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the-most-pathetic-edge-marquis · 11 months

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new fic!!!!

honey, if you stay

based on this request from @nev20: Jacob Black has a daughter [with Bella] and him and the whole wolf pack are overprotective of her and won’t let her go to school because she’s a werewolf so she gets angry and phases into a wolf and runs away but they find her and talk to her. hope you enjoy!

“Sadie?”

Jacob Black calls his daughter’s name, and tries to ignore the panic twisting in his stomach.

Ferns tug his ankles, then fall reluctantly back as he clambers over a gnarled sitka root. His palms come away caked in cool moss—unmistakably torn loose by claws.

At least he knows he’s on the right track.

“Sadie!” he yells again. The sound vanishes almost immediately, sinking into gauzy veils of green. His heart hammers. Sweat itches down his back, pools under the straps of his backpack.

“Keep walking, Jake,” he tells himself. Somewhere above, a bird whistles, high and flutelike. Varied thrush, he thinks automatically—then winces.

He never bothered learning birdcalls when he was younger. Rachel and Beck tried when they were twelve, determined to be able to name every bird around them, and it sort of burned him out on any enthusiasm he might’ve pieced together eventually. But Sadie loves them.

They did a unit in her 5th grade science class, and after it she begged her way into going on Sue’s morning birding walks every weekend, even when it was pouring rain. Four years later, she still likes to eat her breakfast on the porch, well-worn bird guide open next to her. Most days, when he doesn’t have to get to the garage early, Jacob sits with her, watching her name the flashes of colorful feathers and the warbling tunes…

He wonders if Bella’s standing on the porch now. No, wait—that’s a stupid thought.

He’s been out here, following the ragged trail of pawprints, for at least an hour. (Ignoring the fact that if Sadie really doesn’t want to be found, she could be in Canada by now.) Bella’s got the twins to pick up from soccer practice, her latest story for the Forum to finish, her spiral-bound notebooks full of the vampire romance novel she never wants to admit she’s writing. More than enough reasons to go inside. Bella’s hands get cold far too quickly standing outside, even after all these years.

There’s no way she’s still on the porch.

He can’t help picturing it anyways. Standing there just like she had when he’d left, arms crossed painfully tight, staring at the railing Sadie tore off the porch when she phased.

I’ll find her, honey, he’d promised. She’d just swiped a hand across her eyes and muttered It doesn’t help if you get lost too, Jake.

And then he’d promised he wouldn’t, of course he wouldn’t, which…

“I’m not lost,” he says. The thrush warbles above him again. He squints upwards, but can’t find it.

“I’m not,” he insists. “Worst-case scenario I’ll just follow the footprints back!”

This time there’s no response, and it registers that he is, in fact, yelling at a bird. He shakes his head, and turns back to scanning the ground for prints. Not that he really needs to—there’s a trail in his eyeline too, of snapped branches and the shockingly white wood inside them. Worry churns in his stomach.

God, sometimes it feels like all he does these days is worry. Ever since Sadie shifted.

Worry about why it happened in the first place. Which they still don’t know; any scents were long-gone by the time Leah and Jared and Paul made it back to help Sadie through, washed away by weeks of rain. It wasn’t the Cullens, (Bella’d dug her nails into her palms and sat in the car to make a phone call—hadn’t told Jake what was said, but she’d come back with teary eyes and curled up in his side for the rest of the day). A nomad who’d decided to linger just too long? Something else entirely? They didn’t know. The twins were only two years younger, the same age Seth had been…

Worry about how to help. He’d stopped shifting as soon as he could, as soon as the Cullens were gone, almost twenty years ago now. When Sadie had exploded the first time, a blur of snapping jaws and black fur, he’d tried on instinct to shift too, and it had hurt so badly he stopped halfway through, left with nothing but a dislocated shoulder to show for it. And a missing daughter, fifteen, just fifteen—

He’d asked his dad how he’d managed it, watching his child go through something he couldn’t help, couldn’t touch—and he’d just gripped his hand. You do your best, Jacob, he’d said. You just be there.

Worry, worry, worry. Sadie stayed in bed all day and refused to eat anything. Sadie climbed out her window in the middle of the night and brought back a deer with its throat torn out. Sadie punched her little brother for reading over her shoulder and bruised his arm so badly they both started crying. Sadie went cliff-diving by herself without telling anyone. Sadie tried to go play basketball with her cousins and had to leave halfway through to phase, came home in tears. Sadie couldn’t sleep while human anymore, so she made herself a den in the disused garage at her grandfather’s place which would be fine except she didn’t tell anyone.

Much as Jacob had hated the choking responsibility of protecting everyone he’d ever loved from the cold ones, he’d been thinking a lot recently about how much worse it would’ve been to have no purpose at all. No Sam to run him through training and patrols until he was so exhausted he couldn’t even think about shifting once he made it back to human. No pack…

And, of course, today. Summer break was drifting to an end. He and Bella’d talked it over and around in circles—stopped in on Sam and Em and Quil and Embry and Brady and Seth, even called Leah—and they’d all agreed. Sadie wasn’t ready to go back to school, not yet. They’d sat her down on the porch while the twins were out of the house, and they’d tried to explain it gently…

And then half the porch railing and Sadie had both disappeared in a heartbeat.

Really, when Jacob thinks about it, worry might not be a strong enough word.

“Sadie!” he yells again. There’s no answer—except he’s starting to hear waves, a low hum.

Huh. He hadn’t realized they turned toward the coast.

At least it’s not Canada.

He picks up his pace to a jog. “Sadie!”

There are no more snapped branches, just a few crushed ferns. Between them, the pawprints are shallower and closer together—made by a wolf stepping slowly, instead of running. The waves crash louder, louder—

Jacob pushes through a dense cluster of huckleberry, and breaks out onto a clifftop. A few paces ahead, through a veil of gray mist, the silver sea churns.

And just at its edge lies a huge night-black wolf.

Relief is a knife straight between Jacob’s ribs. He swallows, and blinks back the sting of tears. Time to do his best.

“Hey kiddo,” he says, and steps closer.

Sadie doesn’t look at him, but her ears flick back for a moment, before she presses them flat against her skull. It’s just enough acknowledgment that he doesn’t feel bad about lowering himself to the ground next to her.

His knees, of course, protest. The adrenaline is wearing off, the long jog and desperate scrambling over roots catching up. He makes more of a show of that than he needs to.

“I’m telling you,” he groans, (watching her squeeze her eyes closed tighter), “you’re lucky you’ve got young knees. Old bones make it real hard to hike.”

She still doesn’t look, but he hears the quiet huff of air through her nose. He imagines her human, rolling her eyes at him like she does every time he makes one of his terrible jokes. He can practically hear her dragging out the syllables of a response. Come ON, dad—

“Yep!” he says, determinedly even more cheerfully. “It’s sure difficult, being this ancient. Decrepit, even.”

Just like he hoped, she cracks. First she snorts again, even louder, then swings her head off her paws to nudge him in the side. For a second, he considers keeping the joke going, flopping backward like she knocked him off-balance—but where her head presses warm against his ribs, he can feel her shuddering. He stays still.

She wavers…then sags, and lays her head in his lap.

He raises his hands, a cautious breath from touching her. She whines quietly. A lump swells in Jacob’s throat.

“Okay, Sadie-bee.” He lets his hands fall into her fur. It’s warm against his palms, and much longer than it looks. She nuzzles into the touch, so he starts combing through the silk-soft strands. “Thanks for sticking around.”

She snorts again, hot breath gusting up into his face. He grins.

“If you hadn’t, there’s no way these old knees would’ve caught up with you. We were gonna have to send out Aunt Leah.”

He separates out three little strands in her fur, almost without thinking about it. Slowly starts weaving them together.

“Not that you would’ve minded that, I’m sure. She read me the riot act for pulling this shit on you when we called, you know?”

One amber eye pops open. It’s hard for a wolf to look scandalized, but Sadie manages it. Jacob grins. “What? Just don’t tell your mom.”

Sadie huffs. He tugs gently at her fur.

“I am sorry, by the way—not about the swearing.” Sadie rolls her eye. He grins, goes back to braiding. “But it’s hard, when you start shifting. I should’ve remembered. I didn’t even like school and I still tried to take Sam Uley’s head off for pulling me out of it—not that you should get any ideas from that.”

A laugh rumbles, low in Sadie’s throat.

“No, really!” He finishes the thin braid, picks a new spot and starts again. “You’re destroying way less stuff than me, so far. Let’s keep that going.”

She whines, obviously disbelieving.

“You doubting me?” He pauses his braiding to poke her side. “Ask your grandpa. I smashed an entire rowboat. He was so mad he almost ran me over with his chair.”

Which is blatantly untrue—Billy had never gotten angry about anything wolf-related where Jacob could see, just looked grim and told him we’ll figure it out in a tone that strongly implied or else—but it makes Sadie huff another wolf-laugh.

“I am sorry, though,” he continues after a moment of quiet. “We just want you to be safe, but—as Aunt Leah very loudly pointed out to me—there’s a different between helping you do that and controlling you. You have options, little bee.”

Sadie whimpers. It’s small and sad and so, so tired. Jacob swallows the lump in his throat yet again.

“I mean it, sweetheart. I think you know you don’t quite have this thing under control yet, and that sucks. But you’ll get there. And in the meantime?”

He pauses for breath. She nudges him with a paw. He smiles.

“There’s always online school. Your brothers would be crazy jealous, but we’ll just tell ‘em Mom and I trust you to actually do the work. Or we can set up an internship for you—Uncle Quil and I would take it easy on you at the garage. I bet Grandpa C could get you something with the park rangers where they won’t ask too many questions.”

Her tail wags, just a little, against his leg. He finishes another braid, and pauses—steeling himself for the next one.

Sadie’s not stupid, unlike you, Leah had snapped at him over the phone. She knows she’s not ready to go back to school. She’s been worrying about it all summer. At least let it be her decision.

“And…if you think you can do it…Mrs. Uley and Uncle Seth both work at the school. We’ll figure it out.”

Sadie freezes—even the rise and fall of her sides as she breathes stops. Jacob runs a hand down her back, slow and steady. Trying to keep his worry light. To make it so insubstantial that she won’t be able to smell it, even though he knows first-hand how sharp the smell of fear is—

She tears loose from his hands, and pushes upright onto four paws. She towers over him, and a very small part of Jacob can’t help wanting to flinch.

“I brought clothes,” he says instead, “if you want to talk.”

For a moment, she kneads the ground with her paws, like she’s going to run—then nods jerkily. Jacob shrugs his backpack off. She bites onto the top loop of it, and spins towards the trees.

He looks out towards the sea as branches rustle behind him in her wake. On the horizon, mist coalesces into rain, long silver sheets that look almost solid from this distance. The boundary with the gray waves blurs until he can almost believe the ocean reaches all the way to the white-gold circle of the sun.

“Dad?”

Sadie’s voice wobbles, and Jacob scrambles to his feet and spins around so fast the world tilts a little.

His daughter stands just past the huckleberry bush, still half in the shadow of the soaring trees, staring at the ground. The braids still tangled in her brown hair keep it from spilling down over her face, but her fingers run nervously over them, and he can tell she’s itching to pull them out and hide.

(Why’d she get all my bad habits? Bella had griped after the kindergarten parent-teacher conference when someone first proclaimed Sadie painfully shy. Because I don’t have any, obviously, he’d replied, and she swatted his shoulder.)

Jacob holds out his arms. Sadie crosses the rocks in a second and hurls herself into him. She’s almost as tall as him these days, head resting easily on his shoulder, and she clings tight enough to bruise.

“I’m so sorry,” she gasps, “Dad, I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry—”

“None of that,” he murmurs. She tries to laugh, but it cracks into a sob. He hugs her back, as tight as he can. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, Sadie. Nothing at all.”

By the time they make it back to the house, it’s pouring rain.

(Jacob somehow only thought to pack one raincoat. Sadie laughed, when he rummaged through the backpack and groaned, then squealed in protest when he dropped the hood over her face—Dad, I don’t even get cold anymore! come ON—but he strode away so quickly that by the time she caught up, jacket rearranged and fully on, she was just smiling.)

He’s soaked through, only not shivering through sheer force of will. But when Sadie freezes at the edge of the yard, he stops right beside her.

The rain whispers down around them, sighs through pine needles, rattles and clangs off the gutters—and fabric crackles as she crosses her arms.

Jacob waits, hands in his pockets and eyes on the soft yellow flicker of the porchlight. There’s an ache in his chest, a lump in his throat. Sadie looks so much like her mom out of the corner of his eye, biting her lip and rocking onto her heels. He wants to wrap an arm around her shoulders, pull her close and hug the worry out of her, tell her it’s going to be okay—

But he waits for her to find her words.

“What’d you tell the juniors?” she asks.

Jacob sighs, long and drawn-out like he knows she’s expecting—Ephraim’s the only one of the twins who’s technically a junior, but ever since Sadie figured out that Wren’s named after Grandma Renee, she calls them the juniors whenever she needs a plural. It drives Wren crazy.

Sadie sticks out her tongue, and Jacob knows he’s made his point.

“I don’t know,” he says, “They were still at soccer when I left.”

Her smile twists a little. He offers an arm—she leans in, nestles her head on his shoulder. She’s wolf-warm, heat radiating through the jacket down to his bones, and he lets himself feel the grief and the bitter nostalgia of it.

“I’m sure your mom explained,” he says. “And we both know they think this is the coolest thing that’s ever happened, come on.”

“And Mom’s not mad?” Her voice cracks on that one, just a little. He can feel her stiffen as it happens, gritting her teeth and trying to swallow it back.

He rubs her shoulder. “Why would she be?”

“Cause I—ran away again. Freaked her out. I don’t know.” She’s still stiff, one quiet tremor running down her spine. But she hasn’t pulled away either. Jacob squeezes a little tighter.

“You gotta give her more credit, kiddo. She dated a vampire once, it takes a lot to freak her out.”

“Da-ad,” Sadie whines, and he can’t help his laugh. She ducks away to glare at him—but there’s no real heat behind it. “Do you know how many times I’ve heard about that since I phased?”

“It’s because it explains literally everything about your mom,” Jacob says, “and I have fifteen years worth of jokes I couldn’t tell saved up.”

She rolls her eyes. He reaches over, pokes her gently in the ribs. “Really, little bee, nobody’s mad. We just want to help.”

She rocks away from his touch, and he lets her. Watches her look toward the porch—the yellow light barely reaches here into the shadow of the trees, but her dark eyes catch just enough of it that he can see the tears glossing their edges. She twists the zipper of the jacket between her fingers.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay, let’s go.”

As they get closer to the porch, noise swells out from the house—a low murmur of voices, and snatches of humming music. Sadie pauses in the mud, gripping the broken railing. Jacob can see her knuckles straining under the skin, and a fine, furious shiver running through her.

He lays a hand next to hers. “I bet Aunt Leah’ll do some carpentry with you this weekend.”

“She’s coming up?”

Jacob nudges her with his shoulder. “We called her, and she’s mad at me. You think she’d miss out on that opportunity?”

“And you all thought I was running away to Canada,” Sadie mutters. Jacob can’t quite parse the tone of it—wry and bitter and maybe teasing—but she vaults onto the porch fast enough to jar him out of it, and turns back to stick out her tongue. “Your old knees are gonna have to use the stairs, huh?”

In a whirl, she’s gone—pushing open the door and flooding the rainy evening with yellow light and buzzing guitar and the awful squeak of hinges that he’s been meaning to fix for months.

It clicks shut, and Jacob’s standing alone in the rain, gaping—until he laughs.

When he makes it inside, Bella’s waiting with a towel in her hands and a smile on her lips. Light spills from the kitchen, around the corner of the little hallway that they turned into a mudroom—he can see Sam’s back by the fridge, the unmistakable streaks of gray hair that he had before he even stopped shifting.

“Wolf spaghetti night,” Bella tells him, holding out the towel, “for emotional support. Emily commandeered the kitchen to make dessert.”

“Genius,” Jacob says. He bends down to dart a kiss onto her lips, and she settles the towel on his shoulders, brushing back his long hair. “What’d you tell the kiddos?”

“You know, that’s the first thing Sadie asked too,” Bella grins. He rolls his eyes, and straightens up to start actually drying off. “Just that Sadie needed some alone time and went for a run. I got a solemn promise from Junior not to bother her about it, but you know Wren.”

“Makes no promises ever,” Jacob agrees.

“Mmm-hmm.” Bella leans into his chest, and wrinkles her nose. “You really got soaked, huh?”

Jacob grins, and ducks down to press a kiss to the bridge of her nose, right in the middle of the scrunched-up freckles. (Twenty years, and he still gets giddy sometimes about the fact that he can do that, when she pulls one of those faces that he spent so long thinking were the cutest thing he’d ever seen.)

“I only packed one raincoat.”

“Of course you did.” Bella loops her hands around his waist. “You’re lucky you’re so warm, or I’d be yelling at you for dripping on me.”

“Sure, sure,” Jacob says, and wraps an arm around her. “Remember when you kissed me in the literal ocean? Right after we jumped off a cliff?”

“I had an adrenaline rush,” Bella says primly.

“And we got smacked in the face by a wave, but you wanted to kiss me again instead of getting out of the water?”

“Adrenaline rush,” she repeats, and pops onto her tiptoes. Jacob obliges, bending so she can kiss him again. She’s soft and warm as always, her fingers tangling in the back of his shirt, and he can feel the smile still quirking the corners of her lips—

“UNO!!!” Quil bellows from the living room. They break apart, laughing. Bella laces her hand through Jacob’s.

“We should go join the party,” she says.

“Someone’s gotta keep Quil from winning Uno too many times,” he agrees, and she laughs—quietly, and still a little breathless. He grins. Hand in hand, they head into the noise.

The rest of the night is as close to perfect as they’ve had for a long time, and the sharp-toothed worry in Jacob’s chest settles almost completely by the end of it.

There’s spaghetti—his dad’s secret recipe, which he used to laugh about, but he knows by now that nobody else’s tastes quite the same—and two berry cobblers that Emily slides onto the counter still steaming. Jacob beats Quil once at Uno, then spends the rest of the evening getting destroyed by Junior at almost every game they own. In between, Seth tells stories about this year’s class of kindergartners to uproarious laughter. Jared calls in from his ranch down in east Washington—and then even Paul, from a pay phone somewhere in Colorado, where he’s been wandering around eating deer for the past couple years. Embry and Bella gossip quietly on the couch about their respective newspaper jobs. Wren pokes Quil and Emily into showing off their latest tattoos, then spends the rest of the evening on Sam’s heels, as he wanders around the house gathering dishes—she decided she wants to be an EMT a couple months ago, and has been bothering him about taking her on a ride-along ever since. (Jacob’s pretty sure he’ll crack soon, but for now Wren’s only succeeding at getting handed bowls to dry and put away, so neither he nor Bella bother calling her off.)

And Sadie spends the entire night glued to Leah’s side.

She looks years younger, curled deep in the couch cushions with her hair loose past her waist and her eyes half-lidded with sleep. There’s a mug of hot chocolate cradled in both their hands, and a blanket swaddled tight around Sadie’s shoulders. Leah tilts her head in easily for Sadie to whisper to her every so often, but mostly they just sit together and watch the chaos unfold.

It’s enough for memories to catch and tug at the corners of Jacob’s heart, sweet and soft as the half-smile on his daughter’s lips. A toddler in bright purple overalls, stumbling adoringly in Leah’s wake at the first wolfpack reunion, with wide eyes and a gap-toothed smile…a baby girl, cradled in Jacob’s arms in the hospital room, eyes scrunched shut and one fragile hand curled around his finger, the flutter of a tiny heartbeat against his palms and his own heart in his throat…

A piece of blanket fuzz bounces off his nose. Jacob blinks—realizes he’s staring, and Leah’s staring back with eyebrows raised, one hand still poised from the throw. He exaggerates a frown, and she just grins.

For a second, he contemplates revenge, (the twins and Seth appear to have decided that he was too zoned out to keep playing Monopoly, and have been skipping him accordingly, but he could probably still grab a house for a projectile), but Sadie’s actually asleep now, head tucked on Leah’s shoulder, and he doesn’t want to risk waking her.

Instead, he heaves to his feet, and wanders over to flop down beside them. His knees pop, and Leah—who’s phasing again, and still unfairly early in her thirties—grins even sharper.

“Your kid likes me better than you,” she says.

“Sure, sure.” It’s an old joke. Jacob just leans back, closing his eyes. “Thank you.”

For a long moment, there’s no reply. He listens to the warm chatter filling his house—slowed down, now that Sam and Emily have left to drive his dad back to his own place, and Quil’s switched to sitting with Embry, the two of them whispering just too quietly for him to make out words. From the kitchen, he can hear Bella humming as she cleans up the last of the mess—

“She deserves it all,” Leah says, and her voice is a little hoarse. “She really does.”

They’ve made it far enough from their teenage years—decades of apologies and arguments, shared hunts and careful, quiet trust—that Jacob knows exactly what’s behind those words, and what isn’t. What Leah’s left behind. Enough to be here, with her little brother’s voice echoing off walls the same way Harry’s used to, with a plate of Emily’s baking half-eaten by her feet—

With a girl sleeping on her shoulder whose life they've all worked to make softer than their own.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Yeah, she does.”

#is this original content?#it is!#i had a lot of fun with this request actually #jacob black is a good dad #and bella's a good mom #and leah is a kickass lesbian aunt #also quil and embry are married. btw. if you even care #let's see...anything else...#oh. sadie's a nickname for sarah. OBVIOUSLY #i stole jacob and bella having a kid named ephraim and called junior from musingsofvenus i'm pretty sure #wren's because i do actually like the idea of bella naming a kid after renee #especially if all the rest of them are named after jacob's family #but i think she'd put a little twist on it!#idk #anyways #i hope you all enjoy reading this #as much as i enjoyed writing it #OH WAIT ALSO #sam with gray hair my new favorite headcanon #my favorite disaster boy tbh #the version of sam uley in my head is so depressed and anxious and trying so hard #i love him your honor

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