A/N: This might be edited later.
Warning: Minor character death. Some angst.
Okay, so this was case related. Being notified of a new case wasn't abnormal. What was abnormal was having a cop show up at his door to notify him of said case. Usually, they'd just call and Edward and his team would show up to the crime scene.
"Bring the baby." Black says and he has this look on his face that Edward decides he doesn't like. Despite the rough exterior that he seemed to don when he put on the uniform, Edward can still sense the underlying sympathy. His eyes tell more than they should. Whatever this is, it's not good.
Edward's heart drops. He hasn't felt that sensation in years and it' so jarring, for a second, he forgets to move. He glances down at her, before watching the officer climb into his car.
"What was that about?" Emmett says, crowding up behind him to get a look at Black shutting his car door.
"I don't know, but it sounds bad." He mumbles, turning unsteadily back towards his brothers, "I have to get her car seat."
Edward takes a step forward and immediately has to put a hand against a wall to steady himself.
"Woah, you're not driving anywhere," Jasper says, grabbing at the car seat in order to emphasize his point, "Emmett's driving."
Edward climbs into the backseat of Emmett's jeep, sighing as he secures the seat belt around the car seat. They are basically escorted to the police station by the officer before they're ushered inside where everyone seems to be running wild. The calm buzz usually fills the place sounds stilted and chaotic to his ears as uniformed officers flit around the station. He can basically feel the tension as they rush around the building. Some of the officers are answering, what he presumes to be, tip lines. The others are typing furiously at their keyboards. There is a small section, Edward knows, that harbors Black's team.
As soon as they're out of the immediate chaos, Black begins briefing them.
"We found a body. A dead woman in in her late twenties, long black hair, indigenous, who gave birth recently." Hey says pointedly before glancing down at the car seat.
Oh.
They think they've found her mom.
Edward's not one to have a lot of hope. He's not exactly had a life that lends itself to being optimistic. He was cynical through and through despite the odd misstep. So, he's not sure why it never occurred to him that they might not find her parents alive. It had been such a short amount of time that, honestly, he couldn't blame himself for not entertaining the thought. He'd assumed the roughest part would be finding a new home for all of the crap he'd accumulated in a record breaking two days. So, maybe the lack of preparation is why he feels a little woozy.
They all quietly follow Black into the attached lab where the body was clearly being kept. Emmett, Jasper and Edward march inside, eyes on the black body bag laid across the table.
Edward's seen plenty of dead bodies in the time he's been on this earth. He's seen the human body be twisted in the most disturbing and haunting ways imaginable. Then, he'd watched as they were discarded like trash. Though, this was a bit different. He wasn't usually standing next to or holding a family member when the body came rolling into the lab. Somehow, this doesn't feel as impersonal. It was no longer a stranger who encountered an unfortunate set of circumstances. He finds himself lagging behind as Emmett and Jasper circle around the autopsy table. Jasper's hand reaches for the zipper and slowly tugs until the black fabric reveals a face.
She looks like she's peacefully sleeping, like they usually do. She has long hair and bangs that cover her forehead. She has a scar that starts from her right eye and runs all the way down to her chin. It seems to be an old wound, completely healed.
Jasper continues unzipping the bag until they could see her full body laid out before them. She's wearing a plaid shirt and jean shorts. Her lower half is covered in dirt, mud caked in between her toes and covering the souls of her feet. Once the bag is fully open, Jasper glances over at Edward before addressing Officer Black who is still standing in the doorway.
"We'll test their DNA, see if it's a match."
Edward wishes he hadn't contacted the university so soon. He wished he could just scoop the baby up and have her napping on his desk while he taught his class. Instead, he was sitting here holding her while Jasper swabbed her mouth and Emmett took samples from, what they presumed to be, her mother.
"Hey, we can do this," Jasper says in a hushed tone as if he's talking to a scared child, "I'm sure Black wouldn't mind you taking her somewhere else while we run tests."
It feels ridiculous.
He doesn't immediately move to leave.
This somehow prompts Jasper dropping whatever he's holding onto the table to turn to Edward and he can already hear the lecture. Emmett tries to stop it by bumping Jasper on the shoulder, but Jasper's already on his soap box.
"I've seen you get attached to a girl you knew for all of a day," Oh, lovely, "It's okay if you need a minute."
Edward goes to sit in the break room. He'd prefer to ask Emmett for a ride home, but this is as far away as he would allow himself to wander. He was just as curious about the results as anyone else, but besides that, he'd overheard Stanley whispering about them having found a relative. If that was her mother lying on that table, there was apparently a family member who could be taking her home. So, he just sat there trying not to break his coffee mug as he pretended to be busy.
"Aw, look who's here!" He hears a female voice squeak.
Edward looks up to see Jessica sauntering in. She doesn't even bother with pretending to get coffee as she places her mug next to the coffee machine and makes a b-line for the car seat. She peers in to see the baby sleepily staring at Edward.
He watches as Stanley babbles nonsensical baby talk and as the baby yawns and blinks before slowly slipping her eyes closed. The baby eventually falls asleep, unaware of what was going on around her. With the distraction gone, Stanley turns to Edward.
"Still no word from social services." She tries to look sad, but if the past minute of baby talk was anything to go by, she really didn't seem to be bothered by it that much.
Edward stares over at the crib, at her sleeping face and all he can see is the woman's face staring back at him.
"Hey, you alright?" He hears Stanley's muffled voice ask him.
He's about to respond when the door of the break room flies open and Officer Newton pokes his head in.
"We've got another body!"
Edward feels exhausted. It's yet another foreign feeling that he's getting to experience for the first time in over a century. Everything seemed to flow by so easily before, now he's seated in the passenger's seat of a cop car with a baby who's in desperate need of changing, watching Black and his team scout the area for evidence. Emmett and Jasper had shown up to collect the second body. Honestly, Edward would've loved to have joined them, but once again, he wasn't too keen on placing her into a truck with a dead body currently residing in it. So, he sits in the passenger's seat, trying to be patient as Black gives his team instructions.
Eventually, the officer slides back into the driver seat, expression already apologetic as he hears the quiet whines coming from the back seat.
"Sorry, this case is just..." He starts, but immediately stops when he sees the expression on Edward's face.
He's touted back to the station without more words being shared. He stalks back into the lab almost collapses into his seat. He thinks he's had enough excitement for one day, but of course, the day isn't done with him. Jasper's doing that thing again where he tries to handle Edward carefully. He stalks up to him slowly and attempts to make himself a bit smaller in the process as he bends down to speak to Edward.
"We had to send the tests off and put a rush on them. They should be back tomorrow."
So, they still don't have answers.
Emmett offers to take him home.
Due to isolation, a lot of beings like Edward, Emmett, and Jasper, don't tend to feel much for humans. If anything, most see them more like animals that they slaughter when the cupboard is bare. Edward doesn't know if he's ever been strong enough to resist them. In fact, his inability to resist them has gotten him into some deep shit throughout the years. From the Volturi threatening to murder him personally, to accidentally making such an impact that it results in their demise. Every time he finds himself in contact with them for more than a few seconds a day, disaster seems to strike.
She would've been better off with someone else, anyone else, but here they are staring at one another as she fights sleep with everything she has.
They're sitting in the dim lighting of his living room, TV running quietly as background noise, fireplace crackling in the corner because it's starting to get colder as the sunsets. She'll be asleep soon and he'll have to actually sit here for the next eight hours and think about the shitty day they've had. No distractions of cooking dinner, preparing lesson plans for the next day, maybe even falling into bed with someone willing to entertain him. Instead, he's sitting here brooding, thinking maybe this is somehow his fault.
Maybe he'd somehow brought this misfortune to her. Maybe if he'd insisted that they keep her at the station, she'd be going home.
He keeps trying to remind himself that the results aren't back. He doesn't know for sure that this baby even belongs to the woman. Though, deep in his gut, he knows.
Edward's startled out of his "meditation" by the sound of his phone ringing. He picks it up quickly, so as not to disturb the sleeping child who has taken up residence on his chest since she'd woken up at three in the morning.
"Yo, you might want to get up here." Emmett's voice booms through the phone, and he can feel the sense of urgency in his tone.
He moves quite slowly despite himself, stretching carefully as the baby snuggles closer to his neck. He showers while she sleeps and gets dressed as she slowly wakes up. He changes her diaper and her clothes and grabs for her bag and car seat and is almost to the door when he hears a knock. He can't control his sigh as he swings it open to see Officer Black on the other side.
He doesn't bother with the spiel, leading Edward out to his car. He ignores the way the man glances at him from the driver's seat. He doesn't know anything that they don't know, he doesn't harbor some secret. He'd think that would be obvious. Despite his clear curiosity, the officer says nothing as they head for the station.
He lugs the car seat into the lab and is immediately met by Jasper and Emmett who are giving him those pitying looks that he loves so much.
"It's her," Jasper says followed by a sigh, "she was identified by family as Emily Young."
Family. So, there is hope that she still has family to go home to. That's the best news he's gotten so far.
Edward nods in understanding.
"We're still working on the cause of death." Emmett says from behind him.
That's apparently their signal that he can leave as they throw him yet another set of sympathetic looks before they're immediately back to preparing for the impending autopsy.
He decides that maybe the break room isn't so bad. He settles into one of the hard, plastic seats and places the car seat next to him on the table. The smell of strong coffee is nauseating and the harsh lighting is giving him a headache, but it's better than the alternative so he quietly tries to entertain himself by looking into textbooks he could use for future lesson plans.
He's startled out of his boring task by Stanley. She's standing in the doorway, not looking as bubbly and as enthusiastic as she had the day before. Word must've made it around about the DNA test.
"Boss needs to see you." She says somberly.
Edward didn't make it a habit of finding himself in front of the Chief of the Forks Police Department. In fact, he enjoyed their little game of never seeing one another, ever. So, being called into her office was a little annoying. It broke their streak of sixty-five days of pretending the other didn't exist. She wasn't an unpleasant woman, he just tended to not enjoy her wrath as much as others might.
She's sitting at her desk, leaning back in her chair. Her setup looks more comfortable than the rest of the department, but she looks absolutely miserable. There are papers stacked up on her desk and she has a scowl on her face that could rival the vilest men.
Edward's about to question what he's done to find himself here, when Officer Black comes strolling in, taking a seat next to Edward. He glances at Edward and Edward ignores it. He'd had enough of the quiet, pitiful stares to last him a lifetime. He's not the one lying dead on an autopsy table.
"This order I'm about to give is not up for debate," she begins, and Edward already doesn't like the sound of it, "any arguing and I will see to it that your field work is at an all-time low. Understood?"
The threat seems to be aimed mostly at Black, who nods despite his clear reservations at not knowing exactly what he's agreeing to.
"Good. I've made the executive decision that, since there is the potential that we may be seeing the development of a serial killer, that you," she gestures towards Black, "will be seeing to it that the baby stays safe."
A serial killer? They'd only seen two deaths so far, with no actual cause of death determined, and they were discussing the possibility of a serial killer?
Not only that, but apparently, they've found themselves back at step one. She wants Edward to hand her off to Jacob and, as easy as that seemed the first day when he'd almost flattened her on his doorstep, he could feel himself grinding his teeth at thought.
Black looks like he's about to protest, but has to reign himself in.
"The entire family are being treated as suspects, seeing as most of the people living with her aren't actually related to her. We do not need any surprises or spectacles for the media to cling onto." She looks pointedly at Black again.
"Choose whichever living arrangement is the most comfortable for the both of you and best for her protection, notify a trusted officer when you've done so." She says smoothly, clearly pleased with the lack of objection.
Honestly, Edward's too stunned by what he's hearing to even come up with a valid argument. What does she mean 'both'? She's expecting them to stay together?
"Think of it like witness protection. You two will be her parents for the time being." The implication is loud and clear.
Edward's confused as to how he got roped up into this. He's not even an officer. His specialty was performing autopsies. He has two other jobs waiting for him.
"The school and hospital have been notified of your leave of absence," She says, seemingly reading whatever expression he has on his face, "You're dismissed."