I decided to time skip a little in this chapter. It'll still be a bit before he meets Alice but this is the one where things start getting better. Yay. And I'm so sorry this took so long to get up. I've had a tone of homework but spring break is in two weeks so expect a lot of updates then…until
The first year after they left was the worst. We lost the entire state of Louisiana to another army. It wasn't big but it had a big enough population that it meant something. Maria had all but taken out a city in her rage, taking almost too many to replace the newborns we lost. I tried to stay out of her way but that didn't exactly work. She called me into her tent at least once a week. And this time there was no one to help. I constantly kept thinking about them. Were they safe? What was their life like? Had they gotten themselves stuck with another person like Maria? She'd told us in the beginning that there were worse vampires than her. I stopped believing her the first time she raped me.
Training got even harder. I slowly started paying less and less attention to what I was doing and my surroundings. I nearly killed a newborn when he tried to sneak up on me to practice. Actually tore his head off. He survived, of course, but neither the newborn nor Maria was very happy about that. Their expressions would've been funny if their emotions weren't so intense. The newborn looked about ready to kill me once he could move again. Maria looked somewhere between wanting to laugh and also wanting to kill me. She didn't understand why my mind was spiraling downward. She never came in after a night saying she didn't want to hurt me. Instead, she often went on to ask if I understood why I was being punished and saying I deserved it. She never failed to remind me of that. I already believed her, convinced I must have done something in a past life or this one to deserve it. Maria refused to let me touch her anymore. She 'd stopped taking my shirt off at night. "Can't have you tarnishing my looks now with your disgusting hands now, can we, Major?" was what she would always say. It was those words that dropped me down to the point of not caring what she did. Fighting back never crossed my mind again. Peter's words about it being abuse faded. Getting myself killed was out of the option. I wasn't a coward and I didn't think my mind would let me just stand still in a fight and let me get my head ripped off. I knew how to do it quickly and painlessly. I doubted anyone else would take that same care.
In that year, Maria had locked me in the barn three times, coming in almost every day to yell at me and bite me. Apparently, my deteriorating state was completely my fault and she felt I needed to know that. It was all my fault we lost Louisiana and ten newborns. My fault that Nettie and Lucy had betrayed her. I had no idea why it was all my fault but it was somehow. The humans she picked to join us turned out to be even more unruly and unwilling to listen than the others. We ended up taking out half of them when they tried to rebel. She made a public example of them. Everyone was a lot more careful after that. No one stepped out of line again although we always ended up doing something wrong. Maria found flaws where none existed. She seemed to have a tendency to pick a victim for a week and torture them. Unless they failed her somehow. Then she went back to me. She was too mad at everything and everyone to stay calm.
It seemed like it should've been easy to just walk away from it. Like all I had to do was just take off and keep running. And go where? I constantly asked myself where I would go if I ever got out of there alive. Someplace North. Far away from there. Maybe find Peter and Charlotte if that was possible. I thought I would stay solitary, keep away from any covens just in case.
In the second year, fighting back stopped crossing my mind completely. I knew it would have been useless. Instead, I started considering killing her. How I would do it, where, what would happen after. If I succeeded there was a big chance I'd have to take out the rest of the army as well. A group of volatile newborns left unattended would not end well. My plan wasn't even a plan. Just a small idea but it got me through that year with no one by my side. There was no camaraderie here. If you got close to someone, they always died some way in the end. We weren't brothers and sisters or even acquaintances. We were mere soldiers, puppets in the same show, our strings being pulled by the same master. Even that couldn't bond us together. And I hated all of them anyway but I didn't think I could hate anyone more than I hated her. They were foolish, believing that this was the best way. She'd stripped them of their humanity and turned them into animals. Turned us into monsters. Maria always picked the young ones. The ones who had a future and a family. The ones who didn't deserve it at all. I often passed the time focusing in on one of them, memorizing their emotional patterns and trying to imagine what their human life had been. Did they have any siblings? Did their grandparents live with them? Had their house been big? What was their school like? I created scenes for everyone of them and watched them unfold in my mind like a movie. It was as close to entertainment as we could get.
I still hadn't accepted that they left me. I occasionally caught myself thinking I heard Peter talking to me or Charlotte laughing. She was the only one I'd ever heard really laugh here. Maria just laughed because she thought hurting someone was funny. And it was never a laugh laugh. More like some kind of chuckle or purr. The kind you expect to hear from a mad person. It didn't get any easier with their absence. I assumed time would help but it didn't. I hadn't paid a lot of attention to the fact that I needed good company. From what flashes of my human life I remembered, I'd always had someone to talk to or just be with. It didn't matter whether it was my sister or my own men I fought side by side with. Without any non-painful contact combined with whatever Maria felt like doing to me was destroying me. So I clung to my idea of killing her like a life preserver, slowly filling in the holes and finalizing it.
It took me a full year to get the plan completely mapped out in my head. It wasn't going to be easy or quick. Dispatching all of them would take time and I'd have to make sure none of them tried to run. If they got away and got into trouble, there was a good chance the Volturi would step in and that would mean death for everyone. The months passed by in a blur. I barely got myself out to hunt, spending any free time away from everyone else. The battles we won I vaguely remembered, the ones we lost were only slightly clearer because by then I knew what would happen although Maria had a habit of never doing the exact same thing twice. And it seemed every time she called me in, she had something new in mind. My ability to pull my mind away from the present faded, leaving me with no protection at all against her. My gift only worsened it but no matter how strong an emotion was, it never seemed like enough to break the haze that had settled over me.
The fifth year after they left, I had accepted the fact that I was alone in this. Yet in some way I felt like I owed it to every newborn we'd created and killed. Like if I killed her, maybe some of the guilt would go away. I was the only one who could do it, not that there was anyone there to help. I spent about six months making myself numb to her so nothing would hinder me. The damage was still there, I just didn't acknowledge it. I could deal with that later.
I was running out to hunt the day I planned on killing her when they found me. I knew exactly what I was going to do. My body worked on instinct while my mind focused on the plan. It seemed simple enough. I'd get her out into the woods and take her by surprise. Voices yanked me out of my thoughts.
"Are we getting close?"
"Shh! You don't know if anyone else is out here."
"I do actually and you know this is his spot."
I nearly ran into a tree, too shocked to look where I was going. This is it. You've finally gone crazy. It couldn't be them. There was no way in hell they came back. Anyone who left had to have a death wish if they even thought of returning. In a second, they were only a few feet away from me. Before I could even blink, Charlotte had raced forward and hugged me tightly enough I thought she nearly broke a rib. "I'm so sorry. Things just kind of…and Peter wouldn't let me and then this. Well, that was interesting. And then…yeah…um." She rambled in broken sentences before Peter gently pulled her away. She let go and stepped back with a bounce. It took me a moment to comprehend that it was them.
"What are you doing here?" I hissed, taking a few large steps back. They looked better, happy. Charlotte wore a small white dress with flats, emanating concern and joy. Peter was frowning at me, his attire consisting of slacks and a plain button-down shirt, making me almost painfully aware of how bad my clothes were.
"We had to come back," he said quietly, almost whispering. "I'm sorry…it was just a-"
"Spur of the moment thing," I finished for him. Peter smiled. "I get it."
"Come back with us. We got ourselves a cute house and there's plenty of food and any others we have come across aren't hostile. Nothing like here." Charlotte grabbed my hand, immediately assaulting me with all her joy, worry and guilt. I looked at her blankly, knowing she wouldn't lie but still terrified of leaving. Charlotte must have sensed that because she quickly added, "she can't follow you there. We're far away from her territory."
"Jasper, it's coming with us or hell," Peter said slowly. He didn't need to. I was already in.
"I'm with you. Just lead the way." Peter hugged me and I resisted the instinct to shove him away. This is Peter. I chanted that in my head until he let go. Charlotte took his hand and they started running. I raced after them, unsure about what I was feeling. Definitely relieved but still dazed. Like I expected this to be some kind of hallucination and I was going to come to in Maria's tent. My body involuntarily shuddered at the thought and I almost stumbled on a root sticking out of the ground. Charlotte's concern and Peter's slow riling anger spiked. They know. I wasn't sure how to feel about that. Of course they knew what had happened while they were there but things had changed. They knew it had gotten worse. I didn't know whether to be relieved or afraid of the fact.
They babbled the entire run, filling me in on what life was like there. No more fighting. Charlotte spent most of her free time decorating their new house. Peter, in return for all her work, spoiled his mate rotten with whatever she wanted and more. I was only slightly envious of their bond but I never found myself thinking about getting a mate. Charlotte was the only women I barely trusted at all. And besides, who could ever love me?
"How much further?" I questioned after we'd been running for a day.
"We're in Iowa so just a few more hours. The house is closer to Wisconsin," Peter replied, glancing back at me. I'd fallen behind slightly, still a little sore from the last night with Maria. She had been even angrier then. About what, I had no idea.
The house was surrounded by gold grass and weeds, long and red, two stories. Evidence that Charlotte had been there were everywhere. Flowers in pots were on all surfaces, filling the area with their scent. Every piece of furniture inside looked extraordinarily comfortable even the kitchen table chairs. She'd placed multiple couches around the house, actually using the bedrooms as personal spaces that reflected them. Charlotte's was bright, a mirror of herself. Peter's room was a little more dulled down, a little more serious but still happy, charming. It looked nothing like a house that belonged to two vampires.
"This is it," Charlotte chirped, sweeping her hands out to emphasize the room. "The guest room is yours. Last one down the hall." I nodded, slowly following her directions to the room and opening the door. It was plain, unpainted with a small bed and a desk in it. I liked it though. It was simple. And as far as I could see nothing there could be a trigger. I'd learned over the years what things sent me into panic mode so I figured as long as the room stayed that way, there would be no problems. I walked out, immediately roaming the rest of the house, almost unconsciously mapping out what escape routes there were, where everything flammable was and what spots were best for building a fire. That was instinct by then.
Night fell and we sat in the living room, still talking and catching up. Multiple times they had to reassure me that I was safe here, Maria couldn't find us. I was still skeptical and too jumpy for my own good. Charlotte eventually reached over, grabbed my hand and pulled me into her arms like a mother would. I didn't realize I'd stopped breathing until she started running her fingers through my hair and sang quietly. I had a very fuzzy memory of my own mother doing this to me when I got sick. The song tapered off and she kept repeating that I was safe here. I let myself believe her for the moment, closing my eyes and letting her emotions wash over me. She was so calm it made me tired. It was almost like sleeping.
I'm sorry again this took so long. I'm finally on spring break so expect a lot of updates over the next week. And please review, I want a few opinions on how many chapters I should keep him with Peter and Charlotte. How quickly do you want to have Alice come into the picture? Review and tell me (: