leaking silent tears through the majority of her exam from the two doctors.

One valkyrie – Lena – was a cheerful young woman with short dark hair. Aaron from the skin-walkers had more snark than most people could've handled and therefore got along swimmingly with Paul. The two M.D.'s took their time looking over Jezzie and asking her a myriad of questions. She explained to them that she had MS – a preexisting condition she was already feeling flicker back to life before her werewolf encounter.

Aaron sat in the desk chair with his feet up, and Lena sat on the desk with her legs swinging beneath it. "So what do you figure, Ice Queen?" Aaron grinned at the tall, dark-haired woman.

Lena observed her toes as she thought. "Well, she mentioned that she was already feeling the symptoms of an exacerbation before she was attacked. Stress is a trigger in many auto-immune disorders, but–"

"Wait, wait!" Aaron sat up suddenly, his feet hitting the ground. "MS is the result of an overactive immune system. Her body attacks itself, and in this case it's focused on the myelin sheaths in her brain and spinal cord."

"Very good," Lena nodded. "You pass Epidemiology 101."

"No, no," Aaron continued on with his apparent epiphany. "Think about it. Her immune system is just getting geared up to destroy a little more of her brain, when all of a sudden it's introduced to an actual viral infection. The force is overwhelming and her immune system diverts the course from her brain to the poison in her system."

"Bluntly put," Lena nodded. "That explains why she was able to fight off the small amount of poison, but not how she's feeling now. The physical symptoms don't really match up with the mental and emotional to create a picture of shock or trauma that makes sense. Oh!"

"What is it?" Aaron egged her on.

"Werewolf poison is quite potent. And while it is feasible to believe that a human can fight it off, it would require an exceptionally strong immune system. What if her immune system backed itself with even more strength to rid her body of the poison and when that was finished returned to its original mission?"

"And now her super werewolf-fighting immune system is giving her the mother of all MS flares," Aaron concluded sadly.

"Yes," Lena nodded. "Which isn't helped by the fact that she apparently has zero medication with her."

Jezzie just stared up at them from the bed. She'd been watching them volley back and forth like a tennis match. "The drugless girl is moving into the worst MS flare of her life. Good. Thank you for your help, and confirming that I'm probably going to be okay, eventually. I'm going to bed for, like, eight days now."

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

"I'm sorry." After sleeping – really sleeping – for sixteen hours curled into Embry's side, they'd gone for a walk and Jezzie led them to the stretch of beachfront off the main road. Just a line of jersey barriers before a six foot drop to the rocky breaks below. Georgia was nothing like La Push.

"Why the hell are you apologizing to me, Jez?" Embry offered as he sat on the concrete wall, his feet dangling over the rocky breaks and sloshing Atlantic along with Jezzie's.

"Remember the first battle?" she asked, not meeting his eyes. Her back ticked slightly, the muscle twitch barely perceptible underneath her clothes, but Embry didn't miss the grimace. "When we lost Jared?" Embry only nodded. "You woke up from nightmares that night. So bad they made you sick. You felt like a monster for having to kill. And I tried to talk you out of it. I tried to talk you out of feeling the way you did. And now I'm in your place. And I think I would just flip out if someone tried to talk me out of it. That's why I'm apologizing. I'm sorry."

"Jez," Embry reached tentatively, unsure how she'd feel about human contact. "You didn't try to talk me out of my feelings. You convinced me I wasn't a monster. Yeah, it took a while to sink in, but you were right."

"It's different," Jezzie shook her head. "Embry you're born for this. You're born to protect people. So it doesn't make you a monster if it's natural. You're a natural protector. But this?" Jezzie held the heavy empty pistol in her hand. She hadn't let it out of her sight at all. "This is not natural, Embry. This is not a natural extension of myself the way your wolf is. I shot someone in cold blood. I killed them."

"I'd say it's no different. You kill a person, you kill a person. Tearing them apart with your teeth is pretty awful and no amount my telling myself that it's what I'm born for makes me feel any better. Just like there's probably not a lot I can say to make you feel any better. You shot a werewolf in the heart with a silver bullet to protect yourself and the half pints and probably saved Collin's life in the process. You didn't just go on some killing spree, Jez. It was self-defense. Even that holds up pretty well in a court of law. And, yeah, I wish you could go through your entire life and never know what it's like to take a life. But I'd rather have you shoot the bastard than wind up dead. Call me selfish."

Jezzie only rolled her eyes. "I think I've been thinking too much about it. It was sick; I actually started feeling bad for the days he used to be human – like it was my fault or something..."

"It definitely doesn't make sense sometimes," Embry agreed nodding. "There wasn't a lot of the humane left in Azrael. All bets are off when you start wantonly attacking people. He did almost kill you himself. You had to make a hard choice, Jezzie. Risk you and four other lives – or kill a man. You picked the lesser of two evils."

"Doesn't mean it's not evil," she countered.

"That's debatable," Embry conceded. "But one bad action doesn't make an evil person. Are you sorry you did it?"

"I didn't have a choice," she muttered trying to justify it to herself, swinging her legs about staring at the gun resting uselessly in her lap. "This is going to mess with me for a long time," she told him honestly. "I hope you don't get impatient."

"It gets better," Embry told her. "And I screwed up big time with you once, Jez, I'm not about to do it again."

"Promise me something?" she asked and finally lifted her eyes from the rocky beach below.

"Sure."

"Promise me that we're going to go home. That we're going to go to school and become adults and lead normal lives. Even if we're living with a Pack of wolves that went from universally persecuted serfs to the winners of a supernatural world war. Promise me that you'll help make sure power is used benevolently so this never happens again. Promise me we're just going to be normal and happy."

"Normal?" Embry quirked a brow. "Probably not. Happy? I think we can work that one out."

Jezzie smiled slightly and nodded. She would take that. She weighed the unnatural metal object in her hand one last time before holding it by the barrel and throwing it out to sea.

Embry's hand wrapped carefully around Jezzie's back, and he could feel the alternating tension and relaxation in her different muscle groups. Underneath the sadness, and the sickening werewolf poison, and the anxiety there was a familiar and pervasive tone of physical pain.

Truth be told, she looked absolutely awful. She'd lost weight in the few short days of battle, attack, and recovery. Her skin was so pale Embry might've thought a whole other species of monster had sucked her dry. And she was just generally hunched, tired-looking, and miserable.

Jezzie reached out and made desperate contact with his knee. He took her iron grip in his free hand, and he couldn't quite see her face. However, he could hear her sharp exhale as a spasm reverberated up the side of her back.

"Embry," she muttered around a swallow. "I really need my meds."

Thursday, May 1, 2008

"So, uh, Jezzie?"

"Yeah Jake?"

"I think we're gonna need your help. Again. You game?"

"Jacob, I think we're past the point of formality where you guys have to 'ask'," she noted as she worked to pack the spare remnants of all their belongings into the trunk while moving as few muscle-groups as possible. They were headed home today. Embry had left this morning to catch up with Jasper so he didn't have to leave the Midwest alone. Jezzie had to force him out of the parking lot after proving that despite the pain that had begun to cripple her, she could walk by herself. Embry had begged her not to lie to him, and Jezzie had assured him that she'd be fine with Jacob and Paul and that she would see him back in Washington. It was really hard to do, because mostly she just wanted to curl up in his lap and not move for hours on end.

"Lay it on me," she told Jacob.

"Quil needs your help."

Jezzie rolled her eyes. "Tell him he knows Veronica as well as I do and if he wants to get laid, he can figure it out himself. He's gonna have to work for it."

"No," Jacob shook his head. "Not that kinda help."

Jezzie shuffled a few things around and turned towards him. "Jake, what's wrong? Just tell me. You were gone for a while this morning trying to figure things out with the Pack everywhere. Embry's headed home. The Plains Pack is bound for La Push for layover before negotiations, the rest are headed south from Alaska, and the other shape-shifters have gone home. What's going on?"

"During the battle," he replied. "Something happened to Quil. No one can tell what. And he can't phase."

"Human or wolf?"

"Wolf," Jacob confirmed. "He's… he's blind, Jezzie. He can't see a thing. But… yeah, no. He's blind. There's something else going on, also. Paul can feel it, too, but we don't know what it is. There's still too much chaos in the Packmind. But something's wrong. And right now the least we can do is get Quil some help."

Jezzie just stared at him, her mouth agape. "And Carlisle's…"

"Dead," Jake confirmed her suspicions. Jezzie heard a door slam behind her and figured that Collin and Paul had just finished closing up their two motel rooms for good. Her hands fumbled in the trunk and she dropped what she was holding. Her brain stalled and she couldn't even remember what she was holding.

"Really?" he nodded.

"And I can't let Lena or Aaron on to our land, unfortunately. Not yet, anyways. The Council is on DEFCON 1 after the fires, and I have no idea what other shape-shifters will do to the rez kids with phasing genetics."

"Okay," she took a breath. "All right… um, Paul? Paul! Can you and the rest make for Boston in the Batmobile by your lonesome?"

"Yeah," Paul nodded carrying a last trash bag, while Collin followed with Nessie on his shoulders. The first few days of Collin's recovery had been slow and tedious. Beyond speaking, seeing, and processing information no one knew what kind of damage his brain had sustained and whether the wolfy genes would heal it. However, on the third day he actually stood up on his own to go to the bathroom. The next day he ate solid food and walked outside by himself. He was prone to splitting headaches, something Jezzie suspected he might be stuck with, but he agreed it was a small price to pay for being alive. Lena and Aaron couldn't do much for him without imaging, but no one smelled any internal bleeding and he otherwise tested out mostly fine.

"You guys don't want to join the clown car?"

"Nah," Jake offered offhand. "I don't think we can."

Paul looked at his Alpha appraisingly before turning to Collin. "Hey half-pints? Go turn in the room keys and get us checked out?" He tossed the two key rings to Collin who rolled his eyes at the brush off but didn't say anything, and took Zach, Abi, and Ness with him. He didn't speak again until the pup was out of earshot. "What's up, kids?"

"Jake and I are gonna have to fly back," Jezzie told him.

"And not just because you don't fit in the clown car," Paul added.

She shook her head.

"Quil's all fucked up, man," Jacob offered. "We haven't been able to get a read on him or Sam because they were making their way back from Denali in human skin. Quil couldn't phase and I haven't heard from Sam. Leah and Seth went to help and when they came back with them… Seth doesn't even know how to tell me what's wrong and Leah's shutting down. Plus, I need to figure out what the hell it is that's making us both feel off-balance. Something's wrong and you know it."

"And Collin needs to get back to school. He's already missed the better part of this week and I can't get him out of more than that."

"Collin in school: check. So… what's Quil's deal?" Paul offered. "He okay?"

"He can't see a fucking thing and no one knows why," Jacob replied. "Something that happened during the battle and Jezzie's the best thing we got since Carlisle was taken out."

"Christ," Paul sighed and leaned against the open trunk. "God, that fuckin' kid of mine… All right, I'll make back for Boston. I've got enough Red Bull to keep awake and this thing drives like a gift from God so we should be back for Collin to get to class tomorrow morning; the half pints and I'll hang around your place until you get back, Jezzie. No rush."

"Thank you, Paul. Keep them safe," Jezzie nodded towards the now returning brigade.

Paul glanced towards her. "I'll keep your pup safe," he nodded. "You go help mine."

Rachel had gotten a phone call from her brother at the most unholy time of 3:17AM. Because Addie slept liked the dead, Rachel was the one to crawl across the bed and her spouse to reach the cordless phone. She glanced at the number and scowled.

"Jacob you either better be dead or in jail."

"Neither," he quipped. "Do me a favor?"

"You paying?"

"Bring Addie, and I'll buy you a pizza."

"Deal. Now dish. What'd I just agree to?"

"I need you guys to get to La Push."

"Oh…" Rachel's tone changed. She'd known that tensions among the wolves and the vampires had reached their boiling points lately. But the flares were prolonged and spread over time and the country. Rachel and Addie had not been able to afford to leave Seattle and their jobs for such extended periods of time. She knew Paul had gone to the Midwest and some of the others had headed further north. They hadn't been able to get in touch with anyone along the coast for days due to a storm. "What's going on? Is everyone all right?"

"No," he offered without flourish. "Quil got hurt Rach, and I need someone to go tell Veronica. I'm in Georgia, and I can't assess his mental condition. God only knows what he'd tell her. I want you to head down and see if it's safe for her to see him. If we have to tell her, we have to tell her. But I'd like to avoid spilling the Pack secret only to have her dump the guy because he's crippled."

"Way to sell the girl short, Jake," Rachel replied as Addie mumbled something incoherent.

"I'm the Alpha. It's my job to assume the worst."

"So what do I do if Quil's gone fruity?"

"Keep her away. Make up an excuse. Tell her he's in some out of town hospital. I don't know. You're a better liar than me."

"And if Quil's otherwise mentally sound?"

"Make up a corresponding excuse before you let her in the house."

"Two pizzas."

"Two pizzas. And send Addie to check on Leah. Her head's nothing but chaos and I'm worried."

"Ten-four, little brother." Rachel hung up and nudged Addie awake beside her. "C'mon, lady, we got a mission."

Friday, May 2, 2008

It was definitely a good thing that Rachel judged Quil to be of totally sound mind because when she told Veronica that he'd been hurt in an accident after filling in for Paul in drydock and gone blind, well, she was quite certain no human strength would've restrained the girl from finding the guy.

Quil had the blessing and curse of not actually remembering what happened to him. "I don't know what happened!" Quil shouted at her after Rachel had tried to prod his brain.

"Well neither do I!" she'd yelled right back.

The town was all but dead of shape-shifters when Addie and Rachel drove in. Quil was confirmed in town and so were Seth and Leah. Brady and Anna were apparently combing the better part of Western Washington to confirm their coast was clear. Rachel had not heard from or seen any of the other wolves, except her brother. And according to Jacob, Leah was around but losing her marbles a bit. Addie had volunteered for that mission.

"Well, just make something up. I've got to tell her why I can't see anything! The last thing I remember is coming back from Denali with Sam."

"Okay, you know what?" Rachel announced. "We're going with an industrial accident, all right. We're just going to tell her you got something in your eyes working down in drydock. That's where she thinks you've been anyways."

Rachel didn't know how to break it to the girl, so she just laid it out there for her. She told him he'd been hurt at work. He'd gone blind. Veronica had hung up almost immediately. Rachel was sitting on the Ateara's front steps with Claire when Veronica came into the driveway on two wheels, peeling up at least six inches of packed earth. Claire laughed. Rachel was scared shitless.

"Where is he?" Veronica demanded, barely able to put the car in park before jumping out and moving across the lawn at record speed. Rachel stood and met her halfway. She braced her on the shoulders, but Veronica just pushed back. "Where is he!?"

Rachel didn't take offense, knowing the girl was reasonably upset. "Veronica, you need to calm down, all right? He's okay, but you've got to get a grip. You can't go in there like this. Take a deep breath for me."

Veronica obeyed, and focused on trying not to appear so manic, when she felt little arms wrap around her leg. She glanced down to see Claire. "Vonica, Quil can't see nuffin'. Now he doesn't know when my shoes don't match."

Veronica offered a sad and slightly choked laugh, as she bent to pick up Claire. "Well, let's go see him then. I promise I won't tell that you wore one green and one purple shoe today."

Rachel took a deep breath, hoped for the best, knew it was a long shot, and opened the door letting Claire and Veronica inside.

Veronica didn't know what to expect. She'd never met a blind person. She lived a small-town, sheltered life. "Qu-eeeee-l!" Claire wailed in excitement when they stepped inside the living room. The small girl was clearly unfazed by the seriousness of the situation and Veronica was inclined to think that was best.

"Sounds like my two favorite ladies," Quil offered with a small grin.

Veronica couldn't help the way her feet dragged her and Claire across the floor, or the way she threw her one spare arm around her boyfriend seated on the couch. "Don't tell your Mom or your sister that," Veronica offered with a small laugh.

She was now even more slightly hysterical seeing that Quil was okay. She'd heard 'accident' and didn't know what else could've been wrong. A million horrific possibilities had flashed through her mind in the short time. She leaned back slightly, Claire still on her hip, and now more or less half sat on Quil's lap. She used her spare hand to grab a hold of Quil's face and give him a once over.

"Ronnie," Quil offered quietly, "I'm blind, I didn't sever a limb or get a body transplant."

"Shut up, Quil," Veronica sniffed. "You scared the shit out of me!"

"Vonica, you're squishing me," Claire spoke in muffled tones from her spot mushed between Quil and Veronica.

"It's a love squish, Claire," she smiled.

The weight of Paul's statement hung in Jezzie's mind and on her chest the whole way to the airport, up through when she bought the tickets with the last of her loan disbursement. (This was so not what you were supposed to do with financial aid money). Jacob finally prodded her while they sat on the tarmac, waiting for take off.

"You okay, Jezzie?"

She nodded vaguely. "Just thinking about what Paul said…"

"He's putting his trust in you," Jacob offered sagely, seeming to know what she was talking about without her explanation. "He loves Quil – Quil's his pup – and he's worried as hell. And if he can't be there, well, he considers you the next best thing. You're trusting him to get the rest home safe. He's trusting you to go help Quil."

"No pressure," she squeaked, gripping the armrests with a tension that had nothing to do with takeoff.

"Who else is gone, Jake?" she asked quietly. "You really threw me with the Carlisle thing. I had no idea."

"Damn," he grimaced. "I'm sorry. I keep forgetting who I've told and who I haven't. I feel like I've run over it a thousand times. All right so… We know Carlisle's gone. I think the rest of the Cullens are fine. Jasper and Rosalie are orchestrating that crap. We now know Azrael's gone. We lost Elizabeth from the Plains Pack. I don't know about the rest of the shape-shifters, but we're down a few skin-walkers and at least one Nagual. As for us, well… you, me, Ness, Collin, Paul, Embry, Quil, Leah, and Seth are accounted for. I've heard nothing either way about Anna, Sam, or Brady. What little I've heard about Quil and Leah isn't good. Is that everyone?"

The confused expression Jake offered Jezzie only served to remind her just how young Jacob was.

"What about our enemies?"

"Jasper finally got his revenge and polished off Maria, I heard. Esme went ballistic after Carlisle was taken out. She decimated that Volturi wife. Who was apparently the brains behind the operation. She's following them all back to Italy to make sure they don't fuck anything else up. Apparently, she was mad as all hell. Why no one thinks to tell the Alpha these things, I don't know. The Romanians are intact, those slimy bastards – would you believe they actually showed up? Never got within a stone's throw of the real carnage. They just watched the rest of us duke it out. Granted, they look more feeble than crepe paper – do not tell anyone I told you that. No one's seen most of the nomads since the fighting broke out, and I think we're just assuming the worst. And last I heard, Demetri's keeping the Egyptians from completely annihilating what remains of the Volturi. They're really chomping at the bit."

"What makes him do that?"

"He used to be one of the Volturi Guards."

"Loyalty?"

"Not so much," Jake shook his head. "Actually, I think it's more his sense of the rules of war. He reminds me a lot of Jasper. I talked to him on the phone the other day. Technically the Romanians and Egyptians didn't win this – as much as they think they did. They just didn't lose. They have been having a massive bitch fest with the Volturi for a while, but all the bloodshed has been here and now. The Volturi were swiping up old Romanian and Egyptian territory without anything more than grumblings. It was the shifters that started the bloodshed when the Volturi started marching around this side of the Atlantic like they owned the place. They were using Maria and Azrael. Alice's suspicions were correct."

"So the shifters won the war. Which means the Egyptians and Romanians don't get to dictate terms of peace."

"You're catching on."

Jezzie didn't register much else between Charleston International Airport and when she and Jake finally made it inside Clallam County lines. She snuck into her house – that's right, snuck, because there was no way she could quite explain to her father why she was popping in for a few minutes in the middle of April – and retrieved her MS meds and old EMT bag, the one she hadn't taken to Boston and made their way back to La Push.

They had agreed to Addie's request to stop by the Clearwater place before heading to the Ateara's. Addie was worried about Leah. Jezzie agreed to simply wait in the car, while Jake hopped out. Seth slid into the driver's seat moments later after coming out of the woods, and they didn't go anywhere but his story certainly took Jezzie miles and miles from where they started…

According to Seth, Leah had been in the back yard for three days now. Ever since they got home. Jake could believe that considering the yard was littered with bottles and there was a new line, worn into the dirt and completely devoid of grass. Leah just kept pacing. She didn't seem to notice when Jake rounded the corner of her house.

"Lees?"

She looked up at him and what he saw horrified him. He'd never seen that face on Leah, and he'd seen a lot of Leah's emotional planes. They all had. Her eyes were wide and empty, her mouth was set and her forehead was tense. She was shaking slightly, too, but not from the effort of trying not to phase.

"I've been pacing back here for three days," she said quietly. "I have consumed a liquor store's worth of scotch in sixteen hours and it's done nothing except make me pee twice as often."

Jake approached her carefully and braced his hands on her arms. "Leah, what's going on? Tell me. Seth hasn't said anything and I haven't been able to get a read on you while phased so far away. You're too good at hiding your head, Lees."

Her eyes focused on some indiscriminate point somewhere over his shoulder and he saw a muscle twitch in her cheek.

"Sam's dead."

And with those words, Jacob felt something click into place as part of his soul dropped from his consciousness. The chaos he'd been feeling inside, he'd assumed it was a result of the war and having to shoulder everyone's turmoil. He thought it was because a pup and a human had been attacked. But even Paul had said that things felt no different – no less off balance – since they found out both Jezzie and Collin would be fine. The off-kilter feeling never left, but it was because they'd lost a packmate. Sam Uley. The former Alpha. Twenty-one years old. Newlywed. Made some of the best food in the county when Emily let him get spatula in edgewise. Tortured soul. Never stopped thinking about the devastated woman standing across from him.

"I'm sorry." Jacob was torn from his own inner spiraling as things clicked into place way too quickly. He looked up and could see Leah, still looking at that same spot over his shoulder, but this time she was leaking silent tears. "By the time Seth and I got there, he was gone. The vamp snapped his neck. It was quick. Quil was unconscious from the hit he took."

"Where is he?" Jake asked. Had they buried him in the Canadian woods halfway between Denali and here? "Sam."

"In my room," she mumbled, biting down against her lip. "I couldn't leave him there, Jake. I had to bring him back."

The mental image of Leah Clearwater, the Alpha female, carrying Sam's body, an old flame and a packmate, all the way home from the Canadian Rockies helped it click into place for Jacob. She had a lost him, a friend, a packmate, a family member and there was nothing she could do about it. And then she brought his body back home. To Jake's head, that spoke volumes more than any words could ever hope to. Leah lost Sam in a way that Emily would never be able to take from her. Leah had known what she always referred to as 'her Sam'. Emily never had. Leah insisted he changed after he imprinted and those that knew Sam both before and after the event silently agreed.

Sam and Leah had reached some semblance of peace after the first encounter with the Volturi last winter. Things hadn't been good, per se, but the outright warfare had stopped. Leah was no longer hostile. The bitterness was replaced with a fleeting nostalgia. Sam, however, continued to labor mentally over everything. Jake knew this, because he got no peace from any of his wolves' minds.

Leah had lost, along with Sam, the chance for things to get any better. She had hoped for at least peaceful acquaintance if not casual friendship at some point in the distant future. It was never an option for them now. He'd never grow old, he'd never have kids, he was barely old enough to buy beer and he was gone so quickly.

However the thing that made Leah's insides lurch the most – the thing that made her world feel like it had reversed its poles and changed the direction of its rotation – was the feeling of relief. Relief for herself. Relief for Sam.

They were free.

They were finally free from each other. Sam was no longer tied to mortality and an imprint that Leah knew – just knew – he had to question all the time, but was too terrified to destroy another relationship in an attempt at self-discovery. He was free from his own demons. Never again would Leah feel his gaze trained on her back from a distance, knowing he was daydreaming or thinking, but feeling that the path of his stare was somehow significant. She was free from feeling guilty for wanting the past back. She was free from having the seething hate for her cousin poison all aspects of her life. She was free from feeling guilty about moving on.

This was the final sign – if there ever was one – to let go, move on, and be free.

Then without warning, Leah wrapped her arms around Jacob's waist and buried her face in his shirt. He could feel her tears melt through the fabric almost immediately. He was surprised by the gesture. However, his wolf recognized a packmate – his alpha female – in need of reassurance. No… this was something different. It wasn't the Alpha. It was just Jake. And she was just Lees. And they were entwined so naturally together.

Carefully, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders. Still much larger than her, he folded her into his embrace as she sobbed. He let his chin rest on the top of her head, guarding and protecting her from any outside forces. It was the inner battles that Leah would have to fight herself.

He placed a kiss on the top of her head. "You did good, Lees."