Disclaimer: AU/reworking of Chapter 21: 'Trails' from Eclipse. Direct line lifts ahead. Title borrowed from my boy Phil Collins.

Interlude 4: Sam

aka

I Share Your Darkest Thoughts With You
(but share no consequences for them)

As the Alpha, and the technically-but-not-really Chief of his people, Sam spends his days painfully aware of the list of Things He Has to Do. Things that, if they knew, Old Quil and Billy (and Sue) would whoop his ass for not having done already. Essential, important things that he does not trust anybody else to handle, regardless of their bloodline or their rank within his pack. Potentially life-altering, crucial things, absolutely none of which involve hiking halfway up the Olympic Mountains with Bella fucking Swan as part of the stupidest game of hide-and-seek he has ever heard of.

And yet, here he is.

He is the first to arrive in the clearing. He hovers in the shadows of the treeline, but he doesn't have to wait long until he senses something Other approaching, the burning medley of ice and bleach just as potent as ever; it almost completely masks Bella Swan's distinctly floral scent, and it leaves Sam just exactly who he has to blame for this ridiculous plan he is about to carry out.

Edward, yes. Jacob, definitely. Both idiots, in Sam's mind. Both as annoying as the other.

If it were up to him (and Leah) then they'd be hiding the girl on the Rez. Or, if it were up to Paul, they'd be using her as bait. The whole event would be over in a matter of minutes if they could dangle her in front of her newborns and tailor it to their own advantage.

As it happens, Bella is ready for her night in the mountains. Bundled up in a winter parka, she looks around the clearing as she enters, evidently searching for something.

Or rather, someone.

"Where are we meeting Jacob?" she asks.

"Right here," says Edward.

Sam takes that as his cue to step out from underneath the cover of the trees, his arms crossed and his expression wrangled into something that betrays little of his actual feelings.

He does the same with his mind, pulling the shutters down and retreating into himself much the same way he tries when he wants to hide something from his brothers—the way he has done to keep his secrets from them before. He doesn't know if it'll work; he may not be able to protect his thoughts from Edward the same way, but he's willing to try if it means he can retain some control during this goddamn shit show.

If it means he can protect his people.

Bella's lips pull down at the corners. "Where is Jacob?"

"Busy," Sam tells her, much to her visible disappointment.

Edward, however, seems much more relaxed with this turn of events, and Sam wonders exactly how much trouble the consequences of Bella's actions have brought to the other side of the treaty line.

The vampire nods curtly. An answer to the unspoken question, or a greeting? "Hello, Sam," he says. "Thank you for coming."

Sam ignores the pleasantries. The quicker he can get this done, the quicker he can get home to his family—to Emily. "Where do I take her?"

Edward pulls a map from a side pocket on the pack slung over his arm, offering it to him, and Sam gingerly unfolds it, keeping his breathing painfully shallow lest he starts retching all over the forest. The burn in his nose, however, he can do nothing about.

"We're here now"—Edward points at a spot on the map—"and you're taking her up here," he continues, tracing a serpentine pattern around the elevation lines on the paper. "Roughly nine miles. When you're about a mile away, you should cross my path. That will lead you in." He looks up, their faces a mirror image of forced neutrality. "Do you need the map?"

"No," Sam replies curtly. He knows this area, knows this forest and its trails like the back of his hand. He's run through them enough.

Edward nods, unperturbed. "I'll take a longer route," he says. "And I'll see you in a few hours," he tells Bella, staring at her with an expression that conveys exactly how much he is regretting this plan—his own plan, at that—before he turns to leave.

"See you," Bella murmurs, watching him go.

"Well," Sam says, as reluctant to be in the girl's company as she is to be in his. "Let's get this show on the road, shall we?"

Bella struggles to school her features as she steps towards him. And then hesitates. "Actually, I think I'd rather walk."

"Sure," he says, shrugging. It makes no difference to him. "If you want to throw this stupid plan out, I'm game. And when the redhead drains you dry, you can explain to Edward why he should have agreed to hide you on the Rez instead."

Bella shivers, paling as she retreats into her jacket. "I don't like this."

"That makes two of us," Sam mutters, opening his arms. "Come on. The sooner you allow this to happen, Bella, the sooner I'll be out of your hair."

She sighs, chewing her lip in deliberation as she glances towards the trees and back again. "Fine."

Her permission is begrudging, but it's permission all the same; Sam takes another step closer to her, bending down just enough to scoop her up, and he keeps his eyes on the path ahead as he carries her out of the clearing. He barely registers her feather-light weight in his arms, although it's hard to not get sucked into the memory of the last time he carried her in this way. Hard for the past to not merge with the present, substituting one detail for another until he can no longer distinguish between history and reality.

(Her parka was blue, he thinks as he tries to imagine her curled up in the forest, broken in ways he had yet to fully comprehend. Or was it khaki, like the coat she is wearing now?)

After he had found her—after the Cullens had left—he had spent months hating the bloodsuckers for what they had done to her, to him. Months of thinking that maybe, just maybe, there was someone else in the world who had reason to hate his enemy as much as he does. And then the Cullens returned, and Bella accepted them back into her life with seemingly zero hesitation, offering her forgiveness before they'd even retraced their old hunting routes.

"You don't have to run," Bella mutters, yanking him back to the present. "You'll get tired."

After months of endless patrolling, tracing and retracing the same thickets and trails and clearings until they have etched themselves into his unconscious in permanent ink, his body instinctively recognises the landscape as terrain that necessitates hauling ass.

(Emily hates when he says that. Says that it is crass—a word she uses to chastise Paul almost as frequently as she expresses affection for the man—and, yet, he can't help but let the phrase slip through the steel trap of his mind.)

"A steady pace is good," he says finally, acknowledging Bella's searching gaze. "Running doesn't make me tired. Besides, it will be colder soon. I hope he gets the camp set up before we get there."

"It's kind of offensive how fit you are," she says, almost immediately flushing pink. "Not—not like in a weird way," she scrambles to explain, "but how you can run and talk at the same time. The five minute mile in gym class almost killed me."

He smiles a little at that. In a different lifetime, one without the Cullens' reemergence, he can imagine her as one of his motley crew. As a little sister, of sorts.

It's a damned shame—her endlessly forgiving nature, her ability to sideline callous actions that damn near sent her to a psychiatric hospital, the way she effectively turned her back on the pack after they welcomed her in as one of them, as if the months of suturing her jagged edges back together meant nothing.

(It wasn't nothing to him, not really, not ever.)

"I thought you didn't get cold," she says, unknowingly saving him from the idiotic desire to say something sentimental. Her bone-white fingers tap on the sleeve of his parka for just a moment, as if to punctuate her observation, a gesture that feels almost as intimate as the bizarre bridal carry situation he's found himself in.

"I don't. Emily insisted that I bring this for you, just in case you weren't prepared."

"Oh. That was nice of her."

"No big deal. She was right, anyway—I don't like the way the weather feels. It's making me edgy. So it's probably a good idea for you to have an extra layer. Notice how we haven't seen any animals?"

She blinks, twisting her head against his shoulder to scan the landscape. "Um, not really."

"I guess you wouldn't. Your senses are too dull."

She hums in quiet acknowledgement. "Alice was worried about the storm, too."

"It takes a lot to silence the forest this way. You picked a hell of a night for a camping trip."

"Do you think the animals know?" she asks suddenly, her mouth contorted into a frown. "Can they feel that something terrible is going to happen?"

"Maybe," he says, contemplating his own malaise. "Maybe that's why I feel so strange."

"I think that's just a side effect of having to hang out with me," Bella says in her typical deadpan fashion.

It's enough to make him laugh, at least, to break the lingering sense of discomfort permeating the journey.

"I wouldn't know. It's been a long while since you came down to La Push to see the rest of us," Sam says lightly, his gaze fixed on the increasingly steep terrain.

"I've been busy," she says quietly. "And . . . I probably wouldn't have visited, anyway."

He laughs unkindly. "Still scared of Leah, huh? It's nothing to be ashamed of. We're all a little bit frightened of her. Even Jacob."

"I'm not scared of her," she says defiantly, glowering at the laughter it pulls from his chest.

"Either you're lying, or your self-preservation instincts are broken."

"Edward would probably agree," Bella says, "but I'm not lying. Besides, you're her friend. I'm not going to tell you when you'll only tell her what I said."

"Actually, I think Leah would deny to her dying breath that she feels any sort of affection for us," he says. "Especially me."

It's quiet then for a while, little between them but the sound of his measured breathing and the wind roaring high above them in the treetops. A cliff face rises before them, a monolith of bare, rough grey stone that he begins to scale with the adept footwork of a mountain goat.

"Can I ask you about imprinting?"

"Okay," he says slowly, instantly apprehensive.

Bella seems to think very, very carefully about each word before it comes out of her mouth, more hesitant than he has ever seen her before—and that's saying something. "What was it like? For you, I mean. What happened?"

"I thought Jacob would've told you all this."

"I asked him," she admits, "but he said it wasn't his story to tell."

For a moment, Sam is overcome by a deep feeling of appreciation for his brother—and then he remembers that it is not for his benefit Jacob would have kept that particular story a secret.

"What about your bloodsucker, then?" he asks. "There's no way he wasn't picking our heads apart the other night. Sure he would've gotten the full story from one of us, at least."

"He doesn't do it on purpose," Bella says a little hotly. "Besides, whatever he knows is only because he heard you thinking about it."

"So it's our fault, I suppose, for not being able to control our thoughts?" he retorts. "Because let me tell you now, that's a lot harder than it sounds. Take it from someone who knows."

"I didn't mean it like that."

"I bet he was practically foaming at the mouth to divulge all the secrets we'd been keeping," Sam continues regardless, helpless to stop himself. "Especially if it made us look bad."

"It wasn't like that," Bella protests, quietly enough that Sam knows there is some truth in his words—that Edward did most, if not all, of those things; the bloodsucker will seize any opportunity to make his enemies look bad if it keeps Bella within his clutches and away from the pack. Away from Jacob.

Sam scoffs. "How was it, then?"

"Edward didn't tell me anything."

"No?"

"No. I . . . I realised Jacob was right. It wasn't his story to tell. And it didn't feel like . . . It felt wrong, hearing it from him. So I told Edward not to tell me."

"Huh," Sam says, contemplative. "Still hasn't stopped you from asking."

"You don't have to tell me," she says, almost inaudibly. "I was only curious."

He sighs, letting the silence lull between them before he finally takes another breath. "It was . . . rough. Probably nothing like the romantic love-at-first-sight impression you have of imprinting. To want someone that badly, to know that they're exactly what you're missing, to have them outright reject you once you spill your guts out . . . Anyway, Emily slammed the door in my face. I knocked all night; I don't think she got a wink of sleep. She threatened to call Leah, of course, but I think . . . She was worried about what Leah would have thought, so she just left me there. Probably hoping that I'd go away, or—"

"Leah?"

It takes everything not to swear underneath his breath. "You really don't know anything, huh."

Bella stares up at him, expectant.

His next words feel heavier, his voice not his own. "Leah and I were . . . together. A long time ago."

"But you and Emily—"

"I'll get to that—it's part of the story," he says. "After I phased for the first time, I wouldn't talk to anyone about where I'd been, what had happened to me. I couldn't. How could I? But the rumour mill had already started by then—mostly whispers that I was up to no good. Then I bumped into Old Quil one afternoon when he came to visit my mom, and I shook his hand. The old man just about had a stroke."

"Why?"

"He recognised the signs. I all but branded his skin, I was so hot."

"Oh."

"He went straight to the other elders, then," he goes on. "They were the only ones left who still knew, who remembered. Old Quil, Billy and Harry. . . They had actually seen their grandfathers make the change. And when Old Quil told them, they came to find me. And they explained.

"It was easier when I understood—when I knew I wasn't so alone anymore. Nice to know that I wasn't going crazy, anyway. But the elders knew I wouldn't be the only one affected by the return of your bloodsuckers, though no one else was old enough yet. So I had to wait."

"The Cullens had no idea," she says in a whisper. "They didn't think that werewolves still existed here. They didn't know that coming here would change you."

"It doesn't change the fact that it did."

Bella looks away. "Remind me not to get on your bad side," she mutters.

"Do you want to hear this story or not?" he asks.

Her silence is her answer, and he huffs a strained laugh before continuing.

"So—the elders explained, and I knew what was going on. Finally. With them on my side, it wasn't so hard anymore. Everything was almost okay—almost. In most ways, my life was back to—well, not normal, but it was better than what I had imagined it to be. Only . . . I couldn't tell Leah."

"What? Why?"

"We aren't supposed to tell anyone who doesn't have to know. And the elders decided that it wasn't really safe for me to be around her—but I cheated, just like Jake did with you. Still, Leah was furious that I couldn't tell her what was going on—where I'd been, where I went at night, why I was so exhausted all the time—but we were working it out. We were trying." He swallows thickly, his chest tight. "We . . . We really loved each other."

"Did she find out? Is that what happened?"

He shakes his head. "No, that wasn't the problem. The problem is," he explains heavily, "is that I imprinted on her cousin."

Bella gasps, eyes wide. "Cousin?"

"Second cousins," he clarifies. "They were close, though—they were like sisters when they were kids."

"That's . . . horrible. How could you . . . ?" Bella trails off, shaking her head.

"Imprinting," he says, as if it explains everything. "You wanted to know what happened to make me hate your bloodsuckers for changing me. That's what happened. I broke Leah's heart. I went back on everything I had ever promised. All those years—gone. What's worse is that I have to see the accusation in her eyes, and know that she's right."

"How did Emily deal with it? If she was so close to Leah . . . ?"

"Like I said—she was real angry, in the beginning. But imprinting . . . it's hard to resist." Sam sighs. "And after that, I could tell her everything. There are no rules that can bind you when you find your other half."

"Poor Leah," Bella whispers.

"Yeah, she got the worst end of the stick," he agrees. "She puts on a brave face. But I think it's better now." For her, he thinks. "She'll always hate me, but at least she doesn't want to kill me so much anymore."

"Because she has Jacob."

"Yeah. And Emily still has hope they'll be able to patch things up. Before Jacob imprinted on Leah, you couldn't get her in a room with Emily. Or me. Now she can almost pretend that she tolerates us. By Christmas, she might even be able to sit and have dinner with us. Who knows."

"She seemed okay with you the other night, when you all came to meet us."

"It was either that, or be left behind," he says, smiling sadly. "Leah's my pack, just as much as Emily, or Kim, or any of the guys. And, whether she likes it or not, we're hers. She'd never let herself be left behind."

(Not again, he thinks. Never again.)

"I wish Edward saw me the same way," Bella says, her expression settling back into her perma-frown. "No matter what I do, it's never enough."

Her proclamation gives him pause. He tries to read her tone, study her face for clues, but she stares blankly ahead at their path as if she had never spoken at all.

"Listen to yourself," he says, clambering over the smattering of rocks punctuating the mountain trail. "You're not in that deep. Plus, you're young. Go to college, shave your head, disappoint your dad, figure out what you really want. Your life is too important to waste on someone that needs convincing to love you."

"He proposed," she says, her voice tiny. "And he's going to change me after all this is over with. He does love me."

"Why does it feel like you're trying to convince us both," he says, regretting the way the hurt washes over her features. "Let's talk about something else. I really don't want to fight with your vampire tonight—I mean, any other night, sure. But we both have a job to do tomorrow, and I wouldn't want to leave the Cullens one short."

He can't quite pinpoint why, but he's clearly said the wrong thing, if her quivering lip and glassy eyes are to be believed.

"What's the matter with you?" The joking bravado melts from his face like pulling a mask away. "If something I said upset you, you know I was only kidding—mostly. I didn't mean anything—hey, are you okay? Don't cry," he pleads. "Emily will kill me."

Bella takes a shaky breath, avoiding his gaze. "I'm not going to cry."

"What did I say?"

"It's nothing you said. It's just, well, it's me. I did something . . . bad."

He stares at her, his eyes wide with confusion.

"Edward isn't going to fight tomorrow," she whispers. "I'm making him stay with me. I am a huge coward."

He frowns. "You think this isn't going to work? That they'll find you here? Do you know something I don't know?"

"No, no. I'm not afraid of that. I just . . . I can't let him go. If he didn't come back . . ." She shudders, closing her eyes as if that will help her escape the thought.

He says nothing, and so she continues, confessing her worst with her eyes closed tight.

"If anyone gets hurt, it will be my fault. And even if no one does . . . I was horrible. I had to be, to convince him to stay with me. He won't hold it against me, but I'll always know what I'm capable of."

When her eyes finally open, it is to the hard mask that Sam usually reserves for the Cullens, an impassive sneer that he has perfected since becoming Alpha to conceal the softer edges of his personality.

"I can't believe he let you talk him out of going," he scoffs derisively. "I wouldn't miss this for anything."

"Even if Emily asked?"

"She wouldn't. She knows me better than that," he says. "Besides, everything's going to go without a hitch."

"You're probably right, but that doesn't change the fact that the whole time you're all gone, I'll be sick with worry. Crazy with it."

"Why?" he asks gruffly. "Why does it matter to you if something happens to us?"

"Don't say that. You know how much you all mean to me."

"Forgive me if that's a little too hard to believe."

"Why?"

He rolls his eyes. "You don't care for us, Bella. You care for Jacob. Love him, even, given how willing you were to risk your neck by kissing him after finding out his wolf had chosen Leah. Not many people would be willing to insult an imprint like that."

"I do not love Jacob," she insists, but the protest is weak even to his keen ears.

"I'm not saying you don't love Edward. I'm not stupid. But it's possible to love more than one person at a time. I've seen it in action."

"I'm not some freaky werewolf, Sam. I'm not like that."

(Not like you, she means, except he knows that she would never have the guts to say that to his face.)

He wrinkles his nose, as close to a display of disgust that he can afford her, though he changes the subject before he can apologise—or worse, continue.

"We're not far now, I can smell him."

Though the sickly sweet scent of bloodsucker evokes discomfort, the Olympic Mountains have an even greater dread to offer: a solid wall of purple-black cloud races in from the west, blackening the forest beneath it as it comes.

"Wow," Bella mutters. "You'd better hurry, Sam. You'll want to get home to Emily before it gets here."

"I'm not going home."

"You're not camping with us."

Sam barks out a harsh laugh. "I can think of nothing I'd loathe more. I'm not technically camping with you—as in, sharing your tent or anything. I prefer the storm to the smell. But I'm sure your bloodsucker will want someone to stay and keep in touch with the pack."

"I thought that was Seth's job."

"He'll take over tomorrow."

"So why does everyone else need to know?"

Sam grunts. "We don't keep secrets in our pack. Maybe your lot are different. Either way, it's just for coordination purposes—nothing else."

Bella ponders this. "Will you coordinate with Jake?"

"As much as the rest of my brothers, but with him a little more than usual, I guess, yeah."

She nods as if this makes perfect sense to her, and then says, "That night Edward and I met Jake and Leah at the treaty line—you know, after the bonfire . . . He mentioned something about Jacob. And you."

Sam bristles, his lip curling in a near-perfect mimicry of Jacob. "It's probably a lie."

"Oh, really? He isn't second in command of your pack, then?"

He blinks, his face going slack with surprise. "Oh. That."

"How come he never told me that?"

"Jacob doesn't see it as a big deal."

"Why not? It's interesting. So, how does that work? How did you end up as the Alpha, and him as your . . . the Beta?"

Sam scoffs at the invented term. "I was the first, the oldest. It made sense for me to take charge."

Bella frowns. "But shouldn't Jared or Paul be second, then? They were the next to change."

"Well . . . it's hard to explain," Sam says evasively.

"Try."

He sighs. "It's more about the lineage, you know? Sort of old-fashioned. Why should it matter who your grandpa was, right?"

"Jacob told me once that Ephraim Black was the last chief the Quileutes had. Or am I misremembering?"

"No, you're right. Because Ephraim was the Alpha. So, technically, that means I am the chief of the whole tribe now." His laugh is bitter, twisted. "I wouldn't have gotten in on the popular vote, though, that's for sure."

She thinks about it for a long moment, clearly trying to make all the pieces fit. "But Jacob also said that people listened to his dad more than anyone else on the council, because Billy is Ephraim's grandson?"

"Yeah. What about it?"

"Well, if it's about the lineage . . . shouldn't Jacob be the chief, then?"

Sam doesn't answer; he stares ahead into the darkening forest, as if he suddenly needs to concentrate on where he is going.

"Sam?"

"No. That's my job." He keeps his eyes on the pathless course.

"Why? Your great-granddad was Levi Uley, right? Was Levi an Alpha, too?"

"There's only one Alpha," he answers automatically.

"So what was Levi?"

"Sort of a Beta, I guess." He snorts at her term again. "Like Jake."

"That doesn't make sense."

"It doesn't matter."

"I just want to understand."

Sam finally meets her confused gaze, and then sighs. "Yes. Jacob was supposed to be the Alpha."

Her eyebrows knit together in consternation. "You didn't want to step down?"

"Hardly. He didn't want to step up."

"Why not?"

Sam frowns, uncomfortable with the twenty questions. "He didn't want any of it, Bella. He didn't want anything to change. He didn't want to be some legendary chief. He didn't want to be part of a pack of werewolves, let alone their leader. He wouldn't take it when I offered. Downright refused, actually."

She thinks about this for a long moment. He doesn't interrupt, instead staring into the forest again, more comfortable with the darkness ahead than the conversation he's unwittingly walked right into.

"But I thought he was happier. That he was okay with this," Bella finally whispers.

Sam smiles mirthlessly. "I guess. It's not so bad, really. Exciting sometimes, like with this thing tomorrow. But at first it sort of felt like being drafted into a war you didn't know existed. There was no choice, you know? And it was so final." He shrugs. "Anyway, I guess we're all a little bit glad now—that it happened to us. I'm glad that I'm the Alpha. It has to be done, and could I trust someone other than Jacob to get it right? It's better to make sure myself. I can at least do that for everyone until he's ready."

"And if he's not? What happens to you?"

Before he can answer, the wind whistles more fiercely through the trees around them, as frigid as that which blows straight off a glacier. The sharp sound of wood cracking echoes off the mountain. Though the light vanishes as the grisly cloud covers the sky, the little white specks of snow fluttering past glow luminous against the purpling sky.

Sam steps up the pace, keeping his eyes on the ground now as he flat out sprints towards the camp. Bella curls tightly against his chest, tucking her head under the loose fabric of his parka to avoid the unwelcome snow.

It takes only minutes to reach the far side of the stony peak, the little tent nestled up against the sheltering face like the last bastion of civilisation. Though more flurries fall around them, the wind is too fierce to allow them to settle anywhere.

"Bella!" Edward calls out in acute relief, clearly content to be interrupted in the middle of pacing back and forth across the little open space. He flashes to their side, almost blurring as he moves so swiftly.

Sam cringes, quickly setting Bella on her feet as if to distance himself from it all.

Edward ignores his reaction, catching Bella in a near suffocating hug. "Thank you," he says over her head. His tone is unmistakably, sickeningly sincere. "That was quicker than I expected, and I truly appreciate it."

Sam merely shrugs, all the friendliness wiped clean from his face, even as Bella cranes her neck to see his response. "Get her inside," he says. "This is going to be bad—my hair's standing up on my scalp. Is that tent secure?"

"I all but welded it to the rock."

"Good."

Sam looks up at the sky—now black with the storm, sprinkled with the swirling bits of snow. His nostrils flare.

"I'm going to change," he says. "I need to know what's going on back home."

He walks into the murky forest without a backward glance.

It is unmistakably final, Bella will later realise: Sam has spoken his piece, has handed her over to her fate without another argued word. He said that she had time—that nothing was truly final—but in his retreating steps, it is undeniable that her window of opportunity has slammed shut.

She finds herself grateful that her mind remains closed to Edward; it leaves her free to wonder—about what will happen tomorrow, what will happen to her in a mere matter of weeks.

The goodbyes she will have to make.

Bella falls asleep with her fingertips pressed against her carotid.