Breath of Life
Chapter One
Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction using characters from the Twilight franchise. I do not own any of the characters depicted, nor do I share any of the beliefs the characters in this story express. I am not profiting financially from the creation and publication of this story.
There she was.
Meeting eyes of an odd golden butterscotch, he was swept off his feet by the single most enchanting creature he had ever encountered in all of his existence. The room was suddenly bright with an unmistakable joy when Jasper entered the half-empty diner in Philadelphia. Delight, bliss, restlessness, impatience until finally, love washed over him in waves.
The waves of her love swept over him like a rampaging flood. It razed everything in its path; his utter helplessness at this life as a slave to his thirst, his hatred for Maria and the Southern Covens, and the confusion of this need to go North until his chest was tight and his breath was laboured.
Sometimes he thought he was finally insane, that there would be nothing at the end of the call for him to go North, or that it would never end and he'd finally give in to his darkest thoughts under the calls relentless force.
For the past thirty years something's been demanding, screaming, begging inside him to head North. Until he couldn't fight it anymore and he walked away from Maria and the Southern Vampire Covens and never looked back.
And finally, finally, the tides of the call receded, and he felt like he could breath, the air no longer thick as if he walked through suffocatingly dense sand with each step he took.
"You've kept me waiting a long time."
He held out his hand to her in a silent statement, and when her soft, delicate hand slid into his own he was again nearly swept away by emotion. Wave after wave crashed into him, and by her wide-eyed, demure expression she felt it too. What he had felt from her the moment he walked in through the door was nothing compared to this crashing tide.
Having bowed his head, it suddenly shot up as reality came crashing down upon them again. He could feel their eyes on them, stroking over the delicate creature at his side in a way they had NO RIGHT to. As if they had a claim to her, a wish to possess her. Sure the human's would try to touch her, this being of light and grace that was frantically sending gentle feelings of calm in his direction his hand tightened on hers as Jasper growled lowly in his chest in warning, and even though human hearing was too fragile to have heard the air was suddenly thick with terror. This soothed his rage a little, because if they had tried to touch her, he would have butchered them all. But what finally got his attention was gentle finger tips stroking his brow, the sides of his face, and it gave him enough calm to focus past the fury of his possessiveness to sweep her up in his arms and out the diner.
It seemed like moments later, or maybe an eternity later, she collapsed to the ground with nimble limbs, sensually curled into a comfortable seating position and then they just stared at each other. Minutes, hours, days later it seemed she spoke, total and absolute serenity in her feelings and in her voice "I'm Alice... and you're Jasper". His inscrutable expression said nothing of the surprise he was feeling. "And you're my mate", the smile that broke across her face at his words, her joy, seemed to take him off guard. "Yes". He reached out slowly; cupping her face in the palm of his hand like it would shatter under his touch. A contented sigh passed her lips as she leaned into his hand, her eyelids fluttering closed. "Your mine" he stated, but she took it for the bewildered question it secretly was despite his flat tone. Alice's lips curved into an infinitely tender expression, her own hand coming over to rest on top of his on her cheek "yes".
"You know me" Jasper stated again as if disbelief coloured the majority of his emotions. "For as long as I've existed" her amber eyes opened, peering up at Jasper with a look that managed to be both innocent and utterly beguiling at the same time. The world was silent until he asked "how?". Alice's slight hand stroked his that was still cupping her face, and when he slowly retracted it her disappointment and sadness at the loss of touch kicked him in the chest. Before he could think he was already reaching back across the small distance between them, finger tips brushing against her cheek softly and gently across her bottom lip. The happiness that she seemed to naturally exude at his presence came back in full swing "my ability," she paused, her pert little nose scrunching lightly "my curse, but also, apart from you" her eyes sparkled with suppressed laughter "what I'm most thankful for, because of you, is my gift to see visions of the future".
Jasper went completely still, every muscle tense and everything in him screaming as one.
No!
If she truly had this ability, whichever entity that created them was cruel in a way he had never thought he'd experience. Because she will never be safe. There will always be someone who would try to take her from him, someone who would desire her ability and he'd die under the on slaughter of attempts before he allowed someone to take her.
Gentle hands cupping his cheeks again, eyes beseeching into his "thirty years I've been looking for you Jasper. My first memory was of you; my first thoughts were of you, my first awareness of the world was that you were out there". He tried to release the hold he had on her shoulders were they gripped with terrifying force, and found he couldn't. "I've kept myself alive for you, do you really think now that I found you I could leave you so easily?" her earnest truthfulness gradually calmed his storm of emotion until he could finally let her go and breathe past the choking frenzy.
She stood and he followed, and slowly so he knew she was coming she placed a gentle kiss against his cheek. His body shuddered in emotion, before he turned and walked, never for a moment thinking she wouldn't fall into step besides him. The urge, the restlessness that had plagued him, had stopped. But he couldn't stop moving. Alice's gift, her ability, was too tempting. If he stopped someone will take her from him, and he would never allow that to happen.
They roamed for days in silence, in a kind of reverent hush in quiet wonder of the shining bond that had snapped into place the moment their hands had touched. Alice, Jasper could feel, was content and so blissfully happy that he only had to glance at her and her joy almost cut him off at the knees. But the tension in his shoulder's never relaxed, he was always wary… always on guard. He had lived with danger for too long to escape its effects easily. Even on the rare moments he was sitting still, his eyes didn't stop. They were constantly scanning the horizon, watching for danger.
So many times he caught her gazing at him as they walked. There was an intense longing there, but there was a strange sense of satisfied comfort as well. Out of his peripheral awareness, he would see her hand inching for his, but then she would slip it back to her side with a sense of disappointment. It would seem that she wanted to touch him – and yet she seemed unsure of his reaction to her attentions. Strange, affectionate… defenceless girl. Couldn't she feel his eyes were always on her? He was always aware of where she was. And she was never out of his sight.
As they walked under the cover of trees, the forests that the nomad's called home, her little hand slipped into his, fitting like it was made to be there. And it was.
Time had no meaning to the nomad's, but they hadn't even hunted, or faced the conversation on their different definitions of hunting yet when a furious growl ripped through Jasper's throat. Alice's eyes were wide with shock, staring at him as he turned to her menacingly as she was crouched besides the bloom that had caught her attention. As soon as she had taken a step towards a different direction from him the furiousness of his possessiveness had risen to the surface. Sunlight poured into the small clearing, casting mirrors of light to lighten places in which the sun didn't caress. To Jasper it felt like a claiming, a stroke across his senses, as sunlight reflected off her skin and onto his.
"We need to keep moving."
Alice was still watching him, but with tender finger's she touched the petals of a flower she admired as if it was made from the gentlest of spun glass "could we stay for a moment, Jasper? We haven't stood still since that day at the diner". She looked down then, curious as a child when a lady beetle landed on the back of her hand.
With a growl, the tension inside finally came to a head. It had been building and building with such cascading force until his control shattered, and he turned to her, striding forward like an animal on the prowl. She shot up and stepped backwards until a tree trunk stopped her retreat. Jasper's hands came up on either side of her, blocking her path though no part of his body actually touched hers.
"We cannot stop," staring down at her he forced himself to speak past the waves of emotion, his and Alice's, until they became one and the same mixing inside of him "you cannot understand the force some will go to to possess your ability. One will know, figure it out, and the rumours and whispers will spread until they reach the Ancient's who rule the Volturi and they'll come for you. They've destroyed coven after coven to reach the gifted ones, and your ability is one I have never even heard speculated existed". Hand's behind her head and finger's curled in her short black hair as Alice stroked his chest with such care he was physically in pain when he thought of another harming such a spirit.
"This obsession Jasper, will destroy us long before any other finds out about my ability," what was in her heart was matched by the words that came from her mouth and that which was written on her face "it hurts me to know that your preoccupied with these ideas when you should be happy we have finally met". A hand on his heart, it having stopped beating long before she was born.
"Thirty years alone Jasper. So incredibly alone with only vision's of you to keep me going," shadows, horror's, in her eyes as she looked up at him, her small hand cupping his cheek as he stood threateningly over her lithe body. Crowding her against the tree with no way of escape. "You don't understand how much it savaged me to see visions on you, but never being able to find you. And you weren't looking for me" fury in her emotions now, tangled and intertwined with such helplessness and defeat it crippled him. "Every time you went into battle; I saw at least five possible ways you would die. Every time I saw you with Maria, a hand on your arm, looking over your shoulder at something, I wanted to scream and brutalize and claim you as mine when you didn't even know I existed. You were betraying me with every breath you took, and I couldn't handle it". He felt her keening her distress and suffering, so deep and so far inside her the waves and waves of calm he pushed at her had nil effect. He abandoned his forceful position of towering over her, instead frantic hands cupped her face, stroked her hair in an effort to lessen her pain.
"If you hadn't had come that day in Philadelphia, I would have gone to the Volturi," it was impossible to silent the protective growl that echoed in his chest "I knew they would have kept me once they knew what I could do, but it was a future of very few that I saw that we actually came face-to-face. They would have kept you too once they made their way to silence the Southern Coven's again, if only to make me happy, and second for your own ability".
Alice's world weary eyes shuttered closed, and he felt such resignation in her it broke him a little "I won't lie to you. They will come for me". She didn't seem to notice when her hand's started stroking his chest again, having felt rage and fierce helplessness turn his body immovable. "But apart from seeing visions of you, I started getting some of others. Carlisle is old enough and his family is strong and well know across the globe enough that they'll keep us safe. There's a mother and a father unit, the centre, with three they call their children. We were always meant to be a part of them Jasper, just as I was always meant to be your other half".
"It's truly a family Jasper", such longing, he'd never have thought it possible it could come from such a tiny creature if he hadn't felt something stronger on the day they had first met. "They'll love me, and you'll have brother's that will ease some of your tension, because they'll prove that they'll never let anyone take me from you. We will keep them safe while they keep up safe, pieces of a puzzle coming together to finally take shape. Wouldn't you like that? Finally some peace to rest with me after all you've done in your life time, and all I've put you through since we meet?". The fact the she thought this was her fault was almost laughable, but he was in no mood to find humour in anything.
He didn't need to ask what she wanted; feeling such emotional need, a seemingly unstable hunger for these people easily answered that question. But he also felt resolve. If Jasper didn't want to, they wouldn't go to these people she thought would be a family to them. In ways of family all he needed was her, but what would it do to her to keep away from these people? And the Volturi. He would have gone at the first indication that there was even a hope of them being able to keep Alice from Aro's grasp. But to share her with a family of vampires? Impossible. There was no way he had that ability in him. She occupied every thought, every emotion. Nearly every thought in his mind was somehow related to Alice. He was unbalanced with her even a few feet away from him. What it would do to him to have her away from him at any time; he didn't even want to speculate.
"If we find this family," her sudden joy was stifling "you will not leave my side". He stared into her eyes with such intent as to make her understand this was without any compromise "until I say otherwise, you will not leave my sight. Two feet away from me is all I'll allow before I drag you back". She was trying not to bounce on the balls of her feet, so excited was she about all of this "if I sense any danger I'll pick you up or fight and ask questions later. Do you understand, Alice?". Standing up on the tips of her toes she wrapped her arms around his neck, laughing and smiling like he had given her the best gift anyone had ever given her. "I promise, I promise! Everything will be fine, I've already seen it! Oh you'll be so happy! Emmett, he's a fighter, will be ecstatic he's finally got a sparring partner of your calibre. And his mate Rosalie is so beautiful! She loves shopping as much as I do! Edward and you will have chess tournaments that last hours with several boards all joined into one! And Esme, that's Carlisle's mate, she's so kind! She'll love you as much as you'll let her mother you. And Carlisle's got so many books! I'll be bored to tears when you two get into one of your moods and talk for hours about history". He let her ramble as they walked, soaking in her emotions and her explanations of the people they were going to meet. He almost couldn't believe what she was saying was true, but she believed with all her heart that he'd be happy there. He could feel just how much she was excited, not just for her, but for him.
Alice seemed hesitated to reach for him, wondering even as she talked a mile a minute if he needed a little breathing room... a little room to recover after letting her peek through his walls. If he needed that space then she would give it to him, but, with a thrill that shot straight to her heart, she felt the backs of his fingers brush hers as he voluntarily brought his hand closer, seeking hers. She turned her palm, offering it to him. Alice could have cried when the palm of his hand brushed over her, his fingers slipping through the spaces between hers.