Author's note: These characters are not mine, they belong to Meyer.
-twilightjunkie1313
(Jasper Pov)
I knock quickly on the frame of Edward's door.
"It's open." He says instantly.
I enter and take a look around, there is a small pile of newly purchased books sitting in a stack on the floor, next to them Edward is reading one. I note that he is nearly halfway finished, he probably never left his spot on the floor.
I am thankful again, for the hundredth time, that he has Bella to occupy his mind. Otherwise, he would have already read every book printed in the last four decades.
"Something on your mind Jasper?" He asks innocently, but wonder if he already knows.
"Where is Alice?" I ask, mentally tacking a comment about lack of privacy to the end of the question. He looks at me for a moment.
"I do not try to hear any of you. However, if you all but scream it aloud then yes, I can't help but know what your thinking."
He doesn't look up from his book but instead sighs and focuses intently for a second. He looks like he is listening for something small.
His hand leaves the book and points downward, through the carpet.
"In the basement Jasper, she knows you're on your way." He flips the page, eyes going blank again as I watch him sink into his book.
I walk easily down the hall and jump the banister, landing silently on the entryway floor below. I walk into the kitchen and notice Esme cleaning the unused oven with bleach and something that smelled lemony.
Then I duck into the pantry, file past a few feet of shelving full of non-perishable food items. In the back of the pantry is a giant picture of a vineyard, painted in oils with a thick heavy frame.
I come to a stop in front of the picture, my and moving automatically to the small key pad on it's left. I punch in a code and wait as three heavy bolts side back and the frame opens a hairsbreadth.
I pull it out, walk into the small landing and grab the frame, pulling it shut behind me.
Our basement is a very clean place, twenty two steps separate it from the main floors of our house and yet the décor matches perfectly.
"Hey Jasper." Alice's singsong voice is impossible to miss.
She doesn't look up from her work and I walk past her, examining the room.
This is my favorite place in the house, next to Carisle's study. It hold our interests and our hobbies, the things that make us human more than the empty beds and unused oven upstairs.
Alice is working at one of three drafting tables, hers is littered with fabric swatches and photographs of clothing. The two tables next to her are empty, though one is Rosalie's and the other belongs to Esme. Above her, on the wall, is a massive bulletin board, pictures of various projects in different stages of completeness are posted haphazardly.
There is a desk in the corner, where I keep a computer and a notebook. The rest of the family uses it as a place to update our forged documents. I use it to keep track of our stock dealings and monitor our various properties and land purchases.
The filing cabinet next to the desk holds a record of every identity we have ever had and ones we are in the process of creating.
Away from the desk and the tables off in a set back corner by itself is a small set of fridges, lights, plastic sheeting, stainless steel tools and a gurney. There is one of these in every home we have, stocked with ample pain medication, blood transfusions and vaccinations for every sort of disease and bacteria. It is Carisle's hobby to collect medical equipment. It has always had its uses.
I shot a glance to the heavy lead door that sat out of the way. It lead to a leaden and steel plated room, with padding and electrical outlets. I had never seen that room used, but they kept it because it served one invaluable purpose, it could contain (best as anything) a newborn vampire.
Opposite of the drafting tables, nestled against half the wall are glass fronted weapons cases. Here is my hobby in this room of interests. My growing collection of civil war era guns, knives and bayonets sits innocently behind clean double paned glass and five different padlocks.
In the center of the room there are couches, end tables, a few lamps and a pair of coffee tables stacked with books catering our various interests.
I sat down on the couch closest to Alice, she turned and smiled broadly at me.
"Nearly finished with this one, what do you want to do after I'm done?"
She didn't ask why I was down here, she probably already knew.
"Why do you spend so much time down here during the day?"
I asked because the basement had no windows and no portion of it was above ground, didn't she miss the light?
Probably not, Esme kept it so well lit and decorated that one would swear they were not in a fortified basement.
"I had an idea and I needed to work on it." She replies.
I nod.
"What should we do now?"
I look up and she is next to me, half seated on the arm of the couch. Her fabric samples and notations are out of sight, placed back in a drawer. She waits for my answer.
Without a word I tackle her, leaping over the arm of the couch and pinning her to the ground. She laughs and I realize she let me tackle her. I grin and she kisses me lightly on the forehead.
"Saw it coming didn't you?" I marvel.
She nods and I pull her to her feet as I stand.
Alice leans back and perches on the arm of a chair, her face and emotions calm but curious. I stay standing and wait for her to speak.
She looks at the cabinets, there must be thirty guns and a few dozen knives there, locked away.
"Why do you lock them up?" She is gazing at them openly, her eyes reminded me of Edward's when he reads.
"They are dangerous." I explain simply.
"No they are not." She counters.
I raise an eyebrow and there is a pause in the conversation. I move, taking a few steps towards the cases.
"It is those that wield them who are dangerous." She says it calmly.
I see her reflection in the glass, she has moved to stand next to me, taking my hand in hers.
We stand there for a while.
"You are like them, did you know?" She stares mesmerized at a bayonet.
I didn't.
"You have the capacity to be lethal, just as these things do. If you were put in the hands of someone with ill intent or no morals you could do just as much damage as a room full of these, maybe more." She looks up at me now.
I am suddenly aware of the scars littering my skin. I have already done that much damage.
A smile is on her face, a bleak one, but I note its presence.
"You are at rest now, that part of you is put away in your memories. Just as these things now rest safely here. They could be used to kill again, if taken from their places, if only someone opens the cases."
She was unaware of the simple rhyme, but her voice made the words somber.
"And you, you will never stop being what you were, you just lock that part of you away. You could be a killer again so easily, if not for what holds you back."
I was stunned, her voice had the eerie hollow quality of narrating a vision.
But this was no vision.
Her eyes snap into focus, staring at me with warmth and understanding. I felt some confusion around her, swirling in the air along with a peacefulness I couldn't place.
"What holds you back? Why don't you become what you were created to be?"
She is moving toward the glass, I awe of the cases contents, reaching forward to the lock on the doors.
I pulled her away from the cases gently.
I understood now why she had been gaping at them. I could understand the draw.
Fighting had been my singular talent, a gift I had that could not be rivaled by any other immortal. In a race where killers and fighters are the norm I was the most lethal of any. Releasing my strength upon something, letting go of my humane judgment and becoming a weapon, a killer, nothing held the same rush of emotion.
I looked at Alice.
She had led us back to the couches now, seating me without my noticing. She was sitting a few feet away, on the other side of the couch watching my face intently.
"Do you know what holds you back?" She asks, whispering now.
I think about my memories, drawing them out one at a time, faster until I felt sick. The death, the sight of the battlefields, the emotions of winning and self confidence made me sick. I now recognized the images of beaten foes as murders committed by my own hand. I was strong, yes, but too weak to understand I was being used as a weapon, serving other's wills.
I had no desire to go back to that.
I had everything I needed now.
Alice, she was some sort of conscience and will outside my own body. She provided a better judgment then the one I had before. She made me see the world in a new way, not an us against them, but an us and the way we choose to be. She never feared me, trusting me from the moment she saw my face.
From the second she joined me I knew I would follow her. She didn't just change one thing, she changed everything about me. She was peace and rest with a colorful chaotic aura and a penchant for doing things differently.
"You, you always have." I whispered it.
She was quiet.
I closed my eyes and blotted out her confused but stoic face. I focused on my emotions, reveling in them and pulling them to the surface. Then I relaxed, letting the feeling wash over me, flowing from myself into the room and into her.
Calm, peace, joy, happiness, love, protectiveness, safety…I could pick them out as they ran through me. Others were harder to name.
There was a trust in my ability to defend her against anything and a desire to do so if ever the situation called for it. An uncertainty in my ability to not go back to the way I was and conversely, the need to stay the being I am. A thankfulness at the calm she gave me…a joy at the idea that others could live the way we did, with endless years and a lifetime of new memories waiting for them.
I felt a closeness to her, her shadowy past was just as difficult for her as the violent one I carved out for nearly three centuries.
"Thank you for that. I know what effect it has." She was gasping now, her mind and body humming with my emotions. Her breathing was ragged and her eyes unfocused.
I pulled myself back together, sealing the emotions as best I could. I reached out and held her, her body was shaking. The last few remnants of my feeling left her, replaced by her shock and wonder.
After a long time she looked at me.
"It is going to rain tonight, would you like to run?"
I inhaled the smell of her hair, clean and bright but unnamed in my mind.
"Yes."
She untwined herself from my grasp and pulled me to my feet. On the way up the stairs I glanced at the cases against the wall.
I remembered her second question.
"Why don't you become what you were created to be?"
I had no real answer, no expressible answer to that question.
My past and my future had collided in such a way as to blend one and the other. I valued my time with my creators, it gave me morals and lessons and a respect for life that nothing short of killing ever could.
It gave me the capacity to protect her, something I was unwilling to lose, regardless the cost.
It made me value what I had here, remember it for what it is, not some fluffy fairy tale ending but the redemption of a violent past.
The memories I had of myself, some violent beyond description and others placid, calm and relaxed…they conflicted. But both sets of memories are mine.
Both are what I was born to be.