"Leah, it's not working. I can't do this." She was covered in sweat, hair escaping a loose ponytail. They had been practicing-although Bella decided that it wasn't much practice if they weren't making any progress. Leah had taken it upon herself to be the one doing the "training". "This is honestly pointless." She grumbled, adjusting her sports bra. She hated the thing, but Leah had insisted that if they were training that she was to look the part-which meant a sports bra, shorts and one of Jacob's old shirts cut up and tied off.

"Strong body, strong mind Swan." Leah laughed, "Besides, even if it's not working, don't you want to be able to defend yourself?" She did have a point, but no amount of training would account for her awkward, ungraceful self. She was accident-prone, and she didn't need anybody else to tell her that.

"Leah, I'm not even that good. I could probably barely defend myself against a chicken."

"A chicken, Swan? If you find yourself against a chicken please let me know. Because that would be the least destructive thing that you would have decided to cross paths with." She scoffed and stared at her before shaking her head.

They had been running through simple protection moves, but Leah had an unfair advantage with strength and Bella was a big ball of clumsiness. She sighed, sitting on a rock and spinning the top of a water bottle between her fingertips. "You know, none of this is going to matter if I run into a vampire that wants to kill me. Me learning how to punch somebody isn't going to do much against a vampire that moves faster than I do."

"Don't forget more graceful too." Leah chuckled. "If you think that we would let a vampire get close enough to kill you…again…then you don't know just how much Jacob cares about you. I don't think that any of us could be able to live with him if he lost you, not again. He was insufferable."

"What do you mean?" She was curious now, she hadn't asked him about what he did when she was gone, she was wrapped up too much in her own misery.

"I shouldn't have said anything…but he just was…I don't know Swan, he just wasn't himself. None of us knew what being away from your Imprint does on somebody, let alone that long. He was miserable, drinking-although that doesn't really do much for us. He was a wolf so much that we were wondering if he remembered how to be human anymore."

"I–I didn't mean to make him like that…I didn't even know…I wanted to come back, I tried." She kicked the dirt beneath her feet, trying desperately to avoid eye contact as the darkness tried to creep its way back in.

"We know. Jake tried to keep his thoughts private, but with us, it's really hard. We hear everything. He felt like he betrayed your trust by having us hear all the things that happened to you, but….I just want you to know that we're here fo–What is that?!" Bella stood, whipping around in fear.

"What, Leah?"

Leah stood, standing in front of her staring as though she had grown three heads. She waved her hands in front of her, almost as though she was trying to touch something in the air. "You had this strange, freaky shimmery thing by you. Is that what he was talking about? That was the weirdest thing I had ever seen. What were you doing just now? What were you thinking about?"

Bella's arms instinctually wrapped around herself, "I was thinking about all of that…about what Edward did."

"There! There it is again." Leah stared at her in awe. "This is crazy, it must be attached to your mind somehow-you're protecting yourself and your mind is naturally trying to…." She trailed off, before starting to gather their things. "Come on, Swan. Let's get you back home. I think that's enough for the day. He had specific instructions not to break you."

They headed back to the shop in silence, neither knowing what to say. She busied herself with thoughts of Jacob, her mind making up different scenarios of what he was doing when she was gone. He must have been hurting the entire time, and still, he was wrapped up in her when they first found their way back to each other. She paused, remembering just how tired he had looked when she first saw him in the hospital-to it was barely noticeable, she wasn't herself. Seeing him, beautiful as he was, distracted her from her own pain so much that she didn't see his. She trudged into the shop, flopping onto the couch in the office, and dozed off, her mind encompassing her in memories that she saw all too clearly now.

The distant sound of voices stirred her.

"Leah you shouldn't have brought that up, I was worried about her after this whole Alice thing."

"She needs to bring it up. She needs to use that anger, and channel those memories. Her weird shield thing is attached to her feelings and the need to protect herself. I saw it for myself. The more that she feels those things, the stronger she's going to be. She's not as weak and fragile as you worry about, Jake. After everything she's been through, she's still here -she's still standing. Give her some credit."

She heard the descending footsteps as Leah-she guessed-walked away and then the sound of Jacob approaching. She felt his hand on her face, caressing gently as he rubbed his fingertips across her jaw. Her eyes fluttered open to see him inches from her face. He was leaning down, his arm holding onto the back of the couch as he bent in towards her. "You know, you're beautiful even when you're not fully sleeping. How much of that did you hear?"

"Enough to know that I need to get stronger, to stop moping about what happened to me and use it for something." He paused, staring at her with questioning eyes.

"You know that you don't have to do anything you don't want to, right? We can find a different way to figure this out."

"No, we can't Jake. I can do this. I'm a lot stronger because of you." She gulped at her confession and stared up at his chocolate eyes. She always felt like she could drown in them.

"You're right, you are stronger, but it's not because of me Bells. You did that on your own." He pulled away from her reluctantly before reaching into the mini fridge and grabbing two cokes. He paused and handed her one, she smiled at the familiarity.

She took a sip, and the cold brought out her courage. "What did you do when I was gone, Jake? What was it like?"

He stilled at her question, he wasn't prepared for that and he turned to face her. She looked cute, her hair falling out of a loose ponytail. She smelled good, even when she was sweating and he knew that the animal part of him would bask in her scent if she would let him.

"What do you mean?" He sat, lifting her legs onto his lap as he took a sip of his Coke.

"When I was gone, the Imprint? How did it feel? What did it do to you…what did I do to you being away like that?" His eyes flashed up to hers and he clenched his jaw for a moment.

"First off, you didn't do it, Bells. You didn't do anything. What he did to you, wasn't your fault. None of that was your fault. That thing did what he did to you on his own accord, nothing you did wrong." His voice trailed off as he saw a faint shimmering around her, he leaned into her wondering if he could make it stay. "When you were gone, I wasn't myself. I didn't want to be…me. I was a Wolf most of the time, I slept, ate, and lived like that for a good portion of a year. I tried to keep my mind off of you, it was hard. It was like there was this elastic band that was pulling on me, pulling me somewhere I just didn't know where. I was wound so tight that I didn't realize that I was at my breaking point."

He didn't want to tell her all of this, to risk putting her back into that dark space that she used to be in, but she had asked and he didn't lie to her. He couldn't. "It's like I was searching for you and no matter how hard I looked I couldn't find you anywhere. I was angry, mad at you for leaving Charlie, for leaving me. I thought that you chose him over your family." He stared at his hands as he confessed. "Most of all, I was mad because I thought that you chose not to be human and that I wouldn't see your cheeks flush, or you tripping over your two left feet. I thought that I wouldn't ever hear your heartbeat again and that was what bothered me the most. I didn't know if you were alive."

Yet he realized that deep down, a part of him knew that she was.

A gasp escaped his lips as he saw an image flash before his eyes, of Bella laying on a cold floor while Edward sat sneering on a chair in front of her. She was in a light blue nightgown, skin, and bones and he could feel the cold cement as it seeped into her. He turned, staring at Bella as silent tears poured down her cheeks.

"What were you just thinking about, Bells?" His fingers ran against her cheeks, catching tears falling in their tracks. Massive palms tucked against her cheeks and he watched her eyes flutter closed softly as she leaned into his touch.

A poignant silence hung in the air between them as he waited for her to talk. One thing he could always give her was patience. Fluttering lashes against pale skin drew his attention back to her face as she opened her eyes to meet his. "I was thinking about just…a memory of what happened." He nodded softly, seemingly already knowing the answer from her strange power.

He felt the absence of her presence as she pushed off of the couch, and he watched her with tired eyes. It had been a long day, the shop had been busy, and he had been neglectful recently. The pack was doing a fine job of keeping everything in order, but things ran smoother when he was there. He admitted to himself that it was hard to let her out of his sight these days, and he blamed himself for not being there when that leech showed up in his–in their–home.

The guilt washed over him like the gentle waves lapping at the shore and he swallowed it down. He didn't have time to be worried about fighting his own demons, not when hers were showing up in full skin. Even though this skin felt foreign to him, the Wolf wanting to escape with twitching jumps of his flesh, he was trying to remember what it was like to be human again.

The reason he had lost himself was standing right in front of him holding her hand out to save him from drowning in his own misery.

He reached an oiled hand out, ivory fingers slipping in between his caramel hands. "Let's go home."