Chapter 2 actions and consequences

Disclaimer: the characters and all recognisable situations belong to Stephenie Meyer- this is a work of fan fiction, except for the legends and histories of the Quileute which, of course, belong to them. I pay my respects to their gods.

Thanks to BanSidhe for betaing.

The boys were at their usual night clubbing hangout in Port Angeles; the music was loud, the place was pumping. Three girls had already propositioned Jake, but he was sitting in the booth alone. His heart was not in it tonight. The last girl had been almost insistent. He had resisted the urge to tell her to have some self respect, after the second time she tried to get him to go home with her. He sighed again. Fuck, he was doing a lot of that these days.

Embry threw himself down next to him on the bench.

"Where's your date?" Jake asked him.

"Bathroom," he nodded towards the corridor. "You still stressing about Leah?"

"Yeah." Jake fiddled with his empty beer bottle, and then he reached into his pocket and passed Embry the Rabbit keys. "Look, I will dump my clothes in the car and run home. Drop it back tomorrow or whenever. I just need some fresh air."

"Sure thing Jake." Embry clapped him on the shoulder. "We'll see you tomorrow. That pushy girl was too much for you, eh?"

Jake looked towards the exit and planned his escape. Being so tall made him very easily spotted in a crowd. It was nigh on impossible for him to hide. He had a wild desire to just do a football run to the exit, palming everyone out of the way. He was in a mood, it really was a good idea to just head home.

He had almost made it to the exit when somebody grabbed his arm. With a sinking feeling he just knew it was the insistent one.

"Where are you off to?" she asked and when he didn't answer her, she tried, "Want some company?" She was clinging to his arm. He wondered how the heck Paul had put up with this for so long when he was the resident man whore. He supposed he had just never said 'no'. He peeled her fingers off his arm.

"No thanks." He was polite but insistent, but then she grabbed for his groin. He found it interesting that if he had done something like that to her, she would be screaming for security to throw him out. He shook his head; now was really not the time to solve society's double standards. He lost it; he grabbed her by the top of her arms and lifted her up to his face. "I said 'no thanks'," he insisted. He placed her back on her feet. She stood in shock, just staring up at him. "For the last time, I said 'no'!" He made sure he said it now loudly enough for her friend to hear him.

The friend gave him a glance and he turned and made it to the exit unimpeded. Outside he gulped in the fresh air. What the fuck was wrong with him today?

He made his way back to where he had parked the Rabbit. He opened the trunk and found a spare pair of cut-offs and the tie to strap them around his leg. With a quick glance around the parking lot to make sure no one was watching him, he started to strip his clothes off. He slipped the cut-offs on, bundled up his other clothes and put them in the trunk and shut the lid. One of these days he really needed to clean out the car.

He rolled his shoulders and loped off towards home. The only question was whether he went via Oregon.*

Leah ran in the back door of her home; "home" that was a fucking misnomer if ever she had heard one. If patricide was the word for killing your father, what was the word for the place where you caused the death of your father; patricidion, patricic? The scene of the crime? Poor Harry Clearwater. He was a tribal council member. He was so knowledgeable in the ways and traditions of the pack and the tribe. And he was so shocked by the sight of his only daughter phasing into the big bad wolf of their fairy stories, that he had a heart attack.

Surprise!

"Leah?" she heard Seth call from his room as she made her way upstairs.

She sighed. She loved her little brother. Truth be told, she adored him. She would beat the living crap out of anything and anyone that would hurt him, except her of course.

His head stuck out the doorway to his room. "You okay?" he asked solicitously.

She nodded.

"Mum put aside some dinner for you. It's in the fridge in a container."

"Thanks Seth. I'm not hungry. I'm just going to shower and go to bed early."

"Hey, can I eat it then?"

She gave him a small smile. "Sure, you can eat it."

"Excellent. Good night," he tossed over his shoulder as he ran for the stairs and the fridge.

Leah headed for her room. She pulled out the rock she had brought from the clearing and placed it on her windowsill next to the beautiful eagle feather she had found one day. Each time she found a place where she felt calmer and more clearheaded, she tried to bring a little piece of it back with her. She had a rock from the beach, the one from the clearing today and some more from her secret places scattered around her room. She thought she might get seven of them; seven was a magical number.

Jake was eating his cereal at the table in the morning when the squad car pulled up in front of the house.

"Dad," he called out. "Charlie's here for you."

Billy wheeled out. "Charlie? He didn't say he was coming over."

They were both looking quizzical when Charlie knocked and then wandered into the kitchen. He had his hat in his hand and looked embarrassed.

"Charlie? What's wrong?" Billy asked.

"Ahh…" He rubbed his fingers over his moustache. "I need to ask Jake to come down to the station."

Billy and Jake looked at each other.

"There's ahhh… been a complaint made against him and I need him to make a statement."

"Sure Charlie, let me get some proper clothes on and I will come down with you."

Billy followed him to his room and asked with his eyes what was going on. Jake shrugged and shook his head. He honestly had no idea. He squeezed Billy's hand and went with Charlie.

At the station, Charlie showed him into one of the interrogation rooms and asked him if he wanted a coffee.

He came back with it and sat down across the desk from him with a coffee of his own. Charlie's was in a novelty mug Bella had given him. It said "I see guilty people."

Jake waited. Charlie was a lot like his dad, sometimes it was best to just wait for them to get around to what they wanted to say.

Charlie took another sip from his coffee, cleared his throat and spoke, "A complaint has been made against you by Miriam Haines. She alleges that you assaulted her last night at her home."

Jake looked confused. "I'm sorry I don't know the name. Do you have a photo of her? Maybe I know the face."

A deputy came in and leant against the wall, he watched Jake with something close to loathing on his face. He was behind Charlie and he couldn't see him.

"I don't have a photo, but she is about 5ft6, short dark brown hair, I guess she's about twenty two. She says you went home together from the club last night. Perhaps if you could just tell us what you did do last night."

Jake glanced at the deputy; he suspected he ought to be more formal just in case. "I was at Castaways club in Port Angeles last night with Quil Ateara and Embry Call. I didn't feel like nightclubbing so I left early; I guess it was about 11, maybe 11:30."

"So you were in the club," confirmed Charlie.

"Yes," agreed Jake. Charlie gave him a look. He knew Jake was under 21.

"Who did you leave with?"

"I left alone."

"Alone? Can anyone confirm that?"

"Yeah I spoke to a girl just as I left." Jake suddenly put two and two together. Fuck, she was pretty pissed with him. "Part of the reason I left was because there was this girl who just wouldn't leave me alone. She tried twice to get me to go home with her; I refused. Then as I was leaving she asked me a third time. I'll admit I was pretty irritated with her by then. I told her 'no' again. But she…" He blushed. "She grabbed me by the balls."

Charlie just looked at him but the deputy snorted; it sounded derisive.

"Why is this relevant?" asked Charlie.

Jake sighed. "She fits the description of your… what do I call her? Complainant?"

"Can anyone confirm this?"

Jake thought about it, "Embry can confirm she was pretty insistent, and her friend saw the incident at the door. She was blond and slightly taller than the dark haired girl."

"How do you know they were friends?"

"I saw them together earlier, when she first approached me."

"I did grab her on the top of her arms, Sherriff, and it might have been a little hard but she had me by the balls. I told her 'no' again and then I left."

"Then you drove home?"

"No, I left the car for Quil and Embry."

"Did you go to her apartment?"

"No."

"Did you see her outside of the club?"

"No."

"Hang on," interrupted the deputy. "So how did you get home?"

Jake looked at him and could only tell the truth. "I ran."

"Ran?" he snorted again. "It's 70 miles from Port Angeles to La Push."

Jake just shrugged.

"Jesus Charlie, you can't believe this little shit," the deputy appealed to Charlie. He looked Jake over. "You know what they are like," he added.

Charlie pushed a writing pad towards him. "Would you mind writing what you have just told us into a statement?"

Jake just nodded.

"Deputy," Charlie gestured to the door. "A word?"

The door closed behind them. Jake breathed out and started writing.

8888888888888

Leah was at home randomly surfing the net. Amazing how you started clicking on things and ended up a million miles, or a million sites from where you started.

She didn't really know what she was doing; looking for answers? On the Net? And she called herself Native American. She snorted at herself.

Hey, maybe that was it. How did her ancestors find their answers? She wished she had paid more attention to all the stories and legends sometimes. Not that it would have been any warning for her; no one knew she was going to phase. She was so sure her future lay in the real world she had deliberately stayed away from her history. And then Sam phased and then she did too; karmic payback was a bitch.

She did some research and discovered a heap of nifty sites about vision quests. Even Wikipedia had something.

In many Native American groups, the vision quest is a turning point in life taken before puberty to find oneself and the intended spiritual and life direction. When an older child is ready, he or she will go on a personal, spiritual quest alone in the wilderness, often in conjunction with a period of fasting.

Well that sounded exactly like what she was looking for; but how did she do it? She already spent hours in the wilderness on patrol. Hadn't helped her so far. Maybe it was Quil stalking her and trying to see her naked that put her off.

Maybe this would work? Couldn't hurt to try right?

She needed seven stones and an eagle feather. Spooky; she already pretty much had that. She looked around and counted her stones; only six.

She felt energised; she had a quest. Sure, sure, it sounded dumb, but for fuck's sake, she turned into a wolf! How freaky was that? At least it would get her out of the house for a couple of hours, while she found the perfect stone. Maybe a shell from the beach would be a good idea too.

She jogged eagerly out of the house and headed for the beach. Then she remembered that she had followed Jake one day when he was mooning around and being sad because Bella wouldn't come across. He and Bella had always sat by this big driftwood tree on the beach and held hands and had meaningful talks. But that was all before she started jumping Paul's bones.

He had continued to come here on his own; looking for something she supposed, just like the way she looked for peace in her secret spots. Jake had got over Bella so it made a kind of sense to her that her last rock should come from there. If he could do it, so could she. She dug around in the pebbles at the base of the tree until she found a stone that caught her eye. It had reddish flecks in it.

As she stood she noticed a clump of hair caught on a rough patch on the tree trunk. She pulled it off and held it to her nose; wolf hair, specifically Jake's wolf hair. It was the same red as the flakes in her stone. He must have come here in wolf form too and recently. Maybe he wasn't over Bella?

She took both things home to add to her collection.

[*AN: I changed that from Canada, just for Holly Mc. She goes nuts about people running via Canada. Wolves catching the ferry? Too funny.]]

FF_2154210_1132316661 - 29/01/2012 9:51:00 AM