you can't be undone, darling.

i assume the court is in my favor and i will present no further evidence at this time. 

He feels a twinge of relief when her tears start to slow. He knows he shouldn’t be–she has every right to mourn. She’s being faced with everything she lost all over again, even if she’s getting something back in the same breath. It’s not the same, none of it is. Not even them. That alone is enough to bring him close to tears, but he swallows them down as best he can. His eyes and his throat still burn a little but it’s not as bad as it could be. He’s so used to crying alone it’s almost second nature to hide it. He’s let Izzy see it enough to know it’s ok to do it herself, but not enough to know he’s not any better than she is. Not that she doesn’t know anyway, but he tried, at least.

He smiles just a little and drops a kiss against the top of her head. “Yeah well,” he muses. “None of those people are your best friend in the whole fucking world, now are they?” He doesn’t mean to make light of it, but sometimes it’s the only way he knows how to deal. He just can’t imagine doing anything else, not when it’s what she needed him to do. Not when it’s what Izzy needed too. “I’d do it again if I had to,” he adds quietly. “I’d do it a thousand times. It’s worth it to me, Bells. I wish it had been different. I really do. But nothing in me can hate the years I had with her, even if I wasn’t really….” He swallows back the words. Though he knew he’s not her father, not really, he still can’t say it aloud. “I wish she’d had you. Both of you. But I’d do it again. I just need you to know that.”

He says best friend in the present tense and she has to bite her tongue to keep from questioning that. It would go beyond unfair because it wasn’t as if they’d just fallen out of touch. This was out of their control and it was no fault of their own that they were strangers now. And...wasn’t this itself a sign that they weren’t entirely hopeless? That some bit of what they meant to each other before still held? 

He wishes his feeble words were good enough, or his arms or even his life, but that’s just it. He’s never been enough and he knows that. Part of him is angry at Edward for having the audacity to die, for daring to leave her and leave their daughter and leave him, the one they hadn’t wanted, left to try to pick up the pieces of the mess he’d made. He’s glad she at least can’t read his mind to know he feels that way. Nothing sucks worse than seeing Bella or his baby cry.

He sits down more properly on the floor and pulls her into his lap like he’s done for her child a thousand times and strokes her hair just like he used to. He can feel his own grief bubbling up, but he swallows it as hard as he can. There will be time for all of that later. “You don’t have to repay me,” he insists softly. “Not for any of it. Not ever.” She doesn’t owe him anything. Sometimes he feels like he owes her. The way it happened is horrific, but he got to raise the most beautiful child he can ever imagine exists. He never wanted children, not ever, but he can’t imagine life when he isn’t her parent. Or parent adjacent. He tries not to let it sting, even if he knows Izzy feels the same way he does. It won’t matter now she’s back here, surely. But he won’t think of that now either. “I kept my promise. That’s all.”

Shouldn’t she though? She asked far too much of him knowing he would keep that promise. And god had he kept it. He’d raised that little girl, been there for everything she should have been there for. Kept her together through loss, through tragedy, all while carrying his own. There was a reason she’d trusted Jake to do this. She can’t regret it, not really, but she can hate that she asked him to give up everything.

Whatever he’s expecting her reaction to be, it’s not that. He hurriedly sets the books down on the couch and drops down next to her. He has no idea what to do, so he just does the only thing that feels right. He pulls her into his arms and he’s startled by the cold of her–there had never really been time to get used to it–but he only tightens his grip because of it. He doesn’t want her to be a stranger, he doesn’t want her to be unfamiliar. 

Whatever else he’s ever felt for her, he’s always been her best friend, first and foremost, and he desperately wants to be that again.

“I’m sorry, Bella–I didn’t…. I wasn’t thinking. I’m so sorry.” It’s all he can think to say. He can’t give her back the years she lost or the love she lost or any of it. It’s not his fault they chose him to take their baby and run. It’s not his fault he survived when Edward didn’t, and when so many others didn’t, but he’s not really squared with it any more than she clearly has. He pulls her to him so she’s nearly in his lap. She feels so small in his arms, so fragile despite how indestructible she is. Or nearly. “I thought–it was so stupid, I’m sorry.” 

She wants to tell him not to be sorry, that it was a good thing and that she wants to look through them. But all she can do is cry. Sobs threatening to rip her small frame apart. It had been a long time since she’d let herself cry. Because she always knew that when she started it would be so hard to stop...or really that she simply wouldn’t and she would find a way to end herself. To be fully fucking done. But now...now she had reasons to live and apparently that meant she could cry all over this poor man who probably had better things to do.

Jake keeps trying to pretend that she’s not a stranger, but isn’t she? Aren’t they both? He’s not the same scared wolf-boy who ran away with a child on his back, fleeing a battle to save their lives. He’s not the same boy she brought fucked up motorcycles to with a desperate plea to fix them so she might feel something. He’s not the boy who danced with her at her wedding. He’s not really a boy at all. And she’s not any of the versions of herself that he can read just by looking. She’s not the girl he fell in love with, or at least this isn’t a facet of her that he knows. It pains him to admit it.

He sets the bottle down too fast and it almost chips the coffee table. He gets to his feet. “Wait–” He has nothing to offer. She has no need of his help carrying anything, and hell, maybe she’s trying not to be alone with him. Could he really blame her? It’s been years–an entire lifetime for her daughter. Their daughter, really. He won’t say he thinks of her as his too, not to Bella, but he’s the one who raised her. It’s hard not to consider her his own.

“I….” He flounders, looking for an excuse. “I have something for you,” he finally says. “I…” He’s glad that box is still down here too. He sees it on the table with a few of his others–his and Izzy’s–and he goes to it, rooting around til he finds the albums. He had meant to do this later, but it’ll have to do now. There are six of them, one for every year they’d been gone. “I made these…every year on her birthday. She grew so fast, I just…” He crosses the room and offers them to her, though he can’t quite look her in the eyes. “I just thought…in case we ever made it back here…you’d want to see it. What she was like in the time you missed.”

She doesn’t want to wait but she does. Stills herself and waits even though she just wants to hide away again. Let herself sink back into her pain in private. Whatever she was expecting though, it wasn’t albums. The years put neatly into these books. Years she missed. Years she would never get back despite the eternity that looms heavily before them. Bella stares at them without taking them, the box in her hands is a convenient excuse. 

Or it was until it drops between them with a clatter that doesn’t even make her flinch. “Oh...” Still she doesn’t take them. She’s afraid she’s break them if she does, the pain that’s ripping through her now seems uncontrolled. Like a wildfire. And she can’t let those books turn to ash just because she’s not ready to see them yet.