A/N: Uh oh. I was writing a little story for my birthday, and now I have very little padding for this one. Eeps. Let's see if I can keep up with weekly updates. Moo ha.

It was well past midnight when Edward pulled into his garage. He turned off the car and simply sat for a few minutes. The day had been exhausting on so many levels. He needed a moment before he faced his mother inside.

Head tilted back against the headrest, Edward let his thoughts drift from his more tumultuous thoughts to Bella.

As he'd sat in the waiting room earlier, turning the words she'd spit at him over in his head, memories of the student she'd been resurfaced. He remembered she'd been smart, engaged, and insightful in class, but often didn't turn in her homework. He remembered the gossip in the teachers' lounge. "Such a waste," one of them had said.

He remembered the sense he got that she was in trouble and lined that up with what little he knew about her situation. Her mother had died. Neither she nor Emmett had mentioned a father, and whoever he was, Bella wasn't relying on the man, as she'd said she was crashing on a friend's couch. From the way Emmett spoke of their mother, Edward gathered her death was more recent.

Then, as now, it seemed to him that Bella was always skirting the line between responsible and irresponsible—a good student in the classroom who didn't do all her homework, a caring sister who didn't always prioritize her brother's best interests.

But then, her life seemed chaotic. Chaos wasn't the best atmosphere for making calm, rational choices. And wasn't that something Edward was intimately familiar with?

The noise of the door from the garage to the kitchen opened. Knowing his momentary respite was up, Edward got out of the car to greet his mother.

"How was Emmett?" Edward asked as they entered the kitchen.

He already knew from checking in earlier that Emmett had been no trouble; that wasn't what Edward was asking.

Having been a foster parent a long time, his mother understood what he wanted to know. "He's confused, but he hides it behind humor. He has a lot of anger too, but I don't think he knows how to express it. He started to make a face when he was talking about how he couldn't live with his sister, and he turned it into a goofy face." His mother smiled sadly.

Her smile was more genuine when she met Edward's eyes and gave his hand a quick squeeze. "His trauma is easier to deal with than a lot of kids will be. All things considered, he's an easy first case for you."

Edward grimaced. "I don't want easy. Most foster parents can deal with easy. The difficult cases are the ones who need a person like me; a person who can stay the course when it gets really rough."

His mother's eyes were sad and voice a gentle rebuke when she spoke. "Everyone needs someone who can stay the course, Edward. This system can destroy a sweet kid like Emmett."

Edward ducked his head. "I didn't mean—"

"I know what you meant. You want to help the ones the world has already given up on." She squeezed his hand again.

At the end of the day, the system was overloaded and deeply flawed. Foster parents were a bandaid—food, shelter, health. They were a place to put a kid and under no obligation to stay when the going got tough. By definition, every child in foster care had been traumatized. They were easier to get rid of than deal with, and many foster parents did just that at the first sign of trouble.

Edward wanted to be the end of the line for kids—the one who wouldn't toss them out like garbage. He had the wherewithal, he thought.

His mother knew better than most that, sometimes, even that wasn't enough.

"Were you able to see her?" his mother asked, the slightest waver in her voice.

Edward sighed. He sank down onto the couch, his heart aching. It was the whole reason he was out so late. His sister—adopted as he had been out of the foster system—had called their parents.

Esme and Carlisle Cullen had learned the long and hard way, their wayward daughter, Alice, could and would take advantage of them. Their love and steadiness had come too late for Alice, and she'd been lost to them, popping up only when she thought she could use them to get her next hit.

Edward loved his sister. He mourned her, and the relationship they'd lost when her addiction had robbed their family of the person she could be. He knew Alice was still there; that she loved her family, but he wouldn't let her take advantage of them again.

So, when she'd asked Esme to meet her, it was Edward who showed up.

"She looks better than she did last time," he said, picking a positive note to begin. "Her hair is growing out."

The last time Alice popped up, she'd crashed with their parents, ate everything in their fridge, shaved off all her hair, and taken two cell phones. Esme had argued it wasn't as bad a theft—they'd just replaced their phones and the ones Alice had taken were meant to be donated to a women's shelter—but the whole encounter had shaken them. Again.

"Was she…" Esme began but trailed off.

Edward pinched the bridge of his nose. He hated breaking his mother's heart. "Same old. She says she's clean, and she does look…better." He shook his head, staring forward blankly. "She asked for money."

His mother made a small noise, and Edward couldn't look. He didn't want to see the defeated set of her shoulders. "She said she's trying to get a place. Has a boyfriend who's a good guy." He huffed. "Wanted her half of the deposit." He swallowed hard. "But she got angry when I offered to go with her to pay."

"She wanted the money up front," his mother said, voice quiet and flat.

"Yeah." He felt when his mother stepped up behind him and tilted his head back on the couch, looking up at her. "You can't let her in, Mom. Not if you want to help me with the kids or take in more fosters yourself."

He knew his mother didn't need to be told. She'd been in the business since he'd been a lost child himself. One of the rules was that everyone in the household and everyone Edward exposed the foster kids to in his care, had to be cleared. His sister would never have passed a background check even if she stayed still long enough to take one. If his parents let Alice in, he wouldn't be able to let Emmett near them either.

His mother cupped his cheek with a tender smile. "I called you for a reason," she reminded him.

Of course.

Because he was the only one in the family who had the strength to tell his sister "no," even when his heart broke every time.

~0~

"Where is she?" Emmett tossed his body forward in that harsh way kids did, kneeling hard on the floor of the backseat so he could lean into the front between the driver and passenger seats. "Is sissy still coming? Is she not going to come for me?"

Edward had to work to keep the frown off his face. Bella was late, and she hadn't called. If she was a no-show, Emmett was going to be devastated. "She said she'd be here," he said to the little boy. "Let's give her a few more minutes before we get mad."

"I'm not mad." Emmett ran the Hulk toy he had in his hand into the side of the seat. "Just… Do you think she got in an accident? Like me and Mommy?"

Edward's stomach twisted. "I think—"

"Hey, Emmy."

Edward had to admit, the relief that went through him when he heard her voice was palpable. He got out of the car and let Emmett out. The boy rocketed out of the door, running—luckily along the sidewalk instead of across the parking lot—headlong at his sister. Edward sucked in a breath and called his name, already envisioning him toppling Bella to the floor accidentally.

The boy literally skidded to a stop just before he barreled into his sister. "Whoa. Sissy! What happened?"

Bella did look a mess. There were scrapes on her face and hands. And she was on crutches. Her foot was badly sprained and wrapped.

"Takes me longer to get around with these things," Bella said, switching the crutches to one arm so she could lean down and hug her brother. Over his head, she met Edward's eyes. "The bus stop is a little far. That's why I'm late. I'm just not used to being so slow."

Edward's lips twitched. She expected him to have something to say about her lateness. He deserved that, he acknowledged to himself. The impulse to lecture her had gotten the better of him one too many times. He'd taken classes meant to help him communicate with parents, but he was still new at this after all.

As they got their food and sat down, Emmett wouldn't let Bella dismiss her injuries as a simple fall. "Did someone do that? My friend. Rosie. She said if I got taken away, it's because there was hitting. Did someone hit you, Sissy? Was it Mike?"

Sitting in the booth closeby, but giving them space, Edward pressed his lips into a thin line. This was the first he'd heard of this "Rosie" and her theories.

"Wow. Okay," Bella said. "Let me sit down for this conversation, bub."

"Sissy, Miss Jessica and Mr. Edward say you gotta make good choices. Are you making good choices?"

"You're wound pretty tight, aren't you?" Bella got up and moved to Emmett's side of the booth, putting her arm around him. "People are going to say some things about what happened to our family, but you know the truth. Mike was…"

"An asshat?" Emmett suggested, as Bella searched for the right word.

Edward put a hand over his mouth, and Bella huffed. "Yeah, well. I guess that's as good a word as any. He was a lot of things, and not very nice, but he never hit either of us, and we're never going to see him again either way." Bella hugged Emmett and sighed.

"I'm working with Miss Jessica to make sure I'm making the right choices for us, Emmy. I was going to tell you about it today. Miss Jessica got me into a shelter, which is a good thing for me. If I don't have to think about where I'm going to sleep, it's going to help me think better."

"You don't know where to sleep?" Emmett asked, sounding mystified.

"I do now. That's the point."

"Can I sleep there with you? We can share. I don't mind."

"You would think. A lot of the women there have their kids with them." There was a bitter note to her voice, but she smoothed it out quickly. "That's just not how the cookie crumbled for us, bub. Because of what happened, we have to do things a certain way. So I'm going to stay in the shelter, and you're going to stay with Edward. But Miss Jessica is working on finding us a place of our own. An apartment. Maybe even a little townhouse. It depends on what opens up. There's housing for people like us."

"People who live with asshats like Mike?"

Bella snorted. "Yeah. Essentially."

When they moved out to the play area, Edward debated a moment before following them outside. He sat near enough to Bella that she couldn't miss him, but left plenty of space between them. Still, she made an aggravated noise and crossed her arms over her chest.

"I'm going to ask you to think twice before you open your mouth," Bella said, not looking at him. "I'm not in the mood to be polite, and if all you're here to do is to wag your finger at me…"

"No lecture," he said, holding up his hands. "Actually, I wanted to apologize."

Her head snapped to him, an eyebrow arched. "Apologize?"

"Emmett never told me he was worried about you, or that he thought anyone might have hit you. All of that was new to me too, or I would have given you a heads-up."

She scoffed. "He's not going to share his insecurities with you. You're still part of his insecurities. You know that, right?"

Before he could answer, Bella made another frustrated noise and ran a hand over her eyes. "Sorry. I know it's not actually your fault. You're just the foster parent. You don't control how the system works. This just sucks. It might not look like it to you, because you don't know him well enough, but Emmett is so anxious right now. And it's killing me. He's not even six years old, and he's Emmett. He's easy-going. That's not me doing that to him. That's the system. I'm not saying what Mike did was great, but I could have seen him through that without making him scared that he could lose me too."

Edward considered a beat. "It's like trading one trauma for another in a lot of ways."

Again, she glanced at him with eyebrow raised, and he smiled without humor. "I'm a product of the system myself."

Both her eyebrows shot for her hairline. "I'm…sorry."

"It's different in my case. My birth parents are still in prison, so, clearly, someone had to do something with me. But the effect is the same. Whatever my parents were up to—the kind of parents they were—was one trauma. Being yanked away from my birth family, however messed up they were, was another trauma entirely. I'm not going to pretend I know everything about your case, but it sounds like your boyfriend—"

"Ex-boyfriend."

"Ex-boyfriend was into some not so great things. So that was a trauma waiting to happen, right? If nothing else, if you got kicked out of your ex's house as suddenly as you did with Emmett in tow, would he have been able to crash with you on your friend's couch? All those ups and downs would be a different kind of trauma." Seeing her narrow her eyes, he was quick to go on. "I'm not saying you purposefully traumatized your brother. It's like the song says, right? 'Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.'"

She stared at him, blinking. "So you're traumatized?"

He cocked his head, taken aback.

"Sorry. Geez." She wiped a hand over her eyes and gave a huff of laughter. "You're just giving me whiplash. You go from judging me to, what? Trying to connect, I guess? Your parents are in prison? That's heavy. But then you just have to rub it in that I traumatized my brother? I'm trying to catch up."

"I didn't mean it like that."

"It's true, isn't it?" She leaned her head back against the wall, waving at Emmett when he called to her from the top of the climbing structure. "I was always irritated with my mother for bringing the kind of men into our lives that she did, and look what happened. I judged the hell out of her; it would be hypocritical of me to be upset that you judge me."

"I'm not trying to judge you."

She gave him a sarcastic smile. "Not trying and not judging are two very different things, Mr. Cullen." She shook her head, looking away. "It's kind of your fault that I ended up with him in the first place."

"It's…what?"

"Ugh. Nothing. I didn't mean to say that, and I didn't mean it that way. I'm responsible for my own messes. I'm a big girl."

"But what—"

"Just drop it."

Edward flexed his fingers at his sides. It took some willpower, but he dropped it. "Okay, well. I also wanted to see if you'd be amenable to a change in the visitation."

"Amenable? What change?" Her shoulders visibly tensed.

"Nothing bad. I know it's hard for you to get around, and even harder for you with your foot. I could pick you up from wherever you are. We can drive wherever you want. Here or a park or whatever works best, and I can drop you off again."

Bella blinked at him, then stared forward. "Amenable," she muttered again under her breath.

"It means—"

"I know what it means," she snapped, voice slightly raised. "I've just never heard anyone use that word out loud. Can you at least try not to talk down to me?"

Now it was Edward's turn to make an exasperated noise. "I wasn't trying to talk down to you. I'm not trying to insult you. Can you give me maybe half a break?"

Her stare was hard for another moment before her face broke with a genuine smile. "See, now you sound like a twenty-something-year-old man instead of whatever fifty-four-year-old professor with a stick up your ass you're going for." She tilted her head. "How old are you, anyway?"

He grimaced. People gave him a hard time about his age regularly. "I'll be twenty-six next month."

"Wow. Look at you. A little more than four whole years older than me."

Irritated, he glared.

She glared back.

Then, she cracked a smile.

And suddenly, he laughed, irritation fading. "You think I'm pretentious," he surmised, somehow more amused than annoyed now.

She sighed and wrapped her arms around herself again. "I think you're an easy person to yell at. What do they call it? Displacement? See. I can be mature too." She straightened up in her seat, not looking at him again. "Yes, I can work on giving you a break. I'll add it to my list of the metric ton of things I have to do. And yes… I would appreciate a ride. I'm trying to stand on my own two feet, but we see how well that's going." She rolled her eyes, bouncing her bound foot in emphasis.

"It's harder than it looks." Edward thought of his sister, his heart giving a quiet pang.

Bella glanced at him, searching his face. "Yeah," she said after a moment. "Though it's probably a lot easier when you don't shoot yourself in the foot. Fucking Mike," she said under her breath.

Curious as he was, Edward didn't push.

A/N: Maybehaps they're making a wee bit of progress, non?