twelve.

(Leah)

The blaring music of Quil's favourite band doesn't lessen any until after a full minute of pounding her fist on his front door. It's what Leah calls Fuck Off And Leave Me Alone Music — the kind she herself played in the following months after Sam, if only for the mind-numbing beats which drowned out her family's unwelcome advice and drove away the rest of the world's sympathetic looks — and she takes it as a warning of what is to come.

After all, she reasons, if she were Quil then she'd be in a pretty foul mood too after what happened earlier.

The blaring music from inside quietens a fraction. Knowing she has been heard she knocks again, a little more politely this time, and then the music stops. And when the front door finally swings open, Quil's face swiftly morphs from a mix of anger, frustration and general unhappiness into pleasant, cheerful surprise.

"Leah!" His blinding grin splits his face. "You're alive!"

She can't help herself from smiling back at him. "Were you doubting me? Me?"

Quil's laughter rises as she fans her face with her free hand, a picture of arrogance as she leans against the doorframe and blinds him with her best smile.

"Can you blame me?" he asks lightly, barely recovered from his amusement. "I was getting kinda worried when you didn't call. Jake looked so mad that I thought I'd have to avenge you or something. . ." His voice trails off, his eyes having flickered over her shoulder, and Leah realises with a dull pang of dread that he's seen the infamous Rabbit parked behind her.

She didn't think to ask Jacob to park it down the street, out of sight, although she supposes that there's not much of a difference between Quil being angry with her now rather than in five minutes time. Less.

"Woah," he says, jaw dropping comically. "Did you kill him?"

"Not yet," she replies sweetly. Innocently. Jacob is eavesdropping, after all.

Quil blinks. "Shit. He's not tied up and gagged in the trunk, is he?"

It is her turn to laugh. The feeling sits foreign in her throat because she's not laughed for days and days — not properly, not without it being forced, not without feeling good and guilt-free about it. Her dad's not even been dead a week.

"Seriously," Quil protests, torn between chuckling and dark suspicion. "How did you get the Rabbit?"

"Borrowed it."

"Right. Sure you did."

Leah doesn't answer. Everything that Quil says will only force her to tell yet even more lies, so she simply keeps her smile and hopes with everything she has that he will one day forgive her for all she's said so far. "Can I come in?"

"Oh. Sure."

He steps aside, and she catches a glance of his casserole-stained shoes by the doormat. The sight almost makes her smile again until she remembers why she'd been picking glass out of his sneakers in the first place.

"Really," Quil insists from behind, "why'd you borrow his car? Did he let you?"

"Not exactly," she says, hating the way it sounds as if she's asking a question.

"You know that'll really piss him off, right? I mean, he wouldn't even let anyone help him work on it."

She shrugs as if to say, I don't care without having to actually say it, and another smile quickly splits Quil's round face.

"You're brilliant," he declares, shutting the door behind them.

"I think so," she agrees amiably — lying again, because she's anything but brilliant in this moment. It's nice that he thinks so, though. In another life, they might have been good friends. Maybe they could be still after she ruins his life. He's a sweet kid.

"What happened? Truthfully. Did you kick his ass?" Quil asks hopefully.

She bites her lip for show, thoughtful but wicked in a way she's mastered. "Well. I might have yelled at him a little bit," she says. That's not a lie.

"Awesome." He drags out the word, entirely impressed. "You want a congratulatory soda or something?" he asks, waving towards the kitchen. "We'll make a toast, start a club. Figure out a secret handshake. Maybe I'll even teach you the one we used to do when we were kids — that'll really piss him off."

"I was right. You do have a death wish."

"When did you say that?"

"I didn't. But I thought it," Leah tells him, and they both grin. "I actually wanted to talk to you, though. Can we . . . Can we go out in the yard? It's kinda nice out."

"Uh — sure, if you want."

Quil's confusion shows, but he follows regardless as she invites herself further into his house and finds her own way through the hall and into the kitchen, through the back door and out to the yard. It's not really nice out; it's a typical cloudy, cold Washington day in March, nowhere even close to the spring weather they're all waiting for, but at least it's dry. Open, too, with no chance of his house being demolished.

She sees Jacob standing in the middle of the yard straightaway. He gives her an imperceptible nod of understanding — solidarity, even — before shoving his hands into the pockets of his shorts with a slightly grim expression.

"So what's up, Leah?" Quil asks before the thin, white weather-worn door has swung shut behind him with a snap.

And then he sees Jacob.

Everything about her would-be-friend tenses: his back instantly straightens and his mouth presses into one thin, angry line; his shoulders go rigid, his eyes harden, and for a few fraught seconds it looks as if he's forgotten how to breath. Impulse has Leah putting her hand on his chest, even if doing so is exactly what Jacob meant about not getting too close.

"It's okay, really, I asked him—"

"What the fuck, Leah?" Quil glares down at her, the betrayal in his expression like a knife in her side. "This some kind of ambush?"

He's not wrong, but she pushes her hand more forcefully against his chest and wills him to remain intact. "No. Please, just listen. Trust me."

"I do," he says immediately, without thought. The sentiment doesn't warm her like it should. "It's him I don't trust," Quil then spits, his chin jerking over her head and towards where Jacob stands to attention.

"Leah," Jacob says slowly, just loud enough that she can tell his voice is full of worried caution.

She ignores him, ignores the heat searing into her palm through Quil's shirt and the pounding rhythm of his heart against it, and she holds her ground. "Please. I need to tell you something, okay? And I need you to hear me out."

"So why's he here?" Quil all but growls from behind his teeth, his trembling fists curled into tight balls at his side.

"Because — because he can explain how you've been feeling better than I can, and—"

"Okay, that's enough," Jacob says, his voice closer now and on the cusp of full-blown panic. His strong, too-warm hands quickly set themselves on her shoulders, gently coaxing her away.

"I've got this," Leah snaps, whipping around, just at the same time Quil barks, "Get your hands off her!" and then she both hears and feels the rush of Quil's fist careering over her head and into his best friend's jaw.

Jake staggers back a few steps and Leah sags heavily into his chest as he pulls her with him, holding her with his arms which have now locked tightly around her waist. Her breath leaves her — not from his strength, but rather Quil's.

"You okay?" Jake asks immediately, already recovered as if he were merely pushed.

"Fine, Jake," she huffs, both her hands splayed over the forearms which keep her in place. But she doesn't push him off, not even as he straightens himself to his full height, lifting her with little effort and supporting all of her weight — high enough that the tips of her sneakers graze the grass.

Leah is by no means short, nor heavy, but these boys are huge. Jacob is closer to seven feet than he is six, and Quil is not far behind that.

Quil, who boils with rage and spits his aggravation throughout their exchange, but Jacob pays his friend no mind.

He sets Leah gently back on her feet, his fingers sliding down her waist and over her hips as he manoeuvres her whole body quickly and effortlessly behind him. His touch is firm yet gentle, insistent, either too strong or too focused (or both) to even feel her pathetic resistance to stay right where she can see Quil.

He doesn't speak until all she can see is the black shirt on his back. "Quil, man," he says, pleading, "I get it, I do, but you gotta calm down or someone's gonna get hurt."

"You think I'm going to hurt her?" snarls Quil, his anger sounding beyond anything Leah thinks they might be able to tame. "You're the one holding her back! It's you. You and your fucking friends, that's who she's scared of, not me!"

"Jake, move." Leah pushes, but Jacob only steps back, his fingers digging deeper into her skin as he puts even more distance between them and Quil. She huffs out her frustration. "No, move. Let me talk to him."

"See!" Quil insists angrily. "She doesn't want you!"

Leah can't read Jacob's face; she can't see what it is he struggles with during the terrible moment it takes for him to find his voice, but she can feel the strain he's under to keep his temper even. And she knows she should be scared, terrified as the day she saw Seth phase for the first time, except she refuses to give that terror even an inch of space. Because if she starts believing now that she will be hurt — that they will hurt her — then she will be ruined.

"We came here to help you," Jake eventually says instead of answering after a huge breath. "Will you just listen to us?"

"I've tried to talk to you for weeks, Jake! I've been shouting like a moron in the goddamn trees after following you, trying to get your attention, and you didn't care then!"

"I know," Jacob replies guiltily, "I know, but please—"

"And if you think I'm going to join you — if you think you can make me one of you," Quil ploughs on, trying for all his might to not stumble over his words through his rage, "then you've got another thing coming, because I won't. I don't care, I don't want it. Whatever it is you and Embry have got going on with Sam — I'm not — I won't be next!"

"That's why I'm here! You don't think I've wanted to tell you? If you'd let me—"

Leah pushes against Jacob's back again. "Stop it! Just shut up!" she screams, and — almost as if he'd forgotten she was there — Jacob's iron-tight hold on her relents in his surprise. It is just enough for her to pull away and dart underneath his arm and face Quil herself, who opens his mouth—

"Both of you!" she snaps. "Just listen."

Quil doesn't so much as flinch. He only crosses his arms that continue to quiver, tucking his fists tight into his armpits, and lets his teeth show. "I'm not listening to anything he has to say."

"Then don't. Talk to me, okay?" She reaches out, hands splayed in surrender — in peace — and pretends not to notice when she feels Jacob's heat curling around her shoulder again. "A minute, that's all I want. Can you give me that?"

He looks dangerously at the hand on her, his lip still curling, but eventually Quil meets her gaze again and nods stiffly. "One minute. Then he better take his hand off you, or I swear to God—"

"He's not hurting me. He's just . . . worried."

"Because of me?"

"Because of me, actually," she says, smiling tightly when Quil frowns. "Apparently I'm not very good at listening either."

"Did he tell you that?" Quil demands.

"No! Jeez. It's not —" She sighs loudly before looking over at him again, and Jacob's fingers press into her collarbone as if he knows that she wants to move closer to Quil. "It doesn't matter. He came with me because I need to tell you something, and you're not going to believe me and you're going to get mad, but I couldn't lie anymore—"

Quil's hands slip from his armpits before he quickly clamps down on them again. "You lied? When?"

"I'm sorry. I didn't know what else to do. It's not my secret. I couldn't—"

"You're in on it, aren't you?" Pained realisation crosses his face, just as bad as it was when he dropped the casserole over her doorstep and turned away from her. "I . . . You? They let you into their secret? Sam?"

"No! He wasn't going to tell me. Nobody was going to tell me," she protests, unable to help but think back to when Sam had stood in her bedroom, and then when she'd pushed and pushed Jacob for details in her kitchen — twice. "I wasn't supposed to know. Believe me, I'd given up wanting to know what had happened to Sam, and then Seth . . . That day, when my dad . . ." She shakes her head. "Seth couldn't help it. He . . . phased." The word feels strange on her tongue still. "That's what they call it. When they turn into — into wolves."

Quil simply stares. And then he says, voice flat, "You're crazy."

Leah rakes her fingers through her hair, tugging on it at the back of her neck in frustration.

"Quil, she's not —" Jacob starts, and then promptly gags. "You're a — Leah," he gasps painfully, a hand clawing at his throat. "I can't."

"The legends," she blurts, jerked into action by Jacob's suffering. She feels a dull ache in her chest, affected by it, and knows deep-down that it is more than sympathy. "Those stories your grandpa tells, the blind faith he has in Sam, all those secrets. The legends are real, Quil. The Cold Ones, the wolves — Yut — Utlapa and Taha Aki. All of them."

Quil's cold stare breaks into a laugh, a hard and scornful sound which cuts to the bone. "Yeah, right."

"They are! The spirit wolves — that's you. It will be you. Jacob's one, too, and Embry and Seth and Sam and—"

"You're crazy!" he repeats with a yell. "Everyone — everyone talks about what a bitch you've turned into but I thought . . . and I . . . I trusted you about this!"

Tears pool in her eyes, Quil's words settling deep within her. And Jacob growls his warning, but his friend doesn't stop.

"I thought you believed me. I thought you liked me! And now you've just — you — how can you . . . Fuck!"

On that last word, several things happen very, very quickly: Jacob's shout of warning has her heart leaping as Quil finally loses whatever shred of control he's managed to hold onto thus far and cries out; it's a strangled, awful sound which horribly mangles his face, which has her stomach dropping but her hands reaching for him—

—just as Jacob flings his arms out, shoving her with bruising force. Pain radiates across her back, her shoulders, her elbows as she collides with the ground—

—and suddenly a whirl of colour explodes in her vision against the lush green, scraps of fabric floating around it and towards the ground—

—but Jacob — for all he's done to keep her out of the way, he doesn't move. He just stands there on two feet, his arms wide as he braces himself against the oncoming wolf whose snarl drowns the sound of her scream out.

She screams and screams, struggling to push herself up on the grass as the chocolate brown wolf — Quil — throws himself into Jacob, who rebuffs him with an inhuman, deafening roar. And she swears she sees the lines of Jake's body blur out of shape for a second before he coalesces back into himself, every inch of him trembling as he defends himself. Defends her.

Quil scrabbles on the grass, finding his feet again in only an instant before crouching low with an earth-shattering snarl, ears flat against his head. But he's so huge that Leah can see how unsteady his legs are, can see the tremors along his tangled fur and the way his massive eyes dart around the scene before him uneasily, and she realises with a strange sense of hysteria that Quil . . .

He's not trying to kill them. He's scared.

This is what Seth must have looked like.

It is that thought which somehow has her managing to stand. It feels like every part of her is bruised, maybe even cracked in parts, broken and crying in pain, but she manages. Somehow.

Jake and Quil move towards her at the same time as if to help, but it is only the first who reaches her. Quil stops short, remembering himself, and a low, unending whine escapes through his sharp teeth before he whirls on himself and runs. If she'd blinked, she would have missed it.

Sweaty hands are at her cheeks, her jaw, her neck, her shoulders. Shaking. Touching her, turning her.

"I'm okay," she breathes before she dares look into Jacob's eyes and see the panic there. It is worse — worse feeling it from him than as if the panic were her own. She can feel it alongside his anxiety and his shame, the inexplicable need to be here together. But she pulls away from it, her bones groaning, because — "Quil."

Another whine comes from deep within the trees. Mournful.

"Quil," she says again. "Help Quil."

"You're hurt — I hurt you—"

"Jake. He needs you. This is —" She sucks in a painful breath, flinching as Jacob folds her into his embrace without warning. She wants to say, This is why you are here, help him, go now, please, but words fail her. She can only lift her arms up.

"I can't," he moans, the stammer still there. "The others — they'll find him, hear him. I can't leave. Phase. I can't phase."

"I'm okay," she says again as Jacob drops his head and starts mumbling a litany of apologies into her hair, because it's true. She is hurt and tired but . . . whole. Okay. Alive. "Go on."

It takes a minute, or an hour. She's not sure for how long it is exactly that she has to reassure Jacob she will live, that he has to go, but eventually he nods. It is not without shame or fear, not with any certainty that they have truly helped Quil instead of making things worse, but finally he understands.

And he leaves. He follows the trail of destruction his best friend has left where the trees meet the grass, his head bowed, and he does not turn back.

She is glad. Glad that Jacob does not see her picking up Quil's shredded clothes, piece by piece, fighting her tears.

A/N: This chapter hurt. So much. I try and avoid notes but that's how much it hurt, trying to do it justice. Send cake if you liked it, Renesmee-shaped complaints if not. I'll thank you anyway.