DISCLAIMER: I own nothing. Twice a day – when the sun rises and when it sets – I am allowed a glimpse of the world; and it is glorious. I have nothing to say about this, because I hate it, and I hated the original scene, too. Ugh. But here it is, because Edward needs some characterization, too, I guess. (Y'all heard about Midnight Sun? Think smeyer did it because of the plague? I do).

XXXVII

I knew Edward must have been lurking somewhere nearby, but I couldn't smell him, and he was out of sight, so I let him stay out of mind.

I was keeping watch outside the tent, stationed in front of the zipper. A mighty gust of wind shook the entire forest, putting everything on a slant. The snow came at me from the right, covering me like a blanket, and I had to keep shaking it off. The temperature was dropping steadily. I could feel it through my downy layer of fur, so I figured Bella must have been freezing.

The rest of the pack were sleeping. I could follow their dreams if I tried but they were mostly just swirls of color and sound that made little to no sense. Sam was having a nightmare, watching a vampire with Emily's face kill Leah, while she listened to him as he kept whining and twitching. She was the only other one up, and I really didn't want to be hearing her thoughts as she eavesdropped in on Sam's dream. I almost woke him up to ask him to keep an eye out at the tent – just to spare whatever dignity he had left – but then thought better of it.

I shifted and pulled on the black pair of sweatpants I'd worn on the hike up the mountain, then entered the tent.

Bella was huddled up in her sleeping bag, shaking with the tent as the wind picked up. When she noticed me, her lips twitched, but she was shivering so badly I couldn't tell if it was a smile or a grimace.

"W-w-w-w-w-what t-t-t-t-time is it?" She pushed the words through her chattering teeth.

"Late," I said, crawling onto the ground and undoing the zipper at her head. "Scoot over, honey, I'll warm you up."

The wind rocked the tent roughly, and she shuddered along with the thin plastic covering but held onto the edge of the sleeping bag with an iron grip. She shook her head, stuttering on a word stubbornly, unable to squeeze it out through her chattering teeth.

I rolled my eyes. "C'mon, Bells. Don't you like having all ten toes?"

"J-J-J-J-Jake, you'll f-f-f-freez-z-z-ze," she complained.

"Not me," I said cheerfully, cramming my body into what little space was left next to her. "I run at a toasty one-oh-eight point nine these days. I'll have you sweating in no time," I promised, forcing the zipper up behind me.

I wrapped my arms around her, holding her snugly against my bare chest. She sighed, pressing her icy fingers eagerly against my skin.

I flinched. "Jeez, you're freezing, Bella," I complained.

"S-s-s-s-sorry," she stuttered.

"Try to relax," I suggested as another shiver rippled through her violently. "You'll be warm in a minute. Of course, you'd warm up faster if you took your clothes off."

She glared up at me, teeth still chattering.

"That's just a simple fact," I said, laughing. "Survival one-oh-one."

"C-c-cut it out, Jake," she replied, still pressing herself as close as possible to my bare skin. "N-n-n-nobody really n-n-n-n-needs all ten t-t-t-toes."

I moved my hand down to the small of her back, pulling us closer together. "You'll thank me in the morning," I laughed, placing a kiss to her frozen forehead.

We laid in silence for a moment while Bella defrosted. One by one her muscles thawed, until her shuddering slowed and her body was almost completely still in my arms.

"There," I said, pleased. "Feeling better?"

She was finally able to speak clearly. "Yes," she sighed.

"Your lips are still blue," I mused. "Want me to warm those up for you, too?"

She smiled shakily. I tilted her chin up to reach mine and pressed our mouths together, just for a light peck – but once we collided, there was nothing that could pull us apart. Her lips moved hungrily against mine, hands moving up my chest and tangling in my hair, which hung wildly down in front of my eyes. We were squeezed together tight inside the sleeping bag, but my hands managed to find their way to her face, warming up her cheeks until they were deep red.

When she finally pulled away, I leaned over to kiss her jaw.

"Is this why you didn't want Seth to keep watch tonight?" She laughed.

"One of the reasons," I muttered against her skin, a grin tugging at my lips.

She kicked her boots off and pushed her toes against my legs. I jumped a little at the flash of cold, but then I leaned down to press my cheek against her ear.

"Ahh," she sighed contentedly.

The storm howled outside like a wild animal, attacking the tent, but I wasn't worried about it. I was trying very hard to control the hot thrum of blood pooling between my legs, focusing on anything but her body pressing on mine, but it was no use. It felt like an electric current running between us, electrifying every nerve ending and setting my skin on fire.

Bella's body relaxed slowly as she thawed, piece by frozen piece, and then turned limp. I relaxed next to her, burying my nose in her hair, smelling that unique, spring-meadow freshness, like a valley of lilies.

"Jake?" She mumbled sleepily. "Can I ask you something? I'm not trying to be a jerk or anything, I'm honestly just curious."

"Sure," I chuckled.

"Do you think we would be together without the imprint?"

I moved to see her face. Her eyes were half-closed, blinking away sleep stubbornly. I pushed her hair behind her ears, then rested my head next to hers so we were eye-to-eye.

"I would love you no matter what you did. Even if you went back to the bloodsucker" – her nose wrinkled at the term – "I would fight for you, tooth and nail, until your heart stopped beating."

"Mmm," she hummed. "I love you."

I chuckled again, smoothing her hair down. "I love you, too, Bells."

The wind was finally starting to die down. As the silence lengthened, her eyelids drooped shut, and her breathing grew slower, more even.

"That's right, honey, go to sleep," I whispered.

She sighed, and her face was peaceful, content – I was surprised when I recognized it as the same expression she'd worn at the prom.

When I thought she was unconscious, I heard howling in the trees outside and assumed it was only Seth until my nose caught Edward's scent. I groaned, pressing my nose deeper into Bella's hair, trying to block it out.

Then the zipper was pulled back, and the leech was suddenly inside the tent, closing the door behind him. He sat at the very edge of the space, his legs pulled up against his chest, eyes fixed on me.

"Seth is here, too," he muttered.

"Perfect. Now you can keep an eye on everything else, while I take care of my girlfriend."

Edward remained perched on the edge of the tent, perfectly still, his eyes boring into me.

I ignored him, closing my eyes and resting my forehead against Bella's, trying to slow my breathing to match hers. It wasn't easy; the wind picked up again and shrieked like a banshee flying through the trees. The tent shimmied, and every now and then the poles would suddenly jerk and quiver, pulling me back from the edge of sleep every time I was close to slipping under. And Bella was still pressed against me, each line of her body conforming to mine, making it hard to focus on anything but the fluttering in my stomach.

"Please!" Edward hissed suddenly. "Do you mind!"

"What?" I whispered back groggily, surprised at his sudden outburst.

"Do you think you could attempt to control your thoughts?" He whispered in a low, furious tone.

"No one said you had to listen," I muttered, defiant, but my ears got hot with embarrassment. "Get out of my head."

"I wish I could. You have no idea how loud your little fantasies are. It's like you're shouting them at me," he complained.

You could just leave, I thought.

"I'll try to keep it down," I whispered sarcastically.

I remembered her peaceful, happy face just before she closed her eyes. Are you jealous? I wondered, knowing he would hear. I can make her just as happy as you did, and even more, I can take care of her. You could never warm her up like this. Doesn't it make you positively green that I can make love to her? I know you never got that far, I taunted.

"Yes," Edward mumbled, so low it almost got lost in another gust of wind. "I'm jealous of that, too."

"I figured it was like that," I whispered smugly.

"Go to sleep, Jacob," Edward murmured. "You're starting to get on my nerves."

"I think I will. I'm really very comfortable," I replied, settling in closer to Bella. She sighed in her sleep, nestling her head in the crook of my shoulder.

But I couldn't sleep. He was still there, like an absurdly beautiful gargoyle on the roof of a church, crouching like he was waiting for a chance to jump on me.

If you won't let me sleep, you might at least make it interesting and answer a few of my questions.

"Maybe I would," he said.

"But would you be honest?" I wondered aloud, mostly to myself.

"You can always ask and see." He smiled, like he was enjoying an inside joke.

"Well, you see inside my head – let me see inside yours tonight, it's only fair," I said.

"Your head is full of questions. Which one do you want me to answer?"

"The jealousy… it has to be eating at you. Unless you have no emotions at all." That wouldn't have surprised me.

"Of course it is," Edward agreed, the smile disappearing from his face, his grin falling into a scowl, giving me a glimpse of the grotesque monster beneath the smooth skin. "Right now it's so bad that I can barely control my voice. Of course, it's even worse when she's away from me, with you, and I can't see her."

"Do you think about it all the time?" I whispered. "Does it make it hard to concentrate when she's not with you?"

"Yes and no," Edward said, sounding surprisingly honest. "My mind doesn't work quite the same as yours. I can think of many more things at one time. Of course, that means that I'm always able to think of you, always able to imagine…" He trailed off.

We were both silent for a minute. Does she think of me as much as I think of her? I wondered.

"Yes, I would guess that she thinks about you often," Edward murmured in response.

"Does that bother you? Do you wish you could see what she's thinking, too?"

"Yes… and no, again. She likes it better that way, and, though it sometimes drives me insane, I'd rather she was happy."

The wind ripped around the tent, shaking it like an earthquake. My arms tightened around Bella protectively.

"Thank you," Edward whispered. "Odd as this might sound, I suppose I'm glad you're here, Jacob."

"You mean, 'as much as I'd love to kill you, I'm glad she's warm,' right?"

"It's an uncomfortable truce, isn't it?"

Just then, Bella stirred, and her lips moved soundlessly for a moment before she began mumbling, "Jacob… my Jacob…"

I sighed. "I'd tell her all of this, but she'd never believe me."

"I know," he said, smiling.

"You think you know everything," I muttered.

"I don't know the future," Edward replied, his voice suddenly hopeful.

We were silent for a long moment. I listened to Bella's quiet musings, most of which didn't make sense. My name was a common theme, and my heart swelled to the size of the tent. Jacob, my Jacob, kept echoing in my ears, even after she finally settled down.

Once she was silent again, and both our breathing had slowed to a normal rhythm, I remembered what he had said when he was walking her to the clearing, and her reaction.

"What would you do if she changed her mind?" I asked.

"If she decided to take me back…" The leech sighed wistfully. "I don't know that either."

I chuckled quietly. "Would you try to kill me?" I asked sarcastically, secretly hoping he would try.

"No," he answered, voice resolute.

"Why not?" I was still amused with picturing exactly how I might go about fighting Edward.

"Do you really think I would hurt her that way?"

I hesitated for a second and then sighed. "Yeah, you're right. I know you're right. But sometimes…"

"Sometimes it's an intriguing idea."

I pressed my face into the sleeping bag to muffle my laughter. "Exactly," I agreed.

"What's it like? Losing her?" I asked after a quiet moment, no longer laughing, my voice suddenly hoarse. "When you left her? How did you… cope?"

"That's very difficult for me to talk about."

I waited.

Edward spoke slower than before, enunciating every syllable. "When I thought I could leave her… that was… almost bearable. Because I thought she would forget me and it would be like I hadn't touched her life. For over nine months I was able to stay away, to keep my promise that I wouldn't interfere again. It was getting close – I was fighting but I knew I wasn't going to win; I would have come back… just to check on her. That's what I would have told myself, anyway. And if I'd found her reasonably happy… I like to think that I could have gone away again."

I didn't respond for a moment, digesting his words. "And what did you find, when you came back?"

"I found her happier than I had hoped. I found that she was able to move on with her life… and I found her with you, of course. What I hadn't expected was how… how angry I was to be right."

My arms flexed around Bella. "But you said you left because you knew you were too dangerous for her, why wouldn't you be happy to find her safe?"

Edward spoke slowly again, as if the words hurt. "Jacob, from the second I realized that I loved her, I knew there were only four possibilities. The first alternative, the best one for Bella, would be if she didn't feel as strongly for me – if she got over me and moved on. I would accept that, though it would never change the way I felt. You think of me as a… living stone – hard and cold. That's true. We are set the way we are, and it is very rare for us to experience a real change. When that happens, as when Bella entered my life, it is a permanent change. There's no going back…

"The second alternative, the one I'd originally chosen, was to stay with her throughout her human life. It wasn't a good option for her, to waste her life with someone who couldn't be human with her, but it was the alternative I could most easily face. Knowing all along that, when she died, I would find a way to die, too. Sixty years, seventy years – it would seem like a very, very short time to me… But then it proved much too dangerous for her to live in such close proximity with my world. It seemed like everything that could go wrong did. Or hung over us… waiting to go wrong. I was terrified that I wouldn't get those sixty years if I stayed near her while she was human.

"So I chose option three. Which turned out to be the worst mistake of my very long life, as you know. I chose to take myself out of her world, hoping to force her into the first alternative."

"What about the fourth alternative?"

He smiled humorlessly, a dark, sinister smile, and I immediately knew what he meant.

My entire body reacted instinctively. My nostrils flared, eyes flying open. I crushed Bella to my chest, a low rumble grinding in the back of my throat.

"But you left because you didn't want to turn her into one of you. You want her to be human," I whispered, horrified.

He just nodded, waiting for my breathing to slow down.

"I like option one," I muttered after a long, terse silence.

Edward didn't respond. He continued to sit there, still as a statue, watching me.

"You know exactly how much I hate to accept this," I whispered slowly, "but I can see that you do love her… in your way. I can't argue with that. But I really think I make her happy. She's stubborn, no one knows that better than I do, but she's capable of healing. She's healed before. And with me, she's human, with Charlie and Renée, and she can grow up and have kids, and… be Bella. You love her enough that you have to see the advantages of that plan. She thinks you're very unselfish… are you really? Can you consider the idea that I'm better for her than you are?"

"I have considered it," Edward answered quietly. "In some ways, you are better suited for her than another human. Bella takes some looking after, and you're strong enough that you could protect her from herself, and from everything that conspires against her. You have done that already, and I'll owe you for that as long as I live – forever – whichever comes first… I even asked Alice if she could see it – see that Bella is better off with you. She couldn't, of course. She can't see the wolves. But I'm not stupid enough to make the same mistake I made before, Jacob. And I'm not as selfless as she gives me credit for. Until she tells me to leave, I'm here."

"And when she tells you she wants me?" I challenged. "You know she's already told me – what do you plan to do?"

"I'll let her go."

"Just like that?"

"In the sense that I'll never show her how hard it is for me, yes. But I'll keep watch. You see, Jacob, you might leave her someday. Humans die all the time, for various reasons. I will always be waiting in the wings, hoping for that to happen."

I snorted. "Well, you've been much more honest than I had any right to expect… Edward. Thanks for letting me in your head."

"As I said, I'm feeling oddly grateful for your presence in her life tonight. It was the least I could do… You know, Jacob, if it weren't for that fact that we're natural enemies and that you've also stolen away the reason for my existence, I might actually like you."

"Maybe…" I mused. "If you weren't a disgusting vampire who wanted to suck out the life of the girl I love… well, no, not even then."

Edward chuckled. "Can I ask you something?" He said after a moment.

"Why would you have to ask?"

"I can only hear if you think of it. It's just a story I overheard Sam thinking about, tied up with a memory of Bella. Something about a third wife…?"

"What about it?"

Edward didn't answer, no doubt listening to the story in my head. I heard his low hiss, blending in with the screaming of the wind.

"Of course," Edward seethed. "Of course! I rather wish your elders had kept that story to themselves, Jacob."

"You don't like the leeches being painted as the bad guys?" I mocked. "You know, they are. Then and now."

"I really couldn't care less about that part. Can't you guess which character Bella would identify with?"

I had already connected the dots before he was finished, but I was silent for a moment, stroking her hair and placing a kiss on her forehead. "Okay, I see your point," I murmured, watching her eyes flutter underneath their lids.

"She wants to be there in the clearing," he sighed. "Alice has seen it, but she just ends up stumbling around in the forest."

"You know, your military brother gave her the idea just as much as the story did."

"Neither side meant any harm," Edward whispered, backtracking.

"And when does this little truce end?" I asked. "First light? Or do we wait until after the fight?"

There was a pause as we both considered.

"First light," we whispered together, then laughed quietly.

"Sleep well, Jacob," Edward murmured.

It was quiet again, and the tent held still for a few minutes. The wind seemed to have decided it wasn't going to flatten us after all and was giving up the fight. Right on cue, the pop-up ad in my head reminding me to ask Bella about the swirly thing made itself known, and I found myself drifting into a very nice, very vivid dream…

Edward groaned softly. "I didn't mean that quite so literally."

"You could leave, you know – give us a little privacy," I whispered. "Why did you come here, anyway?"

"The jealousy," Edward murmured. "I couldn't stomach the thought of you two, all alone…" He flinched.

I snorted. "Some chaperone," I muttered.

"Would you like me to help you sleep, Jacob?" Edward offered, smiling again.

"You could try," I said doubtfully. "It would be interesting to see who walked away, wouldn't it?"

"Don't tempt me too far, wolf. My patience isn't that perfect."

"Jacob…" Bella hummed, "my Jacob."

My laugh was barely a whisper. "I'd rather not move just now, if you don't mind."

Sleep took me then; like a fog creeping on the ground, it slunk over my eyes the way a cat prowls forward, with silent footsteps, and took me off to odd, slanted dreams – all of which made more sense than reality.