A/N: Oye. So last week wasn't a good writing week at all. Brain is still resetting, I suppose.

Anyway. Trouble is done, with my betas. Fly Away Home is next. I'm going to try to update everything this week. We'll see if my brain stays online.

Edward was startled when he heard Bella's car start. He got to the window in time to see her drive off. Watching her headlights disappear around the corner, a rush of fear went through him. Something had happened. Something horrible.

No. She would have told him, wouldn't she? But she would have told him if she was going out too.

Wouldn't she?

No. Why would she? They were two single individuals with minds and lives of their own. Just because their world had been so concentrated lately didn't mean she wasn't free to do whatever she wanted. She was a big girl who didn't need to tell anyone where she went or what she was doing.

Why that idea chafed, Edward didn't know. He dismissed that thought almost as soon as it occurred to him, his mind on to more important things. Bella could do whatever she wanted, but the fact of the matter was, she had left her family and a handful of friends behind when she moved to Seattle. No, they weren't across the universe from each other, but it wasn't as though she could decide to go see one of them at eleven thirty at night.

Twenty minutes later, unable to shake the thought something had happened, Edward pulled his phone out. He sat at the top of the stairs and texted her. Almost as soon as he pressed send, he heard the familiar chime of Bella's cell phone in her room.

So she'd taken off so quickly, she'd left her cell phone behind. That was strange. Edward's stomach twisted. She was never without her phone. It was difficult for her to be separated from her family, even this small distance. She kept her phone on her, so every text message the kids or Charlie sent would be answered immediately. And then there was Katie. She was obsessed with staying connected in case something happened.

Edward hesitated outside Bella's room. The door was open. He could see her phone on the bed. This was a gross invasion of privacy on one hand. On the other...

The last phone call to Bella's phone was from Jasper.

Edward was out the door in a heartbeat. He drove to Emmett and Jasper's house and didn't know whether to be more relieved or scared when he saw Bella's car. What was the protocol here? Surely, he couldn't go pounding on someone's door in the middle of the night, but if something was going on, why hadn't anyone called him?

He settled on texting Jasper.

Come in. The door's open.

When Edward entered, it wasn't Jasper he found. Emmett was sitting at the bottom of the stairs, watching him. His eyes were tired. Actually, everything about him, from the look on his face to the set of his shoulders, screamed exhaustion and defeat. Edward closed the door quietly behind him, unsure what to say. The house was too calm for his frazzled mindset.

The larger man rubbed at his eyes. "They're upstairs in Katie's room."

"Thanks," Edward said.

He had no idea what to expect when he looked into his daughter's room. They were there on the bed-Bella and Katie-lit only by the dim light of the nightlight. Katie was sprawled across her mother. Bella's arms were wrapped securely around her. Both their cheeks were tear-streaked, but their faces were peaceful in sleep. It was beautiful.

It was painful.

Edward watched them both breathe for a moment before he retreated. Downstairs, Emmett hadn't moved. Edward walked past him to the landing. "Pretty sight, isn't it?" Emmett asked, his voice flat as he glanced up.

Not knowing what to say, Edward stayed silent. Emmett scrubbed his hands over his face. "I mean it, actually." He huffed. "Katie had a nightmare. She thought Bella… she thought she'd made her mother up, that Bella was a figment of her imagination. She woke up convinced of that, and it upset her so much, we couldn't calm her down."

He shook his head. "If I was someone else. If I wasn't..." For the first time, his voice shook. "She's my baby. Mine and Jasper's baby. Our daughter. We were supposed to be all she ever needed. Tonight, for the first time in her life, we weren't good enough. Our baby needed her mother."

Emmett scrubbed a hand over his face again and made a low rumbling noise. He stood up and looked at Edward. "I need a drink. Do you want one?"

"Hell, yes."

Edward followed Emmett into the living room.

"Gentleman Jack?" Emmett asked.

"Yes. That'd be great."

When they were both sitting, sipping, Edward spoke. Not what he wanted to say, not what he was thinking. They were words to fill the space. "Where's Jasper?"

Emmett stared down at his drink. "Bed."

"I'm not keeping you from being with him, am I?"

"No. This is…" He rotated his hand, watching the remaining liquid slosh around the sides of the glass. "Nightmares are…" He swallowed hard. "Were Jasper's domain. He's really good with moods. Like he's usually able to tell really quickly if Katie's nightmares are the scary kind-monsters in the dark or whatever-or the real life kind. After we told her about what happened to her when she was born, she had nightmares that the bad lady came back to get her."

He shook his head. "Anyway. Like I said, Jasper's good at moods. He knows how to handle them. When she's scared, he can make her feel safe again. When she's panicked, he can make her calm. But not tonight." Emmett tilted the rest of his drink back and went to go serve himself another. "He needs to be alone for a little bit. He'll come get me when he needs me."

Edward looked down at his own drink. He wondered if they realized how intimidating they were. They were such a team, both as parents and as a couple. Meanwhile, Bella had raced over here on her own without a second thought about whether or not he should be included. Granted, it was Bella Katie needed tonight. Still, it was the kind of thing he should have been there for, if only to support both of them. That was what Daddies did.

After Emmett refilled Edward's glass, they sat in silence for a long time. It wasn't an awkward silence. It was as though they were both struggling, separate yet strangely unified. For once, for at least these few minutes, there was no bad blood between them.

"It was always hard to believe she doesn't belong to Jasper," Emmett said, apropos of nothing. His stare was far off. Edward doubted he was talking to him. He was just talking, just putting words to the chaos that had to be wreaking havoc in his head. "With her hair and the brains, people always assumed we had her through a surrogate or something. She was his. She was ours."

Edward didn't know what to say to that. He looked at Katie and saw his father. Because he saw his father, he saw himself. She was his daughter. He knew that, felt that without a doubt, but he couldn't begrudge Emmett and Jasper the last six years. She was their daughter too, whether or not they could claim her with those exact words.

As he'd suspected, Emmett wasn't looking for him to respond. He did look over at Edward then, his eyes bright with tears. "You know, it's not like I don't think about it. Someone literally cut that baby away from Bella's body. That is some fucked up, heinous shit. I can't imagine what that must have been like, to wake up and have no idea what happened to your baby."

He pressed his lips together, breathing in through his nose until his breath was steady. "So how would I look at all of this, if I'd never been Katie's daddy? Would I see the beautiful story? A mother who mourned her baby for six years, who could have gone her whole life believing something horrible had happened to her child, finds that baby against all odds. And that was a beautiful sight, man. I was there when Bella saw Katie for the first time, and I was there when Katie called her 'Mommy' for the first time. That is some intense shit. I would have choked up even if it wasn't ripping my goddamned heart out."

It was strange, Edward thought. The four of them shared this little girl. They were all parents and yet, Edward was the only one who couldn't say he knew what it was to lose a child. Then again, as of tonight, he was also the only one Katie had never claimed as hers.

~0~

"I'm sorry," Bella said almost as soon as she came in the door the next morning. "I don't even remember driving over there. I just knew that Katie needed me, and I went."

"I know it was you she needed, but I had every right to be there. I wanted to be there. It doesn't matter that I couldn't do anything." Edward rubbed the back of his neck, tired and agitated. "We're supposed to be doing this together, aren't we? That's the point of all this?" He gestured around them. "Anything involving Katie, anything at all, is supposed to involve both of us."

"It is. I'm sorry." She gave him a small, humorless smile. "Hey, maybe we should find one of those team building camps, you know? Where you have to do trust building exercises. Work together to build a tower of furniture or something?"

Some of the tension that had kept Edward up most of the night let up, and he smiled. "I don't think we can afford a whole retreat." He clenched and unclenched his fist, unreasonably nervous. "How about we start smaller? Like dinner or something. Not here. Not with my parents or your family. Out. Separate from everything that's going on."

Bella blinked at him, obviously startled. "What?"

"It's just that I think we're making a mess of… us. We're supposed to trust each other, depend on each other, but how are we supposed to do that? The only thing you really know about me is that I've already exploded at you once. And then the very first time our daughter needed one of us, you ran off without remembering I even exist."

Her lips tugged down at the corners. "But you started therapy to learn how to deal with your anger, and this mistake is the kind I only have to make once."

"Maybe." Edward paused, trying to find the right words. He offered his hand palm up. She didn't hesitate. She took his hand, holding it between them on the couch. He smiled at that, somewhat reassured. Maybe they didn't know how to talk to each other, how to be a real team, but they weren't starting from scratch. There was this.

"I know some of this is going to be trial and error," he said. "We're both going to screw up, and I think we know how to call each other on it. That's something, at least. It's just that all of this… mess. The good, the bad, the ugly; all of it is so much work. Not that I'm complaining, because it's worth it. Of course Katie is worth all of this, but you and I… I think we've forgotten that it's okay to enjoy each other." He squeezed her hand. "Assuming we still think there's something to enjoy."

She ducked her head, cheeks flushing. "So you want to what? Go on a date?"

At that, Edward felt his own cheeks heat. "I'm not trying to complicate things even more than they are. I just think we could stand to spend some time together that isn't so heavy. Figure each other out the way most people do. No more confessions that get dragged out because I flew off the handle or something like that. Maybe something closer to what we were doing with Katie at McDonald's, you know? Asking the silly questions. That was fun."

"Except without Katie."

He looked up at her, finding she was looking back with a careful expression. "I think there should be more to us than how we are when we're around Katie. We can't just continue to tiptoe around each other when Katie isn't with us."

"So you want to hang out."

"In a manner of speaking. Away from here though. I think right now being at home just reminds us how hard we're working on everything. It's the base of our struggles, you know? It's where we're trying to make a home where Katie will feel safe and loved. It's the source of our frustration because we're dependent on our parents, and you're miles away from your family and job. We need something that isn't bogged down by all that."

Bella smirked as she looked at him. "It didn't take your therapist long to mindfuck you good and proper, did it?"

He laughed, surprised at her bluntness. He supposed he was using language his therapist had taught him. "No, I guess not."

She nodded, still smiling. "Okay, sure. We'll do something fun. I think I could handle that."

"Oh, well. Don't let me twist your arm," he said carefully, thinking maybe he could tease her a bit. "If it's an ordeal to have a good time with me, I wouldn't want you to do anything you don't want to do."

"No, no, no. Sometimes in life, you have to do unpleasant things."

They grinned at each other, whatever residual tension had built up draining away again. After a minute, he looked at her more seriously. "Will you tell me what happened last night, and what Katie said when you woke up this morning?"

"Oh."

Edward hadn't really been able to figure out what had happened from Emmett. The man had been too wrecked to form words with any coherence. Edward got the impression Emmett didn't often go on philosophical tangents. Maybe it was his way of trying to figure out these incomprehensible things that were happening to all of them.

Bella explained what had happened as best as she could. The Halloween trick had put the idea in Katie's head that her mother could disappear, and her nightmare had thrust her into a world where Bella was just a figment of her imagination. She'd thought for years that her mother was dead, and when she woke up from her nightmare, she'd been convinced Bella was the dream. She'd been inconsolable until Bella was there in front of her, touchable.

"I thought she was going to choke me," Bella said, but there was a smile playing at her lips. "And she called me Mommy."

Edward smiled back, swallowing down his jealousy. This was her moment. "She knows who you are."

Bella looked at him, cocking her head to study his features. "She knows who you are, too. When we woke up this morning, that was the first thing she asked. "Where's my daddy?'"

"Yeah. She knows who I am." It sent warmth through his chest, but it wasn't exactly the same. Edward wasn't Daddy, or Dad, or Papa. He was "my daddy." Katie used it as a title, an acknowledgement that she understood he was her biological father. There was no fondness or familiarity in a title. Still, it made him happy that she'd expected him to be there. And sad, of course, because he hadn't been.

Bella closed her eyes, breathing in through her nose. "It's getting harder to leave her there," she said in a whisper. "I hate walking away from her, Edward. I hate it." She took a shaky breath. "And I want her to call me Mommy when she's happy. And I want her hugs. Not clinging, like last night, but a hug. I want her to love me."

"I know." He ran his thumb over her knuckles. "I want all that too. We just have to be patient," he said to himself as much as to her. Katie would call him Daddy some day. "We're closer than you think."

A/N: Many thanks to my girls and their everlasting patience with me.

Personal note. I've started a Facebook page for my stories. I'll post teasers and maybe some of the bizarre things I search for when I'm researching stories. Things like that. You can find it by searching for my screenname, LyricalKris, I think. I dunno. I'm trying to figure it all out, haha. Anyway, it's open for now. :)