Title: Whole New Thing
Rating: T
Warnings: SLASH
Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight.
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Jasper's POV
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Running was all I could do. It was all I could focus on. I couldn't afford to let my mind wander back to his scent, because I knew that I would turn right around and go back for him. I could hear Alice and Emmett chasing, so even if I did turn around, they wouldn't let me get anywhere near the boy, but I still couldn't risk it. Out of desperation, my tactical mind might just find a way around them. It was my specialty, after all.
As I tore through the brush and bracken, I had reached the ten mile point. I knew that it was now safe enough to stop running, because he would be back in town by now. I didn't even slow down before I leapt up the trunk of a great tree, but I was still going a little too fast, and my muscles too tensed from my unexpected encounter, so the base of the tree splintered into a hundred shards. As I crawled up the trunk, it was toppling over. I stood on the tip with the balance and lithe steadiness that only my kind could master, and I leapt onto the second tallest tree as the one under the balls of my feet fell to the ground.
Here at the top of the world, I could breath, and cleanse the scent of the boy from my nostrils. His sweaty fear-ridden smell still stained the palms of my hands, though. There was a storm approaching, so the air up here was full of moisture. All the better, it would absorb the pollutants in the atmosphere. I watched the billions of microscopic water beads drifting in the breeze like stars against the grey brush strokes of the clouds in the sky.
"Jasper?" Alice's high trill of a voice called to me. "You can take smaller breathes now." She said. I hadn't realized how hard I had been panting, trying to clear my head. I turned my head and looked over my shoulder to the tip of the tree only a few feet from myself where she stood, balanced and graceful. Beautiful. An angel.
My angel.
"Where's Emmett?" I asked her, my voice still a little rough from the searing flames it had just endured.
"He's down below in the forest." She said. While I wasn't prepared to see the judgment on Alice's face that I would see from Rosalie, I still looked up into Alice's face. The sight meeting me nearly knocked me off of the tree top. Was she actually smiling? "I'm so proud of you!" she sang.
"Proud? Proud? Alice, what… How… Why?" I asked. I was truly at a loss for words because 'proud' was the last thing she should have been.
"You came so close to killing that boy, but you stopped!" Alice said, leaping from her tree onto mine. She crawled onto my shoulders, wrapping her legs around my waist, and coiled her arms around my neck. She kissed the nape of my neck where my hair began, and I drew in a deep calming breath. If anyone could calm me, it would be Alice.
"Alice, I nearly crushed his throat. I threw him against a tree!" I said.
"He didn't break anything." She cooed.
"He was bleeding." I moaned, grimacing in disgust at the image.
The blood running down the blonde's temple wasn't what repulsed me, because my mouth began to run over with venom at the sight. It was the vision of me reflected in his ocean irises, teeth bared and ready to strike. I had him pinned to the ground under my hand by his neck, and I watched the veins in his eyes flare as I cut off his air and blood supply. My teeth were right over the skin, ready to slice through with one razor swift cut, and I was sure that this boy was about to die.
But I stopped. It literally hurt, both physically and mentally, but I managed to struggle against my instincts. I shakily pulled away from his neck, only once going back an inch or so to strike, but I threw myself off of him and ran.
"You could have killed him. He was alone, and you had no reason to stop, but you did." Alice said. "You just proved that you belong here, with us. With me." She said with a rather large grin.
"I thought Carlisle said I didn't need to prove myself?" I teased.
"You didn't need our approval. I meant that you just proved to yourself that you are strong enough to handle this lifestyle." Alice said. I frowned at that. I didn't like it when others noticed my weaknesses and self doubt so easily, even Alice. "Even after all these years, it's easy to see that you still think that you don't belong here with us." She said.
"He saw me." I groaned. "Alice, he saw me, and I let him live." I said.
"I guess everything comes to an end someday. Even our life here." Alice sighed. I looked around to the flourishing green mountains and trees, and I looked down to the rippling water down in the inlet.
"I'm sorry." I said. "I know you like it here."
"We can come back someday, we'll just have to wait." She said. She caressed my face gently with her small feather soft palms, and she turned my head to the side. "Let's go home and talk to Carlisle." She said. Before I could come up with a reply, she vanished, plummeting down into the darkness of the forest below. I took one last breath of the moist clear storm air from the top of the hundred foot tall tree, before I let myself drop to the forest floor.
Emmett didn't say anything to me as we ran home. He merely tossed a few curious glances toward me in the darkness. He was confounded; I could feel it radiating from him like warmth from the sun. It probably baffled him that the one among us with the weakest will was able to do what none of them except Carlisle would have been able to do, and that was stop myself from draining that helpless boy dry when I had him in my grasp. I had already seen the blood, smelled his flesh, and tasted the sweat in the air. There was no reason I could have logically stopped myself, but there was one advantage I did have that the others didn't.
I had felt his fear. It had been so long since I had been forced to feel that slackening feeling in my stomach. Decades. In the past, I used to just kill them that much faster so I could feel release from their emotions, but not this time. I used it to force myself to pity him. Not only the boy, but myself as well.
Alice slid my hand in-between her own, probably sensing my inner uncertainty. We jumped the river, and stopped before the back of the manor. All the lights were on inside, with the exception of Edward's room, which had been vacated for a little over a year. He, Bella, and Renesmee had been abroad, exploring and enjoying the world. I knew that it would be a good experience for my younger brother to get out and see the world.
Edward had already seen the world, yes, but now he had two fresh pairs of eyes to experience it with. Not to mention that he was also viewing everything through the filters of love and happiness, instead of the gloaming of indifference and sorrow. I was happy for him, I really was, but life had somehow gotten a little boring without them here.
At least when Bella was around, human or vampire, she always attracted some form of chaos. Without her, there was no usefulness to me once again. No werewolves to train, no vampires to rage war against. No adrenaline.
Emmett had already gone inside to break the news, and Alice only watched me as I stared at the black block of the house on the third floor that was Edward's.
"You don't have to worry, Jazz." Alice said. I looked down into her amber eyes and I knew that everything would be fine. But no matter how many times this happened, it never got easier to stand before Carlisle and Esme, and tell them that I let them down. Not only on my part, but all of us.
Alice gently pulled me toward the house, and I crossed the distance staring into her eyes as she danced backwards just for me, so that she could keep my confidence at full stature. I could never falter with Alice beside me.
Walking through the open glass doors in the back, we found the family waiting for us in the kitchen. All four eyes focused on me as I sheepishly stepped around the counter with Alice at my side.
Emmett was still a little confused, but otherwise indifferent. Rosalie was, of course, seething with murderous rage. It was just as bad as the day as when Edward had saved Bella from the skidding van moving to crush her. Esme was smiling and Carlisle looked a bit analytical. Bafflingly enough, I was feeling torrents of joy from the both of them. I couldn't believe it; they were as bad as Alice. Instead of seeing the danger I had just presented them with, they chose to focus on the fact that I hadn't killed the teen.
"Why didn't you go back and kill him?" Rosalie hissed.
"Rose," Emmett began, placing his arms around her shoulders, though that may have been to keep her from leaping across the room and bashing my face into my skull.
"No!" Rosalie shouted, shaking Emmett's large hands off of her shoulders. "If he's forcing us to move because he couldn't control himself, the least he could have done was finish what he started so we weren't exposed." She said. Emmett shrugged, Alice rolled her eyes, and I just stood there with nothing to say. What was there to say? "First it's Edward, and now you! I've already graduated from that school, I don't want to have to start another one already. Don't you use your head when-"
Rosalie was cut off when Carlisle held up a solemn hand.
"But Jasper, he – " she continued, but it was as if the solidarity of his gesture had some magic power that denied her permission to continue talking. Thank God, Jasper thought, because if nothing else around here could, at least there was Carlisle to shut her up.
"Jasper," Esme timidly wedged her way into the conversation. "Why don't you tell us what happened?" she asked. Rosalie folded her arms; No story from anyone's point of view would change her mood now. Carlisle, however, was eager, and although his face was calm, cool, and collected, his emotions were as giddy and impatient. 'Huh', I thought. 'Never thought I'd put Carlisle and Impatience in the same sentence.'
It was strange to have to tell my own stories. Before, Edward had usually summed up all of our woes for us. Even after a year, it still felt strange to open my own mouth and talk. I hadn't realized how little I had to use my vocabulary when Edward was here. Now it was as though I never had the opportunity to shut up for more than five minutes.
"Alice and I were out hunting since I start class tomorrow. Since we haven't been in a room full of blood in a while, she thought it would be good safe measure. There have been storm warnings all week, and we hadn't caught the scent of any humans in the area, so we agreed that it would be alright if we stayed in the area."
"We learned our lesson, it won't happen again." Emmett said to Rosalie when her eyes had popped out of her head and revealed daggers behind them, waiting to launch like missiles.
"I was closing in on a mule deer. My instinct had completely taken over by then, and Alice was off on her own chase, but not too far away. I was about to make the kill when I caught a different and very familiar scent." Jasper hinted. "Of course I tracked it down, and attacked."
Esme gasped. That much I had expected, though that didn't make it much easier to endure. Carlisle squeezed her shoulder, and he kept his face as slate clean as it was before.
"But Rosalie says that you left someone alive out of the group?" Carlisle said.
"Yes, I did leave someone alive; the only person I had come across. There was no group, only the one boy, who is still alive." I told them. Esme sighed in relief with her hand over her heart, and then smiled.
"So you came across a lone hiker, and you left him alive?" Esme stated, stars bursting in her eyes. Then her face was as clean as Carlisle's. "You didn't bite them, did you?"
"No, I just… roughed them up a little and then I ran for it once I regained control over my mind." I said. Esme's eyes flashed once again, this time along with Carlisle's, but I raised my hands to calm them down. "He's just fine. He'll just have some bruises and a stitch or two. Nothing to worry about."
"Jasper, I'm so proud of you, my son." Esme said.
"That makes the both of us." Carlisle chimed in.
"This calls for a celebration." Esme said, beaming at Alice, who was just dying to throw a party ever since Bella's wedding.
"No! There will be no celebrating!" Rosalie shouted. "He didn't tell you who the human was!"
"Rose, just let it go. At least until Alice sees something to confirm that the kid saw Jazz." Emmett said.
"Who was the hiker?" Carlisle asked. I hung my head and grimaced. He had seen me, and Emmett had seen that much to be certain.
"Jasper?" Esme urged.
"It was Mike Newton." I said sullenly.
"Ah." Carlisle said.
"Exactly!" Rosalie cut back in. "Not only did the human see Jasper, but he can identify him! He can even press charges and the entire family will be implicated!" she hissed, pointing accusation in my direction.
"Rosalie, we've heard this all before." Alice sighed. "Now kindly stuff one of Emmett's socks in that mouth of yours since that's the only thing around here big enough to fill that huge gaping maw in your face." She said. Rosalie had temporarily lost interest in me, which I would thank Alice for later.
"Girls," Carlisle groaned.
"So then what's to do?" Esme asked. "If it's true that he caught a good glimpse of Jasper during the attack, then we are exposed the minute he decides to tell someone. If we kill him and leave, it will only complicate our already dwindling reputation."
"Mike Newton must die." Rosalie stated. It wasn't a suggestion, it was her assessment that this was the only possibility.
"Well Carlisle? What do you think? I mean, our hands are a little tied at the moment. At least when we had this conversation about Bella, Alice had already foreseen things working out in the end." Emmett said. "So how about it Alice? Having any visions of you and the Newton boy with your arms wrapped around each other yet?" he laughed.
I turned to Alice at my side, along with every other pair of eyes. She shook her head, and she looked a bit mortified. I was relieved that she wasn't the only one that would be sickened by the fact that my wife would be best friends with Mike Newton of all people.
"I see him standing here." She said.
"Come again?" I asked.
"I see him standing right here, exactly where I'm standing. And we're all… laughing with him… or at him, I'm not sure." She said.
"Me? Befriend Mike Newton?" Rosalie asked incredulously. "Ha!"
"Fat chance." Emmet smirked.
"Well you never laugh, so I just excluded you from the vision completely." Alice snapped.
"What else do you see?" Carlisle asked, just as perplexed as I was. She pinched her nose, and shook her head.
"It's hard to say, really." She said. "There are so many images hitting me at once, but nothing that makes any form of sense." Alice said.
She was withholding from the family, which I could plainly tell, and I'm pretty sure they could as well. What exactly did she just see after Mike Newton standing in the kitchen? I hadn't actually decided anything yet, no one had. Our next move was still up for debate.
"How long do we have before he sounds the alarms?" Carlisle asked. Esme hugged him tighter, and Rosalie seethed in blind fury once again.
I knew why Rose was so angry, I completely understood, but it wasn't completely my fault. I didn't intentionally do this just so she would have to start high school over again. I sighed as I explained my feelings to myself, and as pure as they were, it didn't change the truth, which was the fact that it really was my fault.
"He's not going to tell anyone." Alice said aloud, the perplexity in her voice as audible as the words themselves.
"Really? Newton?" Emmet asked. "That's a little out of character for the kid, isn't it? I mean the way Edward explained Mike's mind he's basically a large selfish toddler who craves attention in the body of a nineteen year old, isn't he?"
"Well, Edward was a little biased." I said. Wait, why was I defending him? Because he decided to go hiking when there were vampires out, we had to move away. This was his fault as much as it was mine. Who hikes when there's a major storm coming anyway?
"From what I can see, he won't tell anyone what happened, and he's going to talk to you tomorrow during orientation, but he doesn't know you two have the same class yet." Alice said.
"Will he figure out what we are?" I asked.
"If he does, we have to kill him." Rosalie said, looking directly at Carlisle and Esme.
"I can't say for sure. Everything's a little fuzzy." She said. "Because nothing's been decided, his future is a little blurry for me."
"Then let's decide that Jasper needs to kill him." Rosalie said. "That should clear things up. Even I can see the outcome of that decision; we move on, start high school all over again, and go on with our existence." She said.
"Rosalie, please," Carlisle said. "I don't like killing out of necessity, and I'm not going to make Jasper go through the process if Alice says that the boy will not tell anyone. It defeats the purpose of the restraint he's shown tonight." He said, and I felt his sense of pride as he explained this. It was nice to be the one receiving praise instead of being the one who had messed up. Again.
"I think that we should wait to decide what to do until the Newton boy talks to Jasper tomorrow." Esme said. Rosalie was, of course, unhappy with Carlisle and Esme's votes, but she knew that with Alice and Jasper on their side, her own vote was outnumbered.
"What do you think, Em?" she asked the large mountainous man behind her. He shrugged.
"It doesn't really matter; the vote is in the Newton kid's favor. Let Jasper talk to him tomorrow and we'll see what his deal is." He said. Rosalie huffed, tossing her hair over her shoulders and stormed out of the kitchen. She slammed the garage door shut, and we all stood in the kitchen, exchanging awkward glances.
Alice was the first one to break the stares as she turned her back to the rest of us, pinching the bridge of her nose and wandering off to our room, I had assumed. Carlisle and Esme walked past me, Carlisle giving me a light pat on my shoulder as he passed me.
"We are both proud of you, Jasper, no matter what happens." He said, and Esme gave me a warm motherly embrace. I endured her prolonging hug until she let go and I could breathe, albeit unnecessary.
Carlisle and Esme were out of sight quicker than the blink of an eye, but I was moving sluggishly. I went to find Alice, but a part of me was afraid to know what she had seen that was so horrifying that she had to filter her thought in front of the family.
As expected, I found her in our room. She felt my presence before I had even left the kitchen because she had been trying to solve my future. What I had done tonight had drastically changed something in our future, and I wanted to know what it was.
"Alice," I softly spoke her name, but so softly that no one else in the house would be able to hear. Softer than a whisper, lighter than air, and barely a twitch of my lungs. "What are you hiding?" I asked, though it ended up coming out as more of an accusation.
Alice sheepishly turned around from the large glass wall and faced me, but she kept her head low. She wouldn't look at me.
"Alice," I said her name again, lovingly, but she did not move. I crossed the wide empty room instantly, and caressed my thumb across her cheek. Without her eyes to look into, I didn't know of any other way to know my affection. "Alice, talk to me." I pleaded.
"Jasper, I don't think I can." She said. "Not right now, at least."
I was completely speechless. I truly, honestly did not know what I had done, or would do, to upset Alice like this, but I knew it was going to be me. She wasn't an 'angry' sort of upset, that much I could feel, but more shaken. She quickly danced around me, leaving me to face the forest alone. She placed a soft, cool kiss on the back of my neck before she left me alone.
I watched her fly through the darkness outside, and my heart clenched when she was out of my sight.
A/N: It's been a while since I've written any fan fiction, and I desperately need a break from my own projects, speaking of which, don't forget to check out my first book, The Pocket Watch, a young-adult fantasy/romance fiction - w w w . a u t h o r s d e n . c o m / v i s i t / v i e w w o r k . a s p ? A u t h o r I D = 1 0 6 5 0 7 - I need all the support I can get!