Adventures in Vegetarianism

I held the warm but very still body in my arms and wrinkled my nose. It smelled absolutely horrific. Who in their right, vampire mind would want to put their teeth to something so … furry? I did and apparently I was out of my mind. There just had to be a better way.

“You already broke the neck, Char,” Peter called out from his perch high in the branches above me. “I kinda doubt it tastes better if the blood’s gone cold.”

“Shut up, Peter!” I hissed without taking my eyes off the body in my arms. “I’m trying to concentrate.”

‘Well, concentrate quicker, babe, I’m bored and you told me I can’t come down out of the tree until you drink that.”

“Two minutes, doll, just give me two damn minutes,” I growled in frustration.

I heard him snort and I knew that he was counting on me to chicken out. We’d made a deal when we spent all that time in Forks, expecting to be wiped efficiently off the face of the earth by the Volturi, that, if we survived, Peter would try the vegetarian diet with me for three months. He was not allowed to back out of the deal. The only one that could break it was me because it had been my idea. I really wanted what Alice and Jasper had. Maybe not necessarily going to school, for a long time yet anyway, but I wanted to live in a house and have nice things. And lots of clothes. Definitely clothes.

And, as I pointed out to Peter, if we survived, we’d probably be safer sticking together and increasing our numbers given how I’d not so subtly eavesdropped on him and Eleazar talking about how the Volturi would probably track down and kill any witness, allies or survivors. Eventually, anyway.

But I knew Peter was betting on me gagging up what little blood I could force down my throat and disgustedly declaring that I would drink humans and only humans from now until the end of my time. I could not, I would not, let that happen.

I lowered my razor sharp teeth into the furry flesh of the deer I cradled in my arms and took a long swallow.

It was repulsive. Absolutely repulsive. I wanted to spit it out right then and there. But I couldn’t. If I did, Peter would win. And I’d been itching to be like Alice for decades but always gave in to his silly whims about ‘proper food sources’ and not being tied down. If drinking gross, disgusting, revolting animal blood was how I was going to get my way, so be it. I would get my way.

So I drank more, forcing myself to swallow every last drop of the lame excuse for blood.

When I finished, I dropped the carcass at my feet and looked up at a my mate. “All gone, doll, and was delicious,” I lied through gritted teeth. “Go get yourself one.”

“After you chased them all away,” he muttered, hopping down from his perch. “Remember, babe, don’t spit anything out. I’ll know if you do and then the deal is off.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I grumbled irritably. “Just go get the fucking deer already. I know the rules.”

He darted into the forest and I fought back the urge to vomit deer blood all over myself. I waited until I could hardly hear Peter anymore and bent down to pick up the deer. It didn’t smell so bad now that it was empty. I could only imagine how my breath smelled. I stalked across the clearing with it in my arms and uprooted a small tree. Depositing the dead deer in the hole, I was about to cheat and spit one last mouthful of blood onto the body, surely Peter wouldn’t notice it there, when I heard him come back. I jumped up, replanted the tree and swallowed the foul tasting liquid with a final, reluctant gulp.

I said a silent prayer that he wouldn’t notice the still sort of fresh blood in my mouth. “That was too fast!” I protested petulantly. “How’d you catch one and drink it so fast?”

He shrugged nonchalantly. “It was easy enough. And, babe? Bambi was delicious. I’m in for this vegetarian bit.”

I almost growled at him. Peter, big bad vampire that he was, could not like deer blood. It wasn’t possible. As far as I knew, even Carlisle didn’t actually like it, much less consider delicious! There was only one explanation. “You’re lying!”

“Think about what you’re accusing me of, babe,” he said casually. “If I lied and didn’t even drink one, I’d still end up drinking them eventually. Wouldn’t I?”

I scowled at him. For the thousandth time, I asked myself why I put up with someone so damn smug about everything. And then he grinned at me. It was hard to scowl in response to his sexy smile. So I settled for leaning forward and sniffing him. He’d definitely drank the swill.

“So we’re vegetarians, then?” I asked, now completely confused about whether I was happy or depressed by that fact.

“Yep,” he said with a firm nod. “Vegetarians. Alice’ll be delighted.”

“And Jasper will be shocked,” I added. I was going to say something else but the thing that had been eating at the back of my brain for the last few seconds finally chewed its way through. I dropped my voice to a whisper and added a snarl for good measure. “What did you call the thing you just ate?”

He looked a little alarmed but wouldn’t let himself show it too much. “Bambi?”

And then I lost it. “Do. Not. Call. The. Deer. Bambi. You. Fucking. Ass!” I growled as I all but flew around the clearing, destroying everything in my path. “How. The. Hell. Am. I. Supposed. To. Eat. Bambi!”

My tantrum lasted just a few minutes and, when it ended, I was mortified to find Carlisle and Esme Cullen standing next to Peter with pure shock etched on their faces.

“Feel better, babe?” my mate asked with a smirk.

I resisted the urge to snarl at him in from of Carlisle and Esme, smiling serenely at them instead. “I’ll replant what can be replanted,” I promised for reasons I didn’t understand.

“What happened?” Esme said a little breathlessly. “Is everything alright?”

I nodded a little more eagerly than was probably strictly necessary. “Mm-hmm. Just fine. We decided to try your diet and Peter called the deer Bambi. I, uh, disagreed.”

“That may be understating things a bit, don’t you think?” Carlisle suggested wryly. “And, Peter, neither of you will succeed at a diet where you personalize your food source. Are you both serious about trying it?”

“Yes,” I said before Peter could speak. “We are. Will you help us?”

Esme glanced quickly at Carlisle and then smiled at me. “Of course we will. But you need to follow our rules, one of those being no unnecessary destruction of the environment.”

Peter jumped up from his spot on the ground and held out his hand to me. “Come on, Char, let’s go clean up your mess and think about all the yummy deer we’re going to be eating.”

I didn’t want to growl at him just then, Esme didn’t approve of growling at one’s mate and, for some strange reason, I didn’t want to disappoint Esme. But I would growl at him later for being an ass. I kept my thoughts to myself and set about replanting the trees and bushes that were still salvageable after my tantrum.

I couldn’t help but groan when I just barely heard what Carlisle whispered to his mate.

“I think we may have our work cut out for us.”

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

Somehow Otherworldly

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Sophomore Year

If Chief Swan had to get Mrs. Edison’s white cat down from the tree where she’d gotten herself stuck, Marshmallow Edison and her mischievous, impish temperament were the hot topic in town for two days. Life was that dull in Forks, Washington.

So, when the hospital hired a new doctor who had five teenaged children and hardly looked a day over twenty-five himself, the small town I lived in literally twitched with excitement and speculation. The most accepted rumor around town was that one Dr. Carlisle Cullen had been with Doctors Without Borders until his leg was blown off by an I.E.D. on a road somewhere in Myanmar. After he came back to the US, he and his wife, who he met in a refugee camp in Bosnia, quickly adopted five people, not necessarily children, of varying ages, nationalities and backgrounds before settling in Alaska. There was even a whisper that she couldn’t bear children of her own because of a badly botched abortion, but I didn’t listen too closely to that one. If It was the case, it wasn’t something that was anyone’s business.

The northernmost of states, however, had apparently held little interest for this very eclectic family and instead they opted for wet precipitation, rain, over dry, snow, and moved to Forks.

As it turned out, Dr. Cullen had both of his legs, had probably never been to Myanmar, though no one dared ask, and was married to a woman from Wisconsin. They had adopted five children. Two were Mrs. Cullen’s orphaned niece and nephew and three were unrelated to anyone else in the family. The only thing that the people of Forks had gotten right was that they lived in Alaska before moving south.

Personally, I was mortified that the town I’d been born in had created stories so outlandishly fantastic and exaggerated about a family that had really done little more than boost the population of Forks by seven. Never mind, of course, that Dr. Cullen was apparently a highly skilled surgeon that could have worked anywhere he liked and he chose Forks.

Things only got worse when the rumor that Billy Black from La Push had banned any Quileutes from going to Forks Community Hospital as long as Dr. Cullen worked there proved to be true. It spread through the town like wildfire and only fuelled the interest in the strange new family.

Mrs. Cullen was the first member of Forks’ newest and most interesting family that I met, and it was a fleeting encounter at that. My mother was the president of the Forks Ladies Club and she invited the new doctor’s wife to a meeting. She’d asked me to help her give a PowerPoint presentation on past fundraisers that the Club had done and it was then that I met Mrs. Cullen. The doctor’s wife reminded me a little of Ingrid Bergman, I had a thing for black and white films and Gaslight and Casablanca were two movies that I would never get tired of. Much more boldly than I usually acted, I told her just who she reminded me of the very second I shook her strangely cold, hard hand.

To her credit, she smiled sweetly and told me that she’d seen Gaslight so many times that her husband and children had started sneaking out of the room when it was her turn to pick a movie to watch. But then Mrs. Stanley and Mrs. Crowley rather rudely demanded her attention and our brief conversation was over.

I met Dr. Cullen himself next, when Joshua shoved two red M&Ms up Isaac’s nose while I was babysitting. Unable to get them out, I panicked like a minor league nutcase and dragged them in their red wagon straight to the hospital. Joshua insisted that the M&M’s would melt in one’s nose but not in one’s hand, problem solved, while Isaac just found the way he sounded with candy up his nose the funniest thing he’d ever heard. He sang Old MacDonald Had A Farm all the way to the hospital just to hear himself. I sobbed in the waiting room and fumed while the very sexy Dr. Cullen patiently pulled both candies out with a pair of tweezers while lecturing the boys about what should and shouldn’t be put up one’s nose.

Mandy, the girl who had gotten macaroni noodles out of my nose when she babysat me when I was little was now a nurse at Forks Hospital, and she took the boys to wash their faces and hands while I spoke with Dr. Cullen. He told me that Isaac would be absolutely fine but that I was right to bring him in, even if I was worried that my parents would be upset about the bill. Listening to him talk and having his strangely golden eyes fixed on me, I completely forgot how embarrassed I was that I’d overreacted so very badly.

As it turned out, I didn’t even have to tell my parents about the M&M incident myself. They’d stopped at the hospital to visit one of the elderly ladies who attended my dad’s church and Dr. Cullen had told them exactly what happened and given me a glowing review as a responsible, trustworthy caretaker. He’d been so nice that my dad announced I’d be getting an extra $2 an hour when I babysat from then on.

School started a few days after that incident and I immediately felt bad for the five adopted children of Dr. and Mrs. Cullen.

Small towns are notorious for weaving simple stories into wildly exaggerated tales of equal parts half-truths and lies but high schools in small towns are the epicenter of the storm. It was a vicious cycle. Parents told their teenagers what they’d heard, the teenagers took those tidbits and added them all together to make something that bordered on horrific, and then they went home and reported the new story to their parents.

Anything not defined as known and accepted was immediately rejected.

In a town as small as ours, nothing new was permitted until it had been thoroughly chewed up and spat out again as a test of sorts to see if it could put itself back together again. Then, if it conformed, it was accepted.

The Cullens were no different than any other family.

Lunch on the first day of school reminded me of the time my parents had taken me to see the new Siberian tiger cubs at the zoo in Seattle. Two thousand people had stood and gawked as the cute white cubs were paraded across the stage.

This time, there were just under four hundred people openly staring at five others, but to me at least, it felt the same.. It was embarrassing and what was a little bit more upsetting was the fact that I kept catching myself doing the same thing. The strange thing, though, was that the Cullens didn’t seem to mind that everyone was gaping at them. In fact, they hardly seemed to notice at all.

The two girls were as beautiful and graceful, like ballerinas, even though Rosalie was tall and statuesque She had the body of swimsuit model, ready to appear on the pages of Vogue at any moment while Alice was short, ridiculously thin and always had a shy sort of faraway look in her eyes but, in her own way, she was even more enchanting than Rosalie. I found her fascinating.

The boys were just as poised and lithe as their sisters. It was a little bizarre to see Emmett, whose muscled body put the biggest linebacker on the FHS football team to shame, weave seamlessly through the crowded lunchroom and hallways. Jasper’s smooth, agile movements were marred only by the intensely pained look on his face although his eyes seemed to soften every time he looked at tiny Alice. The last brother, Edward, always seemed to have a smirk on his face when he joined his siblings at the table that Rosalie had claimed first; he looked a little like he was listening to private jokes.

Forks High nearly erupted that afternoon when Katie Marshall saw Rosalie and Emmett holding hands. Now not only were there five new students with pasts that they didn’t seem keen to share but at least two of them seemed to be a couple. We didn’t find out until later that Alice and Jasper were together, too. They had a different dynamic that was much less obvious than their adopted siblings. Alice and Jasper holding hand didn’t make the splash that Rosalie and Emmett had. By then, it seemed accepted that the Cullens did things a little differently.

In our Honors English class that year, Ben Cheney and I sat in a group with Alice Cullen and Jasper Hale. They cemented my theory that they were different to the others even though they didn’t speak unless they absolutely had to and never, ever started a conversation anyone. It did, though, seem to be a two-way street; Ben didn’t bother to try and start one with them and I was far too shy or maybe in awe of the way that they seemed to communicate with their eyes. It was entrancing to watch and thoroughly distracting.

I desperately wanted to know why Jasper had a faint, feathery pattern of scars across his face and neck but I didn’t dare ask. And, when no one else mentioned it at lunch during the first week, I let my curiosity fade, contenting myself with the private theory that he’d been burned in the fire that left him and his twin sister, who was strangely a year above him, orphaned.

My third conversation with a Cullen was with Edward, about three weeks after school started.

We were paired up by Mrs. Caldwell to do a presentation on Sacajawea and how she led Lewis and Clark to the west coast for our US History class. At first, we spoke only enough to agree to meet at the small Forks library on Saturday afternoon to research and write. I spent the next three days getting more and more nervous as I wondered how in the world I was going to actually work on a project with someone who seemed perfectly content to never talk.

But Edward surprised me. While we took notes from a pile of books that we’d collected, he told me that he and his brothers and sisters appreciated that I didn’t stare at them like they were part of some circus act. I apologized on behalf of my friends and blushed at the idea that they were still being such fools toward the Cullens. Edward smiled, wryly, and shook his head, telling me that I shouldn’t apologize for people who wouldn’t think of doing it themselves. I quickly got the idea that the Cullens, and Hales, were stared at wherever they went and that they either didn’t care anymore or it simply didn’t bother them.

Fitting in and being part of the larger picture didn’t matter much at all to them. It was very strange.

But I envied them intensely.

Junior Year

The novelty of the Cullens and the Hales had worn off almost completely by the start of my junior year, a mere twelve months after they’d started at Forks High. They’d managed to integrate themselves into the school without really ever being a part of things. On the rainy, dreary days that seemed to define Forks, it was a given that they would be at school, speaking only when spoken to, although it was extremely rare that anyone bothered. It was only really teachers who attempted to communicate with them and, given their nearly perfect grades, even the teachers had stopped calling on them to give the rest of us a chance.

On sunny days, it was just as much a given that none of them would be in school, their stellar grades allowing their parents to pull them out for hiking and camping. Lucky them.

Forks and the high school got another thrill when Chief Swan announced, to just one person that I know of, that his daughter Isabella was coming to live with him. The word spread as quickly as ever. Isabella was already known to the people of Forks, to a degree anyway. Everybody knew Chief Swan and even Isabella had come to town occasionally over the years. I even sort of remembered playing with her one summer when we were eight. The carpets in my parents based still bore the faint traces of our toe-painting endeavor that had produced the strangest picture of a tree ever known to two little girls.

Bella, as she told everyone to call her, was shyer than me, if that were even possible.

I liked her. A lot. But two shy people do not fast friends make.

And then, somehow, she managed to get closer to the Cullens than the rest of the Forks High population had. Combined.

Edward was the object of her very apparent affection and that had the gossip girls furious.

Meanwhile, I got to know Alice a little bit better when I offered to be her partner in our spring semester photography class. Lauren Mallory didn’t speak to me for two weeks when I left her to work with Holly Simms and picked Alice Cullen over her, but I didn’t really care. Lauren was nice enough but two weeks of not hearing her snipe and gossip was actually a little refreshing. The only real drawback was that Jessica followed Lauren’s every move like a lady in waiting and Jess, who I liked much more than Lauren, only spoke to me when she was absolutely sure that Lauren wouldn’t find out.

In a way, though, it was worth it.

Though she remained very quiet and shy, almost like she expected me to run for the hills at any moment, Alice was very sweet and nice.

For our big project, we decided to make hands our subject of choice. We agreed that we would use a black and white camera and take candid shots of hands. It seemed silly and Lauren, to her great discredit, even snickered over the idea and asked if the ‘the freak’ picked the idea and I was just too nice to tell her that it wasn’t crap. Alice wasn’t nearby when she made the comment, so I chose to ignore it. Lauren had picked flowers for her topic and I didn’t see how that was possibly any better.

Taking pictures with Alice was actually fun. She had a way of sneaking up on people and snapping the picture without them knowing. It gave me the confidence to do the same thing. And, since the pictures were just of hands, we didn’t need to bother telling anyone that they’d had their picture taken.

We spent three Saturday afternoons working on it. Once, when we went to Port Angeles for a new crop of possible subjects, Alice asked if I minded Jasper tagging along. She told me that he needed to do some research at a library there and would just drive us there and back, otherwise staying out of our hair. I thought it was sweet that he couldn’t stand to be away from her for too long, because that was clearly what was going on, and quickly agreed. I was pretty sure that Jasper didn’t stay at the library, that he sort of followed us around, but I didn’t say anything. It would have made for a very awkward conversation.

I wasn’t absolutely sure of it anyway.

We were supposed to use the lab at school to develop all of our pictures on the third Saturday in April but Alice had mysteriously disappeared from town. Bella and Edward were gone too.

Mrs. Bowen gave me permission to have Eric, who wasn’t in the class but knew about the lab from the newspaper, help me in Alice’s place. But it wasn’t the same and I was a little worried about my new friend’s sudden absence.

She was back, though, a few days later, as abruptly as she’d gone. Apparently Bella had gotten way more dramatic than I honestly thought she had it in her to do and had run away, back to Phoenix, as a result of a fight with Edward. It was very un-Bella like but it wasn’t my place to judge. I was just happy that Alice, to make up for missing the developing session, had written the entire report about what lenses, shutter speeds and apertures we’d used along with a detailed description of what each photo meant to us and why we’d taken it.

After we turned in the project, Alice went back to only talking to me if she absolutely had to. I was more than a little surprised, although I don’t think I gawked quite as openly as the rest of the junior and senior classes, when all of the Cullens came to prom. I had a sneaking suspicion that they were there to support Bella and Edward. Even though it seemed like an odd thing for them to do, given the distance they kept from everyone, they naturally put everyone else to shame on the dance floor that double as the high school gym, but I liked that they came out into the world that was Forks more than they usually would have.

Senior Year

When the Cullens came back to school very late in the year, Los Angeles was the place that was most often cited as where they’d gone, I wanted smack them. Or at least I wanted to smack Edward. Bella had been a shell of her former shy and quiet self when he disappeared so suddenly a few days after her birthday. And it’s hard to be a shell when you were so shy to begin with.

Bella had been gone for three days, no one knew why and I don’t even want to get into the speculation that raced through the school about the girl that hardly anyone cared enough to talk to anyway, and when she came back with Edward, it wasn’t like he’d never been gone. It was like she expected him to disappear at any moment, like she was convinced that it was no more than a dream that he was beside her again.

I wasn’t sure that I liked it. It seemed like an almost unhealthy relationship, especially given how she’d reacted when he left before, but I doubted he’d be leaving again anytime soon, and I worried for my friend.

Things had changed, though, Edward joined Bella at our table and Alice and Jasper followed him. I ended up sitting between Ben and Alice and, after awhile, I even found myself starting conversations with her. She had a really adorable sense of humor and always thought about herself last. It was just a little odd when she got that faraway look in her eyes that always made Bella squirm and Edward act weirdly outgoing.

Only Jasper didn’t seem to worry overly much. He just held her hand until she came back around and smiled at him. Sometimes, you could see his shoulders relax when she smiled.

Their relationship was like that; silent but so obviously incredibly strong.

I’d long since lost count of the number of times I’d seen them standing together in the hallway, always outside of classes that he had separate from her. They would stand together, not talking, with their fingers linked together until there was less than a minute before the bell rang. With just enough time, Alice would pull away, slowly at first until only their fingertips were touching and then more quickly as she hurried with enviable grace to her class. She was never late and he always seemed a little more…calm and confident when she was gone.

It was hard to explain but the best way I’d figured was that he, for some reason that only the two of them knew, wasn’t sure that he could do it, high school, without her. That final touch of their fingertips gave him the strength to make it through whatever would happen over the next few hours.

I’d never known I was such a romantic at heart until the Cullens came to Forks.

I couldn’t help but wonder what he was so afraid of. Even as aloof as he was, Jasper still held the same poise as the others. It didn’t make sense that he would be so afraid of simply being alone.

I kept my thoughts to myself, though, Alice and Jasper’s relationship was private and I respected that, even if no one else did.

It was after one of those occurrences that I got to know Jasper a tiny bit better.

Alice had just broken contact with Jasper when I heard Lauren, who’d been gossiping with Jessica about who Tyler would ask to prom, say something way too loudly about ‘the freak’ finally leaving. I’d looked up from drawing a mouse on my notebook and seen a half second of pain flash in Alice’s golden eyes. But, like the Cullens always did, she just turned and walked away to her class.

In an uncharacteristic flash of confidence, I spoke up, telling Lauren that Alice was most certainly not a freak, that she was a sweet, shy girl who was far too good for people like Lauren Mallory. And then I walked into my psychology class and took my seat next to Jasper.

For the first time, he spoke to me. He thanked me for standing up for Alice and said that she talked endlessly about how much she liked doing our photography project together the year before. I promptly blushed, causing him to look away, and insisted that I hadn’t been a very good friend because I hadn’t stood up for her more. When he could look at me again, he told me that Alice considered me the best friend she’d had in a very long time.

I could have cried. I felt like I should have done more to make Alice more at home in Forks but, how at home in Forks was I? And she could have done more, too, I suppose. But I knew that he was telling me the truth. He was telling me that I’d touched someone’s life without even trying. Maybe that was the best way to make a real difference in a world of hurt and pain, not trying.

I wasn’t proud of myself, that would have been wrong, but I was contented. I’d done something right for someone who didn’t seem to expect to have things done right for them.

The Summer

The last time I saw the Cullens was when Bella and Edward got married in August.

It was a wedding fit for royalty on a miniature scale.

And it seemed somehow otherworldly.

At the reception, outdoors and beneath twinkling lights and drifting flower petals, I found myself standing next to Jasper on the edge of the dance floor as he watched Alice flit elegantly from one spot to the other. The way he looked at her; his golden eyes never leaving her and his body turning slightly ever time she came close to disappearing to view, always searching for her, made me want to cry. If I’d let myself do that, they wouldn’t have been tears of anger, pain, or jealousy. They would have been tears of honor that I was able to witness what the two of them shared so silently. I knew, in that moment, that I had little hope of ever having anyone watch me quite like Jasper watched Alice. And I was okay with that.

I didn’t know half of their story but I would have bet anything that there was enough to it that they more than deserved the happiness, peace and hope that they gave each other.

They deserved to have it forever and I hoped, with all my heart, that they could.

The End

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

Journey Home

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JOURNEY HOME

The Volturi returned the Pacific Northwest one year and nine months after their first visit. Aro and Marcus remained in Volterra while Caius led the best and most seasoned fighters he could collect to carry out vengeance on the Cullen family for the humiliation they had inflicted on the Volturi that day in December. Using Nahuel’s oldest sister as a shield to keep their movements from Alice, they slipped in unnoticed.

Plans for total annihilation of the Cullen family were thwarted when Alice, Edward, and Bella were caught hunting away from the rest of the family. Though the three fought with everything they had, it wasn’t enough. By the time Jasper, Carlisle, Rosalie, and Emmett arrived, hope of their survival was all but lost. If not for the arrival of the Quileute wolves, Caius would have been successful. Instead, he fell with his guard at the mouths of the wolves.

Alone, and without his mate of more than half a century, Jasper had a choice to make. This is his story…

It’d been a long time since I’d hunted in dark alleys.

It had been a long time since I’d hunted anywhere. Part of me was beginning to worry that I’d never be able to speak again if I didn’t quench the fire in my throat. Just being in the city without having killed anyone was a feat that seemed surreal and impossible.

It felt strange to stand with my back against a cold, damp brick wall, watching as two alcoholic homeless men fought over half a moldy cheeseburger that the one with the brightly colored Hawaiian print shirt over his parka had fished out of the nearby dumpster. The other man, dressed in a slightly cleaner parka, though it was leaking feathers from various tears, was more easily distracted. His friend swallowed the burger in two bites while he stuck his tongue down the neck of an empty Jack Daniels bottle, desperate for even a few drops.

As a vampire, it made sense that I would want to relieve them of their blood, making myself stronger and quenching the thirst that burned my throat.

As a vampire that had lived for sixty years as a human, the thought was mildly repulsive.

I shook my head, reminding myself that I was a vampire and not really a human at all. I wanted to be that again. I wanted every shred of humanity that I’d struggled to learn over the past sixty years to desert me. I wanted to be a monster.

With that in mind, I set about deciding which of the men I would kill first. Mr. Hawaii outweighed Mr. Feathers by a good forty pounds, thereby making a larger meal. But Mr. Hawaii was clearly the weaker of the two when it came to the vices of drink and drugs. He absolutely reeked of alcohol and his scent was mixed with the potent aroma of marijuana and meth. He would be disgusting to drink.

Mr. Feathers was perfectly scrawny, nothing more than skin, bones, and feathers but he still had blood. He was remotely less drunk and only carried the odors of one who hadn’t washed, in months. It seemed he would be disgusting as well.

In the end, in my role as judge, jury, and executioner, I granted both Mr. Hawaii and Mr. Feathers a reprieve. They were free to go happily about their business of rooting around in dumpsters and squabbling over whatever treasure there was to be unearthed there.

I, on the other hand, fled from the alley as the humanity I’d learned fought back.

It was Peter that found me. I’d heard him coming a mile away. Even in our first years together, he’d never been known for his quiet and tact. He reminded me of Emmett.

The rusted, brittle metal of the fire escape creaked as he sat down next to me but I didn’t look up.

“Did you hunt?” he asked bluntly with no preamble. “Was it that fucking bad?”

I exhaled deeply and sat up a little straighter. “I didn’t hunt.”

Peter was silent. I felt his eyes appraising me.

“Is there anything that needs cleaning up?” He pressed after awhile, obviously concerned that I might have exposed what I was before I so abruptly left my hunt. His willingness to take care of what I couldn’t was typical of who he was.

“No, they never saw me,” I assured him; he and Charlotte had gone separate ways, leaving me to hunt the easiest prey on my first time back. “I just couldn’t do it.”

“Were they too far gone?” He asked the question but I could tell that he knew it wasn’t really the reason.

My answer wasn’t really an answer. “I think I’m losing my mind.”

Peter laughed once, hollowly, as he tossed pebbles from our ninth floor height, careful not to create huge divots or kill anyone with them. “If you are, you’ve got a thousand damn good reasons for it. Talk to me, though. I know it’s not just the diet.”

Though I appreciated his permission to lose my mind, it hardly made sense to keep on existing if I did indeed go completely insane. And, somewhere deep inside of me, I wanted to keep on existing. I just had to figure out how.

“No, it isn’t just the diet,” I said, shaking my head. “It all, everything, goes back to her, Peter. Every step I take, I wonder if she’d be happy with it. And I’ve done so fuckin’ much that would make her unhappy, I don’t know how to stop.”

“Jasper, you already stopped.” His words were simple and to the point, just as they always were. More importantly, they were right. “You didn’t kill those two bums,” he went on. “I know I didn’t know Alice like you did, but I knew her well enough to know that she’s up in heaven right now cheering for that.”

This conversation was going places I never expected it would. I rolled my eyes and exhaled deeply. “Heaven, Peter? Really? I never pegged you for the religious type.”

He took a deep breath and sprinkled the rest of the pebbles below us. “As bad as it’s going to sound, hell yeah. I don’t know if, when my time is up, I’ll go there, but I have to believe Charlotte will. She’s never set out to hurt a soul, man or beast, with malice in mind. She’s good to the core. Just like Alice was. I learned when I was a little boy that good people go to heaven, didn’t you?”

“Maybe,” I hedged though, though as much as I’d diligently avoided those arguments between Carlisle and Edward, I very much liked the idea that Alice could be in heaven. The only petrifying drawback to the thought was that, by Peter’s definition, I’d never be with her.

“Maybe, my ass,” Peter scoffed impatiently. “And don’t change the subject, Jasper. You didn’t drink human blood, she’s happy about that. She is. You’ve stopped disappointing her, or whatever it was that you said. Sort of. Now just keep going.”

Trying was the very best that I could do and it’d always been enough for Alice. “So what do I do?” I asked Peter morosely. “Go hunt deer?”

I’d drunk animal blood just twice in the two months since I left the Cullens. Peter and Charlotte had found me in Glacier National Park and I had a sneaking suspicion that Carlisle had asked them to keep an eye our for me. They wouldn’t tell me either way, but I’d hunted there and once more, nearly three weeks ago. At the time, I’d decided I wanted it to be the last time I hunted animals. I wanted to go back to the being that cared about one thing and one thing alone; human blood. I wanted to forget everything else as I pursued that at all costs.

It wasn’t working, it still wasn’t working.

“Why the hell not?” Peter said sharply, jarring me from my thoughts. “Your eyes are coal, Jasper. If you don’t want to slip and kill a human, you gotta go get a deer or something.”

The alley below was empty so I leapt effortlessly to the concrete ground. Thankfully, Peter and Charlotte were currently located near Denver, making a trip to find deer not that complicated. “You’re right. I’ll go hunt animals.”

“I’m always right,” Peter smirked, appearing at my side. “But that’s a conversation for another day. You want company?”

I shook my head. “I’ll be alright on my own. I’ll meet you back at your place later on.” I shoved him with my shoulder in the direction I could smell Charlotte’s scent wafting from. “Go find your mate, she’s upset about what happened to … them. Give her a break from me for awhile, I know I’m just making worse.”

He seemed reluctant to let me go on my own, but he was smart enough not to argue or press the issue, simply telling me to be safe and come back soon.

With a promise to do just that, we split up and I headed out of Denver by the most direct route possible.

In the end, I did drain three deer. And, although I felt better for it, I wasn’t ready to go back to Peter and Charlotte, not even close. So I ran south, for no other reason than that the wind was blowing that way.

I didn’t stop running until I was just south of Albuquerque.

It was a stupid place to be, really. Wildlife was scarce enough, save for packs of disgusting coyotes, without having a thirsty vampire needing to feed in the area. That was only the first reason it was stupid. The other was my creator.

I caught Maria’s scent on the northeastern edge of Cibola National Forest and, either out of a death wish I wasn’t aware I had, or simply plain foolishness, I followed it through Cibola and into the heart of Gila National Forest. She was camped out near Turkey Creek Hot Springs with only six vampires, all female and, based on their behavior as I approached, none were older than two years. The young ones were edgy and defensive, but none attacked.

“Dejanos,” Maria ordered the vampires agitated by my presence. When a tall, raven haired female started to protest, Maria held up her hand for silence. “Jasper will not harm me. Leave. Now.”

I heard my name murmured by each of the vampires as they left and looked curiously at Maria. “Are you threatening them with me now? Scaring them with stories of days gone by?”

She shrugged indifferently and settled herself on the ground, dangling her feet in the hot springs. “You can sit, if you’d like,” she offered. “And maybe I am, maybe I’m not. I do what I need to do so I can keep control. You don’t mind, do you?”

I wasn’t exactly sure if I minded or not, so I answered as best I could. “I’m not staying to help you with them.”

“I imagined you’d say that. No me importa.” She looked up at me, her vivid red eyes piercing into me. “Are you going to sit?”

For lack of anything better to do, and for lack of wanting to do anything at all, I sat down.

“I heard about the attack, Jasper,” Maria said quietly. “I am very sorry that you lost Alice.”

“How did you hear about that?”

“Word travels quickly in the vampire world, Jasper, you know that,” she reminded me. “To be more specific, I’ve been keeping up to date on the Volturi movements every way that I can. I heard about their visit to you over a hybrid child and when I came across a nomad called Randall more recently, I asked him if he had news of Carlisle’s coven. He told me about Alice and the others. He’d heard it from Garrett, who is with the Denali coven now, I believe.”

I could hardly believe that Maria knew about Renesmee. And I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or bad. Since it’d been almost two years and we hadn’t heard anything from her, I didn’t think we, or they … the Cullens, had overly much to worry about. If Maria was going to act, she would have done it by now.

It didn’t surprise me that Garrett had already informed the nomads of what happened, though. Bad news traveled fast in the supernatural world.

“You know that I lost my mate in battle, Jasper,” Maria continued when I didn’t speak. “Long before I met you, he was killed. I was devastated. So, please, accept my deepest sympathies for your loss.”

“Gracias, Maria.” Even though the last time I’d seen her, we’d parted on fairly good terms, it was still strange and almost surreal to be having the conversation that we were. After all, I was still fairly certain that she’d never been overly fond of Alice, though she’d only met her twice.

As if she could suddenly read minds, Maria picked up with exactly what I’d been thinking. “It wasn’t that I didn’t like Alice, you know. I was simply frustrated and jealous that you chose her over me. I am vain, Jasper Whitlock, you know that as well as anyone,” she added with a wink. “She made you happy, though, I could see that. It’s why I left without a fight.”

“Other than killing four men in the town and forcing us to leave?” I asked, unable to stop myself.

Maria laughed and twisted her raven hair over her shoulder. “Those men did not put up a fight, Jasper,” she pointed out dryly. “And I have apologized to Carlisle for that. He passed through on his way to Brazil about a decade ago and we spoke. He understood that Roberto and I needed to eat. Did he tell you?”

“He did.” I hadn’t been sure why Carlisle and Esme had run all the way to Rio de Janiero to visit Isle Esme, though I had been pretty sure Alice had something to do with it, but I’d appreciated the information he brought back in the end.

“Then you know that I do not mean that when I speak of leaving without a fight.” Turning to look directly at me, nodding in a sort of approval when I met her gaze, she sighed. “I know, I saw, the depression consuming you when you were with me. It is why I did not follow you when you left with Peter. For a moment, just a moment, I felt guilty about the life that I had condemned you to. So I thought that you would go, find nothing better, and come back to me.”

“Just a moment?” I asked curiously.

“Yes. It passed,” she explained bluntly, shrugging nonchalantly. “I moved on. Just as you did.”

“I found something better.” They were just four words but they meant everything to me, they defined my reason for existing.

“Yo se.” Maria actually sounded remorseful when she sighed.

“And then I lost it.”

“Si.”

There was a question eating away at me that I hadn’t been able to ask anyone in Forks or Peter and Charlotte. Just asking would hurt them and I knew their answers would be colored by many things. Maria, on the other hand, had no filter and no close relationship with Alice or me, really. She would answer honestly and bluntly. So I asked her. “Should I have followed her? Should I have followed her into the fire?”

Maria scoffed and slowly shook her head. “You ask the one who sits here without a mate? I have asked myself that question every day of my existence, Jasper. I still do not know the answer.”

A strangled sob bubbled up in my throat. I buried my face in my hands to stop it escaping. Maria’s mate had been destroyed twenty years before she’d turned me. The very idea that I could spend a hundred and sixty years or more asking myself if I should have followed Alice into the fire was unbearable.

“I’m not unhappy, though, Jasper,” Maria said shrewdly. I knew she was surreptitiously watching me fall apart. “I live my life as Javier might have wanted me to, and I try to make the best of what life has offered me. It might be even more that way for you, with the strange Cullen ideas on living in the human world.

“I am a vampire in every sense of the word. You, Jasper Whitlock, are not. I can see it in you, in your obsidian eyes that are not red. You are still a human. A Cullen version of a human, anyway. There are great differences, I’m sure you know, between vampires and humans.

“What human commits suicide when his mate does? Romeo and Juliet excluded, of course,” she added, making me smile in spite of myself. “And I know that they do not mate in the animalistic way that we do, but there is still the ‘love at first sight’ and all that sort of thing. Even at that, what lion deliberately lets himself be ripped to shreds when his lioness mate is killed?”

“You’ve lost your mind, Maria,” I told her with blunt honesty, dropping my hands and turning to look at her.

“Tal vez. But I distracted you from your breakdown.”

As I digested just how smug she felt about succeeding at distracting me, I realized that, indeed, she had. I still felt like a shell of who I was just a few months earlier, but I wasn’t shaking or sobbing. She’d shown me emotions that I could latch on to and use to center myself.

“Thank you.”

Nodding, she turned her gaze back to the horizon. “Only you can decide what you need to do with your life, Jasper. You can ask me, Peter, Carlisle, or anyone but we cannot answer for you. I can tell you what I feel when I think of Javier. Peter can tell you what he might or might not do if Charlotte were destroyed. And Carlisle can tell you what he’d like you to do as the son he considers you to be. In the end, none of that matters, does it?”

“No. I guess it doesn’t,” I admitted.

In one fluid motion, Maria was on her feet again, I followed her immediately. “I don’t know if you’ve spoken to either of them so I will tell you what I can. You will know if I am telling you the truth.” She took a deep breath and turned her back to me, facing the hot springs again. “Do I miss Javier? Si. Immensely. Do I wish I’d killed myself when he was destroyed? No. Is life without him easy? No. If I could change history, avoid the battle that killed him or do something different in it, would I? Maybe. And, most importantly, am I happy with the life I have now? Tan feliz como puedo ser.”

As happy as she could be. It really wasn’t much to go on but, if I wanted to keep on existing, I had to be willing to settle for it.

I’d noticed the six females standing nervously a hundred yards away and I knew that our conversation was at an end in any case. I hadn’t expected it to make sense, much less help, but it had. “Thank you, Maria.”

“You’re welcome, Jasper Whitlock,” she murmured, turning to face me. “For what it’s worth, coming from me, I hope you decide to go on living.”

After a moment spent staring at her in surprise, I turned and silently ran away, back toward Denver.

The first creature I saw, just outside of Gila, was Charlotte, standing in the moonlight with her hand on her hip as she spoke into her cell phone and impatiently tapped her foot on the hard earth. “He’s fine,” I heard her mutter. “He just came out. Come back now.”

Before I could say anything, she turned on me. “Really, Jasper? Really? You’re worried that Alice wouldn’t be happy with what you’re doing so you go traipsing off for a little tea party with Maria? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

“If I was, I failed, didn’t I?” I answered idly.

Huffing at the same time she stomped her foot, the fight quickly drained out of Peter’s tiny, blonde haired mate. “Sorry, Jasper. I just, well, I really don’t want to get yourself killed. And I kinda freaked when I realized who was in Gila and that you went there.”

“I didn’t think you liked me, Charlotte,” I replied. It was only a half teasing statement. I hadn’t ever been sure just how Charlotte felt about me, though Peter assured me that she liked me just fine.

“Well, I do,” she admitted, dancing closer to me and wrapping an arm around my waist. “Besides, I’d have wanted Alice to look after Peter if something happened to me so I figure she wants me to look after you. Which brings me back to my little rant. Really, Jasper? Maria?”

“I didn’t know she was here, Charlotte. Would I have approached her if I’d known? I don’t know. But we talked, that’s all. Everything is fine.” I leaned back and looked down at her. “And I’m not looking for the closest bonfire, either.”

“Well,” she said with a sigh, “at least there’s that. I’ve been meaning to ask and I feel horrible that I haven’t, does it bother you when I say her name?”

I didn’t need to breathe but the sensation of not being able to, when my throat closed up completely at her innocent and kind but incredibly painful question, was close to terrifying. “I … um … yes,” I choked out. “I … I … can’t say … it. But it’s okay … you can. It … hurts. But it … has to. Doesn’t it?”

With a graceful little hop, Charlotte sat on my hip and wrapped her arms around me, just holding me as I came as close to crying as I ever would. “I think it does have to hurt first,” she murmured miserably. “It has to hurt if it’s ever going to be better. It’s okay for it to hurt, just like it’s okay for you to not say her name. She knows you’re thinking of her and that you love her.”

We were still like that, holding each other as Charlotte cried for her lost friend and sister and I wondered if I’d ever have real emotions again, when Peter finally returned. She, my wife, was the reason I laughed, loved, and lived. Without her, there hardly seemed to be reason for me to be any more than literally the walking dead.

“What took you so long?” she asked him, sniffling softly.

“I accidentally let Maria spot me,” he answered with a shrug, eyeing us both warily. “She sure is chatty these days.”

Still holding his mate, I watched as she zeroed in on the look he was giving us. “Why are you looking at us like that, Peter?” she asked pointedly.

“Just checking to see if you’re okay,” he answered, obviously wondering how close he could get to me and my very likely uncontrolled emotions before he started crying too.

“Don’t be an ass, Peter,” Charlotte sighed wearily. “Come over here. I’m not crying because Jasper is making me cry. I’m crying because I’m sad and because I miss her.”

It was a knife through my frozen, unbeating heart, but it hurt just as much. I was alone in my loss and yet there were more who missed here, nearly as much as I did. Beyond the two vampires in front of me, I knew that more missed her. I had to do something, I just didn’t know what.

“We have to get out of here,” Peter murmured. “We’re too close to the highway.”

He was right, of course. Much of the Volturi guard had been destroyed by the Quileute wolves after Alice, Edward, and Bella were killed but there was enough left to pose a problem at some point. And we really didn’t need the added trouble of having to kill any humans who spotted us in the desert sunlight.

I set Charlotte on the ground and stood next to her. “I’ll go. And I’ll keep in touch. I promise.”

“We’re going where you go, Jasper,” Peter said, looking at me like I’d gone a bit special on him. “Wherever you want to go, we’ll go.”

“You don’t have to,” I argued weakly.

“We’re nomads, Jasper,” Charlotte pointed out, stretching her legs and flexing her arms as though she’d actually exert herself when she ran. “Randomly going places is sort of in our nature.”

I thought about it for a moment, not wondering as much where to go but how to decide where to go without Alice to guide me. How would I know if I’d kill someone if I went north or if I went south? How would I know where it would be sunny and where it wouldn’t? How would I know…

“Jasper,” Peter said softly. “You’re losing it again, man.”

I felt his hand on my shoulder and felt the calm he was pushing out, allowing me to grab onto it and calm myself.

After a moment more of hesitating, I turned to face north. “Let’s at least get out of here,” I suggested weakly. “I need to hunt and it’s better in Colorado.”

“Colorado it is,” Charlotte said, taking off ahead of us. She wasn’t the fastest vampire by any means but she had a strange way of making up for it by running full speed for a bit and then sort of gliding over the ground, if it was not completely flat. She kept pace with us easily and Peter liked to tease her that she could fly.

We ran in silence back to Colorado, Peter and Charlotte flanking me as if they were worried I might run away if they didn’t surround me at all times. They had a point, maybe I would have.

Peter stayed with me while I hunted in the mountains around Aspen and Charlotte ran to the post office box they kept in the city to check her mail. It didn’t bother me that he was hovering. Learning to be a vegetarian in the Cullen family had required that I be babysat and hovered over. I never thought I’d be so glad to be used to it.

Another plus to Peter’s company was that he didn’t feel the need to fill up the silence with silly words that served no purpose. He was content to watch me, offering me his more centered and calm feelings as buoys to my raging, uncontrolled climate of emotions. I held on to what he gave with everything I had.

A few hours later, Charlotte appeared suddenly between us, a single envelope in her hands. Tentatively, she offered it to me. “It’s for you, Jasper,” she said nervously, thinking that maybe I hadn’t realized that. “It was in an envelope for us but it said to give it to you if we knew where you were.”

As soon as I saw the textured pastel purple envelope, decorated with darker purple daisies, I knew who it was from.

Renesmee.

She’d been so happy the day Esme had presented her with her very own set of stationery. She claimed it made her a grown up and, to our delight, we’d all received a letter a day in the mail until she needed a new box of stationery which, of course, she quickly received.

I slit open the top of the envelope and pulled out the matching paper. Renesmee Carli Cullen was imprinted across the top in a childlike scrawl with a small flower dotting the i. Below that, her handwriting almost matched the printing.

Uncle Jasper~

I miss you. And I love you. A lot. I know you love me too. But I still miss you.

I hope you’re okay. I really do.

I wrote letters to all the addresses Grandpa said you might be around. I know you won’t check them, but Grandpa said Peter and Charlotte and the other people might. I even asked a man named Jenks if he’d seen you or heard from you. Grandpa says to tell you that we only met Jenks because I needed new papers, ones saying that I’m Grandpa and Grandma’s daughter. Grandpa didn’t say to say that part, but I thought I should.

We’re moving. To Vancouver. We have to move because I can’t be in the cottage and everywhere at the other house smells like Momma and Daddy.

Me and Grandpa and Grandma live with Grandpa Charlie right now. Grandpa Carlisle told Grandpa Charlie everything about me and Momma and Daddy. And he still let us move in!

He’s why we’re only going to Vancouver. Well, him and Jacob. Both Grandpas and Grandma say that I need to be near what’s comfortable and what makes me happy so that I can heal better. In Vancouver, I can see Grandpa Charlie, Jacob, and the other wolves almost whenever I want. Or they want.

Grandpa Charlie cries sometimes. He thinks I don’t know, but I don’t think Grandpa told him about vampire ears. And, even though he knows Grandpa Carlisle and Grandma don’t sleep, they still leave most of the night while I sleep. I think so they don’t hear Grandpa Charlie cry for Momma.

Enough about that. I’m getting sad again writing about it. And I don’t want to make you sad. Then you might not want to come and see me.

Do you?

You don’t have to come to Forks. We can meet you somewhere else. Maybe at Aunt Rosalie and Uncle Emmett’s house in Sun Valley? That’s where they live right now. I miss them, too, but not as much as I miss you because I don’t talk to you. I can’t. I can talk to them all the time.

So will you come to Sun Valley or somewhere else?

You don’t have to stay. Just see me. Please, Uncle Jasper. Please.

I love you, Uncle Jasper. Even if you think you’re all alone in the world, you have me. I know I’m not Auntie Alice, but I still need you. I can help you. I promise.

Love you lots~

Nessie

If Peter had been worried about me losing it before, he’d been woefully prematurely. My hands were shaking so badly that Nessie’s letter slipped to the forest floor.

Charlotte snatched it up before it got soaked by the puddle it landed near and handed it back to me. “There’s something written on the other side,” she told me.

Taking a deep breath, I turned the paper over. I’d expected to see a note from Carlisle and Esme. I didn’t expect a note from Charlie Swan.

Jasper

I won’t pretend that I know what you’re going through. Knowing what Carlisle told me, I can’t imagine the pain you’re in.

But I wanted you to know that I thought of Alice as a daughter. Hell, I still think of her that way. I mourn her as much as I mourn Edward and maybe even Bella. She was really something special, Jasper. And you’re lucky to have had her for so long, even if it doesn’t seem like long enough.

Nessie asked me to mail her letter for her, so that Carlisle and Esme wouldn’t add any notes to you…that’s what she said. So I added this note of my own.

I see your family, Jasper. They want you home, if you can be. They at least want to know that you’re alright. So let them know, won’t you? Not knowing is breaking their hearts. And they’ve lost enough, haven’t they?

Anyway, I just wanted you to know that Alice really did touch my life and I’ll remember her until the day I die.

Charlie

Oh, and no one is supposed to mention this so that you don’t feel pressured, but we’re all (Nessie, Carlisle, Esme, Jacob and me) going to Sun Valley on Friday. Just saying…

Charlie Swan was right. He didn’t know what I was going through and, to be honest, we didn’t really know each other well enough to even have that. But he knew what Carlisle and Esme, and even Nessie, were going through. And he was right. They had lost enough.

The very least I could do was go to Sun Valley.

“Where’re we headed, Jasper?” Peter asked bluntly as Charlotte caught the paper again, carefully tucking it back into the envelope and then inside her backpack.

I took a deep breath and committed myself to the journey home. “Idaho. Rose and Emmett’s place in Sun Valley. We have to be there by Friday.”

Charlotte actually smiled at my decision.

I ignored her and began to run. It was nearly twilight on Thursday and, factoring in the sun, we’d get there around the same time as my family, if we found no reason to stop.

“The two of you don’t need to come,” I said as we ran, me in the middle again. “I can get there without an escort.”

“Shut up, Jasper,” Peter muttered. “Nomads, remember? We go where the wind takes us and, big surprise, it takes us with you.”

“And I am so not facing Nessie again if you run off and she finds out that we let you get away,” Charlotte added firmly. “You know Peter sucks at tracking. You’re good at hiding, too, so I figure it’d take forever to find you again.”

“I do not suck at tracking,” Peter sniffed haughtily. “It is merely that tracking is not my strong point.”

“To-may-to, to-mah-to,” his mate sighed wearily. “What is your strong point then, my pet?”

Peter laughed and ignored her question. “Aw, Char, you went with the tomato thing instead of ‘if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck…’. I thought that was your cliché of choice for these situations.”

“Just keepin’ you on your toes, love,” she said, gliding across a flat bit of ground and shrugging at the same time. “I know how easily you get bored.”

I knew what they were doing. It was blatantly obvious. They were playing around, teasing each other, and deliberating altering their moods to keep me distracted from dwelling on our destination and what might await me there. I loved them for it and I owed them, big time. Again.

“Thank you,” I said a while later as we skirted the main highway through Sun Valley. “Both of you. For everything you’ve done.”

“You’d have done it for us, wouldn’t you?” Peter asked rhetorically.

“And that better not be you thinking you’re getting rid of us,” Charlotte added as threateningly as she could manage. “Because you’re not. Just so we’re clear.”

I reached out and grabbed her hand, squeezing it before I pulled her back into a small hug. “I’m countin’ on it, Charlotte. I’m countin’ on it.”

We arrived in Sun Valley just an hour before dawn.

Rosalie threw herself into my arms a quarter of a mile from her house. I don’t know how she knew which direction we were traveling in, much less how she knew I was coming at all, but she found me and hugged me so tightly she nearly broke my shoulder.

“Jasper, you came,” she said in surprise as I hugged her back. “I’ve been so worried about you. Emmett wanted to go looking for you two months ago but I convinced him to wait another month.”

“Don’t listen to her, man,” Emmett said, his teasing underlain with a seriousness I didn’t remember in him. “She wanted to follow you the day you left.”

“We both wanted to follow you that day,” Rosalie said, moving just a little to the side to let him hug me without having let go herself. “But Nessie said to give you the time you needed. She was sure you’d come back one day.”

“Come back and see us,” my brother felt the need to clarify what they meant as we ran back to their house. “We’re not saying we’ll be upset if you don’t stay or anything like that. Do what you gotta, Jasper, we’ll work with it as long as we know you’re safe.”

I hugged them both back when we stopped in their yard, appreciating very much how much they were struggling to keep their emotions in check. “Peter and Charlotte are watching me like hawks,” I assured them. “I’m safe.”

“Unless you going running off to Maria,” Peter muttered under his breath.

Mercifully, neither Rosalie nor Emmett had the chance to react to that because Nessie had arrived with her grandparents and her wolf.

If I thought Rosalie threw herself into my arms, I’m not sure there are words to describe what Nessie did.

Although I saw her leap out of Esme’s arms and hurtle toward me, I wasn’t prepared for the force of Nessie as she threw herself into my arms and I staggered backward two steps before I found a fallen tree to sit on.

She was weeping my arms as I pressed my face into her sweet smelling copper curls.

I hadn’t realized how much I missed her and I’d had absolutely no idea how very much she missed me. Guilt washed over me, superseding even the sadness I felt at our shared loss.

“Do you feel guilty because you left me?” Nessie whispered, scooting up so she was closer to my ear. “Because you shouldn’t. You had to go. I told you that. If I was bigger, I might have had to go too.”

“You’ve seen far too much for someone your size, much less your age,” I told her softly as the guilt eased.

“I know.” The two words that she murmured broke the heart of every person who heard them.

After a few minutes of silently holding each other, Nessie asked if I minded if she went to Jacob. Never again would I be able to deny her anything and, though it hurt to have her out of my arms, I let her go.

Surprisingly, Charlie Swan approached me before Carlisle or Esme. As I stood up, he gave me an awkward hug, telling me what he’d said in his note again, and then mentioned that Nessie had given him one of Alice’s photo albums that contained pictures of Bella. He offered to give it back to me, if it wasn’t hers to give.

Knowing that Alice made copies of all her pictures and that Charlie didn’t have the memory I did, I told him to keep it, promising to give him anything else that was mostly Bella. Once I was able to go through Alice’s things, of course. I wasn’t at all sure that would be in Charlie’s lifetime.

Esme came next hugging me tightly to her as she sat next to me on the ground. “Have you found any peace?” she asked me with a gentle honesty that broke my heart at the same time as it warmed me.

“Define peace,” I said, laughing hollowly, just once. “But I suppose I have. Or at least I’ve found my center. Of all people, Maria helped the most.”

“Because she lost her mate too?”

I nodded and, slouching against the tree, I lay my head on Esme’s shoulder. “She told me that she felt like she should have followed her mate into the fire but that she didn’t want to, so she didn’t. She’s convinced herself that he would have wanted her to go on existing in the same way they would have existed together.”

Esme rubbed her hand up and down on my arm and sighed softly. “Is that what you’re trying to do? Convince yourself that Alice wanted you to go on the way you were?”

“Yeah, I think that’s the only way I can go on,” I admitted. “Every time I think about anything else, I remember how much she loved living, just living. How can I stop doing what she loved so much?”

“It won’t be easy,” she told me candidly, “but I know that you know that. I just hope you know that I’m here for you. However you need me, whenever you need me … if you need me at all. I’m here, Jasper.”

“I don’t want to hurt you more than you’re already hurting,” I murmured wearily.

Esme tightened her grip on me. “Then don’t. Let me help you stop hurting so badly and I’ll stop hurting so badly, too.”

I couldn’t stop from smiling at the blunt truth in her offer. Esme was a mother first and foremost. It was obvious to anyone privileged enough to know her that, if her children were hurting, she felt their pain doubly. If I let her help me heal as much as I could, I would be helping her heal as much as she could.

It was the least I could do for her. And, if I were being completely honest with myself, and that wasn’t something I was sure I could even be again, I wanted her help. Badly.

And I needed it even more.

“I need you, Esme,” I told her, having resolved where I was going. “More than you know and probably more than I’ll ever be able to say.”

“Then don’t try,” she instructed me. “I know enough. I don’t need more than that.”

Finally returning her hug, I knew I had to make it all official, for me if for no one else, so I stood up and walked the fifteen paces across the lawn to where Carlisle stood with Nessie in his arms.

I took a deep, slightly unsteady breath and made my request. “Carlisle, may I come home?”

Nessie was in my arms before Carlisle had a chance to give his answer.

“It’s hardly a ‘home’ without you, son.”

THE END

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