seventeen.

(Leah)

Every summer, from the year of Jacob's birth until the year his mother died, the Blacks and Clearwaters would pack up their gear and spend four, glorious long days camping together. It had become something of a tradition during those nine years, something religiously upheld, and when it had finally come to an end — when Sarah had died, that tradition had died with her.

Leah hasn't thought back to that time for a while, perhaps for the same reason her family and Jacob's never camped together again: the very idea of it was too painful, going without Sarah — and now, Leah thinks, without Harry too. But she can remember it perfectly. She remembers that, for the whole hike, no matter what age they were, the twins would drag their feet and their parents would bicker — but that she, Jacob and Seth loved every second of it. She remembers the hours she would waste climbing the hemlock tree once they had arrived; she remembers the whole afternoons she would spend pushing her brother into the lake and jumping in right after him. She remembers sitting at the fire, listening as Harry and Billy retold their stories and as Sarah and Sue reminisced together until nobody could keep their eyes open anymore. And when it was time to leave, Leah remembers how she would cry. Every year.

She has returned to that place only a few times since. Once, the week after Sarah's funeral, Leah had found Rachel and Rebecca there when they'd packed a bag and ran away. Hell, she'd ran there herself when Sam ended their relationship — though Rach and Beck had never found her; they'd already left La Push by then. Nobody had found her, because they hadn't known where to look.

But as soon as Embry had let slip about the lake, Leah had known she'd find Jacob here. And she's hiked for two hours just to get to this very spot, fuelled by her increasing, inexplicable need to see him, to make sure he is okay.

(They nearly killed each other, Embry had said. Sam found out that — that something had happened, and he lost it. Completely lost it. Jake, he was just defending himself. He couldn't help it.

But she hadn't cared whether Sam had been hurt. What? What did he find out?

Embry pulled a face. I can't tell you. Jake made me promise. I'm not sure, but I think . . . He shook his head. You don't understand, Leah. The pack was in shambles after the fight — we've never been so disorganised. My head felt like it was going to explode. And afterwards, when he made us swear . . . Well, I don't think he realised what he was doing, that he was actually giving us an order. I don't think we realised. Not until afterwards.

Who — Her eyes burned as she swallowed, throat thick. A part of her knew the truth; she had realised it as soon as Embry had begun to speak. It was like being told something she already knew. And she had no logical explanation for how she did — she just knew.

Jake.)

He is sitting by the old hemlock tree when she finds him. She is exhausted on all counts, her feet in her ruined sneakers are aching, but she finds her voice to call out to him.

"Jake?"

He doesn't answer at first. His eyes stare up unseeingly at the darkening sky, and for one wild moment the most awful thought crosses Leah's mind: he's dead; she is too late, she has lost him — what is it that makes him hers to lose? — but then his head lolls against the bark, and their eyes meet. He blinks slowly, once, twice, almost as if he can't quite believe who he is looking at —

No. He's not okay. He's dirty, yes; every bare inch of skin looks as if he's been dragged along the muddy banks of the lake: his neck, his naked chest, his arms — he's filthy. But mercifully, he looks unharmed and Leah breathes a sigh of immense relief at the sight of him even as his eyes shine with tears and his lower lip trembles.

"N—no, don't," he starts to protest when she moves to sit beside him, quiet and careful. "You'll get dirty, I'm okay — I —"

Leah ignores him and lowers herself down anyway as he chokes back a sob. "I'm being stupid," he mumbles around shaky breaths, "you didn't need to — you shouldn't have come."

"I'll go home and send Embry along then, should I? Or Quil?" There's no heat to her words. Just plain weariness as she settles down on the ground and stretches her legs out before her, battling with an urge to brush his hair back from his forehead, to comfort him, but somehow she manages to keep her hands in her lap. The feeling has startled her enough that she has to clamp down on it, turn away from it — from Jacob, from everything that has a chance of hurting her.

"I had a hard time keeping them at bay, you know," she continues lightly, "— they wanted to come and kick your ass, but I grounded them."

"You — what?" Jacob sniffs, wiping hurriedly at the tears which have begun to stream down his reddened face.

"It's not their fault, really. I shouldn't have been so mad when I knew they couldn't tell me the whole story anyway. I heard enough, though. Just had to figure the rest out for myself."

Although Jacob freezes, the back of his hand stilling against his cheek, he struggles to keep the rest of himself in check as a storm of emotions flit across his face, ultimately betraying him. His pain turns into pure, undiluted terror, anger and a little bit of something else — something which Leah thinks might be . . . hope?

"Figure it out?" he asks in an extremely quiet voice.

"Yeah, I mean, I'm not stupid. I know first hand how much of an ass he is, how badly he can overreact. And as much as I can sympathise with the whole wanting to rip his throat out thing, Jake, because believe me, I know . . . Did you really have to go and fight with him like that? Embry said he nearly killed you, and I —"

"Wait. Sam? You think this —" Jacob gestures wildly around him "— is about Sam?"

"Well, yeah," she says slowly. "What else is it about?"

"You said you'd . . . I thought . . ."

His shoulders shake as he drops his head, trying to hide that his eyes are suddenly brimming with tears again. It only takes a few seconds before the last of his restraint finally bubbles over his lips and he sobs harder than ever before.

Maybe Leah doesn't want to feel this, but Jacob is her friend for God's sake, and she can't stop herself from reaching out for him this time. "Oh, Jake."

He immediately sags underneath her touch, breaking completely; he leans into her as quickly as she gathers him up in her arms and falls back against the tree, taking his weight with her. She runs her hand down the nape of his neck, his sides. Anywhere she can reach. He has done this for her before, she thinks. She can do it for him.

Despite his massive frame, Jacob curls up like a child beside her: he presses his face against her neck and tangles his legs with hers, his fingers clutching desperately at her sweaty Mariners sweater. She doesn't know where she begins, where Jacob ends; she can't feel or see or hear or breath anything except him all over her, and . . . she doesn't care, not even when his arms wrap tightly enough around her waist that she knows he'll leave bruises.

"I'm sorry. I thought I could do it, but I can't. Not anymore. It hurts so much," he moans into her skin, "and I — I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I just can't, I can't stay away anymore. I don't want to. It's killing me."

The litany of stuttered apologies continues to seep out of him as quickly as his tears. She has never seen him like this, shattered and weak and so utterly broken. It's both frightening and heart-breaking, painful and scary. And it hurts her, too; Leah can feel his agony, but there is nothing she can do except card her fingers through his hair to soothe him — to soothe them — because she cannot reach anywhere else, because she doesn't know what else to do except hold him and wait for it to pass.

It is a long, long time before he calms.

Slowly, his hold on her eases and he takes deep, shuddering breaths against her neck until he can lift his head. The sun has set, but she can still see the tear tracks glistening on his cheeks.

"What is it, Jake?" she finally asks, her hands still running through his dark hair. He is so, so warm. "What's so bad that you had to come all the way out here, if it's not about Sam?"

"I can't tell you," he mumbles miserably, averting his eyes. He sniffs loudly. "Sorry. I didn't mean to just . . . cry all over you. God, I'm so pathetic."

"I know pathetic," Leah tells him plaintively, "and believe me, you're not it."

"You're not, either, if that's what you mean."

A miserable sigh leaves her, but Leah can't tell whether the despair is solely her own or is from what has been bleeding out so profusely from Jacob. She did mean that — she is pathetic — but she doesn't have the strength to argue. "Can you really not tell me?"

His throat bobs. "You'll hate me."

"So it's not because you can't. It's because you won't." Can't, won't — it's always the same excuse nowadays, and the familiarity of it has her bristling in her annoyance.

"Please don't make me say it," Jacob pleads, voice fading to a whisper which is barely audible over even the quiet of the forest around them. "Not yet."

The agony in his voice has Leah sighing in defeat. She doesn't believe that it was Sam who had him so upset — nor that she could ever truly hate Jacob in spite of what he thinks — but she doesn't ask. And he doesn't tell her.

It's something bad. It has to be.

Something awful.

"Okay," she says. "Not yet."

They sit in silence for an even longer while after that, still tangled together underneath the tree. Jacob's hands continue to brand her skin with their heat as she stares into the darkness which has settled over the clearing — but despite what is hanging in the air, all that has been left unsaid, it's not an awkward silence. Now that she's calm, it's . . . nice, actually. Just being here.

They don't speak at all, not until his stomach gives a traitorous rumble. They have been so wrapped up in their silence that they're both startled by the sound and have to laugh at themselves.

"Hungry?"

"I'm okay."

She smiles wryly. "Liar."

Jacob huffs. "I ate all the food." He leans to the side, answering her unspoken question by showing her a bag nearby which she hasn't noticed before now. Its zipper is half open, and wrappers, chip packets and empty bottles can be seen through the opening.

Leah recognises the pattern on the fraying fabric and eyes it with surprise more than suspicion. "Where did you get that?"

Jacob leans back, settling beside her again. "Seth. He's been . . . coming by."

So that's where her brother has been running off to at all hours, why he's so rarely been home. She knew he couldn't have been out on patrol for all that time. Nobody in her family is very good at lying. Perhaps to themselves, maybe, but . . .

"That little punk."

Jacob sniffs, a half-smile appearing on his still watery features. "He's a good kid."

Leah hums, untangling her legs from Jacob's and ignoring the sudden loss she feels. "I suppose," she says, shivering. "He's been avoiding me these last few days," — everyone has been avoiding me — "so the jury's out on that one."

Jacob frowns. "Are you cold?"

"No." It's impossible to be, sitting so close to him. "God knows you're like your very own space heater."

"Bit hotter than that. I'm running at a toasty-warm one-oh-nine these days."

Leah throws him a half-hearted look of reproach. "No need to sound so cocky about it."

Apart from his eyes which are still a little bloodshot, Jacob looks like his old self when he smiles sunnily back at her. He is so young. For all her griping that Embry and Quil are just kids, for all her joking about babysitting them, she forgets that he is the same age as them — that Jacob is just sixteen.

"It's the small wins." He squeezes her gently before his hand slowly withdraws from her hip and settles around her shoulder instead. "Besides, you feel warm to me, too."

"I am warm," she tells him. It might nearly be the end of March in Washington and they might be sitting on the ground, in the middle of the forest under the cover of darkness, but even wrapped up in her dad's old Mariners sweater Leah is warmer than she knows she has a right to be.

"That's not what I meant," Jake says, and he suddenly sounds sad again. Wistful, even. "Nothing feels warm to me anymore. Just the pack and — and you, now."

"I'm not pack, though."

"Yes, you are," he insists, so fiercely that the raise of her eyebrows is more so aimed at the rapid change of his moods rather than the answer he gives. He'll be falling on four paws next, if she's not careful.

"I don't know how Sam would feel about that," she remarks dryly, considering the dim gleam of the water's edge again just so that she doesn't have to look at the outrage in Jacob's eyes, "but it's nice that you think so."

"I know so."

Leah takes a breath, steeling herself for the answer she has been wondering about for hours — since Embry told her about the aftermath of Jacob and Sam's fight. "Is that because you're the Alpha now?" she dares finally ask. "You say it's so, and that's that?"

Jacob stiffens, his arm becoming a heavy weight over her. His fingers dig into her bicep, the heat of them like an open flame even through her sweatshirt.

"How does it work?" she presses when he doesn't answer. "You and Sam tore chunks out of each other, for what? So you can take charge?"

"I'm sorry for hurting Sam," Jacob says, as if on auto-pilot. As if that is the response she wants to hear, so that is the one he has given, except he doesn't really mean it.

"I don't care that you did," she replies just as quickly, an automatic, programmed response of her own. But there's a difference: what she says is true; what she says, she really means. She doesn't tell people what they want to hear, as she has suspected Jacob of doing before.

"I didn't just hurt him, Leah," Jacob protests, and she doesn't understand – it's almost like Jake wants her to be mad at him, like he wants her to fly off the handle. "Embry was wrong. He didn't nearly kill me, I nearly killed him."

Well, tough shit, she thinks, because she's not mad. Not in the slightest. Not with Jacob, anyway.

"I had him pinned," Jake continues, valiantly digging his own grave. "I had him, Leah – and — and I could have killed him if I wanted to."

"Good," she says bleakly. "Why didn't you?"

Jacob shakes his head. "You don't mean that. If I had — if I hadn't stopped, I mean, you would never have forgiven me. I don't think you could forgive me that much. And Emily . . . I couldn't do that. Never in a million years."

"You think I give a shit about her?"

". . . No," Jacob admits after a lengthy pause, "but I do." And then, before Leah can find it within herself to laugh scornfully at him, he adds, "It's just about the worst thing you could do to someone who's imprinted. There's laws, you know – if we hurt an imprint then it's a fight to the death. But what happens if you kill the wolf who imprinted on her? I think you'd just end up killing her, too."

"Or him."

"Or him," Jacob says agreeably, the barest hint of a smile on his face, "but thankfully you've not phased, otherwise there would have been an uprising long before now."

The little snort which flies out of Leah is entirely one of self-satisfaction. She knows what Jacob is trying to do. He's trying to distract her. And it works, for a while. "You're damn right there would have been."

Jacob huffs a laugh. "If Rach and Beck were still around and you had all phased, the three of you would have taken over. I'm sure of it."

He has no idea how much she'd wanted all of that to be true, standing in front of a vampire only a short few hours ago. She hums and pushes the loose hair which has escaped from her long ponytail out of her face. She can't tell him about what had happened with Edward. So instead, she asks, "Do you think I would have imprinted?"

Hesitance grips him. "Is that . . . Is that something you want? Really?"

"I don't know. I haven't thought about it," she admits. It's been the last thing she's wanted to consider, if only because that means she will have to think about Sam and Emily.

She won't, except . . .

Leah swallows harshly around the words stuck in her throat, and when she does manage to speak next it is little more than above a croak. "Would it go away, feeling so awful all the time, if I did? Because Quil wasn't far off, you know. What he said before he phased. I'm a total bitch these days. If I found someone — or someone found me, even, then maybe . . . maybe I wouldn't be."

"You're not a bitch," Jacob says automatically.

"I am. You agreed with me, remember? In fact, I seem to recall that you said you kinda liked it."

"No, I said that I kinda liked you biting people's heads off." Jacob nudges her, but it's more playful than anything else. "Don't twist my words. Just because you don't hold any punches when you let people know what's on your mind, that doesn't mean that you're a bitch."

She quirks an eyebrow, seeing her opening. "Is that another Alpha decree?"

"Quil was wrong to say what he did," Jacob says instead of acknowledging the jab, clearly trying to distract her still. "I know he's sorry for it."

It works. "I know. He told me."

She repeats Quil's apology, and Jake laughs when she adds the part where Quil said he'd walk her non-existent dog for a month if he meant that she'd forgive him. "I was only teasing him, but that damn puppy face of his made me feel so guilty that I think I should actually get a dog just so he can walk it."

"You'd never have to pay him for it, either. He'd do it forever if it meant you'd forgive him. Trust me."

"I didn't know he felt that bad about it." Now she feels guilty. "It's not like it was his fault or anything, was it? I was the one who wanted to . . . Well, if I had been ripped to shreds then let's just say it wouldn't have been nobody's fault but my own."

Jacob shudders. "I wouldn't have let that happen."

Fleetingly, in spite of all her desire not to, Leah thinks of Emily's face. If it could happen to her . . . "Then you would have just gotten hurt instead."

"We heal fast, you know. You can't see it now, but it's not exactly like I walked away with a few minor scratches or anything. It took two days before I could walk straight."

Shit. "Is this the part where you say something like, Should have seen the other guy?"

Jacob grunts. "Seth said he's back on his feet, at least."

"Meanwhile you've just been here," Leah continues joking, teasing, because she can't afford to react to the thought of Jacob being that horribly injured, or to consider that she had spent all that time not knowing a thing about it . . . He has been trying to distract her, and now she is trying to distract herself. "Sulking, because you lost."

Jacob's lips twist without humour. "Sulking. Sure," he grumbles as she begins extracting herself from his arms. "Wait — where are you going?"

"Home. Are you coming?"

He sighs over the sound of her brushing herself down. "You know I can't."

"Sure you can. You think I came out all this way just to have a chat and then leave you again? I risked vampires and all sorts to see you."

"I'm flattered, but isn't Cullen territory," Jacob tells her with a vague sense of amusement. "They can't come here. And the inner northern perimeter isn't too far away — we've got that line secured against anything else. It's so close that I've been able to hear the pack on patrol."

"So you're not worried."

"I'm always worried," he says seriously. Too seriously, for what she is trying to do: to tease him, to goad him into following her. It's like playing a game with a petulant toddler. "But, no, I'm not worried. Not about any bloodsuckers."

"Well, I hope that's true and you boys are looking out tonight otherwise I might end up as something's dinner."

Jacob closes his eyes and takes several seconds to inhale just as many deep breaths, during which Leah has to bite back her smile. "What you're doing," he says, feigning calm, "— reverse psychology, or whatever. It's not going to work."

"Oh, come on, Jake. You've got to go home."

"No chance."

"Fine. Don't come home. But you're going to have to sort it at some point, whatever it is. Just shake on it with Sam. Do something! Billy needs you!"

Jacob laughs hollowly. "I don't think it works quite as easily as that, honey."

"So make it work," she shoots back, although it's more of a mumble and she can feel the heat rising into her cheeks — and it's not because she's angry. Honey. Right. Well, it's not as if he means it like that, is it?

"Sure, sure. Whatever you say."

"Well, I do say. You think I'm pack, right? So you have to listen to me. So there."

"I'm pretty sure I'd listen to anything you have to say anyway," he replies, staring up at her, and the sincerity in his eyes does nothing for the heat still displayed upon her cheeks. It's hard to look away when his eyes blaze like that, leaving her unable to doubt any word he says.

Leah sighs at herself. Get a grip.

"Fine. You want to do this the hard way? Here it is. You go make it up with Sam. Or don't make it up with Sam. Keep changing the subject instead of telling me what's really wrong with you. You can even go off and be Alpha if that's what you want! I seriously don't care all that much, to be quite honest with you!" It's a lie, of course. "But the way Embry said it, it sounded like not knowing either way is making it pretty rough on everyone else and I won't stand for it. Nobody is going to mess up Seth's life more than it already is. I'll kill them first. So get up."

She even swings her foot at his leg for good measure.

And Jacob, asshole that he is, simply cracks a smile, her threat having had the completely opposite effect. "I'd like to see that."

She doesn't smile back as she hitches the rucksack of empty wrappers over her shoulder, pulling the strap tight. Glaring at him.

It takes a moment, but eventually he gives in. His groan is more than exaggerated when he gets to his feet. "Whatever. I guess that I should know by now you're not happy unless you're throwing your weight around," he grumbles. It's just an excuse — she knows that. She knows him. Too well to take offence.

It's rather funny, actually, his half-hearted attempt to blame the temptation of going home on her. Especially when he is the one who takes the lead, often turning back to make sure that she's keeping up.

He even takes the bag from her.

Asshole.

A/N: Basically four-thousand plus something words of these two bonding, challenging each other. Call it laying the foundations before a grand reveal? I'm not even sorry.