Pairing: Jacob/Bella, featuring Embry, Paul, Quil, and Alice

Rating: M, for adult theme, mentions of drinking/drug use

Genre: Angst/Drama

Word Count: 950—flashfic inspired by a drabble prompt.

Prompt: [the picture prompt for week #11 that is available to view on Tricky Raven's Weekly Drabble Challenge group]

2B

Jacob hesitated, his eyes tracing and retracing the numbers on the apartment door.

2B.

The door to heaven and his salvation at the hands of his angel.

Or the door to hell and his damnation at the mercy of whatever demons lay within, torturing the girl he still loved. The warning of their presence was unspoken but clear in the voice of the pixie leech when she called him earlier at Sam's.

"Jacob Black?" the voice—like nails on a chalkboard—had asked.

"Yes…?" he couldn't imagine one of the Cullen leeches having anything to say that he wanted to hear.

"I know it's been a while—"

"Get to the point, leech," he growled, his patience straining as his brothers gathered around Sam's kitchen table, listening in.

"She left the family a year ago. She wouldn't go home for fear of bringing the threat of the Volturi to her dad and the pack. She's in Seattle, a small studio apartment—"

"She made her choice—"

"Jacob, she's got twenty-four hours at most. The decision you make right now determines her fate. If you go, her future remains blank. Uncertain. That's good. If you don't … Jacob, I can see her funeral, five days from now in Forks, her father weeping over her open casket. She's… It's grim."

Jacob swallowed the lump in his throat as his eyes burned with unshed tears, whispering, "It's that bad?"

"It's so much worse than you can even imagine. You're her only friend. If one of us showed up … it would be worse, so much worse. It has to be you. Take some friends. You'll need some help getting her out of there. I'll take care of the apartment and her belongings."

"You say it like I'm going there to bring home her body…"

"I honestly don't know what you'll find."

Even before he knocked on the door, he could smell the stale sourness of the air wafting from under the door of the apartment he'd been directed to. No homey scent of baking cookies, no luscious honey and cream Bella scent, not even the trace of Murphy's Oil soap and lemon Pine Sol he would usually expect of his obsessive compulsive best friend's little nest.

Puffs of dust swirled in the air through the cracks around the door as he knocked.

No answer.

Putting his ear to the door, he could hear the erratic rhythm of a single heart beating within.

The beat faltered.

Jacob took one ragged, deep breath and kicked the door in.

"Bella!" he yelled before the splintered wood hit the floor.

But there was no need.

The apartment was tiny—a boxy studio, no more than a bedroom with a kitchen tucked into a closet on one side and a microscopic, filthy bathroom on the other.

On the floor lay Bella on a mattress that reeked of unwashed linens soaked in whiskey and other unnameable scents he had never before come in contact with.

Jacob stood frozen, unable to comprehend the confusing scene at his feet.

She lay curled on her side, a bottle of Johnnie Walker fallen from one hand, resting on her fingertips, a scorched spoon in the other.

Jacob couldn't make heads or tails of the bizarre assortment of items beside the bed until Embry and Paul stepped up behind him, skirting around the filthy mattress to kneel by Bella's side.

Embry checked for a pulse, sobbing quietly in relief when he found one.

Paul picked up a small plastic bag, his face crumpling, shoulders hunching in recognition as he bit out words in bitter distaste, "It's heroin. If you were waiting for her to hit rock bottom before taking her back, the wait's over. She's already there." He pointed accusingly to the congealed, sticky mess pooling on the floor from the spoon in Bella's hand.

That's when Jacob saw the needles—a dozen or more, caked with grimy fingerprints and sticky, black tar.

The others didn't wait for instructions.

Paul started sorting through her meager possessions, looking for a couple of clean outfits and a bag to pack while Embry grabbed the cleanest washcloth he could find from the pile in the bathroom to wipe the smudges and dry, scaly skin from Bella's face and arms. His hands shook as he wiped tenderly around the track marks and a pair of matching vertical scars on each of Bella's wrists that spoke volumes of her hopeless desperation.

Jacob trembled, so fucking angry, he didn't know whether to phase or scream or both.

He wanted to punch, bite, kill something—tear it apart with his teeth.

But what?

Who was he really angry with?

The leech?

He certainly shouldered plenty of the blame.

Bella?

A woman who made poor choices as a girl and continued to punish herself for them?

Himself?

Did he do his best by her?

Would he do it now?

And where was this fucking blame getting him while Bella lay on the floor in a heap of filth, punishing herself for the monsters who knowingly ruined her life?

Quil's voice from the doorway brought the reality of the situation into focus, "I laid down the seats. There's a stack of blankets to keep her warm. Sue is sitting by the phone with Grandad to talk us through any emergencies on the drive back. We're supposed to take her right to the clinic so Sue can assess her condition—see how bad it is."

Lifting the broken, feather-light body of his unconscious best friend into his arms, Jacob bit his lips to keep from sobbing and turned his back on his brothers to hide the burning pain in his eyes as he murmured, "Tell her it's as bad as it gets."

Tough read, I know. Review if you like...