Edison liked the way the dirt road answered him.
It was direct—no hedging, no polite evasions.
Every twist of the throttle sent a clean vibration through the four-wheeler and into his hands, grounding him in a way nothing else did.
Not his cheating mother, lying father, nor his gold-digging best friend.
The backroads of Forks were uneven, scarred with old ruts and swallowed stones, but they made sense.
You either learned them, or you paid.
The bags were strapped tight behind him, plastic wrapped and taped with methodical precision. He didn't look back. He never did.
The weight was familiar enough to register through the frame, a quiet reminder that tonight had purpose beyond speed.
Prime and Teevee flanked him, engines loud in different ways. Prime rode loose, exaggerated, leaning too far into every turn like the forest itself was watching.
Teevee kept tighter lines, careful but restless, as if restraint itself irritated him.
They weren't supposed to race.
It happened anyway.
Prime revved first—an announcement more than an invitation.
Edison answered without thinking.
Teevee hesitated, then followed, unwilling to be left behind.
The road narrowed.
Mud kicked up, flecking jackets that would be cleaned professionally by morning.
Trees rushed past, close enough to punish mistakes.
Edison leaned forward, letting instinct take over.
The faster it went, the quieter everything else became.
Prime tried to overtake on a curve.
His wheel clipped a root.
The moment broke ugly—metal screeching, a body airborne, then the unmistakable sound of impact.
Edison braked hard, dismounting before the engine fully died.
Teevee followed, laughing already, slipping once in the mud.
Prime lay on his side, clutching his leg, helmet cracked.
"Oh—wow," Teevee said, breathless. "That was impressive."
Prime swore, trying to stand and failing. "I'm fine."
Edison crouched, assessing with detached calm. Swelling, but no break. Embarrassing more than dangerous.
"Better a tree than something solid," Edison said. "You got lucky."
Prime glared. "You always say that."
"Because it's usually true."
They didn't help him up. Prime waved them off anyway, jaw tight.
"I'll walk it back," he said.
Edison nodded after a pause. "Don't cut through town."
Teevee smirked. "Someone might mistake you for local."
Prime flipped them off and disappeared into the trees.
They re-secured the bags and rode on.
The forest thinned, moonlight spilling across the road. Edison let routine settle in—same route, same weight, same ending.
At the clearing, beneath a single floodlight, he cut the engine.
Silence rushed in.
Edison glanced once down the road behind them, then turned away.
Work came first. It always did.
...…
The fall did not end.
Xavier was conscious for the first couple seconds of it, but then everything went blank.
The pain multiplied.
For a fraction of a second—less than a thought—he awoke to weightlessness, suspended in a kind of silence that existed only inside the body, not the world.
Then, gravity remembered him.
Something had given way beneath his back, sounding like breaking teeth; fragmented stone, rushing air so violent it ripped the scream straight out of his lungs.
Another something.
His body pitched sideways, spinning, arms flailing for purchase that did not exist.
He hit once.
Not the ground—something else. Yet again.
A jutting slab of rock smashed into his ribs, knocking the breath out of him in a white-hot explosion.
His body ricocheted, momentum carrying him onward; he rolled, tumbled, slammed shoulder-first into a slope slick with moss and mineral runoff.
He grabbed… or at least, tried to.
The world blurred into violent flashes—gray stone, green vines, white water far too close.
Then came the branch.
It hooked his ankle hard.
Pain detonated up his leg as the vine wrapped limb twisted unnaturally, snapping him sideways.
The sudden arrest of motion wrenched his body around, tangling him mid-fall; vines wrapped instinctively, like hands that didn't care whether thy were saving him or claiming him.
His body swung once.
Twice.
Then stopped.
The force ripped a sound out of him—half scream, half sob—as his spine slammed against the cliff face.
Stars burst behind his eyes.
Something in his shoulder popped wetly, followed by a nauseating slide back into place. His vision tunneled, black creeping in from the edges.
But he did not fall again.
He hung there.
Upside down.
Alive.
For a moment—maybe seconds, maybe minutes—Xavier existed only as pain.
It was everywhere, layered and overlapping: ribs screaming, ankle burning, fingers numb where they clawed uselessly at air.
Blood trickled warm along his temple, dripping downward—upward, from his perspective—until it splashed softly against stone below.
The waterfall roared, indifferent.
Wind howled through the cliffside, threading through vines and hollow pockets of rock, producing a low, animal sound that vibrated through his bones.
The air was colder here, wetter. Every breath burned his lungs.
I'm alive.
The thought was distant, almost surprised.
Then darkness took him.
...…
He came back in fragments.
Pain first—sharp and insistent, like a hand shaking him awake by the collar.
Then sound.
The waterfall again, constant and crushing—always so loud… so consuming, but strangely, not as deafening anymore.
Wind.
The creak of vines stretched too tight.
His own breathing—ragged, shallow, wrong. Like panic that didn't know it was panic… not yet.
Xavier groaned, the sound catching in his throat, tickling along his airways since it was being forced out.
He was hanging. Upside down.
His ankle screamed when he twitched, reminding him why gravity hadn't finished the job.
The vines had cinched tighter during his unconsciousness, binding his leg, part of his thigh, and one arm against the rock. His free hand dangled uselessly, fingers swollen and trembling.
Time was… unclear.
Light filtered in from above in thin, shifting bands—daylight, then darkness, then daylight again.
The passage of time announced itself only through temperature changes and the way his body protested anew with each returning awareness.
Hunger came next.
Not the dull ache he'd grown accustomed to in the cave, but something sharper, more urgent.
Hanging like this burned energy constantly—every muscle engaged just to keep him from swinging, from tearing free, from slipping.
Water dripped nearby, catching on leaves and stone, splashing intermittently against his face.
He twisted his head, tongue lolling stupidly, and managed to catch a few precious drops.
It helped. Barely.
Then he noticed the web.
It shimmered beside him, strung between two rock outcroppings no more than a foot from his face. Thick. Dense. Old. The kind of web that meant its owner was not small.
His stomach turned.
Something skittered across his cheek.
Xavier jerked instinctively, pain flaring as the vines tightened further. He hissed through his teeth, heart slamming against his ribs. His eyes snapped open fully, scanning wildly.
A spider crawled across his collarbone.
Black. Glossy. Big enough that he felt each individual leg as it moved.
"No," he whispered hoarsely.
More movement followed.
They came from the web, drawn by warmth, by vibration, by the slow inevitability of something trapped and alive.
They descended on silken threads, exploratory, cautious.
Fear surged—pure and animal—but beneath it, something colder clicked into place.
Protein.
The thought was grotesque. Automatic. Unwanted.
But his body didn't care about dignity.
When the spider reached his jaw, Xavier snapped his head forward and bit.
The crunch was wet and unmistakable.
He gagged, nearly retching as ichor burst across his tongue—bitter, acrid, wrong. His instincts screamed at him to spit it out, to vomit, to do anything but swallow.
He swallowed anyway.
His stomach cramped violently in protest.
He blacked out… awakened. Black out again. A vicious cycle of waking up just enough to endure pain.
He never once thought the spiders were poisonous; he never once thought about his chances of survival—only what was in front of him.
By the tenth time he awakened, the warmth had come.
Energy.
Not much. But enough. Enough from a full, definitely permanent scarred, stomach.
He now had enough energy to think.
Enough to survive.
The days blurred after that.
Spiders came. He ate them.
Not all at once—never too fast.
His body rationed, learning quickly what it could tolerate. He learned to snap with his teeth, to use his tongue, to endure the crawling sensation long enough to get something out of it.
He drank water when he could. Shifted his weight carefully to keep blood flowing to his head. Passed out. Woke up. Repeated the cycle.
Pain became background noise.
So did fear.
What remained was stubbornness.
He tested the vines methodically, tugging when he could, resting when the pain threatened to overwhelm him.
Old shooting drills echoed faintly in his memory—breathe through it, don't panic, control what you can. His muscles adapted, trembling less each day, learning the exact limits of strain.
When the vine finally loosened, it was almost anticlimactic.
It gave way with a soft, fibrous snap.
Xavier dropped.
Not far this time.
He slammed into a lower ledge, rolling hard, knocking loose stones and debris in a cascading clatter. His body bounced once, twice, then came to rest against a shallow incline, breath tearing out of him in a ragged cry.
He lay there, gasping, laughing weakly through cracked lips.
Alive.
Bruised. Broken in places. But alive.
When he finally pushed himself up—hands shaking, ankle screaming, ribs protesting—he did it slowly, deliberately.
Like a star athlete rising after a bad tackle. Hurt, but unyielding.
The waterfall thundered on.
Xavier wiped blood from his mouth, eyes burning, chest aching.
"Still here," he whispered to no one.
And for the first time since waking in the cave, he believed it mattered.
Being alive is indeed a gift.
...…
He climbed.
Not in a way that could be called heroic—no clean ascent, no decisive progress—but inch by inch, mistake by mistake, body dragging itself upward because stopping meant dying.
Every natural climber understood the process was far from beautiful but even then, Xavier held a new appreciation for the rawness it took to survive.
Finger replacing finger. Hugging rocks as if he was ready to hump them into oblivion. Biting vines with his teeth, just to shift his position ever-so-slightly.
But he could not care—because nothing else would.
The cliff would not care how long it took for him to reach the bottom.
Neither would the waterfall.
Time dissolved.
He marked progress by pain instead of hours.
When his hands shook too badly to grip, he rested.
When his vision blurred, he pressed his forehead to the rock and breathed until the spinning slowed.
Vines became lifelines—he tore them free with his teeth, wrapped them around his ankle to brace it, cinched them tight around his ribs to keep the worst of the movement from tearing him open again.
Improvised tourniquets. Compression. Pressure.
Survival by memory and instinct, techniques drilled into him through stories with his grandfather.
When the bleeding slowed, he tightened again.
When swelling threatened to numb his fingers, he loosened just enough.
He drank what he could—condensation scraped from stone; runoff caught in leaves. He chewed bitter vines when hunger sharpened too much, knowing they would make him sick later but keep him moving now.
His body adjusted, resentful but obedient.
At some point—he never knew when—the angle softened.
At some point after that, the roar of the waterfall dulled.
When his hands finally found the familiar cold lip of the cave's stone, he laughed.
The sound came out broken and wrong, but it was laughter all the same. He dragged himself inside and collapsed against the wall he had carved shelves into, the place that smelled like mold, stone, and him.
Home.
He didn't sleep long. Pain wouldn't allow it.
But thought returned.
Clearer this time.
He sat up slowly, staring at the mouth of the cave, at the distance between stone and falling water, at the sheer drop below. His breathing steadied—not with fear, but calculation.
I didn't fall the whole way, he realized.
Not even close.
Three-sevenths.
That was what the fall had given him. A brutal shortcut downward. Proof of concept.
Inspiration struck like a spark.
...…
The next few days was a testament to daring.
He rolled vines together with shaking hands, testing their strength, braiding them tighter than before.
He barely noticed the passing of time—he hauled stones from deeper in the cave, chipped them patiently, obsessively, shaping them into crude hooks with grooves for binding.
Not tools.
Anchors.
He leaned back against the wall, chest aching, mouth splitting into a grin that hurt.
He wasn't trapped.
He was halfway there, just by believing he could.