The house was empty. Completely. Standing alone somewhere in the woods. Jacob knew, even though he hadn't gone back. The remaining Cullens had disappeared.

Jacob didn't run this time. Not like before, when she had left and he was sure that she wouldn't be coming back human.

He wandered around for a while, but he wanted to be there for others. For Charlie and Sue and Billy and Seth and all the people that the Cullen's had callously left behind, without a single word. They just disappeared. Jacob wasn't going to do the same.

Charlie locked himself away, shut up from anyone else. He didn't talk or speak to anyone for a long time. Sue eventually got through to him, with Billy's help. They had quite the family, brought together by everything that was left unsaid and unexplained. Jacob knew that they hoped that one day he would join them. He wished that he could.

Jacob shut himself off too. Once everyone else had had their time to grieve. Once no one needed him any more. He wandered around the dense forests, mostly as an animal, but sometimes just as himself. The human. He walked through nearby towns looking for something. Anything. But he knew that, just like before, there was nothing there for him. There was nothing anywhere.

Jacob continued walking. Walking, running, anywhere. Just going. Because he couldn't stop. Couldn't let his anger cool down. It was everything that made him. The new Jacob had been forged in the anger, the hatred.

He stopped talking to anyone. He stopped talking to the pack. Even Seth and Leah couldn't get through to him any more. Eventually they returned to the main pack. He understood. He was unreachable. Even to his larger family, the voices inside his head.

The house was empty. Completely. The threat was gone. The vampires were gone. Without the bloodsucking menace, everything returned to normal in Forks. The pack slowly decreased their patrol radius. Jacob could tell when he would cross their borders. Their smell was still distinctive to him. When he did smell them, he would take pains to ensure that their paths didn't cross. He didn't want to see any of his old friends. They were all moving on. Jacob didn't want to forget anything.

Eventually the pack stopped patrolling all together. Jacob could only guess that there had been a unanimous agreement that the threat was truly gone, not just lurking in some unknown corner. Billy confirmed this the next time Jacob visited them. It had been a year. The pack was disbanded, in the sense that they had all agreed to stop being the vigilante wolves that were the stuff of horror stories for new vampires. The Quileutes were still a family, but they stopped being a pack.

Jacob could tell, as he neared Sam's house, that something had drastically changed.

It's only been a year. Was that really long enough? Jacob thought.

The pack had stopped shifting. They were all truly moving on. The realisation didn't change Jacob's resolution. He couldn't keep on shutting himself away. It had been a year. He needed to join human kind again. His brief visits to his father, and occasionally to Charlie, it wasn't helping him.

He knew that the pack wouldn't talk about it. Wouldn't talk about her. They would think that it was too awkward, or that it wasn't their place. His best friends would know that Jacob wasn't over any of it yet, but they wouldn't push him to open up about it. No one would.

Jacob didn't want to join humanity again. He wanted to stay on the fringes, never truly sure whether it was human or animal that he was embodying. Maybe he had lost touch of something, but he wasn't going to give up on the only thing that mattered to him. Killing Edward. One day he would be back, and Jacob would wait for that day. The man would be slowly recovering from Bella's death, the death that he had led her to and abandoned her once she had fallen.

Edward wouldn't come back until he had recovered. And Jacob would wait. He had never wanted anything in his few short years, more than he wanted the man's afterlife. To break the man who had broken Bella.

Jacob slunk back into the shadow of the real world. He pretended that he was moving on. He pretended to be getting better. He visited Bella's grave, taking her flowers. Soon he was the only one.

He attended Charlie and Sue's wedding, on an uncommonly warm day. They had set an honorary place for Bella. A place that would never be filled. He watched as Charlie smiled, looking for all the world like it was the happiest day of his life. Looking like it was more than four years after the death of his only child. Even surrounded by everyone, Jacob had never been more alone.

Slowly the rest of the pack began to age. Jacob barely noticed, too caught up on things going on inside his head, the ever-growing collection of images that he had been cultivating since the funeral, to notice that the outside world was changing. It wasn't until Sam took him aside and suggested that he stopped shifting, that he realised that everyone he knew seemed so grown up. That had been five years since the Cullen's left Forks.

Jacob had never officially re-joined the pack, so Sam's suggestions were nothing more than that, just suggestions. Unlike the rest of the pack, Sam had no control over Jacob. So he continued to shift. He had once told Bella that he wouldn't age unless he stopped changing. She had seemed so put out by that, having an immortal boyfriend and an immortal best friend. Jacob couldn't bring himself to smile at the memory.

He continued to change. Prepared himself for the return that he knew was coming. His anger made him patient, and he knew that he would willingly wait forever. Sam eventually stopped suggesting.

The world moved on around him. A new phone was released, and then another, and then another, and before long, technology hadn't really advanced enough to justify the plethora of new models. Cars were still cars, computers still computers. Nothing like the futuristic movies Jake used to watch. Nothing to mark this as the future. But it was ten years since Bella's death. And then twelve. Time rolled on, and Jacob stayed still.

He didn't get out enough to arouse suspicion. Eventually Billy came to him, knowing that even with his limited contact with the rest of the world, someone was going to notice that something strange was going on. Jacob would have been happy not to care. It didn't matter to him that he hadn't aged. But he knew that, logically, his father was right.

"I know that you're not going to take Sam's advice and stop shifting. And I don't really care. I don't care about the reasons behind it all. But if you're going to do this, go for this long without shifting, we have to come up with something."

"I…" Jacob trailed off, having no suggestions and not wanting to answer any of his father's unspoken questions.

"Jake, we don't know what's going to happen to you. We know that aging doesn't start again until you stop shifting, but no one's ever gone on for so long. I don't want to know what's driving you to do it. Rage can be a great motivator, but it could be killing you son."

Jacob remained silent.

"I know I can't change your mind. So I have a suggestion."

And so Jacob had disappeared for a while. Rumours were circulated around about Jake going off to be married, settling down with a child in some distant place. He stopped going into the community, only staying in contact with the remainder of the pack. He couldn't visit Charlie any more, but he still put flowers on Bella's grave, taking extra care not to be seen. The irony of it wasn't lost on him. He was supposed to be moving on, not just faking it. They were telling everyone that he had somebody, that he had a family of his own, when in reality, Jacob had nothing. He had no family. He was completely alone.

Thirty five years later, thirty five years of wallowing in unresolved guilt and unadulterated anger, Jacob returned to the community, pretending to be his own son. A spitting image of a father that he'd never been. He even had to change his name. Not around his people, but around everyone else, he was Alec.

It had been more than forty years. Everyone had moved on long ago, leaving Jacob dark and isolated. He wasn't the only one who knew the truth, but he was the only one who cared any more.

And still he waited. The house was empty. Completely. But one day they would be back, and Jacob would be ready for them. And he had some surprises for Edward. He held no grudge with the rest of them, but he wouldn't be able to live again until he killed the father and the monster.

He sulked around the house, planned his strategies, two hundred different ways to get in, one hundred to get out. He didn't really care about his own life. He could die, as long as he took Bella's final enemies with him.

He knew that it would take time. Vampires were, by their nature stagnant. He wanted Edward to come back, but only when he was ready. When he had found the ability and the will to live again. And then Jacob would take it from him.

And so, alone, he waited.