I couldn't stop the emotions moving, breathing, coursing through my body. It was like blood, it felt like blood, or what I thought blood should feel like. Movement. That's what it had always looked like in humans. Their veins throbbed, breathed almost. I touched the side of my neck, where a vein would have been were I alive. There was not movement there, no throbbing or ebbing, just cold stone. I was a statue, frozen in time. Yet the emotions felt as though they were moving. Moving through my inexistent veins. I'd never felt so ... torn. So ripped in different directions. Someone was tugging on my body, my arms held in two separate directions in an ancient torture technique. This was the first time I'd ever felt him lose this much control.
The control was definitely slipping though. Like silk strands falling through my fingers. Strands that I had no hope of catching. I'd seen him. It had been a complete accident, a trick of fate that I hadn't seen coming. A tiny piece of me was remaining logical under the stream of emotions, reminding me that it would have happened eventually. It was such a tiny slice though that I wasn't listening, I was simply reacting. Reacting to the hitch in his breath, to the fact that he had turned into a very real statue, to the fact that even I could identify the emotions attacking my body. Sadness, fear, regret, terror, anger, sorrow, and one I had not expected, hope. Despite the fact that it only flickered, it was there. It was physically evident in the fact that he hadn't yet moved away from me, hadn't pushed me off of him. I still lay, exactly where I had landed, with my head balanced on his thigh.
Jasper was leaning against the wall, against the indent he'd made when he flew away from me. I truly hadn't meant to scare him, or upset him, or even make him uncomfortable. I'd simply walked in the door without thinking, and there he'd stood, with his shirt in his hand, his chest bare to the mirror he was looking in. I'd frozen. I'd known he had scars, had seen them on his face, his wrists and his arms, but I'd not gotten this close before. This intimate view that I was suddenly allowed to have. Layers. He was made of intricate layers, and I was only allowed to peal back the foremost of them. His face had contorted into a mask of horror and I'd stepped forward. The single action had sent him flying across the room, the shirt fluttering to the ground and the flicker of fear skittering across my conscious.
I hadn't moved slow then, I'd crossed the floor quickly, brought my hands to his face and stared at him. I'd learned, sometimes words were not the best way to communicate with Jasper. Sometimes simply touching him, looking at him was far better. The swiftness with which he had fallen had shocked me, and I'd shrunk to the ground beside him, landing with my head on his leg, my legs spread out in front of me. We hadn't moved for an infinite amount of time. The light streaming in through the single window had changed, become less defined and more fluid. Time meant nothing to us. Simply a way to mark change; what change there was. The hope was going to win. I could feel it, slowly seeping into a larger portion of my brain, slowly crowding the fear and the sorrow out. I opened my eyes and found him looking at me; his face still held that contorted mask. The one that made his eyes hooded and his lips pursed. Tentatively I reached up, made contact with his face. My fingers splayed across his cheek was enough for him to close his eyes.
The smallest of sighs escaped through his lips and the thin line they had been in relaxed.
"Humans say that scars show character." I whispered the words, testing his mood. He'd gotten his emotions under control again. No longer were they moving throughout my body, coursing across my marbled skin. His eyes opened, a warning glare in them. The laugh that escaped my lips made his eyes slide closed again. I hadn't thought that would really help. "Jazz-" His fingers across my lips stopped my words from forming.
"Shh." I closed my eyes; his decisions were changing too rapidly, the images in front of me were blurry and unformed. Shifting and morphing into shapes I couldn't recognize. "Alice." His face was directly over mine now; both his hands on my cheeks. I offered up a tentative smile; and he mirrored it, despite the real sorrow I could see behind his eyes. His lips brushed over my forehead in a gentle caress and he leaned back, pressing his head to the wall.
I wished to understand. Or to help. Somehow I felt that the two desires had to come together, that without the understanding I wouldn't be able to help. I didn't think he was so much sensitive about the scars, as afraid of how they would impact me. What I would think. That though, didn't make sense entirely either. He knew me. He knew every facet of my face, each nuance that went into my movements, he knew how I saw the world. Yet this, something that neither of us had ever really spoken about, was suddenly quite starkly important. There had been no need to discuss the scars, to talk about the ribbed lines that wound like snakes across his skin.
It had been so simplistic, so natural for me to take his hand in mine, I hadn't even thought that it might make him uncomfortable. At the time I hadn't sensed a change in his demeanor, not even a ripple of a varying emotion. Perhaps though I had missed a look that had crossed his eyes, or a slight grimace spreading across his face in my utter elation to be touching him. Now especially, I wondered if I had been insensitive to him. Maybe I should have mentioned the scars, maybe we should have talked about it.
"What are you thinking?" The words were murmured and I brought my eyes to meet his. I didn't want to do this wrong. To speak and have words spill out of my mouth that had no purpose out in the open. "I can feel your indecision." His spearing gaze hadn't changed. I needlessly swallowed.
"I'm thinking that I should have asked if they bothered you." The words slipping out were so soft no one but he could have heard them. The change in his face was instantaneous.
"Bothered me?" Confusion pushed through me. Piercing my thoughts and controlling my muscles. He'd lost control again. As quick as the emotion had come it was gone and I was left with my own emotions, a faint mixture of regret and sorrow.
"Yes." My fingers skirted around the width of his wrist, crisscrossing over various scars, not really pausing on any of them. It took several seconds for him to speak again, when he did I felt his fingers close around mine. A vice grip that didn't appear to loosen as more indefinable time passed.
"I didn't want to surprise you. To shock you. To scare you." The last phrase was so quiet I nearly missed it. I exhaled softly, my breath brushed across his wrist.
"Jasper I would never-" My words were cut off as he pulled me up, across his lap. Like a child I curled into his chest, my arms reaching up around his neck as he held me to him. He pulled his knees up and dropped his chin onto my head. I could feel the scars, skating beneath my fingertips on his chest. Scare me. The utter terror I had seen in his eyes when I'd walked in ... that had been for me. That emotion, the control he had lost ... we would talk about this. I made the decision with little thought. This could not happen again, this had terrified me, seeing him so scared. We would talk about this.
"Shh, Alice, shh." His voice found my ears again, tickling my face with his breath. Serenity washed across me. He was doing it again, I could recognize that. The influence of his emotions over me. So potent and immediate. For once I didn't mind, didn't instruct him to stop playing, instead I curled farther into his chest. I buried my face in his skin. Sometimes with Jasper ... words simply weren't enough.