A/N: AU New Moon. The situation in Volterra went a bit differently, and Jacob's out to set it right. Rated T with no warnings, only the typical angst with varying cuteness. Reviews are treasured!

Three Cities

"Name three cities off the top of your head."

Bella does the opposite, of course, and gives his question a contemplative thought, brows knitted downwards, and decides, "Lake Tahoe, Houston, and Watertown." Later she'll link those towns to states – "California, Texas, and Tennessee. You didn't know that?" – as Jacob maps out a red line connecting the three cities, dot to dot. It makes a V shape, almost.

With a fingertip, Jacob traces their route, silent until "I'll need twenty-four hours." He nods, reiterating, "Twenty-four hours," as if yes, that will be enough time. As he leaves, he kisses Bella's forehead when her own head gives a bob to say Okay, mute, tens of millions of doubts in his mind she'll back out in the hours he'll need to prepare.

Give us two weeks, he writes to Billy and Charlie in the room of his home. Of his twenty-four hours, it takes him three to come up with that. The other twenty-one are spent selling two motorcycles, one muffler, two cylinders, and five piston rings for money. His heart won't let him touch the cash he's saved from fixing cars for his father's medical everything.

Although, there is one thing of his Jacob takes on his way out, thinking Billy won't miss it, and leaves a few hundred dollars bills with the note on the kitchen table.

Nearly seven grand is the end total of his traveling from junkyards to auto shops, and he uses the first fifty to buy one of those cheap cell phones from a store, just in case, and stashes it in the pocket of his duffel bag.

It's three a.m. when he pulls into the Swan driveway with less than he had before. The rabbit he drives has been checked twice, his tools stowed in the trunk, not risking a breakdown he can't fix.

Bella comes out the front door as Jacob's fingers of one hand tap along the steering wheel, the other fisting in his hair. He can tell she hasn't slept – he thinks it'd be impossible after what she's witnessed – and as she tosses her bag into the back, sits straight in her seat, she begins to have one of those weird flashbacks where her breath comes uneven, soon panted as if she can't breathe, and her soft brown eyes now weakened flicker back and forth, all around, empty.

Jacob takes her hand, feels her squeeze as if something painful is happening inside her, and he holds her palm to his heart, hoping the beat (even if irregular) will help steady the attack and center her.

Soon she calms, and the hair at her neck and forehead sticks to her wet skin.

He laces their fingers. "Better?"

She nods a little and keeps hold of his hand during their drive south through Washington.

Twenty hours later, their first stop is Cheyenne, Wyoming. The hotel room they get is decent, and at opposite ends of one bed they fall to their backs and sleep, dead from exhaustion, shoes still on. When Jacob wakes some immeasurable amount of time later, as his hand flexes around Bella's, somehow ending up holding it through sleep, he feels the reason of why they are here settle like a cement brick on his chest. Maybe it didn't seem real before, but it hits him and he knows it is.

Edward is dead.

Well, dead, as he's always been, but gone, ceasing to exist. Jacob thinks it's not much different than the time before when he disappeared from Bella's life. Out of sight, out of mind, you know? If only she hadn't flown across half the world just to see him torn apart, maybe her reactions would have been the same to the news. He knew how to handle that girl nursing a hole, but now his Bells is just…messed up. She'll have flashbacks of that day more than she won't, puke more often than that, and appear so shaken up some days he's sure his Bells may have been torn apart, too.

Not even a week passed after her return from Volterra and Jacob was ready to scream, but settled with, Remember what you told me? About running away? Let's go. Let's get the hell out of here. He took her face in hands, and she agreed easily enough, as desperate as him to get away. If Jacob was able to extract Bella from the place haunted with Edward's memories, he'll now have to work on cutting out Edward from his Bells.

During the repetitive lull of his thoughts, Bella wakes, jerks upright, calms, and removes herself from bed, from his hand, silent in her movements. Jake watches her go, craning his neck as she disappears into the bathroom, leaving a line of light at the bottom space of the door.

He listens carefully. Those broken patches of breath sound some minutes later. His ears catch it, and he's at the bathroom door in five steps. "Bella?" He tries for the handle but it's locked, waits for any reply but there's nothing. "Bells, please just open the door, honey," he says tiredly, thinking he must've only been asleep for a few hours, because he can barely support the dead weight of his body on his feet, and leans into the doorframe for support.

When the sound escalates, his hand on the knob gives a flick of the wrist to snap the lock and open the door. The sharp light of the room hurts his eyes. He finds Bella sitting on the closed toilet seat, knees to her chest, forehead resting between them. Jacob squats down in front of her and places his hands on her knees, pushing them down.

His hands cup her cheeks to keep her wide eyes, glossed with tears, on his. "Deep breaths, honey."

"I-I…" she chokes.

With one of his hands, he places her palm over his heart, because that worked last time.

It does again, and she's breathing normally, only dripping tears down her cheeks. "It smells…it smells sweet…and…and burning."

Jacob gets what she's referring to. He puked and dry heaved for a good hour after killing the leech with the dreads, the scent of burning the damn thing stuck in his lungs and memory.

"C'mere." Jacob picks her up, moves them from the bathroom and back to the bed. He leaves her sitting on the end as he digs through his duffel to pull out a plastic medicine bottle. Back at her side, he hands her something white. "Take this." It's a pill split in two, one Billy sometimes takes at night if his body is in pain on rare occasion and can't sleep. He hands one half to Bella – half because she's so little and it's so strong – and sits her in his lap as if to say Trust me.

Later they lay on their sides in bed, facing each other. Jacob's fingers trace the side of her cheek. "Better?"

Bella's head nods a little groggily, half-asleep.

The first of the three cities they arrive at is Houston. It's huge, overpopulated, and they find themselves at the local rodeo.

It's the main event in the city, Bella thinks, keeping tight into Jacob's side as they pass through the overwhelming crowds of bodies dressed in hats and boots to her sneakers and flannel.

There's a fair, too, attached to it. A few rides freeing people's screams, a carousel, and unlimited games to can play to win prizes like goldfish, stuffed animals, and enlarged picture frames of old bands or half naked girls.

Jacob makes a joke about that, slaps down six dollars, receives six darts, and manages to pop all six balloons hung on a wall five feet away to win the grand prize of the half naked girl. He trades it out for a stuffed monkey whose hands are Velcro and hangs around his neck all night.

The rodeo itself is sort of cheesy. Bella's nails sometimes dig into Jacob's arm when a man is thrown from one of the bulls, or she'll smile and duck her head into Jacob's side as the rodeo clown makes some sort of joke. It's not so bad, he thinks. They eat peanuts and go to the livestock center afterwards to pet the cows and horses.

As the night is ending, they sit at a table in the middle of the fair, surrounded by booths of food. While eating through a plate of funnel cake, Jacob asks, "Why Houston?"

"You told me to pick three cities off the top of my head." She shrugs, picking at the cotton candy in her hands, staining her lips pink. "Houston was it."

They ride the carousel, and at the sight of Jacob on one of the small plastic horses, Bella's head is thrown back as she laughs.

A few more games are played to pass time. Jacob pays for her, and each time she loses only to win the losing prize of some small stuffed animal fitting in the palm of her hand. For the grand prize of shooting four small basketballs into a hoop, Jacob wins Bella a stuffed animal half her size.

It's a stuffed wolf, she realizes, taking it in her arms.

She rolls her eyes. Jacob doesn't need to make the comment of To remind you of me.

The car ride back to the hotel is silent, all until Jacob reaches out from the wheel to touch Bella's cheek, where it's drawn back from smiling. "Better?"

She doesn't give a reply but a flutter of her eyelashes at his touch, and instead points out, observing the stuffed animal in her lap, "The wolf looks nothing like you. You're cuter."

Watertown is old and old-fashioned, green and humid, just as small as Forks, and of the only three places to stay in town, they choose the bed and breakfast seated in the middle of seventy acres of land because Bella calls it pretty.

The ten hour drive to get here has exhausted them, so they sleep the remainder of the day away once settled in. The TV is on for a distraction and the curtains pulled together for a created darkness. Jacob is seated on the bed, back against the wood of the old headboard with Bella just slightly snuggled into his chest but barely, and he repeats the question of "Why Watertown?" while running his fingers through her hair.

He's sort of figured by now there's a reason for her choices.

"Renée was born here," she replies on instant, picking at his shirt. "I came here as a child but don't remember it much."

Jacob makes a hummed noise and kisses her head goodnight. She's beginning to sleep easier.

In the early morning, Jacob wakes to Bella's ear over his chest, hands fisted, and her erratic breathing slowing to the pace of his heartbeat. She leaves a stain of wetness behind as she goes to shower, not allowing for him to see her face as she pretends to be okay. He listens to her cry as he folds his socks and clothes on the bed, and catches her come from the bathroom almost an hour later wrapped in a towel and dripping in water.

She flushes a soft pink under the intake of his eyes as she retrieves her bag and returns behind the closed door.

Somehow, he managed to forget throughout their trip just how much he wants her, knowing that's not what she needs in hand with how badly he loves her and wants to help her. But now, as his eyes shut and hands brace on the bed, Jacob fights the urge to go after her.

When they eat breakfast, the old woman who owns the place talks the air out of Jacob and Bella, telling them in a cracked voice, "You know, when I was your age, I ran away from home, too. Came to this very bed and breakfast and worked as a sous-chef. The family who owned this place sent me to culinary school, paid for it all. I met my husband of sixty years here at nineteen years old." She nods, her head of gray hair bobbing. "He passed away a year ago."

Bella's face, already collapsed, falls more. Jacob frowns because of it, gives her knee a squeeze.

"Oh, no sad looks you two," the woman scolds with a smile, topping off their glasses of orange juice. "We lived a long and good life, did everything we wanted and some things we didn't want," she chuckles, causing Bella's expression to change, and hands them apples and carrots. "Go on out and feed the horses. They're friendly."

It's here Jacob thinks Bella is getting better. She smiles while letting the horses eat from her hand.

"How are you paying for this?" Bella wonders on the second night, head on his chest.

His hand stills at her back, where it traces calming patterns. "I," he begins, his mouth going dry. "I sold some things I didn't need, honey."

Her lips are on his cheek a moment later.

On their last night in Watertown, Bells hurts herself. She follows Jacob out far to where a gate fences off the many acres of property. He disappears into the woods to phase, needing a release, as Bella calls after him, "Don't go too far, Jake! Please!"

He does, but only to undress. She panics when he's gone from her sight and thinks the only solution is to go after him. She tumbles over a rock, skids her knee on the edge, and takes most of her skin off with it.

Jacob carries her back to the house, shirt and shoe-less, as Bella fights tears at his neck. He sits her on the end of their bed, tracks down some bandages and gauze and peroxide, and fixes the injury right up. As he secures the last piece of tape to keep the gauze in place, his hand ghosts down her leg and his lips kiss the skin above the bandage, near her thigh. He closes his eyes, touches his cheek to her, just breathing her in, and pulls away to her wide eyes.

His voice becomes low and scratched over. "Better?"

"Do that again."

To her scared whisper, he kisses her knee through the bandage, nose grazing her skin.

"Jake…"

Lake Tahoe the most beautiful thing Bella has ever seen. She's in awe, staring out her window, childlike, as Jacob drives the road overlooking the lake and mountain plains.

"Why Tahoe?"

"It's the second deepest lake in America."

Jacob chuckles, drives a two hour lap around the lake, and stops in some town called Heavenly, right on the shore and placed at the border between Nevada and California. Their crash supply is dwindling. Jacob counts out enough money for a hotel room, food, and gas for the next night and hopes the remainder will get them home.

A small part of him thinks it wouldn't be so bad to stay stuck out here.

From the balcony of their hotel room, Bella overlooks the lake as the day ends, heavy wind blowing her hair all around as Jacob watches. He approaches her from behind, chases the goose-bumps away from her arm by running his hand along it.

Her eyes search in the distance.

"I don't have anything to remember him by," she shares quietly, as if trying to come to terms with it. "No pictures, no anything."

Jacob leans his hip against the railing, facing her. He's hesitant to say, "Maybe that's a good thing," but does anyway.

Bella tenses, closes her eyes, and admits, "Maybe."

When she manages to hold herself together, so unlike the girl paralyzed under flashbacks just two weeks ago, Jake takes her into his arms, and she lets out a shaky breath but steps as close as she can into him.

"Better?"

"Yeah. Yeah…I think I am."

FIN