FAMILY

Author's Note: Hi Everyone. Hope you are all well. I am, just feeling kinda feeling overworked 'pulls face' stupid final year of High School.
Anyway enough about me, you're not here to read about me. Yes, I'm updating! I know, I'm kinda surprised myself, since with this update I never thought I'd finish it since I've been writing it for, lets see, a number of weeks now.
I do like it, there are parts in this that I quite I like and had me smiling, while others I kinda 'meh' about, but over all I like it and I hope you guys do too.

Disclaimer: I know that all of you reading this know that I am NOT Meg Cabot.
If I was Meg Cabot I would still be writing The Mediator series whether it was selling well or not, because I much prefer it to say coughPrincesscoughDiariescough... 'sticks tongue out'. Though oddly enough, I quite like the movies, they make me laugh while the books, nah uh, they make me want to throw them around the room in frustration... No offence to any Princess Diary loving people who are reading this, this is just my opinion which is I think the Mediator books were far better written then Princess Diaries, but that is just how I feel personally.
But I'm going off topic.
Ok, I don't own the characters nor the setting nor the location, nor anything else in this besides my own writing and what little bits of Jesse's history that I have delved into because I really love this guy and I find him to one of the most interesting and unknown characters that i have ever read about.

FAMILY

Set: About five years after the sixth book Twilight/Heaven Sent

Location: In the grounds of The Junipero Serra Mission Academy.

Characters: Suze and Jesse

Point Of View: Jesse de Silva (Third person and because I love him)

Status: Complete, one-shot.

"Do you think they would have liked me?"

Jesse looked back at his wife, startled by her odd and out of the blue question. But when he met her solemn green eyes, he mulled carefully over her question.

He knew exactly whom she was asking of; he was just surprised at how blunt and unexpected the question was. But then, that was how his wife went about in life, speaking blunt and getting straight to the point and of course she wanted a straight forward answer in return. Not that she normally got one and when she did, most of the time she didn't like what she heard. And this was exactly what she feared was going to happen with the answer to this particular question.

Her green eyes were growing wider with anxiousness as he continued to mule over her question. Which in fact he needn't have done really since he already knew the answer to her question and was just stirring her up because, well he could and most of the time he could get away with it without too many bruises. But watching the continual widening of her eyes and her front teeth now beginning to bite down hard upon her bottom lip he decided to take pity upon her.

"Don't see why they shouldn't have like you." Not a straight forward answer, he was so going to pay for that later but he wanted to get to the bottom as to what was the exact reason as to why she was asking this question. It was so unlike her.

Yes, she did care a bit about what people thought of her, but never to the extent of her looking so nervous and fearful and having to resort to lip biting to try and relieve her of her stress.

She was frowning at him. Oh, yes he was going to pay for his lack of a straight answer but later, she was still too anxious in getting a proper answer from him to give him a firm punch in the shoulder blade.

She pouts at him, before tilting her head downwards, starring at her hand that was picking idly at the green grass beside her, where she sat underneath one of the trees planted in the Junipero Serra Mission Academy playground that was as of currently being set up for the School Festival the next day. Jesse had been currently setting up one of the children art displays when Susannah had asked him her unusual question.

"I can think of plenty of reasons why they wouldn't like me." She grumbles and picks at a particular blade of grass with some venom. Jesse felt his lips twitch upwards at her action. She could be such a child, even at the age of twenty-one. But he forced his smile back as he thought over her statement.

He went to kneel beside her, taking her small chin in his large, worn hand, cradling it gently in his palm.

"They would have loved you." He tells her gently as he moves to sit beside her. She just frowns at him still.

"How on earth do you know that? They could be, wherever we are suppose to go when we die, saying 'Jesse, you moron, why the hell did you go and marry her for?'"

He can't stop his smile this time. She is so bad at imitating people that he can't stop the laughter from escaping his lips.

"They never spoke like that." He chuckled softly.

"Jesse, you know what I mean." She had a slight whine to her voice now and she really was looking quite frustrated and upset now.

"I know, I'm sorry querida." He leads forward a little and gently brushed his lips against her forehead fondly. She sighs softly.

"Yeah, I am too. I'm just," she scrunches up her face, searching for the right word to describe her attitude at this moment in time. Her faces scrunches further as she mutters, "hormonal," as if it were a horrible word instead just another symptom that she was… suffering from due to her current condition. He chuckles softly and gently brushed his fingers over her face, as if he could brush away her scowl.

"There is nothing wrong with being hormonal, querida. It is perfectly normal."

"Yeah I know it's just making me harder to live with, that's all." She grumbles unhappily.

"Querida…" he chuckles some more and wraps his arm around her shoulders while resting his other on her slowly growing belly.

"I just fill useless and cranky and I can't do stuff that I want to do… or stuff that I don't want to do, which I now want to do because everyone says that I'm not allowed to do it. It's so stupid." She sighs heavily. "Bet if I was in your original time I would have been allowed to help you set up those stupid display units."

"Susannah, you are far from useless." Jesse soothed gently, giving her a gentle squeeze of the shoulders. "But why are you worried now about whether or not my family would like you or not." She shrugs her shoulders slightly.

"I don't know. I guess that now with the baby coming and the whole family thing and the fact that my family likes you, a lot. I mean, seriously if he could have, Andy would have happily adopted you into the family just so that he can have some one else in the family he can talk to about… repairing stuff and wood and… normal sane things. Have a real conversation with another male in the house." She chuckles softly before sighing again. "I don't know, it just of late, I've been wondering whether or not your family would have felt the same way about me too."

He sighed softly and after a moment gently pulled her on to his lap. He chuckled in delight at the surprised squeal that escaped her lips as he did this. She elbowed him in the head for that as she made herself comfortable against him.

"They would have liked you querida. Very, very much. They would have thought no such thing about us and they would have welcomed you with open arms." He gives her a little hug.

"But they wanted you to marry Maria." Susannah reminded him crankily, jealousy evident in her voice. He flinched a little at the name and Susannah's head whipped around to face his, an apologetic look already in place.

"Sorry." She mumbled, burying her face into his shoulder. He stroked her thick hair fondly.

"Don't be, you have nothing to apologize for. And actually, to tell the truth, my parents didn't even really want me to marry Maria. They were against the whole thing, well my mother was." He felt her head shot off from his shoulder, her eyes once more wide, this time from shock and her mouth open into a small 'o'.

"Huh? What do you mean they didn't want you to marry her? I thought that the plan was for you two to get married so that the two families could combine farms or something or other." She was looking completely confused, which he knew was completely understandable, she having grown up in a completely different time to his own.

"It was the plan, but it was more my Uncle's, my father's older brothers, plan. He wanted the farms to be combined and so on. My father only went along with because, well, he was the younger brother and their father had past away meaning that our family 'law'" he rolled his eyes at that before continuing, "was now in my Uncles hands. My father had to go along with him."

"That's stupid."

"That was how families were back then." Jesse replied stroking her soft hair, playing with it, braiding locks of it into little braids.

"But why didn't your family like it?" she was now genuinely curious, as she always was when it came to anything about him and his time before he was a ghost.

"Because, well, you could say that my family thought somewhat out of the box for their time. My father married my mother who wasn't of any particular blood, just a normal Spanish woman. He married for love, which my uncle did not." He sighed. "My poor aunt. She was only sixteen when she married my uncle who was well into his twenties. She was a lovely woman, with a beautiful voice but…" he sighed again sadly. "Anyway, my parents never pressured us, as their children to be anything else then what we were. If I had told them that I wanted to be a Doctor they would have supported me with all their hearts, even though we didn't have the money nor the Workers for me to go and study." He smiled a little ruefully but still went on. "They were quite happy to let myself and my sisters marry whomever we pleased. That is, until my uncle decided that he wanted to marry Maria off and the person he wanted to marry her off to was me." He pulled a face at that. "My family couldn't really argue with him because, all in all, it was actually a good plan. We were losing workers and so were they, though not quite so many, because they could pay more money to their workers to keep them to stay, while we couldn't. My uncle had no son, only daughters and my father had me, so if one of my cousins were married off to me, then both farms could remain in the family, as could our money and our heritage." He finished shrugging.

"When put like that, it sounds like a perfect plan." Susannah mumbled softly.

"Hmmm." He kissed her head. "My mother didn't think so. She thought it was a terrible idea and that only lead to terrible things would come from such a marriage." He smirked a little at the irony.

"I like your Mom." Susannah mumbled softly. He laughed.

"Yes, I thought you might. She would have liked you too, very much, though she would have teased you senseless. If you think I'm bad, she was worse, the Mistress of Teasing. Nice teasing though, never heard a bad word out of her about anyone… well," he paused for a moment, "she was rather vocal on her dislike of Maria, privately of course, but I think the community all knew of my mother's opinion on my Uncle's eldest daughter."

"Now, I really, really like your Mom." Susannah giggled. He smirked.

"Yes, she was one of the few people who could stand up to my uncle without blinking an eye. My father would always be the one sitting between them trying to calm down their tempers."

"Hmmm, that sounds familiar." She sounded a little guilty and he laughs.

"No, your fights with Paul are not nearly as bad as the ones that went on between my Mother and my Uncle. Mind you, it was my Uncle who usually started the fights, it just that my Mother usually had the last word. Words, quick and sharp and left him speechless for a comeback. She was a very witty, intelligent woman, my mother, even though she was what my Uncle said 'to be even less educated than the average woman', she had more brains than him and all his henchmen put together."

Susannah smiled at that. "Sounds like you take a lot after her." She mumbled. He shrugs.

"I was told that while I look like my father, I think like my mother. She always told me that knowledge is a more powerful than any man made weapon in the world, it was just a lot harder to hit people with it. That was the only problem."

Susannah burst out laughing at that.

"So, they would have liked me." She still wanted a proper answer to the question, confirmation that he wasn't just saying what she wanted to hear.

"Yes querida they really would have liked you. Loved you in fact. All of them." She smiles, looking quite pleased and he shakes his head a little and kissed her head fondly.

"And I love you too."

"And the baby?"

He smiles grows and strokes her swelling belly, his eyes glowing slightly with awe as he feels the tiny life growing within her suddenly kick against his hand.

"Yes and the baby too. I love her very much.

"Him." He rolls his eyes before kissing her mouth gently which she quite happily responded to. They were quite happy to settle down into a quiet make-out session when a irritable voice suddenly bellowed across the lane at them.

"Oi, wait for the original kid to come out before you get started on the second." Brad was yelling at them, sounding very cross and bothered.

Jesse felt one of Susannah's arms slip from around his neck leading him to the obvious conclusion from the loud huffing noise from Brad's general direction that Susannah had made a rude hand sign up at him.

Yes, his family really would have adored her. He chuckles.

Author's Note: Well what did you think?
I've been playing with this idea long before I actually starting writing it up, because well I thought that the concept was interesting. My original idea did sort of come through, though granted as usual my mind went off on many different detours and this is the end result.
I've always been curious about Jesse's family, one of the reasons I love the 4th book because we get to see pretty much as much as we were going to get of his background and about his family in the series.
I hope that my representation of Jesse's family isn't too far fetch, it just this is how I have always pictured them. I mean, Jesse is a pretty out off the box thinking guy and I thought, hey, why not have the whole the family think kinda like he does. I actually have a how backstory of Jesse's family sitting in my head (I know, its sad, but it is true. I even have names for all his sisters and for his Mother and Father and Uncle. See, I'm way to obbessed with this series, 'sighs').

Anyway, once again, I hope you like it and reviews are lovely.
Thanks for reading.