Disclaimer: Characters belong to S. Meyer.
The song, Storm by Lifehouse, is the property of the artists in question.
This fic hasn't been beta'd and might have some inconsistencies, but bear with me.
AN: I wrote this fic for littleclarestar, as she bought me in the Fandom Gives Back-auction.
Her prompts were few, seemingly simple and very challenging for me. For a long time I was intimidated by them, as you all know I'm a slash-girl. But then I came up with this concept and Clare liked it. That's what's important for me.
She graciously let me share this with the rest of you. I hope you enjoy it, even if it's not what I usually write.
The Prompts: B&E, Jasper, rain, sea, purple, death and the song Storm by Lifehouse.
-xxXxx-
Underneath The Surface
Dearest Esme,
it is not a good day for me today, but then again if any of my letters reach you, you must know that none of my days are good.
I never thought it would be this easy, losing my mind to this melancholy. Do you think there is something wrong with our upbringing or our make? I remember you being low when you gave birth to Alice, even though it was supposed to be the happiest time in your life.
I would ask how my niece is doing, but I am not quite sure I will be here to get your next letter. I'm sorry, my beloved sister, but that is the truth. One of these days, nights, I'll walk out of my little lighthouse and leave this Godforsaken place. I'll walk up to the cliffs overlooking the water and jump.
There will be a package for Alice in the trunk inside my bedroom. Just a few of my compositions, they're not good as you know I had to give up my piano when it didn't fit into the lighthouse, but they're still for my niece.
If I believed in God, I would end this letter with something fitting, but now all I have is a thank you, Esme.
Thank you for being the best sister an artistic young man could have. Thank you for understanding when no-one else did. Do not be sad, for I will be in peace.
Yours,
Edward.
Bella clutched the letter in her hand, wiping her face with the other. Her sobs had left her with a dull ache in her abs. She had been crying over Edward for days now, the letters were getting more and more depressed and even though this last one had ended with a hopeful note, it still made her weep because she knew it was the last one there was. They might literally be the last words Edward ever wrote.
"Bells, you up there?" she heard her father's voice from downstairs.
"Y-yeah, Charlie, I'm here. Will be down in a minute. There's a casserole in the oven." she called out and put the letters back into the ornate little box that had resided on her nightstand for over a week now.
She knew the letters by heart now.
"Put those letters away now, sweetheart," Charlie's voice from the doorway startled her and she spun around.
"Dad! You nearly gave me a heart attack!" she exclaimed, hand over her heart.
"Well I think it's those letters, honey. You shouldn't really be doing that, they depress you like they did that boy, Edmund." Charlie sighed, messing with his already messed up hair.
"Edward, Ch..Dad, his name was Edward." she pointed out in a tone that would have told anyone she had said this before, multiple times.
"Right, well there's another flea market in Port Angeles next weekend, I thought we could go there and see if we could find something else for you to obsess over. Now where's my dinner, woman?" Charlie said in his best good cop-tone and Bella sighed.
"Fine, dad, dinner's ready soon and I'll go with you to PA, okay?" she said, trying to appease him, the whole weeping thing was getting old anyway.
"Good." was all the Chief said but he eyed the wooden box thoughtfully. "Have you figured out which lighthouse it is yet?"
"I have narrowed it down to a few I think. The thing is the first letters aren't there, like the ones where he would state the name of the place. The problem is that there have been too many lighthouses around here in the late 1900s." her tone betrayed the frustration she was feeling.
After finding the beautiful little box with the carving of a lighthouse on top of it from the last big flea market they had gone to in Port Townsend, she had wanted to find out which place had it been where the young composer had moved to.
From what she had gathered, Edward had been in his early twenties, around Bella's own age, when he had moved to be the caretaker of the lighthouse in question. He had been an artistic man, moving from somewhere he only referred to as 'Home' into this lighthouse in the general area of Washington State. When he had gotten to his destination, he had been devastated to learn that his beloved piano wouldn't fit into the tiny living quarters of the lighthouse. So there he was, a composer without his instrument.
That seemed to drive the brilliant young mind into a tailspin that Bella could read from the letters. It was sad, terrifying even, to read about the arch of the last two years Edward spent living in his lighthouse. When Bella began to question why Edward hadn't left the lighthouse, she had found the reason from the next letter or the one after that; pride. He had taken a task and he would not give up under any circumstances.
Somehow she had a feeling that he had moved to isolation because of a girl. She knew the girl only by the initial T. Apparently this girl had been his and Esme's childhood friend but then gone off and married someone else. Soon after the wedding he had moved into his isolation with the determination to concentrate on his music. But no, that hadn't quite happened like he had hoped.
While Bella set the dinner table, she thought of some of the things she had read in those letters.
"The nights here are beautiful. When I make sure that there's light for the ships, I often stand up there, looking over the blackness of the sea and wish I had my piano to play something for the stars that look down upon my solitude."
For Bella, an English major in the WSU, the language Edward was using in his letters to his sister was so beautiful and poetic, it made her feel the melancholy like it had been her own.
They ate in silence like they always did, Charlie and her. It was summer and she hadn't taken any summer classes, instead opting to come home to spend time with her father. At one point she hadn't even liked him, having blamed him for the divorce of her parents' when she was just a tiny baby. Later she had learned that her mother had been the one to blame. Bella still loved her whimsical, harebrained mother but it wasn't always easy. The older Bella got, the more she appreciated the quiet lifestyle of Charlie's.
Her thoughts revolved around the letters and the box she had had to pry open with a nail file. The man selling it had told them he had gotten it from a yard sale somewhere upstate and it was so light there was probably nothing in it. How wrong had he been. There was a whole life story inside the box. It wasn't a big box, just big enough to hold the dozen letters in an old fashioned envelopes folded in half. There had been nothing else inside but the letters.
"The box!" Bella suddenly exclaimed, jumping up from her seat and making Charlie spill the glass of water he had just picked up.
"Hell, Bells! What are you…?"
But she was already running up the stairs to take a closer look at the carving. It had suddenly come to her that maybe it was the actual lighthouse Edward had lived in that adorned the top of the box.
It wasn't the first time she was happy about the new, faster internet connection and the new laptop she had gotten for Christmas. It didn't take more than a minute or two to find a list of lighthouses in the Pacific Northwest and they all had some sort of pictures, either past or present ones.
Frantically she went through the list of more than two dozen lighthouses on the website she found and it was half way through when her eyes landed on something familiar. The shape was similar, and she opened more images to a larger size to see what the place looked like from the other side.
"Dad? Dad come look at this!" she called out and there were heavy steps as her father trudged up the stairs.
"What is it? A revelation by the sound of your voice…" the man grumbled but she thrust the box at him without explanations, her finger pointed at the image on the screen.
"Is that…?" she breathed and the cop in Charlie Swan takes over once again as he looked at the clues and the different surroundings. There were only new pictures from a few years ago, there were flowers in the flowerbeds around the little lighthouse and some bushes too. None of those were in the carving on the wood.
"I think it could be the same place. See, most lighthouses had the same kind of windows and shapes at the time that one was built, but it's that window," Charlie pointed at a little arch window with a strange, iron screen covering it in the side of the building, "that looks similar to this, look." he pointed at the window on the cover of the box and Bella nodded.
"Yes, yes I think you're right!" she breathed, tears of joy in her eyes.
"Now don't get too excited, Bells, might be a different lighthouse. Where's this one located?" he asked and placed the box next to the laptop before awkwardly patting her shoulder.
She realized all she had was a name so far and went to click on the information. There was a link to Google maps and she brought it up.
It wasn't far, though she'd have to take at least one boat to get there once she'd get to the right town. It was on a secluded spot even in modern day standards.
"We can drive there next weekend if you'd like." Charlie said gruffly, but she shook her head.
"No dad…I think I need to do this alone. You go to PA alone and I'll drive to see the lighthouse in my car."
Before Charlie could object, she reminded him that it was a new truck, not the old one and even though it wasn't a new new car but an old new car instead, it was still what she used to drive across the state when she came to visit him for a longer period of time than a weekend or the holidays.
It shut him up and they went on with their own separate stuff for the evening. Bella kept looking at the page thoughtfully, considering the fact that it might not be Edward's lighthouse after all but she still knew she had to take the trip there to be sure.
There was an email address at the bottom of the page and she briefly considered emailing whomever it was who took care of such mail, but decided against it. She'd rather take the trip there, to where Edward possibly lived and died, and then be sure. The disappointment would be easier to take in a lovely scenery like that than it would be inside this tiny, almost depressing house, in Forks.
-xxXxx-
On Friday afternoon she was driving towards the closest little town to the lighthouse, some four hours away from Forks Charlie had estimated. She was listening to music as she drove and smiled when she realized all the differences to her old truck. It hadn't been able to keep up with anything more than a tractor on the highway and the radio had been an old thing. This CD-player was better by a mile, even though it didn't rival the things some of her friends had in their cars.
Waiting for the ferry across the water to the part of the peninsula where the lighthouse was seemed to take ages, when in reality she waited for two and a half hours only. It was lucky to even catch that ferry, she had been told. It didn't run to the peninsula more than a few times a day and the next one would have been the one in the evening.
Her nerves picked up during the time she spent in town. The little café she found was where she had her late lunch.
"You don't seem like a tourist, dear." the old lady running the café said. Her name tag read Maggie.
"You're right, ma'am. " Bella smiled at her and the old woman preened at her manners.
"If you don't mind me asking dear, what does a pretty young woman like yourself do in such a tiny town?" Maggie asked and Bella gestured her to take a seat across the table. There weren't other clients in so she might as well humor the woman.
"It's a long story, but I'm going to see the lighthouse." she said and then hummed when the excellent flavors of the deep fried fish hit her taste buds.
"My grandma's recipe, she was from Britain," Maggie smiled.
Bella dug into the fries or chips as they would be with the particular recipe, she thought, grinning inwardly.
"Anything special about the lighthouse for you then?" Maggie asked and Bella nodded before taking a sip of her water.
"Yes, I'm wondering something about its history, if I'm right I'll come back and tell you all about it."
"Well I suppose I might be able to help you with your quest if you'd tell me more, but I can see you want to go there to look for yourself." The old woman smiled and then added, "But please, do come visit me and tell me the whole story, whether your find your answers or not. I have to say you picked the right day, it's been raining for a week straight and you get here on a sunny day. I hope you'll bring sunshine back with you too."
Bella promised to come back and after her lunch was done, she went to wait for the ferry at the little docks. It was a lovely day, warm and sunny, against all odds. She still missed Phoenix sometimes, but the dry heat there wasn't something she liked anymore. It was more like she missed the happier days with her mom.
When the lighthouse came into view, finally, she was almost hyperventilating. It was like she knew the place already and she couldn't even think about the possibility of it being the wrong place. It had to be where Edward had lived. It just had to. After driving around the route to the top of the islands, crossing a few bridges to get there, she was finally there. The lighthouse looked just like it did in the pictures online.
Bella stepped out of the truck and looked at the building and the flowers, pretty purple ones she hadn't seen anywhere else before, and then rounded the corner to look at the window. Then she raised the box that was in her hands and looked at it, comparing the carving to the lighthouse. She was certain now, it was the place. Now if she could just figure out if it was Edward's lighthouse too…
A bang of the door startled her out of her thoughts and she turned around to see someone rounding the corner.
Shit, she hadn't even thought someone might be living here!
"Hello," she said and shadowed her eyes from the rare sunshine.
The man walking towards her was maybe her age, less than thirty anyway. He was tall and had blond curls framing his face and the bluest eyes Bella had ever seen.
"Afternoon, Miss. I would ask if you're lost but I doubt anyone comes to a lighthouse to do that." and then there was a grin and dimples and Bella nearly swooned.
The only thing preventing her doing so was the fact that this wasn't the man she was there for.
"I'm Bella Swan, I live in Forks." she said and put the box under her left arm before offering her right one to be shaken by the blond god.
"Jasper Whitlock, Miss." The handshake was firm and polite as was his expression when he turned so that she didn't have to shield her eyes while looking at him.
"Do you think this is the lighthouse in this carving?" she asked, getting to the point and showed him the box.
The man, Jasper, took the box and carefully looked at the image. Bella liked that he didn't just glance at it before giving it back to her, but looked at it in great detail, comparing it to the lighthouse next to them.
"Yes, I think so. I haven't seen carvings of it before, though. Where did you get it?" he asked, clearly interested and she chuckled a little.
"That is a long story and leads to why I'm here in the first place."
"Well I just put the kettle on, there's tea or instant coffee if you're interested?" Jasper asked and Bella found herself nodding, ignoring all the rules her father had taught her. To not go into anyone's home if you don't know them, especially someone male and much bigger than you.
She was led into the little house adjoining the lighthouse part of the building. It was only just a little square, Jasper explained to her that there was this tiny little room with kitchen and a couch that could be turned into a bed and that the little door led into an almost modern bathroom in the corner of the room. The other door led to the lighthouse stairs.
She sat on the bench at the wooden table as Jasper set their teas.
"Do you live here?" she asked and looked around.
"Oh no, I'm just here because I'm writing about lighthouses and this one has a neat story in some ways. A friend has connections so I get to stay here for the summer, taking care of the building and stuff." Jasper smiled as he sat down. "So, the story?"
"Yes, well some time ago I went with my dad to this flea market and…"
Telling the story and showing Jasper the letters took two hours. When he looked up from the envelopes in his hands, he grinned.
"It's the right place alright…"
Bella squeaked, completely unable to help herself and made Jasper laugh.
"How do you know?" she asked and Jasper got up.
"Come," he said and she followed him to the door that led them to the lighthouse.
The tower was maybe as high as a three storey building would be, and the winding staircase was iron and creaked under their weight.
"Don't worry, it holds us, just makes a lot of noise." Jasper smiled as he looked back at Bella who was climbing after him.
When they got on top of the building, he opened the little door and the ducked out to the balcony surrounding the glass top of the tower. It was lovely, the view and she could see Edward standing here while the large lamp behind them would burn and cast a light for the ships at sea.
"Here," Jasper said and walked a bit to the side and pointed at the wooden top of the railing.
There were crude set of piano keys carved into the top of the railing.
"I think he stood here, playing his imaginary piano for the stars…" she whispered, tears welling in her eyes once again as her fingers stroked the silent keys that had barely handled the weather all these years.
Jasper stood next to her, looking at the sea instead of her and she was grateful. Her tears were for Edward, not the blond next to her.
"Do you…do you know if he really jumped?" she asked and Jasper turned to look at her.
"Yes. They found his cane on top of the cliffs there," Jasper pointed at the high cliffs at the distance.
"Cane?" she asked.
"He had some trouble with his hip, he had fallen off a horse when he was younger." Jasper said .
"That explains the not giving up on living here even without the piano-part." Bella nodded and Jasper grinned.
"See, you're the only person who understands that. I always thought, since I heard his story back at school, that he wasn't insane to try to maintain the lighthouse when it must have been difficult for him to climb the stairs time and time again."
"Exactly." Bella nodded and smiled through the drying tears.
"You know, I've been meaning to hold a little vigil for Edward before I leave. Do you want to do it with me? I'm supposed to be here for a few weeks still but we could do it tonight if you want to." Jasper said and Bella looked up at him in awe.
"Really? I'd love to do something for him." she said with a smile.
"Absolutely. I'd love to take a look at the letters and have dinner first if you don't mind? We could walk up to the cliff at twilight. Take a few lanterns with us." Jasper grinned and they began to descend the stairs again.
They decided to make a night of it, sharing all they knew and assumed about the tragic story of Edward Anthony Masen, as Bella learned his name to be. It was nice, being able to talk about him with someone who was also truly interested.
They talked about Edward and the girl he had been in love with, T. as in Tanya, Jasper said, and how she had picked another, healthy man over the sensitive, artistic cripple. Neither of them questioned Edward's choice to end his life. The depression he must have felt somehow lingered in the melancholy feeling of this beautiful place and even though it might have been too much for some people, Bella liked it. She felt connected to the man there.
After their dinner, some improvised wok with rice Jasper cooked on the gas stove, they read the rest of the letters together. Even Jasper's eyes looked red when he read the last one Edward had ever sent to his sister.
"I wonder if her daughter ever got the notes and what the songs were like." Jasper said as he looked at the text before folding the letter back into its envelope.
"If it was anything like what he writes, it would be beautiful I'm sure." Bella sighed and stroked the carving on the box with her fingertips.
"Do you know what he looked like?" she asked suddenly and Jasper nodded.
"There were some stories I once read, they described him having been of moderate build with almost bronze hair and very green eyes. Never seen an actual image though. Doubt there is one." the blond said and Bella sighed. A painting would have been too much to ask, she knew that. Red hair and green eyes, it sounded interesting, she could almost see an image of him standing on top of the lighthouse, playing his makeshift piano for the stars, the light from the moon or the lighthouse reflecting from his hair.
They made sure the oil lanterns were ready and took them outside. Then Jasper ran back in and came back with the acoustic guitar Bella had seen hanging on the wall above the couch.
"I have an idea." he just said and Bella smiled, knowing by now even with just the few conversations they had had, that Jasper had a reason to everything he did or said. He was fascinating and she hoped they could stay in touch even after tonight.
The walk to the top of the cliffs was long and difficult even for two fit people like they were. They had proper boots on, yet they stumbled on the rocks and had to choose their path carefully. It wasn't easy and it wasn't safe.
"He was determined to die." Bella said as they got.
"That he was." Jasper nodded sadly and pointed at the bench someone had built there. "Let's sit."
They sat down, looking at the sunset coloring the lighthouse even though the sunset wasn't in front of them, it was still lovely and there was something very idyllic about the moment.
After the last rays were gone, Bella lit the lanterns and Jasper moved to pick up the guitar and started to play it in the dark.
She listened to Jasper's beautiful singing voice for a moment before joining in with the song she knew already by heart.
"I know you didn't
bring me out here to drown
so why am I 10 feet under and upside down
barely surviving has become my purpose
cause I'm so used to living underneath the surface
if I could just see you
everything will be alright
if I see you
this darkness will turn to light
and I will walk on water
and you will catch me if I fall
and I will get lost into your eyes
and everything will be alright…"
-The End-