Scent Of Soil

by NarcisoTyrell

Summary:

When a freak accident spills blood, Jasper is the only one who can keep Edward from doing something he’d regret. Soon they find out they’re the best equipped, in their family, to help each other come to terms with the violence and bloodlust they thought they had buried deep in their past.
But once that box is open, can they keep themselves from self-sabotaging and spiralling into self-loathing? And what happens when one of them fails to question the difference between morality and societal expectations?

Notes:

All the recognisable characters, settings, plot points et cetera belong to Smeyer, I’m just having fun with them. For streamlining purposes, I assume the reader is already familiar with the Twilight canon.

I have to thank my friends who encouraged me (read: enabled me) to actually indulge my urge to write this fanfiction instead of dropping it. It’s been a long while since the last time, and it feels good to be back.

A huge thanks goes especially to my friend V, who let me drag her back into the Twilightverse for some beta reading. I owe you big time.

Here’s the entire playlist of songs I’ve been using for inspiration.

Chapter 1: Rogue

Summary:

An accident occurs on the school campus and, unexpectedly, only Jasper has the right kind of know-how to deal with the effects it has on Edward.

Notes:

I recommend listening to Rogue (The Flight) by Lucia to get into the right mood for this chapter.

It all had happened so fast – and that was saying something, when your brain could process so much information all at once. But even by their standards, it was a whirlwind.

Alice had been the second to move and act, right behind Edward. He’d sprinted forward as soon as the surrounding mood had started turning to panic, while she had stared into the distance, glassy-eyed, for a couple of seconds more.

Then she had turned to him with three simple, anguished words. “Jazz… blood! Run!”

After all those decades, Jasper knew better than to question Alice’s visions; he only gave himself enough time to check that everybody was too focussed on the blue van skidding on the frozen asphalt to mind him, then darted away from the school’s parking lot at superhuman speed, heading for the cover of the woods.

Even amidst the ensuing chaos of screaming teenagers, screeching tires and scraping metal he could make up Alice’s words and the urgency in her voice: “Jazz, it’s safe there! Wait for him! He’ll need you!”

He stopped a few rows of trees in, the parking lot far out of sight. Of course she was right: the chilly morning breeze carried the rusty, rich, delicious smell of spilt human blood, but from that distance it was bearable. Jasper’s mouth watered a little, his fingertips scraped loudly against his palms, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle. Sure, in the parking lot the scent would have overwhelmed him: Alice and Rosalie and Emmett, they could withstand it, but he, he still struggled.

Why Edward would need him, of all people, was anyone’s guess. Jasper would have rather kept running, not so much because of the blood, but because of the emotional turmoil that was radiating from the school, which he could still pick up loud and clear even from that distance. So much so that it even covered Edward’s emotional state, when he dashed by a few seconds later.

He was dishevelled and visibly tense, but otherwise fine. Or at least, until a second scent joined the first. Even Jasper shivered with want, his throat burning at that special deliciousness, but again, from that distance, it was bearable.

But not to Edward, apparently: with flared nostrils and dilated pupils, he froze dead in his tracks, turned around, and let out a deep, rumbling growl. His bloodlust hit Jasper’s sixth sense like a freight train, with such intensity it even eclipsed a whole school worth of panicking teenagers: he was frenzied, almost crazed, consumed with a want that Jasper had last felt so many decades ago in much, much younger vampires.

Goddamnit, it must have been that Bella girl.

“No!” He shouted, leaping towards the other vampire. “Edward, don’t! Edward!”

It took him less than two seconds to let the beast out: suddenly, Jasper Hale, cherished son, loving brother, devoted husband, teenage student of Everytown High, America, was gone; in his place was Major Jasper Whitlock, handler of newborns and scourge of the Southern wars.

But Edward was no newborn. He was blinded by his thirst, true, but still a refined fighter. Jasper loved sparring with him every now and again: his speed and agility, combined with his mind-reading talent, tilted the scales to a more even match. But now there were lives on the line – theirs included – and that disadvantage was a problem.

As he tried to block Edward’s path, the younger vampire downright attacked him. Jasper dodged a few blows, while another hit him square in the solar plexus – good thing he didn’t have to breathe. At some point, he barely escaped a bite that almost added a new mark to his already scarred jaw. It took him all his ability to counterattack enough that it was now Edward who was on the defensive. At that point, he could get a little edge.

The trick with Edward, he knew, was turning the brain off and letting the instinct take over to reduce his window of anticipation. As Jasper’s body moved with the deadly precision of muscle memory, he also tried to see Edward not as an adversary, but just as a body in motion: he reduced him to the sum of his parts, focussing on what they looked like, rather than what they were doing in order to consciously countermove.

And Edward looked glorious in his fury: his lean, springy body, with all the muscles contracting and relaxing beneath his clothes, in the effort of dodging Jasper, was a perfect fighting machine; his hair, as unruly as ever, moist with the forest’s humidity, was bright auburn even in the dull light of the overcast day; his scent, sweet and distinctive, was so close it even distracted Jasper from the ever lingering blood in the background.

It occurred to him that he’d never really stopped to look at Edward, the brooding mindreader, as a physical creature. And a truly beautiful one at that. He was graceful and pretty even that close to ferality, with his long pianist fingers arched into talons, and his handsome features taut, turned into a mask of thirst and savagery.

And yet, he was and remained gorgeous. How that had escaped Jasper for the better part of fifty years he could not tell, but now there was no denying: Edward was truly beautiful.

That realisation hit him hard for some reason, making him hyperaware of Edward’s every movement, of his very presence. Despite the high stakes, he found he was enjoying the chance that their little fight was giving him to be that close, and a little part of him, somewhere in the back of his mind, relished the idea of pinning him down to the ground when he’d get the best of him.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to let this train of thought go on much further: frustrated with his inability to pick anything useful from Jasper’s mind, or maybe distracted by that last stray thought, Edward made a clumsy move that allowed the older, more experienced vampire to slide behind him and subdue him. He grabbed his chest and upper arms with his own right one, his stomach and forearms with the other; holding him firmly to himself, his chest pushed against the other’s back, he started dragging him away from the school.

“Let go of me!” Edward growled, trying to disentangle himself. “Jasper, let go! Goddamnit!”

Again, Jasper was almost knocked over by the unusual strength of Edward’s emotions. Edward had always been the quiet Cullen sibling, emotionally speaking, too wrapped up in thoughts – his own and others’ – to truly let himself feel.

Now, Jasper could sense his primeval fury, his desperation, his longing, just how much the scent of that specific blood drove him over the edge. For the first time in almost half a century, he was truly speaking Jasper’s own language. He felt approachable, and not only because he was broadcasting a mood range that Jasper was all too familiar with. Somehow, that poked at Jasper even more than watching Edward from up close while fighting had done moments before.

Edward’s attempts to break free, however, were becoming less and less violent the more distance they put between themselves and Bella Swan. Soon, rather than clawing at Jasper’s arms, Edward’s hands started scraping at his own aching throat, as if to tear it off and end that agony.

“Hold on, Edward. Hold on, it’s going to get better, I promise.” Jasper murmured. He inhaled deeply and could no longer smell any blood. He wasn’t sure that’d be the case for Edward and his blood singer, too, so he asked, “Do you think you can run now?”

Edward, who’d finally managed to get enough of a grip on himself to hold his breath, sniffed tentatively. He quivered in Jasper’s arms, but nodded.

“Just… don’t let me go, okay?”

Jasper nodded in return and grabbed him firmly by the wrist before releasing his chest.

They started running southeastwards, in the general direction of Mount Olympus. They kept running through the forest, each stride splattering frost and mud all around them, until the dead leaves and dirt gave way to the pebbles on the bank of the Bogachiel River. They leapt the width of the water in one swift move and, past that ideal boundary, Jasper deemed they were far enough from Forks and the action to stop.

But Edward quietly disagreed. As soon as Jasper let go of his wrist, he grabbed his hand in return, as if he needed to hold on to something himself, not just be held. Then, he pulled the empath into yet another race amongst the trees. Unexpectedly hand in hand, fingers entwined, they leapt over fern-covered boulders and mossy rock ridges, from the ground to the tree branches, then back to overgrown soil again, getting farther and farther away.

At that point, it was clear Edward wasn’t just running from the scent of blood itself: no longer ravenous, he was now broadcasting his guilt and shame so clearly that Jasper almost felt ashamed himself for how his mouth had watered just minutes before.

Edward was trying to outrun the awareness of how close he’d come to end Bella Swan’s life, that much was clear.

The more they ran, the more Edward seemed to grow frustrated, so Jasper just tugged at him firmly to stop him, and let their inertia do the rest: he held Edward as they tumbled on the ground, as if he could get hurt, until they hit a large pine trunk that stopped their course.

Edward got up on his hands and knees and let out a long, anguished wail. In front of him, Jasper rose to his knees and put both hands on his shoulder.

“Hey… how are you feeling?” He asked gently.

Edward shot him an angry glare. Picking up on the subtext, Jasper replied. “I want you to tell me.”

Edward shook his head, so Jasper tried again. “Okay, you wanna tell me what happened instead?”

“The van”, Edward whispered, as if talking louder would strain him. “It was skidding on the ice, it would have hit Bella Swan.”

“And with all that blood…”

Edward nodded his eyes closed tightly. “Alice and I… we tried everything. As I moved she had a vision: I would read it from her, adjust my actions, trigger another vision, and on we went. We tried everything”, he repeated louder, now looking straight at Jasper with the desperation of someone innocent who’d just got caught on a crime scene. “I managed not to let her get killed, or have her legs crushed, but every scenario ended with glass shards from the cars flying everywhere and wounding her, or her hitting her head and bleeding, or both… and me losing control! There was no way, Jasper, there just wasn’t!”

“So Alice told you to run, and me to wait for you so I wouldn’t let you go back for her blood.”

Edward nodded, but then croaked, “I wanted to help her, and instead I left her there! I left her to get hurt!” He was shaking now. With all the power and control their nervous system normally had, it was rare to see a vampire shake uncontrollably like that. It only happened after weeks of starvation.

“But you saved her”, Jasper replied, still in a gentle, comforting tone. “She’s still alive thanks to you, and then you got the hell away before you could become a serious danger to her. She’s safe now. And so are you. And Alice, Carlisle, everyone.”

“But I don’t want her to be!” Edward cried out, grabbing Jasper’s shoulders, too, and leaning against him. “I swear to God, I’ve never, ever wanted to end someone’s life this bad! I couldn’t care about right or wrong, innocent or guilty, about exposure, the Volturi or what the hell not! Even now, I want to go back there and murder Bella in front of the entire school if I have to, just to drink her goddamn blood! What kind of demon am I?! This is the real me, the rest has all been a lie! The monster, it’s been sleeping for all these decades, and now I can’t keep it at bay anymore, Jasper!”

Maybe at that point Emmett would have been more helpful. Maybe, his two encounters with blood singers would have given Edward the insight he needed. To Jasper, individual blood had never made much of a difference: it had been the sweet, torturous, guilt-inducing, nerve-wrecking sustenance of his life for decades; and now, it was a never-ending, ever-lingering temptation, tainting every minute of every hour he spent amongst humans, a constant reminder of his past.

Then again, Emmett wasn’t a monster: he was just an innocent soul thrust into the body of a predator, with instincts far bigger than himself. In the years they’d spent side by side, Jasper never once sensed an ounce of malice, spite, pettiness from the man, and he was sure even his slips had been just that – accidents, not even transgressions.

Jasper, on the other hand, had lived face to face with the monster he was for decades on end, no filter to hide its true colours, no cloak to keep it wrapped under. He’d been a menace for both human and vampirekind, so he could very well see why Edward, in his integrity and rectitude, would be devastated at the mere thought of lusting after Bella Swan’s death.

Unsurprisingly, his distress was tremendous.

“Do you want me to use my powers to help you?” Jasper asked, if reluctantly, raising a hand to caress the nape of his neck as he’d done many times with the newborn María had him train. Maybe it was their decades of acquaintance, but that once familiar gesture felt very different this time around.

Edward nodded tentatively, and Jasper focussed on his own memories. Just blanketing the younger vampire with manufactured calm and serenity wouldn’t do, he knew it, so he thought of Esme.

He was fond of all the Cullens but, except for Alice, he’d always felt more like an outsider sharing their home and life, rather than a true sibling or Carlisle’s son. It wasn’t anything they ever did, said or felt: he simply knew he was a beast, the weak link in the family; although no one ever faulted him for that, his own awareness had always made him feel out of place.

But not with Esme. Around her, everything seemed so easy. He could sense her love for him, the same she had for all her children. He had felt her compassion and support the many times he’d slipped and killed, devoid of anger, blame or condescendence. She was no María: she was proud of her son when he managed to stay the course, and patient, understanding and forgiving when he didn’t. She made him feel like he belonged there.

He knew he was unworthy of Esme – much like he was of Alice, for that matter – but her love was so overwhelming that in her presence he could even cast his self-doubt aside, if only for a brief, precious moment.

He tried his best to replicate that kind of love with his powers, drawing from memory, clumsily building it up to project onto Edward. And while he was at it, he laced it with the feelings that the younger vampire now elicited in him: the sympathy, his own… heartache at seeing Edward like that. He was touched by what he saw as innocence – Edward calling himself a monster and a demon for what were mere thoughts and desires, as if those were the deepest pits of depravity – right there in front of him, whose body count, mortal and immortal, racked in the upper three digits.

Maybe that’s why Alice had wanted him beside Edward in that moment, instead of Emmett.

He knew of Edward’s past, of course, but never once had he ever dared compare himself, the mass murderer, the one everybody had to keep in check at all times, to Carlisle’s glorious firstborn. In all those years of friendly acquaintance, he’d never thought he could be anything more than a good in-law, or an occasional sparring partner, to someone like Edward; he’d never thought they could be similar in any meaningful way. And yet, there he was, this boy he’d always admired and occasionally envied, sharing his very same struggle, the one thing that had been defining his existence for so long.

But Edward was still resisting his temptation in ways Jasper often couldn’t. He admired him even more for that, just not from afar this time.

If he could put his own missteps to good use, helping Edward not to make any of his own, then perhaps he could make peace with those last five decades of constant, exhausting struggle with himself. At least, he could be Edward’s deep darkness, if that meant making him feel like even just a slightly brighter shade of light by comparison.

“But I don’t deserve this!” Edward croaked, gripping Jasper’s shoulders even tighter, replying to his train of thought. “You had to kill or be killed, Jasper, that was it! But I, I just want that blood! Much like in the past I chose to drink human blood, while you didn’t know better! I don’t deserve your compassion!”

“You do, sweet boy. You do.”

“I can still smell it!” Edward cried. “In my head, in my memories! I can’t shake it, it’s all I can think about!”

It was clear that just trying to make Edward feel at peace wasn’t working, so he went back to his days in Mexico, specifically the part where he taught the new recruits how to get a hold of the bloodlust as quickly as possible.

“Okay, Edward, listen to me”, he said as he searched for his gaze and cupped his face with his hands. Ignoring the shiver that gesture sent down his spine, he went on, “Breathe in deeply.”

“I… I…”

“Trust me. Just breathe”, he repeated, doing so himself to show him how. Eventually, Edward took a deep breath in, held it for a while, then let it out. “There, like that. What can you smell?”

“Her goddamn blood!”

Jasper shook his head, then leaned forward to rest his forehead against Edward’s. “That’s in your mind, Edward. What do you really smell?”

Edward fell silent for a long while, just letting the chill air of the forest in, and then exhaling tremblingly. Finally, he said, “I can smell the pine trees. That’s the strongest scent here.” He inhaled again, creasing a brow. “Or… or maybe not?” He swallowed a lump of venom and let more air in. “The bark and the needles smell different from one another. And there’s… there’s also resin, lots of it. Some patches of stagnant water here and there. Fern and moss, lichens on the rocks. There’s also decaying wood and leaves, but it’s not unpleasant.”

As Edward listed the smells he could make out, Jasper nodded encouragingly against his forehead, his hands sliding down the mindreader’s neck, back to his shoulders. His body had stopped trembling and he felt much calmer now, his grip on Jasper’s shoulders relaxing, until he moved his hands further back in a loose hug. The exercise was helping him regain full control, both by cleaning his olfactory receptors of the lingering smell and distracting his mind from its memory.

Edward went on. “The frost is thawing at this time in the morning… and I can smell the soil. Wow, you take it for granted after a while, but it’s there and it’s rich and powerful, almost velvety. The soil has a beautiful scent, I never realised.” He raised his head so his gaze could meet Jasper’s. “And then… there’s your scent.”

There was a small wave of emotions tangled too tightly for Jasper to make out individually, he only caught a vague sense of contradiction which, to be honest, mirrored his own in that moment.

Edward moved one hand from Jasper’s back and lightly traced the scars on his jaw, to which he’d nearly added another one.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for earlier.”

Jasper smiled softly and shook his head. “Don’t mention it.”

“But still…” Edward sighed, lowering his hand, away from Jasper’s jaw. “Also, thank you for everything. For now, too.”

“Anytime, Edward. Anytime.”

He still sensed a lingering need for comfort coming from Edward, so he decided to just indulge him. He moved one hand to his back and pulled him along as he laid back on the ground. After a moment of awkwardness, Edward gave him one of his crooked smiles and leaned against his side. “I’m… this is the closest I’ve felt to exhaustion since I was alive”, he justified himself, even though vampires couldn’t really get tired.

“I feel you, Edward. I feel you.” And he chuckled briefly before adding, “I mean, both literally and figuratively.”

Edward tutted in amusement, resting his head on Jasper’s shoulder and a hand on his chest, letting him keep an arm draped around his shoulders.

They didn’t have much more to say, let alone comment on how the two of them, of all people, had ended up there, cuddling up on the forest floor. Granted, the Cullens were an emotionally open kind of family – and how could they not, with a mindreader and an empath in the house – so even physical displays of affection like that were quite the norm. It was just him and Edward specifically who’d never clicked before.

And yet, in that moment it felt effortless, the most natural thing to do.

Perhaps it was the surprising commonality they’d just discovered. Jasper could sense that Edward felt understood and relieved at not being judged; and Jasper felt somewhat protective of him. He’d been in that dark place more times than he cared to recall, feeling powerless against his own nature, and it was disheartening at times. Even though a part of him felt less alone in that fight, he’d rather Edward not be there at all – he didn’t deserve it.

For a brief moment, he entertained the idea of leaning down and kissing his hair, but immediately let go of it: it was a bridge too far, it would take him places he’d rather leave behind for good. Edward, too, stirred slightly when he picked up that thought.

Apart from that, neither felt particularly awkward, though: Jasper assessed that while looking up at the canopy of the forest, framed by the bracken leaves they were lying amidst. After all, why should they? There was nothing awkward in what they were doing.

Brotherly, he told himself. That was just brotherly. A brotherly embrace after a very stressful morning.

With his next breath in, he was, this time around, the one who focussed on the scents of the forest, to let Edward’s slip away to the back of his mind.

Notes:

This was supposed to be a quick, short, three-chapter-tops fanfiction. Okay, make it four, so we allow for some character development. Scratch that: five, yes, Rosalie, you can get your scene. Now it’s grown into this.

We’re basically changing one detail from the van accident – Bella’s blood will be spilled, no matter what, Edward is underprepared for it, and Alice has to tweak the events accordingly – and see how that ripples through the story. You’re all welcome to join the ride: see you next week for the next chapter!

Chapter 2: Call My Name

Summary:

In the aftermath of Bella Swan’s accident, Edward and Jasper find an unexpected amount of shared experiences, doubts, fears and traumas that draw them closer together.

Notes:

Call My Name by iamamiwhoami is the song I used for mood.

In hindsight, Jasper was sure that not even Alice could have predicted the rippling effect the parking lot incident would go on to have on their lives.

At least as far as the public was concerned, it thankfully died down soon and quietly: amidst the chaos, no one had taken notice of the blur that were Edward’s movements, so that his intervention and subsequent escape at superhuman speed had not exposed him. Bella Swan would swear he’d been right beside her, but the stitches on her forehead didn’t make her the most reliable of narrators.

Given the circumstances, no one in the family could really blame Edward’s impulsive actions, as the amount of blood a crushed Bella Swan would have spilled, well, it would have become a problem for all of them.

Only Rosalie was cranky about it, but contrary to what Edward believed, she was not angry at him, or even at Bella Swan, for that matter: she was just pissed at the situation in general, at how close it had come to ruining the life they had built in Forks.

“Like, for fuck’s sake! Last week we managed to park a space probe on frozen methane on a moon of Saturn, and Tyler Crowley still can’t park a van on frosty asphalt without racking a body count!” She ranted at Jasper that evening, when he and Edward had returned home after a precautionary hunt.

Jasper was only half-listening, his attention directed at Alice who, perched on the big dining table, was looking into the future.

“So, should we kill the girl?” Rosalie asked casually, half per her usual black humour, half with genuine concern.

“Are you crazy?!” Edward shouted from the other side of the room.

In all fairness, Jasper did pause to consider the option. He’d never directly crossed paths with the Volturi, but their intervention with other armies in the South had been brutal. He didn’t want Alice anywhere near the justice they dished out, not even by association. Would Bella Swan become a liability?

He felt a stab of resentment coming from Edward, who’d picked up on those thoughts.

He also felt guilt – his own, this time. The ease with which he’d let his past take over for the second time that day unnerved him. Instinctively, he pulled the sleeves of his jumper all the way down to his palms.

“She can’t be sure of what she saw…” He replied uncertainly, alternating his gaze between Rosalie, Edward, Alice, and Emmett, who in that mess was very happy to keep quiet and blend in with the furniture. “And no one else did. It’s not like Edward stayed there to be found with her or…”

“She won’t become a Volturi-worthy concern”, Alice intervened, breaking her silence and her trance. “I don’t see her letting go of it, but whether the mystery drives her away or closer, I always see her keeping it to herself, for one reason or another. In all scenarios.”

That wasn’t enough to pacify Rosalie, but it did Jasper. He trusted Alice and her visions.

“I’ll take care of it, keep an eye on her”, Alice continued, “And befriend her to direct her curiosity. In several scenarios I can even see us getting close, so who knows?”

“Fine”, Rosalie conceded, raising both hands. “That’s up to you then. If you want to babysit Belle, be my guest.”

“Bella”, Edward corrected her.

“Whatever”, she snapped back with an eye roll.

And that was the news they gave Carlisle when he and Esme returned home and joined the discussion.

* * * * * * * * *

In the following weeks, Alice started spending time with Bella Swan and her human friends, Edward did his best to avoid her whenever possible, and Jasper didn’t quite know what to make of any of that.

On the flip side, Alice’s newfound social life didn’t leave him feeling lonely: after the connection they’d felt during their flight through the woods, both he and Edward found themselves wanting more. And so, they would often lounge together on the roof of the house contemplating the nearby Sol Duc River, or go for a run beyond it until they found some interesting rock formation or monumental fallen log to stop and sit on. Sometimes, they’d make it westwards, to the beautiful, untouched grassy shores of Lake Ozette, or even farther to the coast, to admire the Pacific.

And they would talk. Talk about themselves, their histories, their mistakes. Talk about where they could go from there.

Thoughts of his easy relapse to his past self had stuck to the back of Jasper’s mind. He’d been reluctant to use his gift actively on Edward, despite asking for his permission (as it’d been agreed in the family), mostly because it was too direct a flashback to a time he desperately wished to forget.

Similarly, the uncontrollable bloodlust had been haunting Edward. He hadn’t run away to Alaska, this time, but that close a call had left him shaken to his very core. He’d apologised profusely to Jasper for the times he’d been impatient or dismissive of his struggle, now that he could relate so much, and would find comfort in that commonality.

“For me, it’s like acute pain: it’s nearly unbearable in the moment, but I can still hope it will pass soon enough”, Edward mused, perched on a huge pine branch. “Is it like chronic pain for you? Less sharp but always there, no matter what?”

Jasper, from his lower position sitting on a huge stump whose jagged bark made some sort of backrest on one side, contemplated the analogy for a while. “Yeah. Yes, it pretty much is.” He looked up at Edward and sighed. “And just when I think I’m getting better at it, something happens. There are more humans than usual in the room, and my mouth waters. I’m distracted, thinking of something, and a scent catches me off guard. Or like the other day, some Tyler Crowley gets a flesh wound, and I still need to run for the hills just for good measure. I’m afraid I’ll never truly get a handle of it – not to the extent the rest of you have. It’s been half a century and I’m still at this point.”

Edward jumped off the branch and landed graciously on the ground, right beside him. Reaching for Jasper’s hand, he said, “But that is progress, Jazz. I remember well your first years with us, you’ve come so far!”

Jasper shrugged, looking at some beetle attacking a piece of rotten bark.

“I’m serious”, Edward insisted, lifting Jasper’s face by the chin to have his gaze and full attention. “And don’t get me wrong: the thirst is always there. They will always smell delicious, for all of us. It just gets more and more… feasible, to ignore it. To focus more on the rest of our lives. Barring some bleeding Miss Swans out there.” They both smiled, it was the first time Edward had joked about it since Bella’s arrival. Going back to Jasper’s insecurities, Edward added with conviction, “And Jasper, you already are at that point, everyone can see that.”

Jasper nodded, relishing that wave of trust he felt coming from Edward.

Lately, he’d become easier to read, at least when they were together: it still took him a while to loosen up, his emotions starting up somewhat muffled, filtered through his constant overthinking, but they would soon get more vivid and brilliant. Edward now allowed himself to truly feel in Jasper’s presence, and that, to Jasper, was reward enough for having had to revisit his past during the incident.

Not to mention, being able to support Edward and receiving his support in return was a ray of light in the perpetual twilight of his self-doubt-ridden existence.

“I think it depends on how used to human blood you’d got, how long that’d been going on”, Edward continued musing. “To me, too, it became much, much harder for many years after I went through my rebellious phase.” His voice faltered ever so slightly on those two last words. He averted his gaze for a moment, but then looked back at Jasper. “My murder phase.”

He sat down on the stump too, on the side where there was no bark rim, one foot on the ground and the other leg folded so his torso could half-face Jasper.

“I think you’re the only one with whom I can call it for what it was without your thoughts going frantic with excuses and justifications. You can understand why I’m fully accountable for what I did”, Edward added.

After pondering, Jasper said, “I guess you’re right. Violence is so deeply embedded into our family, into each and every one of us, since before we were even turned”, he commented, tilting his head slightly. “But only the two of us can truly say we perpetrated it, not just received it.”

He felt Edward’s mortification at that thought, and while he wouldn’t take it back, he also wanted to comfort him. He gestured for the mindreader to turn around, so he could rest his back against Jasper’s chest, in a less violent version of their grapple when the blond was dragging him away from Bella Swan’s blood.

Edward accepted that comfort, but still continued with that train of thought. “Carlisle was dragged into his father’s holy war, and tried to minimise the damage. Esme found herself shackled to a… beast.” He spat the word with more contempt than had ever been in his voice.

Jasper went on, “Rosalie, well… there are no words for what was done to her. She only responded in kind, can you blame her?” He sighed deeply before adding, “Alice… I can’t even begin to fathom what might have happened to her, to leave her with no memory at all. Literally, if I only tried to picture that, I’d go berserk.”

Edward moved his head slowly, as if to comfort Jasper caressing his chest with his own nape. He murmured, “And Emmett is…”

Jasper smiled fondly. “…the exception in our midst. He’s too precious for this world. But we…” He reached for Edward’s hand, grabbed it gently by the back and raised it alongside his own. “We have blood on our hands. We know what it truly means to give in to the monsters we are. We’ve faced them, we’ve been them. We can speak frankly.”

Edward remained silent for a long while.

“I’ve never told Esme, but my first was her scum of an ex husband.” He swallowed a lump of shame. “And I wanted it. I relished it. It felt good – right, even. I dreamt of it before I even left the family, and even now, I’m not sure I truly regret it.”

Jasper sighed. “You went after evil people.”

“And yet, who was I to decide that they should die for that?”

“Those were different times, Edward. Even today we, as a society, still haven’t managed to agree that death penalty is inhumane, even though deep down we all know that.” He peeked at Edward’s face from above his shoulder, so close that all he could smell was his beautiful scent. “It’s unfair to judge your 1920s self through the lens of your Third Millennium self.”

Edward smirked, and it was one of his gorgeous crooked smiles. “Wait, ‘we as a society’? Did you just include yourself with the humans?”

Jasper blinked once or twice. “I did.”

“And there it is: the progress”, Edward insisted triumphantly. “In your mind they’re no longer ‘them’. And surely not cattle. That’s what’ll give you the strength. You too, can keep the past as a warning and focus on how good you’re doing now.”

Jasper let his thoughts drift to the forest around them, not to ruin Edward’s conviction with pessimistic thoughts. Then again, he could still sense shame in him.

It was Edward who broke the silence, going back to the main subject. “I don’t know if I should ever tell Esme. She’s no Rosalie, I don’t think she’d find comfort or vindication in what I did. In the end, I just killed a man. My first.”

“I was scared and confused with my first”, Jasper said, trying to take Edward’s mind off that memory. “A boy I’d met in the army, not much older than me. I didn’t really understand what I was yet, what had happened, why all that pain in my throat. And then I felt everything at once: his utter terror, the bloodlust in María, Nettie and Lucy. And my own thirst, overwhelming, all-consuming. But soon, I learned to give in to that urge, to let the pleasure of that sweet, sweet nectar dictate my actions. Even though I knew, I could feel just what terror and pain I was causing.”

“And you miss it.”

“And I miss it. Not my victims’ terror, but the rest. That heavenly satisfaction, that relief from the thirst. It’s like a distant but constant memory: the few times it’s gone, animal blood is enough. But soon, when I’m among the humans, it’s back.”

Jasper only realised his hand was still entwined with Edward’s when the mindreader lifted it to brush his lips on Jasper’s skin. “It will get easier, I promise.”

* * * * * * * * *

A whole month went by, and Jasper and Edward kept growing closer and closer with their long conversations.

Edward loved making him talk, perhaps to make up for the fact that Jasper was a difficult mind to read. He always kept his thoughts shallow and casual, mostly focussed on what was going on in front of him in that moment, devoid even of commentary.

It wasn’t personal, he didn’t do it to keep Edward out. It was more of an old habit.

“You give away so much when you let your mind run”, Jasper told him on another occasion, while the moist, salty ocean wind slapped against their unmoving figures atop a cliff, mixing with the scent of the pine trees and undergrowth, which he’d come to love. “Little movements, microexpressions, one glance too many… María was no mindreader, but somehow she could always tell. She knew Nettie and Lucy were growing restless, my talent only confirmed it. She knew something in Peter had changed, and he was going to try and free Charlotte. She sent me to kill them because she knew I was starting to question my loyalties, so she had to test me. She also knew I’d fail and live the rest of my days looking over my shoulder, waiting for her to catch one more mistake and decide I wasn’t worth the trouble.”

“And so you still try to shield your mind out of habit, because you’re scarred by her manipulations”, Edward commented, resting his hand on Jasper’s shoulder. “And here I am, constantly probing into it, even when I don’t want to, turning your fear into reality.” He let out a small laugh. “Definitely the best companion you could ask for, am I not?”

Jasper laughed in return, leaning closer and whispering over the roaring wind, “And yet, you really are, Edward.”

As they sat, before laying down Jasper took off his jacket and folded it carefully, both to avoid excessive wrinkling and for Edward to use as a cushion on his chest. He was much more careful with clothes than Edward was, treating them with the respect Alice was frustrated not to find in her other male siblings.

They’d grown very accustomed to being so physical with each other. To Jasper it was quite natural: he’d been brought up in a world where homosexuality – well, sodomy, as it was – was not understood as an identity, just a behaviour, and not that mainstream a concern at that. So heterosexual men hadn’t sworn off hugs and other mutual gestures of physical affection yet, lest they’d tarnish their oh-so-precious masculinity. As long as he remembered that, he could act naturally, that close to Edward.

The boy came from a similar world, even though sometimes Jasper could feel him internally stir at their touches. Fleeting, quickly submerged flashes, so brief he couldn’t even make out what emotions they were precisely. But in the end, he was glad to accept the closeness, that same comfort that had saved him that fateful day in the forest.

“I hope you survive”, Edward scoffed, echoing Jasper’s first memory of María, which he’d read in another conversation. “Fucking bitch, she could have chosen not to put you in danger to begin with”, he added, clutching the arm Jasper had rested on his stomach and holding it close.

“Whoa, Mr. Cullen. What was that?” Jasper teased chucklingly, unaccustomed as he was to hearing profanities from Edward.

“Well, it was ungentlemanly of me, but completely warranted”, the other vampire replied with a shrug and half a crooked smirk.

“Then again, if she hadn’t turned me, we wouldn’t be here enjoying the ocean breeze together, would we?” Jasper mused, smoothing a stray lock of hair away from Edward’s forehead, as if it were possible to somehow tame it on a good day, let alone in the wind.

But Edward grew despondent at that thought.

“What?”

“Don’t do this to me, Jazz”, he murmured. “Don’t make me feel selfish.”

“And why would you feel so?”

“Because… these two scenarios – never knowing you, but you being spared this damnation… or you being inflicted all this so you could be in my life…” He moved sideways so he could look up at Jasper’s face. “I know what I should choose, what would be fair to you. But I’m afraid I’d choose what makes me happy.”

“And have you considered that perhaps, maybe, I want to be happy? That I am now, because becoming what I am, living through what I did, in the end brought me here to you?” There was a weirdly charged moment in which their gaze locked and their breath merged. Before his thoughts could linger on that for one too many instants, he added, “And to Alice, first. And Esme, and Rose, and Emmett and Carlisle.”

Edward sighed and returned his head on Jasper’s chest, looking up at the pine trees shaking in the wind.

“Happiness is not a sin, Edward”, Jasper reassured him firmly. “Not even for us.”

It was easy to believe so in that moment.

* * * * * * * * *

Occasionally, they’d talk about Bella Swan, too. She kept trying to connect with Edward despite everything, and they’d exchange a few words every now and again. One such occasion happened when Edward ditched the blood testing biology lesson for, well, obvious reasons, only to find a fainting Bella on a walkway towards the infirmary and, acting on chivalry, take her there and then drive her home.

“She’s an okay girl”, he commented the next day, while they were on a hunt across the Goat Rock Wilderness; Emmett was there too, but had left them behind a few minutes prior, too excited to get into a fight with a grizzly bear to humour their long chats. “In fact, I’d quite enjoy her if it weren’t for the blood problem. I’m both intrigued and frustrated at the same time that she remains a mystery to my sixth sense.”

Jasper honestly wished he could say the same. He felt her loud and clear at school, and the prevalent mood she gave off was chagrin. Chagrin, chagrin, over and over again.

“Jazz”, Edward chuckled, picking up on his thought.

“Trust me, it’s true.”

Edward rolled his eyes, biting down a smile. But then he sighed deeply.

“I wish I could find something… something greater still than my lust for her blood. Something so powerful that could keep me centred in her presence, and make it easier to resist the temptation. I’d like to make sure she’s safe.”

“Well”, Jasper said, quirking an eyebrow. “Just steer clear of her and that should do it, no?”

Edward sighed slightly, but he was amused. “I mean in general, not just from me: that girl is a magnet for accidents. Someone has to step up and protect her while she goes about building herself a future.”

Jasper smiled. “Always the romantic gentleman, aren’t you?”

“Hey! You two done billing and cooing? Come on!” Emmett shouted from across a gully, while casually dodging an attack from the bear.

Edward went stiff for just a fraction of a second, before rolling his eyes and sighing amusedly. “You’re such a petulant baby, Emmett!”

Jasper chuckled, then watched Edward leap across the ravine and join in on the action, quietly awestruck by how beautiful he looked in action. Except this time, with no human lives on the line, he could really enjoy the view serenely until noticing a prey of his own and focussing on the hunt proper.

Talks of Bella Swan gave way to more personal ones when, a few days later, Jasper had another blast from the past, this time in the form of Peter and Charlotte coming to Forks for a visit.

How readily his family would welcome them when they’d come along was heartwarming to Jasper: Esme was eternally grateful to Peter for “saving her child” from the war, and so was Carlisle. Emmett was always enthusiastic to meet the two “badass veterans”, while Rosalie was just glad that her purported twin brother had a social life outside of the family. Seeing his friends so accepted made him feel less out of place for a while.

And of course, both Peter and Charlotte adored Alice for pulling Jasper out of his deepest pit, when he still didn’t know how to overcome his depression even after he’d left his old life behind; during their previous visits, it had mostly been the four of them hanging out; this time around, though, it was Edward who stuck around the most. He was curious to hear stories about Jasper, hoping his closest friends would spill something interesting, or perhaps embarrass or tease him, but he also enjoyed their company out of the same boundless gratitude that Esme felt.

Jasper was surprised that Peter could dig up a few funny anecdotes from their less than pleasant past, and even Charlotte talked fondly of the little ways in which Jasper had helped her get through her hellish first year as a vampire.

Jasper felt the old, familiar remorse, thinking of how insufficient his small kind gestures to the newborns were in the face of the death he’d have to deliver once their first year was up, but Edward gently reassured him, caressing the back of his hand when he heard his thoughts.

All that talking of war and armies had brought back some of Edward’s own memories. After seeing Peter and Charlotte off, he told Jasper everything about his teenage dream of enlisting as a soldier, back during World War I. They were soaking up the rare afternoon sun and shimmering freely on the rooftop of their home – Jasper sitting against a chimney, and Edward lying down with his head on the empath’s lap.

Edward recalled his human days better than Jasper did, bust still somewhat vaguely, as if in a dream. He still remembered the propaganda, though: all the talks of patriotism, of serving the country and the great cause, of protecting liberty in America and all through the world. How pretty all those posters looked on the streets! All just sugarcoating for the greed and corruption that moved the war machine, Jasper knew it.

And yet, the teenager Edward had been was sincere in his belief that a soldier’s life would have been right for him. Much like Jasper had, until he got to touch it first-hand twice over, in the all too human Civil War and then in the vampire Southern wars.

“Oh, Edward”, Jasper said, with more fondness than he thought could be possible, “You think yourself an irredeemable monster, but you’re too pure for war.”

He got stung by some pique so, with a sigh, he elaborated, “It’s a senseless carnage, nothing more. One you’d never want to be anywhere near, I can promise you that. There’s nothing glorious, nothing heroic about it. Not to mention, as vampires we live long enough to look back and come to that horrible, shameful moment when we realise we were standing on the wrong side of history to begin with.”

“You couldn’t have known better. You were born and raised there and then: that mentality was all there was, all you could have known”, Edward commented with conviction. And as he heard the first hint of a protest in Jasper’s mind, he added a bit impatiently, “Come on, if it’s true of me and my acting as judge, jury and executioner, it is true of you too. A equals A, Jasper.”

“That doesn’t change that I fought for a so-called homeland that only ever existed for the purpose of keeping fellow human beings enslaved”, Jasper replied, slightly agitated. “Nor does it change that my ‘heroics’ in the war”, and he charged that word with all the sarcasm and contempt he had, “went on to be the rotten foundation upon which segregation was later built. ‘Those men fought valiantly for our freedom to take away other people’s liberty. The Southern cause had shiny heroes, it can’t be bad, or wrong. In fact, we were the wronged ones. We must honour our glorious, idealised past by finding other shackles to put around the wrists and ankles and necks of those we wanted to keep subdued to begin with’. That’s my legacy, Edward. Mine, and my fellow soldiers’. And what’s worse, it still endures today.”

He didn’t bother hiding the regret and discomfort that those thoughts, that awareness caused him – there was no need to, not around Edward. That was the downside of choosing to honour life, to reenter society and get some of his humanity back: humans were people again to him, all of them, and he had to reckon with having played a part in building the struggles so many faced.

Edward fell silent for a long while, too. He couldn’t find the words, but he was gently submerging Jasper with wave after wave of sympathy, understanding, admiration – of all things! – and affection. A powerful, all-encompassing affection.

“Yes, I do admire you”, Edward replied to his thoughts. “Most people don’t have the strength, or courage, to acknowledge the full extent of the damage they’ve caused, deliberately or otherwise.” He reached for Jasper’s jaw, stroking the same scar he’d touched many times before. “It’s an extraordinary thing, that you faced it at all. And that awareness is the key to change: yourself, first, and then, bit by bit, the world around you. That soul-searching you did, it means you could, I don’t know, go to school tomorrow with an essay about the diaries you found from your great-great-grandfather, Major Whitlock, and the conclusion you’ve drawn from them. And some of those kids will listen to you and change their mind, or feel validated in thinking like you do now, and talk to someone else with the strength you gave them.”

Jasper smiled a little in spite of himself. He wished he could see himself the way Edward did.

“Alice likes to pretend that my past doesn’t matter anymore, but it does”, he said. He lowered his voice to a whisper, hoping it’d be too faint for her to overhear from three floors below. “We don’t all have the luxury of not having one.” He returned to his normal tone to add, “And I’m so glad I found you, who can understand why I can’t shake this burden off. You don’t try to erase it, but you make it feel bearable.”

Edward smiled at him. “As you do mine.”

When their eyes met again, Jasper could swear he saw Edward shudder. And he himself did too.

It was so unusual for a vampire to shudder. The last one he’d seen was Peter, one night while he was training Charlotte and they’d fallen to the ground together. That had been the only wholesome thing he’d ever seen in all of that horror.

Picking up on that thought, Edward mused, “I still maintain that you were thrust into that violence. And even more so in that of the vampire army. That one you definitely didn’t choose.”

“But does it really matter after all?” Jasper pondered with a sigh. “Whatever the causes, the consequence of my military past is an endless trail of death. The people I killed with my musket. The people who were killed, directly or indirectly, by the nostalgics of that war. The people I fed upon. The people I turned into monstrous soldiers and then disposed of in the other war. The people who’d been turned by other vampire leaders and forced to fight me.”

Edward moved his hand away from the scar to cup Jasper’s cheek.

“There’s no fixing the past, Jasper. The only thing we can do is acknowledge the damage we’ve done, learn to live with it, be mindful of the voices of those we’ve wronged, admit that some of it was out of our hands, too, and do our best so it won’t happen again.”

“That includes you, though. A equals A”, Jasper reminded him.

“Yes, it does”, Edward conceded, though Jasper could sense he was just pandering to him.

“I’m serious. If it doesn’t apply to your four years of taking a life every couple of weeks, how can it to my eighty and more years? And with me, it was not just the feeding, but all the carnage as well.”

“That’s why I hate the mere thought of María so much”, Edward lamented, visibly frustrated. “I can make peace with her damning you to the endless night. It brought you to m– to us.” He took a pause to swallow. “But forcing you to endure so much violence day after day after day, playing her mind games to keep you there, to destroy any sense of self-worth you had and reduce you to her monster on a leash, until only guilt could fill up the wound she gave you…” His tone, expression and emotional outlet were full of contempt and ache. “I’ll never forgive her.”

The contempt for María faded from Edward’s emotions, while the ache blossomed into compassion and sweet, strong endearment. And they were so intense, as if Edward was finally allowing himself to feel fully, no intellectual distractions, so that Jasper could appreciate the depth of his feelings for him.

“You sweet boy”, Jasper murmured, turning his head to brush his lips against Edward’s wrist and hand.

Edward didn’t reply. Jasper spent a while looking at the sunlight refracting all over his skin. He was so beautiful in the golden hour, his hair ablaze, his features gilded and emphasised by the grazing rays. Jasper couldn’t resist the urge to caress him, to trace Edward’s cheekbone and jawline with his fingers, to comb through his hair.

And there it was again, that mutual shudder, just as Jasper’s gaze stopped on Edward’s lips for the tiniest of moments.

Without renouncing Jasper’s touch on his face, Edward sat up slowly, turning so he could face him.

They leaned in slowly, eyelids closing, until their hair brushed each other’s forehead. Until they could feel each other’s shaky breath on their slightly parted lips.

There was a sudden stab of panic coming from Edward. He quickly withdrew.

“Edward…” Jasper murmured, opening his eyes.

The boy swallowed a lump of uneasiness, leaning further backwards. Neither of them dared acknowledge what had just almost happened, not with words, not in other ways they could accidentally broadcast to each other. Edward was trying his best not to feel anything again, while Jasper’s thoughts were suddenly filled with admiration for Esme’s excellent job on restoring the tilework of the roof. But neither of them was doing that good of a job at concealing anything.

Jasper looked at the younger vampire.

“We can speak frankly”, he echoed one of their conversations. And indeed, he felt like he couldn’t keep quiet. He owed Edward clarity. And he owed it to himself.

“Edward, I…”

He couldn’t say anything further. Edward suddenly stood up and turned around with a sharp, panicked “What?!” just in time for an extremely upset Alice to climb one of the nearby cedars and leap onto the roof.

“We need to go, Edward! Now!”

Notes:

According to the Twilight Lexicon timeline, the van accident did canonically happen the week after the Huygens probe landed on Titan, which gave me the perfect opening for Rosalie’s remark.
Also, I felt I couldn’t handle Jasper without addressing his Civil War past. I personally don’t think Smeyer is malicious, so much as careless when she throws sensitive things in without thinking of the implications. But this one really needed fixing. Cuddling and political talking: who doesn’t like that?

Chapter 3: Deadlocked

Summary:

Alice brings home some news that sets in motion a chain of events, and Jasper can only watch as a very upset Edward makes some decisions.

Notes:

I listened heavily to Deadlocked by Tristania to get in the mood for this chapter.

TW: there’s some explicit-ish reminiscing of past psychological abuse, manipulation and gaslighting.

From what everybody could gather overhearing Edward and Alice’s rushed, cryptic half-psychic conversation, something bad was going to happen to Bella Swan in Port Angeles. Alice had been keeping an eye remotely on her as per usual, to see if her outing with her human friends could result in their outing, when something had come up completely out of left field; she and Edward had jumped on a car to sort it out.

And so, except for Carlisle who was at work, there they were downstairs, he, Esme, Emmett and Rosalie, waiting for news on whether to start packing already.

Rosalie was particularly sullen. “Why must everything about Belinda be so complicated all the time?”

“It’s Bella, dear.”

“It’s potato potato, Esme.”

Of course, she forgot to misname her when Alice came back and told everybody what her vision had been about. Turned out their secret was way beside the point.

“What’s worse, I can’t see the future right now. Edward’s… agitated. He’s on the verge of some big decision, but I can’t know what until he makes up his damn mind.”

“Why did you even leave him with her in the first place?” Rosalie asked, disbelief in her voice. “Blood-singing bullshit aside: the almost rape victim and the boy who keeps looking daggers and making her uncomfortable at school? Seriously, Alice?”

Part of what she voiced was Jasper’s own concern, except he was more worried about Edward having to suffer the lure of Bella’s blood while already upset, and for a much longer car ride than just school-to-Swan-house. He knew it was selfish and unjust to brush Bella’s mental well-being aside like that, but above all he worried that, should something have happened, Edward would’ve never forgiven himself.

“I saw him do some very stupid, late 1920s things if I’d stayed with Bella and let him go on his own”, Alice explained.

“That’d be the one time we’d see eye to eye, he and I”, Rosalie grumbled before storming outside, phone in hand.

“It was the safer option, up until Edward started brooding over god knows what and clouded my vision”, Alice justified herself, with a hint of frustration. Jasper hugged her from behind and bent down to kiss the top of her head.

He was afraid he was the reason Edward was so wound up. What was he thinking, coming this close to… to kissing Edward? Because that was what it was – he could now think it “out loud”.

Why did he let himself go that far? He’d been sincere in his desire to only be close to Edward in a platonic, 1800s manly camaraderie kind of way, including on the physical side, so why did he have to ruin that?

Jasper had no idea how Edward, with his upbringing, values and ideas, both general and specifically about indulging one’s instincts, would feel about that part of him. It had never really come up: not in the fifty plus years they spent as glorified, if friendly, housemates, surely not now that they were truly bonding. He almost dreaded knowing what Edward would think of… it.

Of course Jasper himself wasn’t surprised. He’d pushed dealing with it for as long as he could, but he’d always known. He remembered but a handful of details of his human life, and the constant underlying secrecy was one of them.

Back in Houston, he’d been too daring with a boy who hadn’t taken it particularly well; that had factored into his decision to run off and join the army, still underage, to return too glorious and respected for that rumour to take root, should it come out. In a way, that only made things worse, as the longer he stayed in the army, the more he became aware that he had eyes both for the battlefield nurses and his fellow soldiers. Thankfully, the ever-present grime and gore and violence made acting on any of those urges quite unappealing.

But in the end, he couldn’t resist riding to Galveston to meet with an officer he’d grown rather fond of, who was currently on leave, and that’s what put him in María’s path.

Of course, there was no time for any of that in his other army – not so much because of the incessant fighting, but rather of María and her jealousy. Still grieving her deceased mate didn’t mean she’d mind some distraction in the form of a blond, supernaturally gifted pretty boy, especially because it was also a useful way to ensure his utter loyalty and devotion. And much like the territory, her boy toy was hers and hers alone.

It didn’t take her long to learn how to work around his gift, how to push her lust for him to the forefront and hide the rest, how to twist her possessiveness into making him feel wanted, appreciated. She even managed to make him doubt his own perceptions when her feelings of contempt and scorn started surfacing.

She was just as talented at exploiting Jasper’s own conscience against him. While the other newborns would get scared with talks of ubiquitous violence they couldn’t survive outside without María’s protection, Jasper would also be told over and over again that no one but her could ever love someone like him, the perfect killing machine. The guiltier he felt over his war crimes, the more she’d stress it, the tighter her leash would become.

So whenever he’d look at any of the newborns with a keener eye than necessary, if only out of friendliness, or dare suggest recruiting one of the defeated enemies he’d taken pity on, she’d find ways to remind him that he belonged to her, a prized possession, a glorified weapon, and a toy, with no entitlement to emotions or wants of its own.

Convincing her to keep Peter had been a nightmare: she only spared him because he was objectively a great tactician, and Jasper had to swear and prove that she was still the centre of his world, in any way possible.

He got so used to repressing himself, his feelings and sensibilities, both to survive the fights and to appease María, that he never went back and consciously questioned himself – not even when, after escaping and having tentative contacts with human society, he caught wind of the new concept of sexual orientation as an identity. Although he did relate with that view, if subconsciously, María was always there, in the back of his head, whipping him with her possessiveness and jealousy whenever he’d gaze at a man.

He instinctively held on to Alice more tightly. What had drawn him so much to her and kept him by her side, when they found each other, was just how pure her love felt: no possessiveness, no judgement, no demands. He sensed it, that she’d never want to chain him to herself like an object: she only wanted to be happy with him, and for him to be happy with her.

Of course, he stopped questioning himself altogether when he and Alice got married. True, while they were still living a nomadic life together the subject had sort of come up, hypothetically, and Alice had been not only perfectly okay with it, but even perplexed at his embarrassment; but after they’d committed to each other, what was the point anymore?

That had worked quite well in the past half century, up until that afternoon; now he was wondering whether what he’d built with Edward in the past weeks was actually a spit in Alice’s face and everything she’d given him.

That included seeking out the Cullens in the first place: true, they stayed because she liked living with them, but they had arrived because he needed a stable environment to heal and find some peace of mind.

Alice noticed him tugging at his shirt’s cuffs, and gently took his hands to stop him. She looked up at him and said “By the way, I’m sorry about earlier, Jazz.”

“You’re…?” He muttered, confused.

“I needed him to find Bella – well, to find her aggressors. I don’t know Port Angeles all that well…”

Was she apologising for taking Edward away from him? And when he’d come this close to cheating on her with him, to boot?

“N-no, I… we… I’m…”

“Shh, it’s okay”, she reassured him sweetly, reaching up to stroke his hair.

Thankfully, Rosalie came back, breaking Jasper’s awkwardness.

“Carlisle’s gonna take care of it” she announced flatly. “Through legal means. Mostly.”

“What’s a typical Cullen Tuesday without some string-pulling, gear-greasing and a bit of corruption, am I right?” Emmett quipped to try and lighten the mood, though his concern was dead serious when he embraced Rosalie to soothe her. Beneath his boisterous, happy-go-lucky demeanour he understood perfectly how deep Rosalie’s emotions ran, and how much her scars could still ache when touched too directly.

No one missed the irony of Rosalie, with her haughty proclamations of not caring about humans at all, being the first to act so that the rapist would be taken off the streets, but they didn’t point it out. Esme caressed her hair with that special understanding that fellow survivors of domestic violence or abuse have.

On the flip side, that afternoon’s ordeal had softened Rosalie considerably towards Bella Swan by the time Edward returned home and announced that the girl had figured them out. On her own merit, through logical deduction with a little push from local folklore. Alice still couldn’t see what would become of it due to whatever crisis was going on in Edward’s mind, but Carlisle once again invited everyone to be level-headed and optimistic.

Jasper respected Carlisle as a coven leader, and often allowed himself to love him as a father figure too, but all that trust in everybody’s good inner nature eventually prevailing could get on his nerves sometimes. That day, after his true inner nature had emerged and likely costed him one of the people that mattered the most to him, it rang particularly hollow. So he excused himself and took off to hunt solo and spend the night away from the house, to brood undisturbed like he hadn’t done since that fateful incident.

* * * * * * * * *

The real kicker came the very next day.

Much to everyone’s shock, by the time they arrived at school Edward and Bella had become a couple. Just like that.

After dodging her like the plague for weeks on end, apparently Edward now worshipped the very ground she walked on. And after over a month of being straight up ignored by him, it turned out Bella Swan was “unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him”, as she confided giddily to a bewildered Alice.

Oh, but it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows with Miss Swan, no, of course she found time to also broadcast her trademark chagrin once or twice, when her friends pressed her for details. Jasper could sense it from the other side of the school, loud and clear. Fuck, he could pinpoint her location by her chagrin. Maybe Alice should have taken him to look for Bella in Port Angeles.

His mood worsened at lunch, when he couldn’t help but overhear Edward’s masterclass in sending mixed signals to the poor girl, seemingly trying to lead her on and put her off at the same time. After ten minutes of focussing his thoughts on a meticulous study of the peel of the orange on his own tray, Jasper just stood up and left to go sulk in Rosalie’s car, hopefully far enough not to have to censor his thoughts too much. He ignored Emmett’s confusion, Alice’s concern and Rosalie’s bemused curiosity, grumbling something about feeling thirsty to excuse himself.

That wasn’t a complete lie: as sated as he was from the night before, the moroser he got, the harder it became to focus on not finding the multiple scents around him appetising. He literally felt like nervous eating.

And by the way, feeling that morose was stupid to begin with. He knew he was being unfair with all that vitriol. Of course, Edward’s decision puzzled him, but it wasn’t Bella he was angry at. Hell, it wasn’t even their blossoming romance that made him so upset. If anything, he should be happy that Edward had found someone at last, however complicated that was due to their respective natures.

He just couldn’t shake the thought that Edward was making it up as he went, without a plan on how to overcome those obstacles and, worse yet, not even sure about going through with it. And that lack of planning from someone so cerebral meant he was acting on panic, of which Jasper was afraid of being the cause.

But he was also feeling irrationally betrayed, so he’d rather keep sulking than confront Edward.

That, and he dreaded being rejected by him.

On the bright side, since Edward had made up his mind that morning, Alice could see clearly into the future again: she had already assured them all that there was no impending doom on the horizon; if anything, she could see Bella growing closer to the family instead. Most of it, at any rate.

Vampirism seemed to be in the cards for her, too, especially if it were up to Bella herself. Jasper could scarcely believe a human in the know would want that, but at very least it meant Edward wouldn’t kill her and spend the rest of eternity torturing himself over it.

Clinging to that thought is what helped Jasper pull through the school day.

* * * * * * * * *

Edward surprised him late that night, when he returned home, knocked on Jasper and Alice’s door and, very naturally, gestured towards the forest beyond the big window. “Shall we go?”

Jasper was too taken aback not to oblige. This time, though, there was no enthusiastic jumping out of the window, no running, no playful competing, wrestling, outrunning and catching up with one another: they took the stairs and walked slowly, quietly, only leaping to cross the river before keeping on at human pace again. When they reached an old, dilapidated cottage, long-forgotten within the Cullen grounds, they stopped and sat on the single step beneath the arched front door. The smell of dust, mould, rotting wood and general disarray coming through the broken windows drowned the all too familiar earthy scents of the forest.

“I… wasn’t expecting we’d keep having our talks”, Jasper commented, breaking the silence at last.

“Why not?” Edward asked, on the defensive.

As soon as he felt that mounting uneasiness, Jasper course-corrected, “I thought you’d be spending your time with… with Bella?”

Edward scowled, but he was amused. “She’s asleep now. Humans do that.”

“Oh, right.”

Edward snorted. “She asked me if I’d ever snuck in and watched her sleep, said it’d have been romantic.” His tone was a bit incredulous. “And tonight she kind of expected me to stick around and do that.”

Jasper frowned. “That’s not romantic, that’s kinda creepy.”

“You think?”

Jasper sighed deeply; the chagrin he felt was entirely his own, for a change.

After a long pause, he said, “Listen, about yesterday…”

“Yeah! It was a crazy evening, wasn’t it?” Edward cut in, shifting his pose. However much he tried to conceal it, he radiated uneasiness.

It was very clear he’d rather avoid addressing that one moment when nothing at all happened, as he course-corrected his thoughts not to upset him, so Jasper gave up and replied, “Yeah… yes, Alice told us.”

“I took Carlisle to look for the man after you left”, he went on, as if to get further away from their incident. “He sedated him and dropped him near the police station. Turns out he was wanted in two other States.”

“Well, good”, Jasper provided vaguely.

There was a lot going on in his head beneath the comfortable cloak of studying the vines of the still blossomless honeysuckle climbing up the walls, but Edward picked up his main question before he could even phrase it in his thoughts.

“What was going to happen to her, the… assault”, he said, his jaw taut, “it made me realise things. My reaction did: I was furious at those scumbags and I wanted to punish them, I wanted it so badly! But saving her felt right, more so than anything I’ve ever done. Remember when I told you someone should step up and protect her? Well… I think that should be me. It made me feel… worthy, more than going after those men would have. She made me choose goodness over vengeance.” He looked up from the overgrown ferns to Jasper. “And I realised: I love her. She’s the light of my life, I can’t be without her.”

Jasper had even more questions – if only because he’d never caught even a glimpse of such feelings in Edward until that very day – but, again, Edward was quicker than him. “And that means I certainly can’t afford to kill her for her blood.”

“Oh.”

As realisation dawned on Jasper, once again Edward anticipated him. “Yeah, I know what you’re thinking.” He snorted and rolled his eyes. “I mean, figuratively. Also literally. Damn, these powers.”

“Can you please stop doing that?” Jasper was getting slightly annoyed at Edward for answering his questions before he could formulate them complete with the uncomfortable parts.

“What, dazzling you?” Edward replied with his crooked grin. “Do I dazzle you too?” He was amused, as if at some inside joke only he could get, except Jasper had overheard that exchange between him and Bella at lunch.

“Edward, I’m serious”, he sighed, crossing into exasperation. He could tell even without his powers that, for whatever reason, coming clean to him about the Bella Swan situation was eating at Edward. He understood the mindreader was trying to stall, deflect, make light of it, but Jasper was in no mood.

“Have I made you uncomfortable, at any point?” He couldn’t help but ask point blank. He hated projecting himself as the protagonist of Edward’s life, the catalyst of this big decision, but he needed to know. The timing was suspicious at best.

Edward looked rather like a deer caught in the headlights. He oozed caution when he replied slowly, “It’s not you that have made me uncomfortable. That much I can assure you of.”

That was an oddly specific way of phrasing it.

Jasper looked at him for a while, wishing they could somehow trade talents, because Edward’s emotional state was very unhelpful at the moment, and Jasper could have used reading his thoughts instead. Edward flinched covertly at that thought, something the blond wouldn’t even have noticed just a couple of months before.

“So I don’t dazzle you either. That’s good”, he commented, trying to lighten the mood a bit.

Edward smiled a little, but Jasper’s doubt were far from being sated.

“So this… dating Bella, loving her. Is it the…” He hesitated, but then decided to say what else was truly bothering him, “…convenient ‘something greater’ than the pull of her blood that you were looking for, isn’t it?”

Even not factoring himself, the suddenness of it all couldn’t help but make him question Edward’s motives and sincerity. He wondered whether the poor boy had convinced himself to embark in that mess just to distract himself from her scent.

Edward got a sinking feeling upon overhearing those thoughts. He turned to face Jasper and laid both hands on one of his.

“I am in love, Jasper”, he said confidently, not a hint of his inner agitation tainting his voice. “I swear it to you, I’ve sincerely never been so in love before. I only realised yesterday, but it’s been going on for a while, at least since the day I saved her from the van. Feel it for yourself.”

Beneath the turmoil, there was sincerity in those words, Jasper could tell. Edward looked right at the empath, as if to further communicate his earnestness.

And suddenly, all Jasper could feel was love. Battered and half-buried, laced with guilt and remorse, shame even, but it was there, inside of Edward, unmistakable.

“Well”, he said, clinging to thoughts of Alice and smiling. “I’m happy for you, Edward. I truly am.” He slipped his hand away from Edward’s to pat him on the shoulder. “And don’t worry about the rest: you’ll figure it out, you’re smart.”

Edward swallowed and turned to face the forest.

“I’m just… sorry that you’ll have to deal with the thirst”, Jasper continued, smiling bitterly. “No one understands that better than me. But… well, it won’t be forever. Things will get better once she turns—”

“That’s not going to happen!” Edward cut him off, springing to his feet. The violence of his outrage hit Jasper’s empathy like a slap.

“Alice said it’s a strong possibility. A reoccurring one in many, if not most scenarios.”

“She’s wrong”, Edward said brusquely. “I won’t let that happen. I won’t cost Bella her soul, I won’t consign her to eternal damnation. I won’t make a monster of her. That’s not open for discussion.”

While Jasper agreed wholeheartedly – not out of concern for metaphysical damnation, but because vampirism sucked at a very practical level, pun intended – he still felt he had to play devil’s advocate, if only to spare Edward the heartbreak. “But… you’re going to lose her, someday. And not because you’ll hurt her: time will. She can’t be your mate for long like this.”

“No.” Edward said firmly, though no longer angrily. “No, Jasper. She won’t be a victim of my selfishness.” He glanced down at him and swallowed a lump. “Had I found companionship in someone who’s already a vampire… had the damage already been done, an eternity together with my true love would have thrilled me. But someone else’s soul is too steep a price to pay for that.” He sat down, as if tired after that outburst. “As for the scent, my love for her will keep me from giving in to the thirst.”

Jasper quietly gave up. “As I said, you’ll figure it out. I believe in you”, he conceded.

Suddenly, Jasper sensed a little nostalgia in him, as Edward mused, “I think my mum would have liked Bella. Not Esme, I mean, Elizabeth. She always imagined I’d pass her engagement ring on to my girl, to match the most beautiful of wedding gowns.” He sighed softly. “She and father always told me how important it would be to marry, be a respectful and dutiful husband, love and cherish a woman with all my heart, do right by her. And then go on and have my own family, in rectitude and God’s grace. Pass the Masen name down, raise my children to be good Christians and keep the family in the light.” He smiled softly, with a hint of irony. “Well, the latter can’t happen anymore, but hey… maybe there’s hope for the former after all. And that will redeem all the evil I’ve done, and… and all the immorality I could have been doing. I’m seeing hope, at last, and I have a chance to honour my parents somehow.”

“That’s… a beautiful thought, Edward. I’m happy for you”, Jasper replied, trying not to think of María’s furious, possessive and slightly disgusted gaze, of which he’d been reminded by one of the things Edward had just said. He caught himself absentmindedly buttoning his shirt al the way up to the collar.

“Thank you, Jazz”, Edward replied with a little smile.

But for the quickest of moments, before distracting himself from his emotions as he used to do, he was definitely not thankful, hopeful or in love: he was miserable and scared.

Notes:

Most of the events from Twilight are still happening in some form, with the logical differences. Of course Port Angeles being the Cabot Cove of the Twilightverse had to be there.

In regards to Bella figuring the Cullens out, my original draft made a more direct reference to Jacob’s help, but I ultimately decided to keep it as vague and oblique as I could, not wanting to drag any real-life Native American Nation into it. In the same spirit with which I tried to be mindful of the real-life implications of Jasper’s past, I acknowledge I don’t have the tools to integrate the Quileute heritage into the narrative in a tasteful, non-exploitative way, and I’d rather avoid repeating or implicitly condoning the cultural appropriation and stereotyping Smeyer and the movies screenwriters made (intentionally or otherwise) of the Quileute Nation.
Here are some resources to concretely help the tribe, and learn more about the real history and challenges of the Quileute people.

Chapter 4: Turpentine

Summary:

As Edward lives on his romance with Bella, the Cullens have to adjust to the new situation. Jasper and Alice, in particular, grapple with what getting closer to human teenagers has been telling them about themselves.

Notes:

You may want to play Turpentine by Oceans of Slumber to set the mood. Perhaps it’s because they’re Texan, but they’re my go-to soundtrack when I’m writing Jasper.

As it turned out, Edward’s newfound relationship truly didn’t keep them from having their talks, even after it became very serious. When Edward would get back home at night, mentally exhausted from resisting Bella’s scent all day long, it would be Jasper he’d turn to. After a while, even physical contact went back to being a natural part of their friendship: the more stoic a façade Edward put on, trying to minimise how hard it all was, the more desperate he was for Jasper’s reassurance and support, so much so that he didn’t care what form it would arrive in. And Jasper simply couldn’t deny him: seeing how his mere presence lifted Edward’s spirits, even a little, was a reward in and of itself, one Jasper soon started craving despite how low he’d feel in-between fixes.

He hated feeling stuck like that, caught between trying to curb his attraction, and having to feed it in spite of himself. But much like Edward swore that the love, goodness and happiness that being with Bella brought to his life were worth the endless fight with his thirst, Jasper, too, appreciated the what he could do for Edward despite having to censor his thoughts and feelings not to push him away.

It was all much tamer than before, though: he carefully avoided thinking of that in Edward’s presence, but Jasper couldn’t be sure of the purity of his own intents anymore; being too physical would be unfair both to Edward, who had clearly got so uncomfortable after the roof episode as to never even mention it again, and especially to Alice.

He’d never, ever entertained the idea of cheating on her. He could let himself get away with cuddling up with Edward while he still was in denial of any non-platonic implications, but that was no more. Whenever touching Edward sent shivers through his body, he knew he was wronging his own mate. And with Bella’s constantly looming shadow, too, Jasper elected adamantly to force himself not to mistake that closeness for anything more than brotherly, ever again.

They settled into this new routine shortly after the unexpectedly chaotic first two weeks of Edward and Bella’s dating – Jasper would rather avoid thinking of that at all – and kept going just as steady as Edward’s romantic relationship did.

Jasper was inevitably seeing much more of Bella too now, both when Edward would bring her home and at school during their lunch break. Alice and Edward even joined the other juniors’ table to help Bella in her leg cast after her “accident”, and he did too to stay close to both in what was to be his last year in (that) high school. Rosalie resented him a little for that, as she did Alice for basically dropping her ever since becoming friends with Bella. Of course, she’d obstinately remain at her own table, with Emmet in tow out of solidarity.

“Can’t believe everybody’s ditching me for Betty these days”, she grumbled.

“You mean Bella?” Emmett asked, trying to sound conciliatory.

“It’s literally the same name!” She burst out, looking daggers at Emmett. “Really, etymologically. Look it up.”

Jasper secretly felt for her, but he was putting a concrete effort into liking Bella, at least for Edward’s and Alice’s sake.

On the flip side, being more social finally allowed Jasper to make good on the resolution Edward had inspired in him: when his English literature class tackled Margaret Mitchell, he actively participated in the ensuing debate, giving his own unique insight about Southern nostalgia, and even brought it to the junior clique. Some students he made uncomfortable, some he quite impressed: Angela Weber, for instance, was genuinely interested, asked him many questions, and thanked him for giving her valid talking points should she have to debate the Civil War’s racist legacy in the future. Lauren Mallory seemed particularly annoyed by it; Edward told him she kept mulling over it for weeks afterwards, and he once overheard her butting heads with Angela and her boyfriend Ben over it, though without much conviction.

And speaking of humans, the biggest silver lining: hanging around Bella so much was some pretty impressive training for Jasper. Her scent was particularly appealing to all vampires, though not to the extent it was to Edward, so being persistently immersed in it was helping Jasper get a much better grip on his inner monster. Not in her actual presence: there was no improvement there, he had to constantly put a conscious effort into it for his mouth not to water. But by the time of his graduation, which she didn’t attend, he found out he could handle a room full of his fellow seniors, their parents and relatives without straining himself – in fact, he could put his self-control on the back burner and actually enjoy the sheer mundanity of the event.

For once, he genuinely accepted Carlisle’s plaudits, and enjoyed how proud of him his father was. He was quietly thankful to Bella for it, and decided he would actually like her, chagrin and all, if not for some details that would occasionally slip past Edward’s enthusiastic reports of their romance, and seemingly contradict them.

For one thing, by the end of the school year he’d gone right back into his tough, unfeeling shell, which frustrated Jasper: it made him feel like all the progress they’d made together had been thrown out of the window and replaced by stagnation.

When he was around her, in particular, Edward was controlled and restrained, though he acted affectionate and warm. On occasion, he’d give off a fuzzy, gentle fondness, definitely some sense of protectiveness, but little else. It was more akin to a mild infatuation, if not mere fascination, than the anguished love that had echoed from beneath his worries and fears that one time by the crumbling cottage. It was underwhelming, even factoring Edward going overboard with caution.

Jasper kept telling himself that this was normal. That each and every couple was its own universe, with its own rules and emotions.

He loved Alice like no one else in the world. He was devoted to her, who’d been his first real family, his first light of hope in this existence. And yet, as a couple they’d never been anywhere near the same level of burning passion as, say, Rosalie and Emmett, or complete spiritual bonding as Esme and Carlisle.

He never once regretted meeting and loving Alice, nor going through with marrying her. A marriage they consummated, though nowhere near the same frequency or ravenous appetite as Emmett and Rosalie, and was still as fresh and loving as it had been in the Fifties. They still had each other’s back, no matter what, and could guess each other’s needs with just a glance. All of that meant the world to him, and to Alice too, he knew.

Though different, their love was no less valid than their parents’ or siblings’.

He knew he ought to afford Edward and Bella the same leniency, but Edwards’s lukewarm affection was far from the only shaky part in the foundation of them as a couple.

Bella went overboard in the opposite direction, in a sense. No matter what, there was no wrong Edward could do or have done. He would open up to her about himself, his nature, his past, and she’d invariably downplay it, build justifications and excuses, and come up still considering him perfect and spotless. It was different from Carlisle’s trust in their growth, Esme’s patience, or even Alice’s hyperfocus on the future to the detriment of the past: they at least acknowledged that work had to be done. But not Bella: she just projected her own idealisation of Edward onto him, and straight up ignored anything that didn’t fit.

Jasper appreciated that she only wanted a happy, carefree relationship for them both, but that was not what Edward needed. What he needed was for people to understand and accept his responsibility for what he’d done and love him nonetheless, while still holding him accountable. He needed for the progress he’d made to be acknowledged even when he didn’t, not for everything to be swept under the rug, pretending it was inconsequential. Jasper could understand that perfectly.

Perhaps, he’d occasionally worry in spite of his best efforts, Edward’s tiredness wasn’t only because of Bella’s scent; perhaps he was growing miserable.

Sometimes – rigorously when Edward was out – Jasper wondered how they even worked out together. Granted, they had in common a penchant for doing or saying the most ridiculously dramatic thing possible at all times.

Jasper was still sore about that time Bella had manipulated him and Alice into letting their guard down so she could sneak behind their back and go look for James the tracker in that ballet studio in Phoenix. He’d been afraid Edward would never forgive him – or Alice, of course – and that thought had almost crushed him.

That had been the only time since they’d joined the Cullens that he’d doubted Alice’s foresight-based reassurances that everything would turn out fine: right until Bella was stable in her hospital bed and Edward could leave her side to go talk to him, thank him for looking after her the way he did, and reassure him that he didn’t hold him responsible for her escapade, Jasper was stuck tormenting himself in that shabby hotel room.

He’d never craved anything – not even blood! – more than he’d craved Edward’s forgiveness and reassurance in that moment. He could scarcely trust his hearing, his empathy, even, when Edward gave that to him unconditionally and wholly, along with his affection and relief that he’d come out unscathed from his and Emmett’s fight with James.

They stood there in each other’s arms, Edward leaning onto Jasper’s shoulder, and Jasper resting his temple against Edward’s hair, inhaling deeply as if the mindreader’s scent could replace with ferny soil and mossy pine trees the sharp, dusty, desert-climate odours of Phoenix, yet another painful reminder of his past.

Those four days had been endless, not just because of handling such close proximity with a very mouth-watering human while focussing on strategies and countermoves, or the effort it took to get out of that studio after killing James when she was bleeding all over the place: it was also how much he’d noticed Edward’s absence. Minute after minute, hour after hour. And then, when he finally had him, Jasper had to put on a smile and a brave face to let him go back to his still unconscious girlfriend. No wonder he was quick to return to Forks as soon as he was no longer needed in Arizona, choosing to drive back one of the cars alone.

Seeing Jasper so upset at the prospect of losing Edward had somewhat changed Alice, too. Small, almost unnoticeable differences, at first, but soon, despite his steel-hard resolve to stick faithfully by her side, he found her gazing into an ever-shifting future, with doubts, questions and wistfulness creeping into her usually sunny disposition.

That came to a head by the end of the school year. A few days after Jasper’s graduation, they sat together by the river, listening to its quiet murmur and to the other sounds of the forest, both of them oppressed by a looming sense of inevitability.

Alice’s gaze was not fixed on the future, for a change, but on one specific finger of her left hand.

“You know, it’s easier at school”, she mused in an uncharacteristically understated voice. “Without the wedding rings, I mean. We’re just teenagers dating, it’s… less scary, I guess?”

Jasper glanced at her. “What’s scary about being married?”

Alice flicked a pebble across the river with her fingers. It shattered when it hit a boulder. “Marriage seems so final, doesn’t it? Set in stone.” She looked at him and grinned, if a bit pensively. “Dating as teenagers feels freer: you’re allowed to try, fail, try again. Experiment. Break up, make up, let the relationship breathe, or even turn into something different if need be.”

He felt a lump in his throat, and an echo of what as a human he would have called nausea.

He couldn’t help but frantically check Alice’s emotions, focussing his gift to go deeper than what she was feeling at the moment. He hated doing that, deliberately invading the privacy of someone’s deepest feelings; he hadn’t done that in almost half a century, but now he was panicking.

He didn’t even have to reach far to find it: Alice’s love was unchanged. As was his own.

“Why are you telling me this?”

Alice leaned forward to hug her legs.

“I love you Jasper. I knew I would when I first saw you in my vision, and I’ve loved you since I actually met you and got to know you. Not a single thing of that has changed, nor will it ever.” She smiled again, this time meaning it. “What has changed is my perspective on our love.”

Jasper was barely moving at all. “I don’t understand.” He was lying, though. Alice’s words had cracked his tough, layered shell of denial, and he knew perfectly what she meant.

“Well, Jasper”, she replied, “we were one man and one woman. We met in the 1940s. We formed the deepest of bonds. And then we got married in the 1950s at Carlisle’s behest.” She rested her chin on one knee, tilting her head sideways to keep looking at Jasper. “It made sense at the time, with the mindset and customs of the era. That’s how relationships worked: man loves woman, woman loves man; they marry. Simple, plain, uncomplicated.”

Jasper smirked, if bitterly. “We’re anything but uncomplicated.”

Alice returned the smirk with self-irony. “Definitely.”

As more and more awareness leaked through the broken shell, Jasper mused, “When we met I was lost. Completely. I wanted to stop existing. And you, with no human past, were still figuring out who you were – who you wanted to be. You wanted to start truly existing.” He bent one leg, too, so he could rest his chin on his knee. “In a way, that brought us balance, we completed each other. But I don’t think we were in a place where we could look into our love and see past what we were told it was supposed to be.”

Alice nodded in agreement. “Consider this: I approached you entirely based on what I had foreseen. I did and said what I knew would yield the best results. Our love is true – it has grown to be – but I still started it… well, basically manipulating you, and already looking at the endgame. Which in turn I based on what I was told by all the movies and books I obsessively consumed trying to figure out an identity of my own.” She smiled mirthlessly. “Boy and girl, we were expected to love each other as a couple.”

Jasper smiled faintly too. “Yeah, precisely: we were expected to.”

He fell silent for a while, looking at the current of the river, then at the dusty sunburst the pebble had left on the rock across the river.

“Does this have to do with… with Edward and me? Our… friendship?”

Alice went quiet for a moment, too, gathering her thoughts. “That’s a factor – but not the way you think”, she was quick to assure him. “We’re not breaking up over you and Edward growing close. But that’s what made me question myself. Should I have been jealous? Maybe, but I wasn’t, honestly. You were both so happy, and that made me happy, whatever was going on. It was weird to realise, but it felt right. And then I started wondering whether we were stifling each other after all.”

Jasper looked at her questioningly, so she went on, “We make each other happy, even against all odds: that’s always been our thing. I take away your gloom, you ground me and remind me to live and enjoy the present. But what if we’re keeping each other from another kind of happiness? One I can’t find in you, or you in me?”

This time, the bitterness not only tainted Jasper’s smile, but his voice too. “If that’s the case, Edward and I are a weird place to raise those questions, trust me.”

Alice frowned a bit – so slightly only Jasper knew her well enough to notice. Her gaze went out of focus for a second, and her mouth bent in the smallest display of disappointment. She ignored that when she replied, “Regardless, the questions still stand.”

He didn’t push to know what she’d looked into, in the future. Because he knew he wouldn’t like the answer. Not now that a substantial part of the resolve behind his decision-making was crumbling away with his half-century marriage.

“What do you think, Jasper?” Alice asked, looking at him encouragingly.

As complicated as they both were, Jasper opted with the simplest of truths. “I don’t want to lose you.”

Alice let go of her legs and turned to face Jasper directly. “My personal future is cloudy, because I’m not sure what I want to decide.” She smiled. “But the one thing that’s clear and doesn’t change is that we love one another. We always will, no matter what label we put on it.”

He nodded, though he studied her closely and carefully. She continued, “If I decide to leave it up to you, we’re still together-together for the foreseeable future. But you grow more and more miserable, and I miss out on so much. And even if we still love each other, what’s the point of being unhappy together?”

It was a rhetorical question, so she went on. “Which brought me to having this talk. Should we try to find a way to both love each other and be the happiest we can be?”

Jasper moved both hands behind him for support as he leaned backwards and looked up at the tree branches.

“Loving each other doesn’t mean being in love with each other”, he mused. “Romantically, I mean. I think I would like to find out where we stand on our own, without the world telling us what we should be to one another – be that human society claiming that men and women can’t be soulmates as friends, or vampirekind with its ideas on how mates work.”

But Alice was Alice: she didn’t need to have supernatural empathy to tell something was bothering him. She reached for his hand and looked him in the eyes. “Are you sure, Jazz?”

He reciprocated her gaze, even though he struggled to find the words.

“Maybe I feel a little guilty. This is… too convenient. I’m confused over some… stuff, and you’ve basically come and taken a weight off my chest. Whether I seek answers or not, and act on them or not , I won’t be doing you dirty now. Yet another gift from you, and I don’t know if that’s fair.”

“Well, yes, I did figure out you’ve been going through some stuff. But so am I. I’m not just freeing you so you can follow other pursuits: I brought up the subject for the both of us.” Seeing as Jasper was still unconvinced, she elaborated, “Becoming closer to human teenagers, these past months, was a painful reminder of how many things were erased from my life – it’s like I never got to experience them at all before I found myself a vampire and went on to marry my best friend based on a future I’d seen and some advice I received. And what I found out from James means that I probably didn’t have much of a life in the first place. It made me realise I still need to find out who I am by myself.”

Jasper felt some relief at Alice’s words. He also realised how self-centred he’d been to chalk up Alice’s turmoil to a mere reaction to his own. He’d been blind to see what she herself had been going through.

“I understand”, he said at last. After some hesitation, he added, “I could never reciprocate what you’ve given me, Alice. Yes, I know you disagree, but I do believe that. You gave me peace of mind and hope, and in return I’ve been giving you endless worries and problems. You pulled me from my lowest point, found us a family, but me? What did I contribute?” She guessed he wasn’t finished yet, so she kept her objections and let him go on. “Recently, I’ve discovered myself capable of giving just as much as I received in a friendship. And I like that. I want to be able to do that with you too. I want to get better on my own, so I can also be a better friend to you.”

Alice gave off happiness and relief at those words, but also a hint of regret. “One thing I’ve realised is that sometimes I fail to truly understand your demons. I focus on a time yet to come, when you’ll be free of them, but I gloss over your actual battle. Warning you when I foresee you’ll need to brace yourself is practical help, but it doesn’t address how it all makes you feel. I, too, need to grow as a friend.” At last, she smiled. “Come on! We’ll go out there, grow as people, and see what further happiness awaits us! And not only be happy with each other, but also for one another!”

Jasper smiled in return, but shook his head. “On the second part, I think I’m fine. I’ll cheer you on from here.”

This time Alice rolled her eyes, but playfully, as her usual self. “You’re not fine, Jazz. You’ve just decided not to look. Ah, if only you gave me more options to see!”

Well, Jasper decided to give up and just walk home. He was about to stand up, as he’d decided… until he just sprung forward and playfully tackled an unprepared Alice.

“You didn’t see this one, did you!”

“You sneak!” Alice laughed out loud, and they rolled a few times in the grass until he found himself on top of her.

She reached up to caress his face. “I love you, Jazz. You’ll always be the one friend I can’t be without, and the very core of my family.”

“I love you, Alice. Always have, always will.”

Their eyes met for a moment, and of course, they could tell what both had thought. Alice nodded gently, and Jasper leaned closer. It was only fitting that they’d kiss goodbye to themselves as lovers.

A kiss on the lips, not entirely chaste, but more tender and affectionate than passionate. A kiss that was entirely true to what they’d always been for one another.

Notes:

The Twilight canon is still providing background events for my twist: the whole James thing happened pretty much unchanged, except for Jasper having some different priorities.

Rosalie misnaming Bella started off as an honest-to-god typo back in chapter 2. But since “Belle” fit the “be my guest” line like a glove, I decided not only to leave it there, but turn it into a running gag. We all know Rosalie is just that kind of petty (and we love her for that).

Also, the Illustrated Guide does outright say that Jasper and Alice married “at Carlisle’s suggestion”, and I milked it for all its worth. Jasper and Alice are cute together, but I think their bond transcends romantic or sexual love (like, look at the scene when they’re reunited at the airport in New Moon). The greatest fun I’m having with this fanfiction is “remixing” the canon while technically sticking very close to it.

Chapter 5: Heart Heart Head

Summary:

The family reacts to Alice and Jasper’s news. Rosalie has some strong opinions to voice. Edward’s issues come to a head.

Notes:

Heart Heart Head by Meg Myers nails the atmosphere of this chapter, especially the final crescendo.

At some point in this chapter I mention the “Aleksandrova sisters”: they’re Tanya, Irina and Kate. I don’t like calling them “the Denalis” as if it were their surname, so I made them an actual one from their matronymic (Sasha is short for Aleksandra), as it would have been Slavic custom back in the day.

Jasper and Alice agreed that she should look into different options on how to best break the news to the rest of the family: it was quite a change, and they wanted to minimise the upheaval for their loved ones. The funny part was, no matter the others’ reactions, in each and every scenario Edward would legit freak out at least for a moment, whether covertly or more obviously.

And he did: as soon as they went through with the “announcement we have to make”, his head snapped in Jasper’s direction, the expression too taut to read except for the widened eyes, but his confusion and outright panic clearly perceptible to Jasper’s sixth sense. He said nothing, and soon excused himself to go see Bella.

Emmett was shocked speechless, and kept eyeing Rosalie for signs of bad news coming from her, too. Esme hugged both Alice and Jasper tightly, and asked them many questions to make sure they were okay; but she ultimately trusted them to make their own decisions, and supported them when they reassured her that they’d work better as siblings than lovers.

Carlisle didn’t say anything, but freely broadcast his interest and curiosity, an open invitation for Jasper to talk whenever he felt like it. And that moment came pretty soon, that same day.

Cosied up in the armchair in front of Carlisle’s desk, inhaling the scent of wood, aged paper and leather that made his office such a wonderful place, he wasn’t even reluctant to open up.

Alice had foretold they’d both end up having a heart to heart with their father, anyway, so he’d more or less prepped a summary of that afternoon, leaving out much of what had built up to it. Assessed that Jasper and Alice hadn’t unintentionally hurt each other’s feelings, Carlisle was obviously curious about the “eternal vampire mates” angle of things, so Jasper, too, put more focus on that part.

“This is interesting, I admit”, Carlisle commented, “But not necessarily strange. Our relationships and affection can take so many different forms, so I don’t see why mates – or rather, soulmates – should be any different. Or unique, for that matter. I try not to be prejudiced in these matters.”

Talking to Carlisle always paved the way for some soul searching, so Jasper was very open to pondering uncomfortable questions.

“Shouldn’t I have known from the beginning, though? I mean, the kind of love I felt for Alice? Did I delude myself? Did I lead her on?” He hesitated, but there was another question nagging at him. “Or… say I met someone in the meantime. O-or before. And for decades I never realised I could be into them. Her. Hypothetically. Shouldn’t I have known?”

“You know I first met Esme ten years before I turned her, right?” Carlisle replied gently. “And I didn’t think much of it. I remembered her, of course, and recognised her when I saw her dying, but it’s not like I was smitten with her since that first meeting. She was sixteen, which is much too young nowadays, but back then was almost adulthood: I’d have likely reasoned like a man of that time and fallen for her straightaway.” He paused reflectively for a second. “Even when I changed her, I did because I took pity on her – or rather, on the girl I had known – and only fell in love later, when I got to know the woman she’d become.”

Jasper was thoughtfully silent, so Carlisle concluded, “This is to say, it’s not like many of our kind believe: that you lock eyes and you’re magically in love for all eternity. Nor do you automatically gain clarity about how you feel for someone. Feelings are complicated and elusive for us too.”

Jasper nodded, though an unsatisfied frown slightly creased his features. “But why didn’t I, or Alice, notice sooner? Why now? Why are we suddenly doubting everything about ourselves?”

“Something must have triggered some deep introspection. Something that only happened now”, Carlisle replied simply. “And I think that’s normal. You see, I do not consider us frozen in time, crystallised in the mental state we were in when we were turned.” He shrugged as he added, “True, much evidence would suggest otherwise – though there’s a lack of method in those observations, so most of it is anecdotal at best. Also true, even among humans it’s rare for the core of someone’s character to change dramatically.” He smiled softly. “But I do believe us capable of growth, of self-discovery. How could I advocate for redemption, if that weren’t the case?”

Jasper nodded again, this time less unsure.

“Think of this”, Carlisle continued. “The nomads can roam anywhere they want, but are trapped in their small inner world. Most of them wander alone, with only their thoughts and sense of identity to cling to. Their contacts with human society are limited and sparse, they can’t really absorb novelty the way we can. It’s no wonder that, amidst all that solitude and with perfect recollection, they change very little even over centuries. Or that when they fall in love with someone, it hits hard and feels like they have a new lease of life.” After a pause, to let that sink in, he added, “I believe that’s where they came from, both the notion that vampires are unchanging and the mythification of the mating bond: solitude, isolation. Perhaps our way of life is why in our family we live relationships and emotions with more nuance.”

As he talked, his eyes rested for a while on the framed family photograph that Esme had taken when they had moved to Forks, a couple of years prior. It was a tradition of hers: there was one copy of the most recent one in the living room of their current house, and a line of all of them in Carlisle’s office, beneath his painting collection.

“I myself can say I’ve changed deeply.” Carlisle smiled ruefully as he added, “You know Edward sanctifies me and would never admit it, but my restraint wasn’t born out of compassion: that is true now, but originally it was born out of self-hatred. I hated what I’d become, I wanted to rebel against my nature. Yes, that stemmed from knowing I’d be murdering people, but ultimately the driving force for the better part of my vampire existence was self-loathing, a sense of brokenness, of being wrong.” He sighed regretfully. “And I’m afraid I passed it down onto Edward, when I turned him and taught him my way of life. Even if by that point I was already acting mostly out of compassion, out of an urge to make a positive impact in the world, that foundation was still there. I held on to it until Esme loved me. She helped me realise that monstrous is not what we are, but what we choose to do.”

Jasper snorted and smiled: it was typical of Carlisle to slip some reassurance about their nature when they’d talk.

“I’m sorry I rushed you and Alice”, Carlisle said, looking at Jasper. “I saw goodness in you, my son, and I wanted to cultivate it. To help you do so. Part out of a religious eagerness to save your soul, part out of a more secular concern for a distressed person who was fundamentally good but needed help not to keep making the bad choices that’d been engrained in him.”

“You always overestimate me.”

“We agree to disagree, Jasper”, he chided gently. “Anyway, I knew from Edward that, out of you two, Alice was the one who was committed to staying with us. You were committed to her. I thought making that permanent would keep you in my orbit.” He raised both hands, palms up. “Maybe pride is my sin, after all.”

“I appreciate that you had good intentions”, Jasper replied sincerely.

“I’ve seen plenty, in my time”, Carlisle justified himself, “But in practice I tend to default to a particular stereotype, when it comes to relationships. That’s what blinded me to your truth. And I’m thankful to you and Alice for giving me a first-hand different perspective.” He smiled warmly and openly at Jasper. “I’m not indifferent to shifts in social customs, though, especially when they render old prejudices obsolete. As I said, we do change. Nowadays I wouldn’t suggest a hasty marriage: I wouldn’t intervene at all, and let you and the person you fancy sort things out by yourselves. In the end, it’s between you and them. Her.” His smile lingered. “Or him. Hypothetically.”

Jasper didn’t smile back, but relaxed when he picked up on the implication. Carlisle radiated acceptance and paternal love.

“Hypothetically”, Jasper repeated. They both knew that was a conversation to be had another time.

* * * * * * * * *

Unlike the rest of the family, Rosalie wasn’t surprised in the least by Jasper and Alice’s news.

Sometimes, while Edward was out martyring himself with Bella, Jasper would take long walks with her. That was partly to make up for jumping ship at the lunch tables, partly out of a misguided notion that she’d be a much safer company than Alice, who could tell with a glance when he was sulking.

Misguided because while, true to herself, she’d take him to town to promenade and bask in the human’s awestricken gazes, rather than hike unseen in the forest, that didn’t mean she’d only think of herself. She was a much better observer than anyone would give her credit for, partly thanks to the cover her purported shallowness afforded her.

That’s why Jasper gave in and asked for her insight too.

“Can’t say I’m sorry”, she commented when they sat down on a bench, while gazing distractedly at the Rayonier Shay #10 locomotive on display at Tillicum Park. Her strolls would often take her there to have a look at it, a relic from the 1930s, when Rosalie’s own adult life was supposed to begin. One night she even disassembled it entirely, cleaned each and every part, removed the rust, touched up the paint, and reassembled it before any Forks denizen could even wake up and be any the wiser. Just for the sake of it.

“In fact, I’m actually glad you and Alice have cleared things up and realised what your relationship is truly about. There’s different kinds of soulmates, not just romantic ones, and you’re mature enough to see that and not hold each other back.”

Jasper sighed lightly, barely noticing the scent of a kid who’d scraped his knee on the playground, some fifty metres away. He was proud of the progress he’d made in the last few months, but just like his self-control was stronger away from Bella, so was his self-doubt away from Alice.

“Do you think I played her for all these years?” He’d asked Esme, too, and with her insight on him, she’d confidently replied no, much like Carlisle.

“You mean deliberately?” Rosalie rolled her eyes. “Wow, no wonder you and Edward have become besties: you both can’t live without finding some fault with yourselves.”

“Did I?” Jasper repeated, slightly more impatient.

She shook her head decidedly. “Remember what I said since day one? You and Alice were doing you. The marriage thing is entirely on Carlisle for going full-on ministry’s son on you two, as if that would be helpful instead of confusing.” She scoffed. “Then again, that’s his fatal flow: he never knows when to leave well alone.”

So she agreed too.

“But you noticed, even then”, Jasper commented, trying to divert the subject from poor, well-meaning Carlisle.

Rosalie tossed her hair behind her shoulders. “Your love for each other is clearly genuine and boundless, but romantic? I know what you say about each relationship feeling different and blah blah, but that’s only up to a certain point, Jazz. If you and Alice were any tamer a couple, you’d be hand-holding kindergarten sweethearts.” She made a dramatic pause, then added. “Now, where have I seen th— oh, right. My other brother.”

Jasper groaned and ran a hand impatiently through his hair.

“Give him a break, Rose. Please, do it for me.”

She shrugged. “Well, whom he spends his lunch break with is not my concern anymore. Hopefully, within his senior year he will have that lunch.”

He was in no mood for her dark humour, so he fired back, “You know, mingling with humans wouldn’t kill you. You should try sometime. They’re interesting.”

“Oh. Please, tell me all about it.”

With a mischievous smirk, Jasper deliberately ignored her sarcasm and turned to face her, laying one elbow on the backrest. “There’s the Jessica girl, who’s very bubbly and sometimes has got an edge of pettiness which makes her fun”, he began with exaggerated enthusiasm. “That Mike boy is constantly horny, like any teenager – the least interesting of the bunch; the Eric guy is too, but at least he also gets excited about other things. The Lauren one is just miserable and restless – Edward says she acts out because she feels trapped in this small town and can’t wait to get out and do something with her life; I feel for her. And then Angela: she’s really nice, with a comforting emotional aura. She might be my favourite. Edward likes her too.”

Rosalie rolled her eyes while silently mouthing ‘Edward likes her too’ to mock him, but Jasper pretended to misunderstand her expression.

“You’re just a snob, Rose. Bella mostly snubs them too.” He snapped his fingers, as if he’d just had a brilliant idea. “Hey, perhaps you should become friends, the two of you!”

“Don’t be absurd!” Rosalie turned to him with a glare, her hair fanning out at the sharpness of the motion.

“Why are you so obstinate about disliking her?”

“Because she’s a pain in the ass who constantly needs babysitting”, she fired back, like it was self-evident.

“Which is not up to you.”

“Unless some tracker and his girlfriend lose their shit over her, like the rest of the world apparently. Then it’s up to everyone.”

Worked up Rosalie was more fun than garden variety Rosalie, so Jasper kept teasing her. “Edward says you’re envious. Jealous that he chose her but not you.”

“Does he.” Rosalie narrowed her eyes. “Well, that’s funny, ‘cause I believe he’s not her first choice, either.”

“Meaning?”

“Okay, wanna know what I really dislike about precious Miss Swan?” She asked, turning to properly face Jasper. “For one thing, she couldn’t become a vampire soon enough. Is it her choice? Yes, but it’s a stupid one. Maybe I am envious after all: I wish I’d been given the luxury of choosing, too, before Carlisle wrapped me up as a gift for his wonder boy.”

Jasper sighed heavily. That was unjust to Carlisle, who’d truly wished to save Rosalie’s life, but he also understood her point of view. “And for another?”

“I think she views Edward as her ticket to…” she gestured at herself and then him, her mouth pulled in a disgusted expression, “…this.”

“Rose”, he replied in a warning tone. Suddenly, the fun was gone.

“I mean it, Jasper: she’s constantly poking into it. I think she aims at this… existence first and foremost, and Edward is at best a perk that comes with it. At worst, just the means to obtain it.” She smirked tartly. “Trust me, I’m sort of an expert on social climbing.”

There was a long, awkward pause. “You’re wrong”, Jasper replied in a thin voice, at last.

“Am I? I wouldn’t be surprised if she found a way to go through with her transformation even if Edward dumped her in the middle of the forest one afternoon.”

“You’re wrong”, Jasper repeated, this time immediately and feigning confidence. “Edward’s happy with her. She makes him happy.”

“Does she?” Rosalie asked drily. “Because she keeps stepping all over his boundaries like it’s nobody’s business – and that goes from trying to stick her tongue between his venomous teeth to pestering him about turning her. She knows how it makes him feel, she just doesn’t care. And don’t even pretend that you, of all people, don’t know what that is: miserable.”

That word stung Jasper. It was, after all, the very same one that kept coming to his mind when he worried about Edward and his predicament.

He looked obstinately at the steam locomotive, pushing those thoughts as far down as he used to do with María, except this time it was to keep them from himself.

Faced with silence, Rosalie clarified, “Look, whatever our history together, Edward and I are family. And nobody fucks with my family, okay? Not even the Queen of Mouth-breathing herself.” She tilted her head between Jasper and the train engine, staring straight at him. “Now, if only Edward had a better option.”

Jasper swallowed awkwardly, so she just tutted and backed off.

“Nevermind”, she said curtly, standing up and parading in the direction of her parked car. That afternoon’s fun was definitely over.

* * * * * * * * *

However much he wished to dismiss Rosalie’s concerns as pure pettiness, Jasper knew her well enough to tell there was much more to that. Despite her snide tone and harsh words, she hadn’t felt malicious or spiteful: if anything, she’d been completely sincere, deeply outraged on Edward’s behalf, and relieved in that specific way that comes from finally getting something off one’s chest.

Worse yet, her words had struck a chord in Jasper: they were consistent with the signs he himself had noticed, and downplayed because a happily committed Edward was easier to give up on than a miserable one.

Unlike with his recent break up, though, Jasper couldn’t ask for another opinion this time: Carlisle had proven entirely unreliable on the matter, Esme was unquestioningly enthusiastic that Edward had found companionship after so long, much like Jasper was trying to be; Emmett had a very linear, uncomplicated view of love, and Alice was in Mississippi to soul-search, looking into her human life after James had dropped his hints.

And so, he was left to brood and mull on his own for weeks on end, wondering whether he had been seeing the same things as Rosalie, only to try and ignore them, or if her perspective, alongside his… protectiveness, as it were, of Edward, were now tainting his judgement and making him retroactively misread things.

For a time, he sort of avoided Edward altogether not to accidentally leak those thoughts in his presence; it wasn’t even difficult, considering that Edward, too, would suddenly spend significantly more time with Bella, and his free time alone in his room, blasting the sappiest songs by some high-drama British rock band, rather than have his talks with Jasper. And when they did talk, it’d be mostly superficial, with Edward guarding his feelings even more than he did around Bella and carefully avoiding mentioning the situation with Alice.

It was almost as if the past five months hadn’t happened at all, and when Edward was nowhere near the house, Jasper could admit the real reason he’d rather avoid the boy’s presence: it hurt to feel him so distant, to see how the earnestness and self-awareness they’d built their relationship upon were all but gone.

The tipping point in their stalemate came very suddenly: one evening in mid-summer, Edward returned very upset and, after calling “Jazz?” in a small voice from downstairs, bolted out. And Jasper once again followed, against his better judgement, catching up with him on the southern tip of Lake Ozette, by which time Edward had already let off the bulk of his turmoil by running, and dialled it down to a manageable level. But he was still feeling miserable, restless, cornered and yearning. And Jasper was starved of his presence anyway.

“You wanna tell me what happened?” He asked, trying to hide the weariness in his voice. “Did you and Bella have a fight?”

Edward looked at him, hesitation on his face. Finally, he shook his head. “Not really. I…” He swallowed and corrected, “Sort of, actually.”

“What about?”

“Two things.” He sighed with deep exasperation as he said, “For one, she keeps asking me to turn her. Over and over and over again. That’s eating at me. No matter what I say, she just wants it, and I…” He trailed off.

Jasper reflected quietly for a moment. “I can see her point, and it would be her choice to make. However, I side with you, if for more practical reasons: this life comes with a lot of problems and baggage, and I believe she doesn’t… quite understand the full scope. When signs pop up, she downright ignores them.” He carefully probed into Edward’s emotional state, and found he wasn’t upset by his bluntness about Bella; on the contrary, he felt validated. “She’s smart, perhaps she’ll agree she’s still underprepared for it? Not to mention the logistical problems with her sudden disappearance at age seventeen?”

“God, I hope so.”

“I don’t know… try to stall? Tell her to wait for her college graduation, when she’ll be fully independent and able to safely phase out of her old life, before you two make a decision either way?”

Edward nodded, but rolled his eyes. “‘But you’re stuck at seventeen’, she says. ‘Time’s ticking, Edward. I’ll look like a cougar, Edward’. So help me.”

“Jesus, even if she’s in her mid-twenties, the difference will be negligible once she’s turned”, Jasper commented drily. Edward glared at him, so he added, “If she’s turned, that is. Anyway, what’s the other problem?”

Edward pursed his lips awkwardly. “I’m afraid I’m making her feel unappreciated.” Under Jasper’s gently inquisitive gaze, he elaborated, “She thinks I keep making excuses when I tell her we can’t be physical. She’s afraid I don’t truly like her. I really don’t want to hurt her feelings, but this evening she was particularly…”

“…Chagrined?” Jasper provided with the barest hint of sarcasm. He sat down on the grass, looking absentmindedly at the dark water of the lake.

He’d unintentionally overheard a few arguments about that. Bella was a normal, healthy human teenager, and as such had a libido in full bloom and lusted after the boy she was in love with. Who wouldn’t? No wonder she was frustrated by Edward’s reluctance: she’d see rejection even though it was was genuinely just cautiousness.

Edward sat down beside him, nodding grimly at his thoughts.

“You know, at first a part of me enjoyed being accepted so wholeheartedly by her. She wasn’t repulsed by our nature – imagine that, a human actually liking the beasts we are.” He pursed his lips briefly, but long enough to send a shiver down Jasper’s spine. “But I agree with you: she doesn’t understands just how dangerous my presence is. How on edge I am on the best of days already. How…” He skimmed on a small fern with his fingertips, so gently it didn’t even move. “…carefully calibrated my every touch needs to be. I tell her over and over again, and she just brushes it aside.”

Classic Bella, shrugging off anything inconvenient or unsavoury about being with Edward. Or vampirism in general.

But uncharacteristically, Jasper was not in the mood to provide emotional comfort, so he went for another practical suggestion: “It’s kind of not my place to say, and I know she and I have barely been close at all since Phoenix, but… would she take my word if I told her I can feel how much you desire her? As in, sense supernaturally, for certain?”

It was true: Jasper had been picking up new feelings from Edward since he and Bella had started dating – feelings Edward had never manifested in the fifty-odd years they’d previously spent coexisting. They were occasional flares, brief and immediately regretted, but unmistakably there: lust, desire, arousal. Not so much in Bella’s actual presence – Edward was impeccably controlled at all times with her – but during their late night talks, in ways so random that Jasper had to consciously ignore not to let his mind run wild.

Edward looked pensively at the lake, still toying with the fern. “I don’t think that would be appropriate.” There it was, again: the shame, taking over as soon as Jasper had mentioned sensing his desire.

That feeling seemed so over the top, so out of place that Jasper acidly doubled down, “Or – hear me out – you could, y’know, get her off every now and again?”

“Jasper!” Not even the sudden panic at that turn of the conversation made him ruffle the fern, let alone damage it.

Jasper didn’t want to upset him – not really or deliberately – so he tried to soften the blow. “Listen, you feel uncomfortable taking your relationship further, and that’s fine and she needs to respect it. But she also has urges and expectations, and you also need to respect that. You need to find a compromise as a couple.”

Edward looked warily at him, letting go of the fern.

Jasper went on, “You do know sex isn’t just ‘insert part A into slot B’, don’t you? You can please her without focussing on yourself, so you won’t lose control beyond getting aroused in the process. And since I assume she’d want to reciprocate, you could find some less risky ways for her to do so. You’d be giving her the intimacy she needs without endangering her.”

He was no mindreader, but he could swear Edward’s gears were furiously turning behind his panicked eyes, looking for an excuse. “Jasper, when we first kissed she completely ignored any caution I was trying to put into it. I… I kind of felt paralysed.” He paused for a beat. “I mean, from desire. I’m not… sure… I could pull it off so easily without incidents. Any of it.”

“She’s a teenage girl and she’s in love! Of course she’s passionate! What did you expect?” Jasper asked, his patience fraying. “Besides, you’ve literally tasted her blood when you had to save her from James! And you resisted draining and killing her! Come on, Edward, that’s beyond what I or any vampire could ever manage with anyone, let alone a blood singer! You owe yourself some credit.”

“But I’m already bad enough for her as it is! She’s an innocent human girl, and I’m a monster.”

“I don’t think that’s true.” Jasper replied, barely resisting the exasperation that getting swamped in that conversation yet again elicited. He turned to Edward instead, and cupped his face in his hands.

“Hey”, he continued in a softer voice. “You always say it yourself, she brings out the best in you. Around her you’re first and foremost a boy in love.” He smiled with all the warmth that touching Edward’s face gave him. “So what if you’re also a monster? You never act like one. Worst case scenario, you keep it in your mind all day long and then, when you get back home, you can be a monster with me. We can be monsters together. That’s what we do.” Or used to, at any rate.

He felt a wave of desire blasting from Edward, so intense the boy shuddered under his touch. Jasper quivered too, but by that time, Edward was already pulling away, deeply ashamed.

Jasper groaned in frustration.

“Edward, she’s your girlfriend. Goddamnit, it’s normal for you to want her. Physically, too. If just thinking of giving in to your desire makes you feel… so… intensely, it’s good – great, in fact! Why are you so ashamed of wanting her? Of wanting to get laid in general?”

Edward’s guilt was still there, crystal clear.

“Because”, he said simply and uncertainly. He looked like he was about to say something but then changed his mind midway, when he added, “I can’t trust my instincts.”

This time it was Jasper who met his words with silence, of the inquisitive type. After some reluctance, Edward clarified, “She helps me stay in the light. If I give in to any of my instincts, it’s the end, I’m going to ruin that! I’m already damned, Jasper, but…”

“Jesus Christ, Edward!” Jasper burst out, gesticulating with his hands. “There’s our thirst, and there’s our other instincts! Coming every now and again will not make you kill her!”

“But…”

“Don’t. Don’t say it.” Jasper cut in, glaring at the pristine fern, tearing off one leave and waving it angrily in front of Edward’s face. “Don’t give me any ‘I might accidentally bruise her’ bullshit. Carlisle told me the Aleksandrova sisters have been physical with humans for centuries, and any safety concerns all but disappeared when they went vegetarian and reined their bloodlust in!”

Edward had internally flinched at the mention of Carlisle, his shame stinging once more. That made Jasper lash out again. “At this point, I side with Bella: why are you making up excuses?”

He was starting to wonder how it’d never occurred to him to get a psychology degree in all those decades. Studying history and philosophy to try and make sense of his past had worked to some extent, but with his unique emotional insight, he could really become the healing guide that his family of emotional trainwrecks was in such clear need of.

Actually, that was a great idea for the next academic year. He’d already elected to take a sabbatical to wait for Alice to graduate, anyway, so he had all the time in the world to look into that prospect.

But right now, faced with Edward’s self-reproaching silence, there was little he could do.

“I don’t think I can help you”, he said, getting up, the fern leaf all crumpled in his clenched hand. But Edward clutched at his wrist and held on to it even as Jasper tried to pull away.

“For fuck’s sake, Edward. What is it that you want?”

Faced with yet more guilty silence, and yearning, and then shame, Jasper just gave in. With one swift move, he overpowered and pinned Edward down beneath him, both wrists held up above his head in Jasper’s grasp, his legs spread to make room for the empath’s hips, their faces barely one breath away. Pretty much what Jasper had envisioned that fateful day in the forest, the very fist time he’d allowed himself to acknowledge how insanely attractive Edward was, if only for a split second.

“Jasper…”

He sounded uncertain, but Jasper’s grip on his wrists was purposely nothing he couldn’t easily break free from. He could get out from underneath him at any moment, yet he just laid there, quivering and restless. Amongst other feelings.

“I can sense that deep down you’re horny as hell right now: isn’t it about time you did something about it?” Jasper whispered directly in his ear.

“Jazz…”

“Are you not?” He asked, slowly grinding his hips against Edward’s, denim scraping on denim, lips on his temple. “Are. You. Not?” It was nothing like when he had tackled Alice the last time: this wasn’t playful or cute or funny. It was primeval and full of need and want. Mutually so.

And yet, even pressed against him, even grinding his hips back in spite of himself, Edward felt desperately, utterly unreachable.

“I can only take so much, Edward. So speak frankly, like we used to. Tell me why we’re here. What do you want? What is this about?”, he almost panted, punctuating every question with a thrust.

Edward fell silent, but he pressed his legs on Jasper, raised his head and inhaled his scent deeply. After a while longer, in a desperate tone he asked, “Why did you and Alice have to break up, Jazz? Why?!”

“What is it to you?” Jasper asked, skimming Edward’s jaw with half-parted lips.

“Why did you have to complicate things even further?” It was nothing more than a soft, crestfallen murmur.

“Is that what this is all about?” Jasper snapped, pulling up his torso to look Edward in the eye. “Do you even love Bella? Or is it about us? About that day on the rooftop?”

“Jazz, please…” At that point, there was no way for either of them not to acknowledge each other’s bulges.

“Stop me, then”, Jasper said, bending down again and planting a kiss on Edward’s neck. “Stop me, get out of here, go to Bella, kiss her like you mean it and give her what she wants. If that is what you want.”

As the empath moved up towards the other’s lips, Edward freed his wrists from Jasper’s grasp, to stop him. Except, instead of pushing him away, he encircled the empath’s neck and moved his head sideways but closer, lips brushing blond hair.

“Then why are you with her?” Jasper asked, giving up any motion and just laying there on top of Edward, defeated but unable to give the closeness up.

“Because it’s expected of me!” Edward burst out, so passionately that Jasper pulled back and sat down between his still open legs. “I must be a gentleman, Jazz! If I want to protect her, if I want to be that person for her, her knight… if I want to be strong enough not to kill her myself, then it must be because I’m in love with her, right?”

Jasper felt hopeless. It had taken him and Alice half a century to figure that out; right now it felt like an awfully long time to wait.

“It’s me and the girl, Jasper”, Edward went on, ignoring his thoughts, even. “I can’t drag her into darkness with me! I can’t ruin her life with my sins! That would the second most immoral thing I could do right now!”

“And I’d be the first?” Jasper asked bitterly.

“Look at us! We’re monsters! Demons! Damned!” Edward cried out, sitting up too. “Do we want to add to that? Do we want to crush any hope for salvation, on the off chance we still have a soul?!”

Jasper couldn’t reply, he just sat there and looked at a very frantic Edward, while sinking in his own despair.

“We’re supposed to be as moral as our monsterhood allows! We’re expected to be decent!” Edward added, in a smaller voice.

“This is not moral, Edward! This is insanity!” Jasper replied urgently. “Your brand of salvation is bullshit!”

“But… you know…”

“It’s bullshit! It was ingrained into you by people who had a very specific agenda!” And probably Carlisle circa 1920, who didn’t have one but was moulded by the same kind of people who craved social control over others. “Being moral means not harming others, being aware of and respecting their needs! But this? What society expects of us does not always align with what is actually good!”

Edward looked at him, longing to believe him.

“What about Esme? Eh? Should she have stayed with her abusive husband, raised her child in his house, because she was expected to?” Jasper was almost shouting. “What if Rosalie had miraculously survived? Should she have married her rapist? And Alice? Was it moral to protect society from the lunatic she was thought to be?” He lowered his voice, though that only made the resentment more evident as he asked, “What about me? Society saw nothing wrong with owning human beings, provided their skin was black. I was told that over and over again. I was made to fight in a bloody war for that. Was that moral? Was that good?”

At last, Jasper stood up as he added, “Well, I know better than that now. We know better than that. Carlisle is right: we do change, Edward. And you told me that, too, over and over: were they just pretty, empty words?”

“That’s you. For me it’s different.”

Jasper tutted. His shirt had got untucked, so he angrily slid it back into his jeans to avoid showing his flanks.

Edward swallowed uneasily. “I… I just wish we could go back to how things were before”, he murmured. “You had Alice. And it was so easy to be us, wasn’t it?”

Jasper shook his head in defiance. “This is the Twenty-first century, Edward. Some things are outdated: deal with it. And if you’ve got some things to tell yourself, speak frankly already, and listen to yourself, too.”

“Please”, Edward murmured, his desperation as evident to Jasper’s ears as it was to his sixths sense. “I don’t need yet another demon to contend with. Don’t unleash it.”

Jasper fell silent for a long while, his eyes resting on the fern. Its scent reminded him on that day in the forest, and it irked him: it had no place in moment like that. He childishly stomped over it.

“I’m sorry, I can’t take any more of this fuckery”, he said, before turning away and bolting out. He left Edward, his erratic emotions and his battered fern there, on the shore of Lake Ozette. That was the only way he could hope to cling to any semblance of sanity now that his and Rosalie’s suspicions had been all but confirmed: Edward and Bella were terribly mismatched, and she did nothing to help that.

And yet, Jasper knew it was definitely not his place to intervene. He could only make things worse: he’d seen that happen before, and he didn’t want that for Edward.

Notes:

Let’s be real, we can totally picture a mid-2000s Edward listening to Placebo on repeat.

This is pretty much where my plans for this fanfiction went tits-up: I had envisioned chapters 3, 4 and 5 as just one, with small scenes with the family leading up to the lake scene between our main couple. But Rosalie demanded screentime, and I didn’t want to brush Alice aside without exploring her motives and feelings while breaking up with Jasper, so the whole thing grew out of proportion and had to be sectioned.
On the bright side, this gave me more space to deconstruct vampire mating with Carlisle. Since we’re leaving the wolves out, we’re not going to open the can of worms that is imprinting, but vampire mating is just one step behind it in terms of yikes. Its “automatic” nature is one the parts of the Twilightverse worldbuilding I like the least, so I decided to discuss it in-universe and knock it down a peg. After all, some things (like the Illustrated Guide saying that Irina was much more into Laurent than he was into her) do give some leeway. Soulmates is something you have to work on, not a one-click subscription.

Chapter 6: A Dangerous Thing

Summary:

Rosalie keeps being insightful, Alice is cooking up something, and Jasper agrees to tag along with one of her more innocent, mundane plans.

Notes:

I was kind of saving A Dangerous Thing by Aurora for another potential Jaspward project I’m gathering ideas for, but I decided it fits better here.

“Why don’t you spit it out already?” Rosalie asked him point blank, one late summer night.

“Excuse you?”

“That you’re in love with him, duh?”

Despite his senses being perfectly capable of telling him who was where, Jasper instinctively looked around in panic, hissing, “Will you keep quiet?”

“Why? No one’s home, anyway. You can talk freely while he’s out smooching Belén.”

“Bella”, he corrected automatically.

“Jesus, not you too”, she grumbled with an exasperated sigh, one hand massaging her forehead.

The house was, in fact, empty. Alice had followed Carlisle on an important trip; Esme and Emmett had gone hunting together; and Edward had just left to spend the night at Bella’s. Apparently, that was now a thing.

It had been a while since Jasper had given him that huge dressing down; if nothing else, the mindreader had decided to pull his shit together and fully commit to his relationship with Bella, convincing her to just enjoy it as it was and postpone talks of her transformation. He’d also loosened up on the emotional side and with the displays of affections.

At least now Jasper could seriously try to get over it all.

He and Rosalie had decided to stay at home, and were sitting on his and Edward’s spot on the rooftop to enjoy the unusually cloudless, starry night.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, anyway”, he said, more out of stubbornness than hope to uphold any plausible deniability.

“Listen, pretty: don’t treat me like a walking dumb blonde joke, okay? ‘Cause if I am, so are you.”

She looked at him with her trademark determined expression. She wasn’t going to let it go.

He drew a deep, long sigh. “How… how did you even…?”

“Well, let me see”, she replied, starting to count on her fingers. “You didn’t beat an eye when Alice realised you two were never romantic to begin with. You spend all the time you can with him. And he with you, if we’re being honest. Or at least you used to – you’ll have to explain to me what happened there. You sulk whenever he’s out on one of his expiation expeditions with Belicia. You avoid her more than your thirst would require – not that I blame you, of course. And you look at him like he’s a snack whenever you think he’s not looking at you like you’re one too.” She paused emphatically. “I might not have special gifts, Jasper, but I do have eyes.”

“That we can fix, Rosalie”, he replied tartly. After a long pause, filled only with the quiet murmurs of the forest around the house, he said, “Look, I’m not admitting to anything, okay? But… could you please not? It’s such not a good idea for you to have these thoughts, Rose. He can barely handle the notion that I may or may not be physically into him. If what you say were true – and it’s a big if – he could never, ever know.”

She scoffed. “You don’t have to worry, our Mr. Masen is a surprisingly simple mind to figure out.” She made a show of looking nonchalantly at her fingernails. “One too many thoughts about my hairdo, or my outfit, or what matching lipstick and nail polish I’m gonna wear for the day, how it all’d look good on me, and voila, my thoughts are too shallow and self-centred for His Grace to tune in voluntarily.” She side-glanced Jasper with a self-satisfied smile. “I’d mastered the art of keeping him out of my head since before Emmett even joined us.”

Jasper gave her an impressed glance, though in doing so he also noticed, in the background, the clearance in the forest where he now knew the stone cottage was. He wondered whether there was a single corner left in the entire Clallam and Jefferson Counties that wouldn’t remind him of Edward somehow. And that was only proof of just how right Rosalie was.

Admitting it for the first time had been scary – terrifying even. It happened on the way back from Phoenix, miles and miles away from Edward: the relief at him not being irrevocably angry for the ballet studio fiasco, and the void he’d left when he’d gone back to be at Bella’s side, they alone made it impossible to deny Jasper’s feelings. He had to stop the car on the side of the lonely road he’d chosen, get out and walk a few steps away from the vehicle to finally kneel down, as the awareness exploded in a kaleidoscope of feelings – elation, fear, hope, despair, desire – much like the sunlight that hit his skin broke into a million prismatic shards on the desert dust around him.

He’d only thought of that a couple more times, rigorously when Edward was safely away, and only after he and Alice had broken up; both times, it had brought back the dry, bony, nerve-wrecking scents of that day – even in damp, gloomy Forks. Even now, forced to confront it, he felt again like he was choking on once all too familiar cacti and ocotillos and scorpionweed and cracked soil, instead of taking in luxurious grass, reassuring cedars and Rosalie’s perfume. Other than those few times, he’d buried those thoughts deep within his consciousness, even deeper than he used to do with anything that would displease María. Had Rosalie not asked him, he’d have kept sternly refusing to phrase those feelings so explicitly: he’d fallen in love with Edward Cullen.

But if the Lake Ozette disaster was any indication, she was doing no one any favours by bringing it up, especially now that Edward and Bella were functional at last – though Rosalie would still beg to differ on that front.

“So what if I’m in love with him? What does it matter? Who cares?”

“I, for one”, she rebutted impatiently. “Is it wrong of me to want you to stop sulking, and Edward to stop sulking, and Alice to stop micromanaging our lives around Belanna, and me and Emmett to stop pretending we’re vacationing in Namibia so I don’t have to fake a smile whenever she comes over and probes into why I don’t like being what I am? I’d like mine and my family’s peace of mind back, thank you very much.”

Jasper smiled bitterly. “And how is my unrequited love for puritan, straight, committed Edward Cullen supposed to fix any of that?”

“First of all: straight my ass, pun intended.” Rosalie scoffed, a finger lifted to underline the quip. “Second: unrequited? Do your extrasensory talents make you lot stupid?”

Jasper tutted and rolled his eyes.

“Jasper! He’s clearly head over heels for you! He’s been since last January. You’re just too scared to see it, and he to admit it! That’s why he’s clinging to her – a paper-thin excuse to avoid it.” She smiled smugly. “Serves her right, if I’m correct about her – which I am – but that’s beside the point. He loves you, Jazz. You should have seen yourselves from outside, before your becoming single and truly available made him backpedal in a hurry! You were sickeningly cute. And he chooses you over her for basically anything: chatting, venting, spending time in general, emotional support… She’s always ever been a smokescreen, a… what’s it called? A beard. So you know what? Just go for it! To hell with her.”

However much she liked to play that part, Rosalie wasn’t truly cruel, Jasper knew that. But it was cruel of her to feed that secret hope he’d never even dared express – that all the love and desire and whatnot he’d sensed in Edward were truly directed at him, not Bella. That the timing, their blossoming only when they were alone together, meant something.

The last few weeks had disabused him of that notion and yet, in an ironic twist of fate, after a life of disillusionment, it turned out that his hope was as much a stubborn survivor as he was.

Jasper rested his elbows on his knees, ran his hands through his hair, and let his head hang between his forearms, as if in defeat.

“He won’t have any of it”, he said, his tone the closest it could be for a vampire to the verge of tears. “The one time I so much as hinted at it, he froze and went on a theological tangent on damnation and redemption. And that was only about my physical attraction: imagine how he’d freak out if he knew I’ve got actual feelings for him” He looked up at Rosalie. “I think he’d rather figure a way to impregnate her – within the sacred bond of marriage, of course! – than be caught a sinner lusting after another man, let alone being in love with him. He called it, and I quote, another demon he’d have to contend with.”

Rosalie inhaled theatrically and let out a long, deep sigh laced with such a perfect mix of patience and exasperation that she must have practiced it for the last seventy years. “Is that really what this is all about?”

Jasper sighed too, in resignation. “He had this upbringing. It was the 1910s. And then came Carlisle, too.”

“You know, Jasper, it’s been well over a decade since we’ve found direct, irrefutable evidence of the existence of exoplanets”, she said with the affected patience of someone who’s explaining a very easy concept to a particularly stupid child. “It’s our understanding, now, that there are probably as many planetary systems as there are stars in the Milky Way. And even more in that galaxy over there.” She pointed overhead, at the distinctly visible conglomerate that the Andromeda Galaxy formed to vampire eyes, especially on a new moon night like that. “And these are only two out of billions of galaxies.”

“I trust that you’ll get to the point, eventually”, he replied dryly.

“And with all this abundance of worlds out there”, she continued, ignoring his remark, “Even if there is a god – and it’s a big if, as you say – then what? He’s got nothing better to do than tune in to Forks, Washington, and get all judgemental over who tops and who bottoms when this fuckery boils over and the two of you finally go for it? Is that really what Edward thinks?” She gracefully dodged a very predictable shove attempt, then pointed at herself with a finger. “And I am the self-centred one?”

Admittedly, Jasper had to purse his lips to suppress a smile, but the mirth was short-lived.

“It’s more complicated than that, Rose”, he said glumly.

“Oh, I know. ‘Do you believe it wrong of us to seek happiness?’, he asked me once, before Emmett came and brought me a modicum of relief. And that’s Edward in a nutshell: he needs to suffer and atone in principle, no matter if there’s an actual reason. To hell with the consequences. And I guess anything’s a good way: snogging the one girl who makes him feel like he’s shoving a white-hot poker down his throat, still dwelling on his mistakes after decades, repressing who he truly is, sacrificing his general happiness, sacrificing others’ happiness, denying himself the good dicking he’s so desperate to get from you…”

“Jesus, you’re sounding like Emmett”, Jasper cut in with a soft facepalm. “You’ve made your point, alright.”

“My point is, you always overlook it because getting gang raped to near death was quite a legitimate reason for seeking revenge. But I am a serial killer, Jasper. Literally.” She admitted neutrally, without pride or shame. “Not a soldier, not a vigilante: a serial killer, plain and simple. Just like that, without a war to fight in or thirst to quench, I serial-killed five people.” She paused for a beat and, matter-of-factly, corrected, “Seven, whatever. And I regret nothing, They deserved all of it. But would I go on a killing spree now? Hell no, because the circumstances that made me go on that one are long, long gone. The violence in my life was never inherently tied to vampirism. If I have something to atone for – again, big if – it’s not my being a vampire. That’s punishment enough in and of itself.” She looked at Jasper to make sure she had all his attention, then concluded, “So, the two of you, too: get over yourselves already, and start living in the present, when you no longer have a reason to be monsters. There are many, many flaws with being what we are, but our thirst, our instincts? We are perfectly capable of reining them in: so long as we choose not to randomly harm anyone in the here and now, there’s nothing inherently monstrous about us in the here and now, and we don’t need to keep punishing ourselves over it.”

He remained quiet for a few moments, reflecting.

“I think I’m getting a handle on that”, he replied sincerely, at last. “On a good day. Well, okay, it’s an ongoing process. The point is, I just can’t do it for him too. But thank you, really: the truth is, I’ve told him exactly that, he’s told me, we’ve told each other over again, but we always apply double standards when it comes to ourselves.” He gave her a half smile. “You’re an objective person in general, Rose – more so than Carlisle, in these matters – so it means a lot to hear it from you.”

That stroke her fondness of him: while Edward would dismiss her opinions and Emmett mostly dread them, Jasper genuinely valued Rosalie’s insight, and she was grateful for that.

“That’s because you’re mutually in love, you dumbasses”, she said, trying to sound more caustic than she actually was.

Jasper threw her a sceptic look, but asked, “Speaking of which, existential crises aside… what would you think of it? Of… ‘us’?” He even did the air quotes. “Do I have your blessing?”

“Honestly, I don’t see why you’d want to try to embark in a…” she faked a shocked, pearl-clutching gasp, “…sodomitic relationship with Mr. Catholic Guilt over there. Labour-intensive would be an understatement.”

As she managed to get a hint of laughter from him, she went on, “However, I’ll admit: if he won’t have me, which now finally makes sense, my twin brother is the next best thing.”

She gave him a side glance and a little smile, which he returned. Outside of human society, the twin thing was a bit of an inside joke of theirs, but beneath her tough exterior, Rosalie had really come to care for him like a sister would. And a very protective one at that.

“Oh, there she is!” Rosalie exclaimed, pointing at the sky near the western horizon. The ISS had just risen: even humans could see its glare as a moving dot in the sky, but vampire eyes could easily resolve its sunlit shape, the four major solar panels and the line of modules.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” Rosalie mused, curling up against Jasper’s side, her head on his shoulder, to watch it cross the sky eastwards.

She felt wistful. He knew she longed to be up there, she’d once told him she considered herself the best candidate to manage it – hell, she could probably go and take a spacewalk in a designer gown. But there was no way she could undergo even one phase of the required training and testing without giving away her true nature, yet another excuse to resent it. And even then, no live megafauna allowed on board.

He’d pointed out that none of that would have been possible back when she was a human, but she’d objected that not even being able to imagine it would have maybe been better.

Then again, all of Rosalie’s current interests where so far removed from the life she could have had as a 1930s housewife that it was plain to see she got fascinated with them as a way to outrun the person she never got to be.

He draped an arm around her shoulder and held her close.

“Love you, sis.”

“Love you too, bro.”

* * * * * * * * *

When Carlisle and Alice returned from their trip, Jasper noticed that his beloved little pixie was in a very peculiar emotional state. They’d gone to the Denali Borough, in Alaska, to visit the Aleksandrova sisters and the rest of their family, the vegetarian “cousins” he and Alice had never had a chance to meet yet. Something was going on with Irina and that Laurent guy, formerly from James and Victoria’s coven, having become romantic; her catching him with very non-golden, decidedly red eyes had caused considerable friction. After talking things through and establishing boundaries and deal breakers in their relationship, they’d summoned Carlisle to try and help Laurent adjust to going vegetarian for good, and Alice had followed to give some foresight.

“What’s going on, you Munchkin?” Jasper asked, hugging her by the door. “You’re all bubbly and radiant!”

“Turns out I have a type, after all: tall, blonde and beautiful”, she replied with a wily smile, standing on her tiptoes and making him bend over to kiss his cheek.

“Do you?” Jasper asked, feigning suspicion. “And who’s the lucky vampire?”

She looked around conspiratorially, then in one breath exclaimed, “Tanya!”

“You gotta tell me everything about it!”

As they sat on the porch, Alice did: she and Tanya found out they enjoyed each other’s company a lot. It was another odd pairing: Tanya was about a thousand years old, she had a long, comprehensive, diverse past, whereas Alice barely had one to speak of. And yet, for the first time Alice had found herself truly fascinated while looking backwards into such an abyss of time, while Tanya was intrigued by Alice’s penchant for looking forward which, along with her disposition, sort of reinvigorated the ancient vampire’s enthusiasm about the future. Talking gave way to flirting, and flirting to making out, and soon Carlisle had to manage the Laurent situation all by himself.

“I’m so happy for you, darlin’!” He exclaimed letting his long-lost drawl slip deliberately.

She laughed at his enthusiasm. “Hold your horses, cowboy: we’re not really an item quite yet. We agreed that we’re dating for now, and long-distance to boot. But we do like each other.” She smiled, this time matching Jasper’s enthusiasm. “And you know what? I’m not looking into this, Jazz. I wanna enjoy the ride without an instruction manual. No sneak peeks, no doing and saying what I know will get me where I want to be. I wanna have all the fun.”

He kissed the top of her head. “As you should, Munchkin. As you should.”

And yet, beneath the happiness and new infatuation, there was more. He could sense it.

“Do you reckon it’s gonna be fun when I tell Edward? ‘Oh my Father in Heaven, another queer in the family, call the pastor’.” Her tone was a bit sharp, even when she imitated her brother: Jasper’s sort-of coming out to Edward had been entirely improvised, so it had completely escaped her visions, but he’d opened up to her when she’d returned from Biloxi, minus some details. Her subsequent pique at Edward, however subtle, had motivated him to patch things up with Jasper as best as they could: it was probably only thanks to her that they were still on speaking terms.

“Can’t you tell?” He asked slightly alarmed; then he narrowed his eyes. “Or won’t you?”

She laughed at his confusion. “I’m not swearing off my powers, silly.” The sly smirk was back in full force. “Most certainly not now: we’re in for a totally different ride, and trust me, it’s gonna be a memorable one. But it does take some planning.”

Jasper furled a brow, looking at her with bemusement.

“I can see clearly now”, she said, switching to her serious oracular tone. “Everything’s going to work out fine, Jazz, I promise.”

* * * * * * * * *

Whatever she might have been cooking up, Alice could multitask for sure. While keeping tabs on this so-called memorable ride, she also managed to squeeze in some very elaborate plans to throw Bella a surprise birthday party. Rosalie was this close to flying to Namibia for real at the prospect (Jasper had half a mind to come along), but Emmett was wholeheartedly on board, if only because that’d be a chance to come out of hiding, and every mention of the party was an opening for a joke.

“Aw, Eddie boy, come on! We’re celebrating that soon Bella will be legal!”, he’d exclaim, wriggling his eyebrows. “I mean, you’ll still be some eighty years her senior, but at least her dad won’t have to cuff you!”

“Emmett, you’re asinine. Just plain asinine.”

“Why so cranky, bro? I bet you’re just impatient! Just wait a little longer and she’ll be getting rid of this cherry of yours. At last!”

And Edward would glance nervously at Jasper to study his reaction, but the blond had elected to maintain an air of calm and support both in his thoughts and facial expressions. Rosalie’s words still stung, but for Edward’s sake Jasper was willing to bury them deep alongside the hope they nurtured. After all, he did find a little solace in Edward’s happiness: as long as his and Bella’s relationship was healthy, Jasper would step aside, stay put, support him unconditionally and keep from ruining or making things difficult for him in any way.

This was one of the reasons why he’d agreed to be at the party without a fuss, and even joined in on Emmett’s present alongside Rosalie.

Alice was another: she had told him very, very specifically how much this party meant to her, how important it would be for the whole family to attend, including him, and Jasper would never disappoint her. After all, she kept saying, she had no recollection of any of her human birthdays; Jasper knew just how much of a tendency to overcompensate for her missing life she had.

There was also Esme, who’d picked up on the tension between her children and had been silently worrying for a while – though only Jasper could sense it. He wanted to prove to her that her family would not be falling apart because of him. A family that now also included Bella, for Edward’s sake; so Jasper was adamant about accepting that fact, getting over his one-sided feud with her, and making a concrete effort to grow to like her.

And so there he was, in a living room that looked more like the venue of a grand gala, faking more enthusiasm than he could really muster and waiting alongside the others for the lovebirds’ arrival.

He heard the roar of Bella’s pick up truck in the driveway. But not even its loudness could drown out her and Edward’s voices.

“…anything for your birthday?”

“You know what I want.”

“Not tonight, Bella. Please.”

“Well, maybe Alice will give me what I want!”

Thankfully, Rosalie’s sharp exhale distracted him from the rest of the conversation. Her jaw was as taut as Jasper’s when they exchanged a glance: she’d heard too. And so had the others, judging by the awkwardness that was suddenly tainting the room’s emotive environment – though Emmett, Esme and Carlisle made quick work of it and focussed back on the cheerfulness.

Barely able to resist the quick deterioration of his own mood and good intentions, Jasper moved away from the centre of the living room, leaning against the banister of the stairs. Bella’s incoming scent was not the only thing he wanted to get away from.

But even Rosalie, while unsmiling, was managing at least not to glare. That gave him the strength and patience to join in on the “Happy birthday, Bella!” cheers, while the girl entered the room.

He watched her look dismally at the decorations, then proceed to greet Esme, Carlisle and Emmett rather stiffly. Her mood was… well, her default one, of course, what else? For a brief moment he entertained the idea of forcing some perkiness onto her, if only to make her have fun in spite of herself, but he’d realised how unethical that’d be even before Edward glared at him.

But he did laugh at her confusion when, opening the box with their present, she found it empty, the radio depicted on the cardboard safely in Emmett’s hands, already being installed in her car. Even Rosalie smirked. It was a genuinely funny moment, and Bella was nice enough to thank them sincerely.

Too bad she had to ruin that the very next second, when Alice handed her the present she’d prepared with Edward. Apparently, it was in flagrant violation of her “no spending money” policy – which was insulting, given their financial situation, and also wrong, anyway: Edward had just recorded a few tunes on the piano with Alice’s help, it was the mother of all homemade gifts. But before she could even clear that out, Bella was already making a big show of glaring at Edward, and rolling her eyes, and muttering, and having it handed to her like opening it was a chore. The most infuriating thing was, the empath could tell she was sincere: she truly felt annoyed that Edward had done something nice for her.

Instinctively, Jasper came closer, if only to enjoy watching her apologise for the theatrics once she appraised the present didn’t break her rules – and truly, if she didn’t feel regret, this time he would make her.

Because however deep he could repress it, he really, truly hated that side of Bella Swan. The way she pretended to be so low-maintenance when, in fact, everybody had to dance to her tune. The way she had to constantly throw in everybody’s face that she didn’t want any fancy clothes, or jewels, or girly things, because she was so humble and unassuming but also above it all – as if buying something for her was in any way more taxing than tiptoeing around her quiet, passive-aggressive temper tantrums. And the way she’d make a show of going along with things she didn’t want to, like moving to Forks in the first place, with a carefully concealed expectation that only Jasper could perceive.

Edward insisted she wasn’t playing the martyr because she wasn’t looking for an audience. Well, joke was on him, because Bella loved feeling awful about things and pretend not to care, only to force everybody around her to pull teeth to know how to make it right, for maximum attention.

Did she really think that James, if he’d really had her mother, would have let her go in exchange for Bella’s life? After all the exposure? No, she wasn’t stupid. She didn’t tell him or Alice about that phone call only because they had to be her audience and witnesses when she went playing hero on a futile mission. They had to stay behind and tell Edward how brave and selfless she was.

Well, she was anything but. In truth she was smug and entitled, and really needed to stop taking herself so seriously on the grounds of being not like other girls, especially around her human friends. Maybe Edward liked her because he couldn’t hear her thoughts, but Jasper could sense all too well the haughtiness and constant sense of judgement she radiated at school.

And honestly, he was past giving any fucks that Edward was listening and kept glancing at him: never had it been more evident than that evening. Because playing hero in the face of death would earn her praise, so she was up for that; but going along with her vampire in-laws being so enthusiastic about something as stupidly mundane as a party was clearly beneath her, too little a sacrifice for her to show off! That’s how selfless she truly was.

Granted, Alice wasn’t being the best of friends to subject her to something she was clearly uncomfortable with, but goddamnit, that was a one-off: Bella could at least put in some effort not to let down her “best friend”, who had no memory of any birthday party of her own and clearly wanted to at least have a taste.

Bella’s entire attitude was an insult to Alice, to the care she’d put into preparing everything, choosing the music with Edward, scattering the flowers all around the house, lighting the candles, and arranging those pricey crystal bowls on the nearby table, precise to the last millimetre.

It was also an insult to Emmett, to the enthusiasm and happiness that fuckery had been giving him from the get go. And to Esme, her generosity and hospitality, the effort she’d put into baking despite her lack of instincts.

And why? Because Belladonna (had Rosalie thought of that one yet?) had to prove to everybody that she was too shy to be social, or too mature to stoop as low as having a good time on her own birthday!

Not to mention Edward. Goddamnit, Edward. He was giving her his all and she kept throwing it in his face, only to ask for the only things that would stomp on his boundaries and sensibilities, much like Rosalie had observed. He’d made a small but very personal, meaningful gesture – surprisingly so for someone who lived on drama like him – and she had to be difficult about it? What shit would she pull if he ever dared do anything more?

Jesus, had Edward done something like that for him, Jasper wouldn’t have been annoyed, wouldn’t have rolled his eyes and grumbled: he’d have cherished it and showed Edward all his gratitude and love!

That wasn’t fair. If Bella hadn’t been in the picture, perhaps Jasper would have been completely honest with Edward; he’d have told him the truth about his feelings, presented him with his heart on a platter even in the face of rejection, just to let him know he was loved and appreciated.

It was mostly out of respect for her that Jasper had resigned himself to watching him from afar, and that’s what she did with it? She had the luxury of having Edward all for herself, and couldn’t even enjoy it. Maybe he could have handled somebody else; or even nobody at all, just Edward being straight and uninterested. But despite his best intentions and efforts to let it go, Jasper really resented being in love with a man who was tied to someone like Bella Swan.

Suddenly, an inner fit of panic piled up on his outrage as he realised that he’d verbalised the Unspeakable Feeling in his thoughts right in the presence of the mindreader who was supposed to never know.

But apparently, Edward had other concerns at the moment: his head snapped towards a quiet but unperturbed, expectant Alice, his expression incredulous. In the meantime, Bella couldn’t even unwrap the stupid present without making yet another scene: there she was, pulling her finger away from the wrapping paper as if the mere touch of that gift could hurt her.

“Shoot.”

Notes:

Rosalie keeps hijacking the fanfiction. I’m sorry, I just LOVE writing her! Did you know she has a degree in astrophysics? Probably not, because Smeyer just threw it in on the Illustrated Guide as an afterthought to try and give her depth, but never worked it into the actual narration. Well, someone had to fix that.

Alice and Tanya are 100% a crackship with no good reason in canon, but I once read a fanfiction where Tanya’s characterisation left me thinking, “Wow, I could totally see her with Alice”. That idea has kinda stuck with me.

We’re officially entering New Moon territory here. I had mapped everything out before rereading it for some fact checking, and I was surprised that I could basically lift the entire birthday scene from there and it would fit into my twist to the story. My beta reader found Bella exasperating, but I literally only added one exclamation mark for extra petulance to what are otherwise direct quotes from New Moon.

Also at the beginning of the novel Rosalie and Emmett are described as generically “in Africa”, which felt like the classic lumping up of the continent as one homogenous, vague mass we tend to do in the West. That’s why I named one specific country instead, and I picked Namibia as a homage to the guys at Ocean Conservation Namibia, who volunteer to rescue seals entangled in manmade rubbish. You can support them on their YouTube channel!

Chapter 7: Heavy In Your Arms

Summary:

Jasper is caught off guard at the worst possible moment. In a twist of fate, it’s up to Edward to help him now. Alice’s uncharacteristic sloppiness comes to a head.

Notes:

Heavy In Your Arms by Florence + The Machine already had ties to the Twilightverse, and makes for a great mood song for this chapter. Enjoy!

In a moment, everything went wild in a way eerily reminiscent of and complementary to the previous January. The smell of blood overwhelmed Jasper’s senses and turned his panic, rage and resentment into pure, unadulterated, visceral hunger. At once, any restraint he could have had was shattered, pulverised, blown up and away.

He’d already launched towards Bella by the time he consciously realised it: everything turned into a big motion blur, negligible and out of focus, except for the tiny, insignificant, mouthwatering blood droplet spilling from her paper cut.

He crashed against Edward and tumbled on the floor together with him, the room spinning sideways and upside down. As the floor hit his face, he could hear loud thumps and glass shattering: Edward had pushed Bella out of the way, but she had landed beyond the table, on the shards of the crystal bowls she’d knocked down. A far cry from the small paper cut, now her entire arm was slashed and bleeding. The smell overcharged the room for almost everyone, but sent an already volatile Jasper into a complete, unescapable frenzy.

Unexpectedly, it was Alice who took the helm, her voice distant and stifled to Jasper’s hearing, against his own vicious growls.

“Emmett, protect Bella!” She shouted. “Rose, please, help Jasper and Edward out. Carlisle, get the…”

He barely had the time to register anything else or study the imposing, unbreathing, dark-haired figure that had crouched between him and his prey: Jasper felt himself being grabbed by two pairs of arms and, while he twitched and thrashed and snarled and tried to fight them off, he got dragged away, the house dashing by in his peripheral vision and the doorway coming at last to frame the fountain of blood he just fucking needed to gorge himself on! But he was too frenzied, too feral to think straight and come up with a strategy to free himself from whomever he’d have to tear to pieces to get to Bella Swan.

Only outside, well past the porch, did he start to regain a modicum of lucidity, enough to recognise an ashamed-looking Esme holding the door open, her free hand covering her nose and mouth as the scent of that fucking delicious blood was testing her self-control too. Emmett was the next to get the hell out of there, blocking the way in but sticking his head out to breathe the fresh air.

When he looked around, Jasper saw long blond locks to his left.

Rosalie was having the time of her life. Her expression barely betrayed it, but he sensed she was enjoying every last second of that drama, almost to the point of being high on schadenfreude. She looked down at him and smirked with warmth, amusement and even pride, like she was impressed with his stunt.

“Rose!” Edward growled at whatever she was thinking, pushing her away. “I take it from here, thank you very much.”

Left with only one warder, Jasper renewed his efforts to break free. He left deep scratches on the bark of one of the cedars, but Edward had anticipated his move and yanked him so he couldn’t cling to the trunk and use it to propel himself towards the house. Granted, Jasper’s thoughts were such a convoluted mess that Edward’s mind-reading abilities gave him only a marginal advantage, but it was still enough to manage him, uncoordinated and erratic as he was.

He kicked and screamed as the mindreader dragged him around the house and then across the backyard. Only the unexpected feeling of the current of the Sol Duc washing over him and preventing him from breathing helped distract him from his prey, as Edward kept trawling him across the river and away from the house. On the other side, in the backyard, Esme looked at them twisting her hands in concern, while Emmett patted her on the shoulder and Rosalie leaned in to whisper something to comfort her. Finally, Alice got out of the house and uncovered her mouth, presumably leaving only Carlisle inside to treat Bella.

Meanwhile, Edward was completely ignoring the pain from Jasper’s repeated bites into the palm of the hand he was blocking the empath’s nose and mouth with to try and give him some relief. It was that realisation that finally froze Jasper in his tracks. Edward still held him tightly against his own body and carried him on farther and farther away from the house, now more easily and swiftly, until Jasper’s inner monologue became coherent enough for him to decide the blond was back in control of himself.

“How’s that cheesy line?” Edward quipped, trying to defuse the tension. “‘We should stop meeting like this’, or something?”

“Edward… I…” Jasper gasped as soon as his mouth was free.

“Hey… it’s over, Jazz”, Edward murmured soothingly, using his newly freed arm to encircle Jasper’s lower abdomen and hold him closer yet. “The worst of it is over. It’s gonna get better soon.”

Under any other circumstances, the irony in that role reversal would have amused Jasper. It did Edward, at any rate: he smiled and nodded, “That’s right. I’m her for you, Jazz. Like you were for me that day. I have your back.”

Jasper’s bloodlust was quicker to subside than Edward’s had been – however mouthwatering, at least Bella wasn’t his singer, after all. It was the rest of what had happened that was slowly drowning him in an agonising sense of irreversibility.

“Your hand… I…” He stammered with little coherence, freeing his arms from Edward’s to grab it and look closely at the damage. He realised he was in no condition to evaluate it objectively, which made him even more anxious.

Edward ignored it, focussing on him instead. “Can you breathe for me, Jasper?”

As Edward let go of him, a trembling Jasper fell down to his knees, covering his face with both hands and then moving them to clutch his sopping hair. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I’m so, so, so sorry, Edward, I’m…”

Edward crouched right in front of him, taking hold of his hands and squeezing them gently. “Breathe deeply.” There was no blame in his voice, nor in his emotional aura. He was very concerned and shaken by what had just happened, but not angry or hostile in the slightest.

“What the fuck?!” Jasper snapped, confused and disoriented. Why wasn’t Edward furious? Why wasn’t he tearing him to pieces, limb by limb, for what he’d just done? Had it been María he’d attacked like that, or whose mate he’d threatened, it would have been the end of Jasper.

“To hell with María!” Edward snapped back in frustration, cupping Jasper’s chin with his unharmed hand. “Please, Jazz, listen to me. Breathe.”

“Edward, I…”

“Breathe in.” Edward repeated obstinately, resting his forehead against Jasper’s and raising his other hand to Jasper’s cheek. “What can you smell?”

“Fuck that!” He shouted, pulling back. He wasn’t offended by the fact that Edward was using his own calming techniques on him, as much as by his disregard for his own safety. What if Jasper went feral on him again? The palm of his hand still felt rough and dented against his cheek as Edward pulled him close again.

“Jasper, my hand will heal perfectly”, Edward sighed, showing him the creased but healing skin. “Look, it already is. We’re sturdy: it’s not like I’ll never be able to play piano again or something.”

Edward’s tone was slightly amused as he made that quip, but Jasper’s was pained when he replied, “It will scar.”

Edward shuddered with indecision, then he finally brushed the scar on Jasper’s jaw with his lips, cold breath against cold skin. “We’ll be matching.”

Muffling his feelings seemed to be harder for Edward now, or perhaps he wasn’t even trying. He was full of yearning, a hint of relief at that small gesture, and… no, Jasper wouldn’t even dare say the word out loud.

He had no time for that, anyway. The weight of what had happened was now coming down on him in full force. “What have I done!” He all but wailed. He looked at Edward. “You should be furious! I almost killed your mate!”

“Can you let me sort out what I should or should not be feeling right now?” Edward retorted sarcastically and a bit impatiently. “First, you didn’t even touch her: I was the one who hurt her by flinging her on the glass. And second, it was an accident – an honest to God accident. They tend to happen when Bella is around.”

But Jasper was nowhere near being pacified. He sat back on the ground, putting some distance between himself and Edward; he frantically tugged at his sweater and shirt, which had slid up his back in the commotion, trying to cover his hideous skin. Then, he hid his face in his hands again.

“A paper cut, Edward. I almost killed Bella over a paper cut! I mean, say it out loud: how ridiculous is that?!”

He elicited a hint of a nervous laughter, but Edward was back to serious when he replied, “It could have been any one of us.”

“Yeah, but guess which one it was in the end!” Jasper looked up again, his tone dry as bone. “Jasper Hale, the one who can’t get a hold of himself. All because I was too busy thinking the worst things of her out of pure spite and jealousy to remember I should keep myself in check at all times because I’m a fucking beast that belongs in a cage away from everyone!”

Truth be told, he’d grown so used to not having to struggle anymore around humans that he’d become complacent, even if he knew that Bella’s scent was something else entirely and he should never get distracted. His negative thoughts had done the rest, bringing forth some latent aggression that ended up feeding his violent instincts.

Rosalie was wrong after all, and so was Carlisle: he was still a monster, a killing machine all wound up and ready to snap at nothing. No matter his best intentions and attempts at being good, there was something fundamentally wrong with him, and that would never change – not now, not in one or two or three hundred years – however much he’d practice abstinence. Clearly, not all vampires were made equal.

The spiralling of his thoughts was interrupted by the potency of Edward’s emotions: frustration, more concern, and a weird mixture of desperation and fulfilment as he hugged Jasper to try and distract him. He straddled him and laid him gently on the ground, following him down to keep their faces close.

“Can you stop overthinking this and breathe for me now?” He asked, stroking Jasper’s face. “Humour me, please, and tell me what you smell.”

Jasper sighed deeply. “The wet bracken”, he begun unenthusiastically, closing his eyes. “The moss and lichens, pretty much everywhere. There’s some baneberry nearby, bitter and pungent, and bunchberry too. And other miscellanea in the undergrowth.” He inhaled and swallowed a lump of nostalgia. “The pine trees – and fuck, did I miss them in Arizona, that time.”

He felt Edward’s thighs press tighter against his hips.

“The soil here in the forest, it smells so good. So rich and nurturing. Not dusty, dry and dead, as it did down there.” As it did when Edward was on the other side of the country, far away from him.

Some things he still couldn’t say out loud, but he was done censoring his thoughts, too.

He opened his eyes and looked down at the boy. The way his wet jeans and shirt clung to his body, drawing each volume, each crease, each muscle, shattered what remained of Jasper’s resolve.

He inhaled deeply and laid his head back on the soil.

“I smell the man I love. And whose girlfriend I almost murdered.”

Edward didn’t freeze or tense. He wasn’t surprised, but he didn’t quite know what to feel. “You didn’t mean to”, he only replied.

Jasper scoffed impatiently. “I smell the man I love, whose girlfriend I almost manslaughtered, is that better?”

“Like I almost did last January? Like I would have, had it not been for you?”

Jasper tutted. “But you resisted your blood singer, of all things: we can’t compare.”

Edward sighed and groaned. “Would you jump Bella right now?”

“Probably yes”, he replied, deliberately unhelpful.

Edward scoffed. “Would you want to jump Bella right now?”

“What does it matter?”

“You were angry at her, I get it. I was annoyed too”, Edward snapped. ”Would you choose to go and kill her over that?”

Jasper sighed. “No. No, I wouldn’t”, he conceded at last.

“And that’s why I’m not angry. We’ve got shitty instincts that sometimes override our choices”, Edward concluded urgently. “You taught me that, you son of a bitch, after I spent a century ignoring Carlisle trying to! Jasper, please, stop punishing yourself. Will you, if I promise I’ll stop doing it to myself? ‘Cause I can’t bear to see you like this!”

“Then go!” He snapped back. “Go, Edward! Go! I don’t deserve you here anyway!”

Edward shook his head.

“Why are you even here?” Jasper asked him.

He didn’t get an answer.

“Why are you here?”

“Because I’ve missed you!” Edward finally admitted. “I’ve missed us, okay? Your words when you talked to me, and your silence when you listened to me. Your thoughts – both the ones you used as a smokescreen and those I managed to pry from beneath the surface! The conversations we’d have, the infinite range of topics we could discuss.” He looked Jasper straight in the eye as he went on, “I’ve missed your laughter, your calling me your sweet boy, your touches and your caresses, your eyes on me, your breath on my skin. Those brief, precious moments of happiness we managed to share together.” He paused, moving his gaze to Jasper’s lips for a second. “I miss our sunset on the rooftop of the house. And the kiss you never got to give me.”

Jasper could sense Edward’s want – his need, even. His relief at finally admitting it. He was so tempted to give in.

But somewhere back at the house, Bella was still bleeding because of him.

“I’m sorry, Edward, we can’t keep this up.”

With a sob, Edward bowed his head and rested it against Jasper’s collarbone.

The empath let him, though part of him was hurting that Edward had completely glossed over his confession – the one before the manslaughter quip.

“I… I don’t know what to say, Jasper. Don’t know what to do. What you said, down by the lake, about right and wrong, morality and social pressure… I don’t know what to make of that. And Bella… I’m with her, but…”

Finally, Jasper raised a hand and rested on the nape of Edward’s neck. It was barely even a caress, but it set his fingertips ablaze.

“I don’t know what to do either. It was wrong of me to burden you with my feelings. I’m so sorry. I should have been a better friend. A brother. I genuinely only wanted to make you happy, to help you cope with your past and your guilt. Instead, I got selfish: I enjoyed too much how you made me feel – like I was more than just scarred skin hiding a retired monster – and how I could put all of that to good use with you. I focussed on myself and forgot what was good for you. So here I am, poisoning everything for you now.”

“I’ve never said that.”

“But you’ve been a mess ever since I tried to kiss you that afternoon. I should have left well alone. I fucked it all up from the get go, and now it’s way too late to salvage this.”

“Stop it. I never wanted any of this…” Edward murmured darkly.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“That’s not what I meant. Why are you not listening to me? Why are– is this payback for Lake Ozette? Tell me, Jasper: why?”

“Because!” This time around, it was Jasper who couldn’t think of a good reason why. Something stirred, deep within his mind, but he was desperate to keep it there. He felt Edward’s frustration when he couldn’t pry it out. So much for speaking frankly with one another.

They laid there silent for a time Jasper couldn’t quantify.

“You should be with her as soon as she stops bleeding”, he murmured finally, moving his hand a way.

“She’s being taken care of”, Edward replied, tracing a tentative path on Jasper’s face with his fingertips. “You need caring too.”

Jasper resorted to sarcasm again, to try and push Edward away. “I’ll go look for Carlisle.”

“Fine”, Edward replied, piqued. He slid away from Jasper and sat beside him. “But I won’t be moving from here until he comes. You should not be alone in a moment like this.”

That was a way they’d learned to use to signal Alice from afar when mobile phones were not an option: they’d make some decision to trigger a vision and let her know they needed her help and how. It worked well enough, and it didn’t take long for Carlisle to actually arrive, even less than Jasper would expect.

He and Edward exchanged a few reassurances about Bella and, after glancing at Jasper one last time, the mindreader pushed through his reluctance and ran back to the house.

“Bella is okay”, Carlisle reassured Jasper, sitting down beside him. “She’s shaken, but otherwise fine. I stitched her up, there was no further damage.”

“Does it even matter?” Jasper retorted tiredly.

“It does. This is not only about you. It’s about her too, and she’s fine.”

Jasper slowly turned to look at his father. “Let’s be real, Carlisle: just because one of my victims – the last of so many I’ve lost count – got away with only stitches, it doesn’t mean all’s good and perfect and I’m not a menace to everything and everyone around me.” He drew a long sigh. “I’m sorry I’m bursting your bubble about vampires being fundamentally good and me being perfect and manageable and incapable of evil for the umpteenth time. You’re a good man, you don’t deserve this.”

“I think you got me wrong, Jasper”, Carlisle replied, turning to look at Jasper as well. “I don’t believe you incapable of evil. I don’t think you, or any of us, really, are devoid of a dark side – in fact, I’m well aware that our nature, its impulses, supercharge it. I do know how difficult it is to resist, and I don’t expect any of us to be able to do it perfectly all the time.”

He raised one hand and rested it on Jasper’s shoulder in a simple but comforting gesture. “You slipped earlier, Jasper, but Edward, Alice and all of us were there to catch you before you fell. As you did when Edward slipped last January.”

After squeezing gently Jasper’s shoulder, he let go of it and went back to looking at the forest, musing more broadly, “It’s true, our nature means that our missteps can spell tragedy for so many people. It’s not just a ‘Sorry, my bad’ sort of thing that can be made right easily. But we are each other’s failsafe. When any of us falls short, the rest are there to help. That’s why we’re not just a coven: we’re a family. When will alone is not strong enough, we keep each other in the light and protect the humans at the same time, and we’re getting better and better at that.”

And he’d been the one putting extra strain on that familial mechanism for half a century.

“Come: I reckon Edward is already driving Bella back home. I’ve cleaned the blood in the house myself, you won’t smell a trace. Let’s go, my son.”

Jasper followed him mostly not to give him yet another disappointment that evening, but he secretly questioned for the millionth time whether he belonged with them at all.

* * * * * * * * *

“Boundaries, Alice! Boundaries: ever heard of them?”

Bella was furious. Alice, on her part, seemed able to only mutter vague apologies.

“I had told you very specifically, ‘Please, Alice, no birthday party’. I’m not saying this is all your fault, but… damn! And regardless, I do not like birthday parties: you already chagrined me by stomping all over that! It’s just the icing on the cake, that if you had respected my feelings on the matter, none of this would have happened!” She was pacing her small bedroom and fidgeting, clearly nervous. “And this isn’t even the first time I ask you not to drag me into your girly girl shenanigans and you flat out ignore me!”

“Is there anything I can say or do to—”

“Look, Alice, I love your brother. I do”, Bella cut in, “But this is getting out of hand. James? That I could handle. Random stranger danger is one thing. But risking death from within the family? I’m sorry, that’s a bridge too far.”

“Jasper didn’t mean—”

“I know, and I’m not angry at him, but it still happened. And it did the moment none of you respected my boundaries. I can’t go on like this. Unless you turn me—”

“We can’t do that.” Alice was peremptory.

“Well, then that’s it. I can’t keep living in danger. Edward was right, we don’t work very well together as it is. I’m moving back with Renée for the time being and then, when I finish college and am independent and safely able to disappear from everybody’s lives, I’ll be back, Carlisle will turn me, I’ll be with Edward forever, yada yada. But for now, I need to be safe. I need to…”

Jasper couldn’t listen any longer. With a swift motion, he leapt from the branch he was perched on, eavesdropping on Alice’s attempts to apologise to Bella, and dashed deep into the forest in the pouring rain, spraying mud and droplets with every stride.

It had been a few days since Bella’s disastrous birthday party. Jasper had called to apologise (by phone, not to risk upsetting her with his physical presence), and she had accepted that. However, from all accounts she’d been seething ever since, until she’d made her decision and told Edward that morning at school: she’d had enough of vampire antics, so she was either going to be turned straightaway, or breaking up with him and moving away from Forks.

And the worst part was that she was right on all accounts! Jasper knew that: their proximity had put her in needless danger many times already, and it wouldn’t stop there. Also, while they did have to put up with her whims, Alice did tend to ignore her requests and just go on doing whatever she wanted. And as it turned out, Edward hadn’t even tried to compromise on their physical closeness after all, leaving her rightfully frustrated.

The difference, now, was that she’d finally had a rude awakening about vampire’s true nature: Edward’s warnings weren’t idle at all, she was in constant danger around them, even during the most mundane of activities. At last, at long last, her survival instinct had kicked in.

Jasper hadn’t dared look for or speak to Edward since that morning. However accommodating he might have been right after the incident, however much he’d gone out of his way to be friendly and act natural around him despite what he’d done, that was the final nail in the coffin of whatever was left of their friendship, Jasper knew it. There was no way Edward would want anything to do with him after he’d effectively cost him his mate.

Why hadn’t Alice seen that coming? How had it even happened?

In fact, she’d been uncharacteristically mishandling the whole situation from the get go. An immensely entertained Rosalie had described to him in great detail Bella’s scowl when, after being patched up, she’d asked for Edward, and Alice had admitted he was out in the woods taking care of Jasper. That, too, had factored into her decision.

And again, Bella was very right to be pissed that her boyfriend was out there cuddling up with her almost murderer instead of comforting her. But he couldn’t believe that she had the luxury of holding Edward’s heart in the palm of her hand, and she was going to throw it away just like that. A part of him, which he knew was irrational, hated her for that.

But mostly, he hated himself for causing that mess in the first place.

It was his thing, after all, destroying the life of the men he loved. That’s what happened to Ebenezer, too, the boy he never got to meet up with in Galveston. After three days of waiting for Jasper, he’d ventured outside the city to look for him. And he did find him… when his transformation was complete, his thirst unquenchable, his newborn instincts unmanageable and his mentors as ravenous as he was.

He’d never forget Eben’s eyes turning from relief to confusion, to fear, to utter horror: that was his first memory as a vampire, seared into his brain with a precision that overshadowed his paltry nineteen years as a human, and it haunted him every day.

Jasper knew he’d eventually see Edward’s eyes go the very same route. He was already painfully aware of how unworthy of him he was, what had just happened was the ultimate proof. However mismatched they were, Edward loved Bella and she was the better option. It wasn’t up to him to break them up and make Edward even more miserable. He’d ruined his chances at happiness because he let the monster slip for a second, just like he’d taken Eben’s life when it had woken up for the first time.

But maybe there was still hope after all. Bella still wanted to come back and be turned. Perhaps she would change her mind if she knew it was safer without the looming threat that was Jasper’s existence.

After all, he had no place there.

He should just pack up and go, stay the fuck away at least for as long as she was human, maybe just drop by every now and again to say hi to Alice, and let Edward be with his girl. That was a plan, it could work.

Maybe Tanya and her siblings would have him? Maybe they’d be compassionate enough to share the Alaskan wilderness with him, the Cullen screwup? Or maybe he’d fuck things up for them too, killing the wrong person at the wrong time in their small town where everybody knew one another?

Maybe he should go to the Volturi? Embrace the monster he knew he was, he could never escape? Put his talent to the service of a greater cause, become once more a mere tool of someone else’s vision of grandeur, a cog in yet another war machine?

Maybe he should seek out María and let her deal with him however she deemed appropriate. At last she would rid the world of the menace that he, Jasper Hale, Jasper Whitlock, Jasper the Monster, was. Edward would be free of him for good. He’d have a shot at happiness.

After all, Jasper had already lost him, even though he’d never had him in the first place.

He let himself fall to his knees and let out a long, loud, visceral cry. He didn’t care if he’d come within earshot of the house, of the entire family: let their last memory of him being the complete disaster that he’d always been.

Notes:

Since Rosalie stole the scene in chapter 6, I had to split up Bella’s birthday party in two (I hope “Shoot!” was a good cliffhanger for those who remember the book!). This in turn allowed me to elaborate further on Carlisle’s scene, which was supposed to be more of a footnote in the next chapter, so silver lining!

Compared to Eclipse, I gave a major overhaul to the night Jasper was turned because I didn’t want to romanticise the war effort itself, especially that side in that war. This is the only big departure from canon I allowed myself when it comes to backstory and worldbuilding. So no war heroics, Jasper was out on a romantic escapade.

Also, Bella needs some boundaries, and I want to stress that she is right at enforcing them and being pissed when Alice ignores them. She should have done so multiple times in canon too.

Chapter 8: Pain

Summary:

A final, gentle push is what Jasper needs to face his deepest wound and finally do what’s truly right.

Notes:

I recommend listening to Pain by Blanche to get into the right mood.

TW: there’s an explicit scene of social injustice and racial violence.

Compared to other vampires’ powers, Jasper’s had a peculiarity: it was tied to and amplified by his own emotional state, much like those of the sister witches from that TV show he loved watching with Alice. When he was experiencing strong emotions, especially deep distress, his empathy would go berserk, temporarily grow in range, pick up people further away, and he’d also accidentally blast anyone within radius with his own feelings.

It hadn’t happened when he’d attacked Bella because his instincts were overriding even his emotions, but that evening he reached the breaking point of weeks, if not months, of mounting tension. And so, he could feel everything that was coming off from the house even several hundred metres away. Which meant it was likely he’d accidentally shared his anguish and grief with everybody.

But once again, he could sense no blame or resentment from any of them: just concern, understanding. And love – so much of it. He could even make out which one was whose. There was Emmett’s genuine, uncomplicated one, and Rosalie’s, which was laced with a hint of annoyance – he could picture her roll her eyes at his antics. Carlisle’s was unmistakable, so full of compassion. And then Esme’s, the strongest of all, a shining beacon of affection and even humanity, despite the circumstances. Jasper was almost tempted to get up and follow it, bask in the comfort of all that motherly affection one final time; but he couldn’t sense anything from Edward, and that petrified him.

He ignored the rustling of the grass as someone approached, though he really could tell who that was from their signature emotional aura. And then, he didn’t feel the raindrops anymore.

When he looked up, he saw Esme, who had crouched beside him holding a large umbrella that covered them both. Vampires weren’t even bothered by the rain, aside from potentially ruining their clothing and hairdos: it was a small gesture of emotional comfort, so typical of her.

He looked at his mother, her soft smile and warm gaze, unsure of what to say. She reached out and hugged him with her free arm, caressing the back of his head while he almost sobbed on her shoulder.

“I’m so sorry”, he whimpered, as she comforted him wordlessly. “I can’t feel him at all. How is he?”

“He’s okay, dear, don’t worry”, she replied, pulling back from the hug to look Jasper in the eye, smile at him and stroke his cheek. “But how are you?”

He shook his head with a grimace, and sniffed. Not that a vampire would ever need to, but it felt like the appropriate thing to do, and a good approximation of his mood. Esme’s presence always made him feel and act a little more human, bringing long-forgotten memories, feelings, even instincts back to life. He might as well allow himself to be a heartbroken nineteen-year-old for a moment, there with his mum.

“Where is he?” He croaked, eyeing the house. “Is he gone?”

Esme nodded, but she wasn’t worried. “He wanted to have his mind all for himself today, he said”, she replied, tucking a strand of hair behind Jasper’s ear. “At least until you came back home. He’d like you to follow him.”

“No. No, he would not”, Jasper replied, if irrationally, with an edge of desperation.

“He specifically asked me to tell you, honey. He went east, you can follow his trail.”

Jasper looked eastwards, where the grounds of the house turned back into forest, indecision on his face. Part of him almost hoped the rain had already washed the trail off despite the thick canopy of trees. But however much he dreaded his last memory of Edward being one of blame and fury, he was too weak not to indulge seeing him one final time.

“I, uh…” He muttered, avoiding eye contact with Esme. “I guess I’ve got time for that. I’m not leaving until Alice comes home anyway – I could never, not without saying goodbye to her too.”

His mother didn’t say anything, she just kept stroking his face. In the end, he couldn’t resist meeting her gaze. “Esme, I beg you, don’t give me that look.” She was obviously looking at him with saddened, worried eyes. “I must go away.”

She shook her head. “You’ll do no such thing, sweetie.” Her voice was soft, yet final.

“Esme, please. If it’s either me or Bella… If I go, if I’m far, far away from her and she’s safe, maybe she’ll reconsider? I… I have to try to make it right. To her and to Edward.”

“Jasper, honey…”

“And besides, let’s be real: what good am I to you? I’ve been a burden since day one, you’re just too nice to tell me. I’m not like Emmett or Edward, I don’t happen to slip up: this is what I am, even if I hate it. I don’t belong here. You’re good people.”

Esme shook her head. “Jasper, listen to me. To me you’re my children, but of course you’re all really adults and are welcome to go your own way whenever and for however long you wish. I’ll miss you when you do, but I’ll be happy for you and what you’ll find along the way. And no matter what, I’ll always save a place for you at home.” Her face and voice were gentle, but she looked him in the eye with burning intensity. “But there’s no such thing as you leaving because you believe you don’t belong here with us. That, and I’d like for you to go running towards the world, not away from yourself.”

Jasper hung his head, gazing down like a scolded teenager.

“I’m so sorry, Esme. I keep fucking up. Blow after blow, fuck up after fuck up, I’ve been chipping away at your family for over half a century now, and I know how much it means to you.”

Esme let go of the umbrella to lay both hands on Jasper’s shoulders. “Jasper, our family is strong. We are strong. It takes more than this to even scratch it.” She smiled at him with warmth and empathy. “You have nothing to apologise to me for.”

He shook his head. “Esme, you know how much I care for you. But this time the mess I made is personal to us, and you can’t deny it. I need to face the consequences of what I did.”

“Are you not?” She asked pointedly.

Jasper looked up at her, a silent question in his eyes.

“Do you know what I’ve been seeing since the first day I met you?” She asked, sitting down with him despite the soaked ground. “A man who knows when he’s done wrong and won’t shy away from admitting it. Who won’t hesitate to put himself on the line to make things right. Who won’t just sit there ignoring his wrongs, or making up excuses: you act on your moral compass. I’ve never seen you shrug off the burden of your past, not once.”

Faced with obstinate silence, she asked, “Did you really stop drinking human blood just to pander to Alice? Or to stay with us for her sake? Be honest, darling.”

Jasper swallowed a lump of unease. “My power…”

Even if he trailed off immediately, Esme picked up the hint of dismissiveness in his voice.

“Then tell me why you changed your stance so completely on your involvement in the Confederate army and what it stood for.”

He sighed deeply. “Honestly, racial bias became somewhat beside the point once I became an entirely different species.”

“But you didn’t shrug it off as ‘just a human problem’, did you?”

He smiled bitterly. “It’s hard to endorse or ignore discrimination when you can sense how it makes its victims feel.”

Esme knew. She was one of the only three people who did, alongside Alice and, more recently, Edward. He had confided in them about the first time he ever managed to resist human blood. He didn’t speak of it often or lightly, because he didn’t want to pat himself on the back for what was basic decency, so he’d never told Rose or Emmett, or especially Carlisle.

It had happened in some rural town in Florida, early in the blur that were the ten years between his rescue by Peter and his encounter with Alice. The trail of freshly spilt human blood stretched all across town, and while he was chasing it, his frantic mind wondered in frustration how anyone could make it that far and follow such a pointlessly intricate path while losing so much blood.

His mouth was pooling with venom the closer he got to his prey, his senses sharp, his body ready to attack. But soon, he found out they were far from alone. As he turned yet another corner, the uproar of the crowd, their emotional turmoil, the loud, collective thumping of their overexcited hearts almost blasted him off his feet.

There were ordinary men a women, all-American Joes and Janes, your everyday, next-door neighbours, wearing their best clothes, gathered together… shouting, jeering, cackling, and carrying torches. And among them was his designated prey: one single man. A boy, in fact, not much older than Eben had been. Bruised and beaten to a pulp, the scent of blood coming from his countless cuts and abrasions. The only Black man in a crowd of white people.

And they were putting a noose around his neck and readying a pyre beneath a big tree growing in the town square, right next to a cheap-looking bronze statue of some Confederate general – one Jasper had even corresponded with, goddamnit.

He had heard of that kind of stuff. He kept away from humans when he wasn’t hunting, but he’d often steal newspapers to make sure there weren’t signs of other vampires in the area he was in. He had read reports of the lynchings. They were praised, exalted, sometimes even advertised in advance to give the crowd time to assemble, and for photographers to come. He’d never thought much of it – at the time he was actively trying, with less and less success, to see humans as just game, all of them.

That night in particular, he was failing spectacularly.

He could cause a distraction and swiftly claim his prey. Hell, he was so hungry that any one of those people could very well become one. But the reality – the inhumanity – of what was happening froze him in place, those emotions overpowering even his hunger.

It was a crushing wave of ferocity and sadism. Of glee, elation at another person’s suffering. Of self-righteousness mixed with pettiness. And in that midst, the Black boy’s utter terror, his impotence and resignation, his solitude, his desperation, his outrage and sense of injustice.

Jasper had fought in a human war for two years, then in a vampire one for another seventy five, and yet that scene horrified him.

He did his best – he really did – he overexerted his talent, trying to infuse the mob with calm, peace, contentment, hoping they’d give up their murderous intents. But for every one person he managed to calm down for a few moments, another dozen would keep beating the man and setting him up for hanging and immolation, and that would galvanise the others back into joining.

It was even worse than dealing with an army of newborn vampires. Those were simple creatures who ran on instinct and need. These were acting on pure, unadulterated malice, on sheer hatred, on evil. There was no magicking that away.

They truly were monsters. And he’d once been one of them.

Not directly, not even with real conviction, not actually hunting down and murdering Black people, but that was the night he realised that he’d been fighting for that. No patriotism, no homeland grandeur: that was what had dragged him into war. What good did it make that he didn’t deliberately target Black people, if only out of indifference about race, if he’d opportunistically supported the people and institutions who actively did?

That realisation shattered whatever little self-worth he still carried, and he knew how much he deserved that guilt.

In the end, he resolved to uproot the tree, his inhumanly fast movements going unnoticed in the darkness: that scared the mob into backing off, and they scattered altogether when he set the pyre and the dried foliage ablaze with one of their abandoned torches.

When he grabbed the man and carried him away, he was within an inch of his life. And while his blood smelled delicious, Jasper just had no more appetite. The hatred and savagery of the mob still rang loud in his memory, and the man’s continuing terror and desperation were eating at him.

He hid him in some abandoned barn, bolting away as soon as possible to go end someone else’s life instead. But not before he’d heard the man feebly crying for his wife.

He did track her, after hunting, and had to literally grab and carry her, so terrified she was of another white, blond man showing up at her doorstep – and certainly not because of his burgundy eyes.

He watched them tearfully reunite, procured them some food for a few days and, as soon as the man was able to stand, put them on the first train north with what few belongings he’d packed at their house, and some money he’d stolen somewhere.

The gratitude that the man and his little wife radiated while they bid him farewell on that train made him sick. It was misplaced. He didn’t deserve it. One single good deed didn’t make him a hero.

After all, what was one life saved in the face of an entire rotten system, which he’d contributed to put in place? That didn’t come close to even hypocritically wash his conscience, let alone absolve him of his guilt. There was no real happy ending when tens, hundreds, thousands of crimes like those kept happening all around him. And there was no such thing as one good Confederate soldier going rogue and making up for the horrors his ephemeral country had caused. Even if he went around saving all of the victims, there’d still be a next one as long as the system was in place; but he had no means to help dismantle it: he was an unwanted, dangerous guest in human society, unfit to live among them. He couldn’t even find a way to keep himself from murdering people for sustenance, how could he even think to make things better?

In the end, he fled the South and his own cursed legacy, knowing full well he’d never truly escape it. And that’s how he eventually ended up in Philadelphia in 1948. He was thankful when, upon reentering human society with the Cullens’ help, the tide slowly started changing, but also shamefully aware that the Southern legacy still endured, in more covert but equally insidious ways.

But after hearing his story, Esme had told him that it had been his very first step in the right direction – and a double one at that. And once he conquered his thirst, he could focus on battling his other demons, too, find ways to make amends. He knew she still thought that, though he wasn’t sure he could agree.

And indeed, she cupped his cheek and looked him straight in the eye. “Your talent is part of you, sweetie. It’s shaped by the kind of person you are, and it shapes you in return. Had it only been about you being a persuasive human before, it would have grown into some form of mind control, wouldn’t it? But it’s emotions you can sense and influence: that has to come from you being sensitive. It’s because you’ve always been a caring person, and not even the violence you endured could erase that.”

For a moment, Jasper wavered in his obstinate self-loathing. Weird as it sounded, that was the first time he’d ever thought of his talent in such terms. He’d always taken for granted that the charisma and cogency he had as a human were what had turned into his power, but his mother was right: that didn’t account for the emotions.

Noticing that small opening, Esme insisted with her insight. “Really, Jasper, don’t deny yourself the credit because of your power. We all relate to people through our senses: we see their distress, we hear their stories. You just have an extra way to do that.”

“You think so?”

She nodded encouragingly. “Yes, dear. And seeing, hearing, even sensing, don’t necessarily mean watching, listening, empathising: so many people choose to ignore what they perceive if it’s inconvenient. And not just out of malice: how many bystanders do nothing in the face of injustice which they can see plainly, just because it’s not their fight and they don’t have to care? How many just deliberately turn away?” She sighed with a hint of remorse. “And how easier it is, when we’re the guilty ones. Do you think other vampires don’t know what their feeding means for their victims? The times I slipped, I saw their terror, I heard their pleas. Deep down, beyond my instinct taking over in that moment, I knew what was happening – what I was doing. And so do others, even without feeling what the humans feel the way you can.”

She stroked his hair to soothe his doubts.

“Let me tell you this: our nature would make it easy to brush all of this aside, we’re made to do that. Caring, holding ourselves to human standards, is a choice we make consciously every day. And you make it too: even before joining us, you already knew wrong from right in a way most vampires, and even many humans, don’t even bother to question. You just hadn’t found a way to act on that. When you found us, we only showed you how, but your resolve was there all along. So what if it came from your extrasensory talent? That doesn’t make it any less meaningful.”

She gently grabbed his shoulders again for emphasis. “And look, even now: you could have just shrugged the incident with Bella off and gone on with your life. And yet, here you are, trying to find the best way to make amends to everyone, including Bella. That does mean something.”

Jasper’s lips quivered as he felt the sincerity, the absolute conviction that Esme radiated while she comforted him.

“You have no idea how much I want to believe you. I tried to, when Edward told me these things. I tried listening to Rose, and Carlisle, but… but… ” He sighed restlessly. “Why is it so easier to listen to you, ever after everything that happened? You always manage to say things I can’t help but relate to.”

“Because we’re more similar than you’d think”, Esme replied. “I know you believe you’re an outsider, but you’ve got as much in common with me and Rosalie as you have with Edward. We all experienced different kinds of violence, but it was violence nonetheless.”

He hesitated for a while, but then shook his head. “You didn’t do the things I did.”

She leaned closer, squeezing his shoulders gently to comfort him.

“I told you, I slipped too: that remorse stays with me every day, like yours does with you. But that’s not what I mean: I’m talking about the violence you had to endure. You are right not to use what was done to you as an excuse to get away with what you did. But you shouldn’t think that what you did invalidates the harm that was done to you, either: it was just as real, and not your fault. That terrible woman did it to you. And before her, those men who poisoned your mind with their intolerance did. Taking accountability for your actions does not mean feeling responsible for theirs, too, nor tormenting yourself indefinitely. You deserve redemption because you’ve been working so hard for it, even while you still needed healing yourself for what was done to you.”

She let go of his shoulders, only to take both his hands in her own.

“Jasper, dear, if you need forgiveness, I’ll forgive you a thousand times over. A million, even, if need be. I will teach you what forgiveness feels like, until you finally find it deep within your heart. I’ll keep forgiving you until you forgive yourself.”

Had he been human, by that point Jasper would have been a sobbing mess. Part of him wished he were, it would have been cathartic.

He smiled, instead, comforted by Esme’s words in spite of himself. He looked up at her. “How do you do it?”

She tucked more strands of hair behind his ears, now that the rain had soaked it again. “You know, it’s not true that you love all your children equally”, she replied. “It’s not about loving one more or less, better or worse, picking favourites. It’s about every one of your children needing a different kind of loving.” She reached gently to caress his cheek again. “You need the most passionate love a mother can give, because you were taught so much hate. Hate for other people, hate for your enemies, and especially hate for yourself. So much so that it wounded you deeply and it’s still festering. It’s up to a mother to clean that wound, my sweet, so you can focus on healing when it’s no longer infected. That you’ll have to do yourself, but I won’t leave you to face it alone.”

He smiled a bit more, looking at her with gratitude.

“And neither will Edward”, she added naturally, smiling back at Jasper. When he swallowed uncomfortably, she squeezed reassuringly the hand she was still holding. “Do you think I didn’t notice the joy you two were bringing to each other? I don’t think I’d ever seen you as serene and… hopeful as you were a few months ago, when you started sharing your time together. It warmed my heart.”

She held his gaze confidently but kindly, still as optimistic even when she added, “I know all of that changed when you stopped being true to yourselves. But earlier today, Edward seemed ready to do the right thing – for Bella, yes, but for himself too. It’s time for you to put yourself first, too, and let all the rest sort itself out without feeling responsible for every single thing: you’ve earned it. I do believe it’s never too late to fix things, especially between two sensitive souls like yourselves. Don’t lose hope just yet.”

He fell silent again, but this time it wasn’t doubt-ridden as before. He was just letting what Esme had just told him sink in. It was a lot to process, as many of the things she said had struck different chords in him.

One in particular felt huge, groundbreaking even.

“It’s…” He hesitated, but Esme hugged him again. “I’ve been ignoring some signals that Edward has been giving me lately – encouraging ones. I kept telling myself I’d never dare make a move on Edward out of respect for Bella, because he already had a mete, or because I was sure he’d reject me and didn’t want to lose him even as a friend, but there’s more to that. Now I know it.”

At last he himself grasped it, the real reason why he’d tried to push Edward away when he’d stayed with him in the forest, after the birthday party, even tough reconnecting with him, going back to before that whole Bella disaster started, was everything Jasper secretly hoped for. It was something he’d never acknowledged, not even in his thoughts – certainly not with the clarity that Esme’s words had just brought.

It had always been there, in the back of his mind, a shapeless shadow that’d been accompanying him at every step, as familiar as the awareness he’d left half-unspoken until a few months prior.

Shining a light on it would dispel it, demystify it, and he was afraid he’d lose something familiar, a piece of himself.

He felt like at the top of a cliff, just about to jump. But finally ready to do it. There would be no going back from that, but he trusted his mother to catch him before he crashed to the bottom.

“Deep down, I’ve always believed that everything that’s even gone wrong in my life was my fault. And not just because of my actions, but because of who I am.” He shivered as he said that out loud, feeling as vulnerable as a soft, fragile human boy. “I wouldn’t have enlisted in that senseless, hateful war if I hadn’t needed to hide who I was, after that one time I let myself get too physical with a boy in my town. I wouldn’t have met María if I hadn’t pursued my friend… my boyfriend, whom I’d met in the army, instead of keeping things platonic. And I wouldn’t have killed him if I hadn’t made him fall in love with me to the point of coming look for me when I didn’t show up nor send news.”

Esme caressed the back of his head to soothe him, but let him continue undisturbed.

“It looked like a pattern: every time I allowed myself to be with a man, I’d have to pay the price. Or, worse, he’d have to. You know those things that you subconsciously believe even if you don’t articulate them consciously? That was it.” He drew a deep breath, inhaling the pleasant smell of the cedars, which the rain had made more vivid, mixed up with Esme’s soothing, familiar scent. He’d never stopped to realise how much it felt like home. It calmed a fit of anguish and allowed him to continue. “I think María figured it out from my distress in the wake of Eben’s death, when I kept losing control of my powers and broadcasting my emotions to the entire coven, because she made sure to hammer it in, to remind me every time she felt her grip on me loosening. And then, I could never quite shake it off.”

He closed his eyes, pressing his fingertips onto Esme’s shoulders.

“You know, I thought I had a handle on it, on my bisexuality. I’ve liked both boys and girls since I can remember, before there was even a name for it. I thought that if I fell short of truly accepting it, at the very least I was resigned to it. I thought I came prepared when I realised I had fallen for Edward. But there was still that other part of me who was desperate to only keep it theoretical. Acting on it, truly letting myself want Edward, love Edward… it scared me, Esme. Especially after he freaked out when he caught wind of it. I know he didn’t mean to hurt me, but it validated the part of me that believed all of this, that I was born wrong and I’d push him away because of that. That’s the moment I convinced myself he was better off with Bella, no matter what. And now, with the mess I made with her, I thought that was it: despite my best intentions, my being in love with him was destroying both of our lives and our entire family, even more than my shaky control over my thirst did. But now… what you just said to me…”

He inhaled deeply, and that must have been what humans felt when they finally breathed again after a long apnoea.

“It was never me, was it?” He asked, pulling back from the hug to look Esme in the eye. “It was the people who wouldn’t accept me. The people who’d make me out to be wrong. The people who’d exploit it to control me. It was on them, not on me, all along.”

It wasn’t as firm a statement as he would have liked – his voice was small, tentative – but there was no doubt, no interrogative inflection in his tone.

Esme smiled radiantly at him, patting and caressing his cheek.

“I’m so proud of you, Jasper, my child.”

He smiled back.

He thought only he and Edward, with their somewhat similar experiences, could ever effectively comfort each other. And that was true, in a way, for the reasons they’d often discussed.

But he now realised that their tendency for self-loathing, and especially their difficulties accepting themselves, could as well lead them to the very feedback loop of fear and irrational preemptive rejection that had made them drift apart.

Their family – all of it – was there to break that loop and give them an outside perspective. It wasn’t, as he thought, that they didn’t get the weight of the responsibilities they carried for they actions: they simply understood that there was more to them than their past mistakes.

“You know, the irony is, I even told Edward some of this, once, when we had a fight. The part about people teaching us self-hatred and bigotry to control us. I just never stopped to think how much it applied to me too. Not until you helped me realise that is what’s been burdening me all this time, alongside my remorse for my own actions. Those I have turned around, and am finding better ways to make up for. And the rest… I can just let it go.”

It was his turn to hug Esme, now, tightly and affectionately.

“Thank you, mum. Even though I’m half a century older than you”, he commented, smirking at that small inside joke of theirs.

Esme chuckled wholeheartedly, hugging him back. Then she got up and held out a hand to help Jasper up. “Now go, my dear. Follow him, clear things up. Tell him how you feel and listen to what he tells you. Be happy together, my lovelies.”

Notes:

I saved Esme’s spotlight moment for the climax of the story because I believe she deserves better. It was supposed to be a shorter scene at the beginning of the main course, but as I was writing what’s become the next chapter I realised Jasper had a lot of unresolved issues that were getting in the way, and his mom’s embrace was the perfect place to work them out. I’m glad I made this choice because it allowed me to properly explore Jasper and Esme’s relationship.
Smeyer has always given me the impression that Esme was a bit of an afterthought to her, written in because the Cullens needed a traditional, nuclear family with a mother figure, but she never quite knew what to make of her. Here I wanted to show her passionate love, how it gives her insight and actually impacts positively her messy children. The backbone of her scene was one of the first things I wrote, which, alongside Rosalie’s “If there is a god” speech, is what turned the fancfiction from just a quick slash piece to more of an ensemble story about the whole family.

Chapter 9: No Regrets

Summary:

It’s time to come clean: Jasper and Edward speak frankly at last, for real, with nothing to hide behind.

Notes:

I’ll admit, there’s been some song reshuffling here. This is was originally going to be the last chapter, named after the song that gave the title to the entire fanfiction, but there was more to be said so I added an epilogue, and then switched songs with it. After all, No Regrets by the Sugababes fits perfectly the tone of this chapter.

Even though it was raining, Jasper knew and loved Edward’s scent so much that he could find it anywhere, no matter how faint. After quickly changing into dry, non-muddy clothes, he followed it easily through the thick forest, running away from the weather system that was dousing Forks, and on into a cloudless evening. Eventually, the trees gave way to a small, round clearing. Edward was sitting in the middle of this meadow, his face and forearms glimmering faintly under the recently-full Moon light. He’d raised his head as soon as he’d heard Jasper’s incoming thoughts.

“You wanted to see me?” Jasper asked tentatively from the edge of the trees.

“Yeah, of course.” Edward sounded natural to the ear, and also felt calm to Jasper’s sixth sense.

“Why?”

He smirked. “I couldn’t very well let you sulk dramatically for days on end, now, could I? That’s my thing.”

Jasper was still unsure what to say. A part of him, the same that had made him ignore all of Edward’s signals the last time they’d been alone together, couldn’t let go of the idea that the boy should be holding Bella’s impending departure against him. The other was determined to truly listen to Edward this time, without prejudice; and thanks to Esme, the latter was winning out.

Edward beckoned him closer and gestured to sit down, among the wild flowers that still bloomed that late in the summer. He kept his ostensible calm, but something stirred deep within him as the empath approached.

The detail that caught Jasper’s eye as he walked closer, though, was a small potted fern sitting right beside Edward. One Jasper could easily recognise, some leaves still battered and bruised: the one he’d spitefully trampled that night on the shore of Lake Ozette.

Edward nodded in response to his thoughts. “You made your point quite clearly, that evening. And while I wasn’t ready to let it sink in just yet, I thought it unfair to just leave it there. So I decided to take it with me and nurture it, so to speak, until it was healthy.”

If he was referring to the plant or the conversation, or if one was a metaphor for the other, Jasper couldn’t tell. Under Edward’s care, the fern had sprouted a few new leaves, though.

Jasper took a sharp breath and began, “Look, I—” but Edward raised a hand, asking him to stop.

“Please, let me go first.”

Jasper sat down, at last, and this time he was the one fidgeting absentmindedly but delicately with the new leaves.

“You were right”, Edward admitted without preamble. “I wanted to love Bella so I’d find an anchor that would keep me from killing her for her blood. I was desperate, and with the way I grew up – that mindset – the biggest anchor was just that: a man’s romantic love for his damsel, inspiring him to be his best self and protect her. Imagine that, in 2005”, he scoffed with self-irony. “In the end, I did learn to control my bloodlust regardless of my feelings for her. I don’t need to cling to an excuse: I can be in a room with Bella and not kill her because I’m better than that, plain and simple. And if I managed to taste her blood and not kill her in Phoenix, it was not because of the power of love: it was because saving her was the right thing to do, period. I put off realising it because by that point she was very invested in our relationship, and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.” He grimaced. “No, scratch that: I was too ashamed of what I’d been doing to backpedal. But the truth is, the more I fixated on going about it the wrong way, the more danger I ended up putting Bella in. James was on me, and so was the party fiasco.”

Jasper flinched internally at the mention, but nodded and listened on silently, waiting for Edward to be finished.

“I was going to break up with her, you know?” The mindreader added, matter-of-factly. “She just beat me to the punch. And honestly, I’m relieved this is turning into a mutual decision and I won’t have to break her heart.”

Well, sure as hell she would have found a way to be so dramatic about it.

Edward smirked overhearing that thought.

“Sorry”, Jasper said, not quite meaning it: his guilt over what happened at the party didn’t change his opinion of her. He laid down on the grass, looking despondently at the Moon.

“I’m not saying you’re wrong. But I can’t fault her: I did her dirty all across the board.” Edward commented with regret. He laid down as well and, after a small hesitation, moved his head closer to Jasper’s. “Taming my bloodlust was only part of my motives. The real reason I started dating her was that yes, Jasper, my attraction to you scared me.” Quivering underneath the calm exterior, he turned his head to look at the blond. “Though I was technically truthful when I said it wasn’t you who’d made me uncomfortable, that day on the roof: it was realising how much I wanted you. It felt so natural, when we almost kissed, and that… threw me off. I’d always done my best not to even realise I was not, in fact, an average, all-American, straight young man – and you know how easy it is for us to compartmentalise and deny ourselves. But with you…” He trailed off, breaking his pretence of detachment by brushing the back of his hand against Jasper’s. “So, I told myself, I could kill two birds with one stone: if I willed myself to love Bella, I could keep her safe and stave off my… confusing feelings by clinging to something safe and familiar – heterosexual love, and a very innocent one, at that.” He smiled bitterly. “It seemed like a good idea at the time, but in reality it’s never a good idea, ever.”

Jasper returned the rueful smile, though he still didn’t dare make eye contact or truly return his touch. He wanted to figure out where Edward’s reasoning would take them before testing his own self-control.

The mindreader went on, “And then things truly got out of control: on the one hand, I owed Bella for what James did to her; on the other, however much it scared me, I still needed you, Jazz. So I built this elaborated scenario in my head: as long as I could cling to the idea that you couldn’t possibly want me because Alice was your mate, and I was with Bella, I still felt safe. You were only kind and brotherly, and I’d been wishfully misreading you since that one time I… tempted you, I guess? I wanted so hard to believe that. But then you and Alice broke up, and I felt no longer safe: not wanting to hurt her, steal you away from her, was the cornerstone of my resolve; suddenly, maybe, I could have had you, after all. And I wanted to, and part of me thought that oh my God, sodomy on top of being a vampire, was I out of my mind? So I had to put even more of an effort into it, faking it harder with Bella, growing more distant from you, until I could no longer ignore just how wrong it all was. I was endangering her and making us all miserable because I was refusing to admit that I like men.” He paused for a beat, his fingers grazing Jasper’s. “That I like you.”

Jasper still didn’t speak: he felt as though if he did, if he moved, if he breathed, even, he could shatter that moment. He was paralysed by disbelief, afraid to hope that what he was hearing was true.

And it wasn’t just the words: Edward was not holding back or censoring one single emotion. Beneath his calm voice, he was feeling all of it: regret over his actions, and then affection, desire, and love.

This time Edward seemed to be actively feeding his hope and eroding his defences, to a point he knew he couldn’t withstand making a move only for Edward to run away in panic. Not now, after Esme had somehow convinced him that he did deserve to be happy after all.

Edward rolled to his side to face Jasper, and reached for his cheek. “I’m so sorry, Jazz. I did this to you. What’s worse, even after I decided that I couldn’t go on being with Bella, I wasn’t sure I’d want to have this conversation – to tell you all of this. I seriously considered going on being miserable because… because after how we left things last time, I was afraid of something different: of rejection. Of being too late. Of you having lost all patience with me and moved on. Of having fucked things up past the point of no return. Can you forgive me?”

Jasper smiled softly, finally breaking the tension. Hearing Edward swear was still inherently hilarious, in an endearing way.

“What changed your mind?” He asked, rolling to his side, too, and finally facing his beloved boy.

“Rosalie did”, Edward said, but with a fond smile, for a change. “She kept replaying your ISS-gazing conversation in her mind over and over again, until I was forced to listen.”

Jasper’s new position allowed Edward’s hand to caress his face more easily. In turn, Jasper tentatively reached to trace the angle of Edward’s jaw, then the cheek, resting the thumb on the corner of his lips. He wasn’t sure whose relief he was feeling – his own or Edward’s. Probably both.

Soon, their hands found their way to each other’s hair. They got closer, their faces but one breath a part.

“I’m not saying I’m… suddenly completely comfortable. But I’m tired of not being. And I want to learn to be.” Edward said, his voice trembling a little. “Will you teach me?”

When Jasper nodded, they were so close their lips brushed. It was a gentle shock for both, a wave of anticipation and relief and long-awaited fulfilment all rolled up together. Needing more, Jasper nipped at Edward’s lips with his own. And then again, and again, until he could taste them and feel their fresh, inviting wetness in return, as they parted.

As the kiss deepened, they both started actively seeking each other, tentatively at first, a careful exploration, a slow testing of boundaries that were quickly crumbling; it didn’t take long for their lips and tongues to find a rhythm in mutually caressing. But Jasper’s urge ran deeper than the kiss, so he pressed himself against Edward, one hand still entwining its fingers in his hair, the other running down his body; and Edward, too, traced Jasper’s face before moving one hand to embrace him. Every touch, small or intimate, passionate or soft, was a much needed anchor for Jasper to convince himself that the moment was real and not a fabrication, a lucid, waking dream gone too far.

In the heat of the kiss, as Jasper caressed his back, Edward’s shirt got untucked, and the empath couldn’t resist slipping a hand underneath to touch the smooth skin directly. It was an intense but brief touch, as he didn’t want to risk going too far. He had to force himself to pull back just enough to look Edward in the eye and ask him, as he caressed his chin and lips with his other thumb, “Will you stop me when it gets too much?”

“It’s hardly even enough”, Edward replied, kissing the palm of Jasper’s hand before reaching for his mouth with renewed passion. Jasper laid down on his back, and was surprised when Edward straddled him.

“I’ve been a bastard to you, Jasper”, he murmured, breathless but with a strange resolve, as he straightened his back. “I used Bella as a shield, as a smoke screen.” He started unbuttoning his own shirt as he spoke, much to Jasper’s confusion (and, secretly, elation). “I attached her name to the love you could sense in me, which was for you. I used my guilt over plunging her into the supernatural to hide my guilt over being in love with you. My doubts about dating a human girl to hide my doubts about wanting you.” As soon as his shirt was open, he shrugged it off his shoulders. “I’m tired of hiding. I need to truly speak frankly. And I want you to see me as I am. Metaphorically and literally.”

And for a moment, Jasper allowed himself to take Edward in, to look at his beautiful body shimmering under the moonlight, too faintly for the human eye but brightly enough for a vampire’s. He couldn’t resist tracing the sides of his chest, caressing every centimetre of his skin, feeling his muscles and bones under his touch.

Suddenly, as Edward’s desire rushed through him, a thought made him chuckle. “Here, though?” He asked with a smirk, gesturing at the meadow.

Edward’s laughter started out slightly nervous, but turned genuine midway through. “I like it here. I come here to find some peace and calm away from the house.” He kissed Jasper again, briefly but deeply. “It’s my special place, and that’s why you’re the first I’ve ever taken here: I like the idea of sharing it with you. Of finding my truth, discovering myself through your touch here.”

As Jasper kissed him back, Edward went on to unbutton and unzip his trousers. But before he could go any further, Jasper stopped his hand. He could sense that Edward was aroused and even impatient, but also a little scared by that unprecedented intimacy. Jasper needed to be sure they both wouldn’t regret what they were seemingly going to do.

“Are you really sure? You know the second I feel you’re uncomfortable I’m going to stop, right?”

Edward nodded with a smile. “That’s why I trust you.” This time, he led Jasper’s hands to his trousers, looking him intensely in the eye. “That’s why I love you, Jasper.”

And in that moment, Jasper was so attuned to Edward’s emotions that he could make even their subtlest hues. His regret was laced with relief: it wasn’t about their kiss, just the wait that had preceded it. And while there was some insecurity, trepidation even, there were no guilt or shame accompanying it, only curiosity: he wasn’t freaking out, just exploring himself, getting familiar with his own desires.

So Jasper indulged him and pulled his trousers off, as Edward himself did away with his shoes. The boy now sat stark naked on top of him, not quite showing off, but letting him watch just how vulnerable, sincere, in love and visibly aroused he was.

After tracing his hipbones with his thumbs, Jasper sat up and kissed Edward’s chest, again with one hand caressing his hair and the other sliding down his back. “How are you feeling?”

“Can’t you tell?” Edward quipped, though he knew why Jasper was asking, so he said more seriously, “It’s… unexpectedly liberating. And refreshing.” He entangled his fingers in Jasper’s hair, adding, “And I really don’t want it to stop. Unless you want it to.”

Well, Jasper definitely didn’t. His mouth and tongue slowly tracing Edward’s breastbone and making their way to one nipple attested to that, if his frantic thinking about wanting less clothes on wasn’t indication enough. Edward heard that and eagerly complied, starting with the empath’s knitted pullover and leaving him bare-chested.

Jasper smirked, but he also shuddered as if the cool air could chill his exposed skin. Except now, he finally knew what it was.

“I… you know how I feel about you, but you also know I’ve got my own issues – tons of them”, Jasper murmured against Edward’s skin, in-between kisses. “Some I’ve even only just realised I have. If it makes you feel any better, this is scary for me too.”

Edward nudged Jasper’s chin up to kiss his lips and look him in the eye with a questioning frown. He was trying not to pry into his thoughts, to let him verbalise them at his pace, which Jasper appreciated.

“My past is literally carved into my skin”, he explained. “I don’t feel self-conscious about being scarred per se, but you know well what those marks represent: parts of me I still have to completely shake off.”

“That’s why you always tug at your sleeves and hems when you’re nervous”, Edward guessed in a whisper. “Especially when your time with María is brought up…”

Jasper nodded. He bowed slightly to kiss Edward’s hand, the one whose palm he had recently scarred, to reassure him he wasn’t pulling away, then continued, “And speaking frankly – to you and to myself – it’s not only about the violence, my victims, my hunting. Those parts I’m slowly learning to forgive myself about. But there’s also much more self-doubt than I thought I was packing.”

His conversation with Esme was still too raw for him to discuss out loud – not to mention that he really wanted to do other things with his mouth at the moment – so Jasper just let his mind run through it for Edward to hear, while making his way up his neck and chin until he could kiss his lips. He felt ready to truly let Edward into his mind, with no filters, no distracting shallow thoughts.

After listening, Edward pushed him gently to the ground, kissing the scar on Jasper’s chin before moving down to the ones on his neck, and then his chest.

“I understand, Jazz. And I promise I’ll help you rebuild what María has taken from you.” He briefly teased one of Jasper’s nipples, before planting a kiss above Jasper’s unmoving heart. “You’re worthy of love, Jazz. Love in general, and mine in particular.”

Jasper smiled, holding Edward close to his chest while kicking his own shoes off. “You’ll have to keep reminding me every now and again, Love.”

“Anytime. In any way”, Edward replied, proceeding to pull off Jasper’s jeans.

The empath raised his hips to help him and mused, “Now I know why I got so angry at you that night.” He glanced briefly at the potted fern, which he pushed further aside, away from potential damage. “I saw you retracing my steps, the ones I subconsciously knew were making me miserable, and I didn’t want that. I wanted you to find happiness. And I was angry at myself, too, because deep down I knew I was deliberately denying myself a chance to be with you out of self-loathing, even if I hadn’t realise it consciously yet.”

Naked at last, he pulled Edward into his arms, and the mindreader replied with an even hungrier, more urgent kiss. Their embrace, too, was tighter than before: it was the savouring of their mutual nakedness; the joy of laying there, skin on skin, with no fear of rejection; the intoxicating, apparently impossible but perfectly real mix of vulnerability and feeling safe and sheltered.

There was still a hint of uncertainty in Jasper. The part of him who felt how right it was to love and be loved by Edward was winning out; the other part, the old, weary, scarred one, was quietly crumbling, but not disappearing just yet.

He shook his head to dispel it. “This is an ongoing process for me too.” He admitted, caressing Edward’s back all the way down to his ass. “Will you be patient with me?"

Edward nodded, his lips still on Jasper’s. “God knows you've been with me. It's the very least I can do.” He replied in-between kisses. “Besides, we’re here to learn together, aren’t we?” He added while grinding himself harder against his lover.

And it was true. And a nice prospect, much like the promise he and Alice had made to one another.

Suddenly, Edward chuckled. “By the way, I don’t think Rosalie’s the only one who’s been working behind the scenes to get us here.”

Jasper gave him a puzzled look, and Edward said, “Alice knew. She told me to hold my breath one second before Bella got that paper cut, but she wasn’t having a vision right then.”

For a moment, Jasper was so stunned that he almost forgot about the raging erections that were pressed between their bodies.

It made sense. Damn if it did! Alice’s reassurances, her insistence about the party, especially that everybody including Jasper attended, her choices in décor, her apologies to Bella being so half-hearted and ineffective… That was the “memorable ride” that required her planning!

With a sting of impatience, accompanied by a groan and some teasing on his nipple, Edward distracted Jasper from his epiphany and brought him back to more urgent matters. The empath resolved to dwell on that later; for now, he just let himself bask in the notion that his whole family loved and supported him, in general and in this new endeavour. And for the first time, Esme’s reassurances truly clicked with him: he allowed himself to feel the forgiveness and unconditional sense of belonging that she had talked about.

He took Edward’s hand and kissed his recently scarred palm, before grabbing him by the haunch and laying him down on the grass.

“Well, we wouldn’t want to let their good work go to waste, now, would we?” He said, eliciting a slight yelp as he firmly grabbed Edward’s buttock. “But enough thinking and talking about the family, or her. It’s just the two of us now.”

Edward kissed him suddenly and urgently. “The meadow doesn’t look like a strange choice now, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t”, Jasper replied in between kisses, enjoying the privacy that the relatively unconventional location afforded them.

With a mischievous look, he descended Edward’s neck with a trail of kisses again, but this time continued past his chest, down his abdomen, grabbing his cock with one hand and massaging it gently, just to tease him. As the boy tensed with that first, long-awaited taste of pleasure, Jasper knelt between his legs, looking up at him with a smirk.

“I have to warn you, I’m a bit rusty here”, he said, tracing Edward’s length with one finger. “Last time I did this, Lincoln hadn’t had his inauguration yet. And I’m going from human memory to boot.”

“So I won’t look too bad when I give you my first attempt?” Edward replied with one of his crooked grins. Which promptly faltered as Jasper started licking and kissing his shaft.

“On our first date, Mr. Cullen? What ever happened to propriety?” He quipped, after withdrawing his mouth to tease Edward.

“Shut up. Like we haven’t been at it for over half a year now.”

Jasper smirked, then took him at his word, at least the first part, by just busying his mouth otherwise. If Edward’s shudders were any indicator, he still remembered a few nice tricks. Maybe, with a little practice…

“Jesus wept. You can practice on me however much you want. I volunteer!” Edward blurted, breathless despite his lack of need for breath.

But even with Edward’s cock in his mouth, it was the playful banter that made that moment all the more intimate. Tasting Edward, kissing and sucking him, making him feel good, it was just the natural next step in their being together – one that was long overdue, but continuing on what they had already built together.

Jasper soon found he didn’t have to worry about the mechanics, and could focus fully on what truly mattered: sharing the moment with Edward, basking in his every sensation. He could feel his lust, finally uncensored and unburdened of shame; his pleasure, growing with every stroke of Jasper’s tongue, with every movement of his head; and his love, encompassing and amplifying all the other feelings. His body didn’t hide a single thing, either: every little expression on his face, tremor of his lips, the little spasms of his fingers as he grasped at Jasper’s hair, the way he would shiver and buck his hips – all of that spoke at length of the pleasure he was letting himself be overwhelmed by. He looked exquisitely human in that moment, lost to instincts whose roots ran even deeper than their vampiric nature.

And Jasper relished being the one to mould Edward into this beautiful, sensual creature, to redefine his features from careful control to passion and abandon. This side of Edward was his and his alone: he felt privileged to be able to witness it, and proud for bringing it out.

He could feel his pleasure growing, and wasn’t surprised when, choking out a short-term warning, Edward came. But what turned Jasper on even more than swallowing him, was the absolute sense of freedom he could feel in his lover for the very first time.

And in fact, after Jasper had lulled him down the slopes of his orgasm, Edward only hesitated for a moment before sitting up and kissing Jasper, utterly unashamed.

“And why would I be ashamed of tasting myself in my boyfriend’s kiss?” He asked after pulling away, giving Jasper another one of his crooked grins.

“Oh, am I?” Jasper rebutted playfully, quirking his eyebrows. “I didn’t get the memo we’re actually together.”

“Because I haven’t given you a proper one, but I’m going to fix that right away.” Edward replied, gently laying Jasper down to be the one, this time, to kneel between his parted legs.

Jasper was glad to only sense the uncertainty of inexperience, but no real hesitation. And even then, Edward made quick work of it by trailing kisses on Jasper’s skin, making his way up his thigh until, with a smirk, he gave a first, tentative but definitely not shy taste to Jasper’s cock.

And once again, Jasper deliberately took some moments just to appreciate the situation itself, regardless of that first, little wave of pleasure, or the ones that followed: he was still incredulous that at last, at long, long last, he could really have Edward. That the boy loved him and was absolutely delighted – not repulsed, not embarrassed, delighted – at giving him head. His stubborn hope felt vindicated at last.

But beside that, Edward was making him feel really good. Jasper wasn’t pushing or directing him, he was letting him explore things at his own pace. He trailed his fingers in his hair and the nape of his neck just to stroke him and satisfy their mutual need for a physical contact beyond the sexual one, without dictating rhythm or depth.

He could feel Edward’s amusement, and his pride at how responsive Jasper was in his mouth. Then again, he was surprisingly good for being inexperienced: he seemed to know exactly what to do, how to move his tongue, how deep to go with his mouth to satisfy each of Jasper’s unexpressed wishes, almost as if he were prying them form…

“This is cheating, though!” He exclaimed with a laughter, when he realised what was going on.

“And who’s reaping the benefits?” Edward asked, after popping Jasper’s cock out of his mouth and looking mischievously at him. “Or do you want me to stop?”

“Shh!” Jasper replied, playfully pushing him back down.

Edward looked him right in the eye as he licked his cock before swallowing it again, clearly enjoying having his boyfriend so wrapped around his finger. Jasper knew Edward could have asked anything of him, now, and he wouldn’t have denied him. Hell, he would have accepted to become Bella Swan’s new BFF, for one of Edward’s blowjobs.

“Alright, that’s it”, Edward said, trying unsuccessfully to suppress his laughter. “After that, I’m officially on a strike. If you want to come, you’ll have to do the work yourself!”

When Edward sat up, Jasper pulled him close again, and they were back in each other’s arms, their kisses even more heated than before.

“Tsk, like you weren’t enjoying it too”, Jasper murmured on his lips. “Two can play this game, Love, and I’m done ignoring that I feel how much you want it – want me.”

Edward shrugged with a smirk, outwardly playing coy, but deliberately hitting Jasper with a wave of craving that, despite his recent orgasm, matched Jasper’s own. He made no mystery that he was nowhere near sated, not just yet.

“You’re right, though”, he purred on Jasper’s skin. “All those nights I returned home exhausted, it wasn’t just from resisting her scent. It was also from forcing myself to ignore that, while I was out there pretending to be a good Catholic boy scout, all I wanted was this, with you. I love you so much, Jazz, I do. I really, really do.”

“I love you too, Edward. With all of myself.”

Edward sighed heavily, grinding himself on Jasper. “Almost all.”

Sensing no hesitation in that allusion, after a deep breath Jasper encircled Edward’s back with his arm and laid him on the ground. “You know what? You’re right too”, he replied, tracing Edward’s side with one hand, going forth down his thigh, then guiding his leg up against his own haunch. “We’ve spent decades hating our nature and the challenges it poses. Maybe it’s time we explored and enjoyed some of the perks that come with it, hm?”

Given the suddenness of their tryst, he was truly low-key grateful that being vampires would allow them to do away with most of the logistics they’d have needed as humans – safety concerns, first and foremost, or proper preparations, especially accounting for being out in the middle of the forest. But especially the fact that only vampire bites could truly cause them pain was going to be a plus, all things considered.

That of course didn’t mean Jasper was planning one going rough on Edward. Despite being denied his orgasm just moments before, still desperate for release, he intended for his beloved boy to savour every single moment of his first time. He pushed his fingers inside Edward’s mouth for the mindreader to suck and lick and coat with venom, before using them to gradually prepare him; he took his sweet time to turn that into a tease, too, just waiting for Edward’s impatient whimpers before sliding one finger in, nice and slowly, smirking as he watched his cocky expression melt into the first hints of pleasure; and then for him to relax and thrust back before adding another one, and again. And in the meantime, he was silencing any potential protest for his leisurely timing with long, ravenous kisses.

“Fuck, this does feel good.” Edward finally exclaimed, after breaking free from one such kiss. As Jasper snickered, he added a playfully piqued, “What?” And then he smirked and licked Jasper’s lips before adding, “You’re going to have to get used to hearing profanity from me, ‘cause I’ll be asking you to just fuck me, already, quite often from now on.”

“As you wish, Love” Jasper murmured, sliding his fingers out and positioning his cock in their stead. “I really can’t deny you anything.”

He pressed himself, but left it up to Edward to let him in with an opposite motion: it was their first time together, after all, he thought it important that they’d both participated equally. It didn’t take long for them to end up pressed together in a first, slow, deep thrust, with Edward throwing his head back, and Jasper shivering from pleasure and choking a yelp against Edward’s neck.

“Is this okay, yes?” He asked, after kissing his shoulder.

“It is! Jazz, I…”

But as he felt Jasper’s fingers suddenly press hard against his skin, Edward nudged his chin up to look at him.

“Are you okay too?”

Jasper nodded, then kissed him urgently but deeply. “Edward, I’m inside you. I’m inside you when I had barely even allowed myself to imagine it! I just can’t get enough of not having to hold back with you.”

“Same.” Edward said, half a sigh, half a moan. “I would have been terrified with anyone but you. Terrified and guilty. But I’m finally with the man I love, and it feels so fucking right.”

Jasper smiled. “And does this…” he begun, giving him another slow thrust. “…feel so fucking good too?”

Edward let out another cathartic moan. “Yes, it does! So much so I might want more.”

As they kissed, Jasper truly picked up a rhythm, which Edward soon reciprocated. And as Jasper trailed his fingers all over his body, greedy for every single touch, Edward started jerking off to the same rhythm as their movements. Jasper could feel him quiver around his cock whenever his moaning got louder and his beautiful features would remodel in pleasure.

“You’re so beautiful…” Jasper murmured in-between moans and kisses. “So free. Thank you for letting me in. For letting me love you.”

“You’re thanking me for freeing me and loving me?” Edward asked, the hint of his laughter dying on a whimper.

“Loving you sets me free too, my sweet boy”, Jasper replied, before giving up on chatter altogether as they both gave in to the rising pleasure.

Edward, too, let go of any restraint and clung to him, one arm around his neck and the opposite leg around the small of his back, hungry for physical contact, as if to get Jasper any closer than having him buried deep inside. He was open and welcoming to Jasper, grinding his hips against the empath’s, reciprocating each movement.

Jasper loved watching him actively seek pleasure, but he moved Edward’s hand away when he felt the boy was getting close: he wanted to be the one to make him come. And Edward let him, embracing him completely, now, and letting himself go to his touching and pounding.

Jasper couldn’t quite tell who came first, his own orgasms blurring with Edward’s as it rushed through his sixth sense. It was so beautiful, not to know where his own feelings ended and Edward’s begun, being so completely entwined in pleasure, and so unabashedly, unapologetically in love with each other. He finally felt home.

And as Jasper pulled out, after a long while, neither he nor Edward let go of each other. They laid together on the grass, Edward curled up against Jasper’s side and Jasper holding him close, just enjoying the afterglow while watching the stars. Jasper smiled when he noticed that, by sheer coincidence, Andromeda and her galaxy hang just overhead, at the zenith.

Picking up on his thoughts, Edward sighed softly and smiled.

“I don’t know if Rose is right about the Divine, but I look up at the Heavens, now, and all I see is beauty: majestic, all-encompassing, much like what we just felt together. I don’t feel judged. In fact, I don’t feel like there’s a reason to. Perhaps there is a Hell, perhaps there isn’t; but this can’t be what condemn us to it.”

Jasper could sense his conviction. With just the tiniest stirring of doubt, perhaps, a sign that Edward would likely not believe that all the time, that they would have to keep reminding each other, but for now all was good.

“So what if there is? We’d go there together anyway.”

Edward smiled, glancing at the potted fern for a moment. “We can be monsters together.”

Jasper kissed the top of his head and sighed contentedly. “We can be monsters together.”

After some time of silent contemplation and small cuddles, Edward chuckled. “I can’t believe I spent so much energy trying to hide from you how horny you made me when we could have just done this instead.”

Jasper laughed wholeheartedly. “Hmm… looks like someone has discovered the joy of carnality. I like it that you’re already insatiable.”

Edward straddled him again, this time pressing his thighs hard against his side. “Aren’t you going to do anything about it?”

Jasper played coy. “I thought you said you’d be asking for it, now, and quite often.”

Edward rolled his eyes and chuckled, bending down to gently bite Jasper’s lips. “Just fuck me, already.”

And as he guided his lover by the hips and eased him onto his renewed erection, Jasper forgot all about the Andromeda Galaxy, or anything really: his gaze focussed entirely on Edward for the rest of the night, completely oblivious of the constellations turning above them. And between making out, and then fucking again, and then cuddling and going at it yet again, they didn’t even notice the stars disappearing, nor the dew deepening all the scents of the forest, as dawn broke above them.

Notes:

Sorry it took longer for this chapter to come out, but I may have overestimated my ability to write happy (well, happier) people. The bulk of Edwards’s speech was already written (I took notes as I wrote the parts he mentions), but the rest… it took a while longer.

As with any real-world detail I’ve woven into this fanfiction, I actually fact-checked the position the constellations take in Forks in late September on Google Sky Map (even going all the way back to 2005 for extra carefulness); around the hour when the scene takes place, in an incredible stroke of luck, Andromeda is indeed at the zenith, tying things up thematically with Rosalie’s speech. Thank you, Universe, you did me a solid here!

Chapter 10: Scent Of Soil

Summary:

Who knew an accident on the school’s parking lot could change everybody’s lives so much? As Jasper and Edward keep walking on the path they had unknowingly discovered and that day, they also watch friends and former foes choosing and walking paths of their own.

Notes:

We conclude the narration with the song that inspired the entire work: Scent Of Soil by Kirsti Huke’s band of the same name.

Apologies for taking so long, but on top of not being very good at writing well-adjusted people, I’m also terrible at finishing the things I start. But here we are, I did it! Enjoy!

“Jasper Hale?”

The vampire turned around as a blonde girl called out his name, one overcast winter afternoon on the streets of downtown Seattle.

“Lauren? Lauren Mallory?” He asked, feigning a little doubt even though his perfect recollection allowed him to recognise her immediately.

“It is you! Oh my god! And hi, Edward!” She exclaimed, waving with a friendly smile.

“Lauren, hi”, he replied, smiling back.

Her gaze briefly lingered on Jasper and Edward’s entwined fingers, and her smile broadened a bit.

Physically, she hadn’t changed all that much in the four years since they last saw her, at Alice’s graduation party; it was her attitude that was completely different: no longer a standoffish, self-conceited, perpetually dissatisfied teenager, she was now a confident, outgoing, seemingly happy young woman, fully in her element away from the small provincial town.

Jasper could sense that she was genuinely happy for that chance meeting, so they lingered and caught up a bit. They were all studying in Seattle, though in different colleges.

“I’m majoring in psychology this year. I’m… really liking the prospects it’s opening for me”, Jasper said, since Lauren had asked about them first.

“And I’m finally able to focus on music studies”, Edward added, with a bit of an inside joke: Carlisle’s latest update was fresh enough that no one had to go through med school this time around.

“What about you, Lauren?”

“I’m studying political science”, she replied, smiling warmly at Jasper.

“Are you? Sounds great!” He commented in an encouraging tone.

“Yeah! And I’m roomies with Angela Weber – remember her? Same college, same classes. We’re even running a progressive club on campus together – it’s quite a success! She curates the contents, I moderate the debates and take care of all the public relation stuff. We’re a pretty cool team, you know?”

Classic Lauren, cultivating and capitalising on her popularity; though doing so for a good cause, and to help introverted Angela be more comfortable behind the scenes, was another indicator of how much she’d grown.

“Thank you, by the way. You deserve all the credit”, she said, looking right at Jasper. As he quirked one eyebrow in confusion, she added, “That discussion we had… you probably don’t even remember it, about the Civil War, one time at lunch during my junior year. It left a big impression: it made me realise I was being narrow-minded and a spoiled brat. That my folks had got so many things wrong in general, and then passed them down to me. Before that, I would never have imagined myself here, studying politics to try and make a difference. But here I am.” She smiled again and reached to pat him on the elbow. “You’ve changed me for the better: I’ll never forget that.”

Pretty much speechless, Jasper could only blurt out a “Why, thank you, Lauren… that’s… that’s sweet”, while a visibly proud Edward gently squeezed his hand.

“It’s true, rather than sweet”, she replied with a wink. “That’s why I’m so happy I’ve run into you and got to tell you.”

After catching up some more – Angela was still dating Ben Cheney from high school, and considering an engagement after college – they said their goodbyes, with Lauren even daring to hug them, their heavy coats and sweaters concealing their hard, unyielding skin.

“Take good care, Lauren”, Jasper said, genuinely happy about that encounter and conversation, before resuming his walk with a positively beaming Edward.

“See? What did I tell you, years ago?” Edward asked, pecking him on the cheek. “There’s no fixing the past, but when you acknowledge the bad, you can help improve the present and the future.”

“Alright, I can’t deny myself the credit: I’ve been moving in the right direction for quite a while, now, have I not?” Jasper replied with a smile, smoothing Edward’s lapel.

In a sense, that was true of all the Cullens. That close brush with humanity during their latest high school run had given them a much needed change of perspective.

Despite Bella’s lacklustre social life outside of Edward and Alice, the two vampires had inevitably grown closer to her human acquaintances while spending time with her at school; even after she had left at the beginning of their senior year, there was no way to backpedal without looking suspicious, and they had ended up actually making friends, if tentatively, with some of their schoolmates.

It turned out that Carlisle’s own experience with adults on the workplace applied to inquisitive, media-savvy highschoolers too: it was easier for people to overlook the Cullens’ physical peculiarities if their overall demeanour was less conspicuously antisocial. By the end of the year, rumours about the Cullens being weird had largely died down, and Alice’s first-ever graduation party had been a resounding success.

This change had carried over to their college years, and Jasper, having finally got as firm a grip on his thirst as the others, gave it a try as well. Even Rosalie did, much to Emmett’s enthusiasm. And so, with some small precautions and a little subterfuge to handle sunny days and dietary restrictions, there they were, with new friends and acquaintances, no longer a mystery to their neighbours or collegemates, closer to feeling like actual people that they’d ever been in their second lives.

Their newfound full-time human experience, though, had come with a deeper kind of awareness. True, as vampires, keeping an animal-based diet was already a remarkable step in not harming humankind. But all those decades they’d spent on the outskirts of society, only passively soaking up new values and updating their worldview as a result, had blinded them to the amount of change that still needed to be made; a change they could actively contribute to, especially considering their obscene amount of wealth.

Rosalie, for instance, had been shocked to find out how much of an issue underfunding was to the support system for victims of domestic and sexual abuse. She had been introduced to a local activist group by one of her classmates – she was majoring in astrophysics again, to update her knowledge – and had since given very sizeable donations to several local shelters. She’d often cover the night shifts as well, rotating between them to pretend she still had a normal sleeping schedule between that and college.

She’d never admit it, but she’d grown fond of a few people she’d met there, like Bree, a Nevadan girl who had ended up living on the streets in Seattle at age sixteen after escaping her abusive father. Esme, who’d sometimes come over from Forks to volunteer alongside Rosalie, had almost adopted Bree on the spot when she’d met her. But by that time, Rosalie was setting the girl up with a forged scholarship that would allow her to stand on her own two feet, rent a small apartment, finish high school and start college. Rosalie had used the scholarship subterfuge because, for once, she didn’t want praise or credit: she just wanted to watch Bree build a life for herself without feeling indebted to anyone.

She was refreshingly pragmatic on the whole endeavour, including the local scope of her action. “Look, I can’t be everywhere at once”, she had once told Jasper. “This is an issue I care about, alright, but I can’t fix it single-handedly. What I can do is act as far as I can see, and be a part of a collective solution. Our true strength is in numbers, Jazz: playing Atlas is pointlessly tiring.”

That had been a very poignant remark for Jasper – then again, knowing Rosalie it had surely been intentional. It had taken him a while, but he was finally at a point where he could stop wallowing in guilt, and act to truly make a change. He also realised the point wasn’t redeeming himself: it was simply doing the right thing for society at large. All his working on himself – outgrowing the time and society in which he’d been born and raised, which he’d done on his own merit – was but the means to an end far greater than himself.

Rosalie’s remark had also helped him realise that, in his greed for self-punishment, he’d often overlook that human lives were not just a concept. True, saving that one Black man from lynching in Florida hadn’t solved the systemic problem, but it was still a life saved. That man hadn’t died, and his wife hadn’t lost him: that was still too small a victory in the grand scheme, but a huge one for those two specific people. And his focus was now making sure it wouldn’t be an exception.

For Jasper, that meant acting on two fronts: contributing to eroding from within the denial that came with long-held racial privilege, and helping empower minorities to speak their truth. The latter he did through donations, contributing to a platform that would allow Black and other minorities tell their story in their own terms. The former he did by sharing his experiences – or, as he’d present them, his great-grandfather’s. He’d had other talks like the one that had opened Lauren Mallory’s eyes, not shying away from the ugliness in those stories; he’d feel the uneasiness they’d cause, but it was a necessary part of accountability.

He’d witnessed enough history to know that white, straight, cis, Christian America needed a push from within to reckon with its own shameful actions; otherwise, it would always be easier to downplay or ignore the voices of the minorities, if it meant avoiding that shame.

Granted, sometimes he really had to hammer it in to the point of obnoxiousness, lest either his words or intentions be misinterpreted. He’d had ample cause to agree with what Carlisle had once wisely told him: “Son, the first thing I had to learn when I came to this country is that subtlety is often not an option with the people here.”

But hearing from Lauren that his efforts were paying off was rewarding: it made him feel like an active part of the broader push for social change that, by the end of the decade, was yielding some results after much stagnation. And if in ten or fifteen years the tide would turn again, as it often did, he’d be damn ready to fight against it.

Meanwhile, things were changing for the better on the vampire side of his life, too. There had been an incident, shortly after he and Edward had got together, that had cemented his resolve to get into psychology, since all vampirekind did need some serious therapy.

One day, Irina’s mate, Laurent, called from Denali to warn them about his former coven mate, Victoria, who had come asking about the Cullens with vengeful intentions over James’ death. Jasper volunteered to be the one to meet with her, and Laurent’s insight on her gift proved useful: approaching her with no hostile intentions didn’t trigger her flight instinct, so Jasper could easily find her where Alice had predicted. Leveraging what she could perceive with her gift and monitoring her intentions with his own, he managed to calm her down enough to talk. The hissy fit she threw when she learned that Bella wasn’t even in Forks anymore, let alone in their orbit, was a bit hilarious; but he was serious and compassionate when she unexpectedly opened up and her rage gave way to ancient, deeply rooted grief.

James hadn’t been the best of mates: in fact, Victoria had made herself grow to love him after a violent and manipulative beginning. And that, too, had come on top of knowing plenty of violence in her human life. Jasper’s compassion and, by extension, the Cullen’s were a downright disorienting novelty for her.

In the end, while she departed still an emotional wreck, she convened that her vendetta wouldn’t bring her anything, and actually thanked Jasper for giving her food for thought. They kept in touch, and last he’d heard, she’d been travelling with Riley, a companion she’d made for safekeeping while still plotting revenge, and was in a better place mentally, in part thanks to him.

Speaking of nomads, seeing how much getting his bloodlust in check had helped Jasper with his mental state had got Charlotte and Peter curious about the benefits of the “vegetarian” lifestyle. They were into their third year of (mostly) animal diet, and had settled relatively nearby in Abbotsford, Canada’s own response to Forks in terms of average overcast days per year. While they built themselves a life within human society, Jasper would gladly and proudly tutor them on how not to slip up, when either he or they would swing by for a visit.

Unfortunately, he could no longer recommend his trademark “Resist Bella Swan Crash Course” to jumpstart a quick improvement.

After graduating in Florida, Bella had taken a sabbatical to travel the world before going to college. Sadly, she had died in a tragic accident somewhere in southern Europe.

That was what poor Charlie Swan and Renée What’s-Her-Name had been notified, at any rate. In reality, Bella had managed to find the Volturi all by herself, first befriending some Italian Gianna girl online, then exploiting her to find the precise location of the Volturi compound. From what the Cullens could gather, she had started concocting that plan as soon as she’d learned that Edward was dating Jasper. Rosalie had graciously abstained from commenting.

Her unexpected arrival had caused some commotion among the Volturi, but once she’d clarified she was there to be turned and exhibited a valuable gift already as a human, Aro had been all too keen to have her on board. He even rewarded Gianna – their human secretary – with vampirism, rather than snacking on her, for allowing such a valuable gift to make its way to him.

The joke was on him, though: Bella’s mental shield protected her not only from Aro’s close inspection or Jane’s deterrence, but from both Chelsea and Corin’s gifts too. Immune to forced allegiance or manufactured contentment, she’d only remain in the Guard strictly of her own volition. And when she came visiting in Forks, she gave off no feelings of loyalty whatsoever while talking about her new coven. In fact her deep burgundy eyes twinkled with a hint of ambition when she mentioned in passing Sulpicia and Athenodora.

In the end, she only had minimal hard feelings for Edward – or Jasper, by association – but she didn’t pull any punches while the three of them talked things out, sitting in the Cullens’ living room.

“You know, I realised what had been going on the moment Alice wrote me that you got with Jasper”, she told Edward. “It was really crappy of you to play with my feelings to spare yourself a coming out.”

“I’m sorry”, Edward replied sheepishly. “I mean it.”

“For what it’s worth, I never meant to chagrin you”, Jasper provided, keeping a straight face even while Edward elbowed him for his choice of words.

“Well, it’s water under the bridge, I don’t hold on to grudges”, she replied with a shrug, before grinning. “I mean, what am I gonna do, tell my bosses it was you who broke the masquerade with me?”

There was a moment of tense silence and alarmed glances. Bella blinked awkwardly.

“Jeez, guys, relax! I’m joking!” Seeing as her chuckling didn’t help, she went back to serious and patted them both on the arm. “I mean it. I never told them, I don’t plan to, and the secret is safe behind my shield. I do want you alive and safe.” There it was again, that quick, ambitious twinkle in her eyes. She then smirked at Edward. “Besides, let’s face it: we were a complete trainwreck from the get go, regardless of your sexual orientation. I was insecure to ridiculous levels, especially when I went off making pointless comparisons to you. Being around vampires made me feel so awful about myself, so ordinary and insignificant: I was never truly happy.”

Edward sighed, finally relaxing again. “And I was constantly puzzled and frustrated that you wouldn’t consider your safety around me, not once. I mean, yes, it was a bit of an excuse to avoid intimacy, which was awful on my part, but I could have hurt you accidentally.”

“Yeah”, Bella grimaced ruefully. “I guess I thought disregarding my own well-being was the ultimate demonstration of love or something. That it meant being selfless, not just a show-off.” This time, she glanced at Edward sheepishly. “And maybe, after all, I shouldn’t take offence at having been your beard, ‘cause I wasn’t much better. I genuinely hoped you’d slip up and have to turn me in an emergency. I completely and deliberately ignored how that would have made you feel. Like, I was grateful to you – all of you – for coming to my rescue when I stupidly went to confront James on my own: I really screwed up there. But I resented you a little, Edward, for not just letting the venom spread.”

Jasper wasn’t sure if he regretted that Rosalie had abruptly decided to go for a jog and a swim that afternoon – to “keep in shape”, of all reasons. He would have enjoyed basking in her smugness, but Edward wouldn’t have lived to hear the end of her “I told you so”.

Overhearing that thought, Edward groaned quietly, but he was serious when he replied, “Look, Bella. Maybe I was a little overdramatic. Bur even if I’m making peace with what we are – me and my family and the love of my life – I don’t think it would have changed anything. I’d never be responsible for turning anybody, or let it happen if I could do something about it. You did good, going to look elsewhere, if vampirism is what you wanted.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “But in hindsight, I don’t regret a thing. In fact, I’m very happy with how things have worked out, and grateful I got to know you and your family. I mean it.”

Edward looked a bit sceptical, so Jasper stroke the nape of his neck. “She does, Love”, he confirmed.

“Exactly! We were clearly not meant to be, you and I, but lots of good has come from our encounter! For everybody! You opened the door to this world for me, and in the end I did get what I wanted. As for you two…”

“You were the accidental catalyst that made us realise we could be so much more to each other”, Edward convened, a smile creeping on his lips.

“Plus, you helped me get a grip on my thirst at last. And taught us how to better blend in with humans”, Jasper added conciliatory.

Bella scowled and pretended to shudder. “Whatever makes you wanna do that.”

They parted ways in good terms.

“And how’s Barbra?” Rosalie asked a few hours later, returning from her jog.

While Jasper glanced at her puzzled, Edward rolled his eyes and sighed, “Bella?”

“Right, sorry”, Rosalie snarked, barely hiding a smirk. “It’s been so long, it’s hard to remember.”

Edward raised both eyebrows at her thoughts. “You’ve jogged and swum to Vancouver and back?”

“I had time to kill”, she shrugged.

Jasper laughed. “Well, she gives you her best”, he teased his obstinately unimpressed sister, “and was sorry she couldn’t stay to see you too, but she had to go. She’s heading north to Alaska for a visit to Alice.”

Alice reported that they had a very amicable but rather brief reunion, as Bella seemed more interested in former Volturi member Eleazar, who had settled with the Aleksandrova sisters alongside his partner Carmen after leaving the Guard to pursue a more peaceful lifestyle. More specifically, Bella was interested in his power to sense and identify other vampire’s talents, and the insight that could give her on her fellow Guard members back in Volterra. From the looks of it, the Volturi were now sitting on a time bomb, with Aro being none the wiser.

Alice still lived with the Cullens on a regular basis, sharing an apartment in Seattle with Jasper and Edward while she pursued her degree in new media and digital communication, but would often visit Denali to spend time with Tanya, and vice versa. Carlisle was very happy with this development, as it had brought the two families even closer together.

Summer in Alaska had become a new Cullen tradition, once everybody’s exam sessions were over. After the gloom of the cloud cover of Forks and Seattle, it was truly refreshing to freely enjoy the midnight sun in the wilderness without caring about getting caught sparkling.

Edward, Alice and Jasper had found much commonality with Carmen and Eleazar: the two siblings had bonded with Carmen over dating former soldiers, and Jasper and Eleazar over being one. The Spanish vampire had his share of regrets too – namely, the creeping suspicion that the Volturi weren’t as lawful as they let on in their ruling of vampirekind, and had exploited his and others’ gifts for they own ends. When Jasper asked him how he coped, he replied, “Same as you, my friend: through the beauty of nature, the affection of a family of my own choosing, and cherishing the privilege of being loved by Carmen.” He glanced at the empath and smiled fondly. “And when I stop marvelling at it – which happens, from time to time – I go to a place where I feel a strong connection with my current life, and I’m reminded once again to appreciate the present.”

Carmen, too, had some wisdom for Edward when it came to dealing with her lover’s survivor’s guilt and PTSD. “I love Eleazar, but I don’t let him be my entire world. I build it on my own each day, and he can come rest in it whenever his own feels like too much to handle. Always remember we’re their partners, not their emotional crutches; two units adding up and growing together, not two halves that are dysfunctional when separated. We’re better for them, if we’re our own person.”

That confirmed Alice’s reasoning why she and Jasper hadn’t worked out as lovers: neither of them was well when they got together, and they clung to each other in search of purpose. Now they were both avoiding that same pitfalls with their new lovers, and were supporting each other in less smothering yet equally valuable ways.

After his first night with Edward, Jasper had confronted Alice over her alleged string-pulling, which she had admitted proudly and without hesitation: once her encounter with Tanya had set her on a new path and cleared her relational indecision, Jasper’s possible futures had become clearer too; she had then deliberately directed the events to get the best possible outcome for both Jasper and Edward, even if that had basically meant throwing Bella under the bus.

“Bella is my friend, but I’ll never not choose you over anybody else, Jazz”, Alice had told him. “And Edward, too: he’s my brother, and I love him to bits. I couldn’t let you both go on being miserable and hurting each other, and her too – not when I could see how happy you could be! However you put it, Bella had to go.” She’d then given him one of her impish smirks. “Besides, I knew you wouldn’t hold it against me. And neither will Bella: she’s not gonna find out.”

“I’m not sure if I should be glad or terrified that a pocket-sized psychic will go to such lengths to make sure I’m happy, whether I like it or not. But know that you, too, will always come first for me.”

“You will be glad, trust me. Last night was just the beginning”, she had replied in an allusive tone, hugging him tightly. “Just don’t ever make me choose between you and Tanya, please? That’d be one nasty conundrum.”

“Oh, I would never, Munchkin. Never.”

Things were surprisingly not awkward between Jasper and Tanya. She had pursued Jasper’s boyfriend for quite some time before, but then again, Jasper had been married to her girlfriend for half a century, which kind of evened out.

“So, that was the reason, Edik? I just happened to have the wrong kind of charms for you?” Tanya teased the mindreader in an amused tone, one afternoon when they had gone for a panoramic hike at the very top of Denali. She was sitting and resting her back against a boulder, atop which Alice was perched while combing and styling her hair in a complicated braided updo.

“It does explain a lot, doesn’t it?” Rosalie commented, breaking off her make out session with Emmett to gesture at Tanya and herself. “But even this one”, she pointed at Jasper, “came this close to being left broken-hearted by Edward Cullen, serial scorner of blondes.”

“Well, excuse me?!” Edward protested, half-sitting up from his position, lying on the perennial snow with his head on Jasper’s lap, like that afternoon on the rooftop of their home in Forks, years before. Except this time they weren’t hiding what they meant for each other – neither from themselves nor from their loved ones.

Edward looked up at Jasper, but the empath smirked and doubled down, “Well, lucky me: turns out brunette wasn’t quite his… flavour after all.”

Everybody laughed while Edward rolled his eyes and tucked one of Jasper’s blond strands behind his ear. “I’m feeling so outnumbered here.”

Alice smirked. “Just wait till Kate and Ira catch up with us.”

Irina and a finally fully golden-eyed Laurent were quite adorable: after their slightly rocky beginnings, they had adjusted to their life together and were clearly mutually smitten. The final incentive for Laurent to commit to his new diet had been the same that had convinced the Aleksandrova sisters centuries before: the superior restraint in very close proximity to humans. When Irina had brought up her time-honoured hobby of seducing humans, Laurent had found the idea intriguing, and his going vegetarian had allowed them to include the occasional human boy or girl in the passionate nights they shared – and not as a snack.

But Jasper’s favourite Aleksandrova sister was by far Kate: she was feisty and spirited, and with her gift of mentally-projected electricity made for a very interesting sparring partner, especially now he felt comfortable fighting playfully again. When Tanya came to Washington for Alice, Kate would often follow her specifically to play with Jasper; it was during one such visits that she ran into an old acquaintance of Carlisle’s, a rather adventurous nomad named Garrett, and another kind of spark flew between them.

Of course, once Kate took to spending more time with her new boyfriend, especially to help him conquer his new great challenge – vegetarianism – her visits became less frequent for a while, and Emmett was just ecstatic to get back to being Jasper’s preferred sparring partner.

Emmett had been the most relieved in the family when Jasper and Edward had made things official. He hadn’t exactly picked up on what had been going on, other than his brothers were having some kind of falling out, so he’d been particularly puzzled and frustrated by the tension. Being blindsided hadn’t stopped him from supporting them wholeheartedly when they came out, though.

“Just as long as you assholes don’t shut me out again, m’kay?” He’d told them, one massive arm draped over each brother’s shoulders on the way to hunting all together – something they hadn’t done since that time at Goat Rock. “‘Cause look, I know both of you love brooding, and I respect that: I’m aware I can be a handful when you’ve got your moods. I’ll never not leave you your space. But this was never-ending! And I was worried – and bored! And I really missed my brothers.” He squeezed Jasper harder. “Both of them.”

Jasper had obviously bonded with Emmett in the decades they’d lived together, but he’d always felt like a bit of a third wheel to his and Edward’s preexisting brotherhood. Fully aware that that feeling had ever only been in his head, he’d finally allowed himself to grow as close to Emmett as Emmett already felt to him.

His brother had matured a lot by spending more time around humans, too. He was still as happy-go-lucky and laid back as ever, but he’d come to a big realisation: humans were mortal; Vampires, not so much. Not in the short term, anyway, which meant they couldn’t ignore certain issues like humans did.

Still a country boy at heart, he’d become very invested in preserving the environment, to the point that, for the first time, he was about to actually complete a college degree – in environmental engineering – without growing bored and dropping it.

“Y’know, most humans alive today will probably get away with it and go out before it truly gets ugly. But we?” He’d commented when Jasper had teased his newfound commitment to academia. “Don’t know about you, man, but I don’t wanna survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, living off rats. I like my forests and my grizzly bears to hunt. If I can do something, I will!”

Rosalie had grumbled a lot about her gas-guzzling vehicle preferences coming under her own husband’s scrutiny, but Jasper appreciated the sentiment: he had his reasons to wish for the Olympic rainforest to last for as long as it naturally could. In the Seattle flat, he and Edward even had their potted fern to remind them of the woods. No longer small and surely not battered, the plant had thrived under their care, much like they’d come a long way since their initial vicious circle of denial and deflection that had put the plant in their path.

It had been weird – somewhat comical, even – but after their first night together in the meadow, they had gone through most of the beats that two queer teenagers in the mid-2000s would: coming out to mum and dad, for starters – both Carlisle and Esme had obviously figured it out months before, but explicitly voiced their love and support nonetheless – and getting teased by their siblings for not doing so sooner.

Edward didn’t feel ready to come out at school yet – partly because he’d have to deal with people’s unfiltered thoughts about it, which could be exhausting, and partly because he still had some acceptance work to do on himself. He also wasn’t very comfortable with displays of affection around the family: shaking off decades of internalised prejudice came easier when he was alone with Jasper (and they were mutually supercharging each other’s arousal), but being around others still made him self-conscious.

While Jasper would rather see public displays of affection as a way to reclaim himself, to actively push away María’s lingering judgement, he had no problems letting Edward proceed at his own pace. School barely factored in their relationship anyway, as he was pretending to be away on his sabbatical while Edward and Alice graduated; as for home, Esme had surprised them by restoring the old stone cottage and gifting it to them, so they could have their privacy without having to run to the forest.

Then, when they moved to Seattle for college, things started changing. Edward no longer felt self-conscious when cuddling up with Jasper in front of Alice, or when Rosalie and Emmett would spend the day at their place. And when he’d get insecure, which Jasper could sense, he’d seek the empath’s touch for reassurance even in public, among strangers. After about a year, they were basically out from the get go to any new acquaintances, introducing themselves as a couple. And by the time Lauren Mallory met them, walking hand in hand on the streets had become a habit.

Granted, they were very aware of the privileged position they were in: they could afford to only care about homophobia insofar as to avoid outing themselves as vampires, should any hypothetical attackers break a hand trying to hit them. And even that had never occurred: the two or three times they had received unwanted attention, two vampires glaring had made the homophobes’ survival instinct kick in and they had swiftly retreated, not even realising why. It felt vindicating, but they knew most queer people weren’t nearly as lucky.

This pushed them to get involved with the local community, eventually: contributing to a sense of solidarity and commonality. Jasper had been the first to explore it, joining a cultural centre, but once Edward had got over his reluctance about himself, he had followed suit and become quite active. He’d put his musical talents to service whenever ambiance was needed, be it for a fundraiser or any other event, while Jasper would use his empathy and newfound psychological knowledge to support those in need. It was good practice before going into psychoanalysing vampires with their fucked up minds, anyway.

When it came time to discuss the future of their permanence in Forks, once all the “children” had graduated, the Cullens found they all really liked their current lives. For decades, all they had had was each other, and only Carlisle had build himself something outside of the coven. But now, while still being each other’s one true constant, they were all branching out and looking for a diverse, more balanced range of fulfilment. Even Esme had at last taken one big leap into the 21st Century and opened an actual business restoring properties and antique objects.

But while the others could still get away with downplaying their age, she and Carlisle were supposed to be pushing forty by now. Even with Alice’s previous degree in fashion, which gave her the skills to style them in more mature clothing that would help trick the human eye, there was only so much she could do. Maybe the next round would last longer – most human millennials did look younger than they were, and Carlisle and Esme’s lagging behind their supposed age wouldn’t be as noticeable as it had been in the Twentieth Century – but in the end they elected to just spend a few more months in Forks before moving on.

Jasper, for one, was sad about it. Not because of Forks itself, or Seattle, but for the nature that surrounded them. There was a reason why he endorsed Emmett’s environmental commitment so wholeheartedly: he loved those forests.

True, he and Edward were happy on average, but some scars ran deep and still ached from time to time. Much like Eleazar had suggested, in those moments Jasper would go back to the woods. He’d retrace the path he and Edward had followed eastwards from the school’s parking lot on that fateful day, taking notice of the ever-changing undergrowth, comparing it to how the rocks and ridges and even the trees looked much the same instead. He’d go back to the big stump where Edward had opened up about his insecurities, or follow the coastline and revisit the cliffs they’d watch the ocean from in those first, beautiful, scary weeks they’d truly shared.

Once or twice, he ran into Edward, on a similar hike for similar reasons. Sometimes, one would join the other, and they’d go together, dashing among the pines, leaping across streams, climbing rocks and tree trunks, cutting through the mist that would linger late into the mornings. They were no longer trying to outrun themselves and their demons, just sharing those beautiful places together, bidding them goodbye.

In those moments of melancholy – their moods, as Emmett called them – which had been fewer and farther apart until right before moving, Jasper could now truly hold Edward, kiss him, make him feel loved, and sense his love in return. It was easier to comfort each other, to avoid falling into self-loathing and other self-sabotaging patterns, now that they could openly share their feelings.

“You know, I love it here”, he told Edward one day, one of the very last ones, while they were cuddling up in the meadow. Under Jasper’s touch, the mindreader’s low mood was slowly dissipating, unlike the clouds still blanketing the sky above them. “Each of these places has become a real home to me, in a way that the scorched grasslands and deserts of Texas never were, even before I was turned. And that’s because they’re so you, Love. When I see all this greenery, what I think of is that day when we dashed through it, and I discovered how blind I’d been not to love you from the start.”

Edward smiled a little, leaning more comfortably against Jasper’s chest and lacing their fingers together.

“I know what you mean. When we’d been here before, in the Thirties, I could take or leave this place. But now, I’m really going to miss it.”

Jasper traced Edward’s cheek with his free hand. “We can always come back again, eventually.”

Edward sighed softly. “In about a century, or so. Not before. Humans live longer now: imagine running into an elderly Jessica Stanley fifty years from now, still as gossipy as ever.”

Jasper snickered. “Her top story to tell would go from trash-talking her former friends, President Mallory and Vice President Weber, to how she used to know the new, handsome kids in town when she and they were all the same age, back in 2005.”

They both laughed, fingers still entwined, gazes still lost on the trees surrounding the meadow.

“Maybe we could have enjoyed it more. School here, I mean. And the rest, too. We should have allowed ourselves to.” Edward mused. “I was so tired, Jazz – weren’t you? It’s tiring, hating one’s own nature. Thinking that allowing oneself the tiniest satisfaction would pave the way to disaster.” He looked up, reaching to stroke Jasper’s hair with his other hand. “I’m so glad you’ve been teaching me to love myself. I can’t not love you, and you’re just like me.”

Jasper nodded pensively. “We’re quite alike in many regards. And I can’t fathom hating you, so… I’m stuck not hating myself either.” He kissed Edward’s hair, then added, “But hey… We’ll build new reminders of that in Maine, won’t we? New memories, new places that feel like us.”

Edward nodded, kissing Jasper’s hand.

“Ask me again”, Jasper said suddenly, letting Edward pry the question from his thoughts.

Edward smiled again, this time more broadly. “What can you smell, Jasper?”

Jasper breathed in deeply, first so close to Edward that his scent completely overpowered anything else, and then raising his head to take in the bouquet of the forest. He closed his eyes.

“The grass, first and foremost. Then the trees all around us. Many pines, and just as many cedars.”

“And spruces and firs, too. Everybody forgets about them.” Edward provided.

“Well, there’s also maples, if we’re being precise. Then the wild flowers, the bracken…”

“The moss. Have you noticed how it smells a little different on the rocks than on the bark? And the rocks, too, smell differently, whether they’re bare, covered in moss or in lichens.”

Jasper nodded. “Yeah, it’s true. There’s also water – running in that stream, not very far, and stagnating in a few ponds and puddles here and there.” He opened his eyes, and looked at Edward. “And then, the scent of soil.” He kissed his head again, then continued. “In my mind, the scent of soil is your scent, ever since that day we fled from school. I tried so hard to focus on it to distract myself from how much I liked yours, that in my memories they’ve become one and the same. And now, it’s like my love for you is everywhere in these forests.”

Edward smiled and reached up to kiss Jasper. Soon, he disentangled himself from their embrace to turn around and straddle him, to kiss him more comfortably.

It was not unusual, in such situations, for their kissing to give way to more, and for melancholy to be wiped away by arousal and desire. Especially when they were at the meadow, a place that inevitably carried a certain sexual connotation for them.

Except this time, distracted as he was by the recent orgasm and the beautiful feeling of Edward still deep inside of him, in the end Jasper found himself with a cluster of tiny diamonds on a golden oval and matching band around his ring finger, which he looked at in astonishment.

“I’m not asking you to wear a matching gown. Or letting Alice force you into one. Unless you want to, that is”, Edward commented casually, with his best crooked grin.

Jasper had never seen it, but it didn’t take a genius to guess whom that ring had belonged to. It even had the smallest of dents where it had been sized up to fit his finger.

“Hell, I’m not even proposing. I just want you to have it. It feels right, for you to have it”, Edward added, faced with a completely speechless Jasper.

This shook the empath up a bit, so he grinned in return. “Well, I can’t speak for Mrs. Masen, but I’m pretty sure your current mum approves of me.” Humour, though, didn’t quite cut it, so he sat up, letting Edward slide out of him, and kissed him deeply but tenderly. “This… thank you, Love. You told me what this means to you, and…”

“Yeah”, Edward mused, as Jasper trailed off. “I don’t let what mum and father told me haunt me anymore: the happy little family with a wife and children and all of that. I mean, imagine me and Bella raising a child.”

They exchanged a meaningful look, and Jasper laid his head back on the grass. “Surely that wouldn’t have been a constant source of drama, hmm? And cha—”

“But the ring…” Edward cut in before he could make fun of Bella’s trademark mood. “It still feels like an important token. Marriage is just a word, compared to how much I love you, Jasper Hale. But I want you to have a symbol of that.” He smiled and looked around them, at the uncountable shades of green surrounding the meadow even in the dull overcast light. “One you can take with you anywhere.”

“As long as I get to keep you too, Love.” Jasper replied, grabbing Edward’s haunches and easing him onto himself, to switch the roles for their next round.

When they were both sated again, Jasper smirked suddenly.

“Hey, how about we do get married, though?” He looked at Edward. “When they make it legal in Maine, or here in Washington. As a political statement.”

Edward laughed him off, then stared back seriously, and then laughed again, a bit nervously. “You want to start a family as a political statement?”

“That we already are, regardless of the paperwork. The two of us, and our siblings, and our parents. And we’ll still be long after marriage stops being a politically charged act for queer people. Or even if the concept falls out of favour altogether, eventually. We have that kind of privilege. But for some, the legal status of their union is pivotal.” He smiled again, kissing Edward. “And I think it’s important to be part of the change, for those who only get to live and love each other in this small window of time.”

Edward laughed again, but this time he kissed Jasper too. “This is the most absurd proposal I’ve ever heard of. And it’s kinda working.”

“We can put a pin on it, and see how we feel about it when… well, when we graduate at least from high school.”

Edward drew a long, dramatic breath while he rolled his eyes and accompanied the gesture with a movement of his head, which he then rested on Jasper’s chest. But Jasper could sense he was secretly amused.

Maybe, deep down, Edward was wondering too how going through high school would be like, now that they were together.

And maybe, Jasper’s proposal wasn’t so silly, after all. It gave them something to look forward to after saying goodbye to their forests.

They had each other, now, and that would turn anything into the most wondrous of adventures. Together, they would always be eager to find out how tall were the trees, and what the soil smelled like wherever their life with their family would take them.

Notes:

I originally intended to end the fanfiction with what became chapter 9, but when I toyed with some notes about what I assumed would happen after a time skip, I realised I needed a proper epilogue.
First, I wanted to give some payoff to Jasper’s inner struggle with social injustice; second, I realised Victoria was a loose thread that needed closure. And then I thought I might as well explore a few other characters here and there, and see how the canon divergence affected them as well.
But really, it all started for funsies with the redemption of Lauren Mallory, whose only crime in canon was disliking Bella in a strongly protagonist-centric franchise. And then, it escalated, which is very on brand with this fanfiction.

Thanks you all for sticking with me!

Notes:

Thanks to everybody who has read, sent kudos and left feedback! I truly appreciate your support, and I encourage you to reflect and (respectfully) discuss any of the topics I felt like exploring in the narration.

I remind you here of the full playlist of songs I’ve been using as inspiration, and I hope to see you all soon again on new projects!

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of How Tall The Trees
• Part 1 of Jasper's Redemption