Charlie didn't press Bella for questions, too worried about straining her, and their already strained relationship. He let their visits be just that, visits, absorbing the minute news of her day, sharing the equally trivial minutiae of his own.
She was healing well, much faster than expected. He let himself grumble a little at the injustice of age, but was glad her youth served her well. Her bandages were off, and the long slices in her legs and arm visible. He didn't challenge her story again, but knew claw marks when he saw them.
He hadn't challenged Edward either, on the inadequate answers he'd given him, though not for lack of want, simply for there being no opportunity. He arrived with Bella, and left with her too, never staying to give Charlie the chance to verbally dissect the load of bullcrap he'd tried to sell him.
That was fine, Charlie thought. He could wait. He'd pull through this.
He had apologized over and over again, for what he'd done, to such an extent, that Bella had told him she'd stop coming if he kept bringing it up.
His own recovery was slower, a postoperative infection leaving him weak and wobbly.
The doctors were hopeful, but warned him he was months—not weeks—away from a return to full health.
He accepted this with as good grace as he could, focusing on the physiotherapy, and trying to be positive.
The visitor he wasn't expecting, a solid ten days in, was Billy Black.
His eyes widened, watching him be pushed into the room by Sam Uley.
Billy looked like hell.
Charlie imagined he did too.
He couldn't fathom what would make Billy come see him. Things had been left awkward and ugly the last time they'd seen each other.
"Hey," Billy ventured.
"Hey," Charlie gave him back.
"Heard you were in here."
"Yep."
If he had something to say, Charlie hoped he would just come out and say it.
He was surprised when Sam spoke up.
"What happened?" he asked, bluntly.
Charlie gave him the version of the story he'd heard from Edward, along with the lead he'd gotten from his friend. "Jacob's been mixed up with some sort of criminal activity. A pretty well organized gang. He and some thugs abducted Bella. I'd had a lead, and was checking out some of their suspected locations, and found them."
He had to pause, gathering more air before he went. It wasn't so easy to move his lungs, with the wobbling jointure of his gut still so tenuously strung together. It didn't help that he was about to tell Billy that he'd shot his son. Five times.
"When I found them, it looked like—it looked like he was hurting her." He paused again, his voice having slipped upwards, refusing the level path he'd planned for it. "I told him to get off of her. Then he turned on me."
He looked down at his midsection, and his legs, and then back at them. "I shot him, point blank, five times."
Sam's and Billy's faces were impassive. They nodded together.
Charlie went on. "So I'm told, Bella got up, took my phone, and found a cell signal, and called for help. All this with giant cuts down her arms and legs, and me bleeding out to the point where I needed an emergency transfusion. Then surgery to repair my innards." His own disbelief in this story could not be more apparent.
Billy glanced nervously at Sam.
"Bella said that her cuts were from the knives she had. That she used on Jacob. That she must have slipped with them."
Billy swallowed. Sam still looked on stony faced.
"Guess Jacob must have grabbed one and stabbed and sliced me up after I shot him five times."
Frustrated by their silence, and tested by the pain he was in, he threw out one last line. "'Course, it could've been the giant dog that he turned into that did it to me, too. But hey, that would be fucking nuts, wouldn't it?"
After Sam finally turned to look at Billy, there was a pregnant moment.
"Not a dog," Sam said. "A wolf."
Charlie didn't bat an eyelash, instead asking, "what else do you know?"
"More than you need to," he said. "What happened to Jacob?"
Charlie snorted. "Bella and Edward said he disappeared. That he wasn't there. Must've run off."
Billy's face collapsed at the edges, just briefly, he smoothing it out with his hands, wiping away the moisture everyone else in the room didn't know how to acknowledge.
Sam nodded, as though he accepted this answer, but understood it to mean something entirely different.
"Wanna tell me what the hell you mean by Jacob turning into a wolf, not a dog?"
"Think you've figured out the salient part, Charlie."
Alice's small form appeared at the door, a quiet rap there.
Sam's face, so impassive before, twisted now, his nose wrinkling. Charlie watched, taking in every transformation on the visages before him. He didn't miss the matching expression on Alice's.
"Hey Alice," he said, wondering at the collision of their visits. "Sam was just telling me that Jacob turns into a wolf."
Everyone except Charlie became very, very still, and he watched carefully, absorbing every single shifting twitch of the facial muscles present.
"We'll leave you to your company," Sam said, going to grab the handles of Billy's chair.
"No!" Charlie said forcefully, immediately regretting it.
Everyone stopped, watching him pale at the exertion.
"It's OK, Charlie," Alice said softly. "We're not going anywhere." Then she looked at Sam.
"Good," Charlie breathed out. "Because I want answers."
- 0 -
"Oh no," Edward said, feeling Bella's hands slip up under his shirt. "No way. You're not well enough yet."
She huffed out a breath. "I'm fine," she said, kissing him again, feeling the pleasant sensations such activities provided ripple over her.
"You're not."
"I'm on so many pain meds, I feel amazing. I don't feel any pain."
He grinned, "yes, I know...and that's exactly why we're not doing what you're trying to get me to do."
She laid back on the bed, a frustrated sigh fluttering out of her lips.
"Carlisle said I was fine to go about my daily activities, as long as I felt fine."
"You know, technically, Carlisle isn't your doctor."
She and Charlie sounded almost exactly the same when they snorted.
She demonstrated this now.
"I feel fine."
Edward trailed his finger up the skin of her leg, just adjacent to the gash that had been stitched together. He continued his tracing, just lightly brushing her arm, where another wound ran its long way up the underside of her forearm. The soft flesh there puckered around the tentative, black threaded jointures the doctor had made.
In these small moments, he remembered, with perfect clarity, his last encounter with Jacob Black. He wished he'd been moments earlier. It would have spared her so much.
Bella was watching him, seeing the look on his face, knowing him lost to something ugly.
"Penny for your thoughts?"
He shook his head.
"Don't shut me out," she breathed. It was what he'd told her over and over again.
When he said nothing, she touched her fingertips to his face. "What is it?"
"I should have been there earlier."
Her eyebrows pulled together. "You came. I'm OK. My Dad's going to be OK."
His hand gestured to her body.
"I'm fine."
He made an uncertain sound in his throat. A wobbling "tch."
His humanity had evaporated. Disappeared with the breeze that had brought him the scent of his wife's blood. Of Jacob's scent.
He hadn't even stopped to see her. He'd snatched Jacob's form through the cabin window and thrown him to the ground. Jacob's mind had been full of his wife's body, and other thoughts he had no right too.
Edward had sunk his teeth into a foreleg first, removing it and tossing it into the water. Then he'd taken the other, the resulting snarls and howls a music that made him tremble with visceral pleasure.
Jacob's last thoughts were a deliberate taunting, and he capitulated to them, snarling and shredding until there was nothing left to rend. He threw the larger pieces into the ocean, flung far, and landing deep.
Only then, had he returned to himself, going to find Carlisle frantically trying to save Charlie, Bella oozing at the unnatural seams his fingers now brushed by.
Her hand rested more solidly on his cheek.
"Come back to me," she said. She knew this look, and the faraway stare. Knew them because she'd worn them so often herself.
"I'm here," he said, voice wooden.
"No, you're not." Both hands rested on his face. "Come back. Don't pretend you're OK. I know you're not."
He leaned down and kissed her. "I'm here."
"Don't," she said, pushing him back, struggling to sit up. "Don't you dare."
He knew he'd been caught in his disingenuousness. "I'm sorry." He frowned.
After a moment, she said, "dare I suggest you might benefit from talking to someone like John?"
His laugh was a bark. "I think that might prove...difficult. All things considered."
"Yes," she said, "it is." Then she looked at him meaningfully.
He curled his hand around hers. "I didn't mean to diminish the work you've done there."
"No, you're just trying to pretend you don't need the help."
He wasn't supposed to need help. He was immortal. Unchanging. Immutable.
Except when it came to her.
He was as vulnerable as an open wound there.
"I've failed you, Bella. Repeatedly. I'm terrified I will continue to. That you will realize, someday, the utter inequity of the bargain you've made."
"I won the lottery, Edward." She smiled. "Trust me."
He let himself have a small, small grin. "I would say the feeling is mutual, but it's weighted so much more in my favour, there's no comparison. I am the luckiest vampire ever."
"There's my vampire," she said. "Welcome back."
He took her hand and kissed it.
He wasn't home by a long stretch, but he'd take her welcome any day.
- 0 -
Charlie stared at all three of them.
He repeated the words in his mind.
Alice was saying nothing. Sitting far too still for a normal person.
"Wolves," he said again.
Sam and Charlie nodded.
"You knew?" he said to Alice.
She nodded.
"Shit."
The keener ears in the room were taking in Charlie's elevated heart rate, and the shallow breathing wasn't enough.
Then the alarm went off.
"Charlie!" Billy called, straining forward in his chair.
The nurse and doctors that rushed in shoved them aside.
Outside, Alice hissed at Sam. "What were you thinking? Haven't you all done enough?"
"Well clearly, you hadn't done a good enough job of managing him!" Sam shot back.
"We didn't cause this!" she yelled. She could hear them using chest compressions. "At least leave, so I can see what's happening!"
Billy looked distraught at this—and shot Sam a frantic look. He wouldn't, would he? Leave the man to die with one of these by his side? She might—he could barely sanction the thought.
Sam didn't say anything, but gripped the handles of the chair, pushing Billy down the hall.
Alice pulled out her phone, and called home.
