"Oh come on!" Sam enthused, as Pond shot him in the face. His avatar fell to the ground and, after a series of clicks and transitions through different screens, re-spawned somewhere else.

Pond's shouts of self-congratulation faded into concentrated silence.

Jacob sighed. The game system that he had let the boys install in his house was turning out to be more of a nuisance than it was a blessing. Sure, it may have done more to bring the group together after their catastrophe than anything else had managed, but Jacob was starting to understand the severe dangers of video game addictions. He'd only played it a few times himself, quickly growing bored of going up against kids who had way more experience than he did.

He was the only one in the pack to have ever been in a true fight, so he could attest to the accuracy of the graphics. Where the boys happily congratulated then selves and each other with each kill, Jacob could only remember the smell and sight of blood staining white snow.

He shook the memory out of his head and went back to trying to coax the boys off the idiot box machine thing.

"Just let us finish this game." Pond said, not looking away from the screen as he addressed Jacob's protests.

The other boys added their agreement. Jacob knew better though. He'd played some video games when he was younger, granted a very long time ago, and he knew that 'just one game; stretched into the rest of the afternoon.

All of the pack was crammed into his living room, staring at the small screen, upon which the chosen representatives of Sam and Pond battled it out along with an overabundance of computer controlled characters. Even Molly was there, squished between Harley and Jack, looking thoroughly enthralled in the game. Jacob was loathed to admit that even though she had barely as much experience as himself, she'd managed to beat him three games in a row one time.

The atmosphere had improved exponentially in the last few weeks. Jacob was spending more time with the group as a whole, which had been almost insufferable during those first few months. It was still a little uncomfortable, but it was so much better than it had been.

Jacob could help but attribute just a tiny bit of it to his own improved temperament. His attitude was improved now that he was no longer existing in a self-perpetuating sea of anger, fear and confusion. It wasn't just that things had clicked into place between him and Edward. Things had been clicking into place all throughout his life. Problems seemed to be smaller, obstacles less daunting. Sam Senior was still at his back to get rid of the vampire menace, but it was easier to deal with.

"No. turn it off now or I will turn it off for you."

"You can't just turn it off, you'll break it."

"You turn it off then. Now, please."

The please wasn't truly necessary. Jacob had slipped into Alpha mode, and Pond had no hope of denying him his request anymore. With a sigh, Sam placed the controller down on the coffee table while Pond reluctantly went through the overly complicated log off sequence.

When the screen blinked into darkness, the boys and Molly rose and turned to face Jacob.

"Everyone, outside now."

The trudged out the door. Jack was dragging Molly behind him, but dropped her hand when Jacob signalled. Molly stayed indoors, and Jacob told her that she didn't have to stay. This was supposed to be their training time, but a fair amount of their session had been taken up by playing soldiers on a virtual battlefield.

Molly smiled at him, and Jacob could see that she was glad to have a reason to escape the testosterone fest. He remembered when Emily had been the only girl, of the pack, and how even though the boys had all treated her like a saint, she'd been relieved to have Bella around.

Molly must have felt the same way, even though she was patient enough to spend time with the rest of the pack if it meant being around Jack. Even after all that had gone on, and Molly's guilt over her unwilling part in it, it was clear that she truly loved Jack. Jacob was happy for the both of them, glad that things seemed to be working out and getting better.

Jack protested a little at Molly's leaving, but Jacob silenced him with a look.

"We should start by running perimeter," Jacob began, but Pond raised his hand. Jacob almost laughed at the gesture, a throwback from his own time at the school on the reservation.

"You don't have to raise your hand Pond."

Pond just shrugged.

"What is it then?"

"All that we do is train and run perimeter."

Jacob grimaced, feeling the accusation running under the boy's words. The boys were all clearly irritated, and while Jacob suspected that kicking them off the game console might have had a hand in that, he hoped that a few minutes in the outdoors would return them to their slightly more cordial selves.

"What do you expect us to do Pond?"

"Well…It's just…none of us have ever even seen a vampire."

"And?"

"Isn't that why we're here?"

"We're here to protect the reservation and the surrounding areas-"

"From vampires." Harley cut in. Jacob sighed. He'd known that the thoughts of the pack were all headed towards this very strain, but he'd been hoping for a little more time to figure out what to say to them. If he was being serious, though, he knew that no amount of time would make this any easier.

"We're only supposed to start changing if there is a threat to the community," Harley continued. "But we've been shifted for over six months, and nothing's happened. There has been no vampire activity on the reservation, and nothing substantial out of it. Either there is no threat and we can stop shifting, or there is a threat that we just can't see."

Jacob remained silent. It was clear to him, and to everyone else, that this was not something that Harley had just come up with. Their resident genius had been turning over their peculiar circumstances for quite some time now, while the rest of the boys were still waiting for their promised threat to show itself. It seemed that Harley was the only who had considered that there may, in fact, be no threat.

Jacob didn't know where to begin, or how much he should tell the boys. He trusted them, but he didn't know how they would react to the way that things were. He wasn't worried about telling them about the new relationship that he had formed with Edward, they would take that as they would, but they would have no impact or influence upon it. Still, the thought of telling them about it did spark a twinge of unease in him.

It was the utter pointlessness that faced the boys that Jacob worried about. Jacob remembered the disorientating realisation of his own, the sudden shock of understanding his own redundancy. Like the whole world had been ripped out from under his feet, with the tattered remains of cut safety strings tangling themselves around him. When he realised that everything he had given up had been in vain, realised that he had wasted important and irretrievable time, it had been not only disappointing, but difficult to deal with.

The group may not have given up quite as much as Jacob did, they definitely hadn't been wolves for as long as he, but to say that their entire worlds hadn't been thrown out of whack by the shift would be a delusion. They'd all had to make sacrifices, not to mention the emotional and physical toll that wolfing out had on them.

When he had finally stopped his blind pursuit of justice, or revenge, or whatever it was that he had been seeking, Jacob had had, at the very least, the recollection of what he had achieved as a wolf. He'd fought the foundling vampires that were threatening the Cullens, and all of forks along with them, almost losing his life in the process.

The boys of his new pack would have nothing like that to remember. No achievements that would make the sacrifice seem just a little easier. Everything that they had done, all of the work, had been for nothing. They had never fought, and they probably never would.

Jacob looked at the boys in front of him, wishing he knew what to tell them.

A question rushed into his mind, and for the first time he realised exactly what it was that he was doing with Edward. Jacob was feeling, for the first time in a very long time, but would that be enough.

Edward would have to leave. It was impossible for the vampire to stay, Edward himself wouldn't want to once he knew exactly what he was doing to these boys. So the vampire would leave, go back to his family or travel to some other secluded house to wait out eternity.

The question was whether Jacob would want to go with him. Could Jacob stay, once Edward was gone and his pack disbanded? Sure sometimes the boys felt like more responsibility than Jacob was used to, but wasn't that a big, important part of being a family? After all, that's what they'd become. A family with their fair share of troubles and scandal, but a family none the less.

They'd all go back to their quiet human lives and live happily ever after.

Jacob wasn't sure that he could go back to being normal. He'd spent so long being something else that now normalcy seemed too far beyond his grasp. And what he was doing with Edward didn't seem like it was about to help him out in that respect.

Not completely animal, not entirely human. There was nowhere he truly fit anymore.

So he could go with Edward, when he left. Whatever it was that was going on between them, Jacob hadn't quite had the presence of mind to give it a proper thought, let alone a label, Jacob thought that it might just be real enough to survive.

So he could maybe go with Edward, to wherever Edward wanted to go. He had nowhere else to go. He would follow Edward to the ends of the earth, if the vampire would let him.

But Jacob knew what he would be giving up. The reservation and the community had been his home since he was born into it on a cold morning that had never quite achieved indelibility in the memory banks. He'd attended the school, first as himself and then as his own son. His father had lived and died here, and his forefathers before that. The history of this place was etched into his bones.

Jacob had done some travelling, sure. Seen amazing things, looked into thousands of faces, but he'd always been drawn back to the mountains and woods of his ancestry. He didn't know if he could give all that up, for a being intended by nature to be his mortal enemy.

But it truly surprised him that he wanted to. Everything here was history, whether his own or his family's. It was memories, both made and inherited, that made this place home.

Jacob had never thought of trying to find a way out, at least not in decades, unlike other people from small towns all over. He'd never jumped at the chance to get away from Forks, or La Push, and all the small-minded people in it. He'd probably been one of the small-minded people at one point.

But when he looked at Edward, with the eyes of a lover, he was possibility. He saw a future that wasn't connected with the events of the past. It wasn't the cold mountains and the empty soaring skies that drew him toward Edward. It was the endless possibilities of a future. Jacob had never been looking for a way out, but he'd found a reason to.

The boys were growing impatient in front of him, unaware of Jacob's epiphanous reverie. They were growing uncomfortable with their leader's ability to hold information from them. It had never happened before, and as far as most of them were concerned, it wasn't really an improvement.

Of all the boys, Harley was the closest to knowing the secrets that Jacob was hiding. He'd spent a lot of time with his Grandfather, a closet vampire enthusiast. Harley had been a little critical of his father's kind words about the bloodsuckers. After all, it went against the ingrained sense of the creatures that Harley had been given, through the telling and retelling of their cultural stories. The stories that his grandfather had told him were quiet in his memory, hushed whispers in the late evening, when the rest of the family was in bed. Most of the community didn't know the truth about their wolf protectors, didn't even know of their existence. The young children would be told stories, but they would believe in them only as that, stories of times gone by, exaggerated by the artistry of a thousand tongues.

Seth had sat Harley down with him and told him new stories. His grandfather's stories may not have been quite as fantastical as those told in booming voices around a blazing bonfire, but perhaps for that very reason they presented themselves to a young Harley, even in the all-believing glamour of childhood, as having more truth.

It had been these stories, of near human creatures with compassionate and loving hearts, which had convinced Harley of the existence of creatures that others would dismiss as myths.

Harley knew about the Cullens and the role that they had played in the lives of the last generation. He knew about the disastrous role that they had played in Jacob's life.

But he was perceptive enough to notice that a change had come upon Jacob recently, and to guess that the reason for it was fast being approached by Pond and his heckling.

"…If we can't find any vampires around here," Pond said, continuing his assault on all of their ears. "Then maybe we should go and find some elsewhere. We're here for a reason, maybe we should, you know, get on with it? And anyway-"

"Be quiet Pond." Jacob groaned, low and ominous. The boy's words slowly trickled into silence, as all the youths looked up at their leader. The look of shock was present on almost every face. Jacob had been angry with them before, for stupid stuff, but the low words, carried on a heavy breath sounded more like a threat than anything that any of them had ever heard.

"I know that you all want to do something. I know that you feel trapped, useless here, while you're entire body is telling you that you need to be doing something. Your body is coded to hunt, and to kill that which threatens our society. Believe me, I know how you are feeling. But I can't help you. There are no threats within the range of our territory."

"But what about the rest-" Pond began to exclaim, but fell quiet under Jacob's glare.

Jacob didn't want to scare the boys. He hadn't meant to react so dramatically, but he was fed up with the horrible situation that they had all fallen into.

"I'm sorry for freaking you guys out, but I just wish that there was something we could do. The last nomadic vampires that passed close enough were taken out decades ago. There hasn't been a vampire threat since I was your age."

The boys nodded, but not a single person looked truly satisfied. Jacob needed to find something to lighten the mood a little, and to keep his mind off the broken promises that were still lying scattered around his mind, He'd needed to find a way to get Edward away from Forks, but for selfish reasons the vampire was still holed up in the house, tucked away between the trees and out of sight. Jacob could have made it just a little easier for the boys but for his own sake and on an irrational gamble he'd forced them to endure much more than they had to.

He owed them the rest of their lives.