AN – HOLY FUCKING SCHNAPPENN WOWZA! Ok, omg. This story totes got accepted onto Twilighted. I submitted it, totes going out on a limb, thinking it'd be knocked down. But they accepted it. I was like.... see above capitals.

Thank you to everyone who reviewed last chapter. This one is longer than the rest. But not too monster-esque.

Jasper's POV

The group therapy session started just moments after Alice and I had our little discussion. It was boring, as per usual. It was called "Learning to be Assertive". I don't fucking need to be assertive. And I most certainly didn't fucking need to be sitting in a group therapy room, pretending to listen to other people ramble about their shit. I spent the hour drawing random patterns on a piece of paper that I stole from behind the nurses' desk. I looked down to see I had drawn an eye. I looked at it, trying to figure out why it looked familiar, and then realised what it was. I glanced up at Alice, who was staring pointlessly out the window behind me.

Fuck.

I had drawn Alice's eyes. I scrunched up the piece of paper, stood, and stormed out of the room. I had been there for almost the entire hour, they couldn't fucking complain. I went outside, and sat down in my corner. Lighting my cigarette, I leant my head against the brick wall, and closed my eyes. Instead of seeing black, I say her eyes, again. I banged my head against the brick wall, hard. I closed my eyes again, hoping I'd see black. Instead, once again, my eyes were plagued by a see of grey. Her eyes looked like they might be bright blue, if she were happy. But they were lifeless. She could smile, and it never reached her eyes.

When the fuck did I notice this shit?

"You've fucking lost it. You're insane. A fucking stalker. Noticing shit about this girl, like that" the voice spoke to me.

"Fuck!" I screamed out, throwing my lighter across the courtyard, before banging my head continuously against the wall, trying to get the fucking image out of my mind.

"You know, you're not going to do anything other than give yourself a concussion by doing that..."

"Oh, just fuck off already! When are you going to learn I don't listen to what you say?!"

"Well now, I'm going to take a wild guess and awesome you're not talking to me, considering I haven't even introduced myself yet..."

What now?

I opened my eyes to see that the voice telling that I was going to give myself a concussion was in fact not in my head, rather coming from a young man, probably about mid thirties, no more, looking at me with a small smile on his face.

"Oh, sorry. I thought you were..."

Great what do I tell him? I thought you were an auditory hallucination determined to get me to listen to it?

"I thought you were someone else" I said lamely, waiting for him to walk away.

"Evidently. I was reasonably sure you weren't telling me to fuck off yet. I'm Dr. Cullen. Or Carlisle. Either way. I prefer to be informal in here, I find that it helps me connect to the patients better. But it's entirely up to you as to what you wish to call me."

"Ok, Cullen. Now that we're all introduced..." I stood up and started to walk away.

"Well technically you didn't introduce yourself, but I already know you're Jasper. I'm the psychologist here. I was looking for you actually. Your room or the group room?"

I rolled my eyes. Of course the person who witnessed my mini psychological breakdown over Alice's eyes was the psychologist. Then I realised how much shit I was in. This wasn't the same psychiatrist I had had the previous times I was in here, and to be perfectly honest, he didn't seem as clueless and my old one.

"My room is fine" I was used to having nurses and doctors in and out of my room, I wasn't about to be precious about who came in.

We walked to my room in silence, and when we got in, I slumped onto the bed, staring at the ceiling. I let out a sigh, and waited for the session to begin. After five minutes Cullen still hadn't said anything, and I was starting to wonder if he'd died in the chair or something. I dared a peek over to see him looking at me, his hands folded in his lap, looking at me. I raised an eyebrow at me, and he mimicked my action.

"What are you waiting for? You going to shrink my head or not?"

"Actually, I'm waiting for you to say something."

Ok, what the fuck?

This was definitely not how most psychologists had worked with me so far. It was usually question after question, and I would give a basic answer. Something generic. Something I knew would get me out of here faster. This was throwing me off and I needed to think about what I was going to say. I wanted to swear at the mother fucker, instead I sat up on the bed, crossed my legs, and reached behind me for my harmonica. I started playing random tunes.

"You know what happens if you say nothing at all Jasper. I know you know that."

He had me there. I did know what would happen if I said nothing. I would either be ordered to stay here for longer, or be transferred to a locked ward, for an indefinite amount of time.

"I don't know what you want me to talk about" it was a good enough excuse. Plus, if he gave me something to talk about, I could bullshit my way through the rest.

"I want you to tell me what you want to talk about. We can talk about anything at all."

I raised an eyebrow.

"Anything?"

He simply nodded, and sat, waiting.

"Why did you become a psychiatrist? You spend 9 hours a day talking to people who lie to you. How is that satisfying?"

Cullen smiled "true, I spend nine hours talking to people who lie sometimes. Not always. But in those lies there's truth, more than you can imagine."

I closed my eyes before talking again,

"So what, you read between the lines? Why not become a kindergarten teacher instead?"

"Because children always tell the truth, or when they lie, they don't have the guts to get away with it. When they get older, that's when they start trying to hide things."

"Why don't you want to ask me a question then? That way I can lie to you, and you can read between the lines and come up with a fucking awesome theory on why I'm as fucked up as I am!"

"That is exactly why, Jasper. What you just said. That is exactly why I don't want to ask questions. Add that to the fact I'm sure you've learnt how to lie superbly over the years that you've been coming in and out of this place."

"So you don't think you could crack me? You don't think you could see through my lies."

Cullen let out a laugh, and shook his head.

"You like to make assumptions, don't you Jasper?"

I turned my head away from him. It was immature, I knew that, but he was frustrating me. What the hell kind of psychiatrist baited his patients like this?

A really fucking good one?

"He's not good, you're just weak"

The voice always did choose good times to talk to me. I started thinking, wondering if I should tell Cullen about it. Maybe he had something that would make it go away. I would never have even considered it with anyone else. that was more because I didn't think they'd get it. Cullen did seem pretty switched on.

"There's nothing they can do to get rid of me, Jasper. You haven't managed yet? And how long have you been trying?"

"Years" I answered without thinking.

Fuck. I wonder if Cullen noticed that.

I looked around to see Cullen looking at me, intrigued.

"Who were you answering Jasper?"

Shit shit shit shit shit.

I bit my lip, trying to thinking quickly, but I wasn't coming up with any coming up with any answers.

"The voice..." I whispered, knowing that he'd hear me. I wasn't getting out of this one easily.

"And are you going to tell me about the voice? Or am I going to have to start asking questions? I really don't like having to interrogate people who aren't going to answer..."

"I don't know what to tell you about it. It talks to me. I ignore it for the most part. But it knows how to get a reaction out of me."

Cullen nodded, and wrote something down for the first time this entire session.

"How long have you been hearing these voices so far?"

"Just the one voice. And a few years."

"Just the one? That's interesting. Does it always talk about the same thing? Perhaps it says the one sentence over and over again? Or focuses on a central theme?"

Cullen was getting excited now. I could see it in his eyes. He liked this shit. He found me fucking interesting. I wanted to get angry at him, but for some reason I was more inclined to answer him.

"Um, I guess it focuses on making me believe I'm crazy. It doesn't say the same thing all the time. And sometimes it diverges, goes onto another topic, but it never lasts long."

Cullen nodded, and continued to scribble on his piece of paper. He looked up at me after a minute, and surveyed my face before asking "does it go away for extended periods of time? Does something trigger it?"

I had to think about this for a moment. Yes, it went away for hours at a time, when I was on something. But for the most part it was always there, whispering. I could ignore the whispers. When it got loud, that was when it was harder to deal with.

"No, it's there most of the time"

We continued talking about the voice for longer than the session would normally go for, and I found myself actually enjoying being able to tell someone what it was like. I left out a lot of parts, including the drug use. I didn't want them to have another reason to withhold medication from me.

Finally the conversation was coming to an end, and I really, really need a cigarette by this point. I was drained, and wanted to sleep. That wasn't an option though, given that it was eleven in the morning, and sleeping during the day was "frowned upon".

"Jasper, I'm going to recommend something to you, and you don't have to answer right now, and I'm not ordering you to stay, but I think that it would be very beneficial if you were to choose to stay in here after your 3 days is up. I believe that the staff here, including myself, would be able to help you. But it has to be voluntary on your part."

"I can't". I answered automatically. It was true, I couldn't stay here. My father would disown me, and aside from that, I didn't want to be stuck in a psych ward for weeks on end. Who knew when I'd get out if I stayed?

Carlisle stood up and walked toward the door. Before he left he turned to me.

"Just think about it please, Jasper..."

He closed the door softly, and I lay back on my bed, before jumping up, grabbing my packet of smokes, and all but running outside.

I slid the door closed, and went to walk to my corner. She was there again. I stood for a moment, trying to decide between going to my corner, with her, or I could go to sit at the table across the courtyard, where three other people sat. I could sit in the middle, but then I'd just look completely stupid.

I sighed, and made my way over to the corner, and sat down. I pulled out a cigarette and lit it with the lighter I now had stashed in the packet. That way I wouldn't forget it. Unfortunately it also meant I'd also smoked nearly half my cigarettes. To get more I'd have to get a nurse to come with me to the store across the road. Not my idea of fun.

Alice stubbed out her cigarette, and looked in her own packet, before closing it, and leaning her head back against the wall with a sigh. I don't know what came over me, but all of a sudden I was holding out my packet to her, and she was lighting a new cigarette with a content look on her face. How she could possibly be content in a place like this was beyond me, but she seemed to be at this very moment. I put it down to the nicotine hit that she thought she was going to have to go without.

We sat in silence for a minute, before I felt Alice move. I looked over to see her now facing toward me, her back against the gate. I looked away quickly, and focused on the garden in front of me. There was a spider's web in the tree, but I was yet to see the spider to go with it. It must have been a big spider, because the web was huge.

"I didn't thank you" Alice suddenly spoke, and I jumped slightly, despite the soft tone.

I turned my head towards her, but made sure to avoid eye contact. There was something about her eyes that scared me. It wasn't the eyes themselves, but it was something I saw in them. I couldn't place my finger on what it was. I cocked my head to the side, waiting for her to continue, and clarify what the fuck she was talking about, because right now I was just fucking confused.

"For helping me... I didn't thank you. Not properly at least..." she trailed off to a murmur, before stopping completely and staring at the ground in front of her as if it were possibly the most interesting thing she had ever laid her eyes on.

"Doesn't matter" I said, before sucking in the last of my cigarette and flicking the butt into the garden.

"Yes it does. You're right, if it was anyone else who had found me, I would have been out of here faster than you can say chips."

I raised my eyebrows and bit down on my lip hard, trying desperately not to laugh.

"Chips?"

"Yes, chips. They taste awesome, and you can say it really fast."

"Mmhmm...." I nodded, before shaking my head incredulously, and looking toward the sky.

This girl had just almost made me laugh. Not a sarcastic laugh, but a real laugh. Something was terribly wrong with that. It scared the crap out of me. In fact, this girl in general scared the crap out of me. I should just get up, walk away, and avoid her for the rest of my time in here, but I felt compelled to stay sitting there, with her, in this corner.

"So you have Doctor 20 Question's too huh?"

"What?"

She was doing really fucking well at confusing me today.

"Doctor 20 Questions, Carlisle, Doctor Cullen. What ever you want to call him."

"Oh, Cullen. Yeah. Why Doctor 20 Questions?"

"He asked a lot of questions..."

"Not to me. Well, until we got started on a topic that I was actually going to talk about."

Alice made an incredulous noise, and threw her cigarette butt that she'd been playing with into the garden. It parallel to mine.

"He barely stopped asking questions for me to answer them when I was talking to him." Alice paused for a moment, before asking "do you know what the time is? I'm starving."

I looked up at the sky for a moment, before looking back to Alice.

"About midday. Lunch should be served soon."

"How did you know what the time was just by looking up at the sky?"

"Well, you can tell by the position of the sun. It's pretty much in the centre of the sky at the moment, see" I pointed to the sun, and Alice looked up.

"Oh. I didn't know that."

"Yeah. My dad is in the air force, he taught me most of the things I know about the outdoors, and all my survival skills. Well, as far as being lost in the bush goes."

"He sounds like a good father"

I scoffed at this, and fought off the memories of all the times my father had beaten me because I had done something wrong, or he'd seen my bare chest, covered in scared and fresh cuts, or the times that I was locked outside of the house for days at a time because I had left a sock on my floor.

"My father was anything but good."

Alice must have sensed the finality in my tone, because all she said was "oh" and then continued to stare at the ground.

After a few minutes of silence, Alice suddenly jumped up off the ground.

"They're serving lunch!"

She all but sprinted toward the door, and slid it open. I let out a small chuckle before following after her. She went from solemn and quiet to hyperactive, and overjoyed in the space of thirty minutes. I started to run through the mental illnesses I knew about trying to figure out what she could possibly have. I was curious about her. I had seen a lot of people with depression, and even though I knew not every case was the same, she just didn't seem to fit the mould. She was unpredictable with her moods. It was like even the smallest thing could change it from completely and utterly depressed, to ecstatic, and apparently angry, from what I had seen in the group room earlier this morning. It was interesting. I was tempted to sneak behind the nurses' desk and find her file. It wouldn't be the first time I'd 'borrowed' a file. Of course I'd never looked at anyone but my one before...

I shook that idea out of my head before stepping toward the serving area.

AN – ok, hope you liked. Reviews are very much appreciated.