The rewrite of this fic was born because of the pandemic. If you've read the original version, you'll notice the plot is completely different but the same characters (that I made up) remain. We're starting in New Moon and working our way through Eclipse, loosely following canon events BUT told through the perspective our friends in La Push... with some darker twists. Some of the pack members are aged up- particularly, Jacob is 18 and Paul is 20.
Some dialogue in this chapter is pulled directly from chapter(s) 16 and 18 of New Moon.
Enjoy :)
Chapter 1: Nightmare
He's never fast enough. He never had enough time.
There Bella was, standing on the cliff with her arms spread eagle- in the middle of a freaking storm- about to jump. Trees and bushes whip by Jacob as he forces his legs to pump faster, go faster dammit- he needs to reach her in time.
She's mumbling to herself- some nonsense he doesn't understand the context of and he's not entirely sure he wants to.
All he can do is watch. The whole pack is watching the drama unfold through his eyes. Even Leah and Seth, still reeling from their father's heart attack and their terrifying transformation, are distracted by the scene playing out in front of him.
He pushes up on his front legs and phases with the momentum, never breaking his stride as he continues to run on two legs. He screams and screams and screams.
No amount of screaming will make her turn around.
Another bellow rips his throat to shreds. "No! Bella, no!"
He never stood a chance.
Bella flexes her arms straight above her head, settles into a crouch, and jumps. And screams. All the way down.
Jacob is screaming, too.
He scrabbles to the edge of the cliff with wide, terrified eyes and looks for any signs of Bella.
"C'mon, c'mon," he mumbles to himself. His fingers tap anxiously against the rocks.
She surfaces with a gasp and treads water, laughing.
Jacob nearly collapses with relief. "Bell-"
A huge wave snags her back under the water. The current batters her tiny form, and her limbs are too weak to do anything about it.
Jacob curses and jumps after her.
The water is freezing, even to him, but the currents are nothing against his strength. He immediately spots Bella where she's slowly sinking and grabs her by the waist. The swim back to the shore is only a few minutes.
But Bella's not breathing. His hands freeze in panic.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no-
"Jacob! Get it together!" Sam barks at him. He didn't even hear him approach, but it's the verbal spanking he needed.
He's not sure if it's the rain, lingering seawater, or tears that he wipes from his face. Freaking out isn't going to help. He knows what he needs to do.
He turns Bella on her side and proceeds to pound at her back.
Water gushes out of her mouth and nose in torrents. Still, no signs of life.
"Breathe!" Riddled with anxiety, he continues to beat the water out of her lungs. He's begging her to just live. "Breathe, Bella! C'mon!"
Another torrent of water expels from her mouth. He goes for another hit, but Bella gasps. It's a ragged, weak sound, but she's breathing. Finally.
"Bella?" Jacob asks, tapping her cheek. "Bells, honey, can you hear me?"
No response.
"How long has she been unconscious?" Sam asks.
"I don't know." He really had no idea. Anxiousness curls in his throat. "A few minutes? It didn't take long to tow her to the beach."
"She's breathing. She'll come around. We should get her out of the cold, though. I don't like the color she's turning..."
Sam is right. Bella's lips are blue, and her skin is stark white. Even worse than how she looked when she came down to the rez for the first time a few weeks prior.
"You think it's okay to move her?" Jacob asks quietly.
Sam grimaces. "She didn't hurt her back or anything when she fell?"
"I don't know," Jacob moans miserably. He could scream.
"Jake…?"
Traitor tears fall down his face at Bella's croak. He crouches closer, right in her face, taking in every minute detail of her face.
"Oh my God, Bella! Are you okay? Can you hear me? Do you hurt anywhere?"
"J-Just m-my throat," she stutters. Her voice is shot. It's music to his ears.
"Let's get you out of here, then," Jacob murmurs, lifting her off the ground. She's a limp noodle in his arms.
"You got her?" Sam calls, already jogging backwards.
"Yeah, I'll take it from here. Get back to the hospital. I'll join you later. Thanks, Sam."
"How did you find me?" she asks in a chainsmoker voice.
"I was nearby," he replies as he jogs up the hill toward his home. "I saw you in the distance getting ready to jump. I was almost right behind you when you screamed..." He shuddered. "Didn't you hear me screaming at you, Bella? What were you thinking?"
"I saw him," she rasps.
"Who, Bella?"
"E-Edward. I saw him."
Jacob stares at her and begins to wonder for the first time if she's as crazy as the rest of the pack thinks she is.
He just shakes his head. "Terrible timing," he mutters under his breath.
"You said… hospital. Before, to Sam. Is someone hurt? Did she fight you?"
"No. It's Harry Clearwater. Harry had a heart attack this morning."
"Harry?" Bella blinks rapidly. "Oh, no! Does Charlie know?"
"Yeah. He's over there, too, with my dad."
"Is Harry going to be okay?"
Jacob purses his lips. "It's bad."
Bella holds her head in her hands as they pass through the front door. "What can I do?"
"You can stay here." Jacob deposits her onto his beat up couch. "I mean it- right here. I'll get you some dry clothes."
He's back in seconds with a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt with his school's logo on it. Bella's reflexes are slow, and she doesn't catch them when she's hit square in the face. She pulls the clothes from her face slowly, with an indignant scowl on her face. It almost makes Jacob smile.
Almost.
"These will be huge on you, but it's the best I've got. I'll, er, step outside so you can change."
"Don't go anywhere. I'm too tired to move yet. Just stay with me."
Jacob sits on the floor, his back against the couch. He leans his head on the cushion next to Bella's slumped form and yawns. "Guess I could rest for a minute..."
His eyes close.
"NO!"
His eyes shoot open at Bella's shriek. He's suddenly sitting in her living room, trembling. The air is saturated with the sickeningly sweet scent of vampire, like cyanide. Bella's face is beet red. The little vampire girl is a statue in the corner of the room.
He never should've answered that phone call.
"How dare he!" Bella continues to scream. She jumps to her feet, and Jacob rises with her. He subconsciously puts himself between her and the tiny leech.
"Oh, get out of the way, Jacob!" She elbows her way around his trembling body and begs, "What do we do? Can't we call him? Can Carlisle?"
Pixie girl shakes her head. "He abandoned his phone in the trash."
"You said before we had to hurry. Hurry how? Let's do it, whatever it is!"
He watches Bella and the leech argue. Bella gets more animated with each volley thrown at her. Anytime someone she loves is in any kind of trouble, she's always ready to do something about it, consequences be damned. He knows. He understands. And yet...
"I'm only afraid of getting you killed," the leech says.
Bella scoffs. "I almost get myself killed on a daily basis!"
She runs to the kitchen, frantically looking for something to write Charlie a goodbye note with. Stupidly, Jacob holds out a pen and paper pad to her. Helping her rush to her death like the idiot he is.
"Thanks," she mumbles, pulling the cap off with her teeth. She leaves a chicken scratch message on the counter.
It'll kill Charlie when he gets home. It's killing Jacob now.
"Don't go," he begs. He doesn't know why he bothers. He knows Bella. When her mind is made up, there's no going back. She's going no matter what he says.
Bella doesn't waste her breath arguing with him. She gives him a brief glance that says it all.
I'm sorry. You know I have to do this, she says.
"No, you don't," he whispers.
Bella closes her eyes. "Please, please, please take care of Charlie."
She hurries after the bloodsucker, stumbling past the threshold of the front door. He follows right behind her.
Funnily enough, she spins around again to lock the door. In any other situation, Jacob would've laughed. Of all the things to worry about right now, locking the door is so trivial.
One foot hovers over the porch steps, and Jacob catches her arm again. He has to try.
"Please, Bella. I'm begging. I can't protect you there. Let the vamp go by herself. You can figure something else out."
"Jake, I have to-"
"You don't, though. You really don't. It's different this time. It's not like when you left with your mom for a couple years. I could take that. Now you could… die. How could I say goodbye, knowing that?" he wheezes. "You could stay here. You could stay alive. For Charlie. For me. We're your real family. Not them. Isn't that enough? Aren't we enough?"
The stupid Mercedes revs impatiently. Tears fly down Bella's face as she shakes her head at him. There's no time to mince words.
"Don't die, Bella," he chokes out. "Don't go. Don't. Please. He's not worth it. If you die, I'll die too. I just know it. So please, please-"
Bella sobs once, and throws her arms around his waist. He does the same, resting his head on top of hers.
He won't let her go. He can't let her go.
"You're a good friend to me, Jake. The very best," she whispers. "I'm sorry. I love you."
"I love me, too," he replies automatically. It was an old joke between them; an ingrained call-and-response since diaper days.
Bella pushes against his chest. He can barely move his arms and head away from her- his limbs suddenly weigh a thousand pounds. She untangles herself from him and runs across the lawn.
Jacob watches his best friend drive off with the tiny vampire. To her death.
His mouth opens to let out a terrible, inhuman wail-
And sits up in bed.
He stares in shock at the band posters littering his bedroom walls.
Over the sound of white noise whooshing in his ears, he can make out the shrill ring of the landline. It's the new hit soundtrack played on repeat in his tiny home since Bella returned from Italy.
Ring, ring, ring.
It's Bella. It's always Bella.
His father's wheelchair squeaks by his bedroom door.
"D'you want me to answer?" Billy asks.
Jacob flops onto his back and throws an arm over his eyes.
"No," he growls.
He was relieved when he got word from Charlie that she returned home safe and sound a few days ago. His mood plummeted as soon as he heard the Cullens returned with her like nothing happened. He couldn't believe it. After everything she went through…
Jacob rolls over and hides his face (and his scream) in his pillow.
He can't talk to her yet. He's too angry. It's too painful.
Ring, ring, ring.
Bella, Bella, Bella.
Bella keeps calling.
Whenever Jacob isn't assigned to patrol, he spends most of his free time hiding among the cliffs just to avoid the phone.
Away from prying eyes, he would sit on the cliffs unbothered for hours whenever the weather gives him an opportunity to go unnoticed. With the help of the rain and fog, no one notices him resting on the edge of the highest cliff among the bluffs.
The massive russet wolf could easily be mistaken for a pile of dried pine needles if anyone bothered to hazard a glance towards the cliffs; he is nearly invisible, blending in with the natural colors of the earth.
His bright amber eyes stare across the sea, taking in every minute movement of the waves with his heightened vision.
Every few minutes, a great huff would escape his muzzle. Pain lances through him as his thoughts, once again, turn to Bella.
He spent days thinking about it, but he couldn't fathom why she would ever let any of those leeches back into her life.
When Bella drove down to La Push with a banged up pair of motorcycles, months after the break up, Jacob lit up like a match.
As soon as she stepped out of the Chevy he grabbed her up in a hug, and a wave of nostalgia rushed through him. And the way she grinned at him- it was just like old times with the mudpies again.
He was too excited to see Bella again after so long, until he actually got a good look at her.
She was pale, a sickly pale that was so different from her natural fair skin she had when he last saw her at prom a year ago.
Her face was gaunt, and her eyes darted everywhere, never settling on one object for too long. She clutched at her middle, like she was barely holding herself together, and would double over and gasp for air when she thought he wouldn't notice.
But Jacob always noticed. And it was all because of that disgusting leech.
Edward Cullen.
If Jacob could spit in his wolf form, he would.
Just when he thought they were pulling each other out of their own hells and piecing each other back together into their modified versions of normal, he gets tossed right back into the rings of fire as soon as she leaves.
He's burning again. Alone.
And while he is begrudgingly happy that Bella emerged out of zombie mode unscathed, he can't help but feel bitter about it.
Why couldn't he get something like that? Where was his reverse Uno card that would magically make it all better?
His spring break had been effectively ruined by vampires.
Jacob snorts. Who is he kidding?
He hasn't attended school consistently for weeks.
He can't bother keeping up the facade that he was a regular human, that he didn't transform into a horrifying monster. It was even harder now that he didn't have Bella around to keep him steady.
Why bother with human interaction? He didn't have time for it anyway. Every second he spent around his classmates was just putting them in more danger.
He was supposed to be spending all of his time protecting them. From a distance, always in the shadows.
He can't fight off vampires and sit in Algebra class at the same time. Vampire hunting isn't included on the list of acceptable reasons to qualify for an excused absence from school.
He informally withdrew from high school, but never told Bella because he knew he would never hear the end of it from her. The principal, however, was hot on his heels.
She was a tall, pewter haired woman with knowing eyes and a kind smile. Principal Silver, who insisted that all the students simply call her Diana, was a stubborn woman who refused to allow him to drop out.
When his absence went on for more than a week straight, she showed up to his house with a giant tote bag over her shoulder to reprimand his father.
Billy took it with his usual stoic face.
Diana straightened from her angry stance when she noticed Jacob warily step out of his bedroom.
"So help me God, you're graduating this year, even if I have to drag you to the finish line myself!"
Jacob's eyes darted between his father's before he settled on Diana.
"I can't," he murmured. She didn't know what she was asking. She didn't realize how much danger he would put other students in if he went back to school. One burst of anger and he could easily expose himself as a wolf, possibly injuring innocents in the process. It was impossible.
"She knows, Jacob," Billy said.
Jacob stared at them both with his mouth agape.
Diana spun back to his father. "You and those kooky councilmen need to come up with a better way to onboard these boys. Or at least give some kind of warning. He looks like a lost puppy!"
"He's a grown man," Billy groused.
"He is a child!" she snapped at him in Quileute.
They both stared each other down until Billy finally looked away with a twist of his lips.
"What do you propose then?" he asked.
"Modified self-study." She dropped the tote bag onto the table with a heavy thud. Jacob could see stacks of papers and textbooks through the peak of the opening.
"Diana…"
"Don't 'Diana' me!" She turned to Jacob with a warm smile and gestured at the papers. "Jacob, these are things from your locker and assignments that you have this week. You don't have to come to school, but you have to complete these and return them to me."
Jacob eyed her with disbelief. "That's it?"
Diana nodded encouragingly. "Come to my house at the end of the week with those finished assignments and I'll give you the next set." She paused with an apologetic grimace. "Sometimes you'll have to come by to take a test though. Can't get around those."
"But what about Embry?"
"I have Embry doing the same thing. He didn't tell you? You guys can work on this stuff together." She winked at him. "Try not to cheat though, okay?"
"I… Thank you," Jacob said sincerely.
Diana waved him off. "Don't thank me for doing my job."
This was more than he could've ever hoped for. He stood stock still, overwhelmed and filled with some kind of emotion that he couldn't name.
He wasn't sure what his expression was, but it must've been something terrible because Diana was quick to scurry over and pull him into a hug. He was suddenly reminded of his late mother.
"Everything's gonna be just fine," she crooned in his ear. "We're here to help."
"Thanks," he mumbled. She pulled back and cupped his face with her hands.
"You look just like Ephraim," she murmured, swiping her thumbs across the apples of his cheeks. She dropped her hands with a little laugh to herself and looked down with a shake of her head.
"My great-grandfather?"
"The very one," she whispered mysteriously. She cleared her throat and offered him another sunny smile. "I'll see you Sunday?"
"Yes."
Diana nodded, satisfied. She made her way to their front door and stilled with her hand the doorknob. She turned to Billy one last time and pointed an angry finger at him.
"Support. System," she insisted with a growl. Billy barely had time to open his mouth to retort before she slipped out with a slam of the mesh door.
He managed to keep up his schoolwork for a month and a half before Diana suddenly died mere days after Bella's return and Harry's funeral.
An aneurism, he was told. He only found out through the pack because of his refusal to and answer any phone calls.
Without someone on the inside that could upkeep his and Embry's special arrangements, Jacob is, once again, the dropout.
Typical occurrence for a high school senior turned beast because of the magic in his blood.
He never put much thought into his plans post high school. He thought he had more time.
He certainly has no time now.
His future is decided for him, and he's been assigned a life of unending servitude. And it sucks.
His spring break isn't ruined. His life is ruined. Forever.
A faint howling in the distance causes his ears to perk up. Sam was politely ignoring his brooding this whole time, but it was time to get to work.
Other streams of consciousness pop into his mind, one by one, as the rest of the pack shifts to answer Sam's call.
They pick up on his brooding thoughts and groan. He can hear a collective, "Jake, c'mon. Not this again," from his brothers.
He growls in annoyance. There is never any privacy. He wishes he could get one fucking second with his own thoughts.
He's the only one who still actively dwells on their predicament. The others feign nonchalance about being wolves when they're together, trying to siphon positivity from each other despite the mandate to be inhuman beasts for the unforeseeable future, but they're all still just as bitter and hopeless as him. He just doesn't bother hiding it.
Jacob stands up on all fours and shakes out his fur. He releases another quiet huff before turning toward the direction of the howl.
He can see through the others' eyes and where they are gathering; he's not too far away.
As he makes his way through the underbrush, he passes a large one story home nestled in a small clearing. The darkness and fog makes the glow of the porch lights look ethereal and welcoming, like something out of a fairytale.
Jacob stiffens when he realizes it's the house Diana used to live in. He didn't realize how close he was to her property.
His ears twitch again as he picks up the sound of an approaching car.
A restored Mustang drives up the obscured turnoff and rolls to a stop in front of the house. Jacob can hear Embry making sounds of appreciation.
The door on the driver's side opens and out steps a tall, copper skinned woman in a pair of sunglasses. Her most striking feature is her tousled garnet red hair that curled just past her shoulders. She pulls her sunglasses up to the crown of her head and glances around the area.
"Holy shit," she murmurs slowly. The woman is a younger, near carbon-copy of Diana.
Jacob can pick up on one particular member of the pack who couldn't catch himself from showing more interest than the rest of the hive.
"Dude, isn't that your ex? Kendra, right?" he asks.
The entire pack can feel Paul flinch at the mention of her name.
Finally, someone else had problems the pack could hone their concentration on and leave Jacob alone.
Another woman steps out from the car. She's wearing a parka with the hood pulled over her head. She's only slightly shorter than Kendra, who makes her way around the car to sling her arm around the smaller woman's shoulders.
And something in Jacob shivers.
"Can you believe it, Bailey?" Kendra says. "It's almost like… nothing changed."
"But it has," Bailey pipes up. She sniffs. "And now we have to go to a funeral."
He moves to get a closer look, suddenly overcome with an itch he needs to scratch- he needs to see- when another howl sounds off, this time an Order.
"Come, Jacob. I won't repeat myself," he hears Sam command.
His ears flatten against his skull at the weight of Sam's authoritative tone, and he hates how those words make his entire thoughts deviate to obey. His joints lock, and no matter how much he fights to move forward, the invisible force of the Order holds him in place. It compels him to turn around. He trembles for a few seconds before he finally complies and begins running in the opposite direction of the house.
"Looks like her granddaughters made it for the funeral," Jacob muses to himself.
"Of course they would, she was their whole world," Paul spits harshly. "That woman raised them all by herself."
Everyone in the thought-link sees a brief flash of a younger version of Kendra with longer, pitch black hair.
She stood with a smile on her face, eyes glittering with mirth. A broad hand reached up, brushing a thumb against her reddening cheek-
The thought is quickly smothered, but not before they all get an aftertaste of the terrible longing behind the memory. It's a memory the pack has witnessed before. No one dares to call him out on it.
"Just bring your ass over here, Jacob," Paul snaps at him.
Jacob bristles at Paul's tone but continues with his stride. He would put in his hours for patrol, and then go back to his favorite spot to brood again.